Tuesday September 10, 2019 – At Sea on the way to Akureyri, Iceland.
There were heavy seas during the night which kept some awake, but others slept through.
The first lecture by Robert Key on “Our Magna Carta – Death of a King – Birth of Liberty and Justice”, was a fascinating discussion about the early days of England from soon before the Norman Conquest (of the governing Saxons) by William I of Normandy in 1066 through 1215 after the defeat of (the bad) King John At Runnymede, resulting in the agreement of surrender – The Mana Carta. This document, of which 4 copies still exist is the basis of the “living law” / constitution of the UK. The four versions, of which the Salisbury one is the best, the Lincoln, The Cotton Augustus (at the British Library) are two of the others.
William of Normandy was the named successor to the throne, but the powerful Harold was eventually crowned in 1066 and lasted only a few months before being defeated and replaced by William the Conqueror in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings. By 1189 King Henry II who married Eleanor of Aquitaine (the wealthiest land owner in Europe and 7 years his elder) the English territory covered most of Southern Europe with the northern part under French rule. They had 8 children (Henry II also had 2 bastard children) – William, Henry, King Richard I, Matilda, Geoffrey, Eleanor, Joan and the baby King John who was ridiculed as a child and never expected to amount to anything but eventually became King. He was ruthless and lost most of the territory previously gained by his father and eventually lead to the nobles defecting from King John and the agreement that had to be reached – The Magna Carta in 1215. He was succeeded by Henry III.
The second lecture by Tristram Elmhirst on “Fingerprints – The Ultimate Forensic Tool?” discussed the use of fingerprint technology to include and exclude witnesses as well as identification. Initially identification was done visually, then modified by Bertillon’s Anthropomorphic System (1878) in which parts of the body were measured and classified to clearly identify individuals. Early work on fingerprints was done by Marcelo Malpighi (1686); Sir William Herschel (1858); Henry Faulds (1880); Francis Galton (1892) and the first country to adopt fingerprints as a mode of identification was Argentina thanks to successful conviction in a crime by Juan Vucetich. Sir Edward Henry (1902) established a classification system based on the types of fingerprints (whorls, ridges, cores and deltas etc). Ridge Endings and bifurcation form the secondary level of classification. Prints can be taken on all parts of the hand and feet and are unique. Visual and DNA may be inconclusive particularly when dealing with identical twins. The third level of analysis for major crimes is sweat pore and sweat composition analysis of fingerprints. Techniques for detecting fingerprints can use visual identification on all surfaces, powders for smooth non-porous surfaces; Ninhydrin for paper and cardboard; Cyanoacryclic acid (superglue) for plastic; Amido Black for protein marks like blood and Gentian Violet for adhesive surfaces like tape. These will bring the prints out of the surface for analysis against the database.
He concluded the talk discussing a case he was involved with – The murder of the Taxi driver Muhammad Arshad.
The third and final talk of the day was a Port lecture on Reykjavik by Ruth Clamp. The various tours that are available were discussed and an overview of the stay was mentioned.
We had a late lunch at the Lido followed by afternoon rest before a formal dress evening and the expectancy that we might see the Northern Lights as we are above Latitude 60 depending on how cloudy the sky is. Clouds came in and we did not see the Northern Lights that night, nor, unfortunately any other night.
Roger & Anne Travels 