8 November: Harvey Wallbangers

Today is National Harvey Wallbanger Day. Here are ten things you didn’t know about Harvey Wallbangers.

1. What is a Harvey Wallbanger, anyway? 3 parts vodka, 1 part Galliano and 6 parts Orange juice, served in a highball glass.

2. Yes, it’s a variant of the screwdriver. In fact, was originally known as the Italian Screwdriver.

3. Galliano is a sweet herbal liqueur produced in Italy. It’s full title is Liquore Galliano L'Autentico, and it was created by Tuscan distiller and brandy producer Arturo Vaccari in 1896. He named it after Giuseppe Galliano, an Italian officer of the Royal Italian Army of the First Italo-Ethiopian War. The flavour is described as “sweet with Vanilla-anise flavour and subtle citrus and woody herbal undernotes.”

4. The Harvey Wallbanger was created in 1969 as a marketing campaign by McKesson Imports Company, importer of Galliano, to promote their product. It certainly worked. Sales of Galliano quadrupled as the Harvey Wallbanger became an extremely popular drink in the 1970s.

5. The 1970s ad campaign featured a slightly worse for wear surfer dude designed by graphic artist William J. "Bill" Young, with the slogan, "Harvey Wallbanger is the name and I can be made!"

6. It’s not entirely clear if it was based on a real person, but the story, which may or may not be true, goes as follows. A Surfer by the name of Tom Harvey (who may or may not have really existed) lost a competition and went on a bender to drown his sorrows. His tipple of choice happened to be a mixture of vodka, orange juice and Galliano. After several of these, he started walking into furniture and bumping into walls, hence Harvey Wallbanger.

7. The recipe is credited to one Donato "Duke" Antone, of Hartford, Connecticut, a champion mixologist and head of a bartending school. He’s said to have come up with the Rusty Nail and the White Russian as well. Unlike Tom Harvey the inebriated surfer, there is actual evidence that Antone existed. He died In 1992 at the age of 75, and much of what is known about him comes from his obituary. He was the brother-in-law of one-term New York State Senator Carlo Lanzillotti; he managed his childhood friend, featherweight boxer Willie Pep; and in appearance is described as “a short, balding man with thick, black-framed glasses.”

8. There was a campaign at one point to make Harvey Wallbanger a candidate in the 1972 U.S. Presidential Elections. Well, let’s face it, he’d do a better job than Trump.

9. There was a band called Harvey and The Wallbangers in the 1980s. Its line up was Jeremy Taylor, Christopher Prurves, Johnny Griffiths, Neil "Reg" McArthur, Richard Allen and Harvey Brough. In addition the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers Major League Baseball team were nicknamed “Harvey’s Wallbangers,” in honour of their manager that season, Harvey Kuenn.

10. Harvey Wallbanger cake was a thing back then, too. The recipe calls for a box of yellow cake mix, the ingredients of the cocktail and a box of vanilla pudding, baked in a Bundt cake pan. Like the drink itself, the cake is thought to have originated in around 1972 for marketing reasons. It was promoting, not only the cocktail but Sunbeam frying pans.

7 November: 311

Today is day 311 of 2026. Ten fun facts about the number 311.

1. 311 (pronounced "three eleven") is an American rock band from Omaha, Nebraska, formed in 1988 by Nick Hexum, Jim Watson, and Aaron "P-Nut" Wills. The band's name comes from the police code for indecent exposure in Omaha after a friend of the band was arrested for skinny dipping in a public pool.

2. The dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood contains 311 pages.

3. The 311 Boyz was a teen gang in Las Vegas, Nevada, estimated at 140 members. In the summer of 2003 they committed or were suspected of a number of violent acts. CBS News speculated that the name might be a coded reference to the Ku Klux Klan: K is the 11th letter of the alphabet, and there are 3 in "KKK".

4. 311 is a telephone number in many communities in the United States and Canada which provides access to non-emergency municipal services.

5. 311 Claudia is a Main belt asteroid discovered by Auguste Charlois in 1891 in Nice. The name was suggested to Charlois by the amateur astronomer Arthur Mee of Cardiff, after Mee's wife, Claudia.

6. Madeira Island, Portugal, is approximately 311 miles from Africa.

7. 311 trillion years is the span of a wide era called mahamantavara on the Vedic Hindu time scale.

8. A number of security measures were taken in response to the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot, including "3-1-1 for carry-ons" (3.4 ounce containers in a 1 quart bag, 1 bag per passenger).

9. Apartment number 311 is the first door to be knocked on in the movie Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

10. Timothy Leary claimed to have taken LSD 311 times.

6 November: Mail

The first week in November is World Communication Week, so here’s a communication themed list – facts about mail.

1. The word mail comes from the Middle English word male, referring to a travelling bag or pack.

2. The first recorded mail distribution system dates back to Ancient Egypt in 2400 BC as a means for Pharaohs to distribute their decrees. The first widespread postal system comes from Ancient Persia. King Cyrus the Great decreed that every province in the kingdom needed a delivery service back in 550BC. There were even negotiations with neighbouring countries. A road was built between Western Iran and the Eastern city of Hakha especially for mail deliveries.

3. There’s a word for a book written in the style of letters to and from the main characters: epistolary.

4. In America, it is legal to send live animals in the mail as long as they can survive in transit without food or water, and are not dangerous, diseased, bad smelling or noisy. Until 13 June 1920 it was legal to post a human being, and people did, because it was cheaper than a train fare. An oft quoted example is that of May Pierstorff who was mailed by her parents to her grandparents in 1914 for exactly that reason. She rode in the mail car and was handed over to her grandparents by the mail clerk. Needless to say, then, Richard Lee McNair was breaking the law when he got himself a job in prison repairing mail bags, climbed inside one and mailed himself out of prison in 2006.

5. The Royal Mail dates back to 1516 when King Henry VIII established the position of “Master of the Post.” In 1635 King Charles I made the Royal Mail available to the public.

6. Postal workers have a patron saint – The Archangel Gabriel, bringer of messages. Perhaps the many postmen who get attacked by Dogs each year (6,000 in the US and 3,000 in Germany are the two figures for dog attacks per year that I found) should invoke him more often. In the US, posties are given tips to avoid getting attacked by dogs while in Germany, they are given training courses in dog psychology.

7. It’s probably fair to say that Cats don’t care about the mailman. However, in 19^th century Belgium there was actually an experiment in which cats were trained to deliver mail. Of the 37 cats in the programme, only one actually delivered anything.

8. Rather more successful was an experiment in 1959 when USPS attempted to deliver mail in a cruise missile and successfully shipped 3,000 pieces of mail from Virginia to Florida in 22 minutes.

9. Every year the postal service in Israel receives over 1,000 letters addressed to God. Postal workers open them and put the letters in cracks within the Western Wall, which is believed to be the most likely place for God’s divine presence to manifest.

10. There is an American band called The Postal Service. It being America, where people sue at the drop of a hat if they think they can extract money from people, the US Postal Service demanded that the band stopped using the name – by means of a cease and desist letter, naturally. In the end, they settled out of court with the band allowed to keep their name in exchange for playing a free show at US Postal Service national conference.

5 November: Miriam Name Day

If your name is Miriam, today is your name day. 10 famous Miriams:

1. Miriam: in the Bible, the older sister of Moses and Aaron. She was a prophetess and first appears in the Book of Exodus.

2. Miriam González Durántez: Spanish international trade lawyer and wife of former Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Nick Clegg.

3. Miriam “Midge” Maisel: the titular character in the TV series The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel.

4. Miriam Margolyes: comedian, writer, and actress. Known for her work as a character actor across film, television, and stage.

5. Miriam Makeba: South African singer, songwriter, actress, and civil rights activist.

6. Miriam Cates: British television host and former politician who was the Conservative Member of Parliament for Penistone and Stocksbridge from 2019 to 2024.

7. Miriam Shor: American actress.

8. Miriam Toews: Canadian writer, author of A Complicated Kindness (2004), All My Puny Sorrows (2014), and Women Talking (2018).

9. Miriam Leveirs: character in D.H. Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers.

10. Miriam Stoppard: British physician, author, television presenter, and agony aunt.

4 November: Endive

Today is the Day of Endive in the French Revolutionary calendar. 10 facts about endives.

1. The scientific name for endive is Cichorium endivia.

2. It belongs to the Daisy family.

3. Endive originated near Sicily and the Mediterranean region. It was used in Egypt, Rome and Greece as a salad vegetable. It was grown in England by 1548 although the first recorded mention of it in the US was in an 1806 seed catalogue.

4. Endive is good source of vitamins A, K and vitamins of the B group. It’s also good for manganese, Copper, Iron and Potassium as well as fibre. Endive also contains a substance called Kaempferol, which has anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, analgesic and anti-allergic properties.

5. There are two main types: curly-leaved endive, also known as frisée; and broad-leaved endive, also known as Escarole or Batavian endive. Escarole has a milder flavour than Frisée.

6. Belgian endive is actually a variety of Chicory that was discovered by a farmer in Belgium in 1830. He found that chicory can sprout and produce creamy-coloured leafy heads when stored in wet, dark conditions. It’s also known as "witloof".

7. Endive is a cool-season crop, meaning it grows best in autumn or spring. The best quality endive is produced in areas with cool summers. Hot weather promotes the production of the bitter compounds in the plant. Some farmers cover the plants with baskets or boxes for a few weeks to limit the amount of bitterness.

8. China is the leading producer of endive, followed by the USA, Spain, Italy, and India.

9. Endive can reach 6 to 10 inches in height.

10. The flowers are pale blue and contain both types of reproductive organs.

3 November: Opals

On this date in 1986, the largest rough black opal was found in Lightning Ridge, Australia by the Lunatic Hill Mining Syndicate. It was named the Halley's Comet Opal as Halley's Comet was visible that year. It’s about the size of a man’s fist and was on sale in 2006 for $1.2 million. 10 facts about opals.

1. Halley’s Comet isn’t the largest ever, just the largest existing Black one. The Olympic Australis opal is the largest at 280 mm long, 120 mm thick, and 115 mm wide and was found in Coober Pedy in 1956. The Olympic Games took place in Melbourne that year, hence the name. The world’s most expensive opal is the Virgin Rainbow, valued at over $1,000,000. It was discovered in Australia in 2003 by John Dunstan in the skeleton of a Belemnite, an ancient ancestor of the cuttlefish.

2. Opinions are divided on the origin of the word opal. Some believe it to be derived from the Sanskrit word for 'jewel', while others think it comes from the ancient Greek word opallios, which can either mean “seeing” (the word opaque comes from this root), or "other" as in "alias" and "alter".

3. The stone is made from silica and water and can be found in the crevices and cracks of virtually any rock, although most commonly in limonite, sandstone and basalt. It is considered a mineraloid rather than a crystal, as are obsidian, amber and Pearl, because its atoms are not arranged at regular intervals.

4. Australia mines over 95% of the world’s precious opals, and so the opal is the national gemstone of Australia. There’s a myth there which tells of an ancestral being who rode to Earth on a Rainbow, and where the rainbow touched the ground, all the pebbles and stones turned to opals.

5. In the Middle Ages, opals were considered lucky because they contained all the colours of other gems and therefore had all their virtues. Opals were believed to grant the wearer the ability to become invisible, resulting in the opal being the patron gemstone for thieves. Another of its powers was to preserve the colour of blonde hair.

6. Later on, however, opals became known for bad luck and were associated with death. This superstition is a direct result of a book by Sir Walter Scott called Anne of Geierstein, published in 1829. In this story, the Baroness of Arnheim wears an opal talisman with supernatural powers. A drop of holy water falls on it, and the opal turns into a colourless stone, and the Baroness dies.

7. Opal is the birth stone for people born in October. The superstition that it’s unlucky for a person born in any other month to wear one also derives from Scott’s novel.

8. Other opal superstitions include a Russian one that they embodied the evil eye, and so if one was spotted among goods for sale, that signalled the end of your shopping trip for the day. Arabic legends say opal falls from the heavens in flashes of Lightning, while ancient Greeks believed they gave their owners the gift of prophecy and protected them from disease.

9. Opals are associated with purity and emotions as many believe they can intensify and reflect the mood of the wearer. They are said to promote creativity and interest in the arts, and in new age healing opals are said to treat fevers and infections, purify the blood and regulate insulin.

10. Opals were first made in a lab by Pierre Gilson in 1974.

2 November: Daniel Boone

American folk hero Daniel Boone was born on this date in 1734. I’ve attempted to provide 10 facts, but with so many tall stories about his life it’s hard to distinguish fact from folklore so don’t take any of this as gospel! Even his date of birth is suspect as he was born around the time of a calendar change so some sources may give his birthdate as 22 October!

1. His father, Squire, was a weaver and blacksmith from England who emigrated to Pennsylvania, where he met and married Sarah Morgan, whose family were Quakers from Wales. The couple built a one room cabin, where Daniel was born. The family were expelled from the Quakers after two of the children married outside the faith and one was visibly pregnant at the time. In 1750 Squire sold his land and moved the family to North Carolina, possibly as a result of the controversy. So while Daniel was brought up as a Quaker, as an adult he simply described himself as a Christian.

2. He wasn’t well educated. He preferred hunting to school, learning the skills from local Native Americans. When his teacher raised the issue of his absences with his father, Squire allegedly said, “Let the girls do the spelling and Dan will do the shooting.” From then on most of his education was from members of his family and he never did learn to spell. That said, he was better educated than many of the frontiersmen he travelled with – he could read, which was more than could be said for a lot of them. Sometimes he was the only one of a party who could read and often had a book or two with him. The Bible and Gulliver’s Travels were his favourites, and he’d read aloud to his fellows around the campfire.

3. In his teens, he figured out that a lot of money could be made from selling furs and animal hides, and as a teen went on his first long hunting trip, sold the furs in Philadelphia and then blew the lot on "a general jamboree or frolick."

4. He acquired a reputation as an able navigator who could remember every trail he walked. This brought him to the attention of land surveyors who’d take him on as an assistant when they went exploring. Boone picked up enough of their skills to become a surveyor in his ow right and is said to have surveyed land as far away as Texas. At least 150 patches of land were surveyed by him, but he wasn’t actually that good at it, and the maps he produced were not very accurate.

5. His reputation as a navigator got him the gig of opening a path through the Cumberland Gap, a narrow mountain pass near the modern borders of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The result was the Wilderness Road, which made it possible for 200,000 settlers to move to Kentucky. Boone founded a fort settlement there, called Boonesborough, which consisted of 26 log cabins surrounded by 15-foot-high walls. It's now a state park.

6. While his relations with Native Americans were mostly good, there was the occasional hiccup. In 1778, Boone and a party of men were captured by Shawnee Indians. In order to survive, Boone had to promise the chief, whose name was Chief Blackfish, that Boonesborough would surrender peacefully to the tribe. Chief Blackfish adopted Boone as his son and gave him the name Big Turtle. Boone, however, managed to escape and travelled 160 miles over rough terrain, reaching Boonesborough four days later and was able to warn them of the upcoming attack. They successfully withstood a 10-day siege. On another occasion, Boone's daughter Jemima and some of her friends were abducted by Indians while on a canoeing trip. Boone managed to track the girls down within three days, although the fact it appeared he’d taught his daughter well must have helped – the girls broke twigs and left markings whenever they could.

7. Boone’s wife was called Rebecca Bryan. As he was often away on extended trips for years at a time she was left to bring up their ten children and the eight nephews and nieces they’d adopted, all by herself. At least he dropped in to visit at least ten times. Or maybe nine, if one folk tale is true. The story goes that he returned one time after a long trip of well over nine months to find that Rebecca had given birth to a child in his absence. Assuming he was dead, she’d turned to his brother to meet her needs and the inevitable happened. Daniel was a good enough sport about it to adopt the child and bring her up as his own. However, since the details, including which of his brothers it was, vary from source to source, it may not be true.

8. It’s also probably not true that he wore a coonskin hat, the iconic headgear of frontiersmen at the time, made from the skin and fur of a Raccoon and sometimes including the head and tail as well. Boone is often portrayed as wearing one, but according to one of his sons, he actually despised them and opted for a flat, broad-brimmed hat instead.

9. He was going on long hunting expeditions well into his 70s. At 76, he went on a six-month hunt up the Missouri River, reportedly as far as the Yellowstone River, a round trip of more than 2,000 miles.

10. In 1809, Daniel Boone dictated his autobiography to his grandson John Boone Calloway. This manuscript may well have been the most accurate account of Boone’s life, had it survived long enough to get published, which it didn’t. Calloway took it with him on a trip and was apparently reading it as he canoed down the Missouri River, when his canoe overturned and the whole thing was washed away. Hence it was left to others to tell his story. Boone lived to see some of the embellishments start to circulate and he hated it. He said, "Nothing embitters my old age [more than] the circulation of absurd stories … many heroic actions and chivalrous adventures are related of me which exist only in the regions of fancy. With me the world has taken great liberties, and yet I have been but a common man."