11 November: 315

Today is the 315^th day of the year. 10 facts about 315:

1. The Roman numeral for 315 is CCCXV.

2. 315 Constantia is an Asteroid from the inner region of the asteroid belt, discovered by Johann Palisa at the Vienna Observatory in 1891.

3. The A315 is a road in London, connecting Knightsbridge and East Bedfont, Hounslow.

4. Area Code 315 is a North American telephone area code serving Central and Northern New York, including Syracuse and Utica.

5. 315 Rocks is a Facebook group for people who follow the journeys of “kindness rocks” which are painted pebbles which originally came from the Central and Northern New York area. Members are encouraged to post photographs of any such rocks they find in the hope of spreading love and joy and making people smile.

6. The British Rail Class 315 is a class of electric multiple unit trains built by British Rail Engineering Limited at Holgate Road Carriage Works in York between 1980 and 1981.

7. The 315 series is a commuter electric multiple unit train type introduced by Central Japan Railway Company in the Nagoya and Shizuoka areas on 5 March 2022.

8. The year 315 was a common year starting on Saturday, known at the time as the Year of the Consulship of Constantinus and Licinianus. In this year, The Arch of Constantine was completed near The Colosseum at Rome to commemorate Constantine's victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge; Crucifixion was abolished as punishment in the Roman Empire; and Hilary of Poitiers, Christian bishop and Doctor of the Church was born.

9. London bus 315 runs from St Julian's Farm Road to Springfield University Hospital.

10. The message of angel number 315 is one of positive life changes which will help you grow, and suggests that you keep an open mind and stay flexible. Tap into your inner passions and divine inspiration to manifest your goals.

New!

The Combat Team series continues with Team Gamma, owned by Madeleine Earnshaw. Forced to abandon her plan to win the contest with a team of women, Madeleine knows her team is not perfect.

Graham has severe PTSD and amnesia: he is missing nine years of his life. He's also the prime suspect in a triple homicide which took place the day he disappeared.

Marcus has a secret he is afraid to reveal.

Stuart's power is most inconvenient outside of the arena.

Thunderbolt, a creature of unknown origin, looks like a monster, but is a mother grieving for her young, killed by humans. Joel not only has a suit of power armour, but an instant rapport with Thunderbolt. He is the only one who can truly communicate with her.

Swallow comes from a world without technology and lacks confidence. The other women on the team bully her.

Ray is Madeleine's right hand man, the person with a solution to almost every problem. But can he convince Swallow he is the one for her when she seems to wear her heart on her sleeve?

Edward has a casual attitude to training and tends to drink too much. His attraction to Madeleine's assistant Janice, although she spurns his advances, goes some way to improving his performance.

When Janice goes missing, the team unite to launch a search and rescue mission, and in the process discover a shocking threat to life on Earth as we know it.

Paperback

E-book

10 November: Oliver Goldsmith Quotes

Today, ten quotations from Oliver Goldsmith, Irish writer whose works include She Stoops to Conquer and The Vicar of Wakefield. He was born this date in 1728.

1. Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.

2. Life is a journey that must be travelled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.

3. You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.

4. I love everything that's old, - old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.

5. He who fights and runs away May live to fight another day.

6. If we do not find happiness in the present moment, in what shall we find it?

7. In arguing one should meet serious pleading with humour, and humour with serious pleading.

8. Aromatic plants bestow no spicy fragrance while they grow; but crush'd or trodden to the ground, diffuse their balmy sweets around.

9. Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

10. There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher.

9 November: Sprats

Happy Sprat Day to those who celebrate! Ten things you might not know about sprats.

1. Sprat is the common name applied to a group of forage Fish belonging to the genus Sprattus, in the herring family. The European sprat’s scientific name is Sprattus sprattus.

2. The European sprat was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae.

3. Sprats are sometimes known by other names, including bristling, brisling, garvie, garvock, Russian sardine, russlet, skipper or whitebait (whitebait is not a species of fish but rather a culinary term for small, often juvenile fish that are cooked and eaten whole).

4. Sprats are not the same as Sardines. They are completely separate species, although they do belong to the same family.

5. The European sprat is shiny silver to Grey in colour with a forked tail. They can grow up to 16cm in length.

6. The young live in estuaries and shallow bays, the adults down to a depth of 50 metres or more. A sprat can tolerate salinities as low as 4 parts per thousand.

7. Breeding takes place at any time of year but peaks between December and April in the Mediterranean and between April and August in the Baltic and northeastern Atlantic. The average length of time from fertilization to hatching is about 15 days, although their development can be adversely affected by low temperatures.

8. Sprats can be found New Zealand, Australia, and parts of Europe. This includes the coasts of Britain and Ireland. The most widely studied populations are the ones in the Baltic Sea.

9. Their diet is entirely made up of zooplankton, which consists of tiny animals, including the eggs and larvae of larger fish like cod, which in turn will eat sprats if they survive to adulthood. Sprats are also eaten by seabirds like puffins and guillemots, as well as by Seals and Dolphins.

10. They are also eaten by humans, of course, and are rich in polyunsaturated fats. Sprats can be canned, salted, breaded, fried, boiled, grilled, baked, deep fried, marinated, broiled, and smoked.

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.