Thursday, 3 March 2022

4 March

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 4 March:

The Forth Bridge

  1. A number of US Presidents were inaugurated on this day. In 1793 George Washington was sworn in for a second term as president of the United States. His inauguration speech was the shortest ever at just 133 words. The longest inauguration speech (8,443 words) was given by William Henry Harrison, the ninth US President, on this date in 1841. Spending so long speaking did him no good. He caught pneumonia and died a month later. In 1849 Zachary Taylor refused to be sworn-in because this date fell on a Sunday far too holy a day to do political stuff, so Senator David Rice Atchison acted as President for one day. In 1925 Calvin Coolidge's inauguration was the first to be broadcast on radio. It was on this day in 1933 that President Franklin D Roosevelt uttered the famous quote, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" as part of his inauguration speech.
  2. In 1960, Leonard Warren, a 48 year old American opera singer, belted out Morir? Tremenda Casa, and then collapsed and died from a stroke. The translation of the title of his final song is To die? A wondrous thing.
  3. It was on this date in 1966 that John Lennon's comment that The Beatles were 'more popular than Jesus Christ' was published in The London Evening Standard. Christian groups in the US were outraged resulting in some states burning Beatles records in protest.
  4. More musical mayhem occurred on this date in 2003 when Sian Davies, aged 23, from Porth in Wales was fined £1,000 plus court costs and had all her amplifiers and speakers plus 135 CDs and cassette tapes seized after complaints she was playing her music too loudly. She'd been playing a Cliff Richard single, ironically titled Peace in Our Time. A spokesman for the Cliff Richard Organisation said he was delighted to hear that somebody in their early 20s was a Cliff fan, but added that Cliff wouldn't want anyone to cause a nuisance by playing his records.
  5. In 1890, the then Prince of Wales opened the longest bridge in Britain, the 1,710 ft Forth railway bridge in Scotland.
  6. In 2007, the most expensive car accident in the world occurred. A Surrey man took his brother’s Bugatti Veyron out for a spin, clocking up 100mph on a rainy day with predictable results. He skidded, collided with a van and ended up in a clump of trees. The car was a write-off and the insurance bill was £800,000 not including the damage to the van. Luckily no one was seriously injured in the accident, although we are not told what happened to the driver after his brother got hold of him.
  7. In 1928, 199 runners set off from Los Angeles along Route 66 in hopes of winning the $25,000.00 grand prized offered in the Great American Foot Race to Madison Square Garden, New York, 3,422 miles away. 84 days later, Andy Payne, aged 20, was declared the winner.
  8. It fell off the back of a lorry, honest, Officer: In 1981, Joey Coyle was arrested at a New York airport with $105,000 stuffed in his boots. This followed a six day spending spree after he'd found $1.2 million which had fallen out of an armoured vehicle. He was acquitted by reason of temporary insanity. In 1993 a movie, Money for Nothing, was based on this event.
  9. In 2000, Damien Nash became the millionth person to visit the Millennium Dome in London.
  10. In 2005 Wookiepedia, The Star Wars Wiki, was founded.


The Power of Love

Willow believes in crystal healing, cosmic  ordering  and the significance of chance  encounters. She believes there's a spiritual  explanation for everything. Except she struggles to find a reason why she can turn herself into  mist and create a wave of energy which can slam a would-be mugger into a wall. Or why the love of  her life left her for a mysterious woman in sunglasses, who then disappeared without trace. 
 

A chance encounter with Firebolt, leader of the Freedom League superhero team, in a Glastonbury coffee shop, does turn out to be significant. He offers her a new start and the chance to use her powers for good.

Servant is a Christian who has joined the Freedom League in order to use his teleporting power to serve God. He and Willow clash from the start, yet they are drawn inexorably to one another.

When Willow leaves the team abruptly for reasons unknown, Servant knows he must put her out of his mind and find a nice Christian girl to settle down with. He is about to propose to devout and straight-laced Ruth, when Willow returns and turns his entire world upside down.


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