30th June: Democratic Republic of the Congo

Today the Democratic Republic of Congo celebrates Independence Day. Here are 10 things you may not know about this country:

1. DR Congo is the second largest country in Africa. In terms of population, it is the largest French speaking country in the world, the fourth most populous nation in Africa and the nineteenth most populous country in the world.
2. Located near the equator, it gets a lot of rain, and has the highest frequency of thunderstorms in the world. It is home to the second largest rain forest in the world (after the Amazon).
3. In terms of wildlife, it is the only country in the world in which bonobos are found in the wild. Gorillas, chimpanzees and okapi also live here, as well as the world's largest concentration of Hippos.
4. Africa's most active volcanoes are in DR Congo, Nyiragongo and the Nyamulagira.
5. The capital, Kinshasa is thought to have a population of around 10 million people, and is the second largest French-speaking city in the world, after Paris.
6. Kinshasa is very close to the capital of the neighbouring country with the rather similar name of Republic of the Congo, Brazzaville. These two cities are the two capitals which are closest to each other. They are separated by the Congo River and are just 5k or about three miles apart. There is no bridge between the two cities - if you wanted to go from one to the other, you would have to travel by boat.
7. The country has had several different names. It was formerly known as, in chronological order, Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville), Republic of Zaire and Democratic Republic of the Congo. The name Congo comes from the river, and the river was named after kingdoms of people living in the area in olden times. The word is thought to derive from a word for a public gathering or tribal assembly. The name Zaire is from a Portuguese adaptation of a Kikongo word nzere ("river").
8. DR Congo is very rich in mineral deposits. Its untapped deposits of raw minerals are estimated to be worth more than US$24 trillion. This includes 80% of the world's cobalt reserves, 70% of the world's coltan, over 30% of its diamond reserves, and a tenth of its Copper. It also has an abundance of Gold, tantalum, tungsten, and Tin. The uranium used in the Manhattan Project, the top secret mission that led to the construction of the atomic bomb in World War II, came from the Shinkolobwe Mine in Katanga province.
9. The official language is French, but 242 languages are spoken in the country overall. These include Kituba ("Kikongo"), Lingala, Tshiluba, and Swahili.
10. The airport in Gbadolite has one of the longest airstrips in Africa, despite being essentially in the middle of nowhere. This is because it was built to accommodate Concorde, and the plane did often land there. Gbadolite is an imitation French town built by Dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, nicknamed "Versailles of the Jungle." It also had three palaces, the largest nuclear bunker in Africa, a state of the art hospital and grammar school, and a church where Mobutu's wife is buried.

My Books

As well as this blog, I also write fiction and have published two novels (Death and Faxes and Glastonbury Swan) and a collection of short stories (Jigsaw). If you like ghost stories, crime stories, a bit of romance and anything slightly bizarre you might enjoy them. 

Further details on my books page

29 June: Seychelles Independence Day

Seychelles Independence Day is today. 10 things you might not know about these islands.

1. The Seychelles is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean. It comprises over 115 islands. 45 of these are granite-based and the only mid-ocean granite islands in the world. The other islands are coral or coral and sand.
2. In terms of population, The Seychelles is the smallest African country with a population of just 90,024. With a population of 25,000, the capital, Victoria, is the smallest capital city in the world.
3. The Seychelles is home to some very rare and unique animals and plants, including its national bird, The rare Seychelles Black Parrot, which only lives in The Vallee de Mai. Despite the name, the bird is actually brown. On Bird Island, you will find Esmeralda, the heaviest wild land tortoise. She weighs 304 kg.
4. Unique plants include the jellyfish tree and the Coco de Mer, a palm tree that produces the world's heaviest nut. This nut is sometimes called the "love nut" because its shape resembles a female bottom.
5. 150 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the Seychelles was part of the super-continent Gondwanaland. The coco de mer grows in The Vallee de Mai on Praslin Island, which according to legend was the location of the original Garden of Eden, and the forbidden fruit wasn't an apple, but the nut that looks like female buttocks.
6. There is said to be hidden treasure in the Seychelles. It was a hideout for pirates. Olivier Le Vasseur, an infamous pirate, had treasure worth 100,000 euros that remains hidden there to this day. Perhaps it is on the Moyenne Island in Ste. Anne Marine National Park, which is believed to be haunted by a spirit that guards buried treasure.
7. Whether or not the Garden of Eden was there, in recorded history nobody lived there before 1770. Even today nearly 50% of the country is uninhabited by human beings and is set aside as nature reserves.
8. Aldabra is the world’s largest raised coral atoll and is home to the world’s largest giant land tortoise colony, the world’s second largest Fregate bird nesting colony, only island nesting site for the Pink Flamingo, and the only flightless bird in the Indian Ocean.
9. It is a popular tourist destination and attracts celebrities, including Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, who named one of his characters, Milton Krest, after a tonic and ginger beer drink he tried while on holiday there. It was also where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge went on their honeymoon.
10. Eat breadfruit in the Seychelles, and according to legend, this means you will return to the islands someday.

My Books

As well as this blog, I also write fiction and have published two novels (Death and Faxes and Glastonbury Swan) and a collection of short stories (Jigsaw). If you like ghost stories, crime stories, a bit of romance and anything slightly bizarre you might enjoy them. 

Further details on my books page

28th June: Emirates Airline

The Emirates Airline is a gondola lift (or a small cable car) which opened in London on this date in 2012. Here are some things you might not know about one of London's newest tourist attractions.

1. It is the first urban cable car in the United Kingdom.
2. There are 36 passenger gondolas, of which 34 are in use at any one time. Each gondola can carry ten people.
3. The journey across takes ten minutes, during which passengers can enjoy views of the City, Canary Wharf, historic Greenwich, the Thames Barrier and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
4. The cable car runs between the Greenwich Peninsula (near the O2) and the Royal Docks (where the ExCel Centre is).
5. It crosses the river at a height of up to 90 metres (300 ft), and the length of it is 1,100 metres (3,600 ft).
6. It cost £45 million to build, although the total cost of the project was £60 million, taking into account legal costs and land acquisition. The initial estimate had been £25 million. The sponsors, Emirates Airline, paid £36 million towards it, with the rest to be funded from fares. As of 2011, it was the most expensive cable car ever built.
7. The fares are £4.40 for a single journey, or £3.30 when paid with a pay-as-you-go Oyster Card. To encourage commuters to use it, "frequent flyer" tickets are also offered.
8. The cable car provides a crossing every 15 seconds, with a maximum capacity of 2,500 passengers per hour in each direction. Two million people travelled on the Emirates Air Line in its first year, but since then there has been a downward trend in passenger numbers.
9. The cable car was the first route to have its sponsor's logo displayed on the London Transport map. For marketing purposes, a trip on the cable car is referred to as a "flight" and tickets are referred to as "boarding passes."
10. It has its fair share of critics, who believe it is an impractical transport solution, that would do well in peak tourist season but not be viable at other times. It's in the wrong place and the tickets cost too much, they say. It seems they may be proved right - after the Olympics passenger numbers dropped to less than 10% of capacity. The number of commuters using it has been estimated at 16. The Guardian newspaper commented that "It would have been cheaper to buy them a gold-plated mini-bus," and suggested that it should be moved - to Switzerland.

27th June: Djibouti Independence Day.

Today it is Djibouti's Independence Day. Here are 10 things you might not know about Djibouti:

1. The country became independent in 1977 and on the same day adopted their Flag. The flag consists of light blue and light Green bands with a white triangle on the hoist side, which has a red five pointed star in the middle. The flag was designed by Mahamoud Harbi. The white triangle stands for peace. The blue stripe represents the sea and sky and the green stripe represents earth. The red star stands for unity.
2. Over 90% of the population are Muslims. Djibouti is thought to be a very early adopter of Islam, dating from when the Prophet Mohammed urged a group of Muslims who were being persecuted to seek refuge there. Islam may thus have been introduced to the area well before the faith even took root in its place of origin.
3. Djibouti is home to lake Assal, the saltiest lake outside of Antarctica. Its average salt concentration is 34.8%, beating the Dead Sea (33.7%). The name means "honey lake", and the salt extracted from it was an important commodity historically. Caravan routes sprang up around it and salt was traded for all sorts of other items, including Coffee, ivory, musk, and slaves.
4. At 23,200 square kilometers (8,958 square miles), Djibouti is the third smallest country in continental Africa, after Swaziland and Gambia.
5. The country was named after the bottom point of the Gulf of Tadjoura, derived from the word ‘gabouti’, a type of doormat made of palm fibres. During its history, Djibouti has been known by other names, including: “Land of Tehuti” after the Egyptian Moon God; French Somaliland; Territoire Français des Afars et des Issas (TFAI) ("French Territory of the Afars and the Issas").
6. It is thought to be part of the location known by the Ancient Egyptians as the Land of Punt. The Puntites had close relations with Ancient Egypt during the times of Pharaoh Sahure and Queen Hatshepsut. According to temple reliefs at Deir el-Bahari, the Land of Punt was ruled at that time by King Parahu and Queen Ati.
7. The capital and largest city is Djibouti City, which was founded by the French in 1888. It is sometimes called the Pearl of the Gulf of Tadjoura, because of its proximity to the world's busiest shipping lanes. 60% of the population live here.
8. The highest point is in the Mousa Ali mountain range and is on the border with Ethiopia and Eritrea. It has an elevation of 2,028 m. The lowest point is Lake Assal, which is 155m (509 feet) below sea level and is also the lowest land point in Africa.
9. The official languages of Djibouti are French and Arabic. Somali and Afar are also widely spoken.
10. Djibouti has a long tradition of poetry. A sign of achievement for a young poet is to be able to compose a gabay (epic poem), the most complex type, which can be over 100 lines long. Poems have several main themes, including baroorodiiq (elegy), amaan (praise), jacayl (romance), guhaadin (diatribe), digasho (gloating) and guubaabo (guidance). 

26th June: Madagascar Independence Day

Today is Madagascar's Independence Day. Here are 10 things you might not know about Madagascar.

1. Madagascar is the fourth largest island in the world. The only larger islands are Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo. The Capital and largest city is Antananarivo.
2. The country got its name through a mistake. Early settlers didn't really have a name for the country as a whole; it was the Europeans who arrived in the middle ages who named it. The name Madageiscar first appeared in the memoirs of 13th-century Venetian explorer Marco Polo - it was a corrupted transliteration of the name Mogadishu, the Somali port. Polo had landed on Madagascar and thought he was in Somalia. It was almost called São Lourenço after Portuguese explorer Diogo Dias landed on the island on St. Laurence's Day in 1500, but people seemed to prefer Marco Polo's mistake!
3. 90% of the wildlife found on Madagascar is not found anywhere else on Earth. Species endemic to the country include lemurs and the fossa, a type of cat, numerous birds and two-thirds of the world's chameleon species, including the smallest known, Brookesia micra. The males of Brookesia micra reach a maximum length of 16 mm (0.63 in) - small enough to stand on the head of a match. 80% of the plant life is found nowhere else, including hundreds of species of orchids and six of the world's eight baobab species.
4. As well as the smallest chameleon, Madagascar was once home to the largest bird on the planet, the elephant bird. They became extinct, probably in the 17th or 18th century, and would have been over ten feet (3 meters) tall. Interestingly, although these birds lived in close geographical proximity to the ostrich, and resemble ostriches, their closest living relative is the kiwi.
5. The national emblem is the traveller's palm or Ravenala (meaning "forest leaves"). The name traveller's palm may have come from the fact that the stems can hold rainwater which a thirsty traveller could drink (although it's not advisable to drink this water without purifying it first); or because the fans tend to be oriented east-west and so travellers could use them as a compass. They are pollinated by ruffed lemurs.
6. Many people in Madagascar follow traditional religions (Christianity was actually banned for a time during its history) and ancestor worship is common. In some areas of the country, it is very important not to offend one's dead relatives in case they become "angatra" or ghosts, and bring misfortune to the family. Keeping them happy involves digging them up every few years and changing the linen in which they are wrapped. People traditionally consult Mpanandro ("Makers of the Days", a type of astrologer) when deciding on dates for important events such as weddings.
7. Lemurs are sacred in Madagascar and there is a taboo against hunting them - possibly because early people believed them to have common ancestry with humans.
8. Madagascar is the world's number one supplier of vanilla, Cloves and ylang-ylang. Other key agricultural resources include Coffee, lychees and Shrimp. Madagascar provides half of the world's supply of sapphires, which were discovered near Ilakaka in the late 1990s.
9. Hery Rajaonarimampianina, the president of Madagascar at time of writing, has a longer surname than any other president in the world.
10. Madagascar is thought to be the site of the mythical independent pirate nation of Libertalia. Madagascar was certainly a popular resting place for European pirates and traders between the late 1700s and early 1800s. Pirates would, according to the legend, renounce their national identities and call themselves Liberi. They waged war against states and lawmakers, releasing prisoners and freeing slaves.

25th June: Mozambique Independence Day

Today is Mozambique independence day. 10 things you might not know about Mozambique:

1. Vasco da Gama visited in 1498, and the country was a Portuguese colony for around 400 years, declaring independence in 1975. The new government sent all the Portuguese people still living there packing. They were ordered to leave within 24 hours and could only take 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of luggage with them.
2. The country is named after after the Island of Mozambique, which was an island town. The island, in turn, was named after Mossa Al Bique, an Arab trader who used to live there. The island is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
3. It was the capital until 1898 when Lourenço Marques became the capital. Lourenço Marques is now known as Maputo. The name changed when the country became independent. At the same time a lot of the street names also changed to reflect the Soviet influence of the freedom fighters. There are streets named for Ho Chi Minh, Robert Mugabe, Patrice Lumumba and Karl Marx. It is also known as the City of Acacias.
4. The Mozambique flag is the only flag to feature a modern firearm, a rifle, representing defence and vigilance. The flag also features a book, representing education, and a hoe, for agriculture.
5. The marimba, a percussion instrument, is native to Mozambique. The musical influences of Africa and Portugal combine to produce marrabenta, a popular style of dance music. Beyoncé's dance moves are influenced by the dance customs of Mozambique. In 2011 she flew a group of Tofu dancers from Mozambique to the USA to teach her dance team their moves.
6. The country's highest point is Monte Binga at 2436m and the longest river is the Zambezi.
7. It's a good place for marine life. Mozambique’s coastline is home to five of the seven endangered species of sea Turtles, and the Bazarut Archipelago is the largest marine reserve in the Indian Ocean and home to 1200 species of fish.
8. The currency is the metical, the name of which derives from an Arabic word for a unit of weight. The metical is divided into 100 centavos.
9. Mozambique exports aluminum, prawns, cashews, Cotton and sugar.
10. The CFM Railway Station in Maputo is considered one of the most beautiful railway stations in the world. That's it in the picture above.

My Books

Death and Faxes

Several women have been found murdered - it looks like the work of a ruthless serial killer. Psychic medium Maggie Flynn is one of the resources DI Jamie Swan has come to value in such cases - but Maggie is dead, leaving him with only the telephone number of the woman she saw as her successor, her granddaughter, Tabitha Drake.

Tabitha, grief-stricken by Maggie's death and suffering a crisis of confidence in her ability, wants nothing to do with solving murder cases. She wants to hold on to her job and find Mr Right (not necessarily in that order); so when DI Swan first contacts her, she refuses to get involved.

The ghosts of the victims have other ideas. They are anxious for the killer to be caught and for names to be cleared - and they won't leave Tabitha alone. It isn't long before Tabitha is drawn in so deeply that her own life is on the line.

Paperback - CreateSpace or Amazon 

Or get the E-book: Amazon Kindle (Where you can use the "Look Inside" function and read the first few pages for free!)

Glastonbury Swan

Every few weeks, there is a mysterious death in Glastonbury. They seem completely unrelated - an apparent suicide, a hit and run, a drug overdose, a magic act which goes horribly wrong - but is that what the killer wants people to think?

The police are certainly convinced - but one of the victims is communicating to medium Tabitha Drake that the deaths are linked.

Who is killing all these people and why? 

This is what Tabitha has to figure out - before it is too late to save someone very dear to her.

Paperback CreateSpace or Amazon

E-book Amazon Kindle

Jigsaw

The first ten short stories from my writing blog. Within these covers you will find murder, mayhem, ghosts, romance, dungeons and dragons and alien vampire bunnies.

You can, of course, read all these stories and more on the blog for free by following the link above, and you're welcome to do that, but if you find you'd like to read them over and over without looking at a screen, or you know your friend who hates technology would absolutely love them, the book is available.

Paperback CreateSpace or Amazon 

E-book Amazon Kindle

24th June: Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce, writer and satirist, was born this date in 1842. One of his famous works is The Devil's Dictionary. Here are 10 definitions from The Devil's Dictionary:

1. Present: That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.
2. Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
3. Life: a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
4. Positive: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
5. Mad: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
6. Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
7. Sweater: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
8. Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
9. Genius: to know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things.
10. Dog: a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.

23rd June: Typewriter Day

Today is Typewriter Day, celebrating a now somewhat obsolete contraption that has been mostly replaced by computers. Here are 10 typewriter facts:

1. For centuries, people tried to come up with a workable device for printing letters on paper so that they looked as if they had been printed rather than hand-written. As early as 1575 an Italian printmaker, Francesco Rampazzetto, invented the 'scrittura tattile' to impress characters onto paper. In 1861 a Brazilian priest made a typewriter from wood and knives and was awarded a gold medal for his invention by the Brazilian emperor. The first commercially sold typewriter was the Hansen Writing Ball, invented by Rev. Rasmus Malling-Hansen in 1865, but only upper case letters could be typed with it.
2. The first typewriter to be a commercial success was was invented in 1868 by Americans Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was a success even though Sholes quickly decided he hated it and refused to ever use it, and wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The patent was sold for $12,000, and Remington began producing them in 1873. This was the first typewriter to be called a typewriter and the first to have the now ubiquitous QWERTY keyboard.
3. QWERTY is not the most efficient layout for English-speaking typists as the most common letters are spread around the different rows. There are a number of theories as to why we've ended up with this arrangement. One is that the keyboard was designed to slow typists down - because if they typed too fast, the keys would jam. Another theory is that it was designed so that salesmen could easily type the word "typewriter" quickly and impress their customers by only learning the letters on the top row. There is no evidence to support either of these theories.
4. It is often said that the word "typewriter" is the longest English word (10 letters) that can be typed using just the keys on the top row. In fact, there is an 11 letter word, "rupturewort" (a kind of flowering plant), and a 12 letter medical term, "uropyoureter". So it is only the longest common English word.
5. Even though the majority of people are right handed, 56% of typing on an English keyboard is done with the left hand as the most commonly used letters are on the left hand side. The longest common English word that can be typed using only the left hand is stewardesses. The longest English word that can be typed with the right hand only is johnny-jump-up (a type of flower). The longest common word that can be typed using just your right hand is Lollipop.
6. Some early typewriters did not have keys for numbers 1 or 0 - it was expected that people would use "i" or "O". Many early models would have ribbons striped in different colours so bookkeeping entries could be entered in red.
7. A lot of terms we use today in relation to computer keyboards come from the typewriter era. These include backspace, carriage return, cursor, shift key, tab stop and cut and paste (because that is what typists would literally do - cut out bits of text and glue them).
8. Typewriters were for a long time the main tool used by writers. The first novel to be written on one was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Ernest Hemingway is known for placing his typewriter on a high shelf and standing up to write, and JRR Tolkien wrote Lord of The Rings on a typewriter balanced on his bed, because there was no room for it on his desk. Most writers use computers now, although one exception is Will Self, who believes that using a typewriter forces a writer to do more thinking in their head.
9. Typewriters are not even made in England any more. The last one was made by Brother in 2012, and was immediately donated to the British Museum.
10. The world's fastest typist is Barbara Blackburn. She can type 150 words a minute for 50 minutes and 170 words a minute over shorter periods on a normal day; but when trying really hard for the record attempt, she clocked up 212 words a minute. An interesting fact about her is that she failed her typing exams at school.

22 June: Anne Morrow Lindberg

The writer Anne Morrow Lindberg was born on 22 June 1906 - so here are 10 quotes from her.

1. The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.
2. For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.
3. One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.
4. Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way.
5. Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
6. I feel we are all islands - in a common sea.
7. Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.
8. I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.
9. It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.
10. There are no signposts in the sky to show a man has passed that way before. There are no channels marked. The flier breaks each second into new uncharted seas.

June 21: Jean Paul Sartre

Jean Paul Sartre was born 110 years ago today, in 1905. Here are 10 things he said:

1. Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.
2. Commitment is an act, not a word.
3. Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
4. If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.
5. When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.
6. Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
7. For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.
8. A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.
9. Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavour.
10. If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

20th June: Errol Flynn

The actor Errol Flynn was born on this date in 1909. 10 things you might not know about Errol Flynn:

1. He was born in Australia. Hobart, Tasmania, to be exact. Both of his parents were native-born Australians of Irish, English, and Scottish descent. He went to school in England for a time - South-West London College, a private boarding school in Barnes, London.
2. He was somewhat of a naughty boy. Back in Australia, he was expelled from school for theft and romancing the school's laundress. He was fired from one of his early jobs, as a junior clerk with a Sydney shipping company, for pilfering petty cash.
3. As an amateur actor, he appeared in the lead role of an Australian film about the Mutiny on the Bounty, playing Fletcher Christian. He'd got the acting bug by now, and returned to England to pursue acting as a career. He worked at Northampton Repertory Company for seven months before getting fired again for having a violent argument with a female stage manager which ended with her falling down some stairs.
4. He had a reputation for being a ladies' man. He was married three times: to actress Lili Damita from 1935 until 1942; Nora Eddington from 1944 until 1949 and to actress Patrice Wymore from 1950 until his death. When he died, it appeared he had his eye on wife number four, Beverly Aadland, a young actress, just fifteen when they met. He cast her in his final film, Cuban Rebel Girls. Aadland claimed he planned to leave his wife and marry her, but he died before it could happen.
5. Rumours abounded that Flynn was also involved with Olivia de Havilland, with whom he co-starred eight times. Flynn admitted that he did fancy her, but Olivia de Havilland says there was no romance. He didn't get on so well with Bette Davis. They quarrelled off screen, and at least one face slap in a film was rather harder than it needed to be! Flynn responded with a certain amount of swagger, suggesting that she disliked him because he didn't fancy her. Others said that Davis didn't think he deserved equal billing with her because he wasn't a proper actor. Although when watching their film, Elizabeth and Essex, Olivia de Havilland heard Davis admit, "Damn it! The man could act!"
6. Flynn was a writer as well as an actor. As well as working as a war correspondent in Spain in 1937 he wrote three books, Beam Ends, an autobiographical account of his sailing experiences as a youth around Australia; an adventure novel, Showdown,and an autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways with the aid of ghostwriter Earl Conrad, as Flynn was suffering from depression and alcoholism by then, and had lost the discipline to write. The book concentrated on his private life rather than his film career and was intended to shock. Flynn wanted to call the book In Like Me, in reference to an expression, "in like Flynn" but the publisher refused.
7. The author Charles Higham published a biography of him in 1980 which made some highly controversial claims, which were refuted by his friends and family. A libel lawsuit against Higham was rejected on the grounds that Flynn was dead. Higham's claims include that Flynn was a Nazi spy and bisexual, but Higham, by his own admission, had no documentation to prove any of it.
8. Flynn became an American citizen in 1942, and as such became eligible for the military draft. Like many actors of the time, Flynn attempted to join up - but Flynn was rejected because of he had a whole raft of health problems including a heart murmur, recurrent malaria (contracted in New Guinea), chronic back pain, chronic tuberculosis, and venereal disease. This posed problems for his image. On the one hand, the swashbuckling hero was criticised for not joining up, but admitting he'd tried but been turned down on account of his health would damage his professional reputation.
9. Flynn died of a heart attack, probably brought on by deep venous thrombosis in his legs. He'd flown to Vancouver to negotiate the lease of his yacht, as by now he had financial troubles. On the drive to the airport to catch his flight home, he started complaining of back and leg pains. The businessman George Caldough, who was driving him, had a friend who was a doctor so he took Flynn to the doctor's home. The doctor diagnosed degenerative disc disease and spinal osteoarthritis; gave him a pain relief injection and a leg massage and told him to rest for a few minutes. Flynn said he felt much better and the doctor left him alone. Twenty minutes later, Beverly Aadland went to check on him and he was unresponsive. The doctor did all he could, and called an ambulance, but Flynn was declared dead at Vancouver General Hospital.
10. Errol Flynn has been the inspiration for comic book characters. Artist Don Heck based Tony Stark (Iron Man)'s look on Flynn, and Stan Lee based one of Thor's companions, Fandral, on Flynn as well. Actor Joshua Dallas, who played Fandral in the film Thor, based his portrayal on Flynn.

19th June: Garfield

Garfield the cartoon Cat first appeared on this date in 1978. 10 things you might not know about Garfield:

1. Garfield was named after, and based on, creator Jim Davis's grandfather, James A. Garfield Davis. Garfield's owner Jon Arbuckle was named after a 1950s coffee commercial.
2. Garfield loves Italian food because he was born in the kitchen of Mama Leoni's Italian Restaurant.
3. Owner Jon's birthday is 27th July. His full name is Jonathan Q. Arbuckle. It was stated in 1980 that Jon was then thirty years old, meaning that he should be in his sixties now. His job is mentioned just once, in the very first Garfield comic strip - he is a cartoonist. After struggling to get a girlfriend for many years, he's now going out with Dr. Liz Wilson, Garfield's vet.
4. Before Garfield, Jim Davis created a comic strip called Gnorm Gnat, which, although the art was good and the jokes funny, wasn't very successful because, as one editor put it, "nobody can identify with bugs." Davis studied cartoon strips to see which characters were successful. Dogs were very popular, but there were few, if any, cartoons featuring cats. Davis grew up on a farm with 25 cats, and decided that it should be easy for him to come up with an idea based on a cat.
5. Originally, Jon Arbuckle was meant to be the main character, until the newspapers and syndicates told Davis they would prefer the strip to focus on the cat, because the cat got all the best lines. Even so, after a test run, the Chicago Sun-Times dropped Garfield, only to be inundated by so many complaints from readers that they had to bring it back.
6. Jon originally had a friend called Lyman, whose sole purpose was to give Jon someone to talk to. He was written out when it became clear that Jon and Garfield were able to communicate nonverbally, and Jon adopted Lyman's dog, Odie.
7. Garfield is set in Muncie, Indiana, which just happens to be the home of Jim Davis.
8. Garfield holds the Guinness World Record for being the world’s most widely syndicated comic strip. It is syndicated in more than 2500 newspapers and journals. Garfield also has nearly 17 million fans on Facebook.
9. There are only three countries in the world which have given Garfield a different name. They are Norway, Finland and Sweden, where he is known as Gustav.
10. The once ubiquitous Garfield plush toys attached to car windows with suction pads came about because of a mistake. They were intended to have velcro on the paws, so people could stick them on curtains. However, the designers sent back a sample with suction pads instead, having misunderstood the specification. Davis stuck it on a window, and said that if it was still there in two days he would approve the design anyway. It was, and the rest is history.

18th June: The Battle of Waterloo

Today is the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, the one that inspired the Abba song. How much do you know about this epic battle?

1. The battle was fought near Waterloo in present-day Belgium (although at the time of the battle it was part of the Netherlands). The battlefield is about 15 kilometers (9.3 mi) south of Brussels. Although it was about 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) from the town of Waterloo, it ended up being called the Battle of Waterloo because Wellington liked to name battles after the place he’d spent the previous night.
2. The Prussians called the battle ‘La Belle Alliance’, after the inn of the same name at the centre of Napoleon’s line. The French called it ‘Mont St Jean’ after the ridge that marked Wellington’s line.
3. Why did it happen? Because other European countries refused to recognise Napoleon as Emperor of France. The UK, Holland, Prussia, Hanover, Nassau and Brunswick were gathering armies to invade France. Napoleon decided to pre-empt this and attack the Seventh Coalition before they could organise their invasion.
4. Before the battle, Wellington got up very early and wrote letters before going out on the field to supervise deployment of his forces. Napoleon, on the other hand ate a leisurely breakfast while slagging Wellington off. "Just because you have all been beaten by Wellington, you think he's a good general. I tell you Wellington is a bad general, the English are bad troops, and this affair is nothing more than eating breakfast", he said to one of his advisers. It's possible he didn't actually believe this, but said it to boost the morale of his troops.
5. No-one knows for sure what time the battle started. Wellington recorded in his dispatches that at "about ten o'clock [Napoleon] commenced a furious attack upon our post at Hougoumont". Other sources state that the attack began around 11:30.
6. By the end of that day, about 30,000 men had lost their lives with many more wounded or missing.
7. The battle may have been lost because of a misread word. Marshal Grouchy failed to bring vital reinforcements to Napoleon’s assistance because he misread one word in the scribbled dispatch sent from the field. The Chief of Staff had written ‘The battle is begun (engagée)’, but Grouchy thought it said ‘The battle is won (gagné)’ so he didn't bother sending any troops.
8. The Coalition captured Napoleon's carriage and found inside it diamonds left behind in the rush to escape. These became part of King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia's crown jewels. They also found printed proclamations announcing Napoleon's victory, addressed to the people of Belgium and post-dated June 17 1815. He'd also promised his troops unlimited plunder when they occupied the Belgian capital.
9. The morning after, local peasants and surviving soldiers swarmed over the battlefield, looting. Some of the soldiers had started looting while the battle was still going on. They collected all sorts of souvenirs and sold them on - badges, hats and weapons. The most valuable and also the most gruesome was teeth from corpses. They would be removed using hammers and chisels and sold on to make dentures for wealthy people. For a long time, dentures were known as "Waterloo teeth". Wellington himself had a set eventually but whether his came from the dead of the battle of Waterloo or some other battle, is unknown.
10. Today, there is a monument on the site, an artificial conical hill with a 28 tonnes (31 tons), 4.45 m (14.6 ft) high and 4.5 m (14.8 ft) long statue of a lion on top. There is a legend that says that the lion was cast from brass melted down from cannons abandoned by the French on the battlefield.

My books are available now. See below for descriptions and links:

Death and Faxes

Several women have been found murdered - it looks like the work of a ruthless serial killer. Psychic medium Maggie Flynn is one of the resources DI Jamie Swan has come to value in such cases - but Maggie is dead, leaving him with only the telephone number of the woman she saw as her successor, her granddaughter, Tabitha Drake.

Tabitha, grief-stricken by Maggie's death and suffering a crisis of confidence in her ability, wants nothing to do with solving murder cases. She wants to hold on to her job and find Mr Right (not necessarily in that order); so when DI Swan first contacts her, she refuses to get involved.

The ghosts of the victims have other ideas. They are anxious for the killer to be caught and for names to be cleared - and they won't leave Tabitha alone. It isn't long before Tabitha is drawn in so deeply that her own life is on the line.

Paperback - CreateSpace or Amazon 

Or get the E-book: Amazon Kindle (Where you can use the "Look Inside" function and read the first few pages for free!)

Glastonbury Swan

Every few weeks, there is a mysterious death in Glastonbury. They seem completely unrelated - an apparent suicide, a hit and run, a drug overdose, a magic act which goes horribly wrong - but is that what the killer wants people to think?

The police are certainly convinced - but one of the victims is communicating to medium Tabitha Drake that the deaths are linked.

Who is killing all these people and why? 

This is what Tabitha has to figure out - before it is too late to save someone very dear to her.

Paperback CreateSpace or Amazon

E-book Amazon Kindle

Jigsaw

The first ten short stories from my writing blog. Within these covers you will find murder, mayhem, ghosts, romance, dungeons and dragons and alien vampire bunnies.

You can, of course, read all these stories and more on the blog for free by following the link above, and you're welcome to do that, but if you find you'd like to read them over and over without looking at a screen, or you know your friend who hates technology would absolutely love them, the book is available.

Paperback CreateSpace or Amazon 

E-book Amazon Kindle

17th June: The Statue of Liberty

1885 The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York. It arrived, from France, in a ship called Isère. It was in pieces in crates when it arrived and the Americans would need to assemble it.

1. Liberty had to wait a while for the pedestal to put her on - it wasn't finished until April 1886. The agreement between the USA and France had been that the French would supply the statue and the US would pay for the pedestal. Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, a New York newspaper, had organised a fundraising drive to raise $100,000. $102,000 was eventually raised from 120,000 donors. 80% of the total was received in sums of less than one dollar.
2. The original concept was thought to have arisen out of an after-dinner conversation between Édouard René de Laboulaye, a staunch abolitionist, and Frédéric Bartholdi, a sculptor, in 1865. Laboulaye, an ardent supporter of the Union in the American Civil War, is supposed to have said: "If a monument should rise in the United States, as a memorial to their independence, I should think it only natural if it were built by united effort—a common work of both our nations." Although it has been suggested that this story was written for a fundraising leaflet, Bartholdi himself reported that Laboulaye did speak the words, but it was an idea, not a proposal, however, it inspired Bartholdi to give the suggestion more thought.
3. The island the statue stands on is called Liberty Island, but before the statue was put there it was called Bedloe's Island. The name was changed in 1956. Bartholdi himself noticed the island when he sailed into New York and thought it would be a good location, especially when he found out that the island was owned by the United States government and therefore was "land common to all the states." President Rutherford B. Hayes, charged with choosing the final location, agreed, and the statue was placed inside Fort Wood, a disused army base on the Island.
4. The height of the Statue of Liberty is 151 feet 1 inch (46 meters). Her hand is 16 ft 5 in (5 m) high; her eye is 2 ft 6 in (0.76 m) wide; her waist measures 35 ft (10.67 m) and her shoe size would be 879. She weighs 450,000 pounds or 204.1 tonnes. Her crown has 25 windows and seven spikes which represent the seven continents and seven oceans of the world.
5. Most people know Liberty holds a torch in one hand and a tablet (inscribed with the date of the US declaration of independence) but less obvious is the fact that she is standing on a broken chain. Early designs had her holding the chain in her hand but it was decided this would be too divisive so soon after the Civil War.
6. There are 354 stairs to reach the statue’s crown. It was originally possible to climb up to the torch, but after a World War I bomb exploded nearby in 1916, causing minor damage to the statue, the torch was closed for safety reasons and never reopened. During World War II, the statue remained open to visitors, but it was not illuminated at night due to wartime blackouts. It was lit briefly on December 31, 1943, and on D-Day, June 6, 1944, when its lights flashed "dot-dot-dot-dash", the Morse code for V, for victory.
7. The Statue of Liberty was originally intended to be a Lighthouse. However, the light from the torch proved much too faint and the newspapers at the time commented that it was "more like a glow-worm than a beacon." Bartholdi suggested numerous ways to improve the situation, but none of them worked, so in 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the statue's transfer to the War Department, as it had proved useless as a lighthouse.
8. The dedication ceremony was not without glitches. There were several long speeches made by various dignitaries. The French flag which covered the face was supposed to be lowered at the end of a speech by Senator William M. Evarts. However, Evarts paused just a little too long in the middle of his speech; Bartholdi thought he had finished and lowered the flag too soon, and the rest of Evarts' speech was drowned out by the cheers of the crowd. Bartholdi was invited to make a speech, but refused. The only women allowed on the Island during the ceremony were Bartholdi's wife and de Lesseps's granddaughter; officials stated that they feared women might be injured in the crush of people. This offended the local suffragettes, so they chartered a boat to get as close to the island as they could so their leaders could make their own speeches, applauding the embodiment of Liberty as a woman and advocating women's right to vote. There was to be a Firework display as well, but the weather was too bad so it was postponed until the following month.
9. The statue is made from Copper, thought to have come from a mine in Visnes, Norway, with an Iron framework underneath. The latter was built by Gustave Eiffel, famous for building a certain tower in Paris. When first erected, it was the tallest iron structure ever built. The statue itself was a dull copper colour at first, but oxidation of the copper gradually turned it the green colour we see today. At first, Congress wanted to paint it to restore the original colour; but the proposal met with a public outcry. Eventually it was decided that the green colour not only "softened the outlines of the Statue and made it beautiful," but also protected the statue from further damage.
10. In high winds, the statue can sway by up to 3 inches, while the torch can move 5 inches. She also gets struck by Lightning about 600 times a year.