31st October: Halloween

Hope you have a spooktastic Halloween! 10 things about Halloween:

1. The word Halloween derives from All Hallows Eve, or the night before All Saints Day on November 1st. Most of the customs pre-date Christianity by a long time. Most of these come from the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced Sowain), a fire festival celebrating the beginning of winter.
2. Samhain was the Celtic new year, and is still celebrated as new year by many pagans today.
3. The Celts believed that the veil between this world and the next was thinnest at this time of year. Friends and relatives who had died would often return, with their souls inhabiting an animal - often a black Cat. That is why black cats are, to this day, symbols of Halloween.
4. The custom of Trick or Treat originated with the Celts as well. To give thanks for the harvest, people would go door to door to collect food for offerings to the gods, and children would collect firewood for the bonfires.
5. Another Celtic custom was to take home an ember from the main bonfire and re-light it at home. Of course, they needed something to carry it home in, and a hollowed out gourd, or Pumpkin, was just the ticket. The hollowed out pumpkin had an extra function - carving a scary face on it, which would be lit up by the embers, would scare the evil spirits away.
6. Dressing up at Halloween comes from the same reason - people would dress up as animals, so that the evil spirits would be fooled into thinking they were not human.
7. One of the top times of year for spells to work out when or who you'll marry. Popular methods include the first person to manage to take a bite out of an Apple floating in a bucket of water or suspended on a string will be the next to marry, as would the one who finds the ring baked into a loaf of Bread.
8. Conservative Christians often speak out against the pagan customs, and stage their own versions. Giving out sweets in the church car park and inviting children to a Christian-based party is one. Another suggestion was that Christians could invite trick or treating children into their house and show them a Christian play or tableau (is it just me, or is that last one actually rather creepy?)
9. The staples of modern day Halloween costumes every year are: cat, Frankenstein's monster, ghosts, Vampires and witches.
10. Predictions for what the trick or treaters will be wearing this year include - superheroes, especially Batman, Superman and Spiderman, Princesses, Anything from Frozen, Mutant Ninja Turtles, zombies and, top of the list as always, witches.

BTW, If you want some spooky Halloween reading, my novel, Death and Faxes is out now. 

It's about a young psychic who is asked by a detective to help track down a serial killer. At first, she is reluctant - but the ghosts of the victims won't leave her alone...

Go to Amazon Kindle Store for the e-book and a free "Look inside" excerpt;

CreateSpace or Amazon for the paperback. (The link takes you to Amazon.co.uk, but it should be available in other countries' Amazon sites as well).

30th October: Paul Valery quotes

Paul Valéry, the French writer and philosopher, was born on this date in 1871. 10 quotes:

1. The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
2. A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.
3. Love is being stupid together.
4. An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
5. Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
6. Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
7. Politeness is organised indifference.
8. A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.
9. The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
10. God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.

29th October: Turkey Republic Day

Kemal Atatürk proclaimed Turkey a republic and became its first President in 1923. Here are some things you might not know about Turkey:

1. The Republic of Turkey straddles two continents. 97% of it is in Asia and 3% in Europe. Its largest city, Istanbul, is the only city in the world to span two continents.
2. Coffee, Tulips and Cherries originated in Turkey.
3. Historic figures born in Turkey include Homer (the poet), Aesop, King Midas, Herodotus (the father of history), and St Paul the Apostle.
4. Many historic and legendary events took place in Turkey: it was here that Julius Caesar said "Veni, Vidi, Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered)"; Alexander the Greatt cut the Gordian knot near Ankara; the legendary city of Troy is here; and its highest point is Mount Ararat, where Noah's Ark is said to have landed.
5. Turkey is the world's 37th-largest country in terms of area, but it has the second largest army of any NATO country (the US being the first) and the third largest number of Facebook users in the world (after the US and UK).
6. The founder of the modern day secular state was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. This wasn't his original name. Before the Republic his name was Mustafa Kemal Pasha. Parliament gave him an honorific surname: Atatürk means Father of the Turks.
7. Turkey was the location of the oldest known human settlement (Catalhoyuk,7th Millenium B.C.) and the first Christian church ever built (St. Peter’s Church in Antioch).
8. In a few years time, it will also be home to the world's largest airport, under construction in Istanbul.
9. Turkey is responsible for 80% of the world’s Hazelnut exports.
10. Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest; Greece to the west; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Iran and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the southeast.

28th October: St Jude's Day

Also known as St Jude Thaddeus, or Jude the Zealot, he was one of the 12 apostles of Christ and the author of the New Testament book of Jude.

1. His book is the shortest New Testament book and is said to contain some of the finest expressions of praise to God in the Bible.
2. He is not to be confused with Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus, although both names, Jude and Judas, come from the same root, the name Judah, a common Jewish name of the time. Some scholars think that Jude was actually called Judas, but because that name was tainted by Mr Iscariot, the name was shortened to Jude.
3. He may have been a brother or cousin of Jesus, and it has been speculated that he was the bridegroom at the wedding where Jesus turned water into wine.
4. Whether he was a relative of Jesus or not, he was certainly devoted to the cause of Christianity and preached the gospel widely, as far away as Syria, Libya and Armenia.
5. He was martyred in Beirut in about 65AD, killed with an axe. Some time after this, his body was moved to Rome and his bones now lie in St Peter's Basilica, although some traditions maintain he was buried in Armenia or Kyrgystan.
6. In art, Jude is usually shown holding an image of Christ close to his heart, often with a flame above his head to signify receiving the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and/or holding a club, an oar or an axe.
7. His grave was popular with pilgrims who went there to pray, and the results were often so powerful that Jude gained a reputation as the Patron Saint of the Impossible, or of Lost Causes. This could also have been because of a letter he wrote to Eastern churches, encouraging disciples of Christ to keep going no matter how hard things get.
8. He is also the patron of the Chicago Police Department and a soccer team in Rio de Janeiro.
9. Today, newspapers sometimes carry classified ads from people seeking Saint Jude's help in some situation, or expressing gratitude for a favour received. Some people wear Saint Jude Pendants for protection.
10. The feast day of Saint Jude is 28 October. On this date in 2013 a severe storm hit the United Kingdom, and the storm was nicknamed Saint Jude.

27th October: Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, 26th president of the USA was born on this date in 1858. He became the youngest president at 42, following the assassination of William McKinley.

1. His time in office contains an impressive list of firsts: The first president to ride in a plane (a four minute flight in a plane built by the Wright brothers), drive in a car and ride in a Submarine; the first president to travel outside the US (Panama in 1906); first president to refer to the presidential mansion as the White House; first to invite a black man to a White House dinner; first to appoint a Jewish person as a cabinet member; the first president to be known by his initials, TR. He was also the first American to win a Nobel Prize, for Peace in 1906.
2. It's generally known that he inspired the Teddy bear, when, on a hunting trip, he refused to shoot a defenceless bear, (because it was "unsportsmanlike" rather than out of compassion for the animal) - but he actually hated the nickname "Teddy" and insisted that his staff called him Theodore, or, if they must use a nickname, "The Colonel."
3. He was keen on conservation and to some extent put his money where his mouth was by banning Christmas Trees from the White House. His convictions didn't extend to the animal kingdom, though. In 1909 he went on safari and his party killed 11,400 animals including rare white Rhinos and Elephants. He justified his actions by saying that as long as there were natural history museums full of stuffed animals he could not be condemned for contributing to their collections!
4. His first wife and his mother both died on the same day, Valentine's day 1884. He was heartbroken and left politics for a while to become a cattle rancher. However, when a blizzard killed his herd, he went back to New York and resumed political activities, including an unsuccessful run for mayor.
5. He was a keen sportsman. After suffering from severe asthma as a child he embraced "The Strenuous Life". One of his favourite sports was boxing. At Harvard, he came second in a boxing tournament and he continued to box several times a week well into his presidency. He only stopped when he got punched so hard in the face that he went blind in one eye.
6. "The Strenuous Life" also included swimming in the Potomac River in the nude.
7. His face adorns Mount Rushmore alongside those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. He is the only one of the five presidents to be portrayed wearing spectacles.
8. His most famous saying was "Speak softly and carry a big stick". Another piece of advice he gave was, "In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing."
9. While campaigning in 1912, he survived an assassination attempt when John Flammang Schrank shot him in the chest. His life was saved by the steel spectacle case and 50 page speech he was carrying in his pocket. After checking that he wasn't coughing blood (which would have meant the bullet was in his lung and he'd need urgent medical attention) he made the speech as planned. Undeterred by the blood seeping into his shirt and the bullet holes in the speech, he spoke for 90 minutes. He began by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."
10. In 1919, a blood clot achieved what a shot to the chest couldn't, and he died in his sleep. Woodrow Wilson's vice president, Thomas R. Marshall, commented, "Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight."

26th October: British Summer Time Ends.

If you live in the UK and haven't already done so you need to put your clocks back an hour. When you've done that you can read the 10 facts about time zones:

1. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as a worldwide standard was first established in 1884 - but only 22 of the world's nations actually voted for it. Only 25 were even asked. France and Brazil abstained and the Dominican Republic voted against.
2. It was several years before GMT was used all over Britain. Before that people used solar time wherever they were, which would vary by a few minutes. When people started travelling long distances by train there needed to be some sort of agreement about what time the train was going to leave or arrive, so it was the railway companies which first officially adopted it in 1847. It was legally adopted in 1880.
3. Why is it called "mean" time? Because even at the Greenwich Meridian the time of the highest point of the sun can vary by up to 16 minutes from day to day, so the mean time is the average time of the highest point of the sun.
4. Although Greenwich is in England, England only uses Greenwich Mean Time for less than half the year, between the last Sunday in October and the last Sunday in March. Most of the time we're on British Summer Time (BST).
5. The only country to use GMT all year round is Iceland.
6. A way to remember which way you need to alter your clocks: Spring forward, fall back.
7. Most places which change their clocks do so by a full hour. There is an island off Australia, Lord Howe Island, which changes its clocks by half an hour so that in winter it is ten and a half hours ahead of GMT. Places near the equator where the amount of daylight doesn't vary much, don't bother.
8. Larger countries like the USA have several time zones, except for China, which decided to adopt one time zone throughout the land. This means that the sun is at its highest at 11am in the east and at 3pm in the west of China - and in some parts of China the sun doesn't rise until 10am.
9. The idea of British Summer Time was first suggested in 1908 by William Willett who noticed that most people were still in bed when he went out riding in the early morning and it was a waste of daylight. The idea wasn't taken on until 1916, a year after he died.
10. Back then, putting the clocks back would be even more of a pain than it is now. Clocks in those days were designed to only move forwards, and trying to move the hands backwards would break them - so the only way to do it was to move the hands forward by 11 hours.

25th October: Picasso's birthday

25 October 1881 was the birth of the artist Pablo Picasso, whose wife once said of his work, "If my husband would ever meet a woman on the street who looked like the women in his paintings, he would fall over in a dead faint." Here are 10 things that he said:

Portrait of Picasso by Juan Gris

1. I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
2. The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
3. All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
4. Everything you can imagine is real.
5. My mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.
6. Colours, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.
7. Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
8. The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?
9. We don't grow older, we grow riper.
10. There are only two types of women - goddesses and doormats.

24th October: United Nations Day

United Nations Day commemorates the forming of the UN on this date in 1945. Some things you might not know about the UN:

1. There are 193 UN member states. On this date in 1945, there were just 51 (mostly those who had been on the winning side of World War II). The most recent nation to join was South Sudan in 2011.
2. The UN replaced the League of Nations. The League of Nations was set up after World War I, to ensure that such a conflict never happened again. It clearly wasn't very effective as there was a World War II, so a new organisation was called for.
3. The name "United Nations" was proposed by US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Winston Churchill in 1942. Churchill was staying in Washington DC at the time and was sitting in the bath when Roosevelt had someone push his wheelchair into the bathroom so he could tell Churchill his idea immediately. Churchill noted that Lord Byron had used the name to describe the Allies at the Battle of Waterloo in his book Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: "Here, where the sword United Nations drew, Our countrymen were warring on that day! And this much—and all—which will not pass away."
4. As well as the member states, there are observer states. There are currently two of these - The Holy See and Palestine. Switzerland, famous for being neutral in everything, was an observer state from 1948 until 2002, when it decided to become a full member.
5. There have been eight Secretary-Generals. The current one is Ban Ki-Moon from South Korea, who replaced Kofi Annan in 2007. He will hold the office until the end of 2016. Ban Ki-Moon has a reputation for being bland, and his nickname is Ban-chusa, or "the bureaucrat" in Korean, but when he was elected he surprised everyone by singing "Ban Ki-moon is coming to town" to the tune of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".
6. Funding comes from contributions by member states. The two-year budget for 2012–13 was $5.512 billion in total. How much they are expected to contribute depends on the ability of the nation to pay as measured by their gross national income with adjustments for external debt and low per capita income. The lowest amount a country can be expected to pay is 0.001% of the total budget. The UK pays 6%. The country that pays the most is the USA (no surprises there) but they also are renowned for paying late - in 2005 the US owed the UN $960 million. In fact, only about 40 of the member nations ever pay up on time.
7. Although the UN headquarters is based in New York, it is deemed to be international territory, and as such, does not meet all of the fire and safety standards for New York City buildings.
8. Alfred Hitchcock wanted to film North by Northwest at the UN in 1958, but did not have permission, so Cary Grant was filmed approaching the entrance by a hidden camera. Other UN scenes were done using a sound stage and special effects.
9. The logo, a projection of a map of the world centred at the North Pole and enclosed by two Olive branches, was first designed as a lapel pin by Donal McLaughlin.
10. There are six official languages used at the UN: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

23rd October: Celery Day

Today was Celery day in the French Revolutionary Calendar, so here are 10 things you might not know about celery:

1. Celery seeds are very small - the size of a full stop in a 12pt font. You can grow an acre of celery from just an ounce of them.
2. Garlands made from celery leaves were found in Tutenkhamen’s tomb.
3. In Homer's Iliad, the horses of the Myrmidons graze on wild celery that grows in the marshes of Troy, and in Odyssey, there is mention of the meadows of violet and wild celery surrounding the cave of Calypso. Among the ancient Greeks, celery was said to have sprouted from the blood of Kadmilos, father of the Cabeiri.
4. Celery was first mentioned in English in 1664 by the diarist John Evelyn, who spelt it sellery.
5. Fans of Gillingham Football Club may be banned for life if they bring sticks of celery to a game. This is because, for some reason, fans had got into the habit of singing rude songs about celery and throwing it onto the pitch.
6. In ancient Rome, celery was considered an aphrodisiac. Modern science has found that celery contains androsterone, a pheromone released by men's sweat glands that attracts females. 18th century French courtesan Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV, ate celery soup to make her less frigid and more attractive to the king. It is also said that she fed the king celery soup to fan the fires of his passion. Finally on this subject, Cassanova used to eat it, too. He thought it increased his stamina.
7. From classical times to the Middle Ages, celery was used as a medicinal plant to treat toothache, insomnia, gout, rheumatism, anxiety and arthritis.
8. The Fifth Doctor Who, played by Peter Davison, wore a stalk of celery on his lapel.
9. There is a celery museum in Portage, Michigan, called the Celery Flats Interpretive Center.
10. It's usually seen as a savoury food, but a recipe uncovered in Pompeii for a celery dessert suggested roasting chopped celery in an oven and serving it with honey and ground pepper.

22 October: Doris Lessing

The author Doris Lessing was born in Iran on 22 October 1919. Here are 10 Doris Lessing quotes:

1. What is a hero without love for mankind.
2. Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
3. If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
4. That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.
5. In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.
6. What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.
7. A writer falls in love with an idea and gets carried away.
8. It's amazing what you find out about yourself when you write in the first person about someone very different from you.
9. There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children.
10. There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.

21st October: Apple Day

Today is Apple Day, so here are some facts about apples:

1. According to the Italian scientists who mapped the genome of the Golden Delicious in 2010, it has 57,000 genes - more than we humans have (30,000).
2. An apple has 10 seeds on average. The seeds contain cyanide - but if you swallow an apple seed it won't kill you - The seed's coat wouldn't be broken down by your digestive system so it would pass through without releasing any poison, and in any case it would take a cupful of the seeds to produce enough poison to be lethal.
3. Apple trees can live to be over 100 years old. They are about five years old before they produce any fruit.
4. The first apples came from Kazakhstan. The city Almaty literally means ‘the apple place’. Today, the top apple producers are China, USA, Turkey, Poland and Italy. The largest consumers of apples are Russia, Germany and the UK.
5. It is generally accepted that the apple was the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate in the Garden of Eden, and the term "Adam's apple" came from the idea that the apple core got stuck in Adam's throat. However, it does not mention anywhere in the Bible that apples were the forbidden fruit.
6. The science of apple cultivation is known as Pomology. The fear of apples is known as Malusdomesticaphobia. This comes from the scientific name of apples, Malus domestica.
7. Apples are popular gifts to bring when visiting people in China - this is because the Chinese word for apple is the same as the word for peace.
8. There are more than 8,000 varieties of apples – the largest variety of any fruit to exist. Apples come in a variety of colours from lime green to golden yellow to burgundy and chocolate brown, and can vary in size from the size of a pea to 1.85 kilos, the largest ever apple, which was grown in the Japanese city of Hirosaki.
9. It takes 36 apples to produce a gallon of cider. The average person will eat 65 of them in a year.
10. The Trojan war was started by an apple, when Paris presented a golden apple, inscribed with the word ‘kallistei’ (‘to the fairest one’), to Aphrodite. This did not go down well with Hera and Athena which ultimately led to the war.

20th October: Sir Christopher Wren

On this date in 1632 Sir Christopher Wren, English astronomer and architect, was born in East Knoyle, Wiltshire. He designed St Paul's Cathedral in London, but here are 10 things you may not know:

1. Sir Christopher Wren did not train as an architect as a person would now - the profession as we understand it today did not exist. Rather, it was a branch of applied mathematics, and something well educated gentlemen might take up as a hobby. When he first went to university in Oxford, Wren was studying Latin and Philosophy.
2. Wren studied, and performed experiments in several branches of science during his lifetime, including: building a transparent beehive to observe Bee behaviour; performed the first successful injection of a substance into the bloodstream of a Dog; made improvements in microscopes and telescopes; observed the Moon and Saturn; and experimented with finding longitude through magnetic variation.
3. As a schoolboy he was a heavy smoker and drinker.
4. He didn't marry until he was 37 years old. His first wife, Faith, died after just three years and two children. His second marriage, to Jane Fitzwilliam, was equally short - she, too died after about three years and two children. Wren never married again after that.
5. He was one of the illustrators for a pioneering anatomy textbook, Cerebri Anatome (1664) for which he provided anatomical drawings of the Brain. It was this book which first coined the term "neurology".
6. Wren submitted plans for rebuilding London after the Great fire to King Charles II, but they were never adopted.
7. He was an MP. He was elected Member of Parliament for Old Windsor three times - but never took his seat.
8. He is credited with the designs of 51 churches in London besides St Paul's, and also the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, and the south front of Hampton Court Palace.
9. From 1657, he gave weekly lectures on Latin and English in London. Some of his colleagues from his former job in Oxford used to attend the lectures and they would all meet up afterwards for scientific discussions. These meetings eventually evolved into the Royal Society.
10. He is buried in St Paul's Cathedral. His son wrote his epitaph, which reads (in Latin) "Here in its foundations lies the architect of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived beyond ninety years, not for his own profit but for the public good. Reader, if you seek his monument – look around you. Died 25 Feb. 1723, age 91."

19th October: John Le Carre

Author John Le Carre was born this date in 1931. 10 quotes:

1. Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.
2. A committee is an animal with four back legs.
3. A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.
4. Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.
5. Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.
6. We lie to one another every day, in the sweetest way, often unconsciously. We dress ourselves and compose ourselves in order to present ourselves to one another.
7. The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.
8. There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.
9. Home's where you go when you run out of homes.
10. The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.

18 October: Azerbaijan Independence Day

Azerbaijan declared Independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Here are some things you may not know about the country:

1. The country first became a republic in May 1918, but this republic only lasted 23 months before Lenin noticed there was a lot of oil there and invaded in order to absorb it into the Soviet Union. 18 October 1991 was when it became independent from Russia.
2. Talking of oil. Azerbaijan was the location of the world's first oil well in the nineteenth century. The Nobel family of Norway, who created the much lauded Nobel prizes, acquired much of its wealth from Azerbaijan's oil industry.
3. Before that, it was also the location of the world's first fireplace, built in Azikh Cave, the largest cave in Azerbaijan, around 700,000 years ago.
4. It is probably this, and the fact that the rich oil and gas deposits would ignite and burn naturally, that gave the country its name. Azerbaijan means "Land of Fire".
5. Another first is Neft Dashlar, a town in the Caspian Sea - it was the first town ever to be built on stilts. Construction started in 1947.
6. The capital and largest city is Baku.
7. The highest peak of Azerbaijan is mount Bazardüzü (4,466 m), while the lowest point lies in the Caspian Sea (−28 m). The largest lake is Sarysu (67 km²), and the longest river is Kur (1,515 km).
8. It was the first Muslim country to grant equal political rights to women, and the first to establish a modern university.
9. Lotfi A. Zadeh, who discovered fuzzy logic, was from Azerbaijan.
10. Tea is the most popular drink, although their method of sweetening it is rather different. Instead of putting sugar in the tea, they put a lump of sugar or jam in their mouths and drink the tea through it.

17th October: Aubergine day

In the French Revolutionary calendar, today was Aubergine day, so here are 10 facts about aubergines/eggplants:

1. The aubergine goes by many different names. In France and the UK, it's an aubergine. In the USA and Canada, it's an eggplant (because early cultivated varieties were white or yellow and looked like Eggs). In India, it is called brinjal, which means "king of vegetables" because it is widely used in Indian cuisine. An old Italian term for it is "mela insana", insane Apple, and in olden times, people in the UK, too, would call it a "mad apple."
2. It's not actually a vegetable. Like a Tomato (to which it is in fact related) it is a fruit.
3. Aubergines belong to the nightshade family. Because of this, it was once thought the fruit was poisonous. It isn't, but eating large amounts of the leaves and flowers of the plants would be extremely bad for you.
4. They contain nicotine - more than any other edible plant, but you'd need to eat 20lbs (9kg) of them to get the same amount of nicotine from them as you would from smoking a cigarette.
5. Most of the world's aubergines are produced in China (58%) and India (25%), although Iran, Egypt and Turkey are also producers.
6. More than 4,000,000 acres (1,600,000 ha) are devoted to the cultivation of eggplant in the world.
7. The first known written record of the plant is found in an ancient Chinese agricultural treatise completed in 544. The first written record of it in England dates from the 16th century.
8. Japan has a proverb about eggplant: “The happiest omen for a New Year is first Mount Fuji, then the falcon, and lastly eggplant.”
9. In the 5th century, it was fashionable in China for women to dye their teeth grey, using a polish made out of the skins of purple aubergines.
10. There are many different varieties of aubergine, including 'Harris Special Hibush', 'Burpee Hybrid', 'Black Magic', 'Black Beauty', 'Little Fingers', 'Casper' and 'Easter Egg'.

16th October: Oscar Wilde

The very quotable Oscar Wilde was born this date in 1854. Here are 10 of his sayings:

1. The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
2. Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
3. To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
4. Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
5. Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
6. Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
7. There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
8. I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
9. No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.
10. An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

15 October: Friedrich Nietzsche

10 quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche, born on this date in 1844:

1. Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
2. That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
3. In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
4. All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
5. One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
6. We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
7. There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
8. There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
9. To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.
10. When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.

14th October: Honey Bee Day

Today is Honey Bee Day, so here are some things you may not know about honey bees:

1. There are only seven species of true honey bee (members of the genus Apis), with 44 subspecies, so honey bees represent only a small fraction of the roughly 20,000 known species of bees. The study of honey bees is known as apiology.
2. Worker bees have career progression. When they are young, their job is to clean the hive and feed the larvae, but after a time they lose the ability to produce the royal jelly which the larvae eat and so they move on to building honeycombs and later to defending the hive and collecting the pollen from the forager bees. Finally, they start to fly out of the hive and become foragers themselves.
3. In winter, the bees stay in the hive and cluster around the queen to keep her warm. They produce heat by shivering and can detach their wings so that they can use the wing muscles to generate heat. The bees rotate in the cluster from outside to inside so none of them get too cold. During this time the bees eat the honey they have stored to create energy and the queen stops laying until the spring. Bees also use this technique to get rid of intruders - they cluster around them and heat them up until they die of a combination of heatstroke and carbon dioxide poisoning.
4. Bees collect both nectar and pollen from flowers - nectar to make Honey and pollen for protein.
5. A queen bee has to mate within 20 days of emerging from her queen cell or she will lose the ability to do so. She only mates once, but with multiple males (who die once they've mated). She stores all the sperm and can choose whether or not to fertilise the eggs she lays (can be as many as 2,000 a day). If she chooses to fertilize an egg it becomes a female worker; if not, it becomes a male drone.
6. Honey bees are the only bee species that swarm. A mated queen and a large number of workers will swarm to a new nest site, which some of the workers will have scouted beforehand. When they all get there, they will build the nest. In other species, the queen establishes a colony on her own, or the workers build the nest before she arrives.
7. A single honey bee worker produces about 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
8. Only female bees can sting. Male drones do not have a sting, but instead have larger eyes so that they can find the queen during her mating flight.
9. Everyone knows bees do a "waggle dance" to communicate to each other where the flowers are, but they also do a "tremble dance" which lets the worker bees know they are home and ready to have their nectar collected. Some species also do a kind of Mexican wave by flicking their wings and arching their bodies, which is intended as a warning display to would-be intruders.
10. A bee can fly at up to 15 miles per hour. This is fairly slow compared to other insects, because bees are built for short flights from flower to flower.

13th October: Face Your Fears Day

For Face Your Fears Day, 10 quotes about fear and courage:

1. If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine. It is lethal. Paolo Coelho
2. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. Helen Keller
3. Be brave. Even if you’re not, pretend to be. No-one can tell the difference. Life’s Little Instruction Book
4. It is not because it is difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult. Lucius Anneaus Seneca
5. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. Marianne Williamson
6. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the judgement that something else is more important than fear. Ambrose Redmoon
7. Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your own fears. Rudyard Kipling
8. Courage is being scared to death... and saddling up anyway. John Wayne
9. Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong. Peter T. Mcintyre
10. You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” Christopher Columbus

12th October: Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley, born this date in 1875, is said, by many to have been the "wickedest man in the world." Whether he was or not is a matter of opinion. Surely Hitler and Osama bin Laden must be in the contest, too? Read the 10 facts and decide for yourself.

1. Crowley actually had a strict religious upbringing. His father was a travelling preacher with the Plymouth Brethren and would read a chapter of the Bible to his family every day after breakfast.
2. Aleister was not Crowley's given name. His parents named him Edward Alexander, but he disliked both names and all their derivatives. Aleister is the Gaelic form of Alexander. Another reason he chose it was because, coupled with his surname, it was a favourable name for becoming famous.
3. Although he described his father as his hero and his friend, his relationship with his mother was not good at all. She called him "the Beast" (which he secretly rather liked). Some scholars believe that his misogynistic views in later life may have stemmed from the dysfunctional relationship with his mother.
4. Crowley was a keen mountaineer and during his life he climbed Beachy Head, the Eiger, Trift, Jungfrau, Mönch, and Wetterhorn. He attempted K2, which had never been climbed at that point, but had to turn back. He also attempted to climb Kangchenjunga in the Himalayas, widely recognised as the world's most treacherous mountain. On this expedition, he didn't get on with the rest of the team, who thought he was too reckless. In the end, the team mutinied and turned back, even though it was near nightfall. Crowley warned then that this was very dangerous, but they didn't listen to him and set off anyway. On the way down there was an accident and several of them were killed. The mountaineering community blamed Crowley for this, even though he had actually tried to stop them.
5. He was also very keen on chess and considered becoming a professional chess player.
6. For a while, he owned a house on the shores of Loch Ness.
7. Known for having countless affairs with both men and women, when Crowley married, it was, to begin with, a marriage of convenience so that his wife, Rose, would not have to enter into an arranged marriage. However, during their honeymoon, he fell in love with her for real.
8. He was hired by George Montagu Bennett, the Earl of Tankerville, to help protect him from witchcraft. Crowley recognised that witchcraft had nothing to do with Bennett's paranoia, but rather, it was caused by cocaine addiction, and a long holiday to France and Morocco should do the trick. In later life, Crowley himself became addicted to heroin (after his doctor prescribed it to him for his severe asthma) and cocaine.
9. Many believe that Crowley was recruited as a spy while at Cambridge. He has been criticised for appearing to support Germany in World War I and writing for an American pro-German magazine - but in actual fact, he was spying for Britain at the time, and the articles he wrote were excessively hyperbolic and intended to make the magazine and its supporters look ridiculous to the American public. Some of the travelling he did was thought by some to be intelligence gathering missions.
10. While widely described as a Satanist, Crowley would never have described himself as such. He didn't worship Satan because, having rejected the Christianity he was brought up with, he didn't believe that Satan even existed.