In 1769 Jeanne Bécu (Madame du Barry) was presented to the Court at Versailles amid great interest – the lowly born last chief royal mistress. When Louis XV of France confided in a duke that she had shown him new pleasures, he responded: “Sire, that’s because your Majesty has never been in a brothel.” On December 8, 1793, she was beheaded by guillotine on the Place de la Révolution, Paris, aged 50; in 1823 Robert John Tyers, a fruit seller in London, applied for a patent for his Volito roller skates, an “apparatus to be attached to boots … for the purpose of traveling or pleasure”; in 1969 Sir Robin Knox-Johnston became the first man to sail single-handed around the world nonstop. After 312 days