31st August: Lawn mowers

The first lawn mower was invented by Edwin Budding in 1830 in Thrupp, Gloucestershire, England. Budding's mower was granted a British patent on August 31, 1830. If you have a garden, in this great British summer we're having as I write this, you've probably been using the lawn mower a lot - so here are ten facts about them:

1. Before Edwin Budding came along, a large, neat Lawn was out of reach of anyone of modest means. You would need either a flock of sheep to nibble at it (which is what US President Woodrow Wilson did. He kept a flock of sheep to trim the White House lawn, and as a sideline, sold their wool in aid of the Red Cross), or an army of gardeners using made to measure scythes.
2. Budding was inspired by watching a cutting cylinder at a cloth mill. He worked out that the same design could be used to cut grass. However, not everyone thought it was such a brilliant idea at first. So many people laughed at him that he'd test his invention at night when nobody was watching.
3. In 1893, another Englishman, James Sumner, patented the steam powered lawnmower, although these had their drawbacks. It would take a few hours for them to warm up sufficiently to get enough pressure.
4. Another solution was the Horse drawn lawnmower. The downside of this was that you'd get hoofprints all over your lawn, so the horses had to wear leather boots.
5. The average American spends, on average, 4 hours per week taking care of their lawn.
6. About 68,000 of them are injured while doing so every year. This might be because they didn't wear the right footwear, or because a lawnmower can pick up stones or other items on the lawn and propel them at high speeds.
7. Running a petrol driven lawn mower for an hour causes as much pollution as driving a car for 200 miles. On the plus side, a 50 foot square lawn produces enough Oxygen daily to allow one person to breathe for a day.
8. Lawnmowers in film: The Lawnmower Man was a 1992 film about a scientist who is working on mind-enhancing drugs and tests them out on the man who mows the lawn, who becomes a genius. The original story was written by Stephen King. The Straight Story is a David Lynch film based on a true story about a 73 year old farmer who drives his lawnmower from Iowa to Wisconsin to make up with his estranged brother - and then back again.
9. Lawnmower racing is a thing. There's even a British Lawnmower Racing Association which claims to offer the cheapest form of motorsport in the UK.
10. There is a museum dedicated to lawnmowers in Southport, Merseyside. Its exhibits include lawnmowers that used to belong to famous people, including Prince Charles, Princess Diana, Nicholas Parsons, Alan Titchmarsh, Vanessa Feltz, Brian May, Roger McGough, and executioner Albert Pierrepoint. You won't find Philip Larkin's lawnmower in there, though. That one is in the archives of the University of Hull.

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30th August: Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein and wife of Percy Shelley, was born on this date in 1797. Here's the low down on her:

1. Her name at birth was Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. She was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the feminist writer and philosopher, and William Godwin, also a writer and philosopher. She had an older half sister, Fanny. Mary's mother died from childbirth complications not long after Mary was born and so she was brought up by her father. He eventually married again – another Mary, who had two children. The young Mary detested her.
2. Her education was unconventional. She was mostly educated at home by tutors and governesses, and her father. He was a publisher of educational books for children and Mary often read these in manuscript form, as well as being taken on educational outings. She attended a boarding school for just six months. To complete her education, Mary's father sent her to Scotland to stay with William Baxter and his family. Whether this was because Baxter could provide a healthier environment or because Godwin wanted Mary exposed to Baxter's brand of politics, is a matter of speculation. We do know, from Mary's own writings, that it was here that she first started writing. She says she sat under trees and on hillsides and wrote, although she dismissed this early work as “a most common-place style.”
3. William Godwin was often in debt – his business didn't make Money. The only reason he didn't end up in debtor's prison was that he had numerous friends and associates who would bail him out. One of these was Percy Shelley, although eventually, Shelley's aristocratic family restricted his access to the money because they didn't like how he was spending it and giving it away, so he had to stop bailing Godwin out, causing a rift between the two men. Hence, when Mary, 16, and Percy, 22 and already married, started seeing each other, he did not approve.
4. Tradition has it that Mary lost her virginity to Percy in a graveyard. Later, they eloped, taking Claire, Mary's stepsister with them, and travelled around Europe, reading and keeping journals, until they ran out of money and had to return to England.
5. Somewhere along the line, Mary had fallen pregnant. Her father wanted nothing to do with her, and she moved in with Percy, but it wasn't a happy time. Not only was Percy's wife pregnant at the time, but he was also almost certainly cheating on Mary with Claire. Percy even tried to set Mary up with a lover, his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who Mary disliked at first, but they did become friends in the end. The couple had no money – Percy often had to go away to escape creditors. His wife gave birth to a son, but Mary's baby was premature and died. This caused her to be seriously depressed, until she had her son, William, just over a year later.
6. In 1816, the family went on holiday to Geneva, with Claire and Lord Byron with whom Claire was now having an affair, and had got pregnant. Also with them was a doctor called John William Polidori. It was a wet summer, Mary recorded in her journals. It was here that Byron proposed that they each write a ghost story. For several days, to her shame, Mary could think of nothing to write; but a conversation about the meaning of life and death and whether a corpse could be galvanised back to life provided her with much needed inspiration. That night, she came up with the idea for Frankenstein. She finished writing it at the age of 19 and published it anonymously.
7. She and Percy Shelley were finally married after Shelley's wife was found drowned after being missing for two weeks. Mary's father and stepmother attended the wedding. There is a conspiracy theory that Mary's father may have killed her.
8. Mary had four children altogether – but only one survived. She also had a miscarriage and almost died, but for her husband's quick thinking – he sat her in a bath of ice to stop the bleeding.
9. Frankenstein wasn't her only book. She wrote several more – including Valperga, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, The Last Man, Lodore and Falkner. She also wrote a number of short stories.
10. She died, aged 53, probably from a brain tumour. 

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29th August: Melbourne

The city of Melbourne, Australia, was founded on this date in 1835. Here's what you need to know:

1. The city was originally going to be called Batmania, after John Batman, one of its founders. It was named "Melbourne" by the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Richard Bourke, in honour of the British Prime Minister William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne.
2. It's a cosmopolitan and diverse city. The population is around four and a half million and includes the highest Italian and Greek populations outside Italy and Greece, the oldest Chinese settlement in the western world – there has been a Chinatown in Melbourne since 1851, and the largest number of Holocaust survivors outside Israel. Melbourne is also the home of the first Lesbian and Gay radio station in the world, which started broadcasting in 1993. Even the weather is diverse – it is said to be possible to experience four seasons in one day.
3. It is said to be the fox capital of the world, with somewhere between six and twenty-six foxes per square kilometre in the metropolitan area.
4. Two of Australia's most iconic products originated in the city of Melbourne. Fosters Lager was originally produced in Melbourne by two Americans. Dr. Cyril P Callister invented Vegemite here in 1922, and Melbourne is still home to the only Vegemite factory in the world.
5. Other things Melbourne has given the world: the eight hour working day (thanks to stonemasons in 1855); the Black Box flight recorder (invented in 1958 by Dr David Warren at the Aeronautical Research Laboratories in Melbourne) and the privately owned theme park (Luna Park is the oldest in the world. It was also the home of the first literary club in Australia (the Yorick Club) and Australia's first set of Traffic Lights. The world's first feature film, The Story of the Ned Kelly Gang was filmed in Melbourne in 1906.
6. The city is home to the world's largest stained glass ceiling - 51 metres (167.3 feet) long by 15 metres (49.2 feet) wide, in the National Gallery of Victoria, and the largest tram system outside Europe (and fourth largest in the world.
7. It is illegal in Melbourne to trade with a pirate, drive a Goat or a Dog attached to a vehicle, carry out unauthorised rain-making activity (like seeding clouds – not sure whether rain dances are included), offer a reward for the return of lost or stolen property “with no questions asked”, or sing an obscene song within earshot of another person.
8. Melbourne was the capital city of Australia for 26 years between 1901 and 1927.
9. Melbourne is sometimes described as the most sports obsessed city in the world, and certainly has a sporting heritage. Australian rules football, a mixture of soccer, Gaelic football and rugby was invented here by Tom Wills in 1858, and the city hosted the first Olympic Games in the Southern Hemisphere in 1956. The Olympic tradition of all the athletes parading around the stadium together as part of the opening and closing ceremonies originated here. It came about after a teenager called John Ian Wing wrote to the Olympic Committee to suggest they did this as a sign of global unity. Finally on the subject of sport, an Ashes match against England in 2013 holds the world record for the highest attendance at a Cricket match when 91,092 people turned out to watch.
10. Melbourne has been voted one of the best cities of the world to live in since 2002, and has topped the list since 2011. Not only are housing, healthcare and economic criteria excellent but there are more cafes and restaurants here per person than in any other city. Also, since 1966, the pubs no longer close at 6pm.

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28th August: John Betjeman Quotes

John Betjeman, former English poet Laureate, was born in 1906. 10 quotes:

1. I don't think I am any good. If I thought I was any good, I wouldn't be.
2. Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows.
3. People's backyards are much more interesting than their front gardens, and houses that back on to railways are public benefactors.
4. Saint Pancras was a fourteen-year old Christian boy who was martyred in Rome in AD 304 by the Emperor Diocletian. In England he is better known as a railway station.
5. It's strange that those we miss the most Are those we take for granted.
6. On our deathbeds we're not going to regret all the work we didn't do. We're going to regret all the sex we didn't have!
7. History must not be written with bias, and both sides must be given, even if there is only one side.
8. One mark of good verse is surprise.
9. I ought to warn you that my verse is of no interest to people who can think.
10. And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait Because I have a luncheon date.

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27th August: Guinness Book of World Records

On this date in 1955 Guinness Book of World Records was first published. Here are ten things you may not know about Guinness World Records:

1. It's a record breaker in itself. It's the best selling book in the world, aside from the Bible and the Quran, and has been produced in 37 languages. As well as holding the record for the best selling copyright book, it also holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Libraries.
2. The first edition, which took about 13 weeks to produce, was intended to be a free leaflet given away in pubs in the UK and Ireland – but demand was so great they made it into a book.
3. It all started with a quiz question nobody could answer. Sir Hugh Beaver, the marketing director of Guinness, asked the question at an Irish shooting party in 1951. The question was, what is the fastest game bird in Europe? Nobody knew, even after combing through a whole library of books about game birds. If only there was a reference work which answered all these sorts of questions, thought Beaver. This inspired him to contact a London fact finding agency to work on that very project. By the way, the answer to the question is the Red Grouse.
4. The names of the people running the fact finding agency may well be familiar to you – they were none other than Norris and Ross McWhirter. The story goes that during their interview, they were asked which language had the least irregular verbs, and without hesitation, gave the correct answer, and got the job. By the way, the answer is Turkish.
5. While it did originally belong to the Guinness brewery, the book of records has been sold several times. In 2001, Guilane Entertainment bought it – they also own the rights to Thomas the Tank Engine. HIT entertainment, owners of Bob the Builder, bought it in 2002. At time of writing it's owned by Jim Pattison Group, who bought it in 2008. They also own Ripley's Believe It Or Not.
6. There is a record for having the most records in the Guinness Book of World Records. The record holder is Ashrita Furman from New York, who has broken nearly 200 records. They tend to be quite wacky things like the tallest mountain climbed on stilts, and the tallest object balanced on someone's chin.
7. About 1,000 people a week apply to be included in the book of world records. Only about 8% of them actually get in. Most lack evidence for their claim, or are claiming something that doesn't count as a record, like being able to lick their elbow.
8. Evidence can take the form of video, photos, press clippings, credit card receipts or independent witness statements. It's not always necessary for a representative of Guinness World Records to be there in person.
9. If you want to set a record for anything to do with food, like the world's biggest Cake, for example, Guinness World Records will require that, after it has been measured, the cake will be distributed and actually eaten. But only after it has been measured. Iran once tried to set a record for the world's biggest Sandwich, but failed because people started eating it before the measurement had taken place.
10. What do you think Jonathan Lee Riches did when he heard he was about to be named the world's most litigious man by Guinness World Records? He tried to sue them, of course. However, Guinness World records denied they were going to publish any such record, and in any case, the courts were getting so fed up of Riches trying to sue wacky things like Hitler, the dwarf planet Pluto, the Eiffel Tower and the Ming Dynasty that he'd been banned from issuing frivolous lawsuits.

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August 26th: Toilet Paper Day

It's Toilet Paper Day, the anniversary of the date in 1871 when toilet paper was first sold on a roll - 1,000 years after the Chinese invented it in 580. Here are ten things you might not know about loo roll.

1. Toilet paper was invented in China in the sixth century. It was a few hundred years before it was manufactured in bulk, again in China, mostly for the royal court.
2. The idea didn't catch on in America until the nineteenth century when a man called Joseph Gayetty introduced it. He had his name printed on every sheet.
3. Another toilet paper milestone came in the 1930s when manufacturers realised that cooking the wood pulp that bit longer turned splinters to mush. Before this it wasn't unknown to find splinters in loo roll. Not only potentially painful, but as the makers of the new splinter free toilet tissue were quick to point out, a possible cause of rectal diseases.
4. What did people do before there was loo roll? It depended where they lived, how much money they had and what was available. In Roman times, rich people used sponges or wool soaked in perfumed Water. Less well off people might use a piece of broken pottery and would scrape rather than wipe. French royals used lace. Leaves, seashells, stones or moss were also used by the common people.
5. The average person uses 100 rolls of toilet paper a year. On average, a roll weighs 27g and has 333 sheets, although the number of sheets varies considerably depending on the quality of the Paper.
6. The most common colour for toilet paper is White, while pastel colours to match the bathroom décor have also been popular. There are also some novelty types. You can get toilet paper with dollar bills printed on it, crosswords and Sudoku puzzles for those who want to amuse themselves while in there. There is also glow in the dark and camouflage toilet paper.
7. Talking of camouflage, an unusual use toilet paper has been put to is camouflaging tanks. US troops during Desert Storm did that. Another unusual use is making wedding dresses out of it. There is an annual competition for fashion designers with a substantial cash prize for the person who can make the best wedding dress out of loo paper. And yes, there are women who have been married in dresses made from toilet tissue. Finally a Japanese author called Koji Suzuki had an entire novel printed on toilet paper. The novel was three feet long, and was set in... a public Toilet.
8. The most expensive brand of toilet paper is Renova, a Portuguese brand which costs $3 a roll. It's three ply, perfumed and comes in a range of colours including more unusual shades like Red and Black. According to some internet sources, Beyonce and Kris Jenner use nothing else.
9. The largest ever toilet roll was made by Charmin. It was eight feet high and had a diameter of more than nine feet, using 1,000,000 square feet of toilet paper – equivalent to 95,000 normal sized rolls. The roll was made to celebrate World Toilet Paper Day.
10. Until the year 2000 there was a toilet paper museum. It was in Madison, Wisconsin, and exhibited toilet paper from all over the world. There were over three thousand rolls in its collection.

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August 25: King Ludwig II of Bavaria

Born on this date in 1845, Ludwig II king of Bavaria is sometimes referred to as the Swan King or the Fairy tale King - or Mad King Ludwig. He's famous for building that fairytale castle in Germany. Here are some facts about him.

1. There is some doubt as to whether he was actually mad. While there may have been a report signed by four psychiatrists saying so, the report was commissioned by the government of the time, who didn't like his spendthrift ways and wanted to depose him. None of the psychiatrists had ever actually examined him, and three of them never even met him. While modern doctors speculate he may have suffered from a personality disorder or dementia, we'll never know for sure. We do know he was a creative introvert and a daydreamer, who avoided functions and meetings when he could. If that's a sign of madness there are a lot of mad people out here!
2. He was born in Nymphenburg Palace (in today's suburban Munich), the eldest son of Maximilian II of Bavaria and his wife Princess Marie of Prussia. He nearly wasn't called Ludwig at all. His parents wanted to call him Otto, but his grandfather, the king at the time, Ludwig I, insisted the baby be named after him, since not only did they share a birthday but 25 August is the feast day of Saint Louis IX of France, patron saint of Bavaria. Ludwig's younger brother was called Otto.
3. Ludwig didn't have a happy childhood. From an early age, his father insisted that both his sons were in training to become kings and imposed a strict regimen of education and exercise, almost certainly a strain on an introverted, creative daydreamer of a boy. He wasn't close to his mother, either, and as king, referred to her as "my predecessor's consort". He was close to his grandfather, though, and his cousin, Elisabeth.
4. Ludwig became king at the age of 18, when his father died after a short illness. He wasn't prepared for kingship, but the people liked him because he was young and good looking. He kept on his father's ministers and continued his policies.
5. One of Ludwig's passions, from the age of 15, was Opera, in particular Wagner. He was so enamoured with the composer that he invited him to the royal court early on in his reign. Ludwig is even credited with saving Wagner's career. At one point, Ludwig was forced to ask Wagner to leave Munich because of his bad behaviour, and even considered abdicating in order to go with him. Wagner persuaded him not to. Ludwig did however, provide a residence for the composer in Switzerland. Wagner could see that Ludwig wasn't suited to the office of king - he wrote of Lugwig: "Alas, he is so handsome and wise, soulful and lovely, that I fear that his life must melt away in this vulgar world like a fleeting dream of the gods."
6. It's highly likely Ludwig was gay, which would have been at odds with his Catholic faith and an obstacle to his producing an heir. He never married, nor had any mistresses, although he was engaged briefly to his cousin Duchess Sophie Charlotte in Bavaria. The relationship seemed based upon a love of the works of Wagner rather than anything else. He kept putting the wedding off and eventually broke off the engagement. His diaries show that he was attracted to men, and struggled with it, because of his faith.
7. Ludwig hated public functions and parties, and avoided them whenever possible. Eventually he withdrew from politics altogether and concentrated on his creative projects. What led to his downfall was that they were extremely expensive personal projects - a series of castles. he wanted Bavaria to equal France in its culture and architecture. The most famous of his castles is Schloss Neuschwanstein ("New Swan-on-the-Rock castle"), built on a mountain crag. Inside, the walls are decorated with scenes from Wagner's operas. There is also Schloss Linderhof, which included elaborate gardens including a Venus grotto lit by Electricity, where Ludwig was rowed in a boat shaped like a shell. From this castle, Ludwig went on moonlit sleigh rides in an eighteenth-century sleigh, with footmen in eighteenth century livery. At the time of his death, he'd started building a replica of Versailles. He also had plans for another castle on Falkenstein ("Falcon Rock"), a Byzantine palace in the Graswangtal, and a Chinese summer palace by the Plansee in Tyrol. These were never built.
8. When government officials arrived at Neuschwanstein to depose him, there was a scuffle, including a loyal baroness attacking the officials with an Umbrella. In the end, Ludwig was prevented from leaving by his uncle Luitpold, who had agreed to become Prince Regent. Ludwig was transported to Berg Castle on Lake Starnberg, south of Munich.
9. The circumstances of his death were somewhat suspicious. He went on walks on the lake shore with one of the psychiatrists who had declared him insane. After one such walk, without any attendants, both Ludwig and the psychiatrist were found dead in the water. Nobody knows what happened. The official report said suicide by drowning but there was no water in Lugwig's lungs, nor had there been any evidence he was suicidal. Accidental drowning was unlikely since Ludwig was a strong swimmer. The psychiatrist had been attacked and possibly strangled. Had the two attacked each other? Another theory is that Ludwig had arranged for a fishing boat to come and pick him up, and he was shot and killed during the escape attempt.
10. One of Ludwig's most quoted sayings was "I wish to remain an eternal enigma to myself and to others."

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24th August: Paulo Coelho Quotes

Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist and many more books, was born on this date in 1947. Here are some pearls of wisdom from him.

1. You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.
2. You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.
3. The more violent the storm, the quicker it passes.
4. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere.
5. It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.
6. The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.
7. No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.
8. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.
9. A warrior of the light does not postpone making decisions… If his decision is correct, he will win the battle, even if it lasts longer than expected. If his decision is wrong, he will be defeated and he will have to start all over again- only this time with more wisdom.
10. We humans have two great problems: the first is knowing when to begin; the second is knowing when to stop.

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August 23rd: The Internet

August 23 is “Internaut Day” (from ‘internet’ and ‘astronaut’), the anniversary of the day in 1991 when Tim Berners-Lee opened the World Wide Web to the general public. Here are ten facts about the internet.

1. We tend to use the terms "internet" and "world wide web" interchangeably but they are two different things. The internet is a network of computers; the World Wide Web is a way of accessing and sharing information across it.
2. 2.4 billion people use the internet, that's 20% of the population of the world. Over half of the world's internet users live in Asia - 1.7 billion of them. When you add up the number of PCs, laptops, phones etc. which are connected to the internet there are over 8.7 billion of them. So there are more machines connected to the internet than there are people on Earth. It's big enough even to have its own patron saint - St Isidor of Seville, who wrote a 20-volume encyclopedia in the 7th century.
3. Now for some words. The word "internet" first appeared in 1974 in a booklet called "Internet Transmission Control Program". It is short for "internetworking" or "inter-system networking." The term ‘surfing the Internet’ was coined by Jean Armour Polly in 1992. The term URL for a web address stands for Uniform Resource Locator.
4. It takes 50 million brake horsepower worth of electrical power to keep the internet running for a day. However, a physicist called Russel Seitz, who clearly had some time on his hands, calculated, using atomic physics theory, the weight of the billions of electrons buzzing around the system. According to his calculation the internet weighs 50 grams, or 2 ounces, which is about the weight of a strawberry. The stored data, all five million Terabytes of it, if taken out of the devices housing it, would weigh less than a grain of sand.
5. We use the internet for all kinds of things now, including webcams, which can show us what the snow is like in a Ski resort on the other side of the world, or someone's face when you Skype them. The first ever webcam was set up by a bunch of students in Cambridge to watch a coffee machine - so they'd know when their Coffee was ready.
6. Then there's email. The first ever was sent in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, an American programmer, who also first used the @ symbol to show the mail was intended for a human and not a machine. And the message? It can't have seemed important or historic at the time, because he can't remember. Over 3 million emails are sent every second. That's 247 billion a day. It probably won't surprise you to learn that 81% of it is spam. That's been around since 1978 when DEC released a new computer and operating system, and decided to send a mass email to 600 users. Who didn't appreciate it at all. Why it's called spam nobody is entirely sure but one theory is that some people playing a text adventure game got bored with it and programmed their keyboards to type in "Spam spam spam spam spam spam", imitating the Monty Python sketch.
7. There's internet dating, too, which is now the most popular way of meeting a significant other. 20% of couples getting hitched today first met on the internet.
8. Ever wonder what would happen to the internet if there was a nuclear war, Asteroid strike or zombie apocalypse? If a major catastrophe ever shut down the internet, there is a plan in place. There are seven people (I don't know who they are - it's probably a closely guarded secret) who have "the key to the internet" and would be able to get it going again.
9. How many websites are there? About 637 million, including over 250 million blogs. The internet is theoretically available in every country of the world but in some places it's severely restricted by the government. Like in North Korea, and to a lesser extent, China. Each country has a suffix to use to identify its websites - for example, .uk for Britain, and .ca for Canada. When Montenegro declared independence from Yugoslavia in 2006, its Internet domain suffix changed from .yu to .me.
10. The web has been the fastest growing method of communication in human history. It took just four years to reach 50 million users. Television took more than a decade to achieve that. However, in the early days, not everyone believed it was going to take off. In 1995, Newsweek published an article saying there was no way people were going to use it to get information or buy things. The article is available to read. Guess where? On their website.

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