Clay Lane

A young French cavalry soldier took a tremendous risk to rescue a drowning man.

Mathieu Martinel enrolled in the French army in January 1816, at the age of sixteen. It was a time of relative peace, but opportunities for heroism appeared to come looking for him.

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The soldier went quite deliberately into a burning room full of gunpowder and ammunition.

Mathieu Martinel was a cavalry soldier in the French army. At the age of twenty, he had already saved a fellow-soldier from drowning in the River Ill, but his heroic exploits were far from over.

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A firework display in Paris turned to tragedy in the narrow streets of the capital.

It is 1837, and Mathieu Martinel, a cavalry soldier in the French army, is now a senior officer in the military college in Paris. Fate, however, had not yet finished testing his mettle.

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The sly cat hatches a plan to get all the benefits of domestic life without any of the responsibilities.

In this short tale by Rudyard Kipling, we learn how the Cat tried to get all the comforts of domestic life without doing any work in return.

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In 1859, peaceful co-existence on the Canadian border was severely tested by a marauding pig.

Even quite late in Queen Victoria’s reign, Britain and the United States of America were still carving up what had once been British colonial territory. One disputed region was San Juan Island near Vancouver, where a dead pig almost led to war.

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A monk of the Egyptian desert helped a desperate mother, and was richly rewarded.

Macarius (301-391) was a disciple of St Anthony, the first Christian monk. Here, he does a favour for a friend in need.

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