15th July: St Swithin's day

Today is St Swithin's Day. The old superstition says that If it rains today, the next 40 days will be wet; but if it is fine, we'll get 40 fine days. As I write, at 8.20am on St Swithin's Day, it's not raining where I am, so I'm cautiously hopeful about the next month or so. 10 quotes and jokes about rain.

1. In the Bible it rained for 40 days, they called it a disaster. In England we call it summer.
2. Life isn't about preventing the storms, but about learning to dance in the rain.
3. No rain - no rainbows.
4. We felt we needed an umbrella organisation to help flood victims. Sky News
5. During a drought the congregation met to pray for rain. "Brothers and Sisters," said the priest, "How can we ask the Lord for rain if we do not have faith? I see not one of you has brought an umbrella."
6. There is a word for a sunny day which follows two rainy ones. It's called Monday.
7. What is the most dangerous weather for rats and mice? When it's raining cats and dogs.
8. What do you get if it rains beer? An Ale storm
9. Where do stupid people do rain dances? In puddles
10. The weather service had to dispatch employees to read its Civic Center rain gauge after an automatic gauge failed because of the rain, said a weather service spokesman, Los Angeles Times

14th July: Bastille Day

Today is Bastille Day, the national day of France. It commemorates the beginning of the French Revolution with the Storming of the Bastille on the 14 July 1789. 10 facts about Bastille Day:

1. Bastille Day is not just a celebration of the events of 1789 but also of the Fête de la Fédération, which was a huge celebration to mark the first anniversary. This began very formally with a Mass and General Lafayette and King Louis XVI swearing an oath to the constitution; and then the party started. Feasting and Fireworks lasted for four days afterwards.
2. It has been an official celebration since 1880 when a politician called Benjamin Raspail proposed a law recognising 14 July as a national holiday. At the time, this date wasn't the only contender. France could have been celebrating on 4th August, marking the end of the feudal system on that date in 1789, but Senate chose 14 July.
3. The military parade, which has taken place in Paris almost every year since 1880, is the oldest regular military parade in the world.
4. During World War II, the German occupying troops held their own parade along the same route.
5. As well as the military parade, it's traditional for the President of France to give a press interview about recent events, future projects and the state of the nation. Nicolas Sarkozy chose not to do it, but François Hollande reinstated it in 2012.
6. There are celebrations in many other countries besides France on this day, in particular, places with large numbers of French ex-pats and former colonies. These include Pondicherry in India, New Orleans, The Auckland, New Zealand suburb of Remuera, and in Battersea Park in London.
7. Jean Michel Jarre has performed special concerts three times, in 1979, 1990 and 1995. The 1979 concert set a Guinness record for the largest outdoor concert audience.
8. In 1998, there was an extra cause for celebration as, two days earlier, France had won the World Cup.
9. Other nations are often invited to take part in the parade. In 2004, to commemorate the centenary of the Entente Cordiale, the British led the military parade with the Red Arrows flying overhead, and in 2007, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the military parade was led by troops from the 26 other EU member states, all marching at the French time.
10. The 100th and 200th anniversaries of the storming of the Bastille have been celebrated with iconic buildings - the Eiffel Tower and La Pyramide du Louvre respectively.

July 13th: Festival of the Three Cows

Today is the Festival of the Three Cows which takes place on the border of France and Spain: In an ancient Basque blood feud, French shepherds killed Spanish shepherds and as punishment, the French were ordered to give the Spanish three cows every year on this date. Now, it is an elaborate ritual followed by revelry.

10 things you may not know about cows:

1. First let's debunk a couple of myths. Cows don't have four stomachs. They only have one, but it is divided into four compartments: the rumen (the largest, which contains the microbes that digest cellulose), reticulum (the smallest, also known as "the honeycomb". If a cow eats a metal object, it ends up here and can cause a condition called hardware disease), omasum (from which water and nutrients are absorbed), and abomasum (similar to a human stomach).
2. Bulls are not enraged by the colour red. Cattle are actually colour blind and cannot distinguish between red and green. It is the movement of the cape in a bull fight, not the colour, which annoys them. While on the subject of senses, cattle have almost 360° panoramic vision; they can detect odours up to five miles away and can hear low and high frequency sounds that humans cannot.
3. Cows are intelligent, sociable and have emotions. They have friends - a cow in a herd will by preference spend time with up to four preferred individuals, and will dislike others. They prefer to sleep in family groups. They hold grudges for years, and it has been shown that they will produce more milk if they are treated well. They are curious and inquisitive, and enjoy solving problems such as how to open a door to get food. They will show signs of excitement when they figure it out. Cows are devoted mothers and will walk for miles to look for a missing calf.
4. A cow's day includes six hours eating, four hours sleeping and eight hours chewing the cud. They munch about 40lb of food a day and drink 30 gallons of water, which is enough to fill a bathtub. They suck up their water rather than lap it up with their tongues.
5. There are approximately 1.3 billion cattle in the world, and about 950 different breeds. They can interbreed with yaks and bison, but not with water buffalo.
6. "Cattle" is an interesting word - its original meaning was movable personal property, which would include any kind of livestock. There is no singular form of the word. You can talk of "some cattle" but not "a cattle".
7. A cow's natural lifespan is around 25 years. The oldest recorded cow, Big Bertha, died at the age of 48 in 1993.
8. Cattle are sacred in India - at one time the penalty for killing a cow there was death. It is believed, too, that cow pee has medicinal properties: distilled cow urine is a common medicine in India although there is no scientific proof that it works.
9. In breeds where the cows have spots or markings, no two cows have the same markings. They are as unique as fingerprints.
10. The genome of the cow was mapped in 2009. The scientists found that cattle have 22,000 genes, and that they share 80% of them with us.

12th July: R. Buckminster Fuller's birthday

Today is the birthday of the scientist R. (Richard) Buckminster Fuller. Here are 10 deep thoughts from him:

1. When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
2. There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.
3. I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience.
4. Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.
5. How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.
6. Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering.
7. The earth is like a spaceship that didn't come with an operating manual.
8. If you are the master be sometimes blind, if you are the servant be sometimes deaf.
9. Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.
10. Don't fight forces, use them.

11th July: Buffalo Bill Day

Today is Buffalo Bill Day. Not sure why as it's not his birthday or the anniversary of his death, but here are 10 things you may not know about Buffalo Bill:

1. William Frederick Cody became known as Buffalo Bill because one of his many careers was supplying buffalo meat to labourers working on the Kansas Pacific Railroad.
2. He entered the world of work at 11, when his father died and finances were tough. His first job was as a messenger boy, riding a horse up and down a wagon train delivering messages. Then at 14, he joined the Pony Express, working there until he had to return home to his ailing mother.
3. There was another man who thought he had the right to the name of Buffalo Bill - a hunter named William Comstock. The two settled their dispute in the best way they knew how - by a buffalo shooting contest. Nevertheless, in later life, Cody became a supporter conservation, advocating a defined hunting season and speaking out against hunting buffalo just for their hides.
4. Buffalo Bill had a name for his rifle. He called it Lucretia Borgia after the character in the Victor Hugo play.
5. He was a Freemason and a Knight Templar.
6. He got a part in Texas Jack Omohundro's show, The Scouts of the Prairie, in Chicago in 1872. 21 years later, he was running the show, which was now called Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World. Many famous names which epitomise the wild west took part: Annie Oakley, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane and Sitting Bull.
7. The show did not limit itself to the wild west - people from other cultures also took part: Turks, Gauchos, Arabs, Mongols and Georgians joined Native Americans in displaying their feats of skill.
8. The show toured Europe several times and featured in the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille. Queen Victoria saw the show, and for once, was amused. She liked it so much that she requested a repeat performance for her Jubilee.
9. Cody was a supporter of rights for Native Americans, which he called "the former foe, present friend, the American". He paid those who appeared in his shows well, and often included more domestic scenes of Native American life so that audiences would see them as more than just warriors. He also supported women's rights. "What we want to do is give women even more liberty than they have. Let them do any kind of work they see fit, and if they do it as well as men, give them the same pay," he said.
10. After the final closure of the show, Buffalo Bill saw another business opportunity with the growing popularity of Yellowstone Park. He opened a hotel on the road leading to it, and called it the Irma Hotel after his daughter.

10th July: The Tour de France

The Tour de France: now in France after its much publicised foray into England. 10 things you might not know about the world's most famous Bicycle race:

1. It was born out of the bitter rivalry between two French sports newspapers in 1903. A few years earlier, a soldier named Alfred Dreyfus was accused of selling military secrets to the Germans. Some people thought he'd done it, others thought he was innocent and arguments between the factions got quite heated. The editor of the best selling sports paper in France at the time, Le Vélo, thought Drefus was innocent. His report of a demo at a racecourse angered some of the Dreyfus-is-guilty camp so much that they started their own paper, L'Auto, hoping to drive Le Vélo out of business. When sales of L'Auto proved disappointing, they hit on the idea of holding a long distance cycling race to boost their sales. Cycling races were already popular but this new one was to be longer than any attempted before.
2. The first winner was Maurice Garin, who defeated the favourite, Josef Fischer, not to mention the many amateur adventurers who took part, including one who competed as "Samson".
3. The race alternates between clockwise and anticlockwise circuits of France, and sometimes includes stages in nearby countries, but it will always include at least two time trials and the route will always include the Pyrenees and the Alps, and the finish is always on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.
4. Nobody is exactly sure when the tradition of the winners of the stages wearing a Yellow jersey took hold. In the 1903 race, it was a green armband. There are two theories as to why yellow was chosen: either because it was the colour of L'Auto newspaper, or because yellow was an unpopular colour and so it would be the easiest colour material to get at short notice.
5. The first person to wear one was Eugène Christophe, who actually hated wearing it because the spectators thought it made him look like a canary and would make canary noises as he went past.
6. As well as the main competition, there is a young rider contest which is scored the same way. It is open to riders under 26, and the leader wears a white jersey.
7. It is possible to win the entire contest without having worn a yellow jersey until the very last stage - although it has only happened twice, in 1947 and 1968.
8. The rider to wear the yellow jersey most times is Fabian Cancellara, but in spite of this, he has never actually won.
9. Bradley Wiggins is 34th in this list, with fourteen yellow jerseys to his name.
10. Thirty people have died during the Tour de France, four of which were actual competitors. In 1910, Adolphe Helière drowned while swimming in the French Riviera during a rest day; in 1935 Francisco Cepeda fell down a ravine; in 1967 Tom Simpson died of a heart attack during the ascent of Mont Ventou, and in 1995 Fabio Casartelli crashed at 88 km/h (55 mph) while descending the Col de Portet d'Aspet. Other deaths were spectators or people taking part in publicity activities. The worst accident was in 1964 when a van hit a bridge in the Dordogne, killing 20 spectators.

9th July: Microwave ovens

Today is the birthday of Percy Spencer who invented microwave ovens. 10 things you may not know about microwaves:

1. Microwave ovens were discovered accidentally. Percy Spencer hit on the idea when he was building radar equipment in a lab for Raytheon, and noticed that a Chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. He tested his idea by popping Popcorn and exploding an Egg.
2. Microwave ovens do not cook food from the inside out. In fact, the opposite is true. They work on the outer layers of food, heating it by exciting the water molecules. The heat transfers from the outer layers inward.
3. Metals reflect microwaves, whereas plastic, glass and ceramics allow them to pass through. Metal doesn't heat up dangerously in a microwave, but thin pieces of metal, such as foil or the tines of a fork, can act as antenna, and the waves arc off them, forming sparks.
4. Oil doesn't heat up well in a microwave because its molecules behave differently to those of Water. Thawing frozen Butter is hard to do in a microwave, partly because it is mostly oil but also because any water there is is ice, and ice crystals are harder to excite.
5. Boiling water in a microwave is actually quite dangerous. If it is heated for too long, water can become hotter than its boiling point if bubbles don't form. If this happens, as soon as the water is disturbed, by moving it or by putting something in it, the heat is released rapidly and it can erupt boiling water out of its container and scald you. Putting a wooden spoon in the cup and not heating it for too long minimise the risk of this happening.
6. It is also dangerous to heat plastic in microwaves. Scientists found that even plastic containers labelled as microwave safe can release Bisphenol A at levels that scientists have found cause neurological and developmental damage in laboratory animals.
7. Over 30 million microwave ovens are sold throughout the world every year.
8. The first commercial microwave oven was called the ‘Radarrange’. It went on sale in 1947 for $5000. It was 1.8 metres tall and weighed 340 kilograms. The machine was cooled by water and consumed three times as much power as today’s microwaves.
9. There is no proven evidence that anyone has ever been harmed by using microwave ovens.
10. A Welsh word for a microwave oven is Popty Ping, which literally translates as "oven that goes ping". Although "microdon" is the official word, "Popty Ping" sounds much more evocative of the microwave oven!