3 May: Dodie Smith

Dodie Smith, author of 101 Dalmatians and I Capture the Castle was born on this date in 1896. Here are some of the things she said.

1. Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
2. Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.
3. I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring.
4. Time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty.
5. I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life.
6. Like many other much-loved humans, they believed that they owned their dogs, instead of realising that their dogs owned them.
7. Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me.
8. It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.
9. I'm convinced England's overflowing with eccentric people, places, happenings. Indeed, you might say eccentricity's normal in England.
10. I have noticed that rooms which are extra clean feel extra cold.

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May 2: Catherine the Great

Born on this date in 1729 was Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia from 1762 until 1796, the country's longest-ruling female leader.

1. That said, she wasn't Russian and her name at birth wasn't Catherine. She was Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, in Prussia. Her birthplace is in present day Poland. She took the name Catherine, or Ekaterina when she converted to Orthodox Christianity just before her marriage.
2. Even though she was the eldest child, Catherine's mother, Johanna, took little interest in her, so she was closer to her governess than to her mother. It was only as she grew up and her bloodlines made her a desirable bride that the ambitious Johanna began to see her as useful. At 15, Princess Sophie was invited to Russia by Czarina Elizabeth, a daughter of Peter the Great who had assumed the Russian throne in a coup just three years earlier. Elizabeth was looking for a wife for her heir, her nephew Peter. Elizabeth decided that Sophie would do nicely.
3. Peter, however, wasn't impressed. He was 17 when the wedding took place, and more interested in his toy soldiers than in his wife. He spent his wedding night drinking and things didn't get much better. It was nine years before Catherine produced an heir - historians speculate that Peter was either impotent or infertile. He didn't treat his wife well - he insulted her at every opportunity and took mistresses. Most of the time, they didn't even live together. Peter was in one palace hosting all night drinking parties while Catherine was in another, spending her time riding her Horse and reading. She refused to ride side-saddle, and wrote “The more violent the exercise, the more I enjoyed it.”
4. In due course, the lonely and miserable Catherine began to take lovers herself. One of them was Sergei Saltykov, a Russian military officer. When Catherine finally gave birth to a son in 1754, he was officially acknowledged as Peter's son, but there were rumours that Sergei Saltykov was actually his father. None of Catherine's other three children were fathered by Peter.
5. When Peter succeeded to the throne, he immediately set about making reforms to help the poor and ending the war with Prussia. The military classes and the gentry didn't like it. Unrest grew, with Peter's opponents turning to Catherine for help. Just six months after taking the throne, Catherine and her supporters forced him to abdicate, leaving her as the sole ruler. Soon after, Peter was murdered by Alexei Orlov, the brother of Catherine’s lover at the time. There is no proof she played any part in it.
6. Catherine was an intelligent and well-educated woman. As a child she'd studied religion and history and learned three languages: German, French and Russian. She collected art, corresponded with great scholars of the time, such as Voltaire, and wrote numerous books, pamphlets and educational materials aimed at improving Russia’s education system. She even tried writing operas. Although she was frequently the most intelligent person in the room, she would play it down for political reasons, telling people she knew "less than a child about art". She didn't travel much, though. Probably afraid someone would usurp her throne if she went anywhere, she never left Russia after arriving there as a teenager.
7. Catherine was just five feet tall, and described by some as friendly and approachable with "a great desire to please". Yet at the same time, she could be quite intimidating. One court spy described her as "romantic, ardent and passionate. She has a bright glassy hypnotic look like that of a wild animal...She is thoughtful and friendly and yet, when she approached me I automatically back away. She frightens me." She worked tirelessly and planned her daily timetable meticulously.
8. Her lovers were generally more than mere amusement. She'd have genuine feelings for them, and when circumstances forced them to part, she would be lavish with favours. She would shower them with titles, land, palaces and servants. She even helped one of them, Stanislaw Poniatowski, become king of Poland, although she was dismayed that when he did become king, he worked at strengthening Poland's independence rather than being a puppet to Russia. She ended up forcing him to abdicate.
9. Although she claimed to be enlightened and opposed to serfdom, political expediency proved more important in practice. She knew the nobility she depended upon to support her wouldn't tolerate emancipation of serfs. In the end, their conditions actually got worse during her reign.
10. Needless to say, she wasn't popular with everyone and rumours spread to discredit her. There is no historic proof that she kept her hairdresser in a cage so no-one would find out she wore a wig, that she advocated having sex six times a day as a cure for insomnia, or that she died on the Toilet or while having sex with her horse. She died in bed, the day after suffering a stroke, at the age of 67.

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1st May: Batman Day

There seems to be some disagreement on the web about when Batman Day is celebrated with September 23 and 26 also being suggested by some sources, but this date ties in with Batman's first appearance in a comic in May 1939.

1. Which actor do you think of if somebody mentions Batman? Children of the 60s will no doubt think of Adam West, and younger people may think of Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale or Ben Affleck. Before Adam West, there were Lewis Wilson and Robert Lowery. Not to forget David Mazouz, who plays a teenage Bruce Wayne in Gotham. However, the person who has played Batman most often never actually wore a cape or mask - his name is Kevin Conroy, who has been the voice of Batman in various animated TV series, films and video games. Another famous person who was heard on an animated version was Mark Hamill, aka Luke Skywalker. He wasn't Batman, though. He was the voice of the Joker.
2. Chances are you haven't seen the first Batman film ever made. It was called Batman Dracula and was made by Andy Warhol in 1964. It was a black and white, silent art film and was only ever screened at Andy Warhol exhibits.
3. The character of Batman was created by Bob Kane, who named him after Robert the Bruce, the Scottish King and Mad Anthony Wayne, a hero of the American Revolution. He was influenced by a pulp radio character called the Shadow, the 1920s film Mask of Zorro, and Leonardo da Vinci, whose Ornothopter flying vehicle formed the basis of Batman's wings. The name of the city he lives in, Gotham, came from an entry in the phone book for a company called "Gotham Jewellers."
4. Bob Kane's original idea of Batman looked very different to the Dark Knight we know today. He was originally conceived as wearing a red leotard with black pants and an eye mask. He was also going to be blond. However, designer Bill Finger revised the concept and the rest is history.
5. Forbes produces a "Fictional Rich List," ranking fictional characters according to their fortunes. Bruce Wayne has been on this list for 75 years. According to Forbes, Bruce Wayne is worth $9.2 billion. That makes him richer than The Simpsons‘ Mr Burns and Christian Grey (50 Shades) but not as rich as Tony Stark (Iron Man). Which is just as well, since it has been estimated it would cost over $300 million to become Batman.
6. If you've ever wondered what Batman's favourite food is, wonder no more. Apparently, according to his butler, Alfred, it's mulligatawny soup, or French onion soup. His favourite drink, or at least the one he consumes most of, is ginger ale. He rarely drinks alcohol, except very occasionally at functions so people won't suspect he's Batman.
7. In some comic storylines, he's actually portrayed as suffering from Chiroptophobia. In other words, rather than being obsessed with Bats, he's actually terrified of them. Perhaps because he fell down a well full of them as a child; and seeing bat-like characters on stage at an opera, his parents had to take him out of the theatre - and that was when they were killed. It has been suggested Bruce is actually suffering from PSTD after witnessing their death. Another reference to their death in the everyday life of Batman is the passcode to get into the Bat Cave. It's turning the hands of the clock to 10.47, the time of their death.
8. Across the various comic universes, Batman has a brother and a whole bunch of children. Bruce Wayne's parents never told him about his elder brother, Thomas Jr., who suffered brain damage in a car crash. The injuries made him mentally unstable and had to be put in a mental institution. As you'd expect, he escaped from there and became a villain, but later gave his life to save his brother. Batman has about seven children scattered around various timelines but perhaps the most notable is Damian Wayne, the son he had with Talia al Ghul, the daughter of a demon. Damian is the latest incarnation of Robin.
9. More about Batman films - Christian Bale refused to play Batman if Robin appeared anywhere in the Trilogy. While Val Kilmer may not have been the most popular Batman for comic fans, Bob Kane said in an interview that Kilmer was the best Batman up to that point. Kane died in 1998, so who knows if he would have changed his mind if he'd lived to see some of the others. The Lamborghini driven by Bruce Wayne in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy is a Murciélago. Murciélago is Spanish for “bat.”
10. Regular readers of this blog may recall that Melbourne in Australia was originally going to be named Batmania after one of its founders, whose name was John Batman. The city's founding document is “Batman’s Treaty”, and there is a Batman’s Hill, Batman Bridge, Batman railway station and Batman Park. There is also a historical unit of mass in the Ottoman Empire known as the batman. It was equivalent to about 16lbs and was divided into two units called the ‘great batman’ and the ‘lesser batman’. There are also three towns in Turkey called Batman and another in Iran. The mayor of one of the Turkish Batmans tried to sue Warner Bros. and Christopher Nolan for using the name without permission when The Dark Knight grossed over $1 billion worldwide. Finally, you can even do a college course in Batman. This course is offered at the University of Victoria in Canada, and it will teach you “The extreme range of adaptability of the human body explored through the life of the Caped Crusader.”

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30 April: The Hoover Dam

On this date in 1947, Boulder Dam was renamed in honour of Herbert Hoover, and became the Hoover Dam. Here are some facts about Hoover Dam.

1. When the building project first opened, the then Secretary of the Interior attended the opening. It was he who declared the dam should be called the Hoover Dam, after his boss. Hoover, however, wasn't a popular president - he was blamed for the great depression - so the next Secretary of the Interior declared it should be called the Boulder Dam instead. Herbert Hoover wasn't invited to the opening ceremony in 1935 and wasn't even mentioned in Franklin D Roosevelt's speech. In 1947, President Harry Truman signed a law restoring the Hoover name, acknowledging that Hoover had helped bring the dam into existence.
2. The Hoover Dam is a Concrete gravity-arch dam across the Colorado River. It is 1,244 ft (379m) long and 726.4 ft (221.4m) tall. When it opened, it was the tallest dam in the world, and remained so for 20 years until Switzerland’s 820-foot-tall Mauvoisin Dam was built in 1957. The reservoir created by the dam is the largest in the USA. It is called Lake Mead, and it contains enough water to flood the entire state of New York.
3. That's a lot of concrete. 3.25 million cubic yards of concrete to be exact, plus another 1.11 million cubic yards for the power plant and additional facilities. This is enough concrete to build a 3,000 mile highway from one side of the US to the other.
4. Energy produced by the dam provides power for 1.3 million people across the states of California, Arizona, and Nevada.
5. Construction of a dam that size was going to be a major enterprise creating huge numbers of jobs. A total of 21,000 men worked on the dam; an average of 3,500 each day - and they all had to live somewhere. Cities in the area all wanted to house the workforce because it would boost their economies. Las Vegas even went to the lengths of closing its speakeasies and brothels for the day when Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur, to project a more clean cut image. It didn't work, however - it was decided to build an entire new purpose built city for the workers instead. The community, Boulder City, is still there.
6. There is a popular myth that several workers were buried alive in the concrete. That isn't true, but there were 96 deaths officially related to the construction. While there was a nod to health and safety, given that hard hats were used for the first time on this project, health and safety was largely ignored by a bunch of workers known as “high scalers,” whose job it was to remove loose rock from the walls of the canyon. People actually used to go just to watch their death defying stunts. One in particular, Louis Fagan, used to draw the crowds. He was nicknamed “The Human Pendulum” because his fellow workers used him as a means of getting from one work spot to the next. Fagan would dangle from a rope; the worker would wrap his arms and legs around him and be swung to his next spot. Even more impressive was Oliver Cowan who acted quickly when a supervisor lost his hold on a safety line. He caught the man and stopped him from falling to his death.
7. One of the problems construction engineers had to solve was how to cool the concrete, which, left to itself, would take years and weaken the structure. So, they constructed what may well have been the biggest Fridge ever made, which dispensed over a thousand tons of ice onto the concrete every day. As it happened, that summer was one of the hottest on record with an average temperature of 119 degrees Fahrenheit every day.
8. There is a road running along the top of the dam - Route 93, a two lane highway. However, increasing congestion and concerns about security after 9/11 led to the building of a bypass bridge. The Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge is 1,905 feet long and 900 feet above the Colorado River. It's the longest single-span concrete arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere and the second-highest bridge of any type in America.
9. The dam almost fell to a Dambusters style Nazi plot. In 1939, the United States government learned about a couple of German Nazi agents who were planning to bomb the Hoover Dam and its power facilities to damage California’s aviation manufacturing industry. The US government discussed camouflaging the dam with a paint job or building a decoy; but in the end the plot was foiled without any need to go to such efforts.
10. Swimming across the river in front of the dam is illegal, because it is massively dangerous - anyone attempting the feat is likely to get sucked into the dam's turbines and killed. However, somebody did it in 2017, and survived - a drunken Brit on a stag do. Arron Hughes and his mates were in Las Vegas, and after several hours of hard partying and lots of booze, he decided he'd go for a swim. He was lucky - only one of the ten turbines was switched on at the time - even so, he reported that he felt the pull. This "hold my beer" stunt took half an hour. Once Hughes reached the other side of the river, he jumped in again and swam back, straight into the arms of the law. He was arrested and fined $330.

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April 29: Constantine Cavafy

Constantine Cavafy is a Greek poet, who wrote a famous poem called Ithaka. He was born on this date in 1863, so here are ten quotes from him:

1. When setting out upon your way to Ithaca, wish always that your course be long, full of adventure, full of lore.
2. If you are one of the truly elect, be careful how you attain your eminence.
3. And if you can’t shape your life the way you want, at least try as much as you can not to degrade it.
4. Have Ithaka always in your mind. Your arrival there is what you are destined for. But don't in the least hurry the journey.
5. Pray that the summer mornings are many when with such pleasure, with such joy you will enter ports seen for the first time.
6. Done Amid fear and suspicion, with startled minds and frightened eyes, we pine and scheme over what steps to take to avoid the certain danger that threatens us so horribly. Yet we are wrong. This was not the danger in store; the portents were false (or we never heard them, or failed to construe them properly). It’s some other disaster, precipitous, violent, one we hadn’t imagined, that suddenly takes us unawares, and – there’s no time now – overcomes us.
7. Do not hurry the journey at all: better that it lasts for many years and you arrive an old man on the island, rich from all that you have gained on the way, not counting on Ithaca for riches. For Ithaca gave you the splendid voyage: without her you would never have embarked. She has nothing more to give you now. And though you find her poor, she has not misled you; you having grown so wise, so experienced from your travels, by then you will have learned what Ithacas mean.
8. You won't find a new country, won't find another shore. This city will always pursue you.
9. That we’ve broken their statues, that we’ve driven them out of their temples, doesn’t mean at all that the gods are dead.
10. Just to be on the first step should make you happy and proud. To have come this far is no small achievement: what you have done is a glorious thing.

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April 28: Salisbury Cathedral

On this date in 1220, construction of Salisbury Cathedral began. Here are ten facts about Salisbury Cathedral.

1. The official name of Salisbury Cathedral is the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
2. Before this cathedral was built, the Bishop's seat was at Old Sarum, but due to tensions between the clergy and the military there, it was decided to move the cathedral. According to legend, the Bishop shot an arrow, and said the new cathedral would be built where the arrow fell. The arrow hit a deer, so the new cathedral was built on the spot where the deer died.
3. It took 38 years to build. Which seems like a lot, but for the time, without modern equipment, that actually wasn't bad going. Some cathedrals have a range of different styles of architecture because they took so long to build, but Salisbury Cathedral has just one: Early English Gothic.
4. 70,000 tons of stone, 3,000 tons of timber and 450 tons of lead were used to build the cathedral. Because it is built on a high water table, the foundations are only four feet deep.
5. Although it was built in the 13th century, Salisbury Cathedral has only had the tallest church spire in the UK since 1549. Until then, there was a taller one in Lincoln - but it fell down. The spire is 404 feet (123m) tall and weighs 6,397 tons (6,500 tonnes). It, too, was in danger of falling down, but Sir Christopher Wren was called on to survey the spire in 1668. He had braces put in to support it, which lasted 200 years, and no further movement took place in that time.
6. It's said the cathedral has as many pillars as there are hours in the year, and as many windows as there are days.
7. The first person to be buried in the building was William Longespée, half brother of King John and the illegitimate son of Henry II. Sir Edward Heath, Prime Minister of the UK from 1970 to 1974 lived close to the cathedral in the last years of his life, and is also buried there.
8. Salisbury Cathedral has the oldest working clock in the world. It's so old it doesn't even have a face, because back when it was built in 1386 clocks only rang out the hours on a bell. It was used until 1884, when it was placed in storage and forgotten about, but it was re-discovered in 1929, and restored to working order in 1956.
9. It also has the best-preserved original copy of the Magna Carta. The man given the job of distributing the original copies was Elias of Dereham, who later became a canon of Salisbury.
10. Artist John Constable painted pictures of the cathedral. One of his paintings was commissioned by John Fisher, then Bishop of Salisbury. Constable painted the bishop and his wife into the scene.

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April 27: Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder Day

Today is Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder Day. Here are ten quotes on the subject of beauty.

1. Even virtue is fairer when it appears in a beautiful person. Virgil
2. Beauty is boring because it is predictable. Umberto Eco
3. The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express. Francis Bacon
4. The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together. Carl Sagan
5. Beauty is the first present nature gives to women and the first it takes away. Fay Weldon
6. Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. Confucius
7. Beauty is power; a smile is its sword. John Ray
8. It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. Leo Tolstoy
9. Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone. Dorothy Parker
10. There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion. Edgar Allen Poe

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