31st July: Oxygen

On this date in 1774 Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen. Here are ten things you might not know about that stuff you are breathing every minute of the day.

1. Oxygen's symbol is O and its atomic number is 8.
2. Joseph Priestly wasn't the first to discover oxygen - he gets the credit because he published his paper first. It was discovered independently the previous year by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, in Uppsala, Sweden. He called the gas "fire air" because it supported combustion and wrote about it in a document titled Treatise on Air and Fire, which was published in 1777. Robert Hooke, Ole Borch, Mikhail Lomonosov, and Pierre Bayen all produced oxygen in experiments even earlier on, but didn't recognise it as a new element.
3. Oxygen was given its name by Antoine Lavoisier, who was also experimenting with it at around the same time. The name derives from Greek - oxys meaning acid and genes meaning producer - because at the time people thought acids had to have oxygen in them (they don't). Scientists in England didn't like the name at first, possibly because it was a French person naming a substance which had been discovered by an Englishman. However, thanks to Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin, who wrote a poem in praise of the newly discovered gas and called it Oxygen, the name stuck.
4. Oxygen melts at 54.36 K (−218.79 °C, −361.82 °F), and boils at 90.188 K (−182.962 °C, −297.332 °F).
5. Oxygen is colourless when it is a gas, but in its liquid and solid forms it is pale Blue in colour. If the temperature falls and the pressure rises it can turn Orange, Red or Black, and even have a metallic appearance, although it is not a metal.
6. Liquid oxygen is magnetic, and it can be picked up with a powerful magnet.
7. Oxygen is the third-most abundant element in the universe, after hydrogen and Helium, and as oxides makes up almost half of the Earth's crust. It's also the most abundant element in the human body since it is a constituent of Water and the human body is mostly water.
8. Oxygen is essential to life, but it can poison us too, if we get too much. At normal pressure, if there is more than 50% oxygen in the air we breathe. oxygen poisoning occurs. It can also occur at lower levels in divers. Symptoms of oxygen poisoning include vision loss, coughing, muscle twitching, and seizures. Too much oxygen can actually kill you.
9. When oxygen first became abundant on Earth, it wiped out about 99% of the life on the planet. The Great Oxygenation Event also called the Oxygen Catastrophe, is the name given to the biologically induced appearance of dioxygen (O2), the usual form it takes in Earth's atmosphere. It happened around 2.45 billion years ago during the Siderian period, but nobody knows why. High oxygen levels in the carboniferous period allowed insects to grow absolutely huge - for example, a millipede that was 2.6m long.
10. As well as O2, the most abundant form of oxygen in the atmosphere, there is also O3, or ozone. When this substance occurs high up in the atmosphere it's a good thing, because it forms the ozone layer which filters out ultraviolet light. Lower down, it's not so good as it is a by product of smog.

Other elements I've covered:

Fluorine

Francium

Helium

Iron

Lead

Mercury

Plutonium 

Potassium

Tin

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30th July: Emily Bronte Quotes

Today, some quotes from Emily Bronte, who was born on 30 July 1818.

1. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
2. A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o'clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.
3. A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly.
4. If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave.
5. Honest people don't hide their deeds.
6. Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies.
7. Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.
8. If I had caused the cloud, it was my duty to make an effort to dispel it.
9. I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.
10. The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them.

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29 July: Buckinghamshire Day

Today is Buckinghamshire Day, a celebration of the English county of Buckinghamshire. Here are ten things about the placed you may not have been aware of:

1. The county gets its name from the town in the north of it - Buckingham, which means "where Bucca lives". Bucca was an Anglo-Saxon landowner.
2. The traditional Flag of Buckinghamshire comprises Red and Black halves with a White Swan.
3. The county town is Aylesbury. Other towns include Milton Keynes, Marlow, Beaconsfield, Amersham and High Wycombe.
4. Celebrities from Buckinghamshire include author Terry Pratchett, musicians Nick Beggs and Howard Jones, actress Lynda Bellingham and rower Steve Redgrave. Many more celebrities have called it home - Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary, John Milton, Jerome K. Jerome, Enid Blyton, Nancy Astor, Benjamin Disraeli, Cilla Black, Roy Castle, Iain Duncan Smith, Ian Dury, Noel Gallagher, Sir David Jason, Sir John Gielgud, Mike Oldfield, Ozzy Osbourne, Florence Nightingale and Terry Wogan. Also located in the county is Chequers, the country retreat of the British Prime Minister.
5. Another place with a political connection is the Chiltern Hills, location of the Chiltern Hundreds. Members of the British Parliament are by tradition prohibited from resigning their seats, so if they want out, they have to disqualify themselves by appointment to an "office of profit under the Crown" and Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds is one of the two offices they can apply for.
6. The two highest points in Buckinghamshire are Haddington Hill in Wendover Woods at 267 metres (876 ft) above sea level, and Coombe Hill near Wendover at 260 metres (850 ft). The River Thames and the River Great Ouse flow through the county and the main branch of the Grand Union Canal passes through it as well.
7. One of Buckinghamshire's tourist attractions is the Bekonscot Model Village in Beaconsfield, the oldest model village in the world. It was built in 1928 by a wealthy accountant whose wife had demanded that his model train set must no longer be kept in the house, so he built the village in the grounds to accommodate his trains. It was opened to the public the following year, and all of its profits go to charity.
8. Buckinghamshire is the location of Bletchley Park, the site of World War II British codebreaking and Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic digital computer.
9. The graveyard where Thomas Gray wrote his Elegy in a Country Churchyard is at Stoke Poges church in Buckinghamshire.
10. Milton Keynes has the longest shopping centre in the world and over 40 million trees. It's also an anagram of silent monkey.

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Somerset 
Sussex 

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28th July: Foxtrot

On this date in 1914 the Foxtrot was first danced at the New Amsterdam Roof Garden in New York. Here are ten things you didn't know about the Foxtrot:

1. The name of the dance most likely comes from the Vaudeville performer Harry Fox, who was the first to perform it for an audience.
2. Harry Fox wasn't his real name. His real name was Arthur Carringford, but he adopted Harry Fox as a stage name after his grandfather. The young Harry had to fend for himself from the age of fifteen and before getting into Vaudeville he joined a circus and was a Baseball player for a while. Originally from California, showbiz took him east to New York where Harry and a team of dancers were hired to put on acts between shows at a movie theatre.
3. On 28 July 1914, Harry and his troupe were performing at the New York Theatre. Harry was doing trotting steps to ragtime music, and people referred to his dance as "Fox's Trot."
4. His dance was seen by some of the foremost ballroom dancers of the time, Vernon and Irene Castle, who started dancing it, too, and from there the dance went on to capture the public imagination.
5. It's possible that Harry Fox didn't invent the dance, but saw it performed at exclusive African American dance clubs as much as fifteen years earlier.
6. People loved the dance, but in its original form it wasn't very suitable for dancing at parties and social events. The trotting step was tiring if done for a period of time, and trotting around a crowded dance floor wasn't very practical. Enter Oscar Duryea, who modified the dance and turned the trot into a glide or saunter, and be danced "on the spot".
7. The dance was brought to England by G.K. Anderson and Josephine Bradley, who won a number of competitions with it, and soon the Brits had the bug, too.
8. The foxtrot was the most popular dance from then on up until the 1940s. Most of the best selling records were tunes you could dance the foxtrot to. In the 1950s, record companies wanted to categorise rock and roll according to what dance you could do to it. Decca records marketed its early rock and roll records as foxtrots. One of these was Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and His Comets - so you could say this was the best-selling foxtrot record ever.
9. Dancing the foxtrot at 120 beats a minute burns 3 and a half calories a minute.
10. There are a number of variations which include the Peabody, the Quickstep and Roseland foxtrot, and other dances developed from it, such as the Lindy Hop and the Hustle.

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Waltz

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27th July: Gary Gygax (Dungeons and Dragons)

Gary Gygax, US writer and game designer, best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, was born on this date in 1938. Gygax has been described as the father of D&D.

1. The game of Dungeons and Dragons was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TSR). Despite having an amateurish production and assuming players were already familiar with wargaming, it took off rapidly and soon spread from the wargaming community to college and high school students. The game had more than three million players around the world by 1981. 750,000 copies of the rules were selling every year by 1984.
2. Deriving from an earlier wargame called Chainmail, Dungeons and Dragons owes its existence to a number of influences. The most obvious is JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, so obvious that Tolkien Enterprises threatened to sue and that's why Hobbit-like characters in the game have to be referred to as "halflings" instead. The Dying Earth stories and novels of Jack Vance influenced the magic system. From the novel Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson, came the idea of character alignments (lawful, chaotic, neutral). Gary Gygax was a great fan of pulp science fiction and drew ideas from many of the books he read, including the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. P. Lovecraft, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock and Lewis Carroll. What may seem surprising is that there are even elements inspired by the Bible. The "flaming sword which turned every way" at the gates of Eden inspired a clerical spell in the game called 'Blade Barrier'.
3. As a kid, Gary Gygax and his friends Don Kaye (later his business partner) and Mary Jo Powell (later his wife) used to sneak into an abandoned psychiatric hospital, and has said that these adventures gave him the sense of what a dungeon should be like. (Both Gary and Don had a thing for Mary Jo and fell out when she married Gary. Don refused to attend the wedding, but they later reconciled.) He also lived in a haunted house, in which ghostly footsteps were heard in the attic and doors opened on their own. These happenings freaked out the family cat, which seemed to see things Gary and his family could not. These events instilled in him a belief that the supernatural was not only real, but not to be messed with.
4. The game was widely accused of being a bad influence - it was denounced by many churches as promoting the occult, witchcraft, devil worship and murder. You may be surprised to learn in light of this that the father of D&D was an active Jehovah's Witness. However, his church were somewhat concerned about him already because he used to smoke weed and drink. His connection with this satanic game was the last straw, and he and his wife eventually left the church - but Gygax didn't give up his Christian faith - remaining a Christian until the day he died.
5. Another criticism levelled at the game was that it could lead to players having difficulty separating fantasy from reality, possibly leading to psychotic episodes. Chris Pritchard, who was convicted in 1990 of murdering his stepfather, and his participation in D&D was blamed for his crimes. A novel, Mazes and Monsters, based on the story of James Dallas Egbert III, explored this theme, and was made into a film. However, recent psychological research has concluded that playing D&D is not harmful to your mental health. In fact, it could even be beneficial, as playing involves using social skills, cognitive skills, logic, mathematics and imagination.
6. The game has, however, become associated with geekiness and in popular culture, TV and films, a character being shown playing D&D is almost shorthand for "this person is a total geek". Characters in The Big Bang Theory, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Stranger Things and The IT Crowd play it. In The Simpsons, Homer relates that he bonded with some geeks by playing Dungeons & Dragons "for three hours... then I was slain by an elf."
7. A number of celebrities have confessed to having played the game. It probably comes as no surprise to learn that among them are Game of Thrones novelist George R. R. Martin, Star Trek actor Wil Wheaton, directors Steven Spielberg and Joss Whedon, Stephen King, Marilyn Manson, novelist China Miéville and entrepreneur Elon Musk. Add to that Simpsons creator Matt Groening, actors Vin Diesel, Robin Williams and Mike Myers. The two that might be a little more surprising are Michael Gove and Judi Dench.
8. All that is required to play is three rule books (The Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual), character sheets for each player, something to write with, usually a pencil, and Dice with various numbers of sides. Maps and figures as a visual aid are optional. Each player generally has one character which makes up part of a party with the characters of the other players. Ideally the characters should all have skills which complement each other. One player acts as the "Dungeon Master", ie the storyteller and referee, who will have done some preparation in advance. The first step is to determine (usually by rolling dice) a characters attributes - Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. These scores influence what race that character may belong to (eg a character which is strong but thick might be an orc) and what their occupation is (fighters need to be strong, wizards need to be intelligent, thieves need to be dexterous). Whether a character is evil or good, lawful or chaotic and any backstory is up to the player. Hit points are a measure of a character's vitality and health and are determined by the class, level and constitution of each character. These can be lost in battle or accidents and when they're all used up the character is dead. They can however be healed or even resurrected by other characters with the right skills. The success or failure of any action is determined by rolling dice, taking into account the level of skill the character has. The longer a character lasts, the better they get as they earn experience.
9. Dungeons & Dragons is the best-known and best-selling role-playing game, with an estimated 20 million people having played it. It has generated more than US$1 billion in book and equipment sales. It has also gone through numerous owners (TSR, TSR Hobbies, Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro) and editions (A 5th edition was released in 2014).
10. Wargaming may have made Gygax a fortune but not without some cost. He lost his job as an insurance underwriter in 1970 - while new management and restructuring of the company was the official reason, the fact that he worked on wargaming material during working hours probably put him at the top of the redundancy list. His marriage suffered, too. He spent so much time playing games that his wife, Mary Jo, was certain he must be having an affair. One day she followed him, intending to confront him and his mistress but discovered him in a friend's basement sitting around a table playing a game. Not that it helped - Mary Jo resented the amount of time her husband spent playing games when he had a job and a family to support. They argued a lot; Mary Jo drank; which led to him having affairs for real. The couple divorced in 1983.

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Dice

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26th July: SS Great Britain

This date in 1845 saw the maiden voyage of SS Great Britain, from Liverpool to New York under Captain James Hosken, with 45 passengers. This ship is now one of Bristol's biggest tourist attractions.

1. The ship was launched on 19 July 1843 at a ceremony with Prince Albert in attendance. The naming ceremony, where a bottle of Champagne is smashed against the hull, went slightly wrong. The local MP's mother, Clarissa Miles, was supposed to perform the honours, but an over enthusiastic tug boat had already begun towing the ship out into the harbour, so the bottle missed and fell into the Water. No doubt this sent the organisers of the event into a panic, as they frantically looked for another bottle. They found one, and Prince Albert himself threw it against the hull.
2. The maiden voyage was delayed by over a year as the ship was meant to go to London to be fitted out, but the harbour authorities hadn't modified their facilities to accommodate the world's biggest ship, so SS Great Britain was going nowhere for a year. When she finally got moving, she got stuck in some lock gates and was only saved from severe damage by her skilled captain. They had to try again at higher tide, and remove some coping stones from the sides of the lock to allow the ship to get out.
3. She was the longest passenger ship in the world from 1845 to 1854. The ship is 322 ft (98m) long and 50 ft 6 in (15.39m) wide. More than 60,000 rivets were used to build her.
4. She was the first Iron steamer to cross the Atlantic. The journey took 14 days. On arrival in New York, a crew member broke his arm badly jumping off the ship, and his injury was such that he couldn't work again. The 19 passengers had a whip round and raised enough money to pension the man off, so we know the first passengers were a) generous and b) rich.
5. A year later, things went wrong again. SS Great Britain ran aground, probably because the captain was using out of date charts and mistook the new St John's light for the Calf light on the Isle of Man. She was stuck for almost a year. Getting her afloat again and back to Liverpool actually bankrupted the company which owned her. After sitting in Liverpool for some time, a company called Gibbs, Bright & Co. bought her for £25,000.
6. The new owners strengthened the hull and fitted the ship with smaller, lighter engines. The ship made a small number of trips to New York before the company passed her on to a subsidiary company, Antony Gibbs & Sons, which was getting into the transporting of passengers to Australia business. This may have been a temporary measure as there were a lot of people wanting to go because gold had been found there, but the route remained successful for some time. She operated on the England–Australia route for almost 30 years. To make it pay, though, they really had to pack people in - the passenger accommodation was increased from 360 to 730. Eventually, she had such a good reputation as a passenger ship to Australia that she carried the first English Cricket team to tour Australia in 1861.
7. The ship had two passenger decks and one for cargo. The principal passenger saloon was 110 ft (34m) long by 48 ft (15m) wide. There were 44 passenger berths and two ladies' boudoirs (private sitting rooms). First class passengers had a choice of thirty courses at meals while in third class they ate salted meats and ship’s biscuits.
8. On a typical journey, as well as the passengers and 143 crew, SS Great Britain would also have on board 36 sheep, 140 pigs, 96 goats, 1,114 Chickens, ducks, Geese and Turkeys, and a Cow. The captain was John Gray, a Scot, who had held the post since before the Crimean War - although Captain Gray eventually committed suicide by jumping from one of the rear windows of the ship and was never seen again. The ship's medical log also reports that an eleven year old boy died when his curiosity about the ship's engines got the better of him. Mostly, the doctor had to deal with cases of seasickness, infections, injuries resulting from drunken brawls, and occasionally, childbirth. During the voyage with the cricket team on board, someone was hit in the face by a cricket bat.
9. In 1882 Great Britain was converted into a sailing ship to transport bulk coal. Her final commercial voyage was in 1886, to the Falkland Islands. A fire broke out on board which caused so much damage it would not be economically viable to repair her. She was sold to the Falkland Islands Company and used, afloat, as a storage hulk (coal bunker) until 1937, when she was towed to Sparrow Cove, 3.5 miles from Port Stanley, scuttled and abandoned.
10. There she stayed until 1970 when Sir Jack Hayward and Sir Paul Getty donated money towards a project to get SS Great Britain afloat and back to Bristol, where she was built. This was achieved and thousands turned out to see her arrive, passing under Brunel's Clifton Suspension Bridge. She arrived back in Bristol on 19 July 1970, exactly 127 years after her launch. She was welcomed back by Prince Philip.

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25th July: Saint Christopher

25 July is the feast day of St. Christopher, patron saint of travellers. Here are ten facts about the saint:

1. The name Christopher means "Christ-bearer" which is a title easily applied to any devout Christian, so there is some dispute as to whether Saint Christopher actually existed or whether the name was applied to any number of different people.
2. One person historians have said may be one and the same as Saint Christopher is Saint Menas, an Egyptian soldier, whose story has several parallels with the legend of Saint Christopher.
3. Assuming he did exist, Saint Christopher's story is as follows. He was a big, strong man - 5 cubits (7.5 feet (2.3m)) tall. He started his career serving the king of Canaan, his native land, but got the idea that he wanted to serve the greatest king there was. So he left his job and sought out the human king reputed to be the greatest. Christopher soon found out this king was afraid of the Devil, so Christopher decided the Devil must be greater and went looking for him. He found someone who claimed to be the Devil and served him, until he saw the man flinch at the sight of a cross by the side of the road. Christopher knew then that he needed to find Christ and serve him.
4. After receiving Christian instruction from a hermit, it was suggested to Christopher that to serve Christ he must live a life of fasting and prayer, which did not suit Christopher at all. So the hermit came up with a better idea, more suited to a man of Christopher's size and strength. There was a dangerous river nearby that many people died attempting to cross. The hermit reckoned it would be a pleasing service to Christ for the strong man to carry people safely across. So that is exactly what Christopher did. One day, a small child came to him and asked to be carried across the river. The river was particularly swollen that day and the crossing more treacherous than usual. Not only that, but the child seemed incredibly heavy and even Christopher struggled. They made it to the other side whereupon Christopher commented about how heavy the child had seemed. The child replied: "You had on your shoulders not only the whole world but Him who made it. I am Christ your king, whom you are serving by this work." Then he vanished.
5. There is a very similar story concerning Jason of Argonauts fame, who once carried an old woman across a river. The woman was much heavier than she should have been, and turned out to be the goddess Hera in disguise.
6. As well as carrying people across rivers, Christopher did a lot of preaching and converting people, and refusing to sacrifice to pagan gods. Inevitably, this annoyed the local king, who first tried to tempt Christopher by bribes and sending him two beautiful women. Christopher converted them, too, so the king condemned Christopher to death. After several failed attempts to execute him, he was beheaded.
7. He is known as the patron saint of travellers, but he is patron of a number of other things, too: bachelors, athletes, soldiers, sailors, motorists, gardeners, mountaineers, surfers, archers, bookbinders, fruit dealers, holy death, against toothache, epilepsy, floods, storms, Lightning and pestilence. Christopher is the patron saint of many places, including Brunswick, Germany; Saint Christopher's Island (St Kitts); Riga, Latvia and Havana, Cuba.
8. His patronage of travellers led to the Saint Christopher medal, a medallion bearing the image of Christopher carrying the Christ child, often worn by travellers as a sign of devotion and a request for the saint's blessing on their journey. A common saying in France is "Behold St Christopher and go your way in safety" while in Spain, "If you trust St. Christopher, you won't die in an accident" is often printed on cards. In Austria, on the Sunday closest to Christopher's feast day, there is a collection where people give a sum of money for every kilometre they travelled during the year. The money is used to buy vehicles for missionaries.
9. Saint Christopher is sometimes portrayed as having a Dog's head. This is because he was believed to be a member of a fearsome tribe called the Marmaritae who were giants with dogs' heads, who ate people. In some versions of the Saint Christopher legend, when Christopher met the Christ child, Christ rewarded him by granting him a human head.
10. Christopher is the most popular saint in England if you count up the number of wall paintings of him in churches. A survey by a Mrs. Collier in 1904, for the British Archaeological Association, reported 183 paintings, statues, and other representations of the saint. Only The Virgin Mary (and presumably Christ himself) had more representations.

24th July: Robert Graves

Robert Graves, poet and novelist was born on this date in 1895. He wrote I, Claudius.

1. There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
2. The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
3. If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.
4. Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.
5. To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
6. In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained.
7. Poetry began in the matriarchal age, and derives its magic from the moon, not from the sun.
8. Religious fanaticism is the most dangerous form of insanity.
9. I love, therefore I am.
10. Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.

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23rd July: Telstar

On this date in 1962 the American Communications satellite, Telstar, made its first trans-Atlantic transmission. Here are ten facts about Telstar:

1. Telstar was the first space mission to have private sponsorship, and the first to have a commercial payload in space. The satellite was developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories for AT&T.
2. Telstar is about the size and shape of a large beach ball, just under three feet (876.30 mm) long. It weighed 171kg/377lb on take off.
3. It was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on 10 July 1962 on a NASA Thor-Delta rocket, and its first transmission was some days later, on 23 July.
4. If it wasn't for Telstar, we wouldn't have satellite TV today. In those days, tapes of broadcasts had to be shipped across the Atlantic if the US and UK wanted to watch each other's television. Telstar pioneered the live broadcasts by satellite which we take for granted today.
5. The first transmission was received on TV sets across Europe. It began with a split screen showing the Statue of Liberty on one side and the Eiffel Tower on the other. The first words spoken on satellite TV came from US newsman Walter Cronkite, who said: “Good evening, Europe. This is the North American continent live via AT&T Telstar, July 23, 1962.” The transmission continued to include a Baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Chicago Cubs, followed by a press conference held by John F Kennedy. For some reason, Europe didn't get to see his opening comments praising Telstar as “another indication of the extraordinary world in which we live” - only a question and answer session on nuclear testing and the devaluation of the dollar. The baseball game was much more popular, certainly with the Daily Mail, whose television critic of the time saying he “preferred to watch Americans play games than talk politics.” There followed a montage of scenes - the Mexican border at Juarez, Niagara Falls, the World’s Fair in Seattle and the United Nations; a talk with astronauts at Cape Canaveral; actors at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, rehearsing “Macbeth.” The finale consisted of close-ups of the stone faces of Mount Rushmore as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
6. The second transmission came three hours later when Europe returned the favour and transmitted live pictures back to America. This broadcast started with a picture of Big Ben and a welcome by the BBC’s Richard Dimbleby. Europe's montage included the Sistine Chapel, the Champs-Élysées, The Louvre, The Colosseum and the Tower of London. There was a Lapland girl in the Arctic Circle; Sicilian fishermen tending their nets; paintings inside Yugoslavia’s national museum; Horses performing to Chopin at Vienna’s Spanish Riding School and a performance of “La Tosca” amid ancient Roman ruins. The broadcast lasted 19 minutes before the satellite went out of range.
7. All this proved that satellite television could be done, but that wasn't all Telstar did during its mission. It allowed NASA to learn satellite tracking and also the effect of Van Allen radiation belts on satellite design.
8. Telstar was powered by batteries and 3,600 solar panels on its outer hull. It only used 14 watts of power - one seventh of the power a modern laptop uses. Hence it could only manage to transmit 600 phone calls and one TV channel - in black and white. Which didn't matter as people didn't have colour TVs, anyway. However, the receiving antennas on Earth were 177 feet (54m) long and weighed 380 short tons (340,000 kg) in order to pick up the signals.
9. It only lasted four months before radiation fried its on-board electronics. Telstar 2 launched in May 1963, and many more followed after that. The original Telstar is still up there, orbiting the Earth as a a monument to the birth of satellite communications.
10. During its brief life, Telstar certainly captured people's imaginations. In particular, a record producer called Joe Meek, who wrote the tune, Telstar with space sound effects, using an overdubbed keyboard. The sound of a rocket taking off was actually a tape of a toilet flushing played backwards. It might have seemed an unlikely hit, and the band which performed it, the Tornadoes, actually hated it. However, they did all right out of it - it was the best-selling British single of 1962 and the first song by a British group to hit number 1 in the US. This didn't happen again until two years later when The Beatles I Want To Hold Your Hand reached the top spot in 1964. One last fact about Joe Meek - despite his success Meek committed suicide on February 3, 1967, the eighth anniversary of "The day the music died," because he idolised Buddy Holly and believed he had made contact with Holly's spirit. As well as the song, Ford named a car after Telstar and Adidas produced a soccer ball which looked rather like it.

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