Xavi Caballé has read a book which suggests that the 18th century predecessors of the Norfolk Regiment were thus called because Spanish soldiers thought their Britannia badge represented the Virgin Mary. There’s another, more scurrilous version: Well, I got fond enough, after all, of the Holy Boys, as the old Ninth lads were called… You…
From an 1854 report of the New York Children’s Aid Society on an Italian school: There is going on a certain change for the better among this low class of strangers. On visiting them, I have remarked a considerable reduction of organs and monkeys in their apartments, usually filled with such instruments and beasts. The…