31st January: Nauru Independence day

Nauru Independence Day - 10 things you didn't know about one of the world's smallest countries:

1. Nauru is the world's smallest island nation in terms of area, covering just 21 km²/8 Square Miles. In terms of population, it's the second smallest (9,378 in 2011), with only Vatican City being smaller. It has the smallest population of any member of the United Nations.
2. The name is thought to derive from the Nauruan word Anáoero, which means "I go to the beach". British sea captain John Fearn, the first Westerner to visit Nauru in 1798, called it "Pleasant Island".
3. The official language is Nauruan, which is unlike any other language spoken on Pacific islands, which makes it hard to determine where the population originally came from.
4. It is the only republican state in the world which does not have an official capital, although the district of Yaren is considered the de facto capital, because that is where the government offices are.
5. It doesn't have a sea port, because it is surrounded by a coral reef. The reef has some channels through it, but they are only accessible to small boats.
6. There is an airport, with just one airline operating from it, "Our Airline." The runway crosses the main road around the island - the only traffic lights on the entire island are here, to stop the traffic so the planes can cross the road.
7. There is no daily newspaper in Nauru, only a fortnightly one called Mwinen Ko.
8. 97 percent of men and 93 percent of women are overweight or obese, making Nauru one of the most obese nations in the world.
9. Nauru's motto is ‘God’s Will First’. Most of the population are Christians.
10. The national flag includes a twelve pointed star, which represents the twelve traditional clans or tribes which traditionally lived there.

30th January: Frank Gelett Burgess

Frank Gelett Burgess, writer, critic and humorist, was born on January 30, 1866.

1. Thinking a smile all the time will keep your face youthful.
2. A woman and a mouse, they carry a tale wherever they go.
3. Love is only chatter; friends are all that matter.
4. Our bodies are apt to be our autobiographies.
5. If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.
6. To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.
7. There is work that is work and there is play that is play; there is play that is work and work that is play. And in only one of these lies happiness.
8. I never saw a Purple Cow, I never hope to see one; But I can tell you, anyhow, I'd rather see than be one.
9. Ah, yes, I wrote the "Purple Cow"— I'm Sorry, now, I wrote it; But I can tell you Anyhow I'll Kill you if you Quote it!
10. Without bigots, eccentrics, cranks and heretics the world would not progress. 

29th January: Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov was born this date in 1860. 10 quotes:

1. People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.
2. Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
3. Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.
4. Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
5. You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.
6. Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
7. Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and when he dies only the five senses that we know perish with him, and the other ninety-five remain alive.
8. The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.
9. The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.
10. If you want to work on your art, work on your life.

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January 28th: Anniversary of the first ski lift

On this date in 1934, the first ski lift, the "ski rope", invented by Robert Royce, went into operation in Woodstock, VT. For this reason, and since the skiing season is well underway (at least four of my Facebook friends have been already) I've put together 10 Skiing quotes.

1. Skiing is a dance, and the mountain always leads.
2. From a warning sign at Targhee: "Warning. Skiing beyond these boundaries may result in death and/or loss of skiing privileges."
3. It is better to go skiing and think of God, than go to church and think of sport. Fridtjof Nansen
4. The Alpine Skiing competition started poorly and went downhill from there.
5. I live with fear daily. Sometimes she lets me go skiing.
6. A real man is someone who can ski through an avalanche - and still manage not to spill any beer. Bruce Fierstein
7. Old skiers never die. They just go downhill.
8. An artificial ski slope at Kidgrove closed yesterday because of snow and ice Daily Telegraph
9. If you are going to be over the hill, at least go with skis on your feet.
10. When Hell freezes over, I'll ski there, too.

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January 27th: Mozart

10 things you might not know about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born 27 January 1756.

1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was baptised Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. His family called him Wolferl.
2. A child prodigy, he was composing music by the time he was six years old. It's said he could write musical notes before he could write words. By eight, he was writing symphonies; at twelve, he wrote a mass - Misa Brevis in G, and an opera at fourteen, Mitridate Re di Ponto.
3. As a child, he could also listen to a complicated piece of music and write it down from memory. While visiting the Vatican, Mozart heard Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere performed in the Sistine Chapel and afterwards reproduced the whole score, which had never been written down outside the Vatican before. Pope Clement XIV was so impressed that he gave the boy the Papal Order of the Golden Spur.
4. Mozart's father was a violin teacher and a composer in his own right. A Trumpet Concerto and the Toy Symphony were among his works.
5. His appearance was not as impressive as his musical talent. Tenor Michael Kelly remembered him as "a remarkably small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair of which he was rather vain." A childhood dose of smallpox left him with a bad complexion. His biographer, Niemetschek, wrote that he didn't look like a genius at all, except, perhaps for his "large intense eyes".
6. Mozart had a fondness for toilet humour, as evidenced by some of his letters and recreational compositions. In the 1990s, it was speculated that he might have had Tourette's syndrome, But Tourette's syndrome experts say that there is no credible evidence for this.
7. Mozart was a Freemason. He was admitted in 1784.
8. The "K" numbering of his works comes from the cataloguing of his works in the 19th century by by Köchel.
9. When the manuscript of Mozart's last work, the unfinished Requiem, was displayed at the 1958 world's Fair in Brussels, someone tore off and stole a corner of the second to last page. The words "Quam olim d: C:" were written on it. These are thought to be the last words Mozart ever wrote, which is probably the motive for the crime. The fragment was never found and to this day nobody knows who stole it.
10. The idea that Mozart believed the mass was for his own funeral is probably a myth which came from a play written by Peter Shaffer in 1979 about the composer. In the play, a mysterious messenger comes and places the order for the Requiem, and Mozart gets the idea, in the play, that he is writing it for himself.

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26th January: Australia Day

Australia Day marks the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British Ships at Port Jackson, New South Wales, and raising of the Flag of Great Britain at that site by Governor Arthur Phillip. 10 things you might not know about the 6th largest country in the world:

1. Most of the population (over 80%) live within 100km of the coast.
2. Australia is big. It is as wide as the distance from London to Moscow. Australia has a cattle station that is bigger than Belgium - Anna Creek Station in South Australia at over 34,000 square kilometres. Australia also has the longest fence in the world, 5,614 km long, built to keep the Dingos out of the fertile land.
3. There are ten deserts in Australia, including the Great Victorian Desert in Western Australia which at 348,750 km² covers 5% of the state and is bigger than the UK.
4. Most of Australia's native animals aren't found anywhere else in the world. No native Australian animals have hooves. The animals that settlers brought with them have no natural predators and so they can multiply and cause problems. Most people have heard that Rabbits are an issue, but there are also over a million feral Camels living in the outback. In fact, Australia exports camels to Saudi Arabia.
5. The Australian nickname for the British, "Pome" comes from "Prisoners of Mother England" because Australia was once an English penal colony. Despite its history as a penal colony (meaning that a percentage of the population is descended from deported criminals) Australia has a very low homicide rate. Only 1.2 per 100,000 population compared to 6.3 per 100,000 in the United States. Australia’s first police force was made up of the most well-behaved convicts.
6. Australia is the lowest and flattest continent in the world. Mount Kosciuszko is the highest point (2228 metres above sea level) and Lake Eyre is the lowest (15 metres below sea level). Australia is the only continent in the world without an active volcano.
7. The capital is Canberra. Canberra was chosen because Sydney and Melbourne couldn't agree on which of them should be the capital.
8. The Australian coat of arms includes a Kangaroo and an emu. They were chosen not only because they are iconic Australian animals, but also because neither beast can walk backwards, and so they symbolise a nation that only moves forward. Some say that Australia is the only country in the world where the people eat the animals on their coat of arms.
9. We usually associate Australia with hot weather, but the Australian Alps actually get more snow than Switzerland.
10. For the last three years, Melbourne has held the title of the world's most liveable city. At one time Melbourne was named after one of its founders, a man called John Batman, so it used to be called Batmania.

25th January: Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was born on this date in 1882. Here are 10 things she said.

1. You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
2. These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.
3. Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.
4. For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.
5. The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.
6. Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.
7. It is far more difficult to murder a phantom than a reality.
8. Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.
9. A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
10. Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

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24th January: National Peanut Butter Day

Today is National Peanut Butter Day. How much do you know about peanut butter?

1. The first people to eat peanut butter were the Aztecs, who ground roasted Peanuts into a paste.
2. A Canadian patented it in 1884. His name was Marcellus Gilmore Edson; he was a pharmacist, and thought it would make a good nutritious food for people who couldn't chew.
3. Studies have shown that men tend to prefer crunchy peanut butter while women and children tend to prefer smooth. It was also discovered that, for some reason, people living on the east coast of the US preferred smooth while west coast people preferred crunchy. Nobody knows why.
4. The oils found in peanut butter are known to allow chewing gum to be removed from hair.
5. It takes 550 peanuts to make a 12 ounce jar of peanut butter
6. A slang term for peanut butter in World War II was "monkey butter".
7. In the Netherlands peanut butter is called pindakaas (peanut cheese) rather than pindaboter (peanut butter) because the word butter is only supposed to be used with products that actually contain butter.
8. While there is a lot of fat in peanut butter, it's the less harmful kind, and there is also protein, vitamins B3 and E, magnesium, folate and fibre in it. Unlike Chocolate, you can feed it to your dog and it's good for him too.
9. Peanut butter and jelly, or jam, is the best known peanut butter combo, but it's also good with pickles, mayonnaise, Olives, Onion, Horseradish, chocolate chips, bacon, Honey, Marmite, or Vegemite and marmalade.
10. Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth. 

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23 January: Edouard Manet

In 1832 the artist Edouard Manet was born on this day. Here are 10 facts about him.

1. He was born in a mansion. His father was a judge in Paris and the family was very well-off.
2. Manet's father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and pursue a career in law, but Manet's uncle had taken him to art galleries and encouraged him to paint, and that is what the young Manet wanted to do for a living.
3. As a compromise, Manet decided to join the Navy, but after failing the entrance exam twice, he was allowed to pursue his career in art.
4. He married his piano teacher. His wife, Suzanne Leenhoff, was initially employed by Manet's father to teach Edouard and his brother Auguste to play the piano. It seems she probably taught them other things, too - it's thought she was having affairs with both of the brothers and her illegitimate son, Leon, born in 1853, who could have been Manet's son, or his nephew. Manet didn't marry her until 1863, the year after his father died.
5. Whatever their relationship was, Leon was often painted by Manet. The most famous painting he is in is Boy Carrying a Sword, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
6. Many artists in Manet's time concentrated on religious or historic themes. Although Manet painted a few such subjects in his early career, he much preferred to paint contemporary scenes of people enjoying themselves, or people he observed in the streets of Paris. This didn't always go down well with the critics. Who wants to look at a picture of a poor man drinking absinthe? they said. Manet himself commented, "One must be of one's time and paint what one sees."
7. This isn't to say he wasn't influenced by religious and historic paintings, though. When he first started painting, he would copy works of the great masters he had seen in the Louvre. Some of his own paintings have been compared with works by Raphael or Titian.
8. One of his most famous paintings was Dejeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) but it was deemed to controversial to be shown in Paris, because it showed two men and a naked woman having a picnic.
9. In 1875, a book-length French edition of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven included lithographs by Manet.
10. Manet's address book would have contained some very influential names, including Antonin Proust, Minister of Fine Arts, who was an old school friend, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot, who married one of his brothers.

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22nd January St Vincent and the Grenadines National Heroes day

St Vincent and the Grenadines celebrates National Heroes Day today. It's also the date in 1498 when Columbus first landed there - on St Vincent's Day.

1. Before European settlers came, St Vincent was called Hairoun by it inhabitants, which means Land of the Blessed.
2. The Europeans left St Vincent well alone at first. Partly because they were more interested in looking for gold in South America, but also because the Carib Indians who lived there had a strict no immigration policy and were very aggressive to anyone who tried to settle. The French finally settled there in the 18th century.
3. Only nine of the 32 plus islands which make up the country are inhabited.
4. Some people who live there are known as "Garifuna". These people are of mixed ancestry, resulting from the intermarriage of Carib Indians and African slaves who were shipwrecked or escaped there.
5. The Amazona Guildingi or St Vincent Parrot is the National Bird.
6. The national dish is Fried Jackfish and Roasted Breadfruit.
7. The economy depends heavily on the export of Bananas. 60% of the working population are employed by the banana plantations.
8. The other major industry is tourism. St Vincent won the Best Sailing and Yachting Island of The Year award in 2009 and Best Honeymoon Island of The Year in 2007 and 2008.
9. The country is made up of six parishes, four of which are named after the UK's patron saints (St Andrew, St George, St David and St Patrick). There is also Charlotte Parish on the main island, the the sixth parish is the Grenadine Islands.
10. The capital, Kingstown, is known as “The City of Arches” because there are over 400 arches there.

21st January John Donne

Quotes from John Donne, English poet, born today in 1573.

1. No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.
2. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
3. When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.
4. Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
5. I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so.
6. More than kisses, letters mingle souls.
7. Love is sin, and let me sinful be.
8. In Heaven, it is always Autumn.
9. Teach me to hear mermaids singing.
10. Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.

20th January: Cheese Day

It's Cheese Day, so here are 10 facts about cheese:

1. There are more than 2,000 different types of cheese in the world. 700 of these are produced in the UK alone. France, surprisingly, only produces 400 different types of cheese.
2. The French aren't the largest consumers of cheese, either - they come second in the world statistics: a French person eats about 24kg of cheese a year. They are pipped at the post by Greece, where the average person eats 27.3kg a year, 75% of which is feta cheese. The top cheese producer is the USA, especially California and Wisconsin.
3. Cheese cannot be sold as Stilton unless it is made in Derbyshire, Leicestershire or Nottinghamshire. Cheese made in the actual village of Stilton, Cambridgeshire, cannot be so called. The reason Stilton cheese was named after a place where it isn't actually made? The village of Stilton was a popular stopping off point for stagecoaches travelling from London to Edinburgh, and The Bell was a popular inn. In 1743 the landlord of The Bell started serving an interesting cheese he had discovered in Leicestershire. Because people ate it in Stilton, they started calling it Stilton.
4. Saint Bartholomew is the patron saint of cheesmongers.
5. It takes about 10 pounds of Milk to make one pound of cheese.
6. The word cheese comes from the Latin word caseus, which also gave rise to the word for cheese in several other languages, for example, queso (Spanish), kaas (Dutch). The French word, fromage, and the Italian formaggio derive from Caseus Formatus which was the term the Romas used for the hard, molded (ie formed) cheese which was supplied to soldiers.
7. In Roman times, rich people would have a separate kitchen just for making cheese, called a careale.
8. Does cheese really give you bad Dreams if you eat it late at night? Not according to the 2005 study by the British Cheese Board. More than three quarters of their sample reported undisturbed sleep after eating 20g of cheese before bed. It did seem to help with dream recall, though, and it seemed that different types of cheese induced different types of dreams. So, if you want to dream about celebrities, eat cheddar; if you want to dream about your childhood, eat Red Leicester; if you want to dream about work, eat Lancashire. Eat Cheshire if you'd rather not dream at all.
9. Cheese also gets bad press because of its fat content, but eating it has benefits as well. Some varieties of cheese like mozzarella, cheddar, Swiss and American, help prevent tooth decay by increasing the flow of saliva; it is an excellent source of protein, calcium, and phosphorus, and its high levels of the serotonin-producing amino acid tryptophan can induce sleep and reduce stress.
10. Cheese is mentioned three times in the Bible - (in 2 Samuel 17, Job 10 and 1 Samuel 17).

19th January: Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was born on this date in 1809. Some facts about him:

1. He used a false name and lied about his age to get into the army. He enlisted using the name Edgar A Perry, and told them he was 22 when he was in fact 18.
2. At 26, he married his cousin, Virginia. She was just 13 but the wedding certificate said she was 21. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 24.
3. The Raven in his famous poem was originally going to be a Parrot, but in the end, Poe decided that a raven better suited the tone of the poem. The Raven was his breakthrough work - after it was published he became instantly famous and children would follow him around flapping their wings and pretending to be ravens. He would turn around and say "Nevermore" to them. The newspaper that published it only paid him $9. The Baltimore Ravens American football team are named for the poem.
4. The photograph often published of Poe was taken just a few days after a suicide attempt, so he didn't always look so haggard. As a young man, he was good looking and athletic, excelling at swimming, rowing and long jump. He was a popular guest at parties and book clubs until one jealous would-be suitor revealed he was having an affair with a married woman, and suddenly he wasn't welcome any more.
5. Poe was a Cat lover, who often wrote with a cat sitting on his shoulder. A spooky fact about Poe and his cats is that a favourite cat, Catterina, was found dead on the day he died.
6. He mostly wrote short stories and poems, but he did write one novel, which proved eerily prophetic. The novel, Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, was about the crew of a capsized ship who drew straws to decide which one of them they would eat to stay alive. The unfortunate loser was named Richard Parker. Poe claimed the story was true, but nobody believed him and the book was not a success. However, some years later, a man called Richard Parker was eaten by his crew-mates after a shipwreck.
7. Poe's death was mysterious. He was found wandering the streets of Baltimore, delirious and rambling. He was taken to hospital where he died four days later. He never recovered enough to explain how he'd got into such a state - he was dressed in shabby clothes which were thought not to belong to him, as it was out of character for him not to look smart. Nor did he know where he had left his luggage (he was on his way to a job interview at the time). The fact that all his medical records and death certificate went inexplicably missing just adds to the mystery. Theories abound, of course: he was an alcoholic and died after a serious bender (disputed by his friends who said he only drank at bad times in his life) suicide (although he'd attempted suicide before, his life was going well at this point - he was to be married in ten days), a brain tumour, diabetes, epilepsy, syphilis, cholera, lead or mercury poisoning (disproved by analysis of his hair), murder or that he'd been drugged as part of an election-fixing scam known as "coopering" and forced to vote at several locations (there was an election on the day he was found).
8. His funeral was only attended by seven people and lasted just three minutes. The ceremony was performed by Reverend W. T. D. Clemm, a relative of Poe's first wife. He decided not to give a sermon because so few people had turned up.
9. Allegedly, Poe carried on writing poetry after his death. In the 1860s, a medium, Lizzie Doten, published some poetry she claimed had been dictated to her by Poe’s ghost.
10. On Poe's birthday, for 75 years, a mysterious person would visit the site of his original grave in the early hours of the morning. The person would be dressed in black with a wide brimmed hat; they would drink a glass of Cognac and raise a toast, and then vanish into the night leaving the bottle of cognac behind and three Roses in a distinctive arrangement. In 2010, the toaster didn't turn up, and has not appeared in any year since.

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18th January: Day of Mercury

In the French Revolutionary calendar, today was dedicated to the element Mercury.

1. An old name for mercury was hydrargyrum, deriving from the Greek words for water and silver, because it is liquid like water and shines like silver. This is where its chemical symbol, Hg, comes from.
2. The atomic number of mercury is 80.
3. Mercury has a freezing point of −38.83 °C and a boiling point of 356.73 °C, and is the only metallic element which is liquid at room temperature.
4. Mercury reacts readily with other metals, corroding them and forming amalgams. Iron is an exception, so iron containers were used to transport and store it. Mercury is particularly damaging to aluminium, and for this reason, mercury is not allowed on aircraft. It is said to have been used by Allied spies in the second world war - they would apply mercury paste to German aircraft to cause structural failure.
5. In ancient China and Tibet, mercury was believed to be very good for you - prolonging life and maintaining good health. The first emperor of China, Qín Sh Huáng Dì drank a mixture of mercury and powdered jade which his alchemists told him would grant him eternal life. Now we know that mercury has rather the opposite effect, which Qín Sh Huáng Dì discovered the hard way - he died of mercury poisoning. His tomb allegedly contained rivers of flowing mercury representing the rivers of China.
6. Mercury has been found in Mayan tombs and in caches on various sites. It has been suggested the Mayans used it as a mirror for divination.
7. In Spain, decorative pools were filled with mercury, and in 1937, American artist Alexander Calder built a mercury fountain for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris.
8. Mercury is mainly used for the manufacture of chemicals and electronics. It has had a number of uses in recent times, although many of them have been, or are being, phased out for health and safety reasons: thermometers for measuring high temperatures; fluorescent lights; dental amalgams (fillings); mirror telescopes; in the manufacture of mascara.
9. As recently as the early 20th century, children would be given a dose of mercury each year to get rid of worms and keep them "regular". It was also used in teething powders and ointments for nappy rash.
10. Fish and shellfish have a higher concentration of mercury in their bodies - a natural result of their body chemistry. The higher up the food chain they are, the higher the concentration.

17th January: Bald Eagle Appreciation Day

For Bald Eagle Appreciation Day, 10 facts about bald eagles:

1. You've probably seen a picture of one, and they are obviously not bald, so why are they called "bald eagles"? The word "bald" in this case derives from "piebald", referring to their white heads and tail feathers. The scientific name, Haliaeetus leucocephalus, translates as "white-headed sea eagle".
2. Their favourite food is fish, including fish which have been stunned or killed by water turbines and Salmon which have died off after breeding. They are opportunistic predators, though, and will also prey on small birds and mammals.
3. Their nests are the largest tree nests of any animal. They can measure up to 4 m (13 ft) deep, 2.5 m (8.2 ft) wide and weigh one metric ton.
4. Females are 25% larger than males. The plumage of the two sexes is the same.
5. A bald eagle can fly at 70km per hour (43 mph) and can reach speeds of 160km per hour (99mph) when diving.
6. The bird is sacred to Native American cultures, some of whom believe that they are messengers from the gods to humans.
7. According to US law, only people of certifiable Native American Ancestry who are members of a federally recognised tribe are allowed to possess bald eagle feathers for use in religious ceremonies. Their supplies come from The National Eagle Repository, which collects and stores eagles which are found dead, and distributes the feathers and any other parts required, to approved people.
8. They don't have vocal chords. They do make sounds, but the screaming sounds eagles make in films are actually made by red-tailed hawks and are added more for dramatic effect than authenticity!
9. Most people know that the bald eagle is the national bird of the USA. It features on the Great Seal of the United States, holding 13 arrows and a 13-leaf olive branch with its talons. On the seal, the eagle is shown looking towards the Olive branch, but in some 20th century versions of the presidential flag show it looking in the other direction, at the arrows. This has led to an urban myth that the flag changes to have the bird looking at the arrows whenever the country is at war.
10. Another urban myth is that Benjamin Franklin suggested that the US national bird should be the Turkey. There's no evidence for this, although there is written evidence that he wasn't keen on the bald eagle - he thought they were cowardly birds of bad character!