Today is World Coconut Day and has been since 2009. 10 things you might not know about coconuts:
The word coconut derives from the Portuguese word “coco” meaning a Skull or a type of mask used to frighten children. They called them that because a coconut has three round marks on its shell which look like a face.
The Latin name for the coconut palm is Cocos nucifera. These trees can grow up to 30 m (98 ft) tall and produce up to 180 coconuts in one harvest.
Technically, it’s not a nut. It’s a drope, like Peaches, Plums, and Cherries.
Coconut farmers in Thailand train pigtailed macaques to harvest coconuts. A trained macaque can pick up to 1600 coconuts a day, while a human can only harvest around 100.
Coconuts can be life savers. A coconut saved the life of John F Kennedy when he was stranded in the Solomon Islands during WWII. He carved a message on a coconut and got a local to deliver it to the nearest US base so they could come and rescue him. Many more soldiers owe their lives to the fact that coconut water has the same level of sugars and salts as human blood plasma. If you’re in a tropical area and don’t have any blood plasma to hand, but there are trees full of young coconuts the water makes a passable substitute.
They can also kill you. Napalm contained palmitic acid from coconuts. In 1944, the Japanese were reported to be using grenades inside coconut shells as coconut bombs. Even now, about 150 people are killed by falling coconuts every year: 10 times the number of people killed by Sharks.
The coconut is widespread on tropical islands because the shells are water resistant and they can float on the ocean for up to 100 days and still germinate when they wash up somewhere.
Banging the two halves of a coconut shell together makes a sound like the clip clop of a horse’s hooves. They were used in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, according to Terry Jones, “because we couldn’t afford Horses”. Doune Castle in Scotland, where Monty Python filmed “Holy Grail”, rents coconut shells to tourists so they can re-enact those scenes. In 2007 5,567 people clip-clopped coconut shells together to set a world record.
Coconuts are very important to the economies of many tropical countries: Sri Lanka has a Ministry and Minister of Coconut Development. On the island of Tokelau, electricity is mostly generated by solar power, except on overcast days when the generators are powered by coconut oil. The Maldives have a coconut palm on the country's national coat of arms.
In 2013, police in the Maldives detained a coconut for loitering near a polling station on suspicion of black magic. They called in a magician who established that the coconut was innocent, and no arrests were made.
Character birthday
Incendio, aka Miles Collins, a genetic variant with fire based powers. His father is Firebolt, although he never knew his father growing up. His mother and Firebolt had separated before she discovered she was expecting Miles and she brought him up alone. He didn’t get on with his step father and was often in trouble. Professor Power of the Power League once bailed Incendio out of the police station posing as his father and offered to train him how to use his powers and not get caught.
Later, he was given the task of infiltrating the life of Agnes Greenwood, the single mother of a child with similar powers, in the hope the child could be recruited to the Power League as well. He began to teach the girl, Seraphina, aged five, to use her powers, but the Freedom League intervened.
Read about him in Fire in Her Blood.
Fire in her Blood
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