GordonD

Man on his deathbed surrounded by his wife and four sons. He says to his wife, "Elsie - I'm dying and there's one thing I've always wondered but didn't bring up because we had a truly happy marriage and I didn't want to ruin it. But our youngest son, Jack, is a skinny little thing while the other three are big hulking brutes. Please don't lie to me - is Jack really my son?" His wife looks him directly in the eye and says, "As God is my witness, Jack truly is your son." "Thank you, Elsie," he says, and dies a happy man. And Elsie thinks to herself, "Thank God

No point. Philately will get you nowhere.

Sadly, not Morgan. The ISS's Russian Pirs docking compartment has been decommissioned and will be separated from the structure within the next few weeks. Assuming the launch of the long-awaited Nauka module goes according to plan, Progress MS-16, currently docked with Pirs, will pull it away from the rest of the ISS and de-orbit it to burn up in the atmosphere. Nauka will then take Pirs's place. On 2 June cosmonauts Novitsky and Duprov carried out a 7hr 19min EVA to disconnect external power cables and clear the way for the switchover. Full details here.

Meant to post this yesterday but I forgot. Sixty years ago yesterday, John F. Kennedy made this speech to Congress

Everybody has heard of Tarzan, but not many know the ultimate fate of the Lord of the Jungle. One sad day, he was swinging through the trees when a vine snapped and he fell sixty feet to the ground and broke his neck. The natives who found him, mindful of the many occasions when he had come to their aid, decided to grant him the greatest honour that their tribe could bestow - they made his body into musical instruments so that even after his death he could bring pleasure to those around him. His thigh bones were boiled until all the marrow had gone, then holes were dril

A story which has dated badly because now they'd all have pocket calculators!

NASA has released footage of Ingenuity in flight - WITH SOUND!

Oops! I overlooked the fact that yesterday saw the sixtieth anniversary of America's first manned space flight - Alan Shepard's sub-orbital hop aboard Mercury-Redstone 3, better known as Freedom 7. Back then, of course, it generated huge excitement, but now coverage of manned space missions is patchy - did you know that the Crew Dragon 1 astronauts returned to Earth on Sunday morning? First American night splashdown since Apollo 8, but if they mentioned it on TV I missed it. We've obviously come a long way since Shepard's flight, though he and everybody else would surel

LOS for now, Mike. We'll see you on the other side.

Yorkshire holds its breath as its main shipping route of flat caps, whippets and ale is blocked. Ernie Slatherswaite, Master of the vessel told us "One minute we were fine then a small gust of wind took us." Yorkshire is set to lose upwards of £3.67 a day until the carnage is cleared, which according to Our Uncle Eric in the pub, could take weeks.

Happy birthday to Britmodeller itself, founded on this day! (Don't know how Mike losted it in the first place...)

My wife got really mad when I told her she had no sense of direction. She packed up her bags and right.