1 April: Carlisle

On this date in 1974 Carlisle was granted city status. 10 things you might not know about Carlisle:

1. The settlement began as a Roman fort back in 72 AD, providing support for Hadrian's Wall. The Roman settlement was named Luguvalium, which means "strength of Lugus".
2. Carlisle is the only city in Cumbria.
3. It is located 8 miles (13 km) south of the Scottish border and has at times been part of Scotland. It isn’t in the Domesday Book, because at that time it was part of Scotland.
4. Her Majesty’s Theatre in Carlisle was the first theatre ever to be lit by Electricity in 1880.
5. It has a significant place in Arthurian legend as the main setting for the tale of Sir Gawain, who, legend has it, stayed at the Castle of Carlisle while on a hunting expedition in Inglewood Forest. He slept with the Carle's wife and killed him. It has even been suggested that Carlisle is the actual Camelot, mythical seat of King Arthur's court.
6. The city might be cursed. In the 16^th century, a curse was said to have been invoked by Archbishop Dunbar of Glasgow against people from Carlisle who crossed the border into Scotland to pillage and steal cattle. For the millennium celebrations, the local council commissioned a 14-tonne granite artwork inscribed with all 1,069 words of the curse. After this was installed, there were floods, an outbreak of foot and mouth disease, job losses, and perhaps worst of all in the minds of some, the football team failed to score goals. The Council considered removing the stone, but a local white witch counselled against doing that, because it would show they believed in the curse, thus giving it more power.
7. The castle is over 900 years old. Built in 1092 by William Rufus, it served as a prison for Mary Queen of Scots in 1568 and now houses the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment and the Border Regiment Museum.
8. The first Pillar Box on the UK mainland was installed in Carlisle in 1853.
9. Sir Walter Scott, the famous Scottish author of Rob Roy, was married at the cathedral on a visit to the Lake District.
10. Famous people from Carlisle include Eddie Stobart, haulage magnate, Grace Dent, restaurant critic and broadcaster, Jancis Robinson, Master of Wine, journalist and wine critic and Melvyn Bragg, presenter and broadcaster.

Character Birthday

April. Member of the Calendar Mob. Her power is weather manipulation, in particular, causing rain. She is sometimes nick-named "April Shower," due to her power, and sometimes, rather cruelly, "April Fool" due to her limited intelligence and reputation as a dizzy blonde.

31 March: Fingerprints

On this date in 1892 the world’s first fingerprinting bureau was formally opened by the Buenos Aires Chief of Police. 10 things you might not know about fingerprints:

1. Fingerprints form in the womb, at about week 10-15 of pregnancy. Scientists believe fingerprints form when the bottom layer of the epidermis grows at a different rate to the rest of the skin. The patterns are based on our movement, location in the womb and composition of our mother’s amniotic fluid. Hence even identical Twins have different fingerprints, although there can be a genetic propensity towards one of the three types of pattern.
2. Which are loops, whorls and arches. Loops are the most common; about 60% of fingerprints are loops. Arches are the rarest with only 5% of fingerprints having this pattern.
3. It’s possible, though rare, for people to have no fingerprints at all. There are a small number of genetic conditions, including Adermatoglyphia, in which a child is born with no fingerprints. It’s sometimes referred to as “immigration delay disease,” for the trouble it causes people trying to cross borders. There are only four families in the entire world who are affected by this condition. Fingerprints can be eroded or erased by rough tactile work, chemotherapy or even “a good case of poison ivy”. Unless there’s permanent tissue damage, they’ll regenerate. When fingerprinting first became a common means to solve crimes, some gangsters, like John Dillinger, went to great and probably very painful efforts to remove them. Dillingner burned his prints off with acid. While he was never convicted using fingerprint evidence, after his death the faint traces of his former ridges and whorls could still be seen.
4. Is there an evolutionary reason for fingerprints? Perhaps. They help us grip things without our hands sliding off, and might be advantageous to the sense of touch. It could be that they helped our tree dwelling ancestors hold on to branches. That could be why the other animals which have them tend to be tree dwellers, too. Our cousins the Gorillas and chimpanzees have them. So do Koalas. In fact, koala fingerprints are so similar to ours that they could confuse police in Australia. (The koala did it!)
5. The world’s oldest fingerprint was discovered in Kuwait on a piece of broken clay pot dating from the Stone Age. The print is 7,300 years old.
6. While Argentina was using fingerprint evidence from 1892, the first legal conviction based on fingerprint evidence in the USA didn’t occur until 1910. A burglar who shot the owner of the house he broke into left his prints on a newly painted bannister. The UK was slightly ahead of the game with the first conviction occurring in 1902. The perp in this case hadn’t committed a murder; he’d merely stolen some billiard balls.
7. The scientific name for fingerprints is 'dermatoglyph' from the Greek derma (skin) and glyph (sculpted).
8. In 1948, British police fingerprinted the entire male population of the town of Blackburn in an attempt to find out who had killed a three year old child. The perpetrator had left his fingerprints on a glass bottle but they didn’t match anything the Blackburn police had on record. Anyone who refused was leaned on by the police and it was one of these people who turned out to be the killer.
9. The Great Train Robbery gang were caught because they played Monopoly with the money they’d stolen while in hiding. They left their prints on the Monopoly board at Leatherslade Farm.
10. It’s possible now to use fingerprints to tell if a person has been using drugs. The technology can detect the presence of a number of illegal drugs, including opiates, cocaine and cannabis from just one fingerprint sample. It’s quick and easier than collecting blood, urine or saliva. It even works on dead bodies so it can be quickly determined whether drugs were a factor in a person’s death.

Character Birthday

Atom Axe: a solo villain who lost his arm in a fight with Blackblade. Dr. Chaos of the Infra League grafted a replacement limb onto Atom Axe, a bionic arm in the form of an axe, and gave him various other defensive mechanisms and powers such as flight. Chaos had hoped Atom Axe would join his team, but he wasn’t one for co-operating with others and walked away, enraging Chaos. Atom Axe is cold and calculating and the epitome of the "mad axe man". His goal is revenge upon Blackblade for severing his arm.

30 March: Cheshire Day

Today is Cheshire Day. Here are 10 things you might not know about the English county of Cheshire:

1. Cheshire is bordered by Wrexham County Borough, Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire. The area of Cheshire covers 2344 square kilometers (905 square miles).
2. The name of the county derives from the Anglo Saxon name for the area, “Legeceasterscir”, which means “City of Legions.” The Romans lived in Cheshire for approximately 400 years. Their town and fort at Chester was known as ‘Deva Victoria’, and they allegedly wanted the capital of Britain to be here.
3. It’s believed to be the first place in England that Vikings coming over from Ireland settled in.
4. The Domesday Book records Cheshire as being mostly ‘wasteland’. After the Norman invasion, many people fled the area, so a lot of the property and land was abandoned.
5. Britain’s oldest sporting venue in continual use is here. It’s Chester Racecourse. The first race was held in 1539. It was set up to provide the people with an alternative to Football, a very violent game at the time. This was the brainchild of one Mayor Henry Gee, which is possibly the origin of the slang “gee-gees” for horses.
6. The largest working Salt mine in Britain is at Winsford. It uses the world’s largest underground digger, weighing in at 130 tonnes and produces 1,000,000 tonnes of salt per year.
7. The highest peak in Cheshire is called ‘Shining Tor’, which is 1,834 feet above sea level and located on the Derbyshire/Cheshire border between Macclesfield and Buxton. Also worth a mention is the second highest, Shutlingsloe, at 1,660 ft, located to the south of Macclesfield Forest. It has a distinctive shape and is nicknamed the "Matterhorn of Cheshire".
8. The county flower has been the cuckooflower since 2002.
9. Famous people from Cheshire include Gary Barlow, Harry Styles, Daniel Craig, Tim Curry, sailor Ben Ainslie, cricketer Ian Botham, marathon runner Paula Radcliffe and authors Elizabeth Gaskell and Lewis Carroll.
10. In Macclesfield there is a flight of 108 steps, and according to local legend if you can make it all the way up without taking a breath your wish will be granted.

Character Birthday

Cassiopeia, a young woman from Classica, Infinitus, who, when her betrothed, John Bladesman, fails to return from a quest, goes in search of him. She follows his trail to Bird Island, and concludes he has gone through the rapidly shrinking hole in the sky. With the help of Multi-girl and the Constellations, she travels through the wormhole to Earth. She teams up with Multi-girl who is also seeking someone she loves. When Multi-girl finds her man, Cassiopeia leaves her to continue her search alone. In due course, she realises that marriage and a family were never her destiny; so she joins the Constellations to become a space adventurer. Her story is told in Over the Rainbow.

Over the Rainbow

'We're not in Trinity anymore,' says Leonard Marx, quoting a line from an old Innovian  movie. The moon is different; the planes flying overhead are different. Nobody has any idea where they are or if it's possible to get home. 

In this strange new world, people from the highly technical Innovia and the less advanced Classica must co-operate in order to survive. In addition, travel through the inter-dimensional wormhole has given some people unusual and unexpected powers.

Innovia mourns the loss of its superhero, Power Blaster, last seen carrying a nuclear bomb to the upper atmosphere away from the inhabited Bird Island. They don't believe he could possibly have survived.  Power Blaster has survived, but is close to death and stranded in the new dimension. He is nursed back to health by a Classican woman, Elena. She has no idea who he is, only that she is falling in love with the handsome stranger.  

Shanna sets out to discover what happened to Nathan Tate, who didn't return from his hiking holiday, not knowing her life is about to be turned inside out and upside down. 

Meanwhile, Desi Troyes, the man responsible for the catastrophe, is at large on the new world, plotting how he can transfer his plans for world domination to the planet he now finds himself on - Earth. 

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle

29 March: Mermaid Day

Today is Mermaid Day. A mermaid is a mythical sea-dwelling creature, with the head and body of a woman and a fish's tail below the waist. Here are ten things you didn’t know about mermaids:

1. The idea of mermaids has probably been around for as long as humans have been observing creatures in the Oceans. Archaeologists have found accounts in Mesopotamian mythology dating back more than five thousand years, of Oannes, a male fish-god. An early mermaid legend comes from Syria, around 1000 BC. The goddess Atargatis wanted to take the form of a fish, but the gods didn’t want her to give up her great beauty, so she was only allowed to become a fish from the waist down.
2. The earliest depiction of a mermaid in England is in a Norman chapel in Durham Castle, built around 1078. The mermaid, strangely, appears beside two leopards and in several hunting scenes.
3. There are legends from all over the world about mermaids or similar creatures. They even appear in landlocked countries. In Africa, mythical water spirits called Mami Wata (meaning "Water as Mother" or "Mother of the Waters") are seen as benevolent spirits who bring healing and wisdom, and ward off disaster. In Ireland, legends speak of merrows, which look like beautiful mermaids with green hair. Many legends depict mermaid like creatures as malevolent, or at least unpredictable. The ancient Greek sirens, for example, are said to lure sailors to their deaths, and the Slavic Rusalki were believed to be the ghosts of women who died from drowning. The Rusalki lured other to watery graves out of anger and revenge.
4. In medieval times, mermaids were assumed to exist alongside other sea creatures such as Whales or Dolphins. It was an accepted fact they existed. Sightings were often reported. Christopher Columbus claimed to have seen mermaids, although he commented that they weren’t as beautiful as he’d been led to believe. It’s generally believed that he’d actually seen Manatees. Considering how hard it can be, even today, to identify a fast moving sea creature when you only get a brief glimpse of part of its body above the water at a distance, especially when the light or weather isn’t great, it’s quite understandable that sailors in olden days imagined they were seeing mermaids.
5. Could mermaids really exist, though? Scientists don’t think so. Not only is there a lack of genuine physical evidence for them, their existence would raise some tricky questions such as how would a mammal/fish hybrid regulate its body temperature, digest its food or reproduce?
6. If they are going to reproduce, then mermen, their male counterparts, would have to exist. Mermen tend to be described as less beautiful and more vengeful than the females. They, too, summon storms and drown people. For example, the Blue Men of the Minch, said to live in the Outer Hebrides have blue-tinted skin and grey beards. The Blue Men often challenge a captain to a rhyming contest; if the captain can beat them, they might spare the ship.
7. As for the Little Mermaid, Hans Christian Andersen's original tale is way darker than the Disney version. In Andersen's story, the mermaid princess has to sacrifice her tongue to obtain legs; walking is incredibly painful for her, like "walking on knives." The Disney tale has a happy ending with the princess getting her man and living happily ever after, but Andersen's story doesn’t end so well The princess fails to undo her curse and the prince marries someone else. The little mermaid kills herself and ends up living with the "spirits of the air". The statue in Copenhagen is by the Danish sculptor Edvard Eriksen who was commissioned to create it in the early 20^th century.
8. Sailors, needless to say, have a fair bit of folklore concerning mermaids. They can be both lucky and omens of disaster. They are popular forms for the figurehead of a ship, because sailors believed that they would appease the cruel sea and bring good weather and fortune. There’s a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I known as the Armada portrait, in which there is a mermaid carved into her throne. It’s possible the mermaid represents Elizabeth's ability to provide calm seas for her fleet yet summon storms for her Spanish enemies, much like a mermaid.
9. Mary Queen of Scots was also represented by a mermaid in contemporary drawings, but these were a lot less complimentary. In these representations the mermaid was shown alongside a Hare. Historians believe the mermaid was a figure of temptation and prostitution while the hare depicted lust, in contrast to her cousin Elizabeth’s reputation as a pure virgin queen. Some legends say mermaids don’t have immortal souls, and the fact they are often depicted holding combs and Mirrors is a sign they were the epitome of vanity.
10. Mermaids sometimes appear in heraldry. Mermen, not so much. Crests and coats of arms which include mermaids include those of Sir Thomas Cusack (1490–1571), Michaëlle Jean, former Governor General of Canada, The city of Norfolk, Virginia, the city of Warsaw and the University of Birmingham, England.

Character Birthday

Caroline Drake, Tabitha’s cynical and practical older sister, who appears in Death and Faxes.

Death and Faxes

Several women have been found murdered - it looks like the work of a ruthless serial killer. Psychic medium Maggie Flynn is one of the resources DI Jamie Swan has come to value in such cases - but Maggie is dead, leaving him with only the telephone number of the woman she saw as her successor, her granddaughter, Tabitha Drake.

Tabitha, grief-stricken by Maggie's death and suffering a crisis of confidence in her ability, wants nothing to do with solving murder cases. She wants to hold on to her job and find Mr Right (not necessarily in that order); so when DI Swan first contacts her, she refuses to get involved.

The ghosts of the victims have other ideas. They are anxious for the killer to be caught and for names to be cleared - and they won't leave Tabitha alone. It isn't long before Tabitha is drawn in so deeply that her own life is on the line.

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28 March: 87

Today is the 87^th day of the year. 10 fun facts about the number 87:

1. Australian cricketers see the number 87 as an unlucky score. It is referred to as "the devil's number", because 87 is 13 runs short of a century.
2. The Gettysburg Address contains the words "Four Score and Seven Years ago…" since it’s the number of years between the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Battle of Gettysburg.
3. 87 is the atomic number of Francium.
4. The Wenger Swiss Army Knife version XXL is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's most multi-functional penknife. It has 87 tools.
5. London bus route 87 runs between Wandsworth Plain and Aldwych / Drury Lane.
6. In Lord of the Rings, Aragorn is 87 years old.
7. David Bowie’s 1987 CD Never Let Me Down includes a song called '87 and Cry.
8. William Shakespeare’s sonnet 87 is the one that begins: “Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing.”
9. The first Black Hole ever photographed was designated M87.
10. In numerology the person influenced by 87 is focussed on the welfare of their family. If they don’t have a family, they long for one, and if they do they take their family responsibilities very seriously. Family need not mean blood relatives only but can encompass neighbours and colleagues as well. 87 is comfortable interacting with others. In social situations, 87 tends to put itself forward to guide and execute the agenda.

Character Birthday

Fyre, aka Seraphina Greenwood-Warner. She can fly and has fire based powers which manifested when she was just four years old. The Power League, believing she would grow up to become extremely powerful, tasked Incendio with training her and recruiting her by means of befriending her single mother, Agnes. Agnes trusted him enough to babysit while she went out on a date, and he took the child out to teach her to set fire to things. The Freedom League were called to deal with the situation and they took Seraphina under their wing after that. She would in due course enter into a relationship with Hurricane, the brother of her best friend.

March 27: 86

Today is the 86^th day of the year. 10 fun facts about the number 86:

1. There are 86 metals on the modern Periodic Table.
2. However, the element with the atomic number 86 is not a metal. It’s radon, a radioactive, colourless, odourless, tasteless noble gas.
3. 86 in Roman numerals is LXXXVI. In binary it’s 1010110.
4. "86" is a song by Green Day from the album Insomniac.
5. In London, the 86 Bus runs between Stratford Bus Station and Romford Station.
6. 86 -Eighty Six- is a Japanese science fiction light novel series written by Asato Asato and illustrated by Shirabii.
7. +86 is the code for international direct dial phone calls to China.
8. 86 is an American slang term, primarily in the food and restaurant industry, indicating that something is not available or out of stock. It has by extension come to mean a customer who is barred. Something that has been eighty-sixed has been got rid of. The 1989 novel Eighty-sixed by David B. Feinberg, for example, refers to the gay community being wiped out by AIDS.
9. The 86 Gallery is an art gallery based in Ventura, California in which all but about four of the artworks on display contain the number 86.
10. In numerology, a person with the number 86 in a major position of their numerology chart tends to have an adventurous outlook on life. Maintaining a balanced outlook on life is important to them. They are realistic and tends to make a good executive with appropriate education and experience.

Character Birthday

Arrow, member of Combat Team Epsilon. He and his adoptive siblings Touchstone and Questor get their powers from a fragment of a meteorite they picked up after the meteor destroyed the orphanage they’d been living in. The only survivors, they were adopted by one of the firefighters who attended the scene. Arrow’s power is superspeed. However, both he and his siblings have developed a dependency on the fragment and cannot be parted from it, or each other.

26 March: International Starling Day

Today is International Starling Day. Here are 10 facts you might not know about starlings:

1. The scientific name for the starling is Sturnus vulgaris, and the common name comes from the fact that when they fly, they look a bit star shaped.
2. They are about 20 cm (8 in) long with glossy plumage which looks Black from a distance, but when you get closer you can see a sheen of Purple and Green. In winter, they are speckled with White.
3. Their beaks are dark in colour in winter but they change to Yellow in time for the breeding season in order to attract females. Their beaks are very strong. They can probe for insect larvae or worms underground and open their beaks in the soil, even in frosty weather.
4. They are very sociable birds and known for large flocks which perform amazing aerobatic displays known as murmurations just before they roost in the evening. There might be thousands of birds in the flock.
5. Most of the starlings you see in the UK live here all year round, but in winter they will be joined by starlings which have migrated from further north.
6. Starlings are commonly used as laboratory birds, second only to the Pigeon.
7. They are excellent mimics, which has been noted in literature. In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Hotspur says: "The king forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer. But I will find him when he is asleep, and in his ear I'll holler 'Mortimer!' Nay I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing but Mortimer, and give it to him to keep his anger still in motion."
8. In fact, Shakespeare’s mention of the birds in his plays is the reason European starlings were introduced to America. Legend has it that a group of Shakespeare fans in the late 19^th century thought it would be lovely if all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare plays could be found and observed in New York’s Central Park. Of all the birds they imported for this purpose, the starling was the most successful and is now common all over North America.
9. Mozart had a pet starling. He bought it from a pet shop after hearing it sing one of his compositions. The bird could sing part of his Piano Concerto in G Major. Mozart became very attached to his pet starling and arranged an elaborate funeral for it when it died three years later. It has been suggested that his A Musical Joke was inspired by a starling’s song.
10. In the medieval Welsh tale Mabinogion, Branwen tamed a starling, "taught it words", and sent it across the Irish Sea with a message to her brothers, Bran and Manawydan, who then sailed from Wales to Ireland to rescue her.

Character birthday

Black Rose, formerly known as Red Tornado, is the youngest child of Superwil and Electric Blue. Her power is super speed and fast reaction times, but unlike most of her siblings, did not inherit the ability to fly. 

Hence in a battle with supervillains, she needed to be rescued and carried to safety by her brother, Captain Crimson. He was attacked by one of the villains and accidentally dropped her. As far as the Warner family could tell, Red Tornado had fallen into an active volcano and they had to accept she was gone. 

They did not know that one of the villains had caught her in an indestructible net and though badly burned, she had survived. The Power League fixed her up with bionic limbs and a bionic eye; through these she acquired the ability to fly. The eye has a rear vision mode enabling her to see behind her and can also function as a camera. At first, she had amnesia which the villains used to poison her mind against her family, which resulted in her dyeing her red hair black and changing her name from Red Tornado to Black Rose. 

She was given the mission to kill her family and other superheroes during a royal wedding. However, Rose decided not to do so as innocent people she had no grudge against would also die. She wanted to exact revenge on her family on her own terms. She hid in a Galorvian ski resort working as a ski patroller and during that time fell in love with Art Kostellov, son of the resort’s founder. In due course, the Power League came after her and her family rescued her from them. Her bionic limbs had been deactivated, however. 

The Warners had no idea this was their long lost daughter and agonised over whether Superwil and Blaze should restore her powers. She was assessed by counsellor Tina Bryant to determine whether she would turn on the Warners once her powers were restored. During this time she learned her family did love her after all. In due course, she would marry Art and live with him in the mountains in Galorvia. Her story is told in Tale of Two Sisters.

A Tale of Two Sisters

During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.

Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.

As Jessica puts the first part of her revenge plan in motion, she finds herself with an agonising decision to make. Before she can decide, the Alliance come for her, determined to make her do their bidding. This time, it's the Alliance who leave her, crippled and at the mercy of the Warner family, who have no idea who the Alliance's Black Rose really is.

Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?

Jessica's older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?

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25 March: 84

Today is the 84^th day of the year. 10 things you might not know about the number 84:

1. +84 is the code for international direct dial phone calls to Vietnam.
2. It’s the atomic number of Polonium, a rare and highly radioactive metal with no stable isotopes.
3. In dominoes, 84 is a version of the game 42, played with two sets of dominoes.
4. Eighty Four is an unincorporated town in Pennsylvania, USA, formerly known as Smithville. Since there was another town nearby with the same name, it was changed to Eighty Four in July 1884. Opinion is divided as to whether the town was named after the year, because it was the year Grover Cleveland became President, or because the postmaster "didn't have a whole lot of imagination." The name could also relate to a mile marker on a nearby railway or that it honours one Major Alexander Cooper Hamilton, who served in Pennsylvania's 84th Voluntary infantry regiment.
5. In 1956, a company was formed in the area which sells building supplies, which was named after the town. The company is called 84 Lumber.
6. It takes Uranus 84 years to orbit the sun.
7. RAF 84 Squadron is a squadron which has been based overseas since 1920, currently at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. Its symbol is a Scorpion and its motto is “Scorpions sting.”
8. 84, Charing Cross Road is a 1970 book by Helene Hanff, about her 20 year correspondence with Frank Doel, chief buyer of Marks & Co antiquarian booksellers, based at that address. The book has been made into a play and a film.
9. There is no London bus route 84 in the TfL network. There is, however, a number 84 bus, run by a different operator, which links North London to St Albans in Hertfordshire. The buses are red and almost identical to the London buses, until you get on one and discover they won’t take your Oyster Card.
10. In numerology, people influenced by this number are sociable and creative, and may make money from their artistic talents. They will particularly enjoy inspiring and encouraging other artists.

Character birthdays

Firecracker: Derek Thorpe, a biologist who found himself out of work when the lab he worked for closed due to lack of funding. He was forced to take a cleaning job at a nuclear power station. He is able to teleport, fly and shoot energy bolts. The origin of his power is unknown. His expertise made it possible for the whole of Guy Fawkes’s Gunpowder Lot to gain immunity to fire and explosions. He and his team appear in Who’s That Girl?

Llew Powell, entrepreneur and playboy who owns the Nefertiti entertainment and leisure companies. He is the owner of Combat Team Alpha.

Who's That Girl?

Matt Webster lives in a tower block and attends a failing school. He dreams of being a spy like James Bond. Little does he know that he is being watched by someone who can make him into even more than that – a superhero.

His first solo mission is to attend a ball at the Decembrian Embassy and discover who is planning to steal a priceless diamond. While there, he meets the mysterious Lady Antonia du Cane, and is powerfully drawn to her. It soon becomes clear, however, that Lady du Cane is not what she seems. Matt’s quest to discover who she really is almost costs him his career.

A modern day Guy Fawkes gathers a coterie around him with the aim of blowing up Parliament with a nuclear bomb. To achieve this, they need money. Lots of it. Selling the Heart of Decembria Diamond will provide more than enough. All that stands in their way is the Freedom League – but the League is beset by internal disagreements. Can the heroes put their differences aside in time to save the day?

Prime Minister Richard Miller and his wife Fiona grieve for their daughter, Yasmin, who has been missing for three years, and is presumed to be dead. Viper agent Violet Parker could hold the key to what happened to Yasmin, but Violet is accused of giving away the organisation’s secrets. She is to be executed without trial. Will she take her knowledge of what happened to Yasmin with her to her grave?

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24 March: The Shoemaker Levy comet

The Shoemaker Levy comet was discovered on this date in 1993. 10 things you might not know about it:

1. The comet’s official name is Shoemaker-Levy 9, because it was discovered by Carolyn and Gene Shoemaker and David Levy. It was the ninth comet of its type, ie a periodic comet, that they’d discovered, hence the number 9. They’d also discovered two more comets of a different type but they use a different naming system.
2. The comet was first spotted in a photograph taken with the 0.4-meter Schmidt Telescope at Mt. Palomar.
3. Since Shoemaker-Levy 9 had already broken up into 20 fragments (labelled A to W) when it was discovered, we don’t know the size of the original comet. Estimates range from 2 to 10 km in diameter. The largest fragments are thought to have been 1 to 3 km in diameter.
4. When discovered, it was already orbiting Jupiter. It had most likely been captured by Jupiter’s gravity, possibly as long as 20-30 years earlier and had been orbiting the planet ever since.
5. In 1992, it made a close approach to the planet and was torn apart by tidal forces.
6. Astronomers got very excited about this because it was very rare to observe a comet which had broken into pieces and it was even more unusual to find one orbiting a planet. They got even more excited when it became clear that the fragments were going to collide with Jupiter, and not only that, but the Galileo space probe, launched in 1989 and due to enter Jupiter’s orbit in 1995, was in a perfect position to observe and beam pictures back to Earth.
7. The impacts started on July 16, 1994, and ended on July 22, 1994.
8. The fragments smashed into Jupiter with the force of 300 million atomic bombs. The fragments created huge plumes 1,200 to 1,900 miles (2,000 to 3,000 kilometres) high and heated the atmosphere to temperatures as hot as 53,000 to 71,000 degrees Fahrenheit (30,000 to 40,000 degrees Celsius). The collisions generated enormous waves which swept across Jupiter at speeds of 450 m/s (1,476 ft/s) and were observed for over two hours after the largest impacts.
9. Afterwards, the scars from the impacts were visible for almost a year, and were even easier to see than Jupiter’s great red spot.
10. What we learned from this is that it is all to possible for a comet to collide with a planet, and had shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Earth the results would have been catastrophic. It meant astronomers began to take that threat more seriously and start actively looking for objects in space that could pose a threat. That said, it also confirmed the idea that massive Jupiter’s gravitational field protects the inner planets by hoovering up many of the objects that could collide with us.

Character birthday

Medoc, doctor and member of Combat Team Alpha. He is a medical genius but was passed over for jobs and promotions. He blamed his short stature for his failure to advance and harbours some bitterness about that; however, the more likely reason that his bedside manner was somewhat lacking. He was taken on as Team Alpha’s healer and is their expert on all things to do with disease and medicine. He’s also known for being blunt to the extent of rudeness at times.

23 March: Erich Fromm Quotes

Erich Fromm, German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist was born on this date in 1900. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the US. Here are 10 quotes:

1. Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.
2. The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.
3. The lust for power is not rooted in strength but in weakness.
4. It takes a moment to tell someone you love them, but it takes a lifetime to prove it.
5. Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
6. An illusion shared by everyone becomes a reality.
7. One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.
8. You have to stop in order to change direction.
9. True love is like a pair of socks: you gotta have two and they've gotta match.
10. Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before.

Character birthday

Enigmatic Man, aka Dr Benedict Cole. A heart surgeon in the Infinitus dimension, his career ended after he accidentally travelled through a wormhole deep in a cave. He had no idea that he’d travelled to another dimension and back, but had gained a “power”, namely that any form of technology was drained of power when he was within range of it. On his return home, his girlfriend died because her pacemaker stopped working when he approached her. The hospital where he worked lost power whenever he entered. Suicidal, he went to a tall building to throw himself off, only to find the lift wouldn’t work. He decided his only option was to steal his father’s yacht and make for Classica, a continent which has little technology and try to make a life there. He got as far as Bird Island, where he visited shrines to see if there was a cure for his affliction, with no luck. When the nuclear test there opened another wormhole, he found himself on Earth. He banded together with others who had come through the wormhole and called themselves The Raiders. After the stable wormhole back to Infinitus was established, Cole did go to Classica and set himself up as a healer using natural and alternative healing methods.

Secrets and Skies

Jack Ward, President of Innovia, owes his life twice over to the enigmatic superhero, dubbed Power Blaster by the press. No-one knows who Power Blaster is or where he comes from - and he wants it to stay that way.

Scientist Desi Troyes has developed a nuclear bomb to counter the ever present threat of an asteroid hitting the planet. When Ward signs the order giving the go ahead for a nuclear test on the remote Bird Island, he has no inkling of Troyes' real agenda, and that he has signed the death warrants of millions of people.

Although the island should have been evacuated, there are people still there: some from the distant continent of Classica; protesters opposed to the bomb test; and Innovians who will not, or cannot, use their communication devices.

Power Blaster knows he must stop the bomb from hitting the island. He also knows it may be the last thing he ever does.

Meanwhile in Innovia, Ward and his staff gather to watch the broadcast of the test. Nobody, not even Troyes himself, has any idea what is about to happen.

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