Most of us have heard that the comedian Tommy Cooper collapsed and died during a performance on stage. Most of us know about Brandon Lee and the tragic
No-one should be surprised by high power prices when lakes are low.
In 1872, lion tamer Thomas Macarte was mauled to death – by lions, believe it or not – during a performance in Lancashire, England.
Lions have attacked lion tamers many times since then. In Virginia in 1898, one bit its trainer’s head off after, as a newspaper reported, “the lion tamer added to the programme by putting his head in the lion’s mouth”.
Despite each occasion reinforcing the knowledge of lions’ tendencies, lion tamers continued to ply their trade in the belief the last shredding was a rare and avoidable anomaly.
MACCOMO the lion tamer is dead – that was the shocking news that readers of The Northern Echo were waking up to 150 years ago this week. Martini Maccomo had died in The Palatine Hotel in Sunderland and is probably the only person to be buried in the North-East with the words “lion hunter” on his headstone. Even more remarkably, one of the lions which mauled him has for generations been one of the region’s most curious museum exhibits. Maccomo was said to have been born in Angola (although he might just have been a Liverpudlian called Arthur Williams who invented a glamorous back story), and he was billed as “the African Wild Beast Tamer”, “Angola s Mighty Czar of All Lion Tamers” and “The Hero of a Thousand Combats”.