24 July: Egon Ronay

Born this date in 1915 was Egon Ronay, Hungarian-born food critic. 10 things you might not know about him.

1. He was born in Bratislava, Austria-Hungary, and was an only child. His father was a restaurateur and his grandfather established a hotel in Slovakia.

2. During the second world war he served in the Hungarian Army in southern Slovakia and northern Transylvania. He claimed to have deserted the army in 1943. This meant he was fighting for the enemy and it’s thought to be for this reason that he was a tad cagey about his history and refused to disclose his date of birth in public records after moving to the UK.

3. The war destroyed the family business in Budapest. His friend Paul Fabry helped Ronay forge his papers and flee to Britain in 1946.

4. Ronay’s father had friends in London, who helped Ronay get a job as a restaurant manager in Piccadilly. It wasn’t long before he had a restaurant of his own, The Marquee, a 39-seat former tea room, near Harrods. The menu included French dishes, which was unusual in post war Britain.

5. TV chef Fanny Craddock and her husband Johnny ate there, and Fanny saw his potential as a food critic. As a result of her spreading the word about him, he got a food column in the Daily Telegraph, in which he attacked establishments such as schools, for poor food standards. In 1955, he sold his restaurant to concentrate on writing.

6. He published the first edition of the Egon Ronay Guide, based on the Michelin restaurant guides of France, in 1957. It sold 30,000 copies. It soon became a mark of distinction for a restaurant to get a mention in one.

7. Ronay sold the rights to his books to The AA in 1985. It was a decision he would come to regret, however, as the AA subsequently sold them to a company called Leading Guides International, which went bankrupt. Ronay went to court to win the rights back.

8. He created a private dining club called the British Academy of Gastronomes ‘to improve the standard of food and beverage at all levels of consumption across the UK’. Or get together and eat posh meals cooked by famous chefs. Members included Ronnie Corbett, Andrew Neill and Sir Evelyn de Rothschild.

9. He never retired, working until his death at the age of 94 in 2010. At the time of his death he had plans for several new projects. Companies he worked with in his later years as a food consultant included J D Wetherspoon and Welcome Break motorway service stations.

10. The guides were produced with the help of a team of inspectors who would never accept freebies from any establishment they ate at, not even a free drink. This was to ensure their reports were impartial.

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 July: Raymond Chandler

23 July is Private Eye Day, the birthday of Raymond Chandler, the creator of Philip Marlowe, who was born this day in 1888. 10 things you might not know about Raymond Chandler.

1. He was born in Chicago and both his parents were descended from Quakers. His mother was born in Waterford, Ireland, and he spent summers there, finally moving there with his mother when his father abandoned the family when Chandler was seven.

2. Soon after that, Chandler’s mother moved to England with him, in order to get him the best education. At that time he lived in Upper Norwood, London, and attended Dulwich College, where he would later work part time as a teacher. C.S. Forester, PG Wodehouse and Michael Ondaatje also attended that school.

3. His family’s ambition for him was the British civil service. He became a British citizen in 1907 and took a job in the Admiralty, but hated it and left after a year. His family were not well pleased.

4. After serving in the first world war, he met the step-mother of one of the men he’d enlisted with, Pearl Eugenie ("Cissy") Pascal. She was 18 years older than he was, but they nevertheless began an affair with Cissy divorcing her husband in 1920. She didn’t marry Chandler until 1923, however, as his mother disapproved and wouldn’t give her blessing. They only married when Chandler’s mother died. Cissy Chandler died in 1954 and Raymond fell apart. He drank to excess and never got around to dealing with her ashes, which sat for 57 years in a storage locker in the basement of Cypress View Mausoleum.

5. He used to write as a young man, but gave it up after the suicide of his friend Richard Middleton. Chandler was 22 at the time. Chandler figured if someone as good as his friend couldn’t hack it, it wasn’t the career for him, either. So he took a course in bookkeeping and worked for an oil company. He worked his way up to the giddy heights of vice president of the company, but by then, he was already drinking heavily, was often absent and when he was in work, got fresh with female colleagues. As a result of all that, he got fired.

6. This was the reason he took up writing again at the age of 45. He took a correspondence course in short story writing and started selling to pulp magazines. He didn’t publish his first book, The Big Sleep, until he was in his 50s.

7. As well as short stories and novels, he wrote screenplays for Hollywood. His first was The Blue Dahlia in 1946. Another was Strangers on a Train, which he co-wrote with with Czenzi Ormonde. However, he didn’t get on with Alfred Hitchcock at all. They frequently clashed over artistic differences and ended up not speaking at all. His final completed novel, Playback, started out as a screenplay for Universal Studios. They passed on shooting it, so Chandler turned it into a novel.

8. During prohibition, the writer played an active role in bootlegging, which contributed to his alcoholism.

9. He was, what they call in writing circles, a “pantser” rather than a “planner”, meaning he made the story up as he wrote rather than working to a plan. This meant he’d sometimes write himself into a corner and would have to throw the whole manuscript out and start again. “That’s the hell of being the kind of writer who cannot plan anything, but has to make it up as he goes along and then try to make sense out of it,” he said.

10. He died while working on a novel called Poodle Springs in 1959. Over 30 years later, it was finished by by Chandler fan Robert B. Parker.

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 July: 202

22 July is the 202^nd day of a non-leap year. Ten fun facts about the number.

1. Area code 202 is a telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan for Washington DC.

2. The Peugeot 202 is a supermini developed and designed by the French car manufacturer Peugeot. It was produced between 1938 and 1942 and sold until 1949.

3. HTTP status code 202 meaning the request was accepted but has not yet been fulfilled.

4. The year 202 was a common year starting on Friday, known at the time as the Year of the Consulship of Severus and Antoninus. In this year, Rome passed a law banning female gladiators.

5. The A202 is a primary A road in London. It runs from New Cross Gate to London Victoria station.

6. Room No. 202 is a TV mini series from 2025, set in Hyderabad. Two struggling artists move into a suspiciously cheap apartment, only to discover that Room No. 202 hides an ancient entity manipulating their minds through illusions, paranoia, and a mysterious box.

7. Pacific 202 is a 1989 album track by the British electronic band 808 State.

8. Bandvagn 202 is an amphibious oversnow tracked articulated, all-terrain vehicle developed by Bolinder-Munktell, a subsidiary of Volvo, for the Swedish Army in the early 1960s.

9. 202 Chryseïs is a main belt asteroid, probably composed of silicate rocks. It was discovered by C. H. F. Peters in 1879, in Clinton, New York, and was named after the mythical Trojan woman Chryseis.

10. London bus route 202 runs from Crystal Palace Parade to: Blackheath/Royal Standard.

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 July: Strasbourg

Today is the feast day of St Arbogast of Strasbourg, patron saint of the city of Strasbourg, largest city of the Grand Est region of northeastern France and the official seat of the European Parliament. 10 things you might not know about Strasbourg.

1. Until the fifth century AD, the city was known as Argantorati, which is derived from the Gaulish words for Silver and fortified enclosures. It then became known as Strasbourg, which means 'town (at the crossing) of roads'.

2. If you’re thinking that the name sounds more German than French, that’s probably because Strasbourg has changed hands between France and Germany five times since 1681. This is reflected in the culture of the city where French cafes serving escargots sit beside German Beer gardens, and Alsatian, a Germanic dialect, is spoken widely along with French.

3. It is home to the oldest Christmas market in the world (dates back to 1570 when it began as a market to celebrate St Nicholas. When Strasbourg became Protestant in the 16th century, they rebranded it as a Christmas market) and the oldest barrel of white Wine which is even older, dating to 1472. It is located in the cellars of the Strasbourg Hospices and only sampled on the most special of occasions, the most recent being in 1944 to celebrate the liberation of Strasbourg.

4. It has more Bridges than any other city in France (more than 230).

5. From 1439 to 1874, Strasbourg cathedral was the tallest building in the world, with its single spire rising to 142 metres. It is visible from the Vosges Mountains or the Black Forest on the other side of the Rhine on clear days. It is a distinctive colour because it is made from sandstone.

6. The French national anthem, "La Marseillaise" was first sung here, not in Marseille. Its composer, Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, an army officer stationed in the city, wrote it in a single night during the French Revolution. Originally titled War Song for the Army of the Rhine, it was adopted by volunteer revolutionaries from Marseille, hence its current name.

7. Notable people who once lived here include Johannes Gensfleisch, better known as Gutenberg, who was a resident between 1434 and 1444. There is evidence that it was here that he began building his printing press. Another famous resident was Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who wrote The Little Prince. He was here to learn to fly. Aged 21 and with financial help from his mother, he spent three months in Strasbourg taking flying lessons, leaving with his pilot’s licence in 1921.

8. The siege of Strasbourg took place from 13 August to 27 September 1870. It was one of the first sieges to massively affect a civilian population, with around 200,000 shells fired at it by the Prussian army. 8 of these shells can still be found embedded in the town's facades.

9. Four sections of the Berlin Wall can be found in Strasbourg, in the gardens of the European Court of Human Rights to be exact. Erected in 1961 during the Cold War, the Berlin Wall represented separation; here it symbolises the freedom and unity of Europe.

10. Strasbourg is the unofficial Stork capital of France. In the 1970s, storks were on the brink of extinction in the region, but there was a successful reintroduction programme, and Strasbourg now boasts a thriving stork population.

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 July: Sir Edmund Hillary

Born on this date in was 1919 Sir Edmund Hillary, famous for climbing Mount Everest. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. He was a New Zealander, born in Auckland, where he called home for most of his life. He became the first living New Zealander to appear on the country’s banknotes in 1992.

2. His mother was a teacher and his father a beekeeper. His mother Gertrude was famous for breeding and selling queen bees. He followed his father into the beekeeping business, which he could work at during the summer to finance his climbing expeditions in the winter.

3. He was over 6ft tall, although as a child, he was smaller than most of his schoolmates. That, and the fact he lived too far away from his school to take part in after school activities, and was rather shy, meant he didn’t enjoy school much. He took up boxing, which helped him gain confidence as well as getting fit.

4. He discovered his love for climbing on a school trip to Mount Ruapehu when he was 16. He made his first major climb in 1939 reaching the summit of Mount Ollivier in New Zealand.

5. He was 33 years old when he climbed Everest. It has been reported that on his way back down he met another mountaineer called George Lowe, and said to him, “Well, George, we knocked the bastard off.”

6. He seems to have lived a bit of a charmed life, narrowly escaping death several times. During World War II, Hillary served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force, posted to Fiji and the Solomon Islands, where a boating accident left him with severe burns. In 1960, he missed a flight which was involved in the New York Air Disaster, a mid-air collision between two planes that killed all 128 passengers as well as six people on the ground. In 1979, he pulled out of an Antarctic Sightseeing Flight due to work commitments. The flight crashed into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 people on board.

7. Sadly, his first wife, Louise, wasn’t so lucky. He’d married her soon after he climbed Everest in 1953, although even after that achievement he was too shy to propose himself and got his mother to do it for him. Louise was on her way to join him in Nepal with their youngest child, Belinda, in 1975. Both died in a plane crash just after take off from Kathmandu airport. In 1989, he married June Mulgrew, the widow of his close friend Peter Mulgrew, who'd taken his place on the ill-fated flight in 1979.

8. Hillary was the first person ever to reach both the North and South Poles as well as the peak of Everest. This has since become known as the ‘Three Poles’ challenge. He also spent five months in the Himalayas on an expedition looking for the abominable snowman/Yeti. Although he found “yeti scalps” in ancient temples, they were found to be from bears and antelopes, and no concrete evidence of the existence of the yeti was found.

9. He founded the Himalayan Trust in 1960, with the aim of supporting the Sherpa people and building hospitals and schools in remote parts of Nepal. He served as ambassador to Nepal (at the same time as he was New Zealand's High Commissioner to India and Bangladesh) and in 2003 he became the first foreigner to be granted honorary citizenship of Nepal.

10. Things named after him include The Hillary Coast, south of Ross Island, the Hillary Canyon, an undersea feature in the Ross Sea, the ‘Hillary Trail’, a hiking trail near Auckland, and the ‘Hillary Step’, a near vertical 12-metre high rock face near the summit of Everest. In 2003, a 2.3-metre bronze statue of Hillary was unveiled, by Hillary himself, in Mount Cook Village. A New Zealand duet called The Kiwis recorded a tribute song about him called Hillary 88 which became his official memorial song.

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 July: Sally Name Day

In Sweden, today is the name day for people called Sally.

Sally is an English language feminine given name that originated as a nickname for Sarah.10 famous Sallys:

1. Sally Field: American actress whose films include Smokey and the Bandit, Steel Magnolias, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Forrest Gump.

2. Sally Jessy Raphael: host of the American talk show Sally.

3. Sally Bowles: cabaret singer in Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin and the musical Cabaret.

4. Sally Ride: American physicist and astronaut.

5. Sally Morgan: British celebrity psychic.

6. Sally James: British television presenter who presented the ITV Saturday morning children's show Tiswas from 1977 until it ended in 1982.

7. Sally Albright: a title character from When Harry Met Sally, 1989 American romantic comedy film.

8. Sally Gunnell: British hurdler.

9. Sally Rooney: Irish writer whose novels include Conversations with Friends, Normal People, Beautiful World and Intermezzo.

10. Sally Brown: Charlie Brown's little sister in the comic strip Peanuts.

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 July: WG Grace

W.G. (William Gilbert) Grace, England's greatest cricketer, known as “the father of Cricket”, was born on this date in 1848. 10 facts about him:

1. He was born in Downend, near Bristol. He had eight siblings and was the second youngest. His father was a GP who was also a cricket fan who encouraged his children to play, and they were coached by their uncle, Alfred Pocock.

2. WG wasn’t academic, and didn’t do especially well at school, but was sought after by both Oxford and Cambridge universities because of his prowess at cricket. However, Grace spurned both and enrolled in Bristol Medical School at 20, as his father wanted him to have a career in medicine. He didn’t qualify until he was 31, taking his final exam at Westminster Hospital.

3. W.G. played his first cricket match on 19 July 1857 for West Gloucestershire against Bedminster at Mangotsfield at the age of eight. His first innings score was three, not out.

4. Cricket wasn’t his only sport. As well as being a good all rounder in cricket, he was a champion 440-yard hurdler, played Football for the Wanderers, cleared nine feet in the pole vault twice, and silver medal in the quarter-mile event at the 1869 AAC Championships. In later life he took up golf, lawn bowls and curling and was the first captain of the England bowls team.

5. In 1873 he married Agnes Nicholls Day, his cousin’s daughter. Their honeymoon was spent on a ship bound for a cricket tour in Australia.

6. He was six feet two inches tall and sported a flowing Beard. His beard impressed the Monty Python team enough for them to use his face as the face of God in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

7. Because he had a day job as a doctor, he was classified as an amateur cricketer, but was so well known that he made more money from the game than professionals did. The price of a ticket to a match doubled if he was playing. There is evidence that, as a doctor, he didn’t bill his poorer patients.

8. He was also renowned for having a bit of a bad attitude on the pitch, throwing tantrums and questioning the umpire’s decisions. Cricket’s John McEnroe, perhaps. Cricket fans in Australia didn’t like him much because of that.

9. He was the first major sports star to endorse a condiment – Colman's Mustard.

10. His final match was on 8 August 1914, when he was 66 years old. He played for Eltham against Northbrook, and didn’t bowl or bat in that game. He died from a heart attack at the age of 67.

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/