Thursday 28 March 2024

29 March: Lemming Day

Today is Lemming day. 10 facts about lemmings:

  1. There are about 19 species of lemming. They belong to the family Cricetidae and are most closely related to Hamsters, voles and muskrats.

  2. They are native to USACanadaNorwaySwedenGreenlandChina and Russia.

  3. The different species vary in size but on average they are 7-14cm in length (not including their tails) and weigh between 30g and 115g.

  4. They don’t hibernate in winter. Those living in extremely cold climates will burrow in Snow to keep warm and eat tree bark and twigs. In summer they eat grass, moss, berries, shoots and roots.

  5. They are solitary creatures as a rule, only coming together to mate. Although it has to be said, they mate a lot. The breeding season is usually during the warmer summer months from June to September, although some especially determined (or randy) individuals may start mating in January. In the summer the females are continually pregnant and can produce two or three litters of about seven (but possibly as many as 13) each year. The young are sexually mature after just two weeks and can start producing litters of their own.

  6. It has been observed that lemming populations fluctuate wildly. Some years there will be lots, others they may seem to virtually disappear altogether. There have been a number of wacky theories which try to explain this, dating back to 1532 when Jacob Ziegler put forward the suggestion that lemmings fall from the sky during storms, and die when the first grass grows in spring.

  7. Whatever the reason, one thing it definitely isn’t is that they throw themselves off cliffs in huge numbers when the population gets too large. This is a myth perpetrated by Disney. Although the concept dates back to the 19th century when a magazine called Popular Science Monthly suggested that lemmings throw themselves in the sea so they can swim off in search of the lost continent of Lemuria. And no, this article appeared in August, not April 1st! A 1958 Disney documentary called White Wilderness is to blame for popularising the myth, as it included footage of lemmings running across the tundra and apparently throwing themselves off a cliff. It was completely staged involving snowy turntables, clever editing, and it has to be said, a lot of cruelty to lemmings. The truth came out in 1983 and the backlash from scientists and animal rights activists resulted in White Wilderness being removed from the list of films on Disney’s website.

  8. A much more likely explanation is that, while lemmings don’t migrate en masse, they will disperse if an area gets too crowded, in search of food and territory. They might tend to go in the same direction but not as a pack. They can swim, and might attempt to cross a river if it’s in their path, but will avoid doing so if they can. If they drown, it’s not intentional.

  9. In the 90’s there was a popular video game called ‘Lemmings’, where players had to guide lemmings through various obstacles to stop them killing themselves.

  10. Even if they get lucky, they only live for a year or two. They are seen as a tasty snack by many predators like Foxes, weasels, OwlsWolves, wolverines, hawks, gulls, and falcons. There’s another myth that lemmings will explode if threatened. Needless to say it’s not true, but they will expose their sharp teeth and screech.

Wednesday 27 March 2024

28 March: Lollipops

Today is National Something on a Stick Day, so here are 10 facts about lollipops:

  1. The concept of something sweet on a stick goes back to prehistoric times when people used sticks to scrape Honey out of beehives. Ancient African and Asian societies had fruit and nut treats candied in honey, which is a natural preservative. They inserted a stick into the treats to make them easier to eat.

  2. Lollipops as we know them began to emerge in the 17th century when Sugar became more available.

  3. Other words for a lollipop include lolly, sticky-pop and sucker.

  4. The word was first recorded by English lexicographer Francis Grose in 1796. It may have derived from "lolly" (tongue) and "pop" (slap); or it might be of Romani origin, related to the Roma tradition of selling candy Apples on a stick. Red apple in the Romani language is loli phaba.

  5. All that said, lollipops were allegedly invented by a man called George Smith from Connecticut who made hard candy treats on a stick back in 1908 and trademarked the name lollipop in 1913. He got the name from a famous racehorse of the time, Lolly Pop.

  6. National Lollipop Day is on 20 July.

  7. Lollipops can help save lives. Putting medicine in lollipops makes it easier for children to take.

  8. A famous company making lollipops is the Dum Dum company, which started in 1923. Its founder thought that name would be easy for children to remember and say. One of the things the company is famous for it its “mystery flavour” which is actually created when one flavour is running out so they add a new one to the same vat, so it’s actually a combination of two random flavours.

  9. The largest lollipop in the world was created in California in 2012. It was Chocolate flavour, 4 feet long, 6.5 feet wide and 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighing 3176.5 kg (7003 lb). The stick didn’t count towards the record but was 11 feet and 10 inches tall.

  10. Other lollipop related world records are the most people licking lollipops together, 12,831, at a lollipop licking event in Valladolid, Spain in 2008; and the longest line of lollipops, 11,602, on Durban Beachfront Promenade, South Africa, in 2022, in aid of the National Sea Rescue Institute.

Tuesday 26 March 2024

27 March: Gloria Swanson

Actress Gloria Swanson was born on this date in 1899. Here are 10 facts about her:

  1. Her name at birth was Gloria May Josephine Svensson. She was born in Chicago.

  2. Her father was attached to the US Army and so she moved around a lot as a child. She was an only child. Her mother dressed her flamboyantly to draw attention away from her large teeth.

  3. She didn’t set out to become a movie star and when she left school her first job was as a sales clerk in a department store. She had a crush on an actor called Francis X. Bushman, and decided to take a tour of the studio where he worked. The tour guide saw her potential as a star and as a result, she got her first film role in The Fable of Elvira and Farina and the Meal Ticket.

  4. Her early roles tended to be in slapstick comedies, of which she wasn’t a great fan. At one point she worked with Charlie Chaplin, but the pair weren’t the least bit impressed with each other. “All morning I felt like a cow trying to dance with a toy poodle,” she would later write, and Chaplin demanded she be replaced. Not that it was any skin off Gloria’s nose. “I would have been mortified if anybody I knew had ever seen me get kicked in the pants…by an odd sprite in a hobo outfit,” she wrote.

  5. In 1925, she founded her own production company, Gloria Productions, giving her greater control over her career.

  6. She was the original inspiration for illustrations of Morticia Addams in the New Yorker in the 1930s.

  7. She was quite superstitious and one of her quirks was always sleeping with her head pointing due north. She would demand that hotel rooms be rearranged to accommodate this.

  8. She had six husbands and had numerous affairs. She married for the first time at 17, to Wallace Beery and realised right away this had been a terrible mistake and filed for divorce when he gave her pills for morning sickness which caused a miscarriage. She went on to wed Herbert K. Somborn but he divorced her citing affairs with 13 men; Henri, Marquis de la Falaise, who despite the marriage ending in divorce remained a friend and with him she helped scientists flee from Nazi Germany; Michael Farmer, who she only married because she got pregnant and he threatened to ruin her career by going public with the news; William Davey, who tried to divorce her for mental cruelty when she tried to get him to admit he was an alcoholic. He died soon after and left her nothing in his will; and William Dufty, to whom she remained married until she died.

  9. She was considered for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.

  10. She was an early advocate of healthy eating and was known for bringing her own food to public functions.


Monday 25 March 2024

26 March: Alfred Edward Housman Quotes

Alfred Edward Housman was born on this date in 1859, so here are 10 quotes from him:


  1. All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.

  2. Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

  3. The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.

  4. I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.

  5. Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure.

  6. Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free.

  7. Whistle and I'll be there.

  8. Oh when I was in love with you, Then I was clean and brave, And miles around the wonder grew How well did I behave. And now the fancy passes by, And nothing will remain, And miles around they'll say that I Am quite myself again.

  9. I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.

  10. Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders and brains, not pudding, in your head.

Sunday 24 March 2024

25 March: Day of Tourists

Today is Day of Tourists. 10 quotes about tourism:


  1. I could spend my life arriving each evening in a new city. Bill Bryson

  2. Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travellers don’t know where they’re going. Paul Theroux

  3. The other day I went to a tourist information booth and asked, “Tell me about some of the people who were here last year.” Steven Wright

  4. People don't take trips, trips take people. John Steinbeck.

  5. The traveller sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see. Gilbert K. Chesterton

  6. A tourist follows a trail; a mountaineer finds one. Reinhold Messner

  7. The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist. Russell Baker

  8. The average tourist wants to go to places where there are no tourists. Sam Ewing

  9. Stay away from restaurants that have menus in five languages. That's always a tourist trap. You want to eat where the locals eat. Curtis Stone

  10. When I land in a new country, I'm a tourist. I can't become a local in one day. Nuseir Yassin


Saturday 23 March 2024

24 March: Palm Sunday 2024

Palm Sunday falls on this date in 2024, so here are ten facts about Palm Sunday:

  1. Palm Sunday is a Christian moveable feast, celebrated the Sunday before Easter. It is also the sixth Sunday and final day of Lent.

  2. It marks the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, which is told in all four of the gospels: Matthew 21:1-11, Mark 11:1-11, Luke 19:28-44, and John 12:12-19.

  3. On the first Palm Sunday, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a Donkey while crowds spread palm leaves and items of clothing in front of him, and cried, “Hosanna” which translates as “save us!” This fulfilled a prophecy in the Old Testament in Zechariah 9:9, about 500 years earlier. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.”

  4. Why a donkey? Wouldn’t you expect a king to show up on a fine white horse? Perhaps, but this would send a signal that the king had come to wage war. It was traditional for a king to ride on a donkey if he came in peace. Exactly the message that Jesus would have wanted to convey.

  5. In the ancient Near East, it was customary to cover the path of someone deemed worthy of great honour.

  6. The Christian church marks Palm Sunday by blessing palm branches, which may be woven into crosses, and handing them out to the congregation. The crosses are kept until just before Lent the following year, when they are collected and burned to make ash to use on Ash Wednesday.

  7. The palm branch represented goodness, well-being and victory, so is particularly appropriate to symbolise Christ’s victory over death.

  8. Of course, palm trees aren’t available everywhere in the world, so in some countries it’s necessary to use a substitute. In Ireland, for example, they’ll use Yew, silver fir, spruce or Cypress instead and the day is known as “Yew Sunday” instead. In IndiaMarigolds are strewn on the ground on this day.

  9. In Latvia, it’s called "Pussy Willow Sunday". Children are traditionally woken this morning by being swiped with a willow branch. Congregations at church will be given pussy Willow, which symbolise new life.

  10. The colour Red is associated with Palm Sunday. Catholic priests wear red robes on this day.


Friday 22 March 2024

23 March: Joan Crawford

Today is the birth date of the actress Joan Crawford. 10 things you might not know about her:

  1. Her real name was Lucille LeSueur, although she was known for a while as Billie Cassin, thanks to a step-father who was briefly around. She ended up with the name Joan Crawford because her bosses at MGM didn’t like either of her other names. LeSueur, for example, sounded too much like “sewer”. So they held a competition in which the general public were invited to choose a name for the new star. The judges chose “Joan Arden”, but it turned out they couldn’t use that as another actress was already using it. So they reverted to the runner up suggestion of Joan Crawford, which had been submitted by Mrs. Marie M. Tisdale from Albany, New York, who won $500. Joan disliked the name. The surname sounded like “Crawfish” to her, and she asked at first that people called her Joanne rather than Joan. She was lucky not to be saddled with Boaty McBoatface if you ask me!

  2. No birth certificate exists for her, so although 23 March is agreed by everyone to be her birthday, the year she was born varies according to source. Crawford always claimed 1908, but 1905, 1906 and 1904 are all often quoted. 1904 is unlikely to be correct, though, as she had a brother who was born in September 1903.

  3. She always wanted to be a dancer, but nearly lost that dream when she trod on a piece of Glass as a child. Doctors said she’d never walk without a limp, but she was determined and practised walking and dancing every day until she could do it without pain. She went on to win Charleston contests and after that, in stage shows. She was spotted in the chorus of The Passing Show in 1924 by MGM producer Harry Rapf.

  4. She was 5’ 3" with red hair and freckles. The freckles would be covered with make up and her hair colour varied depending o n the role she was playing.

  5. She married four times: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Franchot Tone, and Phillip Terry and Pepsi-Cola president Alfred Steele. She also had many lovers. Rumour has it that Clark Gable, Vincent Sherman, and Spencer Tracy had affairs with her, and also that she was bisexual and had affairs with women, too. It has been rumoured that Joan had affairs with Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Greta Garbo, and possibly even Marilyn Monroe.

  6. After several miscarriages, she was told she would never have a baby, so she adopted five children. However, the birth mother of one boy, called Christopher, showed up at Crawford’s home and demanded she give the baby back. The mother then went and sold the baby to another family. Crawford was single when she adopted her three daughters, Christina and fraternal twins Cathy and Cindy. In California at the time it was illegal for a single woman to adopt so she used illegal baby brokers. She adopted another boy while married to Phillip Terry and named him Philip, but when she divorced Terry, she renamed the boy Christopher.

  7. It was Christina who published the damning memoir, Mommie Dearest, in 1978. Christina claimed that Joan was abusive, alcoholic and always put her career before her children. The book was a best seller and was made into a film, although Cathy and Cindy and even Christina’s husband claimed that most of Christina’s claims weren’t true.

  8. Joan Crawford was probably OCD and a germ phobe. Whenever she stayed in a hotel, no matter how reputable it was, she always scrubbed the bathroom herself before using it. She used to wash her hands every ten minutes and follow guests around her house wiping everything they touched, especially doorknobs and pieces from her china set.

  9. She would always reply to letters sent by fans and spent a lot of time writing personal replies and signing them. She was also more than happy to give her autograph to anyone who asked. She was also a supporter of a number of charities, and it was discovered after she died that she’d secretly paid for the medical treatment of hundreds of people who couldn’t afford it. Even the patients themselves had no idea who was footing their bills.

  10. In later life, she became a Christian Scientist and due to her beliefs, refused treatment for the cancer which killed her in 1977.