12 March: Jack Kerouac

Today, 10 facts about Jack Kerouac, who was born on this date in 1922.

1. He was born in Lowell, Massachusetts and given the name Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac. His father was an insurance salesman. He claimed that his family were originally from Ireland, but migrated to Cornwall and that was the origin of the name – Kernewek, meaning the Cornish language. Or it might have been a Celtic name meaning "language of the water". His ancestors would later flee to France and there was a baron among them: Baron François Louis Alexandre Lebris de Kerouac.

2. His first language was French, not English. He learned to speak English when he was six and had a French accent until his late teens.

3. When he was four, his older brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever, aged nine. Jack believed that his brother became his guardian angel and was the inspiration for his book, Visions of Gerard.

4. His best friend at school was called Sebastian Sampas, who shared his love of literature and theatre. It was Sampas who encouraged Jack to join the “Scribbler’s Club” at school, so could be responsible for getting him into writing. Sampas was killed during World War II. His sister Stella became Jack’s third wife in 1966.

5. Jack served as a merchant mariner during the war. He served on the SS Dorchester before its maiden voyage. He wasn’t, however, on the ship when it was sunk during a Submarine attack while crossing the Atlantic. Kerouac joined the Navy Reserves, but military life really wasn’t for him and he only lasted eight days in active service before being honourably discharged on psychiatric grounds. He wrote his first novel at this time, called The Sea Is My Brother, but it wasn’t published until 40 years after he died.

6. One of his friends, Lucien Carr, killed a man called David Kammerer, who Carr claimed was gay and had made advances to him. He asked Kerouac and fellow author William S Burroughs to help him dispose of the body which resulted in Kerouac being arrested as a material witness. He appealed to his girlfriend Edie Parker to get her family to post bail. She said she would on condition that he married her and got a job to pay back the loan. He kept his promise, but the marriage didn’t last.

7. His second wife was Joan Haverty, with whom he had a daughter, but by the time the child was born they had already separated. Kerouac denied paternity and refused to pay child support.

8. He liked to incorporate haiku into his works. Fellow Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg said of him, “He’s the only one in the United States who knows how to write haiku… he talks that way, thinks that way.” Kerouac was also an artist and would paint people he met, having painted his first self portrait at the age of nine.

9. Despite being famous for writing a book called On the Road, he never learned to drive and envied people who had the skill.

10. The character Hank in David Cronenberg's 1991 film Naked Lunch is based on Kerouac. He also has a crater on Mercury named after him.

See also: quotes by Jack Kerouac.

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/

11 March: Spanners

Today is Worship of Tools Day in India. 10 facts about the spanner, or wrench.

1. What is it? A spanner or wrench is a tool used to provide grip and mechanical advantage when applying torque to turn fasteners, such as nuts and bolts.

2. In the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand it’s called a spanner; in the USA it’s called a wrench.

3. 'Wrench' is derived from a Proto-Germanic word meaning turning or twisting. The oldest recorded use dates to 1794.

4. The word ‘Spanner’ also derives from German, in this case from a word meaning to draw, stretch, or spin. The word was first used in the 1630s, referring to the tool for winding the spring of a wheel-lock firearm.

5. In the UK the phrase “throw a spanner into the works” means to screw things up. Americans would say "to throw a monkey wrench into (something)" to convey the same idea.

6. A common April Fool or trick played on a newbie in the workshop might be to send them to find a "left handed monkey wrench". Wrenches are ambidextrous.

7. The use of such tools dates back to the 15th century. They’d be used to adjust suits of armour or to tighten or loosen wagon wheels. Adjustable wrenches for the odd-sized nuts of wagon wheels were manufactured in England and exported to North America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

8. Why call it a Monkey wrench? Because you can monkey with it? One story goes that it was because it was invented by a man named Charles Moncky, who made enough money from selling the patent to buy himself a nice house.

9. However, there’s no evidence there ever was a Charles Moncky. There was a Charles Monk who lived at about the same time in the same area, and he did make and sell tools. However, the tools he sold were for moulders, not for mechanics, so he wouldn’t have sold spanners. In any case, he was born after the term first appeared in print.

10. Another story about the origins of the monkey wrench is that it was called that as a racial slur because it was invented by an African-American boxer called Jack Johnson while he was in prison. This isn’t the case as the first patent for a monkey wrench and the use of the name both date back to before Johnson was born. Johnson can take the credit, however, for a patent for improvements to the tool in question.

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/

10 March: 69

Today is day 69 of any non-leap year. Here are 10 fun facts about the number 69.

1. Flipped horizontally or vertically, the number 69 looks the same. There’s a word for that, a strobogrammatic number.

2. Because of its appearance, it has became associated in symbology with the concept of yin and yang. In numerology it’s also associated with family, compassion and harmony.

3. The square of 69 is 4761 and its cube is 328509. This makes it unique among numbers because every digit from 0-9 appears just once.

4. 69 Hesperia is a large Asteroid and the only one discovered by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, in 1861 while he was looking for the recently discovered 63 Ausonia. It was named in honour of Italy, the word being a Greek term for the peninsula.

5. Summer of '69 is a song recorded by the Canadian singer Bryan Adams from his fourth album, Reckless. It is a song about a dilemma between settling down or trying to become a rock star.

6. The Roman numeral for 69 is LXIX.

7. In binary it’s 1000101.

8. Its divisors are 1, 3, 23, and 69.

9. London bus route 69 runs from Walthamstow Bus Station to Canning Town Station.

10. It has become known as the sex number because of its association with a certain sexual position. This has led, in the US, to frequent thefts of 69 mile markers. In Colorado they solved the problem by replacing them with 68.5 markers.

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/

9 March: Mickey Spillane

Mickey Spillane, crime writer, was born on this date in 1918. 10 facts about him:

1. His real name was Frank Morrison Spillane. He was born in Brooklyn, New York. He was an only child and his father was a bartender.

2. Before finding success as a writer, he worked as a lifeguard and also as a trampoline artist and a human cannonball. He also worked briefly for the FBI, working undercover to crack a narcotics ring.

3. In the 1940s he was writing stories for comic books. He scripted stories about Superman, Batman and Captain America.

4. He joined the army soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor and became a flight instructor. It was during his time in the army that he met his first wife, Mary Ann Pearce. The couple married in 1945 and divorced in 1962. In 1965 he married a singer called Sherri Malinou (who first came to his attention when she was a model for one of his book covers). They divorced in 1983 and in the same year he married wife number three, Jane Rogers Johnson.

5. It was wanting to buy a nice country home to live in with Mary Ann that prompted him to write his first novel, I, the Jury which was completed in just 9 days. It was also the first novel to feature the detective Mike Hammer. It did well, selling over six million copies.

6. He was an actor, too. He played himself, as a detective, in a film called Ring of Fear in 1954, and also played his character, Mike Hammer, in The Girl Hunters in 1963. He also played a writer who was a murder victim on an episode of Columbo.

7. Although his hard boiled detective novels were known for their sex and violence, Spillane also wrote a couple of novels for children. The Day the Sea Rolled Back and The Ship That Never Was. He wrote the first because his publisher dared him to write something for kids, and when it won an award, he wrote the second.

8. He became a Jehovah’s Witness in the early 1950s and at that point took ten years off from writing as he was able to live off the royalties of his books so far. Until his 80s, he was going round knocking on doors and giving out copies of The Watchtower.

9. In 1983, Spillane received the lifetime achievement award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and in 1995 he received an Edgar Allan Poe Grand Master Award.

10. He died of cancer in 2006 at the age of 88.

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 March: Saint John of God

Today is the feast day of St John of God. 10 facts about this saint.

1. A saint’s feast day is generally the date he or she died, and St John of God did indeed die on 8 March 1550, but 8 March was also his birthday. He was born on this date in 1495.

2. His birth name was João Duarte Cidade.

3. He is the patron of Booksellers, hospitals, nurses, the mentally ill, heart patients, and the dying.

4. When he was eight years old, he disappeared. It’s not known whether he was kidnapped or ran away for a bit, but he was gone long enough that his mother died of grief and his father became a monk, so when he did reappear, he was a homeless orphan. He lived on the streets of Spain until he managed to get a job looking after Sheep.

5. His boss was fond of him and found him a diligent worker, and wanted to make John his heir. The catch was he’d have to marry the farmer’s daughter and he wasn’t interested in her, so he joined the army.

6. He almost died in the military, not from the fighting but because a pile of treasure was stolen on his watch and he was condemned to death. One of the officers managed to get him pardoned, at which point John went back to farming for four years. He still didn’t marry, and presumably missed the military life, for when another bunch of soldiers passed through his home town, he joined up again, this time remaining a soldier for 18 years.

7. Then he decided to go to Africa to help Christians enslaved there, willing to die as a martyr if need be. On the way, he met up with a Portuguese knight and his family with whom he became friends. When all their possessions were stolen and they were ill, John nursed them and helped financially. However, he became disillusioned with Africa and decided to go back to Spain.

8. When he was about 42, a religious conversion while listening to a sermon by John of Avila. He also had a mental breakdown and was sent to a hospital for the mentally ill where the treatment was frequent beatings. John of Avila visited him and told him he should think of helping others rather than feeling sorry for himself. He set up a house where he could care for the poor and sick but at first his history of mental health issues went against him, but eventually gained the sympathy of priests in the area. It’s also said that Angels visited his house and assisted as well.

9. He began to gain followers and in due course they organised to become the Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of God, with a mission to care for the sick all over the world. Today the order has a presence in 53 countries, and operates more than 300 hospitals.

10. He died of pneumonia after plunging into a river to save a young man from drowning. He was 55 years old. His body was moved a few times but now rests in a basilica which was originally built as a church especially to house his relics.

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/

7 March: Sir Edwin Landseer

Born on this date in 1802 was Sir Edwin Landseer, artist known for his paintings of animals – particularly Horses, Dogs and stags. 10 facts about him.

1. He was born in London and was the son of an engraver, who encouraged Landseer’s talent by taking him on country walks and encouraging him to sketch the animals he saw, when he was just five years old.

2. So nature and nurture combined to produce a young art prodigy. At 11 Edwin won the Royal Society of Arts’s silver palette for his animal drawings. At 13 he exhibited two drawings at the Royal Academy in London.

3. When he was a teenager, an older artist called Benjamin Robert Haydon suggested that Edwin dissect the carcass of a Lion to help him understand its muscle structure.

4. It was said he could draw with both hands at once and therefore could work on a horse’s tail with one hand and its head with the other.

5. Queen Victoria commissioned many portraits from him; at first, her pets, later members of her staff and ultimately, herself and her children. Landseer often included a dog in the children’s portraits. He even gave Victoria and Albert art lessons.

6. There is a breed of dog named after him – a black and white Newfoundland breed known as the Landseer.

7. While on the subject of dogs, he is probably responsible for the myth that Saint Bernard dogs carry a small barrel of something alcoholic round their necks when they go out to rescue someone. A Saint Bernard thus equipped appeared in one of his paintings.

8. He was a sculptor, too. His best known sculptures are the lions in Trafalgar Square.

9. In 1828, he was commissioned to produce illustrations for the Waverley Edition of Sir Walter Scott's novels.

10. He died in 1873 aged 71 after suffering ill health for years. He’d been so popular that shops in London lowered their blinds and flags flew at half mast; and thousands lined the route at his funeral. He was buried in St Paul's Cathedral. He left behind several unfinished paintings, which, as per his dying wish, were finished by John Everett Millais.

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/

6 March: Cyrano de Bergerac Quotes

Born this date in 1619 was Cyrano de Bergerac, French dramatist and duellist best remembered for the many works of fiction about his life. 10 quotes:

1. I may climb perhaps to no great heights, but I will climb alone.

2. A large nose is the mark of a witty, courteous, affable, generous and liberal man.

3. A kiss is a rosy dot over the 'i' of loving.

4. This veridic nose arrives everywhere a quarter of an hour before its master. Ten shoemakers, good round fat ones too, go and sit down to work under it out of the rain.

5. We must believe then, that as from hence we see Saturn and Jupiter; if we were in either of the Two, we should discover a great many Worlds which we perceive not; and that the Universe extends so in infinitum.

6. A pessimist is a man who tells the truth prematurely.

7. Most men judge only by their senses and let themselves be persuaded by what they see.

8. The angel had told me in my dream that if I wanted to acquire the perfect knowledge I desired, I would have to go to the Moon.

9. You are now bearing the punishment for the shortcomings of your world. Here, as in your world, there are benighted people who cannot tolerate thinking about things they are not accustomed to.

10. The people of your world became so stupid and rude that my companions and I no longer enjoyed teaching them. You must surely have heard of us: we were called oracles, nymphs, spirits, fairies, household gods, lemures, larvas, lamias, sprites, water-nymphs, incubi, shades, spirits of the dead, specters and ghosts.

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/