31 August: Denali (formerly Mount McKinley)

On this date in 2015 Denali, the highest mountain peak in North America, officially regained its original Alaska Native name through an executive order issued by American President Barack Obama. 10 things you might not know about the mountain formerly known as Mount McKinley.

1. It’s the tallest mountain in North America standing at 20,232 feet (6,190 m) above sea-level. It actually has two summits, North and South. The South Summit is the higher one. The North Summit has an elevation of 19,470 ft (5,934 m).

2. It is located in Alaska’s Denali National Park, 130 miles north-northwest of Anchorage and 170 miles southwest of Fairbanks.

3. There are five large glaciers which flow from the top of the mountain: The Peters Glacier, the Muldrow Glacier, the Traleika Glacier, the Ruth Glacier and the Kahiltna Glacier. With a length of 44 mi (71 km), the Kahiltna Glacier is the longest glacier in the Alaska Range.

4. In 1896, the mountain was unofficially named Mount McKinley by a Gold prospector called William Dickey and then officially by the federal government in 1917 to commemorate President William McKinley, who was assassinated in 1901.

5. The dispute over what to call the mountain has been going on since 1975 when the Alaska Legislative asked the US government to change its name to Denali. It took 40 years for it to happen.

6. Denali comes from the Koyukon language and means “The Great One”.

7. The first successful climb was achieved on 7 June 1913, when Walter Harper, Harry Karstens, Hudson Stuck and Robert Tatum reached the top. Hudson Stuck commented, “anyone who thinks that the climbing of Denali is a picnic is badly mistaken.”

8. Part of the reason for that is because Denali is located at 63 degrees North and 151 degrees West. Because it is so far north, there’s a lot of low pressure around it, an effect which is more pronounced than for the rest of the world’s tallest mountains. The temperature can drop to -75 degrees with wind chills as low as -118 degrees. The top of the mountain is permanently covered in Snow. Only about 50% of attempts to climb are successful. The best time to try according to experts, is in April, May or June.

9. The first woman to reach the top was Barbara Washburn in 1947 who climbed with her husband, Bradford, who became the first person to reach the summit twice. The first woman to climb it by herself was Dr. Miri Ercolani in 1982.

10. In 1932, a climbing party was airlifted onto the side of the mountain for the first time. By the 1950s, this had become the standard way to get to the summit, as it cut the expedition time by several weeks.

Character birthday

Whiplash, aka Mark Moore. Employed by Professor Power as a technician, he was regarded as an inconsequential nerd by colleagues. He was someone who was conscientious and beavered away in the background, simply getting things done. Even Seth Power himself rarely noticed the young man, which meant that Moore could eavesdrop on Power League planning meetings without being noticed. Moore was a lonely and awkward young man who spent most of his spare time reading comics, and identifying with the villains more than the heroes. The idea of the Power League excited him, and he fantasised about being part of it. He designed and built the electronic whip to use as a weapon and devised a costume which not only concealed his identity, but protected him from the electric discharges of his weapon.

He then approached Power, as Whiplash, asking to join the League. Power set him a series of unpleasant, difficult and violent tasks as an entry test. Whiplash completed them all while still working in the lab as the unassuming Mark Moore, surreptitiously gathering the knowledge he needed to complete the tasks. To this day, Power is unaware that they are one and the same person.

30 August: 242

Today is the 242^nd day of the year. 10 things you might not know about the number 242:

1. The year 242 was a common year starting on Saturday, known at the time as the Year of the Consulship of Gratus and Lepidus. In this year, the Roman emperor Saloninus was born.

2. The A242 is a road in England running between Reigate and Merstham.

3. +242 is the country code for telephoning the Republic of Congo.

4. 242 Kriemhild is a main belt Asteroid discovered by Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa in 1884 in Vienna, and was named after Kriemhild, a mythological Germanic princess.

5. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 was adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council on November 22, 1967, in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. It formed the basis for later negotiations and led to peace treaties between Israel, Egypt and Jordan and the 1993 and 1995 agreements with the Palestinians.

6. In London the 242 bus runs between Homerton Hospital and Aldgate Station.

7. Plutonium-242 (242Pu or Pu-242) is one of the isotopes of Plutonium, the second longest-lived, with a half-life of 375,000 years.

8. Area code 242 is the telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for The Bahamas.

9. The Roman numeral for 242 is CCXLII and in Binary it’s 11110010.

10. In numerology, 242 resonates with cooperative organisation or performance of business activities. There is companionship, pragmatism, and efficiency. 242 resonates with material acquisition and cooperation. It builds things. It is an energy primarily focused on the material.

Character birthday

Donna Shockley, a teacher at Rathbone Academy at the time of Obsidian’s Ark. She is one of the teachers who accompanies the students on the school journey to New York City.

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?

Available from:

Amazon

Amazon Kindle

29 August: Beatrice Name Day

In Lithuania, today is the name day for people called Beatrice.

Beatrice is a female given name. Beatrix is a variant of the name, which means "blessed one". 10 famous people with the name:

1. Beatrix Potter: English illustrator, author and conservationist.

2. Saint Beatrice of Silva: Portuguese nun and saint foundress of the monastic Order of the Immaculate Conception.

3. Beatrice Portinari: great love and muse of poet Dante Alighieri.

4. Beatrice McCartney: Paul McCartney's daughter with Heather Mills.

5. Bea Arthur: American actress and comedian, Dorothy Zbornak on The Golden Girls.

6. Beatrice: in William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

7. Beatrice of England: daughter of Henry III of England and Eleanor of Provence.

8. Beatrice "Trixie" Espinoza: character in the TV/streaming series Lucifer.

9. Princess Beatrice: daughter of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II.

10. Saint Beatrice d'Este: Italian Roman Catholic saint. She was betrothed to Galeazzo Manfredi of Vicenza, but he died of his wounds after a battle, so she entered a convent.

Character birthday

Scorpion, aka Homer Zoltan. He was a scientist on Desi Troyes’ nuclear testing team. He was issued with an anti-rad suit. He tinkered with his, adding a tailpiece armed with a paralysing agent. He used it to rob people for several months before the team set sail for Bird Island for the test of the nuclear bomb. When the bomb created a wormhole to the Earth dimension, he was among those transported through it. He teamed up with Troyes and became part of the group known as the Desperadoes.

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

28 August: Space Hoppers

The record for the most bounces on a space hopper in one minute is 108 and was achieved by Mark Little (UK) at Butlins, Bognor Regis, UK, on 28 August 2011. 10 things you might not know about space hoppers:

1. In case you don’t know what this is, a space hopper is a heavy rubber ball about 60–70 centimetres (24–28 in) in diameter, with two rubber handles protruding from the top. The classic version is Orange with a Kangaroo face on it.

2. The space hopper was invented by Aquilino Cosani who worked for an Italian company which made rubber balls. He patented the idea in Italy in 1968.

3. He called it a “Pon-pon” after the sound it made as it bounced.

4. A British company called Wembley repackaged the Pon-pon and came up with the name Space Hopper.

5. In the USA these toys are called Hippity Hops.

6. Bouncing on a Space Hopper isn’t actually a very efficient way to get around, it’s just fun.

7. In 2018 Steven Payne from Chichester bought a space hopper on eBay and hopped 76 miles from Italy to Grenoble in Switzerland.

8. Mark Little’s bouncing record was equalled by Shane Summer at Blackpool Pleasure Beach on 26 July 2019.

9. The record for the most people on Space Hoppers simultaneously is 2,943 and was part of a campaign for energy efficiency organised by Eskom Holdings SOC Limited (South Africa) in 2013. The participants bounced on a kinetics plate to transform kinetic energy into electrical energy.

10. In science fiction, there is a race of aliens, “Hoppas” which live on the planet Profania Alpha, and are basically Space Hoppers. They appear in Terry Cooper's humorous science fiction trilogy Kangazang.

Character birthdays

Maisie O’Donnell Jr, Boulder’s sister.

Angel, Cham, Gauntlet, Goliath and Wolf, a group of beings with superpowers who return to Earth whenever the threat from their evil counterparts becomes significant. In Golden Thread, they appear on 28 August, as abandoned babies. They grow up and come together as adults to fight the threat. The group also includes two wolves. In Golden Thread, Gauntlet suffers amnesia, still traumatised from his experiences in Hiroshima during WWII. He is nevertheless drawn to the others although he cannot remember why.

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

24 August: William Wilberforce Quotes

William Wilberforce, politician, philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire, was born on this date in 1759. 10 things he said:

1. You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.

2. Let it not be said that I was silent when they needed me.

3. It is the true duty of every man to promote the happiness of his fellow creatures to the utmost of his power.

4. If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.

5. We are too young to realise that certain things are impossible... So we will do them anyway.

6. No matter how loud you shout, you will not drown out the voice of the people!

7. Lovely flowers are the smiles of god's goodness.

8. Great indeed are our opportunities; great also is our responsibility.

9. The objects of the present life fill the human eye with a false magnification because of their immediacy.

10. Men who sincerely believed that what they were doing was right have perpetrated many of the most hideous crimes against humanity.

Character birthday

Lucky Fortelli, New York Cop whose power is incredible luck. He was born into a gangster family, but left that behind to join the police. He is in a relationship with Karate Queen.

27 August: Ladders

In the French Revolutionary Calendar, today was Echelle, or Day of the Ladder, Here are 10 things you might not know about ladders:

1. The first image of a ladder is in a Mesolithic rock painting dating back at least 10,000 years, found in the Spider Caves in Valencia, Spain. The picture shows two people using a ladder to reach a Honey Bee nest to harvest Honey.

2. The world’s longest ladder is made of wood and measures 135 feet long. It has 120 rungs and was designed by the Handwerks Museum in Austria in 2005.

3. When using a ladder, the angle against the wall is very important to get right. If it is too shallow, the bottom of the ladder is at risk of sliding, and if it is too steep, the ladder may fall backwards. The safest angle for a ladder is 75.5°. The rule of thumb for achieving that angle is for every four feet of vertical height, the ladder foot should move one foot from the wall.

4. Trying to carry something while climbing a ladder is the reason for over 50% of ladder related injuries.

5. There are two types of ladder: rigid ladders are self-supporting or that may be leaned against a vertical surface such as a wall, and rollable ladders, such as those made of rope or Aluminium, usually hung from the top.

6. Rigid ladders were originally made of wood, but in the 20th century aluminium became more common because of its lighter weight.

7. The correct term for the rungs of a rigid ladder are stringers or rails (US) or stiles (UK).

8. Ladders are mentioned in the Bible. Jacob's Ladder is a ladder leading to heaven that was featured in a dream the biblical Patriarch Jacob had during his flight from his brother Esau in the Book of Genesis.

9. Jacob's Ladder is depicted on the facade of Bath Abbey in England, with Angels climbing up and down ladders on either side of the main window on the west front.

10. That walking under a ladder is bad luck is a common superstition. The origin of this is uncertain but theories include: a ladder leaning against a wall resembles a gallows; an ancient Egyptian belief in the sacred trinity of triangles and walking through one was a desecration; the belief that a ladder rested against the crucifix that Christ hung from, making it a symbol of wickedness, betrayal and death.

Character birthday

Musca Australis, member of the cosmic force known as The Constellations. His powers are flight and night vision.

Griffin Dawson was born with a genetic variant disfigurement – compound eyes like those of a fly. He grew up in care. On leaving care he was taken in by Captain Cricket and the Swarm where he found acceptance for the first time. They helped him learn to fly with artificial wings.

However, as he grew older, he began to question the Swarm's goal of a world with insects in charge. He was not insectoid, nor delusional that he was an insect in a human body like many of them were.

The Constellations were bitter enemies of the Swarm – during a battle, Dawson defected and was teleported to safety, to start a new life on Constellation Station as the Southern Fly.

26 August: Mother Teresa Quotes

10 Mother Teresa quotes: She was born on this date in 1910.

1. Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.

2. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.

3. I prefer you to make mistakes in kindness than work miracles in unkindness.

4. I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.

5. Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realise it.

6. I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us, and we change things.

7. The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.

8. Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

9. Some people come in our life as blessings. Some come in your life as lessons.

10. I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.

Character Birthdays

Copycat, aka Katrina Bennison, member of the Power League who can absorb the powers of others. She can only absorb one set of powers at a time, and not those of her team. Her family were well off, and hence Copycat was sent to finishing school in Switzerland rather than university. After this she got a job as secretary to Professor Power. It's thought her abilities manifested around this time and that she was immune from absorbing powers from anyone she had been around before this, hence her inability to absorb her team-mates powers. She met the Power League through work and also because she and Professor Power started having an affair.

Her power first emerged when Obsidian of the Sinister Squad came to see her boss to try and negotiate a deal. Katrina shook his hand and absorbed his power. Later, Power came out of his office and asked her to make tea for them, which angered her, as she had other work to finish and had begun to resent being asked to make tea. When Power returned to his office, she made a rude gesture at the door – and shot an energy bolt through it.

Although greatly shocked at first, Katrina soon realised that both Power and Obsidian saw great value in her ability and tried to recruit her for their teams. She played them off against each other for several weeks but ultimately stayed with Power because of their affair and also because he was offering her the bigger salary.

Despite her alignment being generally evil, she does have a human side and has been known to show mercy to children and act as a mentor to younger women. She appears in Obsidian’s Ark and A Very Variant Christmas.

August, member of the Calendar Mob band of villains with the ability to teleport and drive or pilot any vehicle. Her origin story is unknown.

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?

Available from:

Amazon

Amazon Kindle

25 August: National Don't Utter a Word Day

In honour of National Don't Utter a Word Day, 10 quotes about saying nothing!

1. I have nothing to say, and I’ll only say it once. Floyd Smith
2. Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing. Robert Benchley
3. We’re fascinated by the words–but where we meet is in the silence behind them. Ram Dass
4. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. Abraham Lincoln
5. It often shows a fine command of language to say nothing.
6. Silence: The only golden thing that women don't like.
7. Sometimes you have to be silent to be heard.
8. The true genius shudders at incompleteness – and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be. Edgar Allen Poe
9. Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalising. William S Burroughs
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer. Attributed to the Dalai Lama

Character birthday

Touchstone, aka Suzy Stone. Orphaned at a young age she grew up in an orphanage where, along with her friends Arrow and Questor, she was abused. The three snuck out one night after curfew to perform a spell they believed would stop the abuse. While they were out, the orphanage was hit by a meteorite and they were the only survivors. They were adopted by one of the firefighters at the scene. They’d picked up a rock which had fallen to Earth and kept it; it was in fact an artefact created by the Orbs which gave them powers but also created a dependency so that none of the three could be away from the object for long. This dependency was the reason Touchstone had to drop out of medical school, despite her talent for healing. The three applied to several combat teams which all turned them down because they didn’t have a need for all three. Epsilon, however, took them all.

23 August: J

According to the Immortal Society, today is J Day. 10 things you might not know about the letter J:

1. The letter J started life as a flourish on the last “i” in a Roman numeral, also known as a swash. For example, XXIIJ or xxiij instead of XXIII or xxiii for the Roman numeral twenty-three.

2. It was the last letter to be added to the alphabet. Originally, 'I' and 'J' were different shapes for the same letter. J was first distinguished as having a different sound by Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478–1550). The first books in English to make a distinction were the King James Bible in 1629 and an English grammar book published in 1633.

3. It’s pronounced differently in Romance and Germanic languages. Romance languages tend to pronounce it “dg” as in “edge” while in Germanic languages it’s pronounced “y”.

4. In the Italian language, J only ever appears in proper nouns, Latin words or words borrowed from other languages.

5. In English, J is the fourth least frequently used letter after Z, Q and X. That said, J is more common in personal names.

6. J is the only letter which doesn’t appear on the Periodic Table.

7. Neither does it appear in any numbers in the English language. Neither, incidentally, do K or Z.

8. In the Metric system, J is the symbol for the joule, the SI derived unit for energy.

9. The narrator of Jerome K. Jerome's novel Three Men in a Boat is known simply as “J”.

10. "J" Is for Judgment is the tenth novel in Sue Grafton's "Alphabet mystery" series, published in 1993.

Character birthday

Margarita Harravitch, a nursery maid for the Galorvian royal family who helped the twin princesses, Jade and Gloria, escape when the palace was attacked by rebels.

From A Jack To A King

A royal palace is burning. The King and Queen are dead. The only hopes for an ancient dynasty flee to England for their lives.

A boy runs from his mother and the people he believes want to mutilate him, and vanishes, seemingly forever.

Gary Winchcombe, the experimental "super-cop" pursues a notorious gang of bank robbers, and starts to discover that his friends and neighbours have secrets he never could have imagined.

Tod Reynard wants to turn his life around. When he meets and falls in love with the beautiful Jade, he knows she might just be the one to help him change his life for the better. He cannot possibly know just how much.

When Jade's twin sister Gloria is kidnapped, old rivalries must be put aside and new associations formed in order to save Gloria's life and restore the rightful order of things.

Available from: Amazon, Amazon Kindle

22 August: 234

Today is the 234^th day of the year. 10 things you might not know about the number 234:

1. The Roman numeral for 234 is CCXXXIV.

2. 234 Barbara is a main belt asteroid discovered by Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters on August 12, 1883, in Clinton, New York. It is possibly named for St Barbara, patron saint of mathematicians.

3. The A234 is a road between Crystal Palace and Beckenham in London, England.

4. +234 is the telephone dialling code for Nigeria.

5. In the US, it’s the dialling code for the state of Ohio.

6. In binary, 234 is 11101010.

7. 234 (City of Durham) Squadron ATC is part of the UK's Air Training Corps and is based in Durham City in the North East of England.

8. The year 234 was a common year starting on Wednesday, known at the time as the Year of the Consulship of Pupienus and Sulla.

9. London bus route 234 runs between The Spires, Barnet and Archway Station.

10. In numerology, 234 is compassionate, tolerant, humanitarian, and kind. It tends to be philanthropic. It is a benevolent energy. Teamwork, support, and optimism also resonate with 234 energy, along with creativity, methodology and pragmatism.

Character birthday

Maisie O’Donnell (senior), mother of many children including Adam (Boulder) and grandmother of Mahogany Stone.