31 October: Halloween: Vampire Jokes

It's Halloween, so here are ten jokes about vampires!

1. What do you call a short vampire? A pain in the knee.
2. Because telescopes work using mirrors, we'll never know if there are space vampires.
3. Mother vampire to son: “Hurry up and eat your breakfast before it clots.”
4. I called in to our local video shop to see if they had Dracula in stock. “Have we got Dracula?” the girl behind the counter asked her companion. “Yes, in a box in the back,” came the quite innocent reply.
5. How do vampires get around on Halloween? In blood vessels.
6. What do you get if you cross a vampire with a snowman? Frostbite
7. What is a vampire's least favourite food? Steak
8. What's a vampire's favourite fruit? A necktarine
9. How does a vampire get into his house? Through the bat flap
10. Where do vampires keep their money? In a blood bank

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30 October: Charles Atlas/Bodybuilder's Day

Bodybuilders day is celebrated on the birthday of Charles Atlas, the Italian-American bodybuilder best remembered as the developer of a bodybuilding method which spawned a landmark advertising campaign featuring his name and likeness. 10 things you might not know about the man behind the ads.

1. His real name was Angelo Siciliano. He later changed his name to Charles Atlas because it sounded more American.
2. He was born in Acri, Calabria, Italy. His family moved to America when he was 11.
3. He wasn't always big and strong looking. As a teenager he was skinny, weighing just 97 pounds (44 kg). In fact, he claimed the story of the 97 pound weakling who gets sand kicked in his face in the advert was autobiographical.
4. At the time, of course, he couldn't, as the protagonist in that story did, go home and buy a Charles Atlas fitness programme. He couldn't afford to join the gym at the YMCA so he'd watch other men exercising and do the exercises at home. He also asked the strongmen at Coney Island what their regimes were, and read as much as he could about diet and fitness.
5. He claimed the weight training didn't really work for him. One day he visited a zoo and watched a Lion stretching. Realising this animal was big and powerful without going to a gym and lifting weights, he knew there must be another way. He found that isometric and isotonic exercises worked much better for him.
6. He now had the right kind of body to make a career out of bodybuilding. He won a "World's Most Beautiful Man" contest in 1921 and posed as a model for sculptors. Alexander Stirling Calder's Washington at Peace on the Washington Square Arch in Manhattan; Pietro Montana's Dawn of Glory in Highland Park, Brooklyn and James Earle Frazer's Alexander Hamilton at the U.S. Treasury Building in Washington DC are all based on the body of Charles Atlas.
7. It was when he teamed up with advertising guru Charles Roman in the 1920s that his regimen really took off and he became a household name. Roman coined the term "Dynamic-Tension" for the technique and came up with the comic book style advert designed to appeal to adolescent boys reading comic books. It has been described as one of the longest-lasting and most memorable ad campaigns of all time.
8. By the 1950s, the Dynamic-Tension regimen had been translated into seven languages and sold to nearly 1 million customers worldwide.
9. Charles Atlas died of a heart attack on Christmas Eve 1972. He was 80 years old.
10. Both Charles Atlas and "Dynamic-Tension" are mentioned in the Rocky Horror Picture Show number Charles Atlas Song / I Can Make You a Man. It refers to a 98-pound weakling, who will get sand in his face when kicked to the ground. Dr. Frank N. Furter goes on to say that his creation "carries the Charles Atlas Seal of Approval."

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October 29: Jean Giraudoux Quotes

Born this date in 1882: Jean Giraudoux French dramatist, novelist and diplomat. 10 quotes to celebrate his birthday. 

1. The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.
2. Only the mediocre are always at their best.
3. I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life.
4. Those who weep recover more quickly than those who smile.
5. Men should only believe half of what women say. But which half?
6. There is nothing so wrong in this world that a sensible woman can't set it right in the course of an afternoon.
7. One of the privileges of the great is to witness catastrophes from a terrace.
8. Destiny is simply the relentless logic of each day we live.
9. It's odd how people waiting for you stand out far less clearly than people you are waiting for.
10. When he (man) ceased any longer to heed the words of the seers and prophets, science lovingly brought forth the radio.

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28 October: Saint Simon the Zealot

Today is St Simon the Zealot's feast day. Here are ten facts about one of the lesser known apostles.

1. He is usually listed in lists of all the apostles, and referred to as Simon the Zealot to distinguish him from Simon who was re-named Peter.
2. Zealots were a political group which was in favour of using violence to kick the Romans out of the Holy Land. Simon may have belonged to this group, or perhaps he was called “The Zealot” because he was zealous about keeping the laws of Moses.
3. The Catholic Encyclopaedia suggests Simon was a relative of Jesus, His cousin, or possibly even His brother.
4. He is the patron of sawyers, tanners and curriers. A currier is someone who treats leather after the tanning process to make it waterproof, flexible and strong.
5. After Jesus left, according to tradition, Simon is said to have teamed up with St Jude to go evangelising in Persia, Armenia and Lebanon. Since he and St Jude share the same feast day, it's possible they were martyred together as well.
6. It's not clear how St Simon died. Some say he was crucified, others that he died peacefully; still others say he was executed by being sawn in half.
7. He is often depicted in art being sawn in half, or with a saw. Other attributes associated with him are a boat, oars, fish and a lance.
8. Muslims accept Jesus as a prophet and the Qur'an mentions His disciples as “helpers to the work of God”, and lists them by name. St Simon, it says, went to evangelise the Berbers in North Africa.
9. In the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, Simon the Zealot is the one who tries to persuade Jesus to stir up the crowd against the Roman occupiers.
10. October 28 is his feast day in the Western Christian Church. Other branches of the church celebrate his feast on May 10 and July 1.

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October 27: Dylan Thomas

Today's birthday is Dylan Thomas, born in 1914. He was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems Do not go gentle into that good night and And death shall have no dominion; the 'play for voices' Under Milk Wood.

1. The name Dylan means 'son of the sea' - he was named after a character in an old Welsh story, Dylan ail Don. His middle name, Marlais, means 'voice of the Sea' after his great uncle, also a poet, whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles. While we pronounce his name “Dillan”, the Welsh pronunciation is “Dullan”. Dylan preferred the former, possibly because the latter sounded too much like “Dull one”.
2. His mother was a seamstress and his father was an English teacher. Dylan was born in Swansea, South Wales.
3. He started writing poetry as a teenager. He kept a notebook full of his poems, and edited the school newspaper. He was very proud of the fact that he won the school mile race in 1928. He carried the newspaper's picture of him winning the race with him until he died.
4. He left school at 16 and worked as a journalist, but that career didn't last long. He left to become a poet full time. While several of his early poems were published, his breakthrough poem was Light breaks where no sun shines in 1934. Some of his best known poems including And death shall have no dominion, Before I Knocked and The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower were all written at this time.
5. He met his wife Caitlin Macnamara in London in 1936. Even though she was going out with someone else at the time, Thomas proposed to her that same evening. They married in 1937 and had three children. He had several affairs, though, and both he and Caitlin were heavy drinkers.
6. When World War II broke out, he wasn't conscripted because of lung disease. He struggled to support his family financially at that time and tried to get work with the Ministry of Information. He was unsuccessful there, but got a position with Strand Films, making films for the MOI. He also wrote scripts for the BBC.
7. The village of Llareggub in Thomas's radio play Under Milk Wood is 'buggerall' backwards.
8. His 1940 work Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog is a parody of the title of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
9. In 1950, Thomas went on a three month poetry tour of New York, performing at arts centres and universities. He became infamous for being drunk at parties and even during some of his performances, and for his shocking behaviour. His most popular poem in America was A Child's Christmas in Wales.
10. He died, aged just 39, in 1953, while on another tour in America. He'd been ill before he went, suffering from gout, lung problems and blackouts and according to his assistant, "looked pale, delicate and shaky, not his usual robust self" when she picked him up at the airport. He postponed or cut short several social engagements because he wasn't feeling well, although it didn't stop him drinking. One night he returned to his hotel claiming to have drunk 18 whiskies although the owner of the pub he'd been to later refuted the claim, saying he didn't think Thomas had had any more than nine whiskies. Air pollution in New York reached a high about that time, which is likely to have made Thomas's lung problems worse. He was admitted to hospital with breathing problems and fell into a coma from which he never recovered. Cause of death was recorded as pneumonia, brain swelling and a fatty liver.

See Also:

Quotes by Dylan Thomas

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26 October: Alfred the Great

On this date in 899, Alfred the Great died. He is the only English monarch to be officially described as ‘great’.

1. He was born in Wantage, then in Berkshire, now in Oxfordshire. He was the son of King Aethelwulf of Wessex, and his mother's name was Osburh.
2. There is a story which says that, at the age of four, Alfred was sent to Rome to be confirmed by Pope Leo IV, who "anointed him as king", in preparation for his eventual succession to the throne of Wessex. However, this seems unlikely as Alfred had three living elder brothers, Æthelbald, Æthelberht and Æthelred. All three of his brothers were king before him.
3. His biographer wrote that Alfred didn't learn to read until he was at least twelve. However, if that's true, he soon made up for it. His mother offered a book of poems to whichever of her children was first to memorise it, and Alfred won.
4. Alfred became king when his youngest elder brother Æthelred died in 871. This was despite the fact that Æthelred had two sons. Alfred became king over the two sons because of an agreement the brothers had made earlier in the year, that whichever one of them outlived the other would inherit all their father's land, originally shared between them. Although it wasn't stated specifically, it was understood that the kingship was included in the agreement. In any case, England was at the time fighting off repeated invasions by the Danes and Æthelred's sons were very young when he died – so nobody argued.
5. So what was he like? We don't have any portraits of him from his lifetime, so we can't be sure what he looked like. We do know he wasn't, as you might expect from a great warrior, big and tough looking. He was actually a bit weedy and suffered with his health. Modern doctors, reading accounts of his symptoms, believe he may have suffered from Crohn's disease. He was, however, courageous, clever and an excellent leader.
6. He is famous for defending Britain against the Danes. He's also famous for burning cakes. At one point, the Danes had the upper hand and Alfred was in hiding, sleeping in rough caves and looking rather the worse for wear. He used to beg for food in the cottages he passed. One day, a woman told him he could have some of the cakes she was baking if he watched them and made sure they didn't burn while she was out looking after her Cows. Alfred had a lot on his mind, like how he was going to defeat the Danes, so he did let the cakes burn. The woman returned, and, not having any idea who this apparently ragged beggar really was, sent him on his way with a telling off and no cakes!
7. He is also sometimes referred to as King Alfred the Minstrel. The story behind this is that he once disguised himself as one so he could sneak into a Danish camp and spy on them. He was sufficiently good that he was summoned to the tent of the Danish commander, Guthrum, to play for him. Guthrum showered Alfred with gifts, including one he never meant to give – information. Alfred's forces won the battle and Guthrum was brought before Alfred as a prisoner. Alfred could, of course, have slaughtered Guthrum and all his men, but he didn't. Guthrum had treated him well while he was disguised as a minstrel, so Alfred said he would let them all go on one condition, that they all became Christians. Alfred allowed the Danes to settle in East Anglia and they all lived peacefully for many years.
8. So what did Alfred the Great ever do for us? He restored London after years of attacks by the Vikings, giving the city a new street plan and beefed up the fortifications. Some say he invented the British navy. He didn't – Britain already had one, but he did order the construction of bigger and better ships. He was also known for his legal reform, writing a whole new law book based on the Ten Commandments, the book of Exodus and the Acts of the Apostles. He promoted education and the use of the English language, rather than Latin in schools.
9. In 868 Alfred married Ealhswith, daughter of a Mercian nobleman. They had five or six children, including Edward the Elder who succeeded his father as king.
10. He died in 899 from unknown causes, aged about 50. Known for his Christian faith, Alfred is venerated as a saint by some Christian traditions. Henry VI of England tried to have Alfred made a saint, but failed. Nevertheless, the Anglican church venerates him as a Christian hero, with a feast day or commemoration on 26 October.

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25 October: Beetroot

Another celebration from the French Revolutionary Calendar today. 25 October was Beetroot Day. Here are some things you might not know about beetroot.

1. The scientific name for a beetroot plant is Beta vulgaris.
2. Raw beetroot is 88% water, 10% carbohydrates, 2% protein, and less than 1% fat. It is a good source of folate and a moderate source of manganese. Beetroot has one of the highest sugar contents of any vegetable, but the sugar from beetroot is released into the body slowly, so you don't get a sugar rush from eating it. It also contains tryptophan, which is also found in Chocolate – so it's a feel-good food.
3. The ancient Romans believed beetroot was an aphrodisiac. The Lupanare, the official brothel of Pompeii, had beetroots painted onto its walls. Today, we know that beetroot contains high amounts of boron, which is directly related to the production of human sex hormones, so perhaps the Romans were right! The ancient Greeks, meanwhile, offered beetroot to the god Apollo on Silver platters at his temple at Delphi.
4. The stuff that gives beetroot its colour is a chemical called betacyanin. Betacyanin is also an antioxidant, which has the benefit of speeding up detoxification in the liver – which means it can also be a Hangover cure. The 17th century herbalist Nicholas Culpeper prescribed beetroot juice for headaches and “afflictions of the brain”.
5. A couple more uses for beetroot juice – you can dye your hair with it, as the Victorians used to do, or you can use it like litmus paper to determine whether a substance is acid or alkaline. When added to an acidic solution, it turns Pink, but when it is added to an alkali, it turns Yellow.
6. While we most often eat the root, the leaves can be eaten too, either as a salad vegetable or cooked. Cooked spinach leaves taste like Spinach.
7. Beetroot can also be used to make Wine, which tastes rather like port.
8. Eating a lot of beetroot can result in a condition called beeturia, where a person's urine can turn slightly Red. This happens because the red colour compound is not completely broken down by the body.
9. The heaviest beetroot ever was grown by Ian Neale of Somerset in 2001 and weighed 23.4 kg (51 lb 9.4 oz). The longest was grown by Joe Atherton of Malvern and measured 7.956 m (26 ft 1.22 in). Joe also holds records for other long vegetables such as the longest Carrot.
10. Beetroot has been eaten in space. In 1975, during the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, cosmonauts from the USSR's Soyuz 19 served borscht (beetroot soup) to the Apollo 18 astronauts when they arrived on board.

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24 October: Football (soccer)

On this date in 1857 a football club was formed by a group of Cambridge University Old Boys in Sheffield. Sheffield F C still exists today and is the oldest football club still around. 10 interesting facts about football.

1. It's easy to assume that football is so called because it involves kicking a ball with the foot. That may not be the case. It may be so called because it was played on foot, as opposed to on horseback – aristocratic sports would be played on Horses while the peasants played on foot.
2. The earliest football type game was played in China around 500BC. It was called Cuju, and is recognised by FIFA as the first game similar to football with rules. In Britain, the first football was a game called “mob football” played in the Middle Ages. This game was usually played between two villages with the object of the game being to get the ball into the centre of the other village. Mob football didn't have much in the way of rules. The only rule was that players mustn't kill each other.
3. The largest largest football stadium in the world is the North Korean Rungrado May Day Stadium.
4. The football club with the longest name in the world is a Dutch side called Nooit opgeven altijd doorgan, Aangenaam door vermaak en nuttig door ontspanning, Combinatie Breda. Luckily, the team is generally known as NAC Breda. The full name means Never give up always keep going pleasant through entertainment and useful through relaxation combination Breda.
5. There is only one professional football team in Britain with a J in its name: St. Johnstone.
6. In the course of a football match, a player will run 9.65 km on average.
7. Greenland cannot join FIFA because nowhere in that country does grass grow in a big enough area to make a football pitch.
8. The national football team of Brazil has beaten every other national football team in the world except for one. Norway.
9. Football can be a dangerous game. In 1964, a referee's call in Peru caused a riot in which over 300 people died. It may also be ill advised to play during a thunderstorm. In Congo in 1998 the pitch was struck by lightning killing all eleven members of one team. The other team was unscathed.
10. The fastest red card ever was awarded to Lee Todd, two seconds into a game. The moment the starting whistle blew, Todd made the comment, “f**k me that was loud” and was sent off for using foul language.

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23 October: Sarah Bernhardt

Sarah Bernhardt, the French stage and later film actress known as "The Divine Sarah" might have been born on this date in 1844. It's not entirely certain today is her birthday - it could have been yesterday; but there's a good enough chance to feature her today.

1. She was born Henriette-Rosine Bernard. Her mother Judith Bernard was a Dutch Jewish courtesan, who wasn't very interested in raising a child, so the young Sarah was palmed off with a nurse and later sent to a convent boarding school.
2. It may seem surprising, given how her life turned out later, that while at school she aspired to become a nun. However, even then, she was a rule-breaker. When her pet lizard died, she arranged a Christian funeral for it, and was accused of sacrilege.
3. Although it isn't recorded who Sarah's father was, Sarah herself may well have known, since he paid for her education. When he died, however, her mother had to think of another way to get her teenage daughter off her hands. One of her lovers was Charles de Morny, half-brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, and it was his idea that she should go into acting. Sarah wasn't keen at first – she'd never even been inside a theatre although she had taken lead roles in school plays. Morny's influence made sure she got a place with a company.
4. Her debut in the title role of Racine's Iphigénie didn't go down well with critics. Provost said to her, "I can forgive you, and you'll eventually forgive yourself, but Racine in his grave never will." Others made fun of her thin figure. She ended up losing her first job. She was sacked for slapping another actress who'd bullied Sarah's sister after she'd trodden on the older actress's costume.
5. Sarah persevered in the profession however, and eventually became known for her “golden” voice. Audiences loved her, even though she was highly promiscuous for the time. Her lovers included many of her leading men, and also Victor Hugo, Edward Prince of Wales, and Charles Haas. She would have had an affair with Nikola Tesla, given the chance, but he turned her down, afraid she'd distract him from his work. Belgian aristocrat Prince de Ligne was the father of her son, Maurice, and she eventually married Aristides Damala – the model for Dracula.
6. Talking of Dracula – Sarah was in the habit of taking a coffin on tour with her and sleeping in it. She said the reminder of mortality helped her to enter the psyches of her characters.
7. As well as the pet lizard she had at school, she had a number of exotic pets as an adult - Cheetahs, Tiger and Lion cubs, a monkey named Darwin and an alligator named Ali Gaga. She'd take Ali Gaga to bed with her, but eventually killed him with kindness – his diet of Milk and Champagne eventually killed him.
8. She was the first woman to play Hamlet on film.
9. During the Franco-Prussian war she turned the Odeon theatre into a refuge for wounded soldiers, and hounded rich people and celebrities of the day to donate to it.
10. And yes, Sarah Bernhardt was the one who had her leg amputated. She injured her leg during a performance in 1906, when a stunt went wrong and she fell on the floor instead of on the mattress put there to break the fall. She never fully recovered from the injury and in 1915, the leg was amputated due to gangrene. It didn't stop her working, though. She still performed, although she was carried around in a white palanquin and gave her performances standing behind stage props which hid her leg. Even collapsing and being in a coma for an hour in 1922 didn't stop her – her first words when she woke up were, "when do I go on?"

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22 October: Franz Liszt

Born this date in 1811 was Franz Liszt, prolific 19th-century Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, organist, philanthropist and author.

1. He was born in Hungary to Adam and Anna Liszt. His father was a musician who played the Piano, Violin, cello and Guitar. He knew Haydn, Hummel and Beethoven personally through his work – he was in the service of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy. Franz began learning to play the piano from his father when he was seven and was composing by the age of eight.
2. The first of his compositions to be published was his Variation on a Waltz by Diabelli, part of an anthology commissioned by Anton Diabelli himself, which included 50 variations on his waltz by 50 different composers. Liszt wasn't named in the credits – he was simply described as "an 11 year old boy, born in Hungary". He was the only child composer to contribute.
3. When his father died, Liszt and his mother moved to a small apartment in Paris, where Liszt gave piano lessons to make ends meet. He was forced to give up his budding career as a touring pianist and work all the hours God sent to earn money. He had to travel across the city to his various students. It was sufficiently stressful that he started smoking and drinking.
4. He never married but he did have relationships with women. He fell in love with one of his pupils, Caroline de Saint-Cricq, but her father disapproved and insisted the relationship ended. After that, Liszt became so ill people thought he was going to die and published his obituary. He was also depressed for a long time, questioned his religious faith and did no composing for some time. Later he had a relationship with the Countess Marie d'Agoult, who left her husband for him. They had three children but when Liszt began touring as a virtuoso again, he spent little time with them, and the couple eventually separated. The Polish Princess, Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein also left her husband for Liszt and they stayed together for 40 years, until Liszt died. They would have married on Liszt's 50^th birthday, but Caroline's ex-husband made sure it didn't happen by petitioning the Pope; he also took away her estate.
5. There was a certain amount of fan-mania surrounding Franz Liszt. He was good looking, described by Hans Christian Andersen as a "slim young man with dark hair hung around his pale face", and had charismatic stage presence, resulting in female fans becoming hysterical – fighting over his gloves and handkerchiefs and ripping them to pieces. The term "Lisztomania" was coined by German poet Heinrich Heine to describe the phenomenon.
6. By his mid forties, he had made so much money that he was able to give away most of his performing fees to charity. He donated to the building of schools and churches, including Cologne Cathedral; he also donated to hospitals and pension funds for musicians. When he found out about the Great Fire of Hamburg, which raged for three days in May 1842 and destroyed much of the city, he gave concerts in aid of those who had lost their homes. He also gave piano lessons for free.
7. He is known for writing difficult piano music, but he also wrote for orchestra, and for other ensembles, invariably including piano. He didn't just write Music, either. He wrote a number of essays which were published in magazines, including a series on On the situation of artists. He even wrote an essay under the pseudonym Emm Prym about his own music, but that was rejected. When asked why he hadn’t written the story of his life, Liszt replied, ‘because I was too busy living it’.
8. He became a monk for a while. Two of his children died within three years of each other, which prompted Liszt to enter a monastery and join the Third Order of Saint Francis.
9. He was a Freemason and the first person to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Königsberg, although he never used the title 'Doctor' in public.
10. He remained fit and active, embarking on occasional concert tours until he fell downstairs in his hotel in 1881. He never quite recovered from the accident and was plagued with health problems and depression for years after that. He died of pneumonia in 1886 at the age of 74.

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21 October: Ursula Le Guin Quotes

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin was an American novelist, born 21 October 1929. Working mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction, she also authored children's books, short stories, poetry, and essays. 10 quotes from her:

1. It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.
2. When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.
3. The creative adult is the child who has survived.
4. People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.
5. What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.
6. Success is somebody else's failure.
7. The worst walls are never the ones you find in your way. The worst walls are the ones you put there.
8. Fantasy is probably the oldest literary device for talking about reality.
9. Shoot for the top, always. You know you'll never make it, but what's the fun if you don't shoot for the top?
10. To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well.

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20 October: Cadillacs

On this date in 1902, according to the book Henry Leland – Master of Precision, this is the date the first Cadillac car rolled off the production line. While there are other apparently reliable sources that say this happened on the 17^th or even earlier I'm trusting the Master of Precision on this one and presenting you with 10 things you might not know about Cadillacs.

1. The company was named after a Frenchman called Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, a French army officer. Why him? Because he founded a town called Ville d’Etroit, which we now know as Detroit, Michigan.
2. His family coat of arms was adopted as the car company's logo. The original design is thought to have been created by Antoine himself in 1687. It included a crown, a laurel wreath for aristocracy and victory, stripes in Black (superiority), gold (wealth), Red (boldness), silver (virtue) and Blue (valour), and... ducks. The ducks appeared in threes to symbolise the Holy Trinity. The logo has changed many times over the years. The current version is a flattened version of the shield, which has lost the crown, and the ducks.
3. The company's founder was Henry M. Leland, who'd apprenticed under gunmaker Samuel Colt. Henry Ford was a long time friend and rival of his. He helped set up the Cadillac company but they fell out and Ford left to start his own company. Once the Cadillac company was well established, Leland left to start another firm, Lincoln, but it soon went bankrupt, after which it was bought by Henry Ford.
4. The first cars Cadillac made were the Runabout and the Tonneau.
5. Cadillac was a pioneer in many of the things we take for granted in cars today. They invented the electric starter, meaning the driver no longer had to turn a crank handle to start the engine. This, incidentally, is the origin of the expression, “cranky” which is the mood a driver might be in after struggling to start the car. It was the death of one of Leland's friends, Byron T. Carter, which kick-started the development of the starter. Carter's car backfired while he was trying to start it, sending the handle spinning out of control. It hit Carter on the head and killed him. Leland said, “I won’t have Cadillacs hurting people that way.”
6. Other innovations he made which we take for granted today are electric headlights, airbags and air-conditioning.
7. Leland was so concerned with precision that he imported tools from Sweden to use in his factory. He boasted that his factory was the most precise on Earth, and set out to prove it. In front of a group of judges, his engineers disassembled three Cadillacs and had the judges shuffle the parts before the engineers assembled the cars again with the parts all mixed up. The cars all worked perfectly, even on a 500 mile trip. Cadillac was awarded the Dewar Trophy, a kind of Nobel Prize for cars, for that.
8. Today they can produce parts by 3D printing. Cadillac has the second largest 3D printing facility in the world, second only to General Electric.
9. The tail fin on the 1949 Coupe DeVille was inspired by the P38 Lightning fighter plane.
10. Gangster Al Capone had a bullet-proof Caddy to protect him from rival gangs. When he was sent to Alcatraz it was impounded by the Treasury. Legend has it that when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was going to deliver his “Day of Infamy” speech to Congress after Pearl Harbour in 1941, and a bullet-proof car was needed, the Secret Service used Al Capone's car. The President, when asked where he got hold of a car like that so quickly, quipped, “I hope Mr. Capone doesn’t mind.”

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