9 September: Otis Redding

Otis Redding, soul singer, sometimes nicknamed the "King of Soul", was born on this date in 1941. 10 facts about him.

1. Redding was born in Dawson, Georgia. His father was Otis Redding Sr. and his mother Fannie Roseman. He was the fourth of their six children, and their first son.

2. He was musical from a young age, singing in the church choir and learning to play the Guitar and Piano. At 10, he was taking singing lessons and learning to play Drums.

3. His father caught TB, and was often in hospital and unable to work, so Otis left school at 15 to help support the family. His day jobs included well digger and gasoline station attendant.

4. He got his break at a local talent contest called "The Teenage Party". At first, his backing musicians let him down somewhat, not matching him in talent. This was noticed by a local guitarist, Johnny Jenkins, who offered to play for him instead. Redding’s performance of Little Richard's Heebie Jeebies, accompanied by Jenkins, won him the contest. They continued to perform together and went on to win the contest 15 times.

5. A musical break wasn’t the only thing he got out of the Teenage Party. He also met his wife, Zelma Atwood, there when he was 18. They married in 1961.

6. His first hit was These Arms of Mine, which got to no. 20 on the R&B chart in 1963.

7. At one concert in 1963, it cost Redding and his band more to get sheet music printed for the resident musicians at the theatre than they earned for the concert. In later years, though, he earned enough to buy himself a 300-acre ranch in Round Oak, Georgia, which he called the Big O Ranch.

8. (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay is possibly Redding’s most famous hit. He wrote it after listening to Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles. Although when it came to recording it, he forgot the words at the end, which is why the fade out is of him whistling.

9. Redding was killed in a plane crash when he was just 26, three days after recording (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay. The plane crashed into a lake while flying Redding and his band from one gig to another. It had taken off despite bad weather warnings. Hence Redding was the first artist to have a number one hit posthumously on Billboard's "Hot 100" chart.

10. Had Redding lived, he would have recorded To Love Somebody, which Barry and Robin Gibb had written especially for him. The Bee Gees recorded it themselves and dedicated it to his memory. Redding was also a favourite of Peter Gabriel of Genesis when he was a teenager. Gabriel has said his song Sledgehammer was inspired by Redding.

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/

8 September: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

On this date in 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made their début on CBS. 10 things you might not know about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

1. They were created by two comic book artists called Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. They were struggling artists who were house mates in Northampton, Massachusetts. One November night in 1983, Eastman drew a Turtle standing on its hind legs, wearing a mask, with nunchucks strapped to its arms, as a joke, labelling it “Ninja Turtle”. They added three more turtles and “Teenage Mutant” to the title. In May 2012, the drawing sold at auction for $71,700.

2. Eastman and Laird developed the idea into a comic book, scraping together the cash to produce it, with just enough left in the kitty afterwards to run an ad. They called their new company Mirage Studios, because there was no actual studio, only their living room. At first, it was going to be a one-off comic book, but then it started selling, so they produced some more.

3. The Marvel superhero comic Daredevil was a significant influence. Splinter, the Turtles’ sensei, is a nod to Daredevil’s sensei, Stick. The Foot Gang, likewise, is a nod to the Hand Clan. There are parallels in the origin stories, too. Daredevil is created when Matt Murdock leaps in front of a runaway truck to save an old man, and gets hit in the face by a stray canister. The canister is full of radioactive stuff, which blinds Matt and gives him superpowers. In the Turtles comic, the same thing happens only instead of hitting the rescuer in the face the canister hits a box of baby turtles, and both fall down a manhole. The turtles, and Splinter, get soaked in the radioactive goo, which turns them into the characters we know today. Perhaps another nod to Daredevil is a storyline where Michelangelo is caught in an explosion and temporarily blinded.

4. Eastman and Laird initially explored Japanese names for the Turtles, but couldn’t come up with anything that actually worked. Renaissance artists, according to Laird, were “just quirky enough to fit the concept.”

5. The original comics were not child friendly. They were in black and white, were violent and the Turtles had foul mouths. When Playmates Toys came along and expressed interest in producing action figures and a cartoon series, the Turtles had to undergo a child friendly makeover. This is the point where they become jokers obsessed with Pizza, the villains more cartoon-like, many of them now robots so parents couldn’t complain if the Turtles smashed them. The catchphrases “Turtle Power!” and “Cowabunga!” were introduced to replace the swearwords. Eastman and Laird had the final say on how the characters turned out, but they remain to this day somewhat unhappy with many of the concessions they had to make.

6. In the comics, all the Turtles wear Red masks and are identified by the weapon they use. This, of course, was not acceptable for a kids’ show and so each Turtle got a signature colour, instead. Leonardo, the responsible and disciplined leader and strategist is Blue (his weapon is twin katanas). Raphael, the rebellious, aggressive one, is red (his weapon is twin sais). Donatello, the brains and tech guy, the team inventor, is Purple (his weapon is a staff). Michelangelo, the free spirited one, joker and party animal, is Orange (his weapon is nunchucks although in the UK, nunchucks are restricted so he was restricted to using a grappling hook instead).

7. Other characters include: Splinter the mutant Rat; April O'Neil, who is variously depicted as a news reporter, lab assistant or genius computer programmer and loves the colour Yellow; Casey Jones, a hockey mask-wearing vigilante who wants to date April; Shredder, a criminal mastermind, leader of the Foot Clan; Karai, a skilled martial artist who might be his daughter; Baxter Stockman, a mad scientist; Krang, an alien warlord from Dimension X; Bebop and Rocksteady, Shredder’s henchmen, a mutant warthog and Rhinoceros.

8. Michelangelo’s name was initially spelled wrongly as "Michaelangelo," presumably until the time someone who knew a bit about Renaissance artists pointed out the mistake.

9. In the 1990s, Raphael briefly left the group and joined the Mighty Mutanimals.

10. Parodies abounded, of course. Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters, and Pre-Teen Dirty-Gene Kung-Fu Kangaroos are two examples, and British television series Spitting Image featured a recurring sketch titled "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turds". More seriously, NASA’s Multi-Purpose Logistics Module has a Ninja Turtle on its logo.

7 September: Grandma Moses

Today is Grandma Moses Day, which celebrates the American artist of that name, who was born on this date in 1860. 10 facts about her:

1. Her actual name was Anna Mary Robertson Moses. Born in Greenwich, New York, she had four sisters and five brothers. Her father was a farmer who ran a flax mill.

2. Her painting career didn’t begin until she was 78, but that didn’t mean she’d never painted at all before then. As a child, she would draw and paint on Paper her father bought for a penny a sheet. In those days she’d paint using Lemon juice, grass, ground ochre, Flour paste, slaked lime, and sawdust.

3. She only attended school briefly, but the school she went to is now a museum and has the largest collection of her works in the United States.

4. She entered domestic service at the age of 12. One of her employers encouraged her interest in art and bought her art materials.

5. She met her husband, Thomas Salmon Moses, at work – he was a hired hand at a farm where she worked. She met him at the age of 27. They had 10 children but only five survived. I’m guessing she didn’t have much time for painting at this time. Thomas died from a heart attack at 67. She continued to run the farm for a while with the help of one of her sons, but in due course retired and went to live with one of her daughters.

6. Before getting into painting, her hobby was Embroidery and quilting, making gifts for friends and family. She gave that up when arthritis made sewing too painful. Her sister suggested that painting might be easier, and the rest is history.

7. Initially, she sold her paintings in a local drug store for as little as $3 each. An art collector called Louis J. Caldor spotted her work in the window and bought up the lot. A year later, she had three paintings in New York's Museum of Modern Art as part of an exhibition called "Contemporary Unknown American Painters". Her first solo exhibition was in 1940, making her 79 or 80 years old at the time. It was in New York and called “What a Farm Wife Painted". Her exhibitions would also include samples of baked goods and preserves that she had made as well as the pictures.

8. One of her best known paintings is called Sugaring Off, a detailed scene featuring people boiling sap to create Maple syrup. This picture was made into a US postage stamp in 1969, and sold for $1.2 million in 2006. Her paintings were also used by Hallmark greetings cards.

9. Some critics dissed her for sprinkling glitter over winter scenes, because they thought it made her look amateurish. She stood her ground and carried on doing it, because she thought glitter captured the appearance of snow shimmering in sunlight.

10. Her autobiography, titled My Life's History, was published in 1952.

6 September: Bambi

Born this date in 1869 was Felix Salten, who wrote a novel called Bambi, A Life in the Woods, on which the Disney film Bambi was based. 10 things you might not know about Bambi.

1. Salten’s real name was Siegmund Salzmann, an insurance clerk who wrote in his spare time. The book on which Bambi was based wasn’t intended for children. There were scenes in it which were even darker than the memorable scene where Bambi’s mother dies. At one point in the novel, Bambi is shown the body of a hunter killed by another human. The book was banned by the Nazis in Germany in 1936, not because they wanted to protect kids from reading about death, but because they thought it might be interpreted as a commentary on the plight of European Jews.

2. Walt Disney’s daughter, Diane, complained to her father that Bambi’s mother didn’t need to die in the film. He told her he was following the book, although in other instances, he hadn’t. He’d changed Bambi’s species from a roe Deer, which is native to Europe, to a mule deer, found in California. He’d left out the man’s corpse and the fact that Bambi’s eventual mate, Faline, was his first cousin. As an adult, Diane Disney would comment that, since he was Walt Disney, her father could take any liberties he liked.

3. Felix Salten sold the American film rights to director Sidney Franklin for a mere $1000. Franklin, in turn, sold it to Disney. Salten had never registered the book for copyright, which scuppered a money-grabbing corporation who eventually bought the rights to the book, no doubt with dollar signs in their eyes as they worked out how much they’d be able to sue Disney for. Since Salten had placed his work in the public domain in the beginning, they lost the case.

4. Bambi is the fifth animated Disney feature, and the first not to feature any human characters on screen. Even though he was never seen, “Man” still made it to 20^th place in the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest on-screen villains. In the film, “Man is in the Forest” was the warning used by the animals that the hunters were coming and they needed to hide. The animators working on the film used the same words to warn each other that Walt Disney was coming, and that they needed to look busy.

5. Their task wasn’t an easy one. They spent much time studying deer and how they moved, in the studio and at the zoo. They even had an extremely smelly deer carcass which they used to study the creature’s anatomy. Disney insisted that every spot on Bambi’s back had to be perfectly replicated in every frame, which slowed down production considerably. Try as they might, though, the animators couldn’t get the Prince of the Forest’s antlers right. They had to resort to filming a 3D model of a stag’s antlers and inserting the footage into the animation.

6. Another unusual feature was that Disney, rather than use adult actors putting on kids’ voices for the young animals, decided to use actual children. Bambi was voiced by a six year old called Donnie Dunagan, who was also used as a model for Bambi’s facial expressions. Young Donnie didn’t get the acting bug, though. He never acted again, and joined the Marines instead. He became the youngest ever drill instructor and served in the Vietnam war. Understandably, he never let on about his role in Bambi for fear of being teased mercilessly. The information was, however, hidden away in a top secret file and finally came out when Major Dunagan was about to retire. He’d protested to a commanding officer about being given an extra task to do when he was already swamped with work. 'You will audit the auditors. Won't you, Maj. Bambi?' the commanding officer said, indicating the top secret file. Once retired, Dunagan was much less reticent about his past and was happy to be interviewed about it. At time of writing, he is still alive and living in Texas with his wife.

7. There are less than 900 words in the entire film. There could have been more, as Disney did consider a scene where two autumn leaves had a conversation before falling to the ground, but decided against it because it didn’t quite fit with the rest of the film.

8. Another thing that was unusual for the time – the songs in the film weren’t sung by the characters but rather by soloists and choirs off-screen. The music was composed by Frank Churchill and the lyrics written by Larry Morey.

9. Disney gave his permission to use the characters in Bambi in a fire prevention campaign for one year. Bambi and his bunny friend Thumper both have asteroids named after them.

10. The film Bambi has even been used as punishment. In 2018 a poacher in Missouri not only received a year in jail for illegally shooting deer, but was also required to watch Bambi once a month while he was inside.

5 September: 248

September 5 is the 248^th day of the year. Here are 10 fun facts about 248.

1. In Jewish tradition, this number represents the number of positive commandments in the Torah, which in turn is said to represent the 248 limbs, organs, and principal bones of the human body.

2. London bus route 248 runs from Romford Market to Moor Lane.

3. In texting slang, 248 means “always”. The premise is as follows: 24 as in 24/7, followed by 8 rather than 7, to represent going above and beyond.

4. 248 Lameia is a main belt asteroid discovered by Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa in 1885 in Vienna and named after the Lamia, a lover of Zeus in Ancient Greek mythology.

5. The A248 is a road in England which connects the villages of Shere, Surrey and Peasmarsh, East Sussex.

6. +248 is the international dialling code for Seychelles.

7. The Ferrari 248 F1 is a Formula One car, used by Ferrari for the 2006 season.

8. Ross 248 is a red dwarf star approximately 10.30 light-years (3.16 parsecs) from Earth in the northern constellation of Andromeda.

9. The Year 248 was a leap year starting on Saturday, known at the time as the Year of the Consulship of Philippus and Severus. This year saw the birth of Flavia Iulia Helena, mother of Constantine I.

10. Area code 248 is one of the area codes in the North American Numbering Plan for Oakland County in Michigan.

4 September: Manhattan

On this date in 1609, Navigator Henry Hudson discovered the island of Manhattan. 10 things you might not know about Manhattan.

1. The original inhabitants of the island of Manhattan were Munsee, Lenape and Wappinger tribes. Even in those days it was a busy place. Members of the tribes were fishing for seafood and growing crops. Their movements around the island created pounded down trails, one of which eventually became Broadway.

2. The name of the island comes from a Lenape word which means “the place where we gather wood to make bows”, because there was a grove of hickory trees growing on the island which provided ideal wood for bowmaking.

3. In 1624, the Dutch established a permanent European presence in Manhattan with a trading post. Then, in 1626, according to legend, they bought the island from the Native Americans for goods valued at something like a thousand dollars in today’s Money.

4. Manhattan is 22.7 square miles (59 km²) in area, 13.4 miles long, and 2.3 miles wide at its widest point. It’s also one of the most densely populated locations in the world. In 2020 the population was 1,694,250, or 72,918 residents per square mile.

5. Manhattan has over 520 million square feet of office space. Many offices are housed in the characteristic skyscrapers, made possible by strong and deep bedrock beneath. The Skyscrapers even act like a kind of Stonehenge twice a year when the sunset aligns perfectly with the east-west street grid.

6. The layout of the streets in a grid system was established by the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, which called for 12 avenues running north-south and 155 streets running east-west. The Borough of Manhattan’s Main Street, however, is located on a different island, Roosevelt Island, across the East River.

7. As for the Traffic Lights, it is possible, if you drive up First Avenue at 28mph, to get a string of green traffic lights. If you’re on foot, pressing the button at a crosswalk is probably pointless – over half of them don’t do anything, because the lights have been automated since the late 1980s. The buttons are still there so you think you have some control over them.

8. It is illegal in Manhattan to put on a puppet show in your window and there was once a fine for flirting with someone on the street. You also need a license to hang out washing on a clothesline.

9. There’s a statistic which says than in Manhattan, you are ten times more likely to get bitten by a human being than by a Shark.

10. Some of the parks in Manhattan are former cemeteries. Washington Square Park is one such; in the 18th century it served as a burial ground for people who couldn’t afford private funerals.

3 September: Loren Eiseley Quotes

Born on this date in 1907 was Loren Eiseley, US anthropologist, and writer. His books include The Immense Journey, Darwin's Century, The Unexpected Universe, The Night Country and his memoir, All the Strange Hours.

1. If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air. It can assume forms of exquisite perfection in a snowflake, or strip the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea.

2. We will travel as far as we can, but we cannot in one lifetime see all that we would like to see or to learn all that we hunger to know.

3. We cannot pluck a flower without disturbing a star.

4. One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human.

5. Each one of us is a statistical impossibility around which hover a million other lives that were never destined to be born.

6. It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man.

7. Like the herd animals we are, we sniff warily at the strange one among us.

8. The great artist, whether he be musician, painter, or poet, is known for this absolute unexpectedness.

9. Every man contains within himself a ghost continent.

10. Tomorrow lurks in us, the latency to be all that was not achieved before.