31st March: National Noodle Month

National Noodle Month comes to an end today so in case you've missed all the noodle stuff online here are my ten facts about noodles.

1. The word noodle comes from the German word Nudel. While it's possible to eat a single noodle, a meal usually contains several, so the word is usually seen in plural form.
2. Noodles may have been eaten in China as long ago as 4,000 years. In 2005, a team of archaeologists in China reported finding an earthenware bowl containing millet noodles at a neolithic site, but it has since been disputed as you probably couldn't make noodles from millet as it has no gluten in it.
3. Instant noodles, also known as ramen, were invented by Momofuku Ando in Japan in 1958. They are made from fresh noodles which are flash fried and then dried out.
4. When they first hit the supermarkets, ramen noodles were an expensive luxury item, not the staple for people on a budget as they are now.
5. Ramen noodles have been eaten in space. Two years before he died, Ando created “Space Ram,” a vacuum-packed ramen made with smaller noodles (so they can be cooked without using boiled Water), for Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi.
6. There is a museum in Japan dedicated to instant noodles. According to the museum's website there are 5,460 different flavours.
7. A noodle can only be called a noodle if it contains 5.5% egg solids.
8. Noodles represent longevity in China. A Chinese birthday party will include lashings of noodles. They are thought to be a fairly healthy food, being low in sodium and fat, and high in vitamins and minerals such as Iron, riboflavin, niacin and thiamin.
9. While we associate noodles with long, thin, Spaghetti like shapes, the unleavened dough from which they are made can be made into any number of different shapes, just like pasta.
10. As well as March being National Noodle Month, you can also celebrate National Noodle Day on October 6th, and National Noodle Ring Day on December 11th.

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March 30th: Anna Sewell

Anna Sewell, author of Black Beauty, was born on this date in 1820. Here are some quotes from her:

1. I am never afraid of what I know.
2. We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.
3. My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.
4. If you in the morning Throw minutes away, You can't pick them up In the course of a day. You may hurry and scurry, And flurry and worry, You've lost them forever, Forever and aye.
5. It is good people who make good places.
6. Give me the handling of a horse for twenty minutes, and I'll tell you what sort of a groom he has had.
7. If a thing is right it can be done, and if it is wrong it can be done without; and a good man will find a way.
8. Good Luck is rather particular who she rides with, and mostly prefers those who have got common sense and a good heart; at least that is my experience.
9. We shall all have to be judged according to our works, whether they be towards man or towards beast.
10. Do your best wherever it is, and keep up your good name.

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29 March: The Louvre

On this date in 1989, I M Pei's pyramidal entrance to the Louvre opened in Paris. Here are a few things you might not know about Paris's art gallery.

1. The pyramid is about 20 metres high and covers an area of 1,225 square metres. It is made from metal and glass - nearly 700 panes, to be exact. It is one of Paris's best known landmarks, but there was controversy about it in its early days, since I.M. Pei was the first non-French architect to work on the Louvre. There are actually four pyramids in the courtyard - this one, and three smaller ones.
2. The Louvre wasn't always a museum. It was first built as a fortress in the 12th century by Philip II, the first official king of France. Its purpose was to keep the Vikings out. Part of that original building still survives and can be seen in the Lower Hall.
3. Later it was rebuilt and became a royal palace, until the royals moved out to Versailles. It has also been used as a prison and as an office for the finance ministry. It became a museum in 1793, at which time it housed just 537 paintings.
4. Now it is the largest museum in the world, covering 652,300 square feet – nearly 15 acres. It has 380,000 pieces now, not all on display. There are enough items on display that if you visited, and spent 30 seconds looking at each thing, it would take you 100 days, without a break.
5. About 9 million people visit the Louvre each year.
6. The Mona Lisa is probably the most famous item on display there. You can also see the Venus de Milo and Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix. The man wearing a Top Hat on the left of this painting is Delacroix himself.
7. During World War II, as the German army marched towards Paris, museum staff loaded most of the art into a convoy of trucks and shipped it to the country to be hidden in private châteaus. When the German occupiers demanded that the museum be re-opened, there was virtually nothing there save a few sculptures that were too heavy to move. The Germans found another use for the place - for storing all the art they stole from wealthy French Jewish families before they shipped it to Germany.
8. Napoleon once renamed the Louvre to Musée Napoleon and expanded its collection by 5,000 pieces. The pieces were, however, returned to the original owners when he was defeated.
9. The Louvre lines up with the middle of Arc de Triomphe, the Grand Arche of La Defense and the obelisk of the Place de la Concorde. This alignment is known as Axe historique.
10. It's haunted by a mummy called Belphegor, and the Tuileries Gardens next door are haunted by a man dressed in Red.

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28 March: Pallas 2

This date in 1802 saw the discovery of asteroid Pallas 2. Here's what you need to know:

1. The Asteroid Pallas, usually referred to as 2 Pallas, was the second asteroid to be discovered. It was discovered on 28 March 1802 by Heinrich Olbers. The credit could have gone to Charles Messier as early as 1779. He was tracking a comet back then, and tracked the movement of another object at the same time, which he assumed was a star, but we now know it was Pallas.
2. Olbers discovered Pallas when he was looking for Ceres, the first asteroid to be discovered, and saw something else moving nearby. The two asteroids were passing close together at the time.
3. Like many other asteroids discovered about the same time, Pallas was originally classified as a planet.
4. Pallas is one of the largest asteroids in the Solar System, accounting for about 7% of the mass of the asteroid belt. It isn't the largest - Vesta is bigger. Pallas measures 512 kilometers (318 mi) in diameter. It takes 4.6 years to orbit the Sun.
5. We don't know much about the surface of Pallas yet. It is probably made of a silicate material and variations in the pixels of the images that have been taken suggest there are some surface features.
6. Pallas is part of a family. There are more than 10 smaller asteroids with a similar orbit to Pallas. The first inkling that Pallas was part of a group came in 1917 when the Japanese astronomer Kiyotsugu Hirayama observed three of them. They are not, however, moons of Pallas. Pallas doesn't have any satellites.
7. 2 Pallas is named after Pallas Athena, a name used for the goddess Athena. Pallas was killed by Athena, who took on the name Pallas as a tribute.
8. Pallas is the name used for the asteroid in most languages, except for Chinese. The Chinese refer to it as zhìshénxīng, which means "the wisdom-goddess star".
9. The element palladium was discovered just after the asteroid and was named after it.
10. In astrology Pallas is associated with patterns and linking ideas together, and also with the relationships between fathers and daughters. Also falling into her domain are cities, ideas, creativity, survival, claiming personal power, the immune system, the kidneys, the arts, justice, intuition, wisdom, defence and Horses.

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March 27: Charles I

On this date in 1625 Charles I ascended the English throne upon the death of James I. Some facts about Charles I.

1. At his birth, Charles was the "spare" rather than the heir - he had an elder brother, Henry Frederick, but Henry died at the age of 18, probably from typhoid, so Charles became heir apparent at the age of 12.
2. As a young child, Charles was weak and sickly and when his father, James I, became king and left Dunfermline for London, the family left Charles behind. Only when he was able to walk the length of the great hall at Dunfermline Palace without assistance was he deemed well enough to join them. He was slow learning to speak as well, and had a stammer for the rest of his life. It's thought Charles had rickets, and that was the cause of his physical problems. He eventually recovered and became an adept sportsman.
3. James I wanted his son to marry Maria Anna of Spain in order to achieve peace with Spain. Charles travelled to Spain incognito with one of his father's men to negotiate the match but negotiations failed as one of the conditions would have been for Charles to become a Catholic, which would not have gone down well with the British Parliament or the public.
4. In the end, Charles married Henrietta Maria of France, who was 15 years old. She was a Catholic, too, so Charles delayed opening Parliament until the marriage was done and dusted, so they couldn't object.
5. When Charles was crowned, his wife wasn't crowned with him - she refused to take part in a protestant ceremony.
6. Charles and Parliament never had a good relationship. Aside from the Catholic/Protestant religious tensions, Parliament disagreed with the amount of money Charles spent on waging war. Charles dissolved parliament three times in the first four years of his rule. In 1629, he dismissed parliament altogether. This meant he had to levy taxes on the people to fund his warmongering, which, unsurprisingly, made him unpopular.
7. All this eventually led to the English Civil War, eventually won by the Parliamentarians in 1648. The Rump Parliament was formed. After the Chief Justices of Courts deemed the accusation against Charles I as unlawful, the Rump Parliament passed a bill creating a separate court for Charles’s trial and declared the bill an act without the need for royal assent. On 27 January 1649, Charles I was declared guilty of high treason and sentenced to death.
8. He was executed on 30 January 1649 outside the Banqueting House on Whitehall, London. He requested an extra shirt to wear to his death, because it was likely to be cold and he didn't want to be seen shivering with the cold and have the crowd think he was afraid.
9. Nobody knows who the executioner was. The regular executioner had refused to do it, although it's possible he changed his mind after death threats. Whoever it was wore a hood and did not say the customary words, "Behold the head of a traitor!" possibly because his voice would have been recognised. All we know is that he must have been experienced at cutting people's heads off because he did it in one stroke.
10. After this, England became a republic ruled by Oliver Cromwell, but in 1660, the monarchy was restored to Charles I’s eldest son, Charles II.

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26 March: Erica Jong

Erica Jong was born on this date in 1942. She wrote Fear of Flying. Here are ten Erica Jong quotes.

1. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
2. Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
3. Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
4. Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
5. Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.
6. Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
7. Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.
8. He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.
9. You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.
10. The truth is simple, you do not die from love. You only wish you did.

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25 March: Maryland Day

25 March is Maryland Day. Here are ten things you might not know about the US State of Maryland.

1. Maryland was named after Henrietta Maria of France, the wife of King Charles I. It also has some nicknames: The Old Line State, from a line of soldiers who held the British back while George Washington's army got away, Free State, because Marylanders opposed prohibition and have a long tradition of political freedom and religious tolerance. It's also sometimes called “Little America” because there are examples of all kinds of terrain there.
2. The largest city is Baltimore, and the capital is Annapolis. Annapolis was known as the Athens of America during the seventeenth century and at one time was the capital of the United States. Now it is known as the sailing capital of the world. Other towns and cities include Gaithersburg, known as the science capital of the world and Havre de Grace, known as the Decoy Capital of the World. There are also towns called Boring, Accident and Chevy Chase.
3. Another town, Saint Michaels, is famous for fooling British attackers by switching off all the lights in the town and hoisting lanterns onto the masts of ships and into trees so that the British would fire their cannons too high and miss the town. It worked - only one house was hit.
4. Maryland has the only state flag to be based on English heraldry. The Black and gold quarters are the arms of Lord Baltimore's family, the Calverts, and the Red and White quarters are those of his mother's family, the Crosslands. The colony of Maryland was founded by Sir George Calvert, also known as Lord Baltimore, in 1632.
5. Some other state symbols. Maryland is one of only three states to have a state crustacean, the Maryland blue crab. It's State Bird is the Baltimore oriole; State Reptile, Diamondback Terrapin; State Fish, Rockfish (Striped Bass); State Insect, Baltimore Checkerspot Butterfly; State Flower, Black-eyed susan; State Tree, White Oak. The State Boat is a Skipjack, a sailing boat still used today to dredge for Oysters on the floor of Chesapeake Bay. The state drink is Milk, the state Dog is Chesapeake Bay retriever. Maryland was the first state to designate a state sport - jousting. The state dessert is Smith Island Cake, which features between eight and 15 thin layers covered in thick frosting. More recently it designated a state team sport as well: Lacrosse. Finally, there's the state song, “Maryland, My Maryland”, which is sung to the tune of the Christmas carol “O, Tannenbaum”. Although it was only adopted as the state song in 1939 it was written during the Civil War and within its nine verses refers to Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant and the Union as “Northern scum.”
6. Maryland is one of two states which gave up some of its land to help build the nation’s capital of Washington DC in 1790.
7. America's first Umbrellas were produced in Baltimore, beginning in 1828. The six pack of Beer and the Ouija board were also invented in Maryland. Elijah Bond, one of its inventors, has a Ouija board engraved on his tombstone.
8. Other famous people from Maryland include: Babe Ruth, Francis Scott Key (who wrote the US National Anthem), Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton (America's first saint), authors F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tom Clancy and Edgar Allan Poe (The Baltimore Ravens are named after Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, The Raven), Frank Zappa, Billie Holiday, Jada Pinkett Smith and David Hasselhoff. Kunta Kinte, the slave ancestor of Roots author Alex Haley obviously wasn't born there, but it's where he arrived in 1767 and there is a statue of Haley at the docks to commemorate this.
9. Famous islands off the coast of Maryland are Smith Island, where the cake comes from, and which scientists believe is now sinking, and Assateague, which is the home to famous feral ponies. According to legend, they escaped from a shipwrecked Spanish Gallion, but in reality they are more likely to be descendants of domestic animals transported to the island in the 1600s.
10. Eating while swimming is illegal in Maryland. So is marrying your grandmother, taking a Lion to the cinema, selling chicks or ducklings to children within a week of Easter, and letting thistles grow in your garden.

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24th March: Alan Sugar Quotes

It's Lord Alan Sugar's 70th birthday. Here are some quotes from the straight-talking businessman famous for Amstrad and The Apprentice UK.

1. She’ll walk over anybody, chew them up for breakfast and spit them out. That’s what I like about her.
2. When I first started out, I wasn’t interested in making a million, I wasn’t thinking about getting a knighthood. It was about getting some wheels. I wanted a car.
3. On paper you all look good, but so does fish and chips.
4. Put your loved ones, not your profit margin, centre stage.
5. Don’t start telling me that you’re just like me, because no one’s like me; I’m unique.
6. All I’ve heard from you so far is a lot of hot air, so in the interests of climate change you’re fired.
7. Fair? The only fair you’re gonna get is your bloody train fare home.
8. Don’t worry if you make mistakes because that’s how most people learn.
9. I know the words to Candle in the Wind – it don’t make me Elton John.
10. Let your opponent win something… I realised that it’s no good boxing people into a corner; if you really want to succeed, you need to let them win a little and leave them with a nice way out.

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23 March: The Woolwich Ferry

Another Thames crossing today, but not a bridge this time. The Woolwich Ferry started operation on this date in 1889.

1. The Woolwich Ferry is a free ferry service across the river Thames, between New Ferry Approach, Woolwich SE18 6DX and Pier Road, London E16 2JJ. It links two ends of the inner London orbital roads: the North Circular and the South Circular.
2. The service is operated by Briggs Marine on behalf of Transport for London.
3. About two million passengers make the 1500ft crossing each year. The trip takes 5-10 minutes. It cannot operate in fog, however, so foot passengers would have to use the Woolwich Foot Tunnel to get to work and vehicles would have to divert to the Blackwall Tunnel, two miles away.
4. There has been a ferry crossing of some kind at this point in the river since Norman times. One of the earliest written references to it was in 1308 when the waterman conducting the ferry, William de Wicton, sold his business and a house, to William Atte, a mason, for £10.
5. The Woolwich Ferry as we know it today opened on 23 March 1889. The first boat across was a paddle steamer called Gordon (named after General Gordon of Khartoum). It was opened amid a lot of pomp and ceremony. The streets of Woolwich were decorated with flags and bunting for the occasion. Volunteers of the 2nd Kent Artillery, the 3rd Kent artillery and the 3rd Kent Rifles turned out to lines the streets as Lord Roseberry, who was to perform the opening ceremony, rode by in an open carriage with a party which included the local MP and members of the London County Council. They went across in the ferry and were met by the steam fire engine from Beckton gas works. Then they went back again and Lord Roseberry declared the ferry open. After that there was a banquet at the Freemason's hall.
6. As well as the Gordon, there were two other paddle steamers called Duncan (after Colonel Francis Duncan MP) and Hutton (after Professor Charles Hutton). Since then, there have been another three which replaced the originals from 1923. They were The Squire (named after William Squires, a former mayor of Woolwich), the Will Crooks (after the Labour MP for Woolwich, 1903–21) and the John Benn (after a member of London County Council, Liberal MP for Wapping, and grandfather of Tony Benn). These three operated until the 1960s when they were sold for scrap and replaced with the current roll on roll off vessels: John Burns, Ernest Bevin and James Newman (These were named after local politicians. Newman, for example, was mayor of Woolwich, 1923–25).
7. Many believe that the Woolwich Ferry vessels went to Dunkirk. Romantic as that may seem, it's not true - but they did do their bit for the war effort. In September 1940 the ferry ran all night evacuating people from Silvertown after an air raid which set the docks ablaze, and dodging burning oil on the river. The ferry ran a 24 hour service during the war, which was an extra challenge because the blackout meant no navigation lights could be used.
8. At one time the waiting rooms on both banks were pubs: the Marquise of Wellington on the south bank, and the prince regent on the north. Sadly, they were replaced by dockyards.
9. The ferry is free and is likely to remain so for the forseeable future. To discontinue the ferry, or start charging a fare, would require changes to the 1885 Act of Parliament which set it up.
10. Unlike the Mersey Ferry, nobody has ever written a song about it, possibly because the areas it serves aren't touristy. However, a model of the John Benn was destroyed by a sea monster in the film Behemoth, the Sea Monster. It gets a mention in Only Fools and Horses when Uncle Albert asks Rodney, if he'd ever been on board a ship to which he replied "Yes": but then added "only the Woolwich Ferry".

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22nd March: World Water Day

It's World Water Day. Here are ten things you never knew about water.

1. Water is the most common substance on Earth. There is an estimated 326 million trillion gallons of the stuff on Earth.
2. Only about 1% of that is available for us to use for drinking, manufacture, growing things and everything else we use water for. 97% of the world’s water is salty or otherwise undrinkable. Another 2% is locked in ice caps and glaciers.
3. The amount of water on Earth never changes. There is exactly the same amount now as there was in the time of the Dinosaurs, yet human usage of it keeps rising.
4. Water expands by 9% when it freezes. That is why ice floats in water. It's also the reason why there is life on Earth at all. During ice ages the seas froze on the top, leaving pockets of water underneath where life could keep evolving. If ice sank, the seas would have been completely solid.
5. Water can dissolve more substances than any other liquid including sulphuric acid.
6. NASA has discovered water in the form of ice on the Moon, Mars and Mercury. There is liquid water on Mars, too, but the molecules are not freely accessible, because they are bound to other minerals in the soil.
7. There is more fresh water in the atmosphere than in all of the rivers on the planet combined. Even so, if all of it fell at once and spread out evenly it would only cover the globe with an inch of water.
8. People and trees are made up of about 75% water. Jellyfish and Cucumbers are 95% water.
9. We all know the freezing and boiling points of water - water boils at 100 °C (212 °F) and freezes at 0°C (32 °F). What you may not know is that adding Salt to water lowers the freezing point so the freezing point of seawater is more like -2 °C (28.4 °F). The boiling point falls as barometric pressure increases which is why ski chalet hosts can find boiling Eggs a challenge at higher altitudes. On the top of Mount Everest water boils at just 68 °C (154 °F).
10. Water molecules love to stick to things, especially each other. This is what causes surface tension and capillary action. The latter is what allows water to travel up narrow tubes against the force of gravity. This property is vital to life also, since our blood vessels are narrow tubes and Blood is mostly water.

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21 March: Pocahontas

Pocahontas. Nobody knows the exact date of her birth or death, but 21 March 1617 was the date of her funeral. Here are some more facts about her:

1. Pocahontas was presented to people in Britain as a princess. That wasn't strictly true. While she was a favourite daughter of a paramount chief, Powhatan, who ruled over a number of chiefdoms, She was not in line to inherit his title as traditionally, the chief's siblings stood to take over after his death.
2. We don't know who her mother was. We do know it was customary for the paramount chief to take many wives from the various villages in his domain. Once they'd given him a child they would be sent home and supported by the chief until they could marry again. Pocahontas's mother would have been one of these. It has been suggested she may have died in childbirth, but no-one actually knows.
3. It was also customary for Native Americans of her lineage to have several names, given at different times and frequently changed. They would also have secret names that only a few people close to them would know. Hence Pocahontas probably wasn't the name given to her at birth. We know Pocahontas had a secret name - Matoaka, meaning "Bright Stream Between the Hills" and was also known as Amonute, a name which has no direct translation. Pocahontas was likely a childhood nickname which meant "little wanton", or "playful one".
4. She is best known for saving the life of a colonist, John Smith, who'd been taken captive by her brothers. Smith was kept captive by Powhatan for some time - he claims he didn't meet Pocahontas until several months later. The motivation for capturing and holding him was probably an attempt by Powhatan to make the English settlement part of his chiefdom. Pocahontas certainly befriended him, and would take food to him when the colonists were starving. It was according to Smith's account that Pocahontas intervened when her father's men were about to beat his brains out. However, Smith also told a tale about being similarly saved by a young girl after he was captured by Turks in Hungary. There was a moral tale known at the time with a Christian hero is threatened by heathens and keeps his faith, and only survives because of the intervention of a young girl; so it's possible he made the story up, or embroidered it, to impress Queen Anne and others so they'd believe he was a good Christian.
5. Later on, a war broke out between the settlers and the Native Americans. The Native Americans had taken prisoners and stolen tools and weapons, so the settlers kidnapped Pocahontas by luring her onto one of their ships. She was held hostage for some time, as her father returned the prisoners but kept the weapons and tools. It is said her captors treated her well. There are rumours that they raped her, but treating her badly would not have helped their negotiations with her father. In the end, when allowed to speak to her father, Pocahontas rebuked him for valuing her less than a pile of old weapons and tools, and told him that she would rather stay with the English who loved her.
6. It is possible that Pocahontas had a husband and daughter when she was captured. According to Native American versions of her story, she was married to a man named Kocoum and had a daughter called Ka-Okee. Kocoum was killed by the English and the child was raised by the tribe.
7. During her captivity, Pocahontas learned English, and became a Christian, whereupon she changed her name again, to Rebecca, after the mother of Jacob and Esau, possibly because she saw herself as "a mother of two nations" like the original Rebecca. She also met John Rolfe, a pious tobacco farmer whose wife had died. He fell in love with her, and after agonising about the possible consequences of marrying a heathen, and eventually justified it as a means of saving her soul. We're not told whether she loved him or not, but they married on 5th April 1614 and their son Thomas was born the following January.
8. One of the goals of the settlers had been to convert Native Americans to Christianity. John Rolfe brought his family to England so that his wife could be shown off as evidence that this was possible. They had just started their journey home again when Pocahontas became ill. She was taken ashore at Gravesend, where she died. She was only about 21 years old. The cause of her death isn't known but theories include pneumonia, smallpox, tuberculosis and poisoning. It's not known exactly where her grave is, but it's thought to be under the chancel of Saint George's, Gravesend, a church which burned down in 1727. There is a statue of her at the current St. George's church.
9. Edith Bolling Galt Wilson (Woodrow Wilson's wife), actor Glenn Strange, astronomer and mathematician Percival Lowell, fashion designer and socialite Pauline de Rothschild, and Nancy Reagan are all thought to be either descendants of Pocahontas or at least her distant cousins.
10. In 1907, Pocahontas became the first Native American to appear on a US stamp. She also has an Asteroid named after her - 4487 Pocahontas.

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