Roman soldiers invade Hull museum

Roman soldiers invade Hull Museum
from This is Hull
07:00 – 28-July-2008

A Hull museum was under siege when soldiers invaded the building.

The invasion took place at Hull and East Riding Museum in High Street and Roman soldiers carried out a day-long raid at the venue.

Thankfully, they proved to be a friendly bunch, with some even letting guests try on their helmets and hold their swords.

Museum staff dressed up in character and an army of brave young historians, including Hollie Burgess, 10, of Hessle, dared to dress up as centurions themselves.

Education project officer Kate Armitage said the event had proved a massive success with record-breaking visitor numbers.

She said: “It was a fantastic day and we had almost 650 visitors, which I think is a record for an In Touch event.

“Lots of people dressed up as Roman soldiers and felt how heavy the shields and swords were to carry.”

Crafty guests had the chance to make their own shields to take home with them and lots of children jumped at the chance, creating fierce looking armour-plated shields that would keep away even the sharpest weapon.

History-hungry Hull folk are being invited to get their hands on more interesting objects with a series of In Touch events planned for the summer holidays.

On Wednesday, Victorians will be taking over the Hands On History Museum from 11am to 1pm, and the following Wednesday characters from World War Two will be marching into the Streetlife Museum, in High Street, Hull.

Latin alive and well at Longcroft

Hurrah! An English secondary school has got into the local paper for its Latin, the way American schools seem to do all the time.

This is from the Beverley Guardian

Latin alive and well at Longcroft

STUDENTS at Beverley’s Longcroft School and Performing Arts College have been proving that Latin – often referred to as a dead language – is still very much alive.
Over the past year English teacher Ruth Beckett has been running a popular Latin Club, in which students learn not just about the language itself, but also the culture and history behind it.

To mark the club’s success, Will Griffiths, director of the Cambridge School Classics Project, visited Longcroft earlier this month to see at first-hand the progress students had made.

He presented prizes to Ben Cooper, Benedict Stanforth-Sharpe and Sam Hutchinson for their work in Latin during the academic year.

Hadrian film to be made

Perhaps this one really will happen.

From Variety

Brit helmer John Boorman is reviving his long-mooted project about the life of Roman Emperor Hadrian, most famous in Blighty for building the eponymous wall that separated England and Scotland.

U.K.-based Handmade Films has boarded the $50 million-$60 million project and will be fully financing “Hadrian.” Rome-based Olympus Films will co-produce.

Boorman, as well as Handmade chairman Patrick Meehan and Olympus topper Enzo Peri, who acquired the rights to Marguerite Yourcenar’s bestselling novel “Memoirs of Hadrian,” are casting the lead role.

Boorman is co-writing the script along with frequent collaborator Rospo Pallenberg, who previously worked with the helmer on King Arthur epic “Excalibur” and “The Emerald Forest.”

Principal photography is set to start next spring in Morocco, Rome and Spain.

The resurrection of the project coincides with the British Museum’s blockbusting Hadrian exhibition, dubbed “Empire and Conflict,” which looks at the period from 117 to 138 A.D. when Hadrian ruled over a Roman empire that spanned much of Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East.

“The project says so much about the nature of empire, leadership and human aspiration,” Boorman told Daily Variety. “The time of Hadrian marked both the height of the Roman empire and the beginning of its decline. It’s the irony of his rule.”

Handmade Films Intl. will be handling worldwide sales on “Hadrian.”

Quizlet, a free online flashcard and testing site

As an alternative to the commercial Quia, teachers might like to try out Quizlet.

There are many Latin quizzes and tests already there, and by free registration (they promise they will send no spam to those who register) you can make your own.

From a quick look at the forum section, I conclude that it’s chiefly students who use that facility, but I imagine the tests are all devised by techers.