1 May: The Duke of Wellington

Today was the birthday of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. There is some doubt as to whether his birthday was actually the first of May. Written records of the time, and the family nursemaid, all gave different dates. However, his mother, Anne, insisted he was born on 1 May and she should know. Wellington took her word for it and celebrated his birthday on this date. He was born in Dublin, to an aristocratic Irish family. His father, Garret, was the first earl of Mornington while his mother, Anne, was the eldest daughter of Arthur Hill, first Viscount Dungannon.
2. As a child he was socially awkward and not a good scholar. The only thing he seemed to be any good at was playing the Violin. His mother despaired of him. Nevertheless, he was sent to Eton at 12. However, since his father had died, the family finances weren't great and in due course he was taken out of the school so that a younger brother with more intellectual promise, could take his place. A career in the military seemed the only option for a seemingly unpromising young man.
3. At first, most of the jobs he secured in the military were down to the influence and wealth of one of his brothers, becoming, in due course, the commanding officer of the 33rd Foot, which was as far as he could get with his brother's help. After this, he was on his own. In 1794 the 33rd Foot was sent to the Netherlands and he fought the French for the first time. The British lost on that occasion, but Wellington had learned by experience how not to command an army.
4. After that, he spent some time in India, and spent his time there studying military history. He was promoted to the rank of major general and 1803 saw his first major victory. Facing an enemy force much greater than the 7,000 at his disposal, he won a desperate battle at Assaye, a small village in western India. He wouldn't have lived to see the Battle of Waterloo were it not for an attack of Delhi Belly. In 1801 he received orders to go to Egypt and fight the French, but crippling diarrhoea, a severe fever, and a painful skin condition caused by parasites meant he was too ill to go. The ship he would have travelled on sank in the Red Sea with no survivors.
5. When he left India in 1805 it took him six months to get home. He spent a month on the remote South Atlantic island of Saint Helena, quite possibly lodging in the same building in which Napoleon would later spend his exile.
6. His wife was Catherine "Kitty" Pakenham, daughter of the Second Baron Longford. When he first proposed to her as a young man, her family said no, because it was at the time when he had no prospect of a title, being a third son, and no prospects of a good job, either. Being accomplished on the violin didn't cut it with her father. It's said he was so upset at the refusal that he went home and burned his violin, and never played it again. On his return from India, he met up with her again and proposed again, even though she had changed from the girl he'd proposed to years before and he was no longer so sure she was "The One". It's thought he felt some obligation to marry her. They had two sons, but lived separate lives and he had very public affairs.
7. In January 1812 he led troops from Portugal into Spain, fighting the French, and got as far as Salamanca where they seemed to reach a stalemate. The story goes that one day, Wellington was eating his lunch, a chicken leg, while keeping an eye on the French army through a spyglass. He noticed a gap in the French defences where they'd overextended, threw the drumstick in the air and shouted "Les Français sont perdus!" ("The French are lost!"). Later, when the news arrived of Napoleon's abdication Wellington broke into an impromptu flamenco dance, spinning around on his heels and clicking his fingers. This was a rare display of emotion from a man who usually showed hardly any emotion at all. It was after this victory that he gained the title of Duke of Wellington and moved to Paris as ambassador to France, and even took up with some of Napoleon's former mistresses. Wellington was attending a ball held by the Duchess of Richmond, and just sitting down to eat when the news reached him that Napoleon had escaped exile. "Napoleon has humbugged me, by God," he exclaimed. Early next morning he left for the front. The rest, as they say, is history.
8. On his return from the Battle of Waterloo, he turned to a political career and in due course became prime minister. However, he soon learned that leading a bunch of MPs and running a country was somewhat different from leading an army. He couldn't, for example, beat dissenters into submission with a cat o' nine tails as he could with errant soldiers. He fell out with many over the Roman Catholic Relief Act. He even fought a duel with one political opponent, the Earl of Winchilsea on Battersea Fields. Both survived. Eventually, however, Wellington was forced to resign.
9. He was a strict disciplinarian when commanding an army and appeared to hold contradictory views on the men he commanded. On the one hand, he described them as "scum" but would also describe them as the tools he needed to win battles and lauded their achievements. It may have been that he knew many had joined up because they had no choice and as new recruits, would be entirely useless, but with with discipline and experience, they could become a fearsome army. While he ruled his men with an iron fist, he was also known to show sympathy and care, like when he gave up his bed for a wounded man who was dying. Legend has it that he once went to the aid of a wounded soldier named Tommy Atkins, who said, “It’s all right sir. It’s all in a day’s work”, and later died of his injuries. This gave rise to the nickname of "Tommies" for British soldiers.
10. In later life he was a friend and advisor to Queen Victoria. He was godfather to her second son, who was born on 1 May 1850 and was also named Arthur, after him. When advising her about what to do about the flocks of Sparrows flying around inside Crystal Palace, his advice was typically pithy, concise and to the point - "Sparrowhawks, ma'am".

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30 April: Facts about Flowers

The Floralia, or Florifertum was a five day festival in Ancient Rome, centred around the Kalends of May (May Day). Offerings of Milk and Honey were made to the flower goddess. The city would be decorated in flowers and people would wear them in their Hair. The games of the Florifertum would be celebrated on this day. So here are 10 fascinating facts about flowers:

1. Flowers are basically the sexual organs of plants. In a magazine I read recently, a flower expert commented that if flowers could talk, they'd probably say, "Leave us alone; we're trying to have sex"! Most flowers have both female and male parts. The pistil is the female part and resembles a vase with a long neck. It contains the ovules, or eggs. The male part is called the stamen and resembles a stiff, standing piece of string. On top of the filament is a rounded ball of pollen called the anther.
2. While flowers may have both parts, they don't generally pollinate themselves but rather rely on insects or small animals to do it for them. Flowers that are insect-pollinated are called entomophilous; literally "insect-loving" in Greek. The beautiful colours of flowers are part of a flower's strategy to attract pollinators. Many insects and small birds can see colours. Some pollinators can see into the ultraviolet spectrum as well, so some flowers have patterns called nectar guides, which are only visible in ultraviolet light. It tells those pollinators where to look for nectar, the sweet substance produced to attract them.
3. The scent of a flower isn't just for humans to enjoy, either, but is another strategy flowers use to attract creatures to pollinate them. This is especially true of flowers pollinated by nocturnal creatures. These flowers tend to be White, as they don't rely on colour to attract insects. Not all flowers smell nice to us, either. Some of them want to attract insects which like rotting flesh and so they smell like that. Some flowers are even more sneaky and have evolved to look and smell like female Bees. Male bees come along looking for a mate and go from one to another in the vain hope of some nookie.
4. The largest flower in the world is the titan arum, which produces flowers 10 feet high and 3 feet wide. It's also known as the corpse plant, because it is one of those mentioned above which smells like rotting flesh.
5. The smallest flowers are probably Wolffia, or duckweed. Each flower consists of a single pistil and stamen; it also produces the world’s smallest fruit. The plant has no roots and is found in quiet freshwater lakes or marshes.
6. Writers have long been inspired by flowers and use their meanings as symbolism in their work. Shakespeare used the word "flower" more than 100 times in his plays and sonnets. In Hamlet, for example, Ophelia mentions and explains the symbolic meaning of pansies, rosemary, fennel, lilies, columbine, rue, Daisy, and Violets. Even modern day writers like JK Rowling do it. In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Professor Severus Snape uses the language of flowers to express regret and mourning for the death of Lily Potter.
7. The language of flowers is called floriography and although ascribing meanings to flowers has been around since Shakespeare and even the Bible, was especially popular in the Victorian era. In Victorian times there were books devoted to the meanings of different flowers, flower dictionaries, and a bouquet could actually be a message in code, expressing something a Victorian lady or gentleman could never speak of out loud. Roses had different meanings according to their colour. Red for passion, white for chastity and Yellow for friendship. In Russia, receiving a yellow flower means you're being firmly placed in the friendship zone. The mimosa, or sensitive plant, means chastity because the leaves of the mimosa close at night, or when touched. Even the positioning of a nosegay sent by a suitor could send a message. Pinned on the cleavage meant friendship zone, but if she pinned it to her heart, he was in with a chance.
8. Flower meanings also gave rise to the idea of birth flowers. Each month of the year was associated with a flower or two and those born in that month were said to inherit the qualities of that flower. See the list below for more details.
9. Most countries, and states and counties within countries, have their own official flower. There are far too many to mention here, but England's national flower is the rose. The wars of the roses, between Lancashire and York were so named because both counties had roses as their symbol – red roses for Lancashire and white roses for Yorkshire.
10. There's a plant called the Agave, or century grows for many years without producing any flowers, then grows one single bloom and dies. This phenomenon is called being monocarpic.

Birth flowers

• January: Carnation (meaning depends on the colour) or Snowdrop (hope and beauty).
• February: Violet (loyalty and faithfulness) or primrose.
• March: Daffodil or jonquil (unequalled love)
• April: Daisy (loyal love and purity) or sweet pea (good-bye, or blissful pleasure).
• May: Hawthorn (good wishes) or Lily of the valley (humility and sweetness).
• June: Rose or Honeysuckle (everlasting love).
• July: Larkspur (meaning depends on the colour) or water lily (purity and majesty).
• August: Gladiolus (remembrance, calm, integrity, or a heart pierced by love) or Poppies (a variety of meanings, depending on colour).
• September: Morning glory (affection). Aster (powerful love).
• October: Marigold (optimism) or cosmos (order and peace).
• November: Chrysanthemum (Compassion, friendship, joy).
• December: Holly (a wish for domestic happiness) or narcissus.

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29 April: The Speaker of the House of Commons

On this date in 1376, the first Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Peter de la Mare, took office. 10 things you might not know about the Speaker:

1. The office of Speaker has been around almost as long as Parliament itself, although the first people to hold an equivalent role were known as the parlour or prolocutor. The first of these was Peter de Montfort in 1258. The office as we know it today dates from 1376 and the first person to hold it was Sir Peter de la Mare.
2. What does the Speaker do? In a nutshell, they are the chief officer and highest authority of the House of Commons. They preside over debates, deciding who should be next to speak. Convention dictates that they alternate between the government and the opposition. No MP can make a speech without the Speaker's permission. They are responsible for maintaining order, which they do, initially, by shouting "Order! Order!" and have the power to suspend any MP for the rest of the day's proceedings if they don't comply. Part of their role sounds rather like a game of Just a Minute – they can order an MP to stop speaking if they make irrelevant remarks, are tediously repetitive, or deliberately trying to delay proceedings.
3. While they preside over debates, they don't take part in them. On election as speaker, although they are still an MP and will still do constituency work, they renounce their party affiliation. They don't make speeches and they don't vote unless there's a tie and a casting vote is required. Even then, they wouldn't vote according to their personal preference, but by convention for further debate or to retain the status quo. There is a mechanism in place whereby a deputy speaker from the opposite party doesn't vote, either, so neither side benefits or loses out from this.
4. The Speaker has three deputies, who, like the Speaker themselves, are elected by the House. The most senior deputy is also called Chairman of Ways and Means, which originated from a now defunct Ways and Means Committee which could amend and expedite bills to tax. While the deputies are usually there to take the chair if the Speaker is on holiday, sick, or the proceedings go on for longer than his or her usual hours, there is one occasion when the Chairman of Ways and Means always presides, and that is during the Budget speech.
5. Until 1992, the Speaker was always addressed as "Mr. Speaker" and their deputies as "Mr Deputy Speaker". In 1992, Betty Boothroyd, the first woman Speaker, was appointed and asked to be addressed as "Madam Speaker". She was not, however, the first woman to sit in the Speaker's Chair. That was Betty Harvie Anderson, who was a Deputy Speaker in the 1970s. he was addressed as "Mr Deputy Speaker".
6. The Speaker's traditional dress while on duty was court dress—a Black coat with White shirt and bands, beneath a black gown, with stockings and buckled Shoes, and a full-bottomed wig. Betty Boothroyd, however, decided not to wear the wig although she wore the rest of it. Michael Martin, also declined to wear the wig and also the buckled shoes and silk stockings. John Bercow abandoned the traditional dress altogether, opting to wear a plain black gown over his lounge suit as does the incumbent at time of writing, Sir Lindsay Hoyle. Nevertheless, he has said he will wear the full regalia on ceremonial occasions like the State Opening of Parliament. However, this will be minus the wig, which has gone missing.
7. As well as the right to live in Speaker's House at the Palace of Westminster, another perk of the job is that the Speaker gets their own state coach. It's the oldest of the three great State Coaches of the United Kingdom, originally designed for King William III in 1698 by Daniel Marot. Queen Anne passed it on to the Speaker. However, it doesn't get used for commutes to and from the constituency or for trips to the supermarket. It's usually only used on super-special occasions like coronations. The last time it got an airing was in 1981, for Prince Charles's wedding to Lady Diana Spencer.
8. When a Speaker resigns or retires a new one must be elected. Candidates must be nominated by at least twelve MPs, at least three of which must be from a different party from the candidate. If there is more than one candidate, a secret ballot is held. To get the job, a candidate must get at least 50% of the vote. If no-one does, then the candidate with the fewest votes, and/or any receiving less than 5%, drops out and the vote is held again until one candidate achieves the required majority.
9. By custom, the person elected, (despite having put themselves forward and actively campaigned to be voted in) must show reluctance to accept the post and be "dragged unwillingly" by MPs to the speaker's bench. This originates from the Speaker's original role of communicating the decisions of the Commons to the monarch, which in olden days could potentially get them executed if the monarch didn't like what they were told. That said, no Speaker has ever been executed for doing their job. Six Speakers were executed through the course of history, but usually long after they'd stepped down.
10. Over 150 individuals have served as Speaker of the House of Commons. Their names are inscribed in gold leaf around the upper walls of Room C of the House of Commons Library. Betty Boothroyd was the first woman; Michael Martin, elected in 2000, was the first Catholic speaker since the Reformation; and John Bercow, elected in 2009, was the first Jewish speaker.

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28 April: 118

28 April is the 118th day of the year. 10 things you might not know about the number 118:

1. The Roman numeral for 118 is CXVIII and in Binary it's written 1110110.
2. It's the atomic number of Oganesson, a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Og. It was named after the nuclear physicist Yuri Oganessian, who played a leading role in the discovery of the heaviest elements in the Periodic Table. It is one of only two elements named after a person who was alive at the time of naming, the other being seaborgium, and the only element whose namesake is alive at time of writing.
3. 118 is the medical emergency telephone number in Bolivia, Indonesia and Italy.
4. In Switzerland and Maldives it's the emergency fire number, and in Japan, the number to call when there is an emergency at sea.
5. In the UK it's the prefix number for directory enquiry calls. The best known service is 118 118 for which there was a famous ad campaign featuring two runners with droopy moustaches. Calls have declined since why pay for a phone call when you can Google the number for free, but they do still exist and since 2008 have included a service where customers can ask any question they want.
6. In Singapore, there was a TV series called 118 about a coffee shop owner who is nicknamed 118 because he is positive and generous. He has a wife and four children and lives in a small flat above the shop with his family. It gets even more crowded when he rents out a room and takes in other relatives who have fallen on hard times.
7. In India, 118 is a film about an investigative journalist who tries to decode a recurring nightmare involving a woman's death.
8. The A118 is a road in east London which links Bow Interchange with Gallows Corner in Romford via Stratford and Ilford. Parts of the route have formed the Camulodunum (Colchester) to Londinium (London) extension of the Pye Road.
9. If you're travelling by bus, the 118 Bus runs between Brixton Road/ Brixton Police Station and Morden Station.
10. In numerology, 118 is self reliant and independent. People with the number in their chart tend to be loners who like to be left alone to get on with working towards their goals. They may be leaders. They like to explore new ideas and will get things done.

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27 April: Keys

Today is the feast day of St Zita, invoked by people looking for lost keys. 10 facts about keys:

1. A key consists of two parts, the bit or blade, which slides into the lock, and is unique to the lock, and the bow, which is the bit the user turns.
2. When Viking women married, they became the keeper of the household's keys. They often wore them as signs of power and privilege and were even buried with them.
3. Roman women weren't so lucky – they were often the things being locked away by their menfolk, who would wear their keys as rings on their fingers. That meant not only that their keys were always handy (see what I did there?) but they were on display as a sign of status, that they were rich enough to have things to lock away.
4. A master key which can operate any lock is known as a skeleton key. It is so called because they are stripped down to their essential parts, or skeleton.
5. Keys were often designed in the shapes of animals or flowers in the handle. An old fashioned key is often quite aesthetically pleasing and they are sometimes worn as jewellery.
6. A person who collects keys is called a cagophilist.
7. A related word is copoclephilist, which means a person who collects key rings.
8. As of 2013 the champion cagophilist was Lisa Large of Kansas City, Missouri, who was awarded the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of keys – 3,604 of them.
9. In heraldry, keys sometimes appear on coats of arms. They frequently appear on arms related to the church, related to the fact that Saint Peter was promised the keys of Heaven. Vatican City and the dioceses of Exeter, Gloucester and York all include keys on their coats of arms.
10. The ceremony of the keys occurs every evening at 9.52 at the Tower of London. It's basically locking the tower up for the night and escorting the keys back to the Queen's residence. This ceremony has been held nightly since at least the 14th century and was only delayed once during World War II. In the olden days it was possible to buy tickets to watch the ceremony and they would be sold out a year in advance. Though since absolutely everything has been cancelled for the foreseeable future I've no idea whether they even have this ceremony any more, and even if they do, people certainly won't be allowed to go and watch it. Yet another thing we lost in 2020, probably.

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26 April: 116

Today is the 116th day of the year. 10 things you might not know about this number:

1. 116 is the atomic number of Livermorium, a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Lv. It has only been created in the laboratory and has not been observed in nature. The element is named after the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, where it was created. The town was named after the rancher and landowner Robert Livermore. The longest-lived isotope is livermorium-293 with a half-life of about 60 milliseconds.
2. In Roman numerals it is written as CXVI and in Binary as 1110100.
3. The 116, is an American Southern Christian hip hop collective originally from Dallas, Texas. They named themselves after the Bible verse Romans 1:16: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes; to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile." For them it means acknowledging the power of the Gospel and the divine calling to proclaim it in every area of their life. "We can lay our lives down to serve and glorify God in everything we do."
4. It's the answer to the famous trick question, "How long did the Hundred Years War last?" The war between England and France took place from 1337 to 1453 – 116 years.
5. The 116th Street Crew, also known as the Uptown Crew, is a Mafia crew originally based in the Palma Boys Social Club in Manhattan, founded by Anthony Salerno. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the 116th Street Crew had recruited many members of the vicious East Harlem Purple Gang, an Italian-American murder for hire and drug trafficking gang.
6. 116 is the fire emergency telephone number in Peru.
7. The "lost 116 pages" were the original manuscript pages of Joseph Smith's translation of the Book of Lehi, the first portion of the golden plates revealed to him by an angel in 1827. Smith's scribe, Martin Harris, lost them, so Smith had to complete the Book of Mormon without them.
8. In London, the 116 bus runs between Ashford Hospital and Hounslow Bus Station.
9. Also in London, the A116 is a road connecting Manor Park and Wanstead.
10. In numerology, 116 is a number which organises, builds and leads. It's efficient, realistic and gets things done. It's also a nurturing, family number, considering everything within its area of control as a family.

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25 April: Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald, American Jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella, was born on this date in 1917. 10 things you might not know about her:

1. She was born in Newport News, Virginia. Her family were Methodists and active in the local church. This was where Ella was first introduced to music. Also her mother bought jazz records so there was music at home, as well. As a child, Ella was a fan of Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby and the Boswell Sisters.
2. At first, dancing, rather than singing was her passion. She started taking dance lessons in third grade. Indeed, when she made her stage debut in a talent contest at the Apollo Theater, aged 17, she intended to dance on stage rather than sing. However, on seeing the competition, namely, the Edwards Sisters, she didn't think she could beat them and decided to sing, instead. The audience loved her and she won the contest.
3. She did well at school until she moved to New York with her mother and her new partner. Her mother died from injuries sustained in a car crash when Ella was fifteen. It's thought her stepfather abused her and she eventually went to live with an aunt. Around that time, she started skipping school and got involved in some dodgy activities like working as a runner for the Mafia and as a lookout at a brothel. She ended up in a reform school as a result.
4. The young woman who won the Apollo competition was, therefore, a scruffy street kid and so the theatre didn't make good on part of the prize offer – a week long gig on their stage. The bandleader Chuck Webb was reluctant to take her on because she looked “gawky and unkempt”, but was won over by her powerful voice.
5. Even in the 1950s some club owners didn't think she was glamorous enough to appear on their stage. The Mocambo, a very popular nightclub being one. However, Ella's singing had caught the attention of Marilyn Monroe, who stepped in to call the owner and say if he booked Ella, she would be there at a table in the front, every night. The owner couldn't resist publicity like that, so he hired Ella, and Marilyn made good on her word and attended every night.
6. Her first hit was an adaptation of the nursery rhyme, A-Tisket, A-Tasket, which she helped to write.
7. She also acted in films. Her first was an Abbott and Costello flick called Ride ‘Em Cowboy in 1942.
8. In 1958 Fitzgerald became the first African American woman to win a Grammy Award. She won two that year – one for Best Jazz Performance, Soloist for Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook, and another for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Songbook. She would go on to win 14 Grammys, and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1967. She was also the first African-American woman to perform during Superbowl Halftime in 1972.
9. She's known to have married twice. Her first husband was Benny Kornegay, a convicted drug dealer and local dockworker. She married him in 1941 but the marriage was annulled in 1942. In 1947 she married bass player Ray Brown, who she met while on tour with Dizzy Gillespie's band. However, their busy careers led to an amicable divorce in 1953. It's possible there was a third husband, Thor Einar Larsen, a young Norwegian. However, he went to prison in Sweden for stealing from an ex girlfriend, so her relationship with him came to an end.
10. Her last performance was at Carnegie Hall in 1991. After that, she lost her eyesight and had to have both legs amputated below the knee as a result of diabetes. She never quite recovered from that, and died in 1996 aged 79.

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24 April: The Night Sky

On this date in 1957, English astronomer Patrick Moore presented the first broadcast of The Sky at Night. 10 facts about the night sky.

1. Astronomers use a concept called the Celestial Sphere to map the night sky. This idea dates back to ancient times when people believed Earth sat in the middle of a huge hollow ball which rotated and that was what made the stars move. While we know now that it's not like that, it's still useful to help explain the positions of stars.
2. At the top of it, in its Northern Hemisphere, is the Pole Star, or Polaris. It's directly above the axis of the Earth's rotation and so all other stars appear to revolve around it. There is no equivalent in the Southern Hemisphere.
3. The oldest star map was discovered in a Chinese tomb dating back to 25BC. It was painted on the ceiling.
4. A night sky is never completely dark. Even when there is no Moon or you're far from any city lights it's still possible to see the silhouette of something against the night sky. There is light emanating from the stars but there's also something called airglow which is basically light from the Earth's atmosphere. This is why astronomers are so keen to launch telescopes into space to eliminate this from their observations.
5. There are three stages of twilight – civil twilight is when the sun is the time between sunset and the sun reaching 6 degrees below the horizon. Between 6 and 12 degrees below is called nautical twilight and astronomical twilight is when the sun is 12 -18 degrees below the horizon. After this the sky will be as dark as it ever gets.
6. Ancient maps of the night sky noted the patterns the stars made and often assigned some kind of image to groups of stars, usually something from the mythology of the time. These are constellations. While different cultures had different ones, since 1922, there has been an internationally accepted list of 88. By 1928 the International Astronomical Union had divided the celestial sphere into 88 areas corresponding to the constellations, with boundaries between them. The best known ones include the 12 zodiac signs, the Plough and Orion.
7. Within this list of 88 constellations 42 are animals, 29 are inanimate objects and 17 are people.
8. Some of the planets of the solar system are visible to the naked eye at night. The brightest of these is Venus, sometimes also referred to as the morning star or the evening star as it's often the only star you can see close to sunrise or sunset. Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are also visible to the naked eye. The word planet comes from the Greek word for wanderer, because they were observed to move through the night sky a little each day.
9. A point of light travelling in a straight line across the night sky, taking a couple of minutes to cross, will be a man made satellite of some kind. If they appear to blink this probably means they are rotating bits of space junk.
10. A spiral arm of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is also visible in the night sky although in cities it's blocked out by light pollution. The Milky Way is more spectacular in the Southern hemisphere than in the northern one. It appears as a dim, glowing band which appears “milky” to the naked eye, hence the name. The word galaxy also derives from an ancient Greek word for Milk.

Obsidian's Ark

Teenage years bring no end of problems. Daniel Moran's include getting hold of computer games his parents don't think he should have; a full blown crush on the beautiful Suki from Zorostan; maintaining his status as a prefect and getting his homework done. He must also keep from his parents and sister the fact that he is a superhero with a sword from another world.

Trish wonders how to get science whizz Tom to notice her; how to persuade him that the best way to stand up to the school bully is to fight back. She doesn't want her friends, especially not Tom, to know she is a genetic variant with superpowers. Little does she know that Tom has secrets of his own.

Suki struggles to make friends at school when she cannot understand everyday cultural references, and they all suspect her of being a terrorist. She, too, has a secret, but is it what her classmates assume?

When Daniel stumbles upon a plot by an alliance of supervillains to plunge the world into war, he tries to alert the established superheroes, but none of them believe him. When the Prime Minister's only daughter, Yasmin Miller, is abducted, Daniel knows the villains' plan is underway. It seems humanity's only hope may be Daniel and the ragtag bunch of teenage superheroes he recruits. Can he pull together, not only his own team, but the older heroes as well, in a bid to save the Earth from a devastating war?

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