Symbolic Forest

Last night, on TV, I was idly watching a documentary, Real Men, about the maintenance of the Forth Bridge. Rather interesting it was, even if the risks were a bit overstated sometimes.^* One thing, though, puzzled me. It started off, as you might expect, with the history of the bridge: in the 1870s construction had begun on a Forth Bridge designed by Sir Thomas Bouch, previously responsible for designing the train ferries the bridge was to replace. In 1879, though, Bouch’s Tay Bridge collapsed catastrophically, so work on his Forth Bridge was stopped.

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Keyword noise: botch, Edinburgh, etymology, fake etymology, Fife, Firth of Forth, Forth Bridge, inaccuracy, urban myth, Scotland, Thomas Bouch, Tay Bridge, Wikipedia.