Topical Tens

Sunday, 23 March 2025

23 March: Wind

Today is World Meteorological Day. Since I prepare these posts several weeks in advance, I’m writing this while sheltering from Storm Eowyn, which prompted me to find ten facts about wind.

Wind is the movement of air from an area of high pressure to an area of low pressure. The reason wind even exists is the fact that the Sun heats the surface of the Earth unevenly. As air heats up, it rises, causing a void underneath into which cooler air will move.
"Anemos" is the Greek word for wind. This gives us the words anemology (the study of wind), anemious (a plant which grows in windy conditions) and anemometer (an instrument for measuring wind).
In Greek mythology, the anemoi were four wind gods, causing wind from the four compass points (They were called Boreas, Notus, Eurus, and Zephyrus). Other wind gods include: Vayu the Vedic and Hindu God of Wind; Njörðr (Norse wind god); Stribog (Slavic god of winds, sky and air); Fūjin (Japanese wind god); and Venti (Roman wind gods).
The word Kamikaze actually translates as “divine wind”. The term was first used for a series of typhoons that saved Japan from two Mongol fleets under Kublai Khan in 1274 and 1281. In England, the wind that thwarted the Spanish Armada was dubbed “Protestant Wind”.
Wind power now provides four per cent of the world’s energy. It’s not a new idea, though. The first house in the world to have its Electricity supplied by wind power was in Kincardineshire, Scotland in 1887; and the ancient Sinhalese of Anuradhapura and Sri Lanka used monsoon winds to power furnaces as early as 300 BCE. A Windmill was used to power an organ in the first century.
The convention for describing the direction of the wind is to call it by the direction it comes from. Therefore, a westerly or western wind is blowing from west to east.
The windiest place in the world is Antarctica, but the highest verified gust of wind was in Barrow Island, Australia on 10 April, 1996. The gust was 253 miles/408 kilometers per hour. The strongest observed winds on a planet in the Solar System are on Neptune and Saturn.
Trade winds are steady winds flowing toward the equator, named after the 16th-century Portuguese ships which travelled east to west to trade goods. Jet streams are powerful winds blowing about ten kilometres above the earth; they were discovered by World War II fighter pilots who found their speed reduced when they flew against these winds.
Wind chill is the sensation of cold produced by the wind on exposed skin as the air motion speeds up the rate of heat transfer from the body to the surrounding atmosphere. Its values are always lower than the measured air temperature.
When there are high winds, the advice is always to keep pets indoors, but sailors of old had a superstition that storms were the result of someone shutting a Cat up indoors on shore. They also believed that the ship’s cat could start storms through magic stored in its tail, so you’d better not treat it badly. If a ship's cat fell or was thrown overboard, it was believed it would summon a terrible storm to sink the ship. If the ship survived, it would be cursed with nine years of bad luck.

See also: Fog, Rain, Snow, Hail, Lightning, Ice, Rainbows, The Beaufort Scale.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Friday, 21 March 2025

On this date in 1997 the world's smallest boomerang, measuring 48 mm or 1.8 inches long and 45 mm or 1.77 inches wide was thrown successfully by Sadir Kattan during the Australian National Boomerang Championships in Melbourne. 10 facts about boomerangs:

It is believed that boomerangs are amongst the first heavier than air flying objects invented by humans. Depictions of boomerangs being thrown at animals, such as Kangaroos, appear in some of the Indigenous Australian rock art of the Kimberley region, which is potentially up to 50,000 years old.
Although usually associated with Aboriginal peoples of Australia, they existed elsewhere – King Tutenkhamen owned a collection of boomerangs in ancient Egypt, and Native Americans in California and Arizona, and in southern India used them as well.
The oldest boomerang found was in Olazowa Cave in Poland. It was made from a Mammoth tusk, and has been dated as about 30,000 years old.
In Australia, not all the Aboriginal people even knew about them. It was only the people in Eastern and Southern Australia who used them. Boomerangs were unknown to those in the Northern Territory, Tasmania, half of South Australia, the northern parts of Queensland and Western Australia.
Nor do most boomerangs actually come back. They weren’t supposed to. They were used as weapons for hunting animals and could kill or maim even large animals like kangaroos or Emus as well as small birds or mammals. Boomerangs that come back evolved for recreational use.
There’s evidence that they were used in warfare as well, against other human beings. There’s even a variety with a sharp hook at one end.
The name derives from the word used for these weapons by the Turuwal tribe in New South Wales. They were also known as "throwsticks" or "kylies".
The first recorded mention of boomerangs by Europeans was at Farm Cove (Port Jackson), in December 1804, when its use was witnessed during a tribal skirmish.
We know about the smallest boomerang. What about the largest? The largest boomerang was over 259 centimetres long.
The longest time in the air for a boomerang is over 2 minutes.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

Thursday, 20 March 2025

21 March: Colour

Today is International Colour Day: 10 facts about colour.

Most people can see about 10 million colours. There is, however, a genetic mutation found only in women which allows perception of up to 100 million colours. Women with the mutation are called tetrachromats, and the reason they can see more colours is because the mutation gives them four colour cones in their Eyes, instead of the usual three.
Women in general are better at perceiving Red and Orange tones. Researchers at the University of Arizona discovered the ability to see red comes from a gene that is attached to the X chromosome. Since women have two X chromosomes, the two copies of these genes means that they can see a lot more orange-red tones than men.
Colour blindness is more common in men for the same reason. However, there is an up side to being colour blind, and possibly it was once an evolutionary advantage. People who are colour blind can see better at night. According to the US Army, they can even perceive camouflage colours which makes them better equipped to spot hidden enemies.
When they are first born, babies cannot see colour. They see the world in Black and White first of all and their ability to see colour develops by the time they are five months old. The first colour a baby sees is red.
The ability to see colours can also be affected by one’s native language. There are some tribal languages in Africa which use the same word for Green and Blue, and speakers find it hard to distinguish between those colours. Also in Russian, light blue and dark blue are completely different colours.
There is a name for the colour you see when you first close your eyes or turn lights off. It’s called eigengrau.
Scientists have found that it is easier to remember images in colour than it is to remember black and white images.
Blue is the most common favourite colour worldwide, followed by Purple. The least favourites are orange, Brown, and Yellow.
Colours affect perception using other senses. The perception of how something tastes differs according to the colour of the plate or mug in which it is served. In one experiment, participants were given hot chocolate in orange, cream, red, and white mugs. Participants thought the hot chocolate served in the orange and cream mugs tasted better. The sense of smell can be affected, too, with red and Pink shades specifically associated with fruity fragrances, and oranges and browns with musty ones. Even your perception of time is affected. There was a study in which people had to look at different coloured screens while waiting for a computer download. The people looking at blue screens believed the download was quicker than the people looking at a red screen believed it was.
A rare sensory condition known as synaesthesia means some people see numbers, letters, or days of the week, as colours.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

Wednesday, 19 March 2025

20 March: Ovid

This date in 43 BC was the birthdate of Ovid. 10 things you might not know about him:

Who was Ovid, anyway? He was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus, a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace. These poets are the three canonical poets of Latin literature.
His real name was Publius Ovidius Naso.
Most of what we know about him comes from his own work, as he wrote more about his life than most Roman poets did. In particular, his poem Tristia gives a lengthy autobiographical account of his life.
He was born in a town called Sulmo, now known as Sulmona, east of Rome.
His father had him and his brother educated in rhetoric. Ovid’s father wanted him to practice law and rhetoric was needed for that. Owever, when Ovid’s brother died at the age of 20, Ovid went off the rails. He gave up his study of law and went travelling. He went to Athens, Asia Minor, and Sicily, taking minor public posts along the way. Eventually he resigned these to concentrate on writing poetry, much to his father’s disapproval.
He married three times and had divorced twice by the time he was thirty.
Ovid is most famous for the Metamorphoses, a mythological narrative in fifteen books, one of the most important sources of classical mythology today. However, he wrote a lot of other stuff including a tragedy about Medea, which the Roman rhetorician Quintilian thought was among his finest work, but it hasn’t survived, so we’ll never know. He also wrote a poem called the Medicamina Faciei, which was about women's beauty treatments.
He spent the last few years of his life in a place called Tomis, on the Black Sea, which is in what is now Romania. According to Ovid’s own words, he was banished there by the Emperor Augustus for a "poem and a mistake", but doesn’t elaborate on that, so speculation is rife. The poem bit is generally assumed to be one called Ars Amatoria, or the art of love, which was about adultery. Augustus was particularly concerned with loose morals in Rome at the time and promoted monogamous marriage and having lots of babies, so Ovid was going against that narrative. As for the “mistake”, theories include ogling the Emperor’s wife when she was naked or having sex with the Emperor’s granddaughter.
Ovid has been described as the originator of the dramatic monologue form, a style Tennyson and Browning would be famous for two thousand years later.
It’s also thought Ovid was a massive influence on William Shakespeare, who would have studied his works at school. There’s a fair bit in Shakespeare’s work about metamorphosis, people changing into other people and into things, which was a recurring theme in Metamorphoses.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

Tuesday, 18 March 2025

19 March: Platinum

On the 78^th day of the year, 10 facts about the 78^th element in the Periodic Table: Platinum.

The word platinum comes from the Spanish platina, a diminutive of plata "Silver".
Its atomic number is 78, its symbol is Pt; its melting point is 2041.4 K (1768.3 °C/3214.9 °F) and its boiling point is 4098 K (3825 °C/6917 °F). It has remarkable resistance to corrosion, even at high temperatures, and is therefore considered a noble metal.
It may not react much, but it has proved very useful as a catalyst. As such, it is used to make catalytic converters for cars and also fertilisers.
Another industrial use it has been put to is cancer drugs. The anticancer drug cisplatin was the first one to be platinum based. Now, about half of the drugs used in chemotherapy contain platinum.
Archaeologists have discovered traces of platinum in the gold used in ancient Egyptian burials. What they don’t know, however, is whether the Egyptians even realised there was platinum in their Gold. The South American La Tolita Culture (c. 600 BCE – 200 CE) on the other hand, are known to have specifically worked the metal.
The first European reference to platinum appears in 1557 in the writings of the Italian humanist Julius Caesar Scaliger. He described an unknown noble metal found between Darién and Mexico, "which no fire nor any Spanish artifice has yet been able to liquefy". The Europeans who first came across it regarded it as an impurity in gold and would actually throw it away. The first person to study platinum was Antonio de Ulloa, who collected some nuggets of the stuff the natives were working with when travelling in Colombia and Peru in 1735. He established the first mineralogy lab in Spain and produced a report on platinum in 1748, but after that he stopped studying it and moved on to other things.
There are only about 5 parts per billion by weight in Earth's crust, meaning platinum is very rare. It’s been said that all the gold ever mind would fit into 3 Olympic sized swimming pools. All the platinum ever mined would fill just one of those pools to ankle depth. Hence it gets used as bullion and as an investment. The value of platinum, unlike the metal itself, is highly reactive to market conditions. During periods of economic growth, the price of platinum tends to be as much as twice the price of gold, but during periods of economic uncertainty, the price of platinum tends to decrease more due to reduced industrial demand, falling below the price of gold.
Platinum, therefore, is seen as more prestigious than gold. A platinum loyalty or credit card will offer more privileges than a gold one, for example. In the United States, a musical album that has sold more than a million copies will be credited as "platinum."
The 70^th anniversary of anything is its platinum anniversary or jubilee. For example, 2022 saw the platinum jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II who had been on the throne for 70 years.
The metal bar that traditionally defined a kilogram, housed at the Paris Institute for Weights and Measures – is made from an alloy of 90% platinum.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

18 March: Neville Chamberlain

Born this date in 1869 was Neville Chamberlain, who became British Prime Minister in 1937. 10 facts about him:

Neville Chamberlain was born into a political family, his father being Joseph Chamberlain, a Victorian Cabinet minister.
He was born and educated in Birmingham, Rugby School, and later Mason College (now the University of Birmingham) but wasn’t very interested in studying or politics at that time.
He trained as an accountant and at 21, his father sent him to the Bahamas to establish and run a sisal plantation. That didn’t work out, and Chamberlain returned to England six years later, having lost £50,000. On the plus side, he’d gained a reputation for being a hands-on manager, taking a strong interest in the day-to-day running of a business.
It looked as if he was going to be a lifelong bachelor, but when he was 40 he met and fell in love with Anne Cole. They married, and it was she who encouraged Chamberlain to get involved in politics.
Chamberlain initially became involved with local Birmingham politics, standing as a local councillor and eventually being elected Lord Mayor of Birmingham. Then he stood as the Unionist candidate for Birmingham Ladywood, and was elected with almost 70% of the vote.
He didn’t get on with David Lloyd George. Lloyd George appointed him Director General of the Department of National Service, but he resigned within the year because of personal differences. He later refused to serve under Lloyd George in coalition government.
In 1922 he became Postmaster General under Andrew Bonar Law, and was made Minister of Health soon after. Under Baldwin, he was made Chancellor of the Exchequer all within 5 years of entering Parliament.
His achievements included the Factories Act 1937: limited hours worked by women and children; the Holiday with Pay Act 1938: recommendation of a week’s paid holiday and the Housing Act 1938: to encourage slum clearance and maintain rent controls. However, he’s probably best known for unsuccessfully trying to avert war with Germany but meeting with Hitler in 1938. Initially the result seemed promising. Chamberlain returned from the meeting declaring “I believe it is peace for our time”. Some suggested Chamberlain should be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for this. However, Hitler carried on invading places and his invasion of Poland forced Chamberlain’s hand, and he declared war on 3 September, 1939. Chamberlain’s critics maintained that all the peace talks with Hitler had done was give Germany time to build up its forces.
The first few months of the war didn’t go well and Chamberlain’s reputation suffered. He resigned in May 1940 after the failure of the British efforts to liberate Norway.
Soon after that, he resigned from government entirely because he had cancer, from which he died on 9 November 1940, just a few weeks after leaving office. He was 71.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

Sunday, 16 March 2025

17 March: Harps

Today we celebrate all things Irish, and today I present 10 facts about Ireland’s national symbol, the harp.

The harp is one of the oldest musical instruments known to man. The earliest harps and lyres were found in Sumer, 3500 BCE; several were excavated from tombs in Ur. The walls of many ancient Egyptian tombs have paintings of people playing the harp.
The word “harp” originates from the German, Old Norse and Anglo Saxon words meaning “to pluck.”
A person who plays the harp is called a harp player, or a harpist.
So why did Ireland choose it as a symbol? Nobody really knows. The reason is lost in the mists of time. We do know that the clans of ancient Ireland would all have a resident harp player who would compose and play songs about the men of the clans. According to tradition, Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, played the harp, as did many of the Irish gentry of the time. The harp was adopted as a symbol of the Kingdom of Ireland on the coinage from 1542.
In the 1600s the English rulers of Ireland banned the harp and burned any they found. People caught playing the instrument faced execution.
Companies with a connection to Ireland often use a harp as a significant part of their logo. The Irish brewer Guinness has used a right-facing harp (rather than the Irish State emblem's left-facing version) as its emblem since 1759, and the logo of the airline Ryanair is a stylised harp.
Ireland may be the only country to use a musical instrument as its national symbol, but there is as city in Sri Lanka, Jaffna, which has a South Asian Tamil harp yaal as its symbol, and the arms of the Finnish city of Kangasala feature a red, eagle-headed harp. Since Northern Ireland is part of the UK, a harp appears on the British Royal Standard, and it is the national instrument of Wales. An Iraqi football club, Al-Shorta has used a harp as its emblem since their style of play was likened to fine harp-playing by a television presenter.
Parts of a harp are the column, which makes up the longest side, which runs down to the foot. The other two sides are called the neck and the body. The corner of the harp where the neck and body meet is called the knee. A modern concert harp has 47 strings and 7 pedals. The pedals sharpen or flatten the note produced when a string is plucked. Harp strings are coloured depending on the note as an aid to the harpist. C strings are red, F strings are Black or Blue and the other strings are White.
In The Bible, Genesis 4:21 says that Jubal, the first musician and son of Lamech, was 'the father of all who play' the harp, and also the flute. King David is another Biblical figure who played a harp. Famous harpists in modern times include comedian Harpo Marx, and the lead singer from the band Yes, Jon Anderson.
Some world records: The largest harp, as of 2021, measures 28.03m tall and 21.8m long, and was unveiled at Sichuan University of Culture and Arts in China. The world’s largest harp ensemble is comprised of 420 harpists. In October 2022 the World Record for the longest marathon harp playing was set when Kateryna Oliinyk played the harp for 3 hours and 1 minute and 54 seconds in Dubai. The world’s most expensive harp is made by Lyon & Healy, in the rococo style of King Louis XV and known as the Louis XV special harp. It is priced at around $189,000, or approximately £144,000. Finally, the highest altitude for playing a harp was achieved by Siobhan Brady who played her harp at Singla Pass in India at an altitude of 4,954m.