I've never noticed this gun on Horseguards Parade, but it's a trophy from the Napoleonic Wars, captured during the siege of Alexandria in 1801. It's a true antique, the barrel cast in the Ottoman Empire in 1524. And there's a great little story attached to it...

In 1802, shortly after the gun was unveiled in its new home in St James's Park , a colonial administrator called Colonel Edward Marcus Despard hatched a plot to assassinate George III and seize Parliament, the Bank of England and the Tower of London - a full-scale coup d'etat.

One Victorian historian described it as 'one of the maddest conspiracies ever recorded.' It failed when Despard and his co-conspirators were arrested in a Lambeth pub by Bow Street officers. They were hanged and decapitated on the roof of Horsemonger Lane Gaol.

A contemporary report of Lord Nelson's funeral at St Paul's Cathedral gives a deeply equivocal review of the music. Not what a cathedral organist wants to hear!

Lovely discovery today: the signature of Astley Cooper, the most celebrated surgeon of Georgian England, on the will of a murder victim - the subject of my forthcoming book. pic.x.com/HLfFqhjgP4

I'm so glad that the internet was invented. How else would I have found out that the entire discipline of chemistry (and, by extension, most of the other sciences) is fictitious?

The manosphere perfectly described by Sophia Watson in 1768.

I love this idea: in 1806 the New River was deliberately diverted through Sadler's Wells theatre so that they could stage the Battle of Trafalgar on real water.

Let the punishment fit the cri.... wait, what?

This is not a disc I am running out to buy.

In May 1809 a mermaid was reported in the sea off the north-east coast of Scotland. From this eyewitness account it appears that what was actually seen was... a woman going for a swim.

Spotted at Great Chalfield Manor. There can't be many parish churches where the organ was built by the rector. This is one achievement inexplicably omitted by @RevRichardColes during all of his incumbencies.

This is an astonishing story, thankfully with a happy ending!