Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. The great novelist was born on this day in 1812. On 9th June 1870, he died. Sadly, the old chap never got to ride a velocipede, which had arrived […]
Continue ReadingThe Times is running an eight-point cyclesafe campaign to highlight the need for safer streets for cyclists. In 1898 the newspaper had had enough of cyclists – it was at the end of the Bicycle Boom – and a leader […]
Continue ReadingAs well as being pioneers in roads, ball bearings, cars, and aeroplanes – see ‘What have the cyclists ever done for us?’ – cyclists were also responsible for the first published study in the field of social psychology. This was […]
Continue ReadingThis cartoon by illustrator Borin Van Loon was used as a campaigning image for Friends of the Earth in the early 1980s. Cycling at the time was recovering after a long period in the doldrums. Cycle use in the mid-80s […]
Continue ReadingIn August 1867, the Paris correspondent of the New York Times wrote an editorial that resonates down to us today. (And by today I mean today: The Times of London has a cover story on an eight-point plan to increase […]
Continue ReadingPantene, the shampoo brand, has started an advertising campaign using the flowing locks of champion cyclist Victoria Pendleton. However, she’s wearing a UCI-compliant sparkly go-faster jersey. Clothes? Who needs clothes? The flowing locks on the nude Cycles Gladiator woman from […]
Continue ReadingThis is a puzzle. In more ways than one. It was published in a puzzle-book from 1914 but the dress and the subject matter don’t ring true for such a date. The League of American Wheelmen had morphed into the […]
Continue ReadingThis is a line-drawing of the world’s “first header”, a forward fall from a bicycle. It’s also a line-drawing of the probable creator of the world’s first pedal-operated bicycle. The rider is Frenchman Pierre Lallement. The location is Birmingham, close […]
Continue ReadingNetherlands schmetherlands, the country with the best riding conditions for cyclists used to be America. Difficult to imagine, but in the 1890s a number of American cities could boast the world’s best bicycle-infrastructure. Part paid for by pushy, influential cyclists, […]
Continue ReadingViewed from a windscreen, roads look as though they were built for cars and trucks. Britain’s motorways and the elevated arterial road systems of the 1960s and 1970s seem to bear this out but such car-centric highways are the exception […]
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