31st January: Valkyries Day

Today is Valkyries Day. Here are some things you might not know about Valkyries:

1. The word Valkyrie comes from the old Norse language and means "chooser of the slain".
2. They were servants of the god Odin, and their job was to carry out Odin's commands during battles, thus deciding whether the battle was won or lost.
3. In some legends, they were giants who could make it rain Blood, and row ships on rivers of blood across the sky.
4. In early legends, Valkyries were fierce creatures who took part in battles and devoured the bodies of the dead on battlefields. Only later did they evolve into beautiful female warriors in armour who selected the bravest dead warriors to take with them to Valhalla.
5. Once in Valhalla, the Valkyries turned from warriors to waitresses, bringing the warriors food and mead.
6. Sometimes the Valkyries were portrayed as the wives or lovers of heroes, or as princesses.
7. Some Valkyries caused warriors to die, while others served as protectors, guarding the lives of their loved ones.
8. Creatures associated with the Valkyries include Horses, Ravens and Swans. They usually ride horses, but there is an ancient runestone in Scandinavia which tells of one who rode a wolf.
9. One of the most famous Valkyries is Brunhilde, who was placed in an enchanted sleep within a wall of Fire as punishment for disobeying Odin.
10. Amulets depicting Valkyries have been found in Viking graves. They are usually shown wearing long gowns and with their hair pulled back, carrying drinking horns. They were thought to protect the graves.

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30th January: Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day

The last Monday in January is Bubble wrap appreciation day. Here are 10 facts about bubble wrap:

1. Its inventors, Marc Chavannes and Alfred Fielding, got the idea from two shower curtains sealed together. They called their invention Air Cap.
2. It was originally marketed as 3D wallpaper. When that didn't catch on, they attempted to sell it as greenhouse insulation. It was only when IBM realised this material would protect their shipments of Data Processing Systems in 1960 that bubble wrap became popular.
3. It is usually made from LDPE or polyethylene film, and has a flat side bonded with a shaped side to create the bubbles. The bubbles range in size from 6mm to 26mm, but are most commonly a centimetre in diameter.
4. Bubble Wrap is a generic trademark, owned by the Sealed Air Corporation.
5. Enough bubble wrap is made every year to go around the Earth ten times.
6. According to a survey commissioned by the makers of bubble wrap in 2012, popping bubble wrap for a minute provides as much stress relief as a 33 minute massage.
7. The current world record for popping bubble wrap simultaneously is 942 people.
8. In 1997, the Italian Torninova Corporation created a type of bubble wrap with heart-shaped bubbles.
9. There are any number of electronic games, apps and virtual internet games based on popping bubble wrap, if you can't find any and need to release some stress!
10. Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day came about when a radio station in Bloomington, Indiana, took delivery of a batch of new microphones wrapped in bubble wrap. As the microphones were unpacked, the sound of bubble wrap popping was unintentionally broadcast, and the rest is history.

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29th January: Emanuel Swedenbourg

On this date in 1688 Emanuel Swedenbourg, the Swedish scientist, philosopher and theologian was born. 10 quotes from him:

1. Love consists in desiring to give what is our own to another and feeling his delight as our own.
2. True charity is the desire to be useful to others with no thought of recompense.
3. Man knows that love is, but not what it is.
4. All religion relates to life, and the life of religion is to do good.
5. We are not people because of our bodies but because of our spirits.
6. The inner self is as distinct from the outer self as heaven is from earth.
7. it is the quality of our love that determines the quality of this life.
8. Heaven is not located on high, but where the good of love is, and this resides within a person, wherever he or she might be.
9. Worship does not consist in prayers and in external devotion, but in a life of kindness.
10. Love means setting aside walls, fences, and unlocking doors and saying 'Yes.' One can be in paradise by simply saying 'yes' to this moment.

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January 28: Edward VI

On this date in 1547 Edward VI, 9, succeeded Henry VIII as king of England. Here are 10 things you might not know about this boy king:

1. He was the son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, the long awaited male heir, on 12 October 1537. He was christened on 15 October, and his half sister Mary, then 21, was his godmother. His other half sister, Elizabeth, was just four at the time and was given the role of carrying the chrisom.
2. Less than two weeks after his birth, his mother died, presumably from childbirth complications.
3. He was crowned on 20 February 1547 at the age of nine. He is said to have travelled in a procession to the Palace of Westminster the night before his coronation, through crowds of well wishers and street performers. Even at the age of nine, he was writing a chronicle, and many things we know about him come from this - about his coronation, he recorded that he particularly liked a Spanish tightrope walker who "tumbled and played many pretty toys" outside St Paul's Cathedral, and that after his coronation he presided over a banquet, and dined with his crown on his head.
4. History has tended to paint Edward as a weak and sickly child but more recently historians have challenged this view. Contemporary accounts describe him as "tall and merry", and despite a bout of "quartan fever", a type of malaria, at the age of four, and poor eyesight, he was generally healthy until his final illness.
5. Spoilt brat? Possibly. His father Henry described him as "this whole realm's most precious jewel", and he had every toy and human comfort he could want, including his own troupe of minstrels. Henry made sure security was tight around his son and that everything was kept scrupulously clean around him.
6. Edward appears to have been a highly intelligent boy. He studied geometry, learned to play the lute and virginals, and his hobby was collecting maps and globes.
7. Edward was very fond of his step-mother, Catherine Parr. Although he was later to bar them from succeeding him, he seemed to get on well with his sisters as a child, too. Elizabeth once made him a shirt, and he enjoyed Mary's company although he didn't like her taste for "foreign dances".
8. Edward was England's first monarch to be raised as a Protestant. He was interested in religion, and it was during his reign, rather than his father's, when a lot of the religious reforms took place including the abolition of clerical celibacy, the Mass and English as a compulsory language for services. The reforms were overseen by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose Book of Common Prayer is still used today.
9. King Edward never actually ruled in his own right because he never came of age. During his reign, the realm was governed by a Regency Council first led by his uncle Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset and then by John Dudley, 1st Earl of Warwick, from 1551 Duke of Northumberland. However, Edward did attend the council's meetings.
10. He died at the age of fifteen. The cause of his death isn't certain, and the inevitable rumours that he was poisoned by Catholic supporters abounded. However, there is no evidence for any of the rumours. The contemporary accounts of his illness suggest he probably died of tuberculosis after his immune system had been suppressed by a previous illness. On his deathbed, he wrote and signed a document entitled "My devise for the succession" which passed over his sisters because they had been declared illegitimate, because Mary was a Catholic and because they were women. Instead he declared that the male heirs of his cousin Lady Jane Grey should inherit. When it became obvious Edward was going to die soon, the wording was altered to allow Lady Jane herself to inherit the throne. She reigned for a matter of days before Mary deposed her and had her executed. Edward's last words were, according to John Foxe, "I am faint; Lord have mercy upon me, and take my spirit". He was buried in the Henry VII Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey, in a grave which was unmarked until 1966 when Christ's Hospital school, which Edward founded, provided an inscribed stone.

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27th January: Sir Francis Drake

On this date in 1596 Sir Francis Drake, Elizabethan sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician died off the coast of Panama; famous for leading the first English circumnavigation of the world.

1. His birth date isn't known. Records state that he took command of a ship called Judith at the age of 22 in 1566, and there are a couple of later portraits of him stating his age at the time, which date his birth to around 1544. He was the oldest of twelve children of Edmund Drake, a farmer, and Mary Mylwaye. Drake's godfather was Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, after whom he was named.
2. Drake's sailing career started when he was apprenticed to a neighbour who was the master of a barque used for coastal trade transporting merchandise to France. The neighbour never married or had children, so when he died, Francis inherited the ship.
3. Drake first sailed to the Americas at the age of 23, with a cousin, Sir John Hawkins. By the age of 28, he was embarking on independent expeditions to the area. His first was to capture the town of Nombre de Dios on the Isthmus of Panama. This was the place where Spanish ships would pick up the treasure which had been brought out of Peru. Drake and his men captured the town, but withdrew, leaving the treasure behind, when Drake was injured.
4. In Britain, history paints Sir Francis Drake as a hero, but in Spain he was seen as no better than a pirate who raided their ports and stole their treasure. They called him El Draque, and any Spaniard who'd managed to kill him would have received a reward of 20,000 ducats, which would amount to about £4 million ($6.5 million) in today's money.
5. Even his famous circumnavigation of the world was motivated by making war with Spain and taking their stuff. In 1577 Elizabeth I of England sent Drake to start an expedition against the Spanish along the Pacific coast of the Americas. He set out from Plymouth on 15 November 1577 but had to turn back after bad weather damaged some of the ships. He set off again on 13 December aboard Pelican with four other ships and 164 men. As well as raiding Spanish ports and capturing their ships, on this trip Drake discovered Elizabeth Island near Cape Horn, fought with indigenous people in southern Patagonia, becoming the first Europeans to kill local people (and sadly not the last), and discovered a remedy for scurvy - Tea made from tree bark. The tree was later named Drimys winteri after Captain Wynter, who ordered the collection of lots of the bark. About three years after setting off, Drake returned to England with just the one ship and 59 men. He gave the queen half the treasure he had on board, which amounted to more than the rest of her income for the entire year. Drake himself had enough money left to buy himself a big house - Buckland Abbey, in Devon, now owned by the National Trust. Drake's famous ship, the Golden Hind, was called the Pelican at the start of the voyage. Drake re-named it when it was the only ship left, the others having been burned or scuttled as men were lost, to stop the Spanish from capturing them. The new name was chosen in honour of Sir Christopher Hatton, who had a golden hind on his coat of arms.
6. Drake was knighted on board his ship, the Golden Hind in 1581. While the knighthood was awarded by Elizabeth I, she didn't actually perform the ceremony. Drake was dubbed by a French diplomat, Monsieur de Marchaumont, who was visiting to try and negotiate a marriage between Elizabeth and the King of France's brother. This gesture was to help gain the support of France against Spain. The Victorians promoted the idea that Elizabeth did the dubbing herself in a spirit of nationalism.
7. The Spanish Armada, then, wasn't an unprovoked attack on England but an act of revenge by Philip II for all the pillaging and the skirmish in Cadiz where Drake "singed the beard of the King of Spain" by capturing the port and destroying some ships. The story of Drake being so confident he could beat the Armada that he insisted on finishing his game of bowls before sailing out to meet it may not be entirely true as there were no witnesses to this event and the first written accounts appeared several years later. It's possible it was bad weather, rather than a game of bowls, which delayed him.
8. Drake was a politician as well as a swashbuckler. He became Mayor of Plymouth in 1581 and also an MP for an unknown constituency the same year. He gained a seat in Parliament twice more, for Bossiney in 1584 and Plymouth in 1593.
9. Queen Elizabeth granted Drake a coat of arms. This may have been prompted by an argument in court between Drake and a sea captain called Sir Bernard Drake, to whom Francis claimed he was related and therefore entitled to use Bernard's coat of arms. Bernard disagreed and the resulting disagreement escalated to Bernard giving Francis "a box in the ear". The queen intervened to stop the fisticuffs by giving Drake his own arms, although they did include elements of Sir Bernard's. Sir Francis's included a ship being towed by hand emerging from the clouds and included the motto Sic Parvis Magna Auxilio Divino, meaning "Thus great things from small things (come) with divine help".
10. Drake carried on seafaring until his mid fifties, although towards the end of his life he lost a few battles. He died of dysentery while anchored off the coast of Portobelo, Panama, where some Spanish treasure ships had sought shelter. Following his death, the English fleet withdrew. Drake had requested that he be dressed in his full armour for his burial at sea. He was buried at sea in a Lead coffin somewhere near Portobelo. To this day, divers continue to search for his remains.

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January 26: Discovery of the Amazon River

On this date in 1500 the Amazon River was first discovered by Europeans. Here are 10 things you didn't know about the online bookstore's namesake.

1. The Amazon River in South America is the largest river by discharge of water in the world with a discharge of 209,000 m³/s or 7,831,000 cubic feet. This is more than the total discharge of the next 7 largest rivers added together.
2. During the wet season, the Amazon River can reach over 190 kilometres (120 miles) in width.
3. It is between 6,259 and 6,992 kilometres (3,889 and 4,345 mi) long. Measuring rivers isn't straightforward and different geographers have come up with different figures over the years. Whether it is the longest river in the world is a matter for debate. It has generally been accepted that the Nile is longer. The Nile, however, is reported to be anywhere from 5,499 to 6,690 kilometres (3,417 to 4,157 mi), so there's not much in it.
4. 20% of the fresh water that enters the seas anywhere in the world comes from the Amazon. There's so much of it that it dilutes the salinity of the sea and changes the colour of the sea for 1,000,000 square miles.
5. The source of the Amazon River is Lago Villafro in the Andes Mountains, Peru.
6. On its way to the Atlantic Ocean, the Amazon passes through Colombia, Peru, and Brazil. The largest city it passes is Manaus.
7. Most of the river runs through rainforests, so there are no bridges over it.
8. The Amazon is home to a huge amount of wildlife. There are over 3,000 species of fish, including the piranha, and more being discovered all the time. Anacondas live in the shallows, and you could also find Manatees, Dolphins, electric eels, Otters and Turtles.
9. Vicente Yanez Pinzon was the first European to sail into the river in 1500. The first European to travel the length of the Amazon River was Francisco de Orellana in 1542.
10. It has over 1,100 tributaries, 17 of which are over 1,500 kilometres long. 

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25 January: Fluoride Day

Fluoride Day:

Fluoride is basically a type of ion of the element fluorine.

1.           The element's name comes from the fact that it was used to lower the melting points for metal ores (first documented by Georgius Agricola in 1529), making them easier to work with. Hence the Latin verb fluo meaning "flow" became associated with it. It was Sir Humphrey Davy who first proposed the name.

2.           Andreas Sigismund Marggraf described another early use in 1764. He heated fluorite with sulphuric acid. The resulting solution corroded its glass container, so hydrofluoric acid became an agent used for glass etching.

3.           Fluorine is highly reactive and forms bonds easily with other elements. It wasn't until 1810 that scientists began to suspect that fluorine was an element. It took until 1886 before anyone managed to prove it. Fluorine proved difficult and dangerous to isolate from its compounds and several scientists died in the attempt. They became known as "fluorine martyrs".

4.           In 1886, French chemist Henri Moissan managed to isolate elemental fluorine using low-temperature electrolysis. He won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this, for, as the citation read, "the great services rendered by him in his investigation and isolation of the element fluorine ... The whole world has admired the great experimental skill with which you have studied that savage beast among the elements".

5.           Fluorine's symbol is F and its atomic number is 9. Its melting point is 53.48 K (−219.67 °C, −363.41 °F) and its boiling point is 85.03 K (−188.11 °C, −306.60 °F).

6.           It's the 24th most common element in the universe and the 13th most common on Earth.

7.           In normal conditions, it is a pale Yellow gas with a pungent odour. In liquid form it is bright yellow.

8.           Fluorine has no known metabolic role in mammals. Some plants make organofluorine poisons to deter herbivores. That said, studies in the 20th century found that it did have the effect of reducing tooth decay in areas where it was naturally present in drinking Water, so since the 1940s 6% of the world's population have small amounts of fluorine added to their drinking water.

9.           At least 17,000 metric tons of fluorine are produced each year. Industrial production of the stuff dates back to World War II when the Manhattan Project used huge quantities for uranium enrichment. Meanwhile, Germany used high-temperature electrolysis to make incendiary chlorine trifluoride.

10.        Today it is used to make fluorosurfactants which are small flourine compounds which repel water and can be added to fabric as waterproofing. It's also used in about 20% of modern drugs, because the bond between fluorine and the active ingredients is slow to break down, so it lengthens dosage periods.

24th January: Gloomsday

24 January is Gloomsday, the most depressing day of the year according to Dr Cliff Arnall, a Cardiff Psychologist. His January Blues day formula is W + (D-d)3/8 x TQ M x NA, Where W = weather, D =Debt, d = money due in January pay, T = time since Christmas, Q = time since failure to quit bad habit, M = general motivation and NA = Need to do something about it. The formula has an economic function - it is a good predictor for travel companies of when people are most likely to book a summer holiday to give themselves something to look forward to.

Feeling fed up? Ten pearls of wisdom to help you feel better:

1. Do not despair whatever happens for behind the clouds is always the rainbow. L Frank Baum
2. Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression. Dodie Smith
3. Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
4. That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Nietsche
5. The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea. Karen Blixen
6. We can complain because rose bushes have thorns or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.
7. When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade - go and find a very large gin and tonic.
8. Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a glass.
9. If you can’t see the bright side, then polish the dull side.
10. Life isn't about preventing the storms, but about learning to dance in the rain.

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23rd January: Compliment Day

It's Compliment Day. Here are 10 quotes about compliments.

1. You have to love yourself or you'll never be able to accept compliments from anyone. Dean Wareham
2. When envoys are sent with compliments in their mouths, it is a sign that the enemy wishes for a truce. Sun Tzu
3. Compliments cost nothing, yet many pay dear for them. Thomas Fuller
4. Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes. Oscar Wilde
5. It's always the compliments from people you love that mean so much. Maria Bamford
6. We are prepared for insults, but compliments leave us baffled. Mason Cooley
7. A woman will doubt everything you say except it be compliments to herself. Elbert Hubbard
8. It is a great mistake for men to give up paying compliments, for when they give up saying what is charming, they give up thinking what is charming. Oscar Wilde
9. Only fools imply compliments. The wise man comes right out with it, point-blank. Imply criticism--unless the criticized isn't within earshot. William Faulkner
10. True humility is being able to accept criticisms as graciously as we accept compliments. Sabrina Newby

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January 22: Grigori Rasputin

Rasputin, whose first name was Grigori, (not, as suggested by a rumour spread by pop group Boney M, Ra-Ra) was a Russian peasant, mystical faith healer, and trusted friend of the family of Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia. He was born in 1869 on this date in the new style of calendar.

1. He was known as "the mad monk" but he was never a monk. While it was true he underwent a religious conversion while staying at a monastery at the age of 18, he never joined any order. He had a wife and three children. A lot of what we know of Rasputin comes from memoirs written by his daughter, Maria, who insisted most of the negative aspects of his reputation were based on slander and rumours circulated by his enemies. She eventually became a circus performer and died in Los Angeles.
2. He was illiterate. He never learned to read or write because there was no school in the Siberian village where he was born.
3. His father was a postal coachdriver.
4. Rasputin was named after St. Gregory of Nyssa.
5. As a young man, Grigori was known as a brawler and suffered from physical tics.
6. After his conversion Rasputin gave up alcohol and meat for many years, although he started drinking again after an assassination attempt in 1914 when a woman disguised as a beggar stabbed him and he had to spend six weeks in hospital.
7. In 1907, Tsesarevich Alexei was suffering from bleeding which the doctors couldn't cure. Tsarina Alexandra had met Rasputin while staying in Peterhof Palace because of all the unrest in the capital, and thought the itinerant holy man might be able to do something. Rasputin possibly did little apart from pray for the boy and calm both the patient and his parents down in the process, which in itself would have helped. He may have advocated that Alexei stop taking any drugs the doctors had prescribed. This could actually have been helpful, since Alexei had haemophilia. It was possible he was being given Aspirin for the pain, a drug we now know prevents Blood from clotting and wouldn't have been doing the boy any good at all.
8. While the Russian Queen would have been well impressed by this, there is no evidence Rasputin was ever her lover. However, by this time he held a belief that sex was a means to achieve enlightenment and the more sex you had, the holier you were. So he did have lots of lovers and women were drawn to him despite the fact he was a wild-looking, illiterate peasant who smelled like a Goat and admitted himself that he often didn't change his underwear for six months. The explanation for his way with women may lie in the rumour that his penis was 13 inches long. His member was removed after his death but before the autopsy so there is no official evidence this was the case. In the 1980s, an American called Michael Davenport sold what he claimed was Rasputin's penis at auction, but the object turned out to be a sea-cucumber. Rasputin's penis, it is now claimed, is in a jar of formaldehyde in the museum of erotica in St Petersburg. In other accounts, his daughter pickled it and kept it in a box; and there were rumours that it was worshiped by a female cult in Paris in the 1920s.
9. Being as close to the royal family as he was, Rasputin made plenty of enemies, who didn't like his potential influence on them. He died when a bunch of nobles lured him out of his house, by telling him he was to be the guest of honour at a party. It's said they fed him poisoned cakes, which had no effect, although the autopsy on Rasputin's body found no poison in his system. Maria Rasputin said that her father didn't like sweet or sugary food so it may have been he refused to eat the cakes. So they shot him, but this didn't kill him either and Rasputin escaped. He was chased, shot a few more times, but still was strong enough to beat up one of his attackers. The final cause of his death was drowning, after they threw him into the river.
10. It's possible Rasputin's death was ordered by the British and that an MI6 intelligence officer called Oswald Rayner was there - bullets from the type of gun he would have used were found in Rasputin's corpse. There would have been a motive for the British to do this - they would have been afraid that Rasputin would advise the Tsar to pull out of the first world war which would have meant Britain would lose without their powerful allies. We'll never know, because Oswald Rayner burned all his papers before he died.

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21st January: Christian Dior

10 facts about Christian Dior, born on this date in 1905.

1. Christian Dior was born in Granville, a seaside town on the coast of Normandy, France. He was the son of a wealthy fertilizer manufacturer and had four siblings.
2. His parents wanted him to become a diplomat, but young Christian wanted to do something with art.
3. He started out by selling his fashion sketches outside his house, charging 10 cents each for them. When he left school, his father gave him the money to set up a small art gallery, as long as the family name did not appear on the door. Dior and a friend ran the gallery, selling works by well known artists like Picasso, until the family fortune ran out and they had to close it.
4. Dior worked for several other designers such as Robert Piguet, for whom Dior designed three collections. A day dress with a short, full skirt called "Cafe Anglais", was one of the best received.
5. During World War II Dior worked for Lelong, a fashion house with a mission to preserve the fashion industry through the war. Dior was designing dresses for the wives of Nazi officers. Ironically, Dior's sister Catherine, was fighting in the French Resistance at the time.
6. Dior was 42 when he produced his first collection under his own name. The collection was called Corolle (literally the botanical term corolla or circlet of flower petals in English), but the name that stuck was New Look, coined for it by Carmel Snow, editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar.
7. His designs weren't well received at first. In times of post-war austerity, Dior was heavily criticised for the amount of fabric his designs used, and women, used to showing more of their legs when fabric was scarce, didn't like their assets being hidden by swathes of fabric.
8. Dior would always include, in each of his collections, a garment called Granville, after his home town and at least one model had to carry a bunch of white lilies, his favourite flower. Sometimes, for luck, he would sow Lily of the valley flowers into the hems of the dresses.
9. Christian Dior was the first designer to lend his name to a range of accessories to go with his line of clothing. Critics at the time thought he was cheapening the haute couture industry.
10. Dior's solo career as a designer lasted just ten years - he died of a heart attack at the age of 52. What caused the heart attack, however, has been subject to rumour and speculation. Some said it was caused by choking on a fish bone, others said it was brought on by a game of cards, and there was a rumour that it was caused by a "strenuous sexual encounter".

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20th January: US President Inauguration Day

It's US President Inauguration Day. Here are 10 things you might not know about presidential inaugurations.

1. 20 January has been the date of the swearing in of a new president since 1937. Before that, the ceremony was held on 4 March. Should 20 January fall on a Sunday, though, the ceremony would take place on the following day, Monday 21st.
2. Since 1981, the ceremony has been held at the Capitol's West Front. An urban legend maintains that Ronald Reagan chose this location so that he would be facing his home state of California.
3. The inauguration for the first U.S. president, George Washington, was held on April 30, 1789, at Federal Hall in New York City. He was sworn in by Robert Livingston, the Chancellor of the State of New York.
4. The new Vice-President will be sworn in on the same day.
5. The only constitutional part of the ceremony is the actual oath, where the President says "I, <full name>, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Everything else that happens over the ten days of celebrations is by tradition.
6. It's not even constitutional that the President swears the oath on a Bible, although most of them do. Often they'll use a family Bible. In 2013 Barack Obama used a Bible that belonged to Martin Luther King Jr.
7. Immediately after the presidential oath, the United States Marine Band performs four ruffles and flourishes, followed by Hail to the Chief, while a 21-gun salute is fired. The new President makes an inaugural address (George Washington's second address was the shortest at 135 words; William Henry Harrison's was the longest at 8,495 words).
8. Since 1805, it has become tradition for the president to parade down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House. The only President not to do so was Ronald Reagan during his second inauguration in 1985, because the weather was too awful. He had, however, done so in 1981. Jimmy Carter walked the whole distance in 1977, but since then, they drive most of it, for security reasons. Once there, it is customary for the president, vice-president, their respective families and leading members of the government to watch an Inaugural Parade from the edge of the North Lawn.
9. Ronald Reagan's first inauguration in 1981 was the warmest on record (55 °F at noon). The coldest was his second, (7 °F at noon).
10. The first inauguration known to have been photographed was that of James Buchanan in 1857; the first to be filmed was that of William McKinley in 1897, the first broadcast on radio was the second inauguration of Calvin Coolidge in 1925; the first to be televised was the second inauguration of Harry S Truman in 1949; the first to be televised in colour was John F Kennedy's in 1961 and the first to be made available live on the internet was Bill Clinton's in 1997.

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19th January: The number 19

10 things you didn't know about the number 19:

1. 19 is the 8th prime number. It's also the fifth "happy number". A happy number is one where if you take the sum of the squares of its digits, then take the sum of the digits of the resulting number, and keep going, eventually the number will reach 1, or keep going in an endless loop with no 1. The numbers which end in 1 are happy numbers.
2. 19 is the atomic number of Potassium.
3. According to the Qur'an, there are 19 angels guarding Hell. Also in the Qur'an, the birth of Jesus is announced at the reference Qur'an 19:19.
4. In golf the "19th hole" is the clubhouse bar.
5. 19 is the name of Adele's 2008 debut album, so named since she was 19 years old at the time.
6. It is also the title of a song by Paul Hardcastle, released in 1985, based around the statistic that 19 was the average age of soldiers killed in the Vietnam war.
7. 19 is the legal age for buying cigarettes in Alabama, Alaska, New Jersey, Utah and parts of New York; for buying alcohol in most of Canada, and for getting married in Nebraska.
8. Nineteen is an unincorporated community located in Ohio County, Kentucky, United States. The nineteenth President of the United States was Rutherford B. Hayes. The nineteenth state to enter the Union of the United States was Indiana.
9. The game of Go is played on a grid of 19×19 lines.
10. There is no combination of cards in a hand of cribbage that adds up to 19 points. Hence in cribbage, "19 points" is a joking reference to scoring nothing at all.

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18th January: Airbus A380

On this date in 2005 the Airbus A380, the world's largest commercial jet, was unveiled at a ceremony in Toulouse, France.

1. It is the world's largest passenger airliner, but it is not, in fact, the world's largest aeroplane. That distinction goes to a Russian cargo plane called the Antonov An-225.
2. So how big is an A380? 72.72 m (238 ft 7 in) long (as long as two blue whales), 24.1m (79ft) high, 80 meters wide and weighs approximately 590 tons. Each engine is as long as a Mercedes C-series car. It's the first passenger plane to have two decks along its full length, giving it 550 square metres (5,920 sq ft) of cabin space. It can carry 525 people in a typical three-class configuration, but if the airline wanted to pack everybody in cattle class, it could carry 853 people. More than 3600 litres of paint is required to paint the exterior of the aircraft.
3. Each plane costs US$432.6 million to build. They are made up of 4 million individual components, produced by 1500 companies, in 30 different countries, including 8000 bolts to attach the three main parts of the aircraft. Some of the structural components are so big that specialised means of road and water transport had to be devised to get them from the factories in France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom to the assembly plant in Toulouse, France.
4. If all the wiring in the A380 is laid end to end, it will stretch from Edinburgh to London – 320 miles.
5. Because it is so huge, the airports it visits have had to upgrade their facilities, like gate sizes, to accommodate it. There are only 20 runways in the world long and wide enough for these huge beasts to use. While runways may have needed to be lengthened and widened, it wasn't deemed necessary to reinforce them - even though the A380s are heavier, they have more wheels (22) than other aircraft, spreading the extra weight out.
6. In October 2016, there were 198 A380s in service, primarily with the the airlines Emirates, Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa and Qantas.
7. The shortest route these planes operate on, as of December 2016, is a flight from Dubai International Airport to Doha-Hamad, although it's not the shortest route these planes have ever operated. In 2010, Air France briefly used it for the Paris-Charles de Gaulle to London-Heathrow route (344 km or 214 miles). The longest A380 route — the third longest non-stop commercial flight in the world — is Qantas' service from Sydney International Airport to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, which is 13,804 kilometres (8,577 mi).
8. The maximum speed an A380 can reach is Mach 0.96 (640 mph). Its cruising speed is Mach 0.85 (561 mph; 903 km/h). It can fly at a height of 43,000 feet. It can hold 81,900 gallons of fuel weighing 560 tons. However, it burns 17% less fuel than other large planes and has lower emission than any other aircraft. For this reason, Airbus nicknamed it the "gentle giant", but this wasn't the nickname that captured the imagination - in the minds of the public, it's the "superjumbo".
9. In spite of its size, the first test pilot, Jacques Rosay, said flying the A380 had been "like handling a Bicycle".
10. Flying one as a passenger is intended to be a better experience, too. The cabin interior is 50% quieter than other aircraft and it has a higher pressurisation and more space. The windows and overhead bins are larger, and there's more headroom. For those who can afford to travel first class, facilities have included beds, sofa lounges, bars, an electronic art gallery and even a shower spa.

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These are my books. Find out about them on my Books Page.