February 9th: Maiden flight of the Boeing 747

The 747's maiden flight took place on this date in 1969. 10 things you may not know about Jumbo Jets:

1. A Boeing 747 is 19.4 metres high at the tail - about the height of a six storey building. Its wing span is greater than the length of a Space Shuttle.

2. It is made up of six million parts, which are manufactured in 33 different countries. Half of the parts are fasteners.

3. Boeing agreed to deliver the first 747 to Pan Am by the end of 1969. That meant they only had 28 months to design the aircraft, a third less than usual. The people who worked on it were given the nickname "The Incredibles" because they worked so fast.

4. Boeing did not have a plant large enough to build 747s, so they built a new one specially, near Everett in Washington. The prototype 747 was called City of Everett after the nearest town to the factory.

5. The first 747 to enter service with Pan Am was christened Clipper Victor by Pam Nixon, the then First Lady of the United States. Instead of champagne, red, white and blue water was sprayed on the aircraft. It was used on the New York to London route.

6. 747s are adaptable planes - it is possible to reconfigure the seating overnight if the airline wants more, or less first class seats. They were designed to be easily converted into cargo planes, as in 1969 it was believed that supersonic airliners such as Concorde would render them obsolete as passenger planes. 

7. The VC-25 variant is most commonly known as Air Force One, the US President's plane. In fact, there are two Air Force Ones. Two 747s were modified to carry the Space Shuttle. 

8. The First powered flight by the Wright Brothers could have taken place inside the economy section of a 474.

9. On a typical flight, passengers on a 747 eat five tons of Airline meals.

10. Retired 747s have been refitted as a restaurant and a hotel. The restaurant was made from the second 747 ever made, which had been taken apart and flown to South Korea. It was reassembled there and painted to look like Air Force One, and was used as a restaurant until about 2009. Meanwhile, in Stockholm, the "Jumbohostel" is a 747 converted into a hotel.

February 8th: Jules Verne Birthday

Jules Verne, French writer born 8 February 1828, author of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Around the World in 80 Days. Here are 10 things you may not know about Jules Verne:

1. Jules Verne is the second most translated author in the world since 1979, below Agatha Christie and above Shakespeare.
2. His teacher at boarding school was the widow of a naval captain who told her students her husband had been cast away on a desert island. It is thought her tales awoke his passion for travel.
3. Legend has it that Jules Verne tried to run away to sea at 11, but was caught by his father just before ship sailed, sent home, and made to promise any future travels would be imaginary!
4. As a young man he belonged to a dining club called Eleven Bachelors, who continued to meet long after all 11 had got married.
5. First published novel: Five weeks in a Balloon. However, there is no balloon in Around the World in 80 Days, although one is shown in the film adaptation.
6. Captain Nemo was intended to be a Polish scientist whose family had been killed by the Russians, but Verne's publisher strongly disagreed because he did not want to alienate the Russian market. Verne, in turn, did not want to follow the publisher's suggestion of an anti-slavery campaigner, so as a compromise, the Captain's past was left vague.
7. Verne has a crater on the far side of the Moon named after him.
8. Jules Verne has been credited with predicting television, films, the atomic bomb, computers and the internet, but none of these things appeared in any of his books.
9. He gave up a career in law in order to write.
10. He travelled extensively and eventually bought himself his own ship, the Saint-Michel, and as he grew richer, he upgraded to the Saint Michel II and then Saint Michel III.

February 7th: Hangover Awareness Day

It's Hangover Awareness Day so here are 10 bizarre hangover remedies from around the world:

A Bloody Mary

1. Pliny the Elder recommended a deep-fried canary, eaten whole, bones and all.
2. Ancient Greeks treated hangovers with a breakfast of sheep lungs and two owl eggs.
3. Sicilians with hangovers would eat dried bull penis. 
4. In Ireland it was said that the cure for a hangover was to get your mates to bury you up to the neck in moist river sand (provided they weren't too hungover themselves to do it). 
5. Mongolians would drink a cocktail made of Tomato juice and pickled sheep's eyes. 
6. A popular US remedy is the Prairie Oyster, a cocktail of ingredients that include Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, salt n' pepper, and a whole raw egg. Optional ingredients include a shot of vodka, ketchup or tomato juice, and vinegar.
7. In the wild west cowboys drank a tea made of Rabbit droppings steeped in hot water. 
8. Nineteenth century chimney sweeps were known to dose themselves with a lump of soot mixed into warm Milk.
9. The Romanians, Mexicans and Turks all recommend tripe soup. Tripe, offal made from the digestive tract of pigs or cows, boiled in a greasy, salty soup with Garlic and cream. 
10. Haitian voodoo practitioners would stick 13 black-headed pins into the cork of the bottle that made them drunk.

If you don't fancy trying any of those, though, 10 suggested modern remedies are: 

1. drinking lots of water,
2. taking a couple of pain killers, 
3. Vitamin B (found in marmite or vegemite) 
4. Vitamin C
5. A peanut butter, honey and banana sandwich on white bread (replaces sugars).
6. Coffee
7. More booze (Hair of the dog)
8. Taking a hot bath
9. Sleeping it off
10. Going for a run.

February 6th: Monopoly first went on sale

Monopoly was first sold on this date in 1935, so here are 10 things you may not know about Monopoly:

1. The longest Monopoly game ever lasted for 70 days. The record for the most people playing monopoly at one time was 3,000.
2. Monopoly is available in 111 countries, in 43 languages.
3. Rich Uncle Pennybags is the mascot, the man with the top hat and moustache. The character locked behind the bars is called Jake the Jailbird. Officer Edgar Mallory sent him to jail.
4. Monopoly sets were used to smuggle Escape maps, compasses, files and money for escapees into POW camps in Germany during World War II. 
5. Editions have been produced for most major cities in the world. There is also: a Braille version for the visually impaired; a "Star Trek" edition; a Junior edition which is simplified for small children; a make your own edition which can be customised by the owner, and many more. An edible edition made of Chocolate was produced in 1978. 
6. The most expensive version was produced by San Francisco jeweller Sidney Mobell and was worth $2 million. The board was 23-carat Gold, the and dice studded with diamonds.
7. Monopoly Here and Now: World Edition was produced in 2008. It includes notable locations throughout the world, and its own currency, the Monopolonian. The locations were chosen by public vote. The smallest city to be included was Gdynia, Poland. 
8. Tokens from a Monopoly set were flown into space aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2007. 
9. The current playing pieces are: Battleship, car, Thimble, boot, Scottie dog, Top hat and Cat (added in 2013, replacing the iron).Other pieces that have appeared in the past are: a man on horseback, wheelbarrow, Lantern, Purse, Rocking horse, Sack of money and cannon. The deluxe version had a locomotive, and editions in Australia and Canada included a koala and a beaver respectively. 
10. New tokens are often chosen by public votes. Tokens that didn't quite make the cut include: Piggy bank, bi-plane, guitar, diamond ring, helicopter or robot.

Picture by  ScooterSES

February 5th: Bubble Gum Day

For Bubble Gum Day, 10 things you may not know about bubble gum:

1. It was invented in 1928, by Walter E. Diemer, an accountant for the Fleer Chewing Gum Company in Philadelphia, while he was experimenting with new recipes for chewing gum. 
2. The first bubble gum was Pink, because it was the only food colouring Diemer had available.
3. The first bubble gum ever marketed was marketed under the name 'Blibber-Blubber'.
4. Susan Montgomery Williams of Fresno, California in 1996 holds the Guinness World Record for largest bubblegum bubble, with a bubble measuring 23 inches.  
5. You can make your own at home Using corn Syrup, powdered sugar, Gum base (not easy to get, but apparently not impossible), flavouring and colouring. If you want to give it a go, the recipe is here: http://ingoodcents.com/2012/03/sundays-at-home-homemade-bubble-gum-recipe.html.
6. It is possible to blow a bubble gum bubble inside another bubble gum bubble. Tips on how to do it are here: http://www.wikihow.com/Blow-Bubblegum-Bubbles-Within-Bubblegum-Bubbles.
7. Got some in your hair? Rub Peanut butter on it. The peanut butter contains oil which might just soften the gum enough to pull it off. You can also chew peanut butter along with your gum to help blow larger bubbles.
8. A piece of bubble gum contains about 20 calories.
9. 100,000 tons of bubble gum is chewed every year all around the world, but not in Singapore, where it is banned. The average American chews around 300 sticks of gum in one year. 
10. If you swallow bubble gum, it doesn't, as some people believe, get stuck in your intestines. It just passes through like anything else indigestible!

Picture by LadyofHats

February 4th: Clyde Tombaugh's birthday: Pluto

Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh was born on this date in 1906. He is famous for discovering Pluto, so here are 10 things you may not know about Pluto.

Pluto and its satellites as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope
(Photo by NASA)

1. Tombaugh, who was 23 at the time, identified the object which would become known as Pluto through taking a series of photographs of the night sky and looking at them on a machine called a "blink comparator", so he could more easily make out which object had moved.
2. Pluto is composed primarily of rock and ice; Pluto's atmosphere consists of a thin envelope of nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide gases; Pluto's temperature is about 43 K (−230 °C)
3. The name "Pluto" was originally thought of by an 11 year old girl, Venitia Burney, who was interested in classics and astronomy, and thought that the name of the god of the Underworld was appropriate for a world which would be very cold and dark. She mentioned this to her grandfather, who happened to have been a librarian at Oxford's Bodleian Library, and he passed the suggestion on to people with influence.
4. "Pluto" was not the only suggestion. The planetoid could have ended up being called Zeus, Percival, Constance, Minerva or Cronus. Pluto proved by far the most popular choice and was elected unanimously as the best name.
5. In most languages, Pluto is Pluto, but in Hindi and Vietnamese it is called Yama, and in some Polynesian languages, Whiro. These are the Hindu and Maori gods of the Underworld.
6. In 1941, Glenn T. Seaborg named a new element Plutonium after Pluto, following uranium, which was named after Uranus, and neptunium, which was named after Neptune.
7. Pluto has five moons: Charon, discovered in 1978; Nix and Hydra, both discovered in 2005; Kerberos, discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2011; and Styx, discovered in 2012.
8. Pluto takes 248 years to orbit the sun. Its "day" is equal to 6.39 earth days.
9. The orbit of Pluto is erratic - its distance from the sun varies considerably throughout its orbit - at times, so far away that its atmosphere of nitrogen and methane freezes and vanishes. Its orbit crosses that of Neptune, but scientists have concluded that the two will not collide in the foreseeable future - although Pluto's chaotic orbit makes it difficult to predict what Pluto will do after a few million years.
10. In astrology, Pluto is the ruling planet of Scorpio, and represents destroying in order to renew. Pluto governs big business, wealth, mining, surgery and detective work, anything involving digging under the surface to bring the truth to light. Pluto is also associated with the day Tuesday.

February 3rd: "The Day The Music Died"

Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Richie Valens died in a plane crash 3rd Feb 1959. This event inspired Don McLean to pen his signature song, American Pie, which was first a hit in 1972. Ever since, people have been trying to analyse the meaning of the cryptic lyrics. McLean himself keeps a dignified silence on the matter, but fans have been only too willing to speculate. 

Here are 10 of the speculations as to what the song might mean:

1. The song begins on “the day the music died” but refers in subsequent verses to events that follow, up to 1970 (hence for 10 years we've been on our own).

2. Miss American Pie – a combination of apple pie and Miss America (not the name of the plane that crashed as some people have suggested). Possibly his date when he drives to the levee, and who stands him up at the school dance – dancing in the gym with someone else and leaving him alone with his pink carnation and pick-up truck.

3. The levee was dry – something that once gave sustenance has evaporated.

4. This'll be the day that I die – reference to That'll be the day that I die from the Buddy Holly song. The worst has happened and “the day that I die” has arrived.

5. Moss grows fat on a rolling stone – parody of the rolling stone gathers no moss proverb – that's not how it used to be. Everything is being turned on its head. Reference to the Bob Dylan song, and possibly The Rolling Stones.

6. The Jester is thought to be Bob Dylan, who is pictured wearing a James Dean coat on the cover of his 1963 album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The King could represent Elvis, as Bob Dylan became the new symbol of rebellion for the 1960s generation and therefore stole his crown. On the sidelines in a cast refers to a serious motorcycle accident Dylan had in 1966, from which he had to take time out to recuperate.

7. The quartet practising in the park may be The Beatles, especially as John Lennon is mentioned in the previous line. His reading a book on Marx symbolises music becoming more political; while those who grew up on 50s music lament the loss of innocence and simplicity that music represented for them (we sang dirges in the dark).

8. The half time air was sweet perfume while Sergeants played a marching tune: The summer of love, flower power – the scent of flowers – or of marijuana? 

9. Verse 5: A Rolling Stones set at a concert at Altamont Motor Speedway in California in 1969 was marred by violence, with fans storming the stage. One man was killed by security, which was provided by the Hell's Angels (no angel born in hell). Mick Jagger refused to stop playing and was unaware, or indifferent, to the drama unfolding around him.

10. Father, son and Holy Ghost – several theories here. They are the three who died in the crash; they are JFK, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr (although catching the train for the coast implies the people are still alive); they are Buddy Holly's backing group, the Crickets; America's religious faith, or belief that the innocent times could still return, finally giving up (they held out as long as they could, catching the last train).