In the summer of 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, and his killing led to the four years of slaughter that was the First World War.
Everyone knows this.
But what not everyone knows, certainly not me until recently, was that our feathered friend (pictured above) came to Worksop months before he was murdered.
How he ended up coming here I’ll never know. He must have been either lost, or clinically insane.
This is the equivalent of Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, or Barack Obama rolling up at The Priory Centre.
More astonishingly still, the Archduke very nearly died on this visit, having a narrow escape when a gun accidently fired during a hunting trip.
Well, that’s the official story. I find it much more likely that if this esteemed visitor was wearing the bizarre get up he is sporting in this picture, then he was probably nearly shot because he was mistaken for some sort of animal.
Historians have been in a lather speculating how history could have been changed forever had the hunting accident proved fatal.
Many theorise that had the Archduke met his demise in Worksop the whole ghastly war would have been avoided.
But I have a different theory. I believe the Austro-Hungarian empire would have taken out its rage on Worksop.
We would have been invaded! They would have taken us over.
Picture the scene: The whole town would have been awash with folk who couldn’t speak a word of English. Not much different to how it is now, in fact.
Worksop would have been full of people in ridiculous headwear. The same as now, then.
So maybe history wouldn’t have been so different after all.