16 August:Jean de la Bruyere

16 August 1645 was the birthdate of Jean de la Bruyere, French writer and moralist famous for his work Characters of Theophratus.

1. Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.
2. Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.
3. One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.
4. Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.
5. Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.
6. Out of difficulties grow miracles.
7. It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well nor the judgement to hold their tongues.
8. A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.
9. When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.
10. There are only three events in a man's life; birth, life, and death; he is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live. 

August 15th: Republic of the Congo Independence Day

The Republic of the Congo gained independence from France on this date in 1960. Here are some things you may not know about this country:

1. To distinguish Republic of the Congo to the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo the country is sometimes called Congo-Brazzaville, Brazzaville being the capital city. Brazzaville is separated from the Democratic Republic's capital of Kinshasa by the Congo river. This is the only place in the world where two national capital cities are situated on opposite banks of a river, within sight of each other.
2. Brazzaville was built on the site of a Bateke village named Nkuna by an Italo-French explorer, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, after whom the city was named.
3. Mont Nabemba is the highest mountain in the Republic of the Congo. It has has an elevation of 1,020 metres (3,346 ft).
4. The highest building in the country was named after the mountain. This building, the Nabemba Tower, also known as Elf Tower, is 106 metres tall and has 30 floors. It also has a distinctive shape - its sides bend in the middle making a concave cylinder. The facade's vertical lines with glass and light concrete reinforces its narrow shape. The floor plan consists of three concentric circles: Lifts and technical facilities in the middle, then circular corridors, and finally an outer ring of offices.
5. Natural resources include petroleum, timber, potash, Lead, Zinc, Uranium, Copper, phosphates, Gold, magnesium, natural gas and hydropower. 1.55% of the land is arable, while only 0.20% has permanent crops.
6. In 2014, a peat bog was discovered in the Republic of the Congo which was said to be as big as England.
7. The national Flag consists of a Yellow diagonal band diagonally from the lower hoist-side corner, with a Green upper triangle and red lower triangle. It is the only Pan-Africanist flag to have a diagonal pattern in its design. The green represents the agriculture and forests of the Congo, and the yellow represents the "friendship and nobility" of the Congolese people. However, the symbolism behind the red was left unexplained.
8. The first people to live in the area were pygmies. The first Europeans to arrive were the Portuguese in 1482. It became a French protectorate in the nineteenth century and became independent from France in 1960.
9. The coast was a centre of the slave trade. France abolished the slave trade in 1826 but slavery remained in the French colonies until 1848.
10. During the Second World War, Brazzaville was the centre of the French resistance in Africa.

14th August: Steve Martin

Steve Martin, US comedian and actor, whose films include Roxanne, Parenthood, Man with Two Brains, Little Shop of Horrors, Pennies From Heaven, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Trains Boats and Planes, Three Amigos, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Father of the Bride and Housesitter, was born on this date in 1945. Here are ten gems from him:

1. Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.
2. You kill me and I'll see that you never work in this town again.
3. A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true.
4. Why is it we don't always recognise the moment when love begins, but we always know when it ends?
5. I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.
6. I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.
7. Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.
8. Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.
9. Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.
10. I thought yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life but it turns out today is.

13 August: Central African Republic Independence Day

Central African Republic gained independence from France on this date in 1960.

1. The Central African Republic (CAR) is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan to the northeast, South Sudan to the east, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of the Congo to the south and Cameroon to the west.
2. It is about the size of Ukraine, or slightly smaller than the US state of Texas.
3. The terrain is mostly flat or rolling plateau with hills in the northeast and southwest. The highest point is Mont Ngaoui at 1,420m and the lowest lowest point is at the Oubangui River, 335m above sea level.
4. The population of the Central African Republic has almost quadrupled since independence. In 1960, the population was 1,232,000; in 2014 it was approximately 4,709,000.
5. The capital and largest city is Bangui, which was established as a French outpost in 1889. The city gets its name from the Ubangi River, the name of which means "rapids" in the Bobangi language.
6. It is one of the poorest countries in the world, despite its most important export being diamonds. It is estimated that between 30% and 50% of those produced each year leave the country clandestinely.
7. According to National Geographic, Central African Republic is the country least affected by light pollution.
8. The country has one of the largest magnetic anomalies in the world, a local variation in Earth's magnetic field. The anomaly is called the Bangui magnetic anomaly; it is roughly elliptical, about 700 km × 1,000 km (430 mi × 620 mi) in area, and covers most of the country.
9. The official languages of Central African Republic are French and Sango (a Ngbandi based creole). Arabic and tribal languages are also spoken.
10. The Flag of the Central African Republic was adopted on December 1, 1958. It was designed by Barthélemy Boganda, the first president of the autonomous territory of Oubangui-Chari. He believed that "France and Africa must march together," so he included the Blue, white and red of the French tricolour alongside the Pan-African colours of red, Green and Yellow.

August 12: Grouse

Today is the so called "Glorious twelfth" when the Grouse shooting season begins. Here are some things you may not know about these birds:

1. Grouse belong to the order Galliformes, in the family Phasianidae, meaning they are related to Chickens.
2. There are 18 species of grouse They range in length from 31 to 95 cm (12 to 37 in), and in weight from 0.3 to 6.5 kg (0.66 to 14.33 lb).
3. Grouse live in temperate and subarctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere, in forest, moors and mountainous regions.
4. They are mostly vegetarian - their diet consists of buds, catkins, leaves, and twigs. Some species will even eat needles from conifers. The chicks eat meat, mostly insects and other invertebrates, but eat less and less of them as they grow up.
5. Male grouse are bigger than females. In the mating season, the males display their feathers and strut around in displays known as lekking to attract females.
6. A grouse nest is nest is a shallow depression or scrape on the ground with a thin lining of plant material. There can be up to twelve eggs in a clutch. The eggs are are pale Yellow, sparsely spotted with Brown.
7. Chicks hatch in dense, yellow-brown down and leave the nest immediately. They grow feathers very soon after that, and can fly at two weeks old.
8. Around 250,000 grouse are shot in Britain between August 12 and December 10 each year.
9. In America the grouse is called ‘prairie chicken’. Kansas has more wild grouse than any other state.
10. In  Scotland and the Alps, the male grouse's Black tail feathers are a traditional ornament for hats. They are most commonly associated with Glengarry and Balmoral or Tam O'Shanter caps, worn by pipers of civilian and military pipe bands. 

11 August: Enid Blyton

Born on this date in 1897 was Enid Blyton, children's writer whose well known characters include known characters is Noddy, the Famous Five and the Secret Seven. Her work has been translated into nearly 90 languages.

1. Her first book was called Child Whispers, and was a 24-page collection of poems, published in 1922. It was illustrated by her schoolfriend, Phyllis Chase.
2. At school, she was good at sports - she became school tennis champion and captain of lacrosse. The only academic subject she did well in was writing. She could play the Piano well enough to consider a career in Music, but in the end, she chose writing. Her mother thought writing was a "waste of time and money". Since Enid did not get on with her mother this may have influenced her decision.
3. For a while after leaving school, Enid lived at Seckford Hall near Woodbridge in Suffolk. Seckford Hall, which had a haunted room and secret passageway.
4. Her manuscripts were rejected by publishers many times, which only made her more determined to succeed. She believed rejection made her more determined and self-reliant. Her perseverance paid off in the end, She is now the world's fourth most translated author, behind Agatha Christie, Jules Verne and William Shakespeare.
5. She married an editor at her publishing firm, Major Hugh Alexander Pollock in 1924. They had two daughters, Gillian and Imogen, but in time the marriage broke down. Enid had several affairs, including, according to a memoir written by her husband's second wife, a lesbian affair with one of her childrens' nannies. Eventually, she started an affair with Kenneth Fraser Darrell Waters. Pollock found out about it and wanted to file for divorce. Enid, not wanting her public image damaged by adultery, persuaded him to let her do the filing, and she'd allow him access to his daughters, However, according to the second wife's memoir, she went back on that and didn't allow him to contact the girls. She also bankrupted him by making sure he never worked in publishing again. Enid, meanwhile, married Darrell Waters.
6. She wrote so much so quickly (sometimes producing fifty books a year plus magazine and newspaper contributions) that people believed she'd hired ghost writers. Enid was upset by this and put an appeal in a children's magazine asking the kids to let her know if they heard these rumours. One child informed her that her school librarian was saying it, and the librarian was rapidly sued and forced to apologise. Enid Blyton's response to her critics was that she was uninterested in the views of anyone over the age of 12; that half the attacks on her work were motivated by jealousy and the rest came from "stupid people who don't know what they're talking about because they've never read any of my books".
7. She believed that the colour red acted as a mental stimulus for her, so she kept a red Moroccan shawl near her while she was writing.
8. She didn't just write fiction, either. She wrote educational texts (her day job was teaching) which were influential in the 1920s and '30s. These included The Teacher's Treasury (three volumes), Modern Teaching (six volumes), Pictorial Knowledge (ten volumes), and Modern Teaching in the Infant School (four volumes).
9. She wrote six books under another name, Mary Pollock, in 1940 - including Three Boys and a Circus and Children of Kidillin. These books were popular, too, to the extent that people said, "Enid Blyton had better look to her laurels". Her fans figured out who was really writing the books and complained to the publisher, who later re-issued them as Enid Blyton books.
10. Enid Blyton used her massive fan base to encourage children to get active supporting charities which supported animals and children. The largest of the clubs she was involved with was the Busy Bees, the junior section of the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals, which, after Blyton promoted it in the Enid Blyton Magazine, attracted 100,000 members in three years.

10 August: Ecuador Independence Day

Ecuador gained Independence from Spain on this date in 1809. 10 things you might not know about Ecuador:

1. It's said that Ecuador is the nearest country to space, because its highest mountain, a currently inactive stratovolcano called Chimborazo, while not the highest mountain in terms of elevation from sea level, due to the fact that the Earth bulges slightly near the equator, is the furthest distance from the Earth's core and the nearest to space.
2. Talking of the equator, Ecuador's name means "Equator" in Spanish, making it the only country in the world to be named after a geographical feature. The equator runs through the country and there is a marker in Ciudad Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World City) where one can allegedly stand with one foot in each hemisphere, although measurements had improved since the line was painted and the equator is actually 240m south of it.
3. Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, is 2,850m above sea level, making it the highest official capital city in the world.
4. The largest city is Guayaquil.
5. Quito is also UNESCO World Heritage Site #2, that is, the second place to be named as such. The world's first UNESCO Heritage Site is also in Ecuador - the Galapagos Islands.
6. The Galapagos Islands are famous for their endemic species of animals and birds, which were studied by Charles Darwin during the Voyage of the Beagle, and helped inspire his theory of evolution by natural selection. Nature in Ecuador has a constitutional right not to be exploited by man. Since 2008 nature has the “right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.” Ecuador is the first country in the world to grant rights to the natural world.
7. Ecuador is the world’s largest exporter of Bananas, accounting for up to 29% of all bananas exported in 2011. It also produces most of the world's supply of balsa wood, and the Panama hat, originally made to sell to the workers building the Panama Canal.
8. The national tree of Ecuador is the cinchona tree which produces Quinine, the first drug used to prevent and treat malaria. The national flower is the Rose.
9. Ecuador is one of only two countries in South America that does not share a border with Brazil.
10. The Flag is a tricolour of Yellow (the yellow stripe is twice as deep as the Blue and red stripes) and it has the coat of arms in the centre. Depicted on this are Chimborazo; Guayas, the first seaworthy steamship built in Ecuador and indeed in all of South America; a Caduceus and the zodiac symbols for Aries, Taurus, Gemini and Cancer representing the months March to July, the duration of the March Revolution of 1845.