24 February: Carnival floats

On this date in 1868, the first parade to feature floats took place in Mobile, Alabama, to celebrate Mardi Gras. Here are 10 things you might not know about carnival floats.

1. A float is defined as a decorated platform, either built on a vehicle like a truck or towed behind one, which is a component of many festive parades.

2. They date back to the middle ages when they had religious themes. They were used as mobile scenery for passion plays, especially during Feast of Corpus Christi, which would feature 48 floats, one for each play in the Corpus Christi cycle. Artisans would build them to feature their particular skills.

3. Floats got their name because the very first ones were barges on the River Thames, decorated for the Lord Mayor's show.

4. In 1890 Pasadena's Valley Hunt Club organised a parade featuring Horse-drawn carriages covered in Flowers as part of a festival. This festival became known as the Tournament of Roses and it continues to this day.

5. In New Orleans, Mardi Gras was celebrated with small street processions until 1857 when a larger parade was organised. The first floats were simple, built on wooden wagons with paper, fabric, and gas lanterns. Like the passion play floats, they were designed to tell a story, as floats still do today. As people from Europe migrated to New Orleans, they brought skills with them and in time, the floats became more elaborate and artistic.

6. The largest float ever exhibited in a parade was 116-foot-long (35 m) and took part in the 2012 Tournament of Roses Parade. It featured a skateboarding Bulldog surfing in tank of water which held 5,500 imperial gallons (25,000 litres) of water, was 80 feet (24 m) long and included a wave machine which created a wave every minute.

7. When is a float not a float? When it’s a cart. In South West England there is a carnival parade in November connected with Guy Fawkes night. Floats here are known as carts and the parade takes place after dark. There are about 40 large floats which are illuminated with up to 22,000 lightbulbs. It tours various locations in Devon, Wiltshire and Somerset including Exmouth, Trowbridge, Bridgewater, Weston Super Mare and Glastonbury.

8. It can take several months to build a float. Once a theme has been decided upon the float will need a metal frame, hydraulic motors to make parts of it move, and the details added in wood, papier mache, fibre glass and clay. Costumes for the people riding on the float also have to be designed and made.

9. Themes of floats include children’s books and films, historical scenes, musical trends such as dance crazes or popular musicals, transport such as trains, cars and space travel and scenes from around the world.

10. In Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Ferris jumps onto a float during a parade and sings several karaoke numbers to the crowd.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

23 February: Horlicks

Born this date in 1846 was William Horlick, food manufacturer and the original patent holder for malted Milk. 10 things you might not know about his product, Horlicks:

1. For anyone who doesn’t know what it is, it’s a sweet malted milk hot drink powder developed by James and William Horlick.

2. The brothers emigrated to the USA, William in 1860 and James in 1873, and it was in that year that they they founded the company J & W Horlicks in Chicago.

3. Horlicks was originally a food for babies and invalids.

4. The Horlicks brothers invented a condition called 'night starvation' for their advertising campaign. The cure, as you may already have guessed, was to have a mug of Horlicks before bed.

5. Horlicks was later made and marketed by GlaxoSmithKline as a nutritional supplement.

6. Horlicks in the UK is currently owned by Aimia Foods.

7. What is this stuff made of? In the UK at least the ingredient list is The main ingredient in the United Kingdom formulation is a mixture of Wheat flour, malted wheat, malted Barley, dried whey, Calcium carbonate, dried skimmed milk, Sugar, palm oil (certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil), Salt, Anti-Caking Agent (E551), and a mixture of vitamins and minerals.

8. In South Africa, you can get Honey and Horlicks flavoured milkshake.

9. In Hong Kong, it’s a popular drink in cafes and can be served hot or cold, with ice.

10. Horlicks was the sponsor for Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, a serial broadcast on Radio Luxembourg in the 1950s.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

22 February: George Washington Quotes

George Washington was born on this date in 1732. 10 George Washington Quotes, from a time when stuff a US president said made sense and didn’t just consist of calling people he didn’t like “failing losers”.

1. A pack of jackasses led by a lion is superior to a pack of lions led by a jackass.

2. Be Americans. Let there be no sectionalism, no North, South, East or West. You are all dependent on one another and should be one in union. In one word, be a nation. Be Americans, and be true to yourselves.

3. 99% of failures come from people who make excuses.

4. Leadership is not only having a vision, but also having the courage, the discipline, and the resources to get you there.

5. You have only one way to convince others, listen to them.

6. Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it.

7. When there is no vision, there is no hope.

8. Make sure you are doing what God wants you to do – then do it with all your strength.

9. Real men despise battle, but will never run from it.

10. To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

21 February: Leo Delibes

Born on this date in 1836 was Leo Delibes, French Romantic composer. 10 facts about him.

1. His works include Coppélia, Sylvia and Lakmé, which includes the "Flower Duet".

2. His full name was Clement Philibert Leo Delibes.

3. He was born in Saint-Germain-du-Val, France. His father was a postman and his mother a musician. He was their only child. His grandfather was an Opera singer.

4. His father died in 1847 and the family moved to Paris. At the age of 12 he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire.

5. As a boy he had a good singing voice and sang in the church choir at La Madeleine. He also played the organ at several churches.

6. One of his teachers at the Conservatoire was Adolphe Adam, the composer of Giselle.

7. Delibes earned a living as a critic; inspector of school music; and accompanist and chorus master at the Opéra.

8. He was one of the first composers to write high quality music for Ballet. He was able to retire thanks to the success of Coppélia and devote his time to composing. He had a yen to compose more serious stuff and wrote a grand scena, La Mort d'Orphée (The Death of Orpheus), and a serious opera, Jean de Nivelle.

9. In 1971 he married Leontine Estelle Denain, who he’d met while working as an organist.

10. He died on 16 January 1891, at the age of 54.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

20 February: Sidney Poitier

This date in 1927 saw the birth of Sidney Poitier, American actor. 10 things you might not know about him.

1. His family lived in the Bahamas, which at that time was a British Crown colony, but Sidney wasn’t born there. He was born in Miami, which made him a US citizen. His father was a farmer and the family would travel to the US on business, which is why they were there when Sidney was born, two months prematurely. It was touch and go whether he’d survive, but he did, and his parents returned to the Bahamas where he grew up.

2. At 15, he went back to Miami, and then to New York when he was 16. He’d decided by then that he wanted to be an actor. He worked washing dishes to support himself.

3. He failed his first audition with the American Negro Theatre because he wasn’t able to read a script fluently. One of the waiters worked with him every night, listening to him as he read from a newspaper.

4. Soon after that, in 1943, Poitier lied about his age so he could join the army, since he was homeless at the time and the military would provide accommodation. He served as a medical attendant at a mental hospital in New York, but hated it and faked a mental illness to get discharged. Faced with the prospect of electric shock treatment, he confessed that he’d been faking and also that he’d lied about his age. After some therapy sessions, he was discharged.

5. After this he tried again for the American Negro Theatre and this time was successful, although he still had a lot of work to do. He couldn’t sing, which was something expected of actors at the time, and he still had a noticeable Bahamian accent, which he needed to work on losing.

6. His breakthrough film role was as a high school student in the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle. He was blacklisted for a time because he was an active member of the Committee for the Negro in the Arts (CNA).

7. Ultimately, though, he was a great success. He was the first African-American actor to win an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Lead Role for Lilies of the Field in 1963, and the first to place autograph, hand, and footprints in the cement at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in 1967.

8. In 2009, Poitier was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama. He’d already, in 1974, been awarded an honorary knighthood of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. He served as as ambassador of the Bahamas to Japan, and was was a member of the board of directors of the Walt Disney Company.

9. He was the visual inspiration for the original illustrations of the superhero Green Lantern.

10. At the time of his death, aged 94, he was the last surviving Oscar nominee as Best Actor from the 1950s, and the last surviving winner from the 1960s. Incidentally, he died on the same day and in the same city as Peter Bogdanovich, who directed him in To Sir, with Love II in 1996.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

19 February: Mendelevium

On this date in 1955 the element Mendelevium was discovered. Here’s what you might not know.

1. It’s a synthetic metallic element with the symbol Md and atomic number 101.

2. That makes it what is called a transuranium element. These are elements with atomic numbers greater than 92, the atomic number of Uranium. All of them are radioactively unstable and decay into other elements. They are all synthetic and none of them occur naturally on Earth, except for neptunium and Plutonium.

3. It has been predicted that Mendelevium would melt at 1100 K (800 °C, 1500 °F).

4. It was named after Dmitri Mendeleev, a Russian chemist known for formulating the periodic law and creating a version of the Periodic Table of elements.

5. It was first synthesised by Albert Ghiorso, Glenn T. Seaborg, Gregory Robert Choppin, Bernard G. Harvey, and team leader Stanley G. Thompson in early 1955 at the University of California, Berkeley, by bombarding another synthetic element called einsteinium with alpha particles.

6. It was the first element to be synthesized and discovered a few atoms at a time. In about a dozen repetitions of the experiment, the team of scientists produced 17 atoms of mendelevium.

7. In the periodic table, mendelevium is located to the right of the actinide fermium, to the left of the actinide nobelium, and below the lanthanide thulium.

8. Seventeen isotopes of mendelevium are known, with mass numbers from 244 to 260.

9. Mendelevium is the last element with any known isotope that has a half-life longer than a day.

10. The most stable of its isotopes is mendelevium-258 which has a half life of 51.5 days.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

18 February: Alessandro Volta

This date in 1745 was the birthdate of Alessandro Volta, Italian scientist and inventor of the electric battery. 10 facts about him.

1. Volta was born in Como in northern Italy. His father, Filippo Volta, was of noble lineage.

2. His family expected him to become a priest, but he chose a career in science and family life instead. This led to speculation that he had no religious belief, but that wasn’t true. He maintained his Catholic faith all his life.

3. His wife’s name was Teresa Peregrini, who like him, was from Como. They had three sons: Zanino, Flaminio, and Luigi.

4. His work built on that of Luigi Galvani, the guy who discovered that touching a skinned Frog’s leg with different metals caused the leg to move. Volta concluded that the frog’s leg was merely a conductor and wasn’t actually generating electricity. He did similar experiments without using frogs, just different metals, and found that the current was generated just the same. He called it “metallic electricity.”

5. His method of detecting weak electric currents between two metals was to place them on his tongue.

6. He went on to invent something called the voltaic column, an early battery, which consisted of alternating disks of Zinc and Silver (alternatively Copper and pewter) separated by Paper or cloth soaked in salt Water or sodium hydroxide.

7. He was also credited with discovering methane gas.

8. Volta demonstrated his battery to Napoleon Bonaparte, who was so impressed that he made Volta a count.

9. Volta retired in 1819 to his estate in Como and died there on 5 March 1827, just after his 82nd birthday.

10. The volt unit of measurement is named for him. Also named for him is a species of electric Eel, Electrophorus voltai, which as been described as the strongest bioelectricity producer in nature.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/