1 August

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 1st August:

1. On this date in 30 BC Mark Antony and his lover Cleopatra committed suicide after Antony was defeated by Octavian at the naval Battle of Actium, and in a brief land battle at Alexandria.
2. In 1838, slavery was declared unlawful throughout the British Empire.
3. MTV Europe began broadcasting on this date in 1987. The first video was Money For Nothing by Dire Straits.
4. In 1919, Doubleday published nine year old Daisy Ashford's The Young Visiters; or, Mr Salteena's Plan. Sir James M. Barrie wrote a preface – leading the public to believe Barrie was the real author.
5. In 1793, France became the first country to use the metric system of weights and measures, a by-product of the French Revolution. The kilogram was introduced in France as the first metric weight.
6. In a violent storm in London on this date in 1846, 7,000 window panes in the Houses of Parliament, 300 in Old Scotland Yard, 10,000 in Leicester Square and many more in Regent Street, Somerset House and Buckingham Palace, were shattered by hailstones.
7. In 1785, Caroline Herschel became the first woman to discover a comet.
8. In 1973, Jerry Garcia celebrated his 31st birthday by playing a concert at Roosevelt Stadium with the Grateful Dead. He was surprised with a cake wheeled on stage, which contained a naked woman. He was, in his words, "embarrassed."
9. There was a mutiny on board the convict transport ship Lady Shaw, on this date in 1797. 60 male convicts and one woman mutinied on the way to from Britain to Australia.
10. In 1996, Darlington Sub-aqua team found 6 fossilised bones in Loch Morar. Could be Morag, cousin of the Loch Ness Monster, it was concluded.

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31 July

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 31 July:

Nostradamus

1. In 1997, two teenagers attempted to steal the Aluminium supports of a 160 foot electric tower. The tower collapsed and crushed them to death.
2. In 1498, Columbus arrived at the island which he named Trinidad (The Trinity).
3. In 1588, the English fleet attacked and defeated the Spanish Armada.
4. Joseph Priestley discovered Oxygen on this date in 1774.
5. For writing The Shortest Way with Dissenters, Daniel Defoe was made to stand in the pillory in front of Temple Bar on this date in 1703. Sympathetic crowds threw Flowers at him instead of mud.
6. In 1928, MGM's first talking motion picture White Shadow of the South Seas was released, and Leo the Lion's roar was heard at the beginning for the first time. There wasn’t much dialogue, however. The only word spoken in the film was Hello.
7. In 1948, President Harry Truman dedicated New York City’s new airport as International Airport at Idlewild Field. Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the airport was renamed in his honour.
8. In 1971, Apollo 15 astronauts James B. Irwin and David R. Scott became the first humans to ride a vehicle on the moon's surface. The astronauts rode around the Hadley-Apennine region of the Moon in their moon buggy.
9. The first US patent was granted to Samuel Hopkins on this date in 1790. It was for a process for making potash and pearl ashes. Mr. Hopkins did not get Patent #1, however, as thousands of patents were issued before someone came up with the bright idea of numbering them.
10. Nostradamus predicted that the world would end on this date in 1999. It didn’t.

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30 July

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 30 July:

1. This date in 1863 saw the birth of car manufacturer Henry Ford, who famously said: “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it’s Black.”
2. Also born on this date, in 1818, was Emily Bronte, author of Wuthering Heights
3. In 1792, the French national anthem La Marseillaise by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, was first sung in Paris.
4. In 2006, the world's longest running music show, Top of the Pops, broadcast for the last time on BBC2 after 42 years.
5. In 1972, 53 caribou were found dead near an army base which had once been a chemical and biological warfare laboratory. The post commander suggested the animals might have been struck by Lightning.
6. In 1918, the police went on strike in London. 2,000 officers marched from Scotland Yard to Tower Hill where they held a meeting calling for more pay and the reinstatement of a colleague dismissed for political activity. Bus and taxi drivers went on point duty and escorted prisoners to court.
7. On this date in 1760, London ceased to be a walled city when three of its city gates were sold for scrap.
8. In 1988, Antonio Gomez dos Santos stood motionless for a record 15 hours, 2 minutes, 55 seconds at a Lisbon shopping centre.
9. Another endurance record was beaten in 2001. Kota Baru museum Malaysia. Malena Hassan had spent 30 days in a small cage with 2000 Scorpions, and only got stung seven times.
10. In 2010, thousands of children in Gaza broke their own world record for the number of Kites flown at the same time.

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29 July

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 29 July:

1. Dutch impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh died on this date in 1890 at the age of 37. Two days earlier, he’d walked into a field and shot himself in the chest and he died of the wound. His works include Starry Night and Vase with twelve Sunflowers. He is also known for having cut off part of his left ear. His last words were “The sadness will last forever.”
2. In 1949, the first regular televised weather forecast was broadcast by the BBC.
3. In 1966, Maureen Cleave’s interview with John Lennon in which he said ‘We’re bigger than Jesus now’ was published. Christians reacted with outrage, burning Beatles records.
4. In 1981, Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul's Cathedral.
5. In 1954, the first part of The Lord of the Rings was published in the UK.
6. On this date in 1907, Baden-Powell officially formed the Boy Scouts.
7. In 1938, the first edition of the Beano comic was published, and comic strip Dennis the Menace first appeared.
8. In 2017, the Charles Kuonen Bridge in the Swiss Alps opened. At 1,621 feet (494 meters), it is the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in the world.
9. In 1948, King George VI opened the 14th modern Olympic games at Wembley Stadium. It was the first Olympic Games after the war.
10. In 1972, Screaming Lord Sutch was arrested in London after jumping from a bus in Downing Street with four naked women.

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28 July

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 28 July:

1. On this date in 1866, Beatrix Potter, Children's writer and illustrator was born. Her books include The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher and The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck. She bred prize Pigs and Sheep.
2. This date in 1655 saw the death of Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, French soldier and writer famous for having a big nose, at the age of 36. Fourteen months earlier, a plank had fallen on his head and he died of complications resulting from that.
3. In 2000, the first eviction from the Big Brother house took place. The dubious honour went to a contestant named Sada.
4. In 1914, the Foxtrot was first danced at the New Amsterdam Roof Garden in New York. Music by Harry Fox (who else?).
5. In 1988, Stuart Lack, aged 19, donated bone marrow to his father Alan to save him from leukaemia. Eight years before, Alan Lack had donated bone marrow to Stuart, to save him from the same disease.
6. In 1586, Sir Thomas Harriot brought the first Potatoes to Britain when he docked at Plymouth after sailing from Colombia.
7. In 1995, a Cricket match between England and the West Indies at Old Trafford was stopped, not because of rain for once, but because of sunshine. Sunlight reflected off a nearby glass roof was blinding the batsmen.
8. In 1983, Robert Paul Yarrington, who’d collected $210,000 for the loss of his left foot in a motorcycle accident, was convicted of insurance fraud in San Jose. He’d hired two friends to stage the accident and hack off his foot with a hatchet.
9. In 1814, Percy Bysshe Shelley, already married to Harriet Westbrook, eloped to France with Mary Wollstonecraft.
10. In 1945, a twin-engined B-25 light bomber crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building. The plane's fuel tank exploded and six floors were engulfed in flame, killing 13, and injuring 26. One engine shot through an elevator shaft, severing the cables and sending the car plummeting to the basement. A woman called Betty Lou Oliver was in the lift at the time, and fell 1,000 feet/75 floors but miraculously survived, setting the world record for the longest survived elevator fall. The pilot, Lt. Colonel William F. Smith, Jr., was concluded to be to blame as he’d ignored LaGuardia Airport when they told him to land, and decided instead to continue his flight over fog-shrouded New York City. It was Saturday, and fortunately the offices were closed.

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27 July

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 27 July:

1. In 1870, Hilaire Belloc, English author of The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts, was born during a thunderstorm in France. His nickname was “Old Thunder.”
2. In 1586, Sir Walter Raleigh brought the first tobacco to England from Virginia.
3. Bugs Bunny made his "official" début in the Warner Brothers animated cartoon short A Wild Hare on this date in 1940.
4. In 1900, the H.J. Heinz Company, the one which claims 57 varieties, was incorporated.
5. In 1888, the first electric vehicle, designed by Philip W. Pratt, was demonstrated in Boston. It was a tricycle driven by storage batteries.
6. In 1949, Group Captain John Cunningham, test pilot and World War II night fighter hero, flew the world’s first jet airliner, the 40 passenger de Havilland Comet, on its maiden flight.
7. In 1986, Greg LeMond became the first American to win the Tour de France.
8. In 2001, Ian Johnstone flew to England from Australia to propose to his girlfriend, Amy Dolby. At the same time, she’d decided to fly to Sydney to pay him a surprise visit. Their stopovers in Singapore coincided, but sadly, they didn’t meet.
9. Cindy Hartman's phone rang in the middle of the night in Conway, Arkansas, on this date in 1994. When she got up to answer it, she discovered an armed burglar in her home. Her reaction was to kneel, and ask if she could pray for him. This must have triggered something in the burglar, because he broke down, apologised and knelt to pray with her. He returned her belongings, borrowed a shirt to wipe away his fingerprints, and left his gun behind when he drove away.
10. In 1964, Sir Winston Churchill made his last appearance in the House of Commons.

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26 July

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 26 July:

1. This date in 1856 saw the birth of George Bernard Shaw, who wrote over 60 plays, including Candida, Pygmalion and Saint Joan. He won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature. He said, “If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion.”
2. Born this date in 1875 was Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, Carl Jung. He emphasised understanding the mind using Dreams, art, mythology, world religion and philosophy. He studied alchemy, astrology, sociology, as well as literature and the arts. His most notable ideas include the concept of archetypes, the collective unconscious and synchronicity.
3. In 1989, Leslie Merry, 56, was killed by a Turnip thrown from a passing car in London. The vegetable knocked Merry off his feet, broke one of his ribs and ruptured his spleen; though it was respiratory failure brought on by the accident which caused his death.
4. In 1847, Liberia declared independence from the American Colonisation Society and became a republic, Africa's first sovereign, black-ruled democratic nation.
5. In 2018, a team of Russian scientists in collaboration with Princeton University announced that they had brought two female nematodes back to life after being frozen in permafrost from around 42,000 years ago. The two nematodes the oldest confirmed living animals on the planet.
6. The first book in Esperanto was published on this date in 1887. Esperanto is a language invented by Polish Dr. L. L. Zamenhof, intended for use between people who speak different native languages. Zamenhof created it with the purpose of promoting peace and understanding among cultures.
7. In 1969, scientists got their first look at the rocks brought back from the Moon – but were not allowed to touch them.
8. In 1745, the first recorded women's Cricket match was played near Guildford, between teams from Hambledon and Bramley.
9. The Disestablishment Bill was passed on this date in 1869, officially dissolving the Church of Ireland. The organised opposition to this legislation had coined one of longest words in the English language: antidisestablishmentarianism.
10. In 1995, the eternal flame honouring those killed in World War II went out in the Russian town of Taganrog because the town had not paid its gas bill.

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25 July

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 25 July:

James I

1. A British army surgeon named James Barry died on this date in 1865 at the age of 70; whereupon it was discovered that Dr Barry was a woman, making her the first woman doctor in the British Isles.
2. James VI of Scotland was crowned James I of England on this date in 1603.
3. On this date in 1948, Bread rationing ended in Britain.
4. In 1872, a shower of rain included thousands of black worms, about the size of Honey Bees.
5. In 1909, French car headlamp maker and aviator Louis Bleriot towed a 28 hp monoplane behind a white Horse to a field in Calais. He climbed into the cockpit and allegedly asked, "Where is England?" before taking off. 37 minutes later, he crash landed in Northfall Meadow, Dover, England. It was the world's first international overseas flight, which netted Blériot the £1,000 prize the Daily Mail had offered to the first person to fly the Channel in either direction. The wooden plane, held together with Piano wire, was classified as yacht by customs officers.
6. In 1959, the first-ever crossing of the English Channel by Hovercraft took place. Sir Christopher Cockerell took two hours and three minutes to reach France (86½ minutes slower than Bleriot.).
7. In 1998 Louis Bleriot III attempted to re-enact his grandfather's cross Channel flight, using one of Bleriot's three surviving aircraft. He crashed into a lake 37 seconds after take off.
8. In 1871, William Schneider invented the merry-go-round, aka the Carousel in Davenport, Iowa.
9. On this date in 2000 at Charles de Gaulle Airport, an Air France Concorde crashed into a hotel in Gonesse north of Paris, killing 100 passengers, 9 crew, and 4 on the ground. It was the first time Concorde had ever crashed. It was thought a tyre had been punctured by a metal strip on the runway, and fragments had started an engine fire. Alice Brooking from Kent had a lucky escape when she jumped from her Hotel window seconds before the explosion.
10. In 1979, President Carter issued a letter absolving Dr. Samuel Mudd, the physician who’d treated John Wilkes Booth for a broken leg, of any role in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

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24 July

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 24 July:

1. Amelia Earhart, US aviation pioneer was born on this date in 1897. Earhart was the first woman to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean in 1932. In 1935, she made the first solo flight from Honolulu to the Mainland America. Two years later she attempted the first round-the-world flight along the equator with navigator Frederick Noonan; her plane vanished after take-off from New Guinea. She was never seen again and nobody knows what happened to her. She said: "Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others."
2. In 1701, the US city of Detroit was founded by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac as a fur trading post which he called Font-Pontchartain du Détroit, between Lakes St. Clair and Erie. Cadillac named the settlement Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit. "Detroit" is French for straits and there were some near the settlement.
3. In 1946, Norma Jean Dougherty signed her first contract with 20th Century Fox. A condition of the contract was that she had to change her name. She chose "Monroe", her mother's maiden name. It was Ben Lyon who suggested "Marilyn" as her first name.
4. In 1969, the Apollo XI astronauts, two of whom had been the first men to set foot on the moon, splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean. President Richard Nixon commented, “The greatest week in the history of the world since the creation”.
5. Instant Coffee was invented on this date in 1938.
6. Patricia Cheeseman, aged 6, received the first successful treatment with insulin at Guy’s Hospital, London on this date in 1925.
7. In 1908, 56 runners ran the London Marathon beginning at the east lawn of Windsor Castle. An extra 385 yards was added to the 26 mile course so they’d finish in front of the Royal Box at White City Stadium.
8. In 1847, Brigham Young and his Mormon followers arrived at the Valley of Salt Lake, where they would establish the centre of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Brigham Young founded the State of Deseret; the Federal government later changed the name to Utah.
9. In 1992 Yokohama Rubber Co. was forced to recall its tyres after it was discovered their computer-designed tread resembled the Islamic word for Allah.
10. In 1911, Hiram Bingham discovered the Lost City of the Incas, Vilcapampa (now called Machu Picchu), where the last Incan Emperors found refuge from the conquistadors.

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23 July

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 23 July:

1. This date in 1892 saw the birth of Ras Tafari Makonnen, Haile Selassie, (Lion of Judah) Emperor of Ethiopia. He went into exile when the Italians invaded his country in 1936. Ethiopia was liberated by British and Ethiopian forces in 1941, whereupon he returned and resumed his position, the last emperor of Ethiopia's 3,000 year old monarchy until he was overthrown in a military coup. He died in Addis Ababa at the age of 83, almost a year later. To the Rastafari movement, he is considered to be the religious symbol of God incarnate.
2. On this date in 1913, Michael Foot, politician, Labour Party leader from 1980-83 was born. A passionate supporter of Plymouth Argyle Football Club, for his 90th birthday, the club registered him as a player and gave him the shirt number, 90. This made him the oldest registered player in the history of Football.
3. In 1884, cabin boy Richard Parker was killed and eaten by the three other survivors of the yacht Mignonette, who’d been forced to abandon ship when the pump failed during a storm. The cabin boy was dying, anyway, so it solved the problem of dwindling food. The survivors were eventually rescued, and confessed what they’d done. They were tried and sentenced to death, but thanks to public sympathy their sentence was reduced to six months in prison.
4. In 1993, Stephen Cawthorne, 43, an engineer from York, died from head injuries when his Yamaha 600cc motorcycle was jumped on by an emu in a narrow cutting near Mount Surprise, Queensland.
5. In 2012, the Olympic torch featured in a special live section of EastEnders. Actor Perry Fenwick, in character as Billy Mitchell, carried it through the fictional London borough of Walford as part of the 2012 Olympic torch relay.
6. Donald Campbell broke the world water speed record on Ullswater on this date in 1955 when he reached 202.32mph in Bluebird.
7. In 1962, the American Communications satellite, Telstar, made its first trans-Atlantic transmission which included excerpts of a Baseball game at Wrigley field, a live press conference by president Kennedy, and a performance by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The event inspired British record producer Joe Meek to write the tune Telstar. The instrumental tune was recorded later in the week by the Tornadoes.
8. In 776 BC, the first Olympic Games opened in Olympia. The foot race was won by Coroibos, a cook.
9. In 1855, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning attended a seance conducted by medium Daniel Dunglas Home, at the residence of London solicitor John Rymer. The Brownings claimed to have witnessed a number of strange occurrences during the meeting, including the manifestations of several disembodied hands, one of which placed a wreath on Mrs Browning’s head. (“Thank you, Thing.”)
10. In 1995, Russian scientists protesting against poor wages occupied a cage at Moscow Zoo, with the label: “Rational man: Homo sapiens, Subspecies: scientific workers”.

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There is a whole new universe of superheroes to discover in my novels. The Ultraheroes Universe includes at least one alternative dimension, good guys, bad guys, secrets, romance and more.

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