8 February: Chinese New Year

Today is Chinese New Year - the year of the Red fire monkey. So here are ten things you may not know about China:

1. The name China probably comes from the Qin dynasty - Qin is pronounced "Chin". First Emperor Qin Shi Huang (260-210 B.C.) of this dynasty first unified China in 221 B.C.
2. The capital is Beijing, which means "Northern Capital". The city has gone by a number of other names throughout history - Yanjing, Dadu, Peking and Beiping. The largest city in China is Shanghai.
3. China is considered to be the oldest civilization in the world today, having existed since 6000 BC. It also has the world’s longest continuously used written language.
4. China is famous for Tea and silk, both of which, according to legend, were discovered by accidentally dropping things into boiling Water. Tea was discovered by the Chinese emperor Shennong when a tea leaf fell into his boiling water, and silk by Lady Xi Ling Sui, wife of the Emperor Huang Di. When a silk worm cocoon accidentally dropped into her hot tea, fine threads from the cocoon unravelled in the hot water. The Chinese were so protective of their silk making that smuggling silkworm eggs or cocoons out of China was a crime punishable by death.
5. There is a long list of things China is said to have invented or discovered, often thousands of years before Western civilization. These include: Paper, Toilet paper, printing, the Compass, gunpowder, Kites, soccer, Ice cream, the first instrument for monitoring Earthquakes, the circulatory system of Blood, the decimal system, chemical weapons, the crossbow, suspension bridges, natural gas, the Iron plough and the waterwheel.
6. In 2015 the population of China was estimated to be 1,376,049,000 - that's four times as high as the US. One in every five people in the world is Chinese. The population growth prompted the Chinese government to bring in their controversial one child policy. While it may have done the trick in slowing down population growth, because people valued sons more highly than daughters, it led to female babies being aborted or killed, and now there are 32 million more boys than girls in China. So girls are going to be at a premium when they all want to get married. There is also a law in China which forbids couples from having a baby until they have been granted a Family Planning Certificate from the government. Any babies born to parents without one are not considered legal.
7. The population explosion is also thought by some to be responsible for the invention of chopsticks. Cooking food for all these people took a lot of fuel, so food was chopped into small pieces so it would cook faster, using less fuel. Knives weren't needed to cut food, so people used chopsticks.
8. China is home to the world's biggest dam (The Three Gorges Hydroelectric Dam which spans the Yangtze River), the oldest and longest canal in the world (China’s Grand Canal is 1,114 miles (1,795 km) long and has 24 locks and around 60 bridges) and the world's largest artificial forest (made to stop the Gobi desert from expanding).
9. China owns all the Pandas in the world. Any pandas seen in zoos anywhere else are merely on loan. Baby pandas born abroad have to be sent back to China (by Fed Ex) to help expand the gene pool. The early Chinese emperors kept pandas to ward off evil spirits and natural disasters. Pandas represented might and bravery.
10. Rich people in some parts of China can hire body doubles to serve their prison sentences for them.

7 February: Grenada

Grenada gained independence from the UK on this date in 1974. Here are some things you may not know about Grenada:

1. Grenada comprises the island of Grenada itself and six smaller islands at the southern end of the Grenadines. The smaller islands are Carriacou, Petit Martinique, Ronde Island, Caille Island, Diamond Island, Large Island, Saline Island, and Frigate Island. The island of Grenada has six parishes - the capital and largest is Saint George, the rest are Saint David, Saint Andrew, Saint Patrick, Saint Mark, and Saint John.
2. It's principal crop is nutmeg. Nutmeg was introduced to Grenada in 1843 when a merchant ship called in on its way to England from the East Indies. The ship had a few nutmeg trees on board which they left in Grenada. Now the country supplies 20% of the world's supply. Mace is a by product of nutmeg as it consists of the covering of the nutmeg seed.
3. Grenada has had a number of names throughout its history. The Carib Indians who lived there first called it 'Camerhogue'; Columbus, although he never landed there, named it as well - he called it 'Concepcion'. It's thought that Spanish sailors came up with the name Grenada, because it reminded them of home. The nutmeg industry gave it the nickname of "the Spice Island".
4. St. Catherine is the highest mountain at 840 m (2,760 ft).
5. The national dish is "oildown". This is salt beef, chicken and pork cooked with dumplings, breadfruit, green banana, yam and Potatoes in coconut milk. It is cooked until the milk is all absorbed and only a small quantity of coconut oil is left in the pot.
6. Grenada has a sculpture gallery which was built 24 feet under the sea. It can only be seen by divers, or from a glass bottomed boat. It was built in 2006 by Jason De Caires Taylor. It is intended to be an artificial reef and wildlife sanctuary, so the sculptures will change over the years. It also serves to lessen the pressure on the natural reefs from scuba diving tourists. There are 79 sculptures in all, the largest being a circle of children holding hands.
7. Grenada's Carnival is held each year, for 10 days, in August.
8. Most of the people who live in Grenada are descended from the African slaves brought by the English and French or indentured workers from India.
9. The national Flag of Grenada was adopted on independence from the United Kingdom, on 7 February 1974. The six stars in the red border stand for the country's six parishes, with the middle star, encircled by a red disk, representing the capital, Saint George's. The symbol in the hoist represents a clove of nutmeg. The colours have meanings, too - red stands for courage and vitality, Yellow for wisdom and warmth, and Green for vegetation and agriculture.
10. There is a fort in St George's which has cannons facing inland instead of out to sea. The "backwards facing fort" is Fort Frederick. The French began building it in 1779 and the British finished it in 1791. The French built it this way because they feared a surprise land attack after using this successful strategy themselves against the British.

6th February: New Zealand

Waitangi Day The Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand's founding document was first signed in the Bay of Islands on 6 February 1840.

1. New Zealand was named after a province in the Netherlands - Zeeland. The indigenous Maori people, however, have their own name for it - Aoetaroa, meaning ‘land of the long white cloud’.
2. New Zealand was part of Australia until 1901, when Australia federated. New Zealand then refused the offer to become a state of Australia and struck out on its own. That said, the Australian constitution still lists New Zealand as one of its states - so it could still become a state of Australia if it wanted to.
3. There are a number of things New Zealand has more of per person than anywhere else. It has more Scottish pipe bands per capita than any other country in the world (including Scotland); more golf courses; more sheep (around nine sheep per person); more book-shops (one for every 7500 people); more Helicopters and more Olympic gold medals. The largest city, Auckland also has the largest number of boats per capita than any other city in the world.
4. In terms of wildlife, the only native mammals are Bats. Everything else was introduced by humans. There are no Snakes, introduced or otherwise. There are more different species of Penguins here than anywhere else; and the country is home to the world’s smallest marine Dolphin (Hector’s Dolphin), the world's heaviest insect (the giant weta, which weighs more than a small bird and looks like a giant cockroach), the world's only flightless parrot (the Kakapo), and of course, its national bird, the kiwi, which lays the largest egg in the world in relation to the size of the bird - a kiwi's egg weighs about one-third of the female bird’s weight. It is the only bird in the world to have a sense of smell, and even though it cannot fly, it is the symbol of the New Zealand Air Force.
5. Wellington is the southernmost capital city in the world. Auckland is the largest city, though - more people live there than on the whole of the South Island.
6. In 1893, New Zealand became the first country to give women the right to vote. In 2006 it became the only country in the world where all the highest positions were simultaneously held by women: the Queen, the Governor-General, the PM, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Chief Justice were all women. It was also the first country in the world to have a transsexual Member of Parliament in 1999 (Georgina Beyer). It has created a couple of slightly wacky government posts - a Minister for Lord of the Rings, to maximise the amount of money which could be made from the films; and a National Wizard. His duties include casting out evil spirits and cheering up the population. New Zealand ties with Denmark as the least corrupt nation in the world.
7. New Zealand has two National Anthems - God Save The Queen and God Defend New Zealand. New Zealand is one of only three countries that have two official (and of equal standing) national Anthems. The others are Denmark and Canada.
8. New Zealand is home to the tallest man made structure in the Southern Hemisphere (the Sky Tower in Auckland at 328m) and the world's steepest street (Baldwin Street, in Dunedin has a gradient of 1 in 2.86 at its steepest section).
9. The highest mountain is Aoraki/Mount Cook at 3,754 metres (12,316 ft).
10. The Maori name for a hill in Hawke’s Bay is 85 characters long and is the longest place name found in any English speaking country. It is Taumatawhakatangihangaoauauotameteaturipukakapikimaungah-oronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu, which roughly translates as, “the place where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed and swallowed mountains, known as the land-eater, played his nose flute to his loved ones”.

5th February: William S Burroughs

William S Burroughs was born on this date in 1914. Here are some words of wisdom from him:

1. After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'
2. Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.
3. Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.
4. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
5. Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.
6. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.
7. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
8. Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
9. The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing.
10. I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.

4th February: Facebook

On this date in 2004, Facebook was founded. So here are ten things you might not know about Facebook:

1. 1 in every 13 people on Earth is on Facebook.
2. The man whose face appeared on the 2007 Facebook homepage behind a cloud of binary code is the actor Al Pacino.
3. Facebook’s library contains over 140 billion photos, which is about 100,000 times what the US Library of Congress has, and amounts to 4% of all the photos ever taken.
4. The "Like" button was originally going to be called the "awesome" button.
5. Facebook is predominantly blue because Mark Zuckerberg is colour blind and blue is the colour he can see best.
6. The most "liked" company on Facebook is Coca Cola.
7. The average Facebook user has 130 friends and spends 21 minutes a day on the site.
8. Adding numbers after the Facebook URL takes you to the personal pages of the founders. https://www.facebook.com/4, for example, takes you to Mark Zuckerberg's page. 5 gets you to Chris Hughes, 6 to Dustin Moskovitz and 7 to Arie Hasit.
9. Every 20 minutes, 1,000,000 links are shared; 1,484,000 event invites are posted; 1,851,000 status updates are entered; 1.972 million friend requests are accepted; 2,716,000 photos are uploaded; 2,716,000 messages are sent and 10.2 million comments are posted.
10. Your Facebook page can be translated into 70 different languages, including English (Pirate), in which friends are called "mateys", commenting is called "scrawling a mark" and so on. To try this out, on your page, scroll down to below the pictures of your friends where there is some grey text which will either say something like "select a language" or will display the language you're currently using eg "English (UK)". Click on this to get a full list of available languages, including "English (Pirate)". Follow the same procedure to go back to normal English.

3rd February: Athena

The 3rd day of the month is sacred to the Goddess Athena. So 10 Athena facts for the third of February.

1. Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, mathematics, strength, war strategy, the arts, crafts - especially weaving, and skill. She represents intelligence, humility, consciousness, cosmic knowledge, creativity, education, enlightenment, the arts, eloquence and power.
2. Her Roman equivalent is Minerva.
3. Athena is the daughter of Zeus and Metis, the goddess of crafty thought and wisdom. According to the legend, Athena was not exactly a wanted child, at first. When Zeus had sex with Metis, he immediately regretted it, because of a prophecy that she would give birth to a deity more powerful than him. So he ate her. Later, Zeus found himself suffering from a headache so bad that he could only find relief by getting one of his warriors to cut his head open with an axe; whereupon Athena leapt out of his head, fully grown and fully armed. Despite this, she is later cited as being his favourite daughter.
4. One of her nicknames is Athena the Virgin, because she never married nor took a lover. The nearest she came was when Hephaestus tried to rape her, but she fought him off and his semen fell on the ground, impregnating the earth instead. The result was Erichthonius, who was born to the Earth goddess, Gaia. She gave the child to Athena who adopted him.
5. Another nickname is Pallas Athena. Pallas, according to myth, was a sister or companion and sparring partner of Athena. In most versions of the myth, Athena accidentally kills Pallas and is so distraught at what she has done that she takes her name.
6. Athena is closely linked with Athens, the capital of Greece. Nobody really knows whether the city was named after her or if she was named after the city. The legends relate that she and Poseidon competed for patronage of the city, and Athena won, because the people preferred her gift of an Olive tree to Poseidon's spring of Salt Water. The olive tree, therefore, is one of her symbols.
7. Another symbol is the owl. This may be because of the bird's reputation for wisdom and seeing in the dark, or possibly because of its eyes. Glaukopis is another common name for Athena and it means bright-eyed or with gleaming eyes. The Greek word for owl comes from the same root. Descriptions of Athena usually state that she has "piercing eyes".
8. She is said to have disliked fighting, unlike her brother, Ares, and saw war as a last resort once wisdom had failed. She is said to be of calm demeanour and slow to anger, unless, like Arachne, someone claims to be better at weaving than she is. Despite warnings not to anger the gods, Arachne asked for a weaving contest. Arachne produced a flawless work, but its theme was Athena's father Zeus being unfaithful with numerous women, so Athena lost it with her and hit her with a loom, turning Arachne into a spider.
9. In art, Athena is usually shown in armour and wearing a helmet with the image of Nike, and carrying a shield with a gorgon's head on it.
10. Athena is the patron of several universities, including Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany, and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania has a statue of her in the Great Hall. At exam time, students make offerings to her, hoping for good luck, and that she will forgive them for breaking any college rules or traditions.

2nd February: Hedgehog Day

It's Hedgehog Day! Ten facts for you about these little creatures:

1. Hedgehogs have been so called since the 15th century. Before that they were called igls. "Hedge" refers to its usual habitat, and "hog" refers to its piglike snout and the snuffling noise it makes. Other names include urchin (sea urchins were named after them), hedgepig and furze-pig. The collective noun for a group of hedgehogs is array or prickle. The name for a baby hedgehog is a hoglet.
2. The average hedgehog has about 5,000 to 6,500 quills, which are hollow hairs made stiff with keratin. Muscles on the hedgehog's back control the position of the spines, so as best to protect their vulnerable areas when they employ their well-known defence tactic of rolling into a ball.
3. They eat insects, Slugs, Snails, caterpillars, Frogs and toads, Snakes, bird eggs, carrion, Mushrooms, grass roots, berries, melons and watermelons. Hedgehogs are lactose intolerant, so putting out Bread and Milk for them as so many of us were taught to do as children, is actually very bad for them. If you want to feed the hedgehog in your garden, give it non-fish flavour cat food.
4. They are eaten by Badgers and owls, and in some cultures, by people. Hedgehogs were eaten in Ancient Egypt and some recipes of the Late Middle Ages call for hedgehog meat. In the Middle East, hedgehog meat is thought to cure rheumatism, arthritis, tuberculosis, impotence and witchcraft. In Morocco, inhaling the smoke of the burnt hedgehog skin is a remedy for fever, male impotence, and urinary illnesses. The blood is sold as a cure for ringworm, cracked skin and warts. Romani people still eat hedgehogs, boiled or roasted. The 1980s hedgehog flavour crisps, however, did not contain hedgehog.
5. It's illegal to keep a wild hedgehog as a pet (although there are some domesticated species) or even drive one in a car in the US state of Pennsylvania.
6. Hedgehogs have an unusual habit called anointing. When it encounters a new scent, it will bite or lick the source, then produce a frothy saliva and cover its spines with it. Nobody knows why they do it, although one theory is that it is a form of camouflage.
7. Hedgehogs are largely immune to snake venom.
8. There are seventeen different species of hedgehog, originating from Europe, Asia, and Africa. There are no native species in America, Australia or New Zealand, but they have been introduced there. They belong to the family Erinaceidae and are distantly related to shrews.
9. A hedgehog can run at over six feet per second. They've also been known to scale walls.
10. In New Zealand, McGillicuddy's Serious Party once tried to get a hedgehog elected to Parliament. They were unsuccessful.

1st February: Crosswords

On this date in 1930 The Times published its first crossword puzzle. Here are 10 things you may not know about crosswords:

1. It wasn't the first crossword ever - that distinction usually goes to a journalist named Arthur Wynne from Liverpool, whose creation was published in the New York World paper in December 1913. He called it a "word cross" and it was diamond shaped rather than square.
2. It wasn't even the first crossword in a British paper. The Sunday Express got there first in 1925.
3. Crosswords were a big hit with readers in the 1920s. There was even a divorce case in Chicago in 1924 where a woman filed for divorce because her husband was always engrossed in a crossword. The judge ordered him to limit himself to three crosswords a day "and devote the rest of his time to domestic duties."
4. Not everyone was a fan of the crossword craze. Newspaper editors disliked them because they were difficult to print. Libraries didn't like them because, although library usage increased with people looking for the answers, it did so to the extent that often books weren't available for students. "The puzzle 'fans' swarm to the dictionaries and encyclopedias so as to drive away readers and students who need these books in their daily work, can there be any doubt of the Library's duty to protect its legitimate readers?" said the New York public library in 1925. "A childish mentality," one clergyman said.
5. Another detractor said "A sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern, more or less complex. This is not a game at all, and it hardly can be called a sport... [solvers] get nothing out of it except a primitive form of mental exercise, and success or failure in any given attempt is equally irrelevant to mental development." This was the New York Times, which for a long time was the only paper not to publish a crossword. However, it succumbed in 1941, feeling that people would need something to occupy their minds in wartime. Now, the New York Times Crossword is one of the most prestigious in the world.
6. Talking of wartime, there was a furore in Britain in 1944 when the solutions to a series of crossword clues in the Daily Telegraph turned out to be codenames for the forthcoming D-Day landings. The crossword compiler was suspected of being a spy and passing on secrets to the enemy and was interrogated - but the conclusion was that it was all a complete coincidence. A possible explanation was that the compiler in question was the headmaster of a school next to an army camp and the schoolboys had picked up the words from the soldiers.
7. Crossword creators are called “cruciverbalists”.
8. Roger Squires of Ironbridge, Shropshire, is the most prolific cruciverbalist. In 2007, he published his 66,666th crossword, meaning he'd come up with 2 million clues. He also holds the record for the longest word ever used in a published crossword - the 58-letter Welsh town Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch clued as an anagram.
9. Other crossword records: The Guinness Book of Records lists the largest ever crossword as 7′x7′ in size, 91,000 squares and 28,000 clues. The fastest completion of a New York Times crossword was in 1996 by Stanley Newman. His time was 2mins 14 seconds.
10. Publishers Simon and Schuster owe their existence to crossword puzzles. They published the first book of crossword puzzles in 1924. It's said they did so after Simon was asked by his aunt where she could get a book of crossword puzzles. He told her there was no such thing - and realised here was a gap in the market. Their book was a runaway success. It came with a Pencil attached.

31st January: Broccoli

The French Revolutionary Calendar celebrates broccoli on this date. Here are 10 things you might not know about this vegetable:

1. Broccoli belongs to the same species as Cabbage and Cauliflower. It's actually a man-made cultivar of the species Brassica oleracea.
2. The word broccoli comes from the Latin word brachium and the Italian word braccio, which means “arm”.
3. Broccoli originated in Italy off of the Mediterranean. It has been eaten there since the time of the ancient Romans in the 6th Century BC.
4. It was brought to England from Antwerp in the mid-18th century by Flemish sculptor Peter Scheemakers.
5. China and India are the world's biggest producers of broccoli.
6. Broccoli is very good for you. It's an excellent source of Vitamin C and vitamin K as well as the flavonoid kaempferol. Kaempferol is an anti-inflammatory, which helps prevent heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
7. This may explain why broccoli consumption has risen by over 940 percent over the last 25 years!
8. Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the United States, was a fan of broccoli, importing the seeds from Italy to plant at Monticello. He recorded planting the vegetable there as early as May of 1767.
9. On the other hand, former President George Bush famously doesn't like it, and saw one benefit of being President of the United States as being that he didn't have to eat it if he didn't want to!
10. Presumably Tom “Broccoli” Landers likes it as he holds the current world record for eating 1 pound of broccoli in 92 seconds.

30 January: The Lone Ranger

On this date in 1933 The Lone Ranger began a 21 year run on Radio. The first episode of the Lone Ranger was broadcast on station WXYZ in Detroit. It ran for 2,956 episodes and came to an end on radio in 1954.

1. The Lone Ranger is not so called because he works alone - he doesn't, because he has Tonto with him - but because he was the last surviving Texas Ranger of a posse of six which was massacred by the Cavendish Gang.
2. In the original story, the six rangers are left for dead, but one of them, the title character, is still alive - barely. Tonto stumbles across the scene and recognises the surviving ranger as one who saved his life when they were children - so he nurses him back to health.
3. One of the rangers killed was the Lone Ranger's brother, the leader of the posse. After burying the fallen, Tonto digs a sixth grave to fool the Cavendish Gang into thinking they wiped out all of them. The Lone Ranger makes his mask from his brother's waistcoat.
4. The character may have been inspired by Texas Ranger Captain John R. Hughes, to whom the book The Lone Star Ranger by Zane Grey was dedicated in 1915.
5. The Lone Ranger's name is often cited as John Reid, although a first name was never mentioned in the series. Other names have been used in TV and film versions - Allen King, Bill Andrews and Luke Hartman.
6. Tonto did not appear until episode 11 of the radio show. He was introduced to give the Lone Ranger someone to talk to (important for radio!). The name "Tonto" meant "wild one." Kemo Sabe, the name Tonto uses for the Lone Ranger, means "trusty scout". He is a member of the Potawatomi tribe. In Spanish speaking countries, Tonto's name is changed to Toro ("Bull") because Tonto means "stupid" in Spanish.
7. In the radio show, Tonto was played almost entirely by a bald, stocky Irishman called John Todd. He was often replaced by a Native American actor for public performances. He was the only original cast member to be in the final broadcast on September 3, 1954.
8. The Lone Ranger's horse, Silver, was a wild horse which was saved by the Lone Ranger from an angry buffalo. According to the story, Silver was so grateful that he gave up his wild life to become the Lone Ranger's horse. In one episode, the Lone Ranger tries to release Silver back into the wild. However, Silver comes back with another horse, which becomes Tonto's horse, Scout.
9. The famous theme tune is taken from the March of the Swiss Soldiers finale of Gioachino Rossini's William Tell Overture. A classical piece was chosen so the radio station did not need to pay a composer to come up with an original tune.
10. Fran Striker (writer) and George W. Trendle (radio station owner) were well aware these characters would become role models for children, so they came up with guidelines for the characters, which included: The Lone Ranger always speaks with proper grammar and never uses slang; he never drinks or smokes; criminals were never shown as glamorous or successful and were rarely depicted as foreigners; the Lone Ranger would never escape using impossible odds; he'd never shoot to kill, but to disarm his opponent as painlessly as possible. He used Silver bullets to remind himself that life is precious.

29th January: Carnation Day

It's Carnation Day. It's Carnation Day because it's former US President William McKinley's birthday. 10 things you never knew about carnations.

1. Why is US president William McKinley's birthday Carnation Day? Because he used to wear one, as a lucky charm, ever since he won his first election. Until one day he gave his carnation to a little girl at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Moments later, he was shot and died of his wounds eight days later. In France, carnations are used as funeral flowers and considered unlucky.
2. The most common colour of the flowers is Pink, but there are also red, white and Yellow ones. It's not possible to naturally produce a blue one because the plants do not produce the necessary pigment, delphinidin. However, if you want a blue one, or a Green one, it can be achieved by putting a white carnation in Water with food colouring - the flower will take in the colouring and change colour in about a day.
3. In the language of flowers, light red carnations represent admiration, dark red denote deep love and affection. White carnations represent pure love and good luck, striped (variegated) carnations symbolise regret that a love cannot be shared, and purple carnations indicate capriciousness.
4. The flowers have been adopted by political movements. Red carnations, as well as Roses, are a symbol of socialism and the labour movement and are worn on demonstrations or on May Day. The Dutch Prince Bernhard wore one during WWII and some of the Dutch population copied him. After the war the white carnation became a sign of the Prince, veterans and remembrance of the resistance. Green ones are traditionally worn on St Patrick's Day. Oscar Wilde used to wear one, and so green carnations became a symbol of homosexuality, helped along by the book The Green Carnation and Noël Coward's song, "We All Wear a Green Carnation" in his operetta, Bitter Sweet.
5. According to legend, carnations first grew where the Virgin Mary shed tears as Jesus carried his cross. Hence they have become associated with Mother's Day.
6. There is a tradition at Oxford University for students to wear carnations to their exams - a white one for the first exam, a pink one for the middle ones and a red one for their last exam. This comes from the ability of carnations to change colour in coloured water. Students were said to keep a white carnation in a red inkpot between exams and it would gradually change colour.
7. The botanical name is Dianthus caryophyllus which comes from the Greek for "heavenly flower". Some scholars believe that the name "carnation" comes from "coronation" or "corone" (flower garlands), as it was one of the flowers used in Greek ceremonial crowns. Others think it comes from the Latin for "flesh" because of the colour, or perhaps because of another legend which says that the goddess Diana came to earth and propositioned a shepherd boy she took a fancy to. He turned her down and in a fit of rage, Diana ripped his eyes out and threw them on the ground, where they sprouted into the first carnation flowers.
8. There are over 300 varieties of carnations and Colombia is the largest carnation producer in the world.
9. Carnation is the birth flower for those born in the month of January, the traditional first wedding anniversary flower and the national flower of Monaco, Spain and Slovenia as well as being the state flower for Ohio.
10. The flowers can be eaten in salads. They can also be drunk - Carnations are used as flavouring agents in the manufacture of Beer, Wine and other alcoholic beverages.

28 January: Colette

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, usually known simply as Colette, was born on this date in 1873. Some quotes from her:

1. Be happy. It's one way of being wise.
2. You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
3. Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.
4. The true traveller is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.
5. You do not notice changes in what is always before you.
6. Total absence of humour renders life impossible.
7. We only do well the things we like doing.
8. What a delight it is to make friends with someone you have despised!
9. There are no ordinary cats.
10. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.

27th January: Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll was born on this date in 1832, Here are some facts about him:

1. His real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. The name Lewis Carroll is a linguistic play on his real name. Lewis was the anglicised form of Ludovicus, which was the Latin for Lutwidge, and Carroll an Irish surname similar to the Latin name Carolus, from which comes the name Charles.
2. He could have been known as Edgar Cuthwellis, Edgar U. C. Westhill or Louis Carroll, but the editor of the magazine which published his first work under that name chose Lewis Carroll from the list of pen names Dodgson himself submitted.
3. He did write some books under his own name. He was a mathematician and wrote some scholarly books on the subject for which he used his real name. There is a tale which says that Queen Victoria read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and liked it so much that she demanded Carroll's next book be dedicated to her. She was duly presented with one of his mathematical works! However, there is no evidence this is true.
4. He was one of eleven children and as a youth wrote puppet plays and a family magazine to entertain his siblings. The magazine was called Mischmasch and is notable for containing the earliest version of the poem "Jabberwocky".
5. He was brought up in the High Anglican Church and was groomed from an early age to be ordained as a priest. He got as far as being ordained as a deacon but refused to seek ordination as a priest, even though the rules of his college demanded he should. For reasons unknown, the Dean of the college decided to waive the rules in his case and so he became the only senior student of his time not to be a priest.
6. He was an advocate of letter writing. Dodgson wrote and received as many as 98,721 letters in his lifetime and even published an essay about how to write better letters. He also invented "The Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case" for people to keep their Postage stamps in. He would sometimes write letters backwards, so the recipient would have to hold the letter to a mirror in order to read it.
7. He was a keen photographer and even considered it as a career. He photographed a range of subjects, although today's scholars tend to home in on the fact that he took pictures of young girls, sometimes naked young girls, leading to speculation that he was a paedophile. However, it's also true that naked children were a common symbol for innocence in Victorian times and taking pictures of them was common. People used pictures of naked children on their Christmas cards.
8. Carroll suffered from chronic migraines, epilepsy, stammering, partial deafness, and ADHD.
9. After his death, it was discovered that several volumes of his diaries were missing and pages had been removed from the remaining ones. There is much speculation about why this should be, including his family destroying them because they might have brought the family into disrepute, or Carroll himself suffering from depression and removing pages in which he'd written about events he wanted to forget.
10. He could write 20 words a minute, a page of 150 words in seven and a half minutes, and 12 pages in two and a half hours - but despite being a mathematician, he wasn't able to balance his bank account and often went overdrawn.

26th January: Pistachio Day

Today is Pistachio day. Here are some facts about pistacios that you may not know.

1. Pistachio nuts aren't really nuts, although everyone refers to them as such. Botanically, they are seeds.
2. The botanical name for the plant is Pistacia vera, and it is a member of the Cashew family.
3. People have been eating them for a long time. Archaeologists found the remains of these seeds, along with cracking tools, in Israel's Hula Valley, dated to 78,000 years ago.
4. The Queen of Sheba was a big fan, and demanded that the entire region’s pistachio harvest be set aside for her. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were said to have contained pistachio trees during the reign of King Merodach-Baladan about 700 BC.
5. The pistachio is one of only two nuts mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 43:11 if you want to look it up). The other nut mentioned is the almond. In Moslem legend, the pistachio nut was one of the foods brought to Earth by Adam.
6. Iran, the United States and Turkey are the major producers of pistachios. China and the United States are the biggest consumers.
7. In Iran, they are called “smiling nut” and in China, “happy nut”.
8. Sometimes the shells are dyed. Originally this was done to hide stains from hand-picking but since most harvesting is done by machines today, it's not necessary although some people expect it.
9. As the fruit ripens, the shell changes from Green to beige, and when it is ripe, the shell splits open with an audible pop. In the Middle East, where the trees originated, if you happen to be sitting by the tree when this happens and hear the pop, it means good luck.
10. They are good for you. They are a source of protein, fibre, B vitamins, calcium and vitamin E. They also contain potassium and studies have found they can help mitigate the effects of everyday stress.

25th January: W. Somerset Maugham

This date in 1874 saw the birth of writer W Somerset Maugham. Some words of wisdom from him!

1. It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
2. The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
3. Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
4. At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
5. Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
6. You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
7. An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
8. Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
9. The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
10. I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.

24th January: Romania

Romania's national day is today, so here are 10 things you didn't know about Romania.

1. The name Romania derives from the Latin romanus, meaning "citizen of Rome".
2. Its currency is the leu, which means "Lion", which is divided into 100 bani, which is also the Romanian word for money. The smallest banknotes ever printed were Romanian - 10 bani notes issued in 1917 which measured 1.08 x 1.49 in. The leu's days are numbered, however, as it's anticipated Romania will adopt the euro around 2020.
3. Famous Romanians include: Nicolae Paulescu, who discovered insulin; Eugen Pavel, inventor of Hyper CD-ROM; Petrache Poenaru, inventor of the fountain pen; Nadia Comăneci, who at 14 was the first gymnast to score a perfect ten in an Olympic event; Soprano Alma Gluck, the first lyrical artist to sell a million records; Francesco Illy, the founder of Illycaffè and inventor of the automatic steam espresso Coffee machine; and Johnny Weissmuller, the actor who first played Tarzan.
4. Arguably the most famous Romanian of them all doesn't actually exist. Transylvania, where Count Dracula comes from, is part of Romania. Dracula's Castle is there. The actual castle is Bran Castle, and while there is no evidence that Vlad the Impaler (the Romanian prince Dracula was based on) ever lived there, the castle has become a tourist attraction. Transylvania itself has become associated with mystery, the supernatural and horror. The Munsters and Rocky Horror Picture Show's Dr. Frank N. Furter also hail from Transylvania.
5. Another castle in Romania, Peles Castle, is known for being the first castle in Europe to be lit by Electricity. The first city in mainland Europe to have electric streetlamps is also in Romania - Timisoara, which installed them in 1884.
6. The Romanian language is more closely related to French, Italian and Spanish than it is to the Slavic languages of Eastern Europe. It is the only Romance language from the region.
7. Romania is home to the second largest building in the world (Palace of the Parliament in the capital, Bucharest, built by former Romanian dictator – Nicolae Ceausescu. The only building in the world which is bigger is the Pentagon); the largest rock sculpture in Europe (a 55m high depiction of Decebalus, the last king of Dacia, on the Danube river near Orsova which is only reachable by boat); the tallest wooden church in the world (in Sapanta Peri, it has a 23 foot tall cross weighing 1,000 lbs, on top of the 257 foot tall church); the largest organ in Europe (in the Black Church in Brosov, it has 4,000 pipes); and a waterfall, Bigar Cascade Falls in Caras-Severin, which has been voted the most beautiful in the world.
8. The highest mountain is Moldoveanu Peak (2,544 m or 8,346 ft).
9. Not counting Russia, 50% of Europe's brown Bears and 20% of its Wolves live in Romania.
10. The country is also home to the world's most cheerful cemetery. The Merry Cemetery (Cimitirul Vesel) is in Maramures county, near the Ukrainian border. The crosses are carved from Oak and painted in bright colours depicting scenes from the person's life and witty poems about their life and/or the way they died.

23rd January: Tupperware

On this date in 1942 Earl Tupper bought his first manufacturing plant to make Tupperware. 10 things you didn't know about Tupperware:

1. Earl Silas Tupper was an American born-Costa Rican businessman and former landscaper, whose company had gone out of business in the 1930s. He'd found work in a plastic factory. He became interested in plastic to the extent that he even bought some of the factory's moulding machines to play with at home.
2. After WWII, the company were keen to find peacetime uses for plastic - enter Earl Tupper, who came up with the idea for Tupperware and developed it. The first Tupperware product ever developed was a bathroom drinking glass.
3. This was closely followed by the Wonderbowl, an airtight container which expelled air from inside as it was sealed, making a burping sound. The idea for the burping lids came from the seal on a can of paint.
4. In the shops, the products weren't a huge success at first, because nobody understood the way the burping lids worked. A saleswoman named Brownie Wise came up with a novel idea to boost sales - the Tupperware Party. The first party was held in Detroit in 1949. They spread rapidly and Tupper was so pleased with the result that he made her vice president of marketing in 1951.
5. However, the relationship between Tupper and Wise later soured and he fired her in 1958. Officially, it was because he disagreed with her idea of holding bigger Tupperware parties and rallies called jubilees in which top sellers would be rewarded. This, he said, was too expensive. This was just an excuse, however. He wanted to sell the company and didn't think anyone would buy a company with a woman in a high position. Rexall, later Dart Industries, bought Tupperware in 1958.
6. The first Tupperware party in the UK was held by Mila Pond in Weybridge.
7. In the 1950s there was a strict dress code for Tupperware sellers. Ladies must wear skirts with stockings or tights and white gloves. Today, it's more relaxed. The flamboyant cross-dressing ‘Aunt Barbara’ is the top Tupperware seller in North America.
8. Tupperware isn't so popular in the UK these days - operations in the UK and Ireland were closed in 2003, because people didn't like the direct sales model. A proposed re-launch in 2011 was cancelled. However, it remains popular elsewhere. Tupperware is sold in around 100 countries and it's said a Tupperware party is held somewhere in the world every 1.4 seconds. Over 500,000 Tupperware parties are held each year in France alone.
9. The Guinness Book of World Records named Tupperware as one of the greatest inventions of the 20th Century.
10. Eleganzia, Wonderlier, MiniMax, Go Flex, Compactware, FridgeSmart, Stuffables and UltraPro are all names that Tupperware products have been sold under in order to appeal to a younger market.