30th April: The Jubilee Line

On this date in 1979 The Jubilee Line on the London Underground was officially opened. Here are 10 Jubilee Line facts to celebrate its 35th anniversary:

1. The original names proposed for this line were the Fleet Line or the River Line. The name Jubilee was first proposed in 1975 to coincide with the Silver Jubilee Bus Fleet. At the time, it was thought that it would be too expensive to change it, but in 1977 the Conservatives, as part of their Greater London Council Election campaign, promised to re-name the new line the Jubilee Line in honour of the Queen's Jubilee. Jubilee fever won out over penny-pinching, so the Jubilee Line it is.
2. The colour of the line was going to be a darker, slate Grey, representing a fleet of battleships, but its association with the Queen's Silver Jubilee resulted in a lighter, silver/grey being adopted. The Jubilee line's official colour is Pantone 430.
3. The Jubilee Line Extension to Stratford which opened in 1999 was only one of a number of proposed extensions. Most of them were never built. If they had been, the Jubilee Line would also serve Aldwych, Ludgate Circus, Cannon Street, Fenchurch Street, Surrey Quays, New Cross Gate, Lewisham, Addiscombe, Hayes, Thamesmead, St Katharine Docks, Wapping, Surrey Docks, Millwall, Custom House, Silvertown and Woolwich Arsenal.
4. The 1999 extension is the only section of London Underground to have platform doors which open when the train has stopped at the platform. Although it is commonly believed the doors are there to stop people from committing suicide, according to Wikipedia the main purpose of them is to regulate air flow.
5. The Jubilee line is the deepest on the entire network at 32m (105ft) below sea level – 68.8m (221ft) below ground level.
6. It is also the only line which connects with all the other London Underground Lines.
7. The closest stations on the Jubilee line are Waterloo and Southwark. The farthest apart are Kingsbury and Wembley Park.
8. The longest ever jury trial in the UK involved the Jubilee Line. Six people were charged with attempting to bribe London Transport over contracts for the extension. The trial collapsed after two years and the defendants were all acquitted.
9. The Jubilee Line extension is responsible for making the Houses of Parliament clock tower (Big Ben) lean slightly due to the construction of the tunnels and Westminster Station.
10. Stations on the Jubilee Line have the following claims to fame: Waterloo is the busiest station on the network during the rush hour with about 50,000 people passing through; Canary Wharf is the busiest tube station outside central London and the busiest to serve just one line. A "YouGov" poll in 2013 named Canary Wharf the "most loved" station; St John's Wood is the only station which does not contain any of the letters of the word "makerel"; London Bridge is the only station on the tube network which actually has "London" in its name.

April 29th: Zipper Day

Zipper Day: The modern zip fastener was patented on this date in 1913. Here are 10 things you may not know about the humble zip fastener.

1. The first forerunner of the zip was the "Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure". patented by Elias Howe (who also invented the Sewing machine) in 1851. It had the same function, but looked rather different, consisting of clasps pulled together by pulling a string. Howe didn't realise the full potential of his idea and so didn't bother marketing it.
2. Around the turn of the century, Whitcomb L. Judson (who also invented the 'Pneumatic Street Railway') devised another version known as the “Clasp Locker or Unlocker for Shoes.” It was a device to join and close the clasps on a shoe, and then taken off when not in use. It was time consuming and difficult to produce, so it didn't take off, either.
3. The zip as we know it was invented by Gideon Sundback. After his wife died in 1911, he buried himself in his work and two years later he had perfected his design.
4. His name for it was the "separable fastener."
5. B.F. Goodrich, (which used the product for boots and galoshes in the 1920’s), came up with the name zip, or zipper, after the sound it made.
6. Zips were not used on clothing for a long time - clothing manufacturers at the time preferred to stick to tried and trusted components. It was mainly used, at first, for fastening boots and tobacco pouches.
7. Zips first took off as fasteners for clothes in the 1930s, when they were used in children's clothes. They were promoted as making it easy for young children to dress themselves.
8. In 1937, zips made a breakthrough as French designers started using them in men's trousers. In that year they beat buttons in "the battle of the fly". Esquire magazine raved about this "Newest Tailoring Idea for Men" which, among other things would prevent "The Possibility of Unintentional and Embarrassing Disarray," or, as we would say today, a wardrobe malfunction!
9. Many zip fasteners have a tiny pin in the handle, which slides between the teeth when the handle is folded down. This is to stop the zip from coming undone.
10. NASA developed airtight zips for space suits.

April 28th: Terry Pratchett's birthday

Terry Pratchett was born on this date in 1948. To celebrate his birthday here are 10 Terry Pratchett quotes.

Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower...

1. Ninety percent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact.
2. Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.
3. Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
4. Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.
5. It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called life.
6. Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
7. In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.
8. Sometimes glass glitters more than diamonds because it has more to prove.
9. Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.
10. Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

April 27th: Morse Code Day

Morse Code Day Commemorates the birthday of Samuel Morse. Here are 10 things you may not know about Morse Code:

1. The inventor of Morse Code, Samuel Morse, was a portrait painter before becoming an inventor of telegraph systems.
2. Although the code uses the standard 26 letter alphabet and Arabic numerals, there are extensions for languages with more than 26 letters in their alphabets.
3. The basic unit of measurement within the code is the duration of the "dot" signal.
4. A dash is three times the length of a dot; the silence between the dots and dashes is the length of a dot; the silence between words is the length of three dots (or a dash) and the space between words is seven dots.
5. The length of each character in Morse is approximately inversely proportional to its frequency of occurrence in English. The most common letter in English, the letter "E," therefore has the shortest code, a single dot.
6. Originally, only numbers were going to be used and operators would have to look up words in a dictionary. The idea of expanding it to use letters was introduced by Alfred Vail.
7. Initially, code translations were to be written down and transcribed, but it became obvious in time that it was easier to learn Morse Code by sounds than as a written language.
8. Probably the best known Morse code rhythm is the opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which was used regularly during the Second World War at the beginning of BBC broadcasts. The timing of the notes sound like the Morse for "V"; di-di-di-dah and stood for "V for Victory".
9. Morse code was replaced by the Global Maritime Distress Safety System in 1999, so it was no longer used as a standard form of radio communication. Nowadays its use is the preserve of historical enactment enthusiasts or visually, during radio silences. It is also used by severely disabled people, who can communicate simply by blowing and sipping a computer interface, which translates it into speech.
10. When the French Navy ceased using Morse code on January 31, 1997, the final message transmitted was "Calling all. This is our last cry before our eternal silence." In the United States the final commercial Morse Code transmission was on July 12, 1999, signing off with Samuel Morse's original 1844 message, "What hath God wrought", and the prosign "SK".

April 26th: Colemanballs

This date in 1926 saw the birth of David Coleman, the UK sports commentator affectionately known for his on-air gaffes, or Colemanballs. So today here are 10 Colemanballs for your enjoyment:

1. In a moment, we hope to see the pole vault over the satellite.
2. The front wheel crosses the finish line, closely followed by the back wheel.
3. For those of you watching who do not have television sets, live commentary is on Radio 2.
4. There’s going to be a real ding dong when the bell goes.
5. The next race starts in 10 minutes. That’s our time, of course
6. He just can’t believe what’s not happening to him.
7. And the line-up for the final of the women's 400 metres hurdles includes three Russians, two East Germans, a Pole, a Swede and a Frenchman.
8. This evening is a very different evening from the morning we had this morning.
9. He's even smaller in real life than he is on the track.
10. It's a great advantage to be able to hurdle with both legs.

April 25th: Walter de la Mare

Walter de la Mare was born on this date in 1873. Here are 10 quotes by him:

1. Once a man strays out of the common herd, he's more likely to meet wolves in the thickets than angels.
2. God has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first the blow, hours afterwards the bruise.
3. What a haunting, inescapable riddle life was.
4. An hour's terror is better than a lifetime of timidity.
5. As long as I live I shall always be My Self - and no other, Just me.
6. It was to be a day of queer experiences. He had never realized with how many miracles mere everyday life is besieged.
7. Fancies were all very well for a change, but must be only occasional guests in a world devoted to reality.
8. Thinking is like a fountain. Once it gets going at a certain pressure, well, it almost impossible to turn it off. And, my hat! what odd things come up with the water!
9. When there hasn't been anything there, nothing can be said to have vanished from the place where it has not been.
10. All day long the door of the sub-conscious remains just ajar; we slip through to the other side, and return again, as easily and secretly as a cat.

April 24th: Halley's Comet

On 24 April 1066 Halley's comet was seen in the skies above England. To the people of that time, the unusual star had to be an omen of some kind. A bad omen for King Harold, but a good one for William. Here are 10 things you may not know about Halley's comet:

1. It is approximately 15 kilometres long, 8 kilometres wide and 8 kilometres thick, and is shaped like a peanut. It is actually a pile of rubble, loosely held together.
2. The comet has an elliptical orbit around the sun, which takes around 75 years to complete. At its farthest point, or aphelion, it is 35 times further away from the sun than the earth is, At its perihelion it is nearer to the sun than Venus.
3. We can only see it from Earth because of the substances which evaporate from it when it approaches the Sun, causing a coma, or atmosphere, of vapour and dust which reflect sunlight. The tail is caused by solar winds pulling the coma out into space. The tail can be over 100 kilometres long.
4. The coma and tail consist of 80% water vapour, 17% carbon monoxide and 3–4% carbon dioxide with traces of hydrocarbons and traces of methane and ammonia. The dust particles are a mixture of carbon-hydrogen-oxygen-nitrogen (CHON) compounds and silicates.
5. Halley did not discover the comet. It had been observed by astronomers for many centuries before Halley was born. The first records known to mention it are from China in 239 BC. Halley was the first modern scientist to work out that it was orbiting the sun and would return on a regular basis. Most people believed then that comets were just passing through the Solar System in a straight line, never to be seen again. He correctly predicted when it would be back, and although he didn't live to see it, the comet was named after him. I say "modern scientist" because there is a passage in the Talmud which mentions "a star which appears once in seventy years that makes the captains of the ships err," which suggests astronomers in the first century were aware of it, too.
6. There is speculation that the Star of Bethlehem could have been Halley's comet, since it appeared in 12 BC.
7. American author Mark Twain was born two weeks after the comet's perihelion in 1835. He predicted: "I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'" He was right. He died on April 21 1910, the day after the next perihelion.
8. By the time Halley's comet appeared in 1910, mankind had invented photography and so it had its photograph taken for the first time, and scientists were able to study it using spectroscopy. Superstition about its appearance was still widespread, though, and hoaxers had a field day. One hoax said that a religious group in Oklahoma were about to sacrifice a virgin to ward off the evil omen, but were stopped by police. When scientists discovered that the tail contained cyanogen, a toxic gas, an astronomer called Camille Flammarion declared that when Earth passed through the tail, the gas would extinguish all life on Earth. Panic buying of gas masks and "anti-comet umbrellas" ensued until other astronomers pointed out that there were only traces of the gas and that it would not cause any problem.
9. By the next appearance, in 1986, space travel had been invented, and so a veritable armada of space probes were sent up to meet it. A Space Shuttle mission was scheduled to observe the comet from space, but sadly, it was the Challenger mission which exploded just after launch in January 1896.
10. Halley's comet will be back in the middle of 2061.

April 23rd: Saint George's Day

Today is Saint George's Day. Saint George is the patron saint of England. Here are 10 things you might not know about Saint George.

1. England isn't the only country Saint George is patron of. He is also revered in Georgia, Egypt, Bulgaria, Romania, Ethiopia, Greece, India, Iraq,  Israel, Lebanon, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, Serbia, Macedonia,  Ukraine, Russia and Syria. Among the cities which have adopted him as patron saint are Genoa, Beirut, Preston, Rio de Janeiro, Barcelona, Moscow and Victoria.
2. He is also the patron of farmers, soldiers, horses, the Italian Cavalry, boy scouts, the Church of England, the Order of the Garter, Romani people in Eastern Europe, and people suffering from leprosy, plague, herpes and syphilis.
3. Saint George probably never set foot in England. He was born in Palestine, to Christian parents. His father was a distinguished soldier, and at 17, George followed suit and enlisted with the Roman army. He quickly rose through the ranks until he was commanding a thousand men. He was a favourite of the emperor of the time, Diocletian. However, Diocletian hated Christians so much that George's reputation could not save him when he took a stand against the Emperor's anti-Christian edicts. He was tortured and executed in front of crowds, which included Diocletian's wife, who is said to have been so moved that she became a Christian herself. For the record, her status as the Emperor's wife didn't save her either. She was martyred, too.
4. The name George means "worker of the land", or farmer.
5. The dragon story is a romanticised myth, of course, but I'll tell it anyway. It happened in the city of "Silene", which is probably in either Libya or the Holy Land, where the dragon terrorised the city's main source of water. At first, the people appeased it with sheep, but eventually they ran out of sheep and had to find an alternative. So they started sacrificing virgins to the dragon, choosing them by a lottery. One day, the name of the King's daughter was drawn. The King tried to pull rank and save her, but the people refused, and the Princess bravely went off to the spring to await her fate. Cue Saint George, who happened to be riding past. Seeing the plight of the Princess, he protected himself with the sign of the cross and attacked the dragon. At first, he only wounded it. In some versions of the story, the dragon's scales were so hard that they shattered his spear. He asked the Princess for her girdle, which he used to make a leash to lead the dragon back to the city to show the people. His killing it was conditional upon the people of the city converting to Christianity. Which, of course, they did.
6. The lance used to slay the dragon was called Ascalon, after a Middle Eastern city. During World War II, Winston Churchill named his personal aeroplane Ascalon after it.
7. The association with England began in 1099, when a vision of Saint George is said to have appeared and led the Crusaders into battle. Despite this legend, Saint George is known and respected by Muslims, too.
8. Saint George did not become the patron saint of England until the Reformation in 1552. Before that, Edward the Confessor held the position.
9. The flag of Saint George, the red cross on the white background, was flown by the greatest British seafarers - Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh and John Cabot. It was also the flag which flew from the Mayflower when it sailed into Plymouth, Massachusetts.
10. There isn't a huge celebration in England on Saint George's Day. Although it is said to be England's national day, it's not even a public holiday, although there are campaigns to make it so. Wearing a red rose in the lapel is the traditional custom. Churches would traditionally sing the hymn Jerusalem on the day, or the nearest Sunday to it. Order of the Garter medals are awarded by the Queen on this date.

April 22nd: Earth Day

April 22nd is Earth Day, so here are 10 things you may not know about the planet we live on:

Picture by NASA

1. Earth is in the Milky Way galaxy, about 28,000 light years from the centre of the galaxy. A more specific description of where we are in the galaxy is about 20 light years above the galactic plane in the Orion spiral arm.
2. Around the equator, the earth measures 40075.017 km, and around the poles, 40007.86 km. So it's not a perfect sphere but is slightly flattened at the poles with a bulge around the middle.
3. There are, of course, local deviations from the spheroid shape. We call them mountains and canyons and trenches. There are as many, or more, geographical features, mountains, canyons, volcanoes, plains, etc, below the sea as above it. The largest deviations are Mount Everest (8,848m above local sea level) and the Mariana Trench (10911m below local sea level). However, the summit of Mount Everest is not the furthest point from the centre. Due to the equatorial bulge, these are summits of Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador and Huascarán in Peru. While these might seem like massive deviations to us, on a global scale, they are really not. Earth deviates by 0.17%, from the perfect spheroid. In comparison, a regulation billiard ball can deviate by up to 0.22%.
4. Earth's axis is tilted by around 23.4 degrees from the perpendicular. This is what causes the seasons as less heat from the sun reaches the areas which are angled away from it. Also, without the tilt, there would be an eclipse every two weeks, alternating between lunar eclipses and Solar Eclipses.
5. The name of the planet, earth, developed from Middle English erthe, from Old English eorthe which itself came from the Proto-Germanic erthō.
6. The earth is made of rock. The most common element within its rocky structure is iron (32.1%). The ocean floor is largely made of basalt, a volcanic rock.
7. At the centre of the earth, the temperature may be up to 6,000 °C. Only about 20% of the heat is left over from when the planet was formed. Most of it is caused by radioactive substances breaking down.
8. As of 2013, there are about 196 countries on earth, and more than seven billion people.
9. The Earth's atmosphere has no definite boundary, slowly becoming thinner and fading into outer space, so it's hard to tell where Earth ends and space begins. Humans like defined boundaries, though, so 100km above the surface, named The Kármán line, is a used as a working definition for the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space.
10. The standard astronomical symbol for Earth is a cross circumscribed by a circle. This symbol may be called the wheel cross, sun cross, Odin's cross or Woden's cross. It represents the four Compass points. 

April 21st: Easter Monday

Countries have their own Easter customs - but there are some which crop up in several different places throughout the world, so here are 10 common Easter customs.

1. Easter is a religious festival, so naturally many of the customs revolve around church services. Often these start late in the evening and finish at around 3am, when people go home for a big celebratory breakfast. In Ethiopia, this consists of sourdough bread cur by the priest or the head of the family. In Greece they eat lamb's stomach soup.
2. A common tradition in many places is to visit seven different churches in their local area during the Easter period.
3. Egg cracking games: like conkers with Eggs. Everyone gets an egg, hard boiled and usually painted in bright colours. Then people crack their eggs together until only one egg is left intact. The person holding that egg is the winner, and will be lucky all year.
4. Eggs feature in virtually every Easter celebration as a symbol of spring, new life and fertility. Egg hunts, egg rolling, egg painting or simply giving them as gifts. In Greece people carry around a brightly coloured egg on Easter Sunday. When they meet another person they knock their eggs together and say, "Christ is risen".
5. Rabbits are a common symbol too, although in Australia they prefer a native animal called a bilby, because to the Australians, rabbits are nasty pests.
6. Water games: many countries have traditions involving water, from throwing people in to spraying each other. In Poland they say that any girl who is caught and soaked with water will marry within the year.
7. Many countries also have a tradition of men whipping their wives and girlfriends - playfully nowadays, with a small willow branch. Sometimes the women get to return the favour the following day. In some places this has evolved to picking small branches and tapping people with them for luck.
8. Parades, passion plays and re-enactments of the events of the first Easter are common. In the Philippines they go so far as to attach people to crosses with actual nails. People seem more than happy to submit themselves to this in gratitude to God or to atone for their sins.
9. Feasts and family meals are held to celebrate the end of Lent, during which time people will have abstained from eating meat and dairy products. In Haux, France, they make huge omelettes. In Colombia traditional Easter fare is turtles, Iguanas and large rodents. In parts of Ireland, there are mock funerals of herrings, which were the only food many people were allowed to eat in Lent, so by Easter they were thoroughly sick of them!
10. In some places you might be forgiven for thinking you've landed in Halloween! In Gerona, men dressed as skeletons dance in the streets, and in Finland, children dress up as witches and go from door to door begging for sweets.

April 20th: Pot Smoking Day

In America, the number 420 has become a euphemism for supporting cannabis use and drug culture (don't ask me why!), and for some, smoking it on April 20, or at 4.20am, has special significance. 10 cannabis jokes:

1. Marijuana is Nature's way of saying "High".
2. A friend with weed is a friend indeed.
3. On reports that an Old Bailey juror smoked pot during a trial: “There is no substance in this story.” Maureen Evans, Deputy Chief Clerk
4. The lethal dose of cannabis is a 2 kilo block dropped on your head.
5. Cannabis smoking by troops... investigation by joint chiefs. Morning Star
6. A man rang 999 in Brighton to report that a burglar had stolen his cannabis. Police said later, “The man is assisting us with our enquiries.” The Times
7. You can make it illegal, but you can’t make it unpopular.
8. A joint a day keeps reality away.
9. Legalise cannabis now - and we'll all go to pot.
10. The three appeared on the same charge sheet only because each had admitted smoking cannabis with one of the others. There were no joint charges. Shropshire Star

19th April: Primrose Day

Today is Primrose Day so here are 10 things you may not know about primroses:

1. The Latin name for primrose is Primula vulgaris; "primrose" derives from the Old French or Latin and means "first rose", because it is one of the first flowers to bloom in spring. It is not, however, related to the rose family.
2. It is illegal to pick wild primroses in the UK (Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, Section 13, part 1b). This is because so many have been picked that it is now quite rare to find them growing in the wild.
3. The flowers and leaves are edible, and can be made into primrose wine or tea.
4. The primrose was Benjamin Disraeli's favourite flower; Primrose Day and the Primrose League were given their names in honour of this.
5. It was voted the county flower of Devon in 2002.
6. In the language of flowers, the primrose means, I Can't Live Without You. They represented wantonness in England, as expressed in the phrase 'the primrose path of dalliance'.
7. Placing primrose roots in a cask of beer or ale makes the brew stronger.
8. Primroses are sacred to the Goddess because of its 5-petalled flowers, which are said to represent five stages of a woman's life: birth, initiation, consummation, repose and death.
9. They are also held sacred by Druids.
10. Finally, they are seen as "fairy flowers" in some cultures. Eating primroses is supposed to enable people to see fairies, and touching a fairy rock with a primrose posy opens the way to fairyland. Caution is advised, however, as using the wrong number of flowers in the posy leads to certain doom. Five is supposedly the correct number to use.

April 18th: Animal Crackers Day

It's National Animal Crackers Day - so here are 10 animal jokes which could have fallen out of Christmas crackers!

1. What do you call an exploding monkey? A baboom.
2. What do you do with a wombat? Play wom.
3. How many skunks does it take to stink up a room? A phew.
4. What do you get if you cross an elephant with a kangaroo? Big holes in Australia.
5. What do you call an elephant at the North Pole? Lost.
6. What do you call a donkey with three legs? A wonkey.
7. Where will you find a stuffed cow? In a mooseum.
8. What do you call a pig with three eyes? A piiig.
9. What do you call a line of rabbits walking backwards? A receding hare-line.
10. What’s the difference between a gnu and a wildebeest? You can’t paddle a wildebeest.

April 17th: National Day of Syria

Today is the National Day of Syria: Evacuation Day, when, in 1946, the last French troops evacuated Syria and it became an independent state; the country had been under French control since the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. It is a public holiday there.

It's in the news a lot because of ongoing conflicts, but there is more to Syria than war, so here are 10 non-war related facts about the country:

1. The capital is Damascus, but the largest city is Aleppo.
2. It is bordered by Turkey on the north, Lebanon and Palestine on the west, Iraq on the east, and Jordan on the south.
3. The highest point in Syria is Mount Hermon (2,814 m; 9,232 ft) on the Lebanese border.
4. Its principal river is the Euphrates. Most of its population (22,530,746 in 2012) live in the Euphrates valley.
5. Agriculture and cattle breeding are thought to have originated in Syria during the Neolithic era.
6. The popular pet, the golden hamster, is a native animal of Syria.
7. Although none of them were actually born in Syria, the following people are of Syrian descent: Carlos Menem (former president of Argentina); singer Paul Anka, comedian Jerry Seinfeld and singer Paula Abdul.
8. The Apostle Paul was converted on his way to Damascus, and his base, from which he started out for many of his missionary journeys, was in Antioch, ancient Syria.
9. The official language is Arabic, with many different dialects of the language spoken in different parts of the country. Aramaic is still spoken in some areas and educated Syrians are likely to be able to speak English and French.
10. In May 2013, the Syrian national football team was ranked 138th in the world by FIFA.

April 16th: Birth of Charlie Chaplin

Sir Charlie Chaplin was born on April 16th 1889. Here are 10 facts about Charlie Chaplin:

1. Showbusiness was in his blood. Both his parents were accomplished actors and singers, although the family was poor and Chaplin's childhood went from one crisis to another, including two stays in a workhouse before the age of nine, his parents splitting up, his mother's mental illness and early death.
2. His first acting role was at the age of twelve, when he played "Billy" the page boy, with William Gillette in Sherlock Holmes.
3. His older brother, Sydney, helped start Charlie Chaplin off in his comedy career. Sydney had joined Fred Karno's comedy company and was doing very well, and was able to get Charlie a trial with the company. It almost didn't happen, as Karno's initial impresson of Charlie was "a pale, puny, sullen-looking youngster who looked much too shy to do any good in the theatre." Charlie, however, soon proved him wrong.
4. He got into films while touring with Karno in the US - he was as popular there as in London, and was approached by the New York Motion Picture Company who thought he would be perfect for their Keystone comedies. Although Chaplin wasn't overly impressed with the Keystone comedies, the chance to start a new life and work in the fledgling media of film was too good to pass up. His first film was a short called Making a Living. Chaplin hated the film, but it got him noticed by reviewers.
5. His famous "Tramp" character first appeared in a film called Kid Auto Races at Venice, although it wasn't the first film Chaplin made starring the character. Another film, Mabel's Strange Predicament was made earlier, but released later.
6. In 1923, after starring in 70 comedy films, he tried his hand at directing a serious film called A Woman of Paris. He appeared in an uncredited cameo role as a railway porter.
7. The advent of the "talkies" was not welcomed by Chaplin. He felt that his "tramp" character would not be as popular worldwide as non-English speaking audiences would no longer relate to him. He chose to make the 1931 film City Lights as a silent film and simply ignore the new sound technology. Although the film was a success, Chaplin didn't think he could continue making silent films in the face of the new trend, so he took 16 months off and went travelling, and considered retiring to China.
8. Chaplin won three Academy Awards. His first was in 1929 for a film called The Circus, for "Versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing and producing". However, the award didn't make up for the difficulties he'd experienced in making the film, and in his autobiography, he chose not to mention it at all. It coincided with a messy divorce from Lita Grey. Lita's lawyers were doing all they could to saboutage Chaplin's career, which meant smuggling the film to a safe hiding place to stop the lawyers from seizing it. Sets destroyed by high winds and fire, shots ruined by lab mistakes, and students stealing the circus wagons added to the stress.
9. Charlie Chaplin was an accomplished musician and composer as well as an actor. He wrote and published songs, played the violin and cello left handed, and composed the scores for some of his films. He had never trained as a musician, though - he could not read music and needed help from professional composers when composing film scores.
10. He was a writer, too, and wrote at least four autobiographical books about his life and travels. He also wrote the scripts to all his films.

April 15th: Birth of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was born on this date in 1452. The famous artist and polymath was a brilliant inventor - many of his inventions and ideas were forerunners of things which were not built until centuries later.

10 things Leonardo da Vinci invented:

1. Flying machines: "Ornithopter" - a machine consisting of wings shaped like those of a bat, and a board on which the pilot would lie and power the machine by pedalling, and cranking a handle for extra power. The wings would actually rotate and flap, as birds wings do. Scientists reckon it would have flown, getting it into the air would be a problem as the pilot would not be able to generate enough power to achieve take off; Aerial screw - which would work using the same principles that make helicopters fly today. It was a linen and wire helically shaped contraption powered by four men standing on a platform and turning crank handles. Although he got the scientific theory right, scientists today believe it would have been too heavy to fly.
2. Weapons: Although da Vinci hated war, he was enough of a pragmatist to realise that inventing war machines was what put the food on the table. The kings and princes of the time were willing to pay handsomely for devices that would give them an advantage in battle. The 33 barrelled organ was basically a machine gun consisting of 33 small cannons connected together which could be fired in groups of 11 - while one group was being fired, another was cooling and another was being loaded; He invented an armoured car, basically a round platform with a slanted protective cover with eight men cranking handles to make it move. It was also equipped with cannons so it could move and fire in all directions. It had a major design flaw, though. Because of the orientation of the cranks, it could go in every direction except forwards. It's possible that da Vinci did this on purpose so that it would never actually be used. cannon; crossbow
3. Diving suit: Made of leather with cane tubing leading up to a diving bell on the surface; and using a balloon which could be inflated and deflated at will this is the forerunner of scuba gear. Again it was intended for use in war - sneaking up on enemy ships and making holes in them from below.
4. A self propelled cart, thought to be designed for the theatre, it was powered by coiled springs, and could be programmed to move in pre-set directions. It was a type of robot and could be seen as the very first car. Scientists in Italy built one in 2006 from da Vinci's designs and found that not only did it work, it looked a bit like the Mars Rover.
5. The humble ball bearing is another invention of his. It may not seem as impressive as flying machines and diving suits, but da Vinci realised that using a spherical bearing in devices with moving parts made them much more efficient by removing friction. It was such a fundamental idea that it is still used widely today.
6. City design - after Milan was devastated by an outbreak of plague, da Vinci set about designing a city that would limit the spread of disease. Wider streets, so people weren't jammed together, air vents in buildings and a sanitation system would have helped achieve this. The buildings themselves would have been beautiful - da Vinci's artistic soul wanted everything on the surface of the city to be pleasing to the eye. It was never built, though.
7. Robotic knight: designed for a pageant rather than as a fighting machine, an elaborate humanoid figure with gears and pulleys and wheels that would allow it to sit down, stand up and move its head.
8. Movable bridges - for troops on the move, allowing them to cross rivers more easily.
9. Viola Organista a type of stringed musical instrument played by pressing keys, similar to a hurdy gurdy
10. Anenometer - an instrument for measuring wind speed.

April 14th: Titanic!

Titanic hit an iceberg on this date in 1912 and sank in the early hours of the next day. Here are 10 spooky stories associated with the Titanic disaster:

1. Before the ship was even launched, some of the builders reported hearing a tapping noise coming from the hull, leading to speculation that a builder, or his ghost, was trapped inside.
2. As with every disaster, there are always stories of those who should have been caught up in it, but weren't, either because they cancelled their trips or because circumstances prevented them from getting there. Notable examples in this case were British entrepreneur J. Connon Middleton, who had recurring dreams about Titanic sinking prior to his voyage, which left him unsure about whether to travel, even though he had urgent business in New York. Then someone in New York sent him a wire suggesting that he put off the trip. He did. Members of the crew fled the ship in Queenstown, Ireland, the ship's final port of call. One, stoker John Coffey, sneaked off the ship by hiding under mail bags being transported to shore. Others weren't so lucky. Henry Wilde, chief officer, had a bad feeling about the ship, and wrote in a letter to his sister: “I still don’t like this ship... I have a queer feeling about her." Despite this, he let his friends talk him into taking the post on the Titanic, which proved to be his last.
3. The mummy's curse: the mummy of the Priestess of Ammon-Ra was said to have been smuggled aboard by William Thomas Stead, who had just bought it from the British Museum. The mummy, dating from 1050 BC and discovered in the 1890s, had brought extreme bad luck to all its previous owners. Its reputation was such that no museum in the UK wanted it, and Stead had to bribe crew members to bring it on board. The mummy somehow survived the wreck and continued to wreak havoc. The ship which transported it from Egypt, the Empress of Ireland, sank with 840 lives lost, in May 2012. Finally, a collector decided that the only way to deal with the curse was to return the mummy to Egypt. However, the ship he chose to carry it was the Lusitania, which was torpedoed by a German submarine. What happened to the mummy after that is not known.
4. William Thomas Stead was also a writer, so the tale he told about the mummy on the night of the disaster was probably purely for the entertainment of his fellow passengers. However, he is among a number of authors whose stories are said to have predicted the events of that fateful night. Stead had written two short stories, How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic, by a Survivor (1886), which tells of a mail steamer's collision with another ship, resulting in high loss of life due to lack of lifeboats; and From the Old World to the New (1892) about a White Star Line vessel rescuing survivors of another ship that had collided with an Iceberg. He wasn't the only one. The May 2012 issue of The Popular Magazine, contained the short story by Mayn Clew Garnett called The White Ghost of Disaster, about the collision of an ocean liner with an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean, which caused a sensation at the time - the magazine was already on sale when the Titanic sank. Earlier that year, a German newspaper had published a serialisation of a novel called Atlantis by Gerhard Hauptmann in which a ship meets a similar fate. In 1898, Morgan Robertson wrote a book called Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, about an enormous British passenger liner called the Titan, which, deemed to be unsinkable, carries insufficient lifeboats. On a voyage in the month of April, the Titan hits an iceberg and sinks in the North Atlantic with the loss of almost everyone on board.
5. Vessels sailing in the vicinity of the wreck claim that they continue to hear SOS signals from the Titanic, and occasional radio interference and signals, to this day. Some ships have claimed to see orbs in the area - orbs are thought by ghost hunters to be spirit presences.
6. There are also tales of mysterious people being rescued by ships passing the site, including a woman in Edwardian dress whose name was later found on the passenger Titanic passenger list; a ten month old baby in a lifeboat inscribed with the Titanic's name, and even an elderly gentleman in a White Star captain's uniform who introduced himself as Captain Smith.
7. In 1977, Second Officer Leonard Bishop of the SS Winterhaven gave a tour of his ship to one of his passengers, a soft-spoken man with a British accent. Something about the man struck Bishop as odd, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, except that the man seemed unusually attentive to detail. A few years later, when he saw a picture of Captain Edward J. Smith, The Titanic's captain, Bishop recognised him as the man he had shown around his ship.
8. Disasters like this are often referred to as "acts of God", and there are stories suggesting that Titanic was cursed by God Himself. The ship was built in Belfast, a sectarian city, and therefore many of the men hired to build her were Protestants. The White Star Line had a policy of not "christening" their ships; and the Titanic had an extra reason to annoy God (or the Roman Catholic one, at least) - it was given the registration number 39094, which, seen in a mirror, resembles the words "No Pope", a common Protestant slogan of the time.
9. A travelling exhibition of Titanic artefacts is reported to be haunted. Volunteers working at the exhibition have reported hearing disembodied voices and footsteps, and feeling strange presences around the artefacts. A woman in a black dress and her hair in a bun has been seen several times. A photographer taking pictures of the exhibit prior to its opening, reported seeing a woman walking down the Grand Staircase. He thought this odd, since the exhibition wasn't open and the staff never walked on the staircase. When he asked the woman if she wanted her photograph taken, she didn't reply, but slowly disappeared.
10. The funeral home to which the bodies of the victims were taken in Nova Scotia is now a restaurant. Glasses and cutlery flying off shelves is a frequent occurrence, and the restaurant's manager has said that the ghosts will play tricks when people do not acknowledge that they are there.