On 28th December 1883, the Flintshire Observer Mining Journal and General Advertiser for the Counties of Flint Denbigh records how an Oxford undergraduate was charged at by a wild boar while walking in Shotover Wood. Apparently deep in the study of a volume of Aristotle, he had the presence of mind to ‘thrust Aristotle down the brute’s throat’. We are told that ‘no wild boar was ever more effectively choked.’

This event is celebrated annually at the student’s college (Queen’s, Oxford) when a boar’s head is carried into the hall to grace the Christmas dinner’!