There has been a story handed down in my family concerning my great, great uncle and his exploits in the early twentieth century. I recently found some fascinating letters about our Uncle Norbert, or 'Nobby' as he was known to the family:
Always taller, and thinner, than his classmates in school who teased him with nicknames such as 'Twiggy', he excelled in chemistry - for which he had a particular affinity - yet, rather surprisingly, foundered miserably at basic mathematics (a weakness which would prove costly in later life).
At the age of nineteen, and the height of six feet eight, he joined the British Army at the height of the Boer War. Nobby, or 'Lofty' as he had come to be known was eventually enrolled in the Coldstream Guards, with whom he served with distinction. During his Army years he began to be fascinated by the subject of ballistics, an interest which would follow him into civilian life.
After he was demobbed, Lofty sought employment best suited to his talents and began work at a chemical plant. After only a couple of weeks in the job however, he was sacked when a simple miscalculation resulted in an entire village being evacuated and its livestock lost.
After that, Lofty got a job at a munitions factory. All went well until the day when the battleship HMS Supernova attempted to fire an 18" shell from a batch that had been loaded by Lofty, and was never seen again.
During this latest period of unemployment, a travelling circus came to town. Lofty went to see it and had a life-changing experience. He found his true calling. From that moment on he was 'Lofty - The Human Cannonball'.
He built his own cannon, mixed his own propellant and, at his first attempt, broke the British record for distance - to great public acclaim. During his three years in hospital, he planned his attempt on the World record and designed a safety net.
Sure enough, Lofty broke the world record and went on to increase it many times over the next ten years and on one occasion, passed right through his safety net, breaking a few ribs.
During this period, due to the nature of his profession, his height had diminished in inverse proportion to his calibre, so that he was now somewhat less than six feet tall, yet still the same weight of seventeen stone that he had been when he left the army. As a result of this, he had been forced to have his cannon re-bored on numerous occasions. Every now and then he would break his safety net again, so that they had to be made of increasingly stronger rope.
Next followed a period of experimentation during which Nobby, as he was again known, began to use greater and greater amounts of his special gunpowder to further extend his lead over his competitors. His safety net was now constructed from tugboat rope.
At the end of this period, 'Stumpy', as he was now known, received the ultimate honour. He was commanded by The King to perform at Wembley Stadium on the occasion of the FA Cup Final, in front of 100,000 spectators.
Stumpy decided that he would give them a spectacle never to be forgotten.
He contacted the son of Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, to consult with him about the possibility of using TNT as a propellant. Despite Mr Nobel's warnings, Stumpy decided to go ahead and began to make his calculations.
On the great day, Stumpy made his preparations. At the centre spot of the pitch, his new steel-rope safety net had been set up to break his flight. In the distance, beyond the spectators, mounted on the roof, stood his trusty old cannon. Due to failing eyesight, he had finally employed an assistant. He pointed out the instructions for the girl to read and got, once more, into the breach. The girl read the instructions - it is a tragedy that dyslexia was so little understood in those days - primed the cannon and lit the fuse.
The cannon disintegrated into a million pieces, most of which found a home with a football fan (from that day on, both teams have had red kits). As for Stumpy, he again passed through his safety net, only this time the net suffered no damage whatsoever. As one commentator, a man named Motson according to our records: "Stumpy covered the park like none of the star footballers present ever had".
After that we have no record of him until the late 1960s. At that time, the curator of a local museum, searching through items that were not on public display, found a dusty old box. Written on the box was "Stumpy ******** - 62,523 items".
Within weeks, a team of the nation's top paleontologists and jigsaw puzzle enthusiasts had been assembled to put Stumpy together again. Finally in 1972 he went on display - all five feet two inches and twenty-two stone of him (due to the glue).
The sign reads "Stumpy, the Human Cannonball - a man of great calibre and many parts".