August 12: Grouse

Today is the so called "Glorious twelfth" when the Grouse shooting season begins. Here are some things you may not know about these birds:

1. Grouse belong to the order Galliformes, in the family Phasianidae, meaning they are related to Chickens.
2. There are 18 species of grouse They range in length from 31 to 95 cm (12 to 37 in), and in weight from 0.3 to 6.5 kg (0.66 to 14.33 lb).
3. Grouse live in temperate and subarctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere, in forest, moors and mountainous regions.
4. They are mostly vegetarian - their diet consists of buds, catkins, leaves, and twigs. Some species will even eat needles from conifers. The chicks eat meat, mostly insects and other invertebrates, but eat less and less of them as they grow up.
5. Male grouse are bigger than females. In the mating season, the males display their feathers and strut around in displays known as lekking to attract females.
6. A grouse nest is nest is a shallow depression or scrape on the ground with a thin lining of plant material. There can be up to twelve eggs in a clutch. The eggs are are pale Yellow, sparsely spotted with Brown.
7. Chicks hatch in dense, yellow-brown down and leave the nest immediately. They grow feathers very soon after that, and can fly at two weeks old.
8. Around 250,000 grouse are shot in Britain between August 12 and December 10 each year.
9. In America the grouse is called ‘prairie chicken’. Kansas has more wild grouse than any other state.
10. In  Scotland and the Alps, the male grouse's Black tail feathers are a traditional ornament for hats. They are most commonly associated with Glengarry and Balmoral or Tam O'Shanter caps, worn by pipers of civilian and military pipe bands. 

11 August: Enid Blyton

Born on this date in 1897 was Enid Blyton, children's writer whose well known characters include known characters is Noddy, the Famous Five and the Secret Seven. Her work has been translated into nearly 90 languages.

1. Her first book was called Child Whispers, and was a 24-page collection of poems, published in 1922. It was illustrated by her schoolfriend, Phyllis Chase.
2. At school, she was good at sports - she became school tennis champion and captain of lacrosse. The only academic subject she did well in was writing. She could play the Piano well enough to consider a career in Music, but in the end, she chose writing. Her mother thought writing was a "waste of time and money". Since Enid did not get on with her mother this may have influenced her decision.
3. For a while after leaving school, Enid lived at Seckford Hall near Woodbridge in Suffolk. Seckford Hall, which had a haunted room and secret passageway.
4. Her manuscripts were rejected by publishers many times, which only made her more determined to succeed. She believed rejection made her more determined and self-reliant. Her perseverance paid off in the end, She is now the world's fourth most translated author, behind Agatha Christie, Jules Verne and William Shakespeare.
5. She married an editor at her publishing firm, Major Hugh Alexander Pollock in 1924. They had two daughters, Gillian and Imogen, but in time the marriage broke down. Enid had several affairs, including, according to a memoir written by her husband's second wife, a lesbian affair with one of her childrens' nannies. Eventually, she started an affair with Kenneth Fraser Darrell Waters. Pollock found out about it and wanted to file for divorce. Enid, not wanting her public image damaged by adultery, persuaded him to let her do the filing, and she'd allow him access to his daughters, However, according to the second wife's memoir, she went back on that and didn't allow him to contact the girls. She also bankrupted him by making sure he never worked in publishing again. Enid, meanwhile, married Darrell Waters.
6. She wrote so much so quickly (sometimes producing fifty books a year plus magazine and newspaper contributions) that people believed she'd hired ghost writers. Enid was upset by this and put an appeal in a children's magazine asking the kids to let her know if they heard these rumours. One child informed her that her school librarian was saying it, and the librarian was rapidly sued and forced to apologise. Enid Blyton's response to her critics was that she was uninterested in the views of anyone over the age of 12; that half the attacks on her work were motivated by jealousy and the rest came from "stupid people who don't know what they're talking about because they've never read any of my books".
7. She believed that the colour red acted as a mental stimulus for her, so she kept a red Moroccan shawl near her while she was writing.
8. She didn't just write fiction, either. She wrote educational texts (her day job was teaching) which were influential in the 1920s and '30s. These included The Teacher's Treasury (three volumes), Modern Teaching (six volumes), Pictorial Knowledge (ten volumes), and Modern Teaching in the Infant School (four volumes).
9. She wrote six books under another name, Mary Pollock, in 1940 - including Three Boys and a Circus and Children of Kidillin. These books were popular, too, to the extent that people said, "Enid Blyton had better look to her laurels". Her fans figured out who was really writing the books and complained to the publisher, who later re-issued them as Enid Blyton books.
10. Enid Blyton used her massive fan base to encourage children to get active supporting charities which supported animals and children. The largest of the clubs she was involved with was the Busy Bees, the junior section of the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals, which, after Blyton promoted it in the Enid Blyton Magazine, attracted 100,000 members in three years.

10 August: Ecuador Independence Day

Ecuador gained Independence from Spain on this date in 1809. 10 things you might not know about Ecuador:

1. It's said that Ecuador is the nearest country to space, because its highest mountain, a currently inactive stratovolcano called Chimborazo, while not the highest mountain in terms of elevation from sea level, due to the fact that the Earth bulges slightly near the equator, is the furthest distance from the Earth's core and the nearest to space.
2. Talking of the equator, Ecuador's name means "Equator" in Spanish, making it the only country in the world to be named after a geographical feature. The equator runs through the country and there is a marker in Ciudad Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World City) where one can allegedly stand with one foot in each hemisphere, although measurements had improved since the line was painted and the equator is actually 240m south of it.
3. Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, is 2,850m above sea level, making it the highest official capital city in the world.
4. The largest city is Guayaquil.
5. Quito is also UNESCO World Heritage Site #2, that is, the second place to be named as such. The world's first UNESCO Heritage Site is also in Ecuador - the Galapagos Islands.
6. The Galapagos Islands are famous for their endemic species of animals and birds, which were studied by Charles Darwin during the Voyage of the Beagle, and helped inspire his theory of evolution by natural selection. Nature in Ecuador has a constitutional right not to be exploited by man. Since 2008 nature has the “right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.” Ecuador is the first country in the world to grant rights to the natural world.
7. Ecuador is the world’s largest exporter of Bananas, accounting for up to 29% of all bananas exported in 2011. It also produces most of the world's supply of balsa wood, and the Panama hat, originally made to sell to the workers building the Panama Canal.
8. The national tree of Ecuador is the cinchona tree which produces Quinine, the first drug used to prevent and treat malaria. The national flower is the Rose.
9. Ecuador is one of only two countries in South America that does not share a border with Brazil.
10. The Flag is a tricolour of Yellow (the yellow stripe is twice as deep as the Blue and red stripes) and it has the coat of arms in the centre. Depicted on this are Chimborazo; Guayas, the first seaworthy steamship built in Ecuador and indeed in all of South America; a Caduceus and the zodiac symbols for Aries, Taurus, Gemini and Cancer representing the months March to July, the duration of the March Revolution of 1845.

9 August: Leaning Tower of Pisa

On this date in 1173, the foundations of the Tower of Pisa were laid.  Here are ten things you might not know about the Leaning Tower:

1. It's a bell tower, a freestanding one, of the Cathedral of Pisa. It has seven bells, one for each note of the musical scale.
2. One of the bells is older than the tower itself. That is the fifth bell or the Pasquareccia, so named because it was rung on Easter Day. The bell came from the tower Vergata in Palazzo Pretorio in Pisa, where it was called La Giustizia (The Justice), and was tolled to announce executions of criminals and traitors, such as Count Ugolino in 1289. It was moved to the Pisa Tower when its original Pasquareccia broke.
3. It took 199 years to build, although to be fair to the builders, construction was halted several times because of wars.
4. It leans because the architects and builders failed to realise the ground in Pisa was too unstable to support the proposed tower. Also because they only built a three foot foundation for a tower that was to be over 180 feet tall. The name Pisa comes from the Greek for "marshy land". You'd have thought that would have given them a clue.
5. It started to lean in 1178, before they'd even finished building it. It owes its continued existence to the first century long halt in construction, because that allowed the ground beneath it to settle before more stories were piled on. Without that break, the tower would have fallen over long ago.
6. The tower is actually curved, because the second generation of builders and engineers, led by Giovanni di Simone, architect of the Camposanto, attempted to compensate for the tilt by building the floors with one side higher than the other. Hence the two spiral staircases inside have different numbers of steps. One has 294, the other has 296. The efforts to correct the tilt at this time had the effect of changing the centre of gravity of the building which meant the lean actually switched direction from north to south.
7. In 1934, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini decided the leaning tower had to be corrected because it wasn't perfect and everything in Italy had to be perfect. Concrete and grout was pumped into the foundations, but all Mussolini actually achieved was to make the lean even worse. Between 1990 and 2001, extensive restoration work was carried out by modern engineers, led by one John Burland, who said that soil mechanics, the branch of engineering required to complete the task, had been his worst subject as an undergraduate. Presumably he got the hang of it in the end, as, following the restoration, the tilt was reduced from 5.5 degrees to 3.99, and the tower has been declared safe for another 200 years.
8. The tower was almost destroyed during the second world war. The Germans were using it as a lookout post, and the Americans, led by sergeant Leon Weckstein, arrived to carry out an artillery strike on it. Weckstein saw what a beautiful building it was, and didn't order the strike.
9. The story goes that Galileo Galilei once dropped two different sized cannonballs from the top of the tower to demonstrate that their speed of descent was independent of their mass. However, we don't know for sure that it happened, since there is only one account of it, by his follower and biographer Vincenzo Viviani, who probably wanted to big up his mentor's achievements. Modern scientists believe it was only a thought experiment of Galileo's and he never actually did it.
10. There are several other towers in Pisa which lean, thanks to the soft ground. San Nicola, a 12th century church located about half a mile south of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, leans slightly while San Michele degli Scalzi, an 11th century church about two miles east has a 5-degree tilt. There are other leaning buildings in other parts of the world, including one in Germany, the Leaning Tower of Suurhusen, which has a tilt of just 0.02 degrees less than Pisa's tower. The record for the most lop sided building goes to the Capital Gate building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, with a tilt of 18 degrees, but it was intentionally built to be that way. Finally, there is a rock formation in Antarctica which is nicknamed “Tour de Pise” because it looks a bit like the Leaning Tower.

8 August: Happiness Happens Day

Today is Happiness happens day - so here are ten quotes about happiness:

1. Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have. Dr Hyman Schachtel
2. People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy. Anton Chekhov
3. I don't sing because I'm happy; I'm happy because I sing. William James
4. Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply hadn’t found out where to go shopping. Bo Derek
5. Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don’t even remember leaving open. Rose Lane
6. I would always rather be happy than dignified. Charlotte Bronte
7. Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go. Oscar Wilde
8. The (US) constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. Ben Franklin
9. It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness. Charles Spurgeon
10. Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is. Maxim Gorky

7 August: Jack the Ripper

On this date in 1888 Jack the Ripper claimed his first known victim. For three months he murdered and mutilated prostitutes in London's East End. He was never caught.

1. There are five murders generally assumed to have been carried out by Jack the Ripper; those of Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly who are known as the "canonical five" between 31 August and 9 November 1888. However, as many as eleven different murders in the area were included in the investigation, including that of Martha Tabram, killed on 7 August 1888.
2. The name "Jack the Ripper" came from a letter from someone claiming to be the killer, which was printed in newspapers at the time. The author of the letter signed himself as "Jack the Ripper" and the name stuck.
3. Police at the time referred to him as "the Whitechapel Murderer" or "Leather Apron".
4. There were actually hundreds of letters from people claiming to be the killer, mostly dismissed as hoaxes, including the one mentioned above. At the time, cheap newspapers and magazines were gaining prominence and there is a theory that the newspapers composed the letters themselves in order to sell more copies. Certainly Jack the Ripper was the first serial killer to get publicity of that magnitude. One of the letters was attached to a box containing half a human kidney preserved in ethanol. Eddowes' left kidney had been removed by the killer. The writer claimed that he "fried and ate" the missing kidney half. With string beans and a good chianti? It didn't say.
5. Typically, the victims had had their throats cut and their bodies mutilated in a way which led to the belief that the Ripper was a surgeon. Or a butcher. Even Queen Victoria had an opinion. She thought it must be a butcher or cattle drover on one of the cattle boats that plied between London and mainland Europe, docking in London on a Thursday or Friday and leaving on Sunday. The killings took place at weekends and Whitechapel was close to the London Docks. The police looked into it but there was no one boat docked in London at the times of all the murders, nor any transfer of crew between the boats that could implicate anyone.
6. The police investigation proceeded not unlike it would today with the collection of forensic material, house to house inquiries and interviewing of suspects. More than 2,000 people were interviewed, "upwards of 300" people were investigated, and 80 people were detained. However, they were all ruled out and Jack the Ripper was never caught.
7. The police weren't the only people looking for him. A group of volunteer citizens in London's East End called the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee weren't satisfied with the way the official investigation was going, and so they took to the streets looking for suspicious looking people. They petitioned the government to raise a reward for information about the killer, and hired private detectives.
8. A Jack the Ripper Museum opened in Cable Street, Whitechapel in 2015. Founded by Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe. its exhibits include the whistle used by police constable Edward Watkins to summon help when he discovered the body of Catherine Eddowes, another victim, PC Watkins' notebook, Handcuffs and truncheon and a recreation of the police station in Leman Street where detectives attempted to identify the murderer. There is, however, no waxwork figure of Jack the Ripper at Madame Tussauds' Chamber of Horrors because they have a policy of not making models of people unless they know what that person looked like. Instead, he is shown as a shadow.
9. Because the perp was never caught, speculation has always been rife about whodunnit. Suspects have included: Seweryn Kłosowski, "the borough poisoner", hanged in 1903 for poisoning three of his wives and who'd been living in Whitechapel and working as a barber at the time of the murders; John Pizer, coincidentally known as "Leather Apron". He had a prior conviction for a stabbing offence, but had alibis for at least two of the murders; Thomas Neill Cream, a doctor specialising in abortions who was hanged for poisoning the husband of his mistress - it's alleged his last words were "I am Jack the..." but police officials who attended his execution never mentioned this; Thomas Hayne Cutbush, a medical student sent to Lambeth Infirmary in 1891 after stabbing a woman in the bum. He was thought to de suffering from delusions caused by syphilis; Frederick Bailey Deeming, who murdered his first wife and four children in Rainhill near St. Helens, Lancashire, in 1891. He emigrated to Australia with his second wife, and murdered her as well. He boasted that he was Jack the Ripper, but had watertight alibis in that he was in prison or abroad when the Ripper murders happened.
10. Writers have been coming up with theories about who Jack the Ripper was ever since. Fictional suspects have included William Withey Gull, physician-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria; Sir John Williams obstetrician to Queen Victoria's daughter Princess Beatrice; The Duke of Clarence and Avondale; and even Lewis Carroll. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle went so far as to suggest that it wasn't Jack the Ripper at all, but Jill the Ripper - a woman committed the murders. Jill the Ripper may have been, or posed as, a midwife to gain the trust of her victims. It wouldn't have been unusual for a midwife to have blood on her clothes so she wouldn't have been suspected. Another similar theory was proposed by author John Morris, who pointed the finger at Sir John Williams' wife, Lizzie, who was sent mad by her inability to have children and carried out frenzied attacks on women who could.

6 August: Bolivia Independence Day

Bolivia celebrates independence from Spain in 1825 today, on Bolivia's National Day.

1. It has two capital cities and two Flags. The official capital is Sucre, (named after Don Antonio José de Sucre, the great marshal of the Battle of Ayacucho) and the seat of government is in La Paz which at 3,650m (11,975ft) above sea level, is the highest capital city in the world. Even higher is El Alto at 4,150m (13,615ft), which is the highest large city (large city being defined as having a population of more than 100,000) in the world. The largest city in Bolivia is Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
2. The state flag is a horizontal tricolour of red, Yellow and Green, often with the coat of arms in the centre. There is also the Wiphala, commonly used, especially by indigenous peoples, as an alternative flag. It's a square flag divided into 49 squares with colours arranged diagonally with a white diagonal in the middle and the colours of the Rainbow on either side.
3. In La Paz, people are employed to dress up as Zebras and wander the streets helping children cross the road and to educate people about road safety. Important, since just 35 miles (56km) north of the city is the world's most dangerous road, the North Yungas Road, commonly referred to as ‘The Road of Death’. Not for the nervous driver, or passenger, it is a dirt road just 3 metres wide with continuous threats of landslides and a 1,000 metre cliff face. It's only 50 miles (69km) long but between 200 and 300 people are killed on it each year.
4. La Paz was the first city in South America to get an Electricity supply - powered by llama dung. An old superstition in Bolivia is that it is lucky to have a dried llama foetus buried under the foundations of your house.
5. There is also a clock in the main square of the La Paz which runs backwards to remind its citizens to think outside of the box.
6. 70% of the world's supply of Brazil nuts are produced in Bolivia.
7. Bolivia is home to the largest salt flat in the world, Salar de Uyuni, 10,582 square kilometres in size. There is a hotel there built entirely out of Salt, including all the furniture and fittings.
8. Bolivia is home to the largest Butterfly sanctuary in the world (The Guembe Biocenter, 24 hectares) and the largest collection of Dinosaur footprints (about 5,000 of them in Cal Orcko on the outskirts of Sucre).
9. There is a prison in Bolivia where the inmates can buy or rent their accommodation and their families can live in the prison with them. It's like a community in itself and has shops and restaurants run by the prisoners.
10. The Constitution of Bolivia recognises 36 official languages besides Spanish.

5 August: The Olympic Games

The Rio Olympics begin today, so here are some facts about the Olympics you may not know:

1. The first Olympic Games ever was held in 776BC in Greece, and the games were held regularly until 393AD. The games in those days were a religious festival in honour of the Greek God Zeus, which is why they ended - they were deemed a pagan festival by the Christians and therefore banned. In the very early days there was only one event - a foot race. Competitors back then didn't need expensive kit - they competed naked although they might oil themselves up in order to look good. Incidentally, the word “gymnasium” comes from the Greek “gymnos,” which means “naked.” Women were not allowed to take part.
2. The tradition was revived briefly in 1612 in Chipping Campden, England which held an “Olimpick” games. Later on, it was England again which set up a National Olympic Association to establish a National Olympic Games, held in a different city every year. The first National Olympic Games took place in London in 1866, the last in Hadley, Shropshire in 1883.
3. The Olympic Games as we know it today was proposed in 1894 by French educator Baron Pierre de Coubertin. He proposed Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger) as the official Olympic motto. His proposal came to fruition in 1896 when the first modern era Olympic Games was held in Greece. Greece won the most medals that year - 47. The first person to win a medal at these games was an American triple jumper named James Connolly. Again, women weren't allowed to take part in 1896, but in 1900, women competed for the first time. The first female winner was Charlotte Cooper, a tennis player from Ealing, west London. Mostly, men and women compete in separate events, but there is one sport where they compete against each other - equestrianism.
4. The prize hasn't always been a medal. In ancient times it was a laurel wreath. In 1896, it was a silver medal and an olive leaf. In 1900, France hosted the games and gave paintings as prizes instead as they deemed paintings to be much more valuable. Incidentally, today's gold medals aren't solid gold, and haven't been for about 100 years. The regulations say they must be plated with six grams of gold, but it is up to the host city to decide the composition of the centre.
5. Some facts about medal winners. The country which has won the most medals throughout the history of the games is The USA. However, they are not the only country to have won at least one Gold medal at every single Summer Olympics - that is Great Britain. The athlete to win the most medals throughout their career was Larrisa Latynina, a gymnast from the former Soviet Union, who clocked up 18. The person who won the most in a single games was the American swimmer Michael Phelps who won eight at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Abebe Bikila, from Ethiopia, was the first African to win gold for the Marathon in Rome in 1960. He competed barefoot. Eddie Eagan (United States), Jacob Tullin Thams (Norway), Christa Luding-Rothenburger (East Germany), and Clara Hughes (Canada) are the only athletes to win medals at both the summer and winter games.
6. The youngest Olympic athlete ever was Dimitrios Loundras, a Greek gymnast who took part in the Athens Olympics in 1896. He won a medal at the tender age of 10 years and 218 days. Later in life he became an admiral in the Greek Navy. The oldest was Oscar Swahn, a Swedish shooter who was 72 when he won a silver medal in Antwerp in 1920.
7. London is the only city to have hosted the games three times, in 1908, 1948, and 2012. In 1908, the paint used to paint the Olympic site in Shepherd's Bush became the name of a district in London - White City. In 2012, It took the London Philharmonic Orchestra 50 hours to record the individual National Anthems of all the countries taking part.
8. The 1908 games in London also had the distinction of being the first to stage an opening ceremony for the lighting of the Olympic flame. The Olympic Anthem, played when the Olympic Flag is raised during the opening ceremony, was composed by Spyridon Samar. The lyrics come from a poem by Greek poet Kostis Palamas.
9. The five Olympic rings represent the five major regions of the world – Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceana, and every national flag in the world includes one of the five colours, which are (from left to right) Blue, Yellow, Black, Green, and red.
10. The 2016 Olympics in Rio will mark the first Olympic Games to be held in South America. The only continents then not to have hosted one will be Africa and Antarctica.

4 August: Greenwich Foot Tunnel

Greenwich Foot Tunnel opened on this date in 1902. Here are ten facts about the tunnel:

Photo: Mike Peel

1. The tunnel links the Royal Borough of Greenwich with the Isle of Dogs.
2. It is 1,215 feet (370.2m) long and 50 feet (15.2m) deep, and has an internal diameter of about 9 feet (2.74m). The northern end is even narrower, due to repairs carried out after the tunnel was damaged by bombs in the second world war.
3. It has been nicknamed "The Pipe" by locals.
4. It was built for workers living south of the river to get to work in the docks. Before the tunnel was there, they had to rely on an expensive and unreliable ferry service.
5. The tunnel was designed by civil engineer Sir Alexander Binnie and built by John Cochrane & Co. It cost £127,000 to build.
6. It is constructed from cast Iron rings covered in concrete which in turn has been covered with about 200,000 white glazed tiles.
7. At either end there is an entrance shaft under a glazed dome and a helical staircase with 100 steps. There is also a Lift but the lift may be unavailable at night, weekends and bank holidays as there is a lift operator.
8. The tunnel is classed as a public highway and therefore by law is kept open 24 hours a day. It's also part of the UK's National Cycle Route 1 linking Inverness and Dover.
9. The tunnel has been used as a filming location for the movies 28 Weeks Later, Dorian Gray and Bronco Bullfrog, and the TV series Original Sin.
10. Walking through the tunnel can feel quite unsettling. For one thing the tiles and the shape distort perspective so while you are walking uphill your eyes see a level path. If that's not weird enough, there are rumours the tunnel is haunted. Some visitors say they feel a strong presence and the feeling of being followed until reaching the other side. A few claim to have seen the ghosts of a Victorian couple out for a stroll. They are seen walking towards the visitor from the opposite direction, but fade away as they approach.

3 August: Traffic lights

On this date in 1926 Britain’s first electric traffic lights were installed at Piccadilly Circus. Here are ten things you may not know about traffic lights:

1. It wasn't the first one in the world, though. The first electric traffic light was installed in Cleveland, Ohio on August 5, 1914.
2. The first traffic lights were manually operated, meaning a policeman had to stand there and change the lights. Before electricity traffic lights were manually operated gas lamps. There were some installed outside the Houses of Parliament in 1868. Within a month, they'd exploded. The danger to policemen meant they never really caught on.
3. In 1928, Charles Adler Jr invented traffic lights that could be activated by drivers honking. They didn't catch on either, due to complaints from local residents about the noise.
4. The first automatic traffic lights were installed in Wolverhampton in 1927.
5. The city in the UK that is thought to have the most traffic lights is Leicester.
6. The colours, red, amber and Green, were chosen because they were already in use on the railways. The reasons the railways chose them are lost in obscurity, but scientists know today that the colour red has a longer wavelength than green, and can be seen from farther away. This makes sense as it would give drivers more time to slow down.
7. Early traffic lights only had red and green lights, but lights changing from green to red with no warning led to accidents. In 1920, a Detroit police officer named William Potts added the Yellow (or amber) signal to warn drivers.
8. The oldest traffic light in the world still in use is in Ashville, Ohio. It was installed in 1932, and has the added distinction of an unusual design. It looks like an Art Deco-era rocket ship rather than a rectangular box.
9. Traffic lights are generally arranged with the lights above one another, but in some parts of North America they are arranged horizontally, sometimes with lights being different shapes as well as colours, because the horizontal arrangement is less vulnerable to storms and hurricanes.
10. Is it permissible to drive through a red light if the lights are broken and stuck on red? Actually, no - if the lights are broken then by law you should wait until a policeman or traffic warden comes to direct the traffic. There are tales, possibly urban myths, of people who sat at a broken red light for days until they nearly died of dehydration and everybody would say people who do that are somewhat lacking in brain cells - however, if you drive through a broken red light and are prosecuted you'd need to be able to prove the light was broken in your defence.

2 August: James Arthur Baldwin

James Arthur Baldwin was an African-American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic. He was born August 2 1924.

1. Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
2. I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
3. Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
4. The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.
5. Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
6. People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
7. People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.
8. I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.
9. Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.
10. There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now. 

1st August: Benin

Benin gained Independence on this date in 1960 from France. Here are 10 things you might not know about Benin.

1. The capital of Benin is Porto Novo. The name is of Portuguese origin and means "New Port". It was originally developed as a port for the slave trade. It is also called also known as Hogbonu or Ajashe.
2. The area around Porto Novo was once called the "Slave Coast" as large numbers of African slaves were shipped from there. By about 1750, the Kingdom of Dahomey (a part of Benin) earned about £250,000 a year from the slave trade. The last ship of slaves departed from Dahomey for Brazil in 1885.
3. Now, the biggest export is cotton. Cotton accounts for 40% of GDP and roughly 80% of official export receipts.
4. Although the parliament is in the official capital of Porto Novo, most of the government departments are based in the largest city, Cotonou. This city's name comes from the Fon language and means "by the river of death".
5. Benin was formerly known as Dahomey but was re-named in 1975. The new name was chosen because it was a neutral one, after the body of water on which the country lies, the Bight of Benin.
6. The country measures about 325 km (202 mi) at its widest point. It is a little smaller than the US state of Pennsylvania or about two thirds the size of Portugal.
7. Most of the people follow Christianity or Islam, but there is also a significant number who follow voodoo, or vodun, which is also an official religion. Benin is sometimes referred to as the cradle of vodun.
8. Many people in Benin have names which reflect the day of the week on which they were born, their birth order and the circumstances under which they were born. There are names, for example, given to babies who were born in a field, on the road, in time of war, prematurely, babies who are illegitimate, born after their father's death or after infertility. The second born of a set of Twins is deemed to be the elder, as s/he was mature enough to let the other one be born first.
9. Pendjari National Park in Benin is one of the most important strongholds for the endangered West African lion.
10. Mont Sokbaro is the highest point of Benin, with an altitude of 658 metres (2,159 ft).

31 July: Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman, an economist, was born on 31 July 1912. 10 quotes about governments and bureaucracy.

1. If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
2. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
3. Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
4. The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
5. Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
6. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
7. The power to do good is also the power to do harm.
8. Governments never learn. Only people learn.
9. Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
10. Anybody who was easily converted was not worth converting.

30th July: The Central Line

Public services began on the London tube's Central Line on this date in 1900. How much do you know about the Central Line?

1. Back then, the trains only ran from Bank to Shepherd's Bush, and were operated by the Central London Railway. The line was opened by The Prince of Wales (soon to be Edward VII) who made the eighteen minute journey. The author Mark Twain was another early Central Line passenger.
2. Tracks were extended to Wood Lane in 1908, Ealing Broadway in 1920, Greenford in 1947 and West Ruislip in 1948. To the east, services were extended to Liverpool Street in 1912, Stratford in 1946, Woodford and Hainault in 1947, round the Hainault loop in 1948, Epping in 1949 and Ongar in 1957. The Epping to Ongar shuttle closed in 1994. It became known as the Central Line in 1937.
3. It is thanks to the early Central Line that the entire London Underground system as we know it today is referred to as "The Tube." It had a flat fair of 2d, and together with the cylindrical shape of the tunnels it became known as the "Twopenny Tube", later shortened to "The Tube".
4. The Central London Railway was the first underground railway to have the station platforms illuminated with electric lights.
5. Today, the Central Line is the longest tube line at 46 miles (74 km). It has 49 stations and has the longest possible journey between two stations - the 34 miles from West Ruislip to Epping. It's also the busiest with around 260.916 million passengers using it per year.
6. The Central line's official colour is Pantone 485.
7. During the second world war, the as yet unopened Central Line tunnels between Leytonstone and Newbury Park were turned into a two and a half mile long aircraft components factory employing 2000 people.
8. It has the sharpest curve on the tube system, the Caxton Curve, between Shepherds Bush and White City. There are a lot of bends in general, because the line was built to follow the streets rather than going below buildings. This was because it would have been too expensive to purchase wayleave under the private properties on the route. This also has the effect that in places, the east and west bound platforms are on different levels and one line runs above the other.
9. The line has the shortest Escalator on the London Underground system, at Stratford with a rise of 4.1 metres (13 ft). Stratford and Greenford are the only stations where escalators take passengers right up to the trains. Greenford has another escalator claim to fame - until 2014, it had the last remaining escalator with a wooden tread.
10. It is one of only two lines on the London Underground network to cross the Greater London boundary, the other being the Metropolitan. 

29 July: International Tiger Day

It's International Tiger Day! Here are ten facts you may not know about these beautiful creatures:

1. The tiger (Panthera tigris) is the largest cat species. Tigers have reached a body length of up to 3.38m (11.1 ft) and have weighed up to 388.7 kg (857 lb) in the wild.
2. They are Cats, but they like swimming and they cannot purr. Their pupils are round, unlike other cats, because they hunt in the morning and evening rather than at night.
3. The stripes on each tiger are unique, like human fingerprints. If a tiger's fur is shaved off, the stripes are still visible on their skin.
4. A group of tigers is called an ambush or a streak.
5. Tiger pee smells like buttered Popcorn, and their saliva is antiseptic.
6. Tigers can leap distances of over 6m, and jump up to 5m vertically. One swipe from a tiger’s front paw is strong enough to smash a Bear’s skull.
7. Unlike Lions, tigers will share a kill, even with other tigers not related to them. Males will wait for females and cubs to eat first.
8. White tigers are a colour variant of Bengal tigers, caused by a recessive gene. They tend to have blue eyes, and may also be cross-eyed as all these genes are linked. One in 10,000 natural births is a white tiger. There is another variant called "golden" or "strawberry" which has light gold fur and pale orange stripes. There have been reports but no confirmed cases, of blue tigers as well.
9. Tigers hunt by ambush - so if you look a tiger in the eye, it is less likely to kill you. This is why men in India often wear masks on the back of their heads, so a tiger won't pounce on them from behind.
10. The tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, India, Malaysia and South Korea.

28 July: Beatrix Potter

This date in 1866 was the birthdate of Beatrix Potter, English author, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

1. Peter Rabbit was based on her own pet Rabbit, which she bought in 1890 and named Benjamin Bouncer. She used to take him for walks on a leash.
2. Her books of animal tales came about when she was writing letters to the sick child of her former governess. One day she ran out of things to say and filled up the letter by telling a story about a rabbit.
3. As a teenager, Beatrix kept a diary, which she wrote in code. She wrote about society, art and artists, told stories and observed life around her. The code was so secret that Beatrix herself had trouble deciphering it as she got older.
4. She was very interested in most branches of natural science, and in her time, collected fossils and drew insect specimens - but her number one passion was the study of fungi. At first she was interested because she liked painting them, but her interest deepened after meeting Charles McIntosh, a revered naturalist and amateur mycologist, during a summer holiday in Perthshire in 1892. He taught her taxonomy and supplied her with live specimens to paint during the winter. By 1895 she had developed a theory of the germination of fungi and wrote a paper about it. Her paper, On the Germination of the Spores of the Agaricineae, was submitted to the Linnean Society in 1897. She couldn't go to the meeting where it was presented because women weren't allowed to attend. Her paper and its illustrations have recently been rediscovered, and is only now being properly evaluated. In 1967, the mycologist W.P.K. Findlay included many of Potter's fungus drawings in his Wayside and Woodland Fungi, thereby fulfilling her desire to one day have her fungus drawings published in a book. In 1997, the Linnean Society issued a posthumous apology to Potter for the sexism displayed in its handling of her research.
5. She knew the value of "spin-off" merchandise, and patented a Peter Rabbit doll in 1903. Following on from that, she licensed painting books, board games, wall-paper, figurines, baby blankets and china tea-sets, all of which supplemented her income.
6. In her late thirties, she became engaged to Norman Warne, even though her parents disapproved of him because they thought he was of too low a social status. The engagement only lasted only a month - Warne died of leukaemia at the age of 37. In her forties she married solicitor William Heelis, a solicitor who had helped her manage her working farms. Her parents didn't approve of him either but this time the marriage went ahead and they remained happily married until her death.
7. In later life, Beatrix became a highly respected sheep farmer. She bred Herdwick sheep, the indigenous fell sheep. She was so highly regarded among the sheep farming community that in 1942 she was named President-elect of The Herdwick Sheepbreeders’ Association, the first woman to be elected to that position, but she died before taking office.
8. She was also an authority on the traditional Lakeland crafts, period furniture and stonework; established a Nursing Trust for local villages, and served on committees and councils responsible for footpaths and other rural issues. She gave generously to the Girl Guide movement, and allowed them to camp on her land.
9. She owned a working farm, Hill Top Farm, which had not only accommodation for the tenant farmer but space for her studio and workshop.
10. When she died, she left most of her estate, 14 farms, over 4,000 acres of land, and substantial numbers of Herdwick sheep, to the National Trust. It was the largest gift of the time to the Trust, and enabled the preservation of the land now included in the Lake District National Park and the continuation of fell farming. In 2005, the central office of the National Trust in Swindon was named "Heelis" in her honour. Potter also left most of the original illustrations for her books to the National Trust. Her husband kept some property which he left to the Trust when he died 18 months later. Hill Top Farm was opened to the public by the National Trust in 1946.

July 27th: The Bank of England

Bank of England was established on this date in 1694. Here are 10 things you might not know about the Bank of England:

1. The Bank of England was established on 27 July 1694 to manage government loans for the purpose of building a navy. It is the second oldest central bank in the world, after the Sveriges Riksbank. Its founder was a Scotsman called William Paterson. A year later, in 1695, the Bank of Scotland was founded by an Englishman, John Holland.
2. You may know that the Bank is sometimes referred to as "The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street" but do you know why? The nickname is said to have arisen from a 1797 cartoon by James Gilray depicting the bank as an old lady sitting on a chest of gold and being forcibly courted by Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger.
3. The Bank has been on Threadneedle Street since 1734. Before that it was in Walbrook, a street in the City of London. This location was found in 1954 to have been the site of a Roman temple of Mithras, the god of contracts.
4. The first Governor of the Bank of England was Sir John Houblon 1694 – 1697. At time of writing, the Governor is Mark Carney, a Canadian, the first non-British citizen to hold the post (although seeking UK citizenship is on his agenda).
5. The Bank is custodian to the official Gold reserves of the United Kingdom and many other countries, as well. A 2012 estimate reckoned there was about £156,000,000,000 worth of gold in the vault, which covers a floor space greater than that of the third-tallest building in the City, Tower 42. Gold bars are packed in stacks of 77. Each stack literally weighs a ton, and if they were any bigger the floor under them could collapse. The keys to the vault are three feet (90 cm) long, presumably so no-one can smuggle them out in their pocket ("is that the key to the vault of the Bank of England in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?") The key alone doesn't open the vault. Anyone wanting to get in also has to speak a password into a microphone.
6. The outer walls of the building at street level are between 8 and 11 feet thick.
7. It is the only bank in England and Wales to literally have a licence to print Money, having the monopoly on the issue of banknotes in those countries. There are seven other banks which can issue notes in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The last private bank in England to issue its own notes was Thomas Fox's Fox, Fowler and Company bank in Wellington, Somerset, which merged with Lloyds Bank in 1927. Its notes were legal tender until 1964.
8. The Bank of England used to burn banknotes which had become unfit for circulation on site. They used the heat from the incinerator to help heat the building. Nowadays burning the notes isn't seen as environmentally friendly, so they shred them, instead.
9. The Bank of England has never been robbed of any of its gold. Its security system is probably second to none - but there is a tale which suggests that wasn't always the case. A man employed to clean the sewers in the area got lost, and while trying to find the way out, went through an unlocked gate - which led into the vault of the Bank of England. When he reported this potential security loophole to the then Director, the Director didn't believe him, so the man challenged the Board of Directors to meet him in the vault in five minutes. The Board went down there to be greeted by the man. He didn't steal anything, and was given a reward of £800 for reporting it. In today's money his reward would be worth roughly £75k so no more cleaning sewers for that guy.
10. The Bank of England is haunted. The ghost of Sarah Whitehead, also known as The Black Nun, is said to haunt its gardens.