Selling coal to Newcastle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Newcastle upon Tyne in the United Kingdom was traditionally a coal mining, distributing and selling hub. Hence the phrase Carrying coals to Newcastle or Selling coal in Newcastle is used to describe a foolhardy or pointless action.

[edit] Actual Occurances

Timothy Dexter, an American businessperson, did export coal to Newcastle during a miners strike and thus made a large profit for himself. This only increased his reputation as an eccentric, but extremely lucky businessperson.

In 2004, due the ambundance of coal in Russia, coals were actual imported into Newcastle[1]

This page has been transwikied to Wiktionary.

Because this article has content useful to Wikipedia's sister project Wiktionary, it has been copied to there, and its dictionary counterpart can be found at either Wiktionary:Transwiki:Selling coal to Newcastle or Wiktionary:Selling coal to Newcastle. It should no longer appear in Category:Copy to Wiktionary and should not be re-added there.
Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and if this article cannot be expanded beyond a dictionary definition, it should be tagged for deletion. If it can be expanded into an article, please do so and remove this template.
Note that {{vocab-stub}} is deprecated. If {{vocab-stub}} was removed when this article was transwikied, and the article is deemed encyclopedic, there should be a more suitable category for it.