7th April: No Housework Day

It's No Housework Day - so here are ten quotes about housework:

1. Cleaning anything involves making something else dirty. Laurence Peter
2. I hate housework. You make the beds, you do the dishes and six months later you have to do it all over again. Joan Rivers
3. A clean house is a sign of a wasted life.
4. Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day. Simone de Beauvoir
5. The way to avoid housework is to live outside. Sandra Blacksmith
6. A house unkempt cannot be so distressing as a life unlived. Rose Macaualay
7. A man would rather come home to an unmade bed and a happy woman than to a neatly made bed and an angry woman. Marlene Dietrich
8. There’s no real need to do housework. After four years it doesn’t get any worse.
9. Remember - dust is a protective coating for furniture!
10. If you don’t clean your house for two months, it doesn’t get any dirtier. Quentin Crisp

6th April: Fresh Tomato Day

Continuing a salad theme since today is Fresh Tomato Day. Ten facts you didn't know about tomatoes:

1. Tomatoes originated in South and Central America. The Aztecs used them in cooking. The first tomatoes were probably small and Yellow, rather than the red we know today. Hence the word for tomato in some languages, such as the Italian pomodoro, literally means "apple of gold".
2. The word "tomato" comes from the Spanish tomate, which in turn comes from the Nahuatl word tomatl, meaning "fat water" or "fat thing". The Aztecs eventually started producing larger, red tomatoes and they called them xitomatl, meaning "plump thing with navel".
3. The pronunciation of the word "tomato" his been a subject for debate. Is it "tomarto" or "tomayto"? As in Ira and George Gershwin's 1937 song Let's Call the Whole Thing Off. There's also a saying in English, "tomayto/tomarto" when offered two choices, meaning, "it's all the same to me."
4. Tomatoes belong to the nightshade family, which is why, when they were first introduced in Europe, people were suspicious of them, believing them to be poisonous. The Florentine aristocrat Giovanvettorio Soderini wrote that they "were to be sought only for their beauty" and were grown only in gardens or flower beds. The leaves do contain toxins and at least one person has died from drinking tomato leaf tea. The scientific species name for the family is lycopersicum, meaning "wolf peach", from German legends which said that deadly nightshade was used by Witches and sorcerers to transform themselves into Werewolves. Hence the tomato's similar, but much larger, fruit was called the "wolf peach" when it first arrived in Europe.
5. Most people know that a tomato is a botanically a fruit while used in cooking as a vegetable. Hence the saying, "Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad". What you may not know is that the confusion over whether a tomato is a fruit or vegetable started thanks to the US tax system. In March 1883, Congress passed a new tariff act that put a 10-percent import duty on any whole vegetables brought into the country. People didn't complain too much, until the produce-importing Nix family tried to bring a load of tomatoes from the West Indies into New York. They were charged the tax, despite pointing out to the tax collector that tomatoes were fruit. The Nixes sued him to recover their tariff duties.
6. There is no mention of tomatoes anywhere in either the Bible or in the complete works of Shakespeare.
7. There are actually around 7,500 tomato varieties grown. Cherry tomatoes are not the smallest, either. There is a variety called tomberries, which are about 5 mm in diameter. In contrast, beefsteak tomatoes are 10 cm (4 in) or more in diameter. Most cultivars produce red fruit, but you can also get tomatoes in yellow, Orange, Pink, purple, Green, Black, or white.
8. The town of Buñol, Spain, celebrates La Tomatina every year on the last Wednesday in August. It's basically a massive food fight. It started in 1945 during a parade when a bunch of young people's high jinks caused one participant to fall off a float. He was so angry that he started throwing tomatoes at them, and it soon escalated, thanks to a fruit and vegetable stall conveniently located nearby, and had to be controlled by the police. The following year, the young people brought tomatoes from home to recreate the event. They were again dispersed by the police. This continued annually until the police presumably gave up trying to stop it. By 2007, it had grown huge - 40,000 people gathered in Buñol and 115,000 kg (254,000 lb) of tomatoes were thrown. In 2013, in the name of health and safety (and making Money out of it), the town council made it a ticket only event. There are rules now, too. Only tomatoes can be thrown and they must be squashed before throwing; participants must make way for lorries, and after the signal for the end of the fight (two shots) has sounded, no more tomatoes must be thrown.
9. The heaviest tomato ever, weighing 3.51 kg (7 lb 12 oz), was grown by Gordon Graham of Edmond, Oklahoma in 1986. The largest tomato plant ever grown reached 19.8 m (65 ft) in length, grown in Mawdesley, Lancashire, UK, in 2000.
10. The first commercially available genetically modified food was a variety of tomato named the Flavr Savr, which was engineered to have a longer shelf life.

5th April: Lettuce

Lettuce was the vegetable celebrated today in the French Revolutionary calendar. Here are 10 fascinating facts about lettuce:

1. Lettuce is part of the Asteraceae family, meaning it is related to daisies and Sunflowers.
2. The first people to grow lettuce, in around 2680 BC, were the Egyptians, who grew it primarily for the seeds, which were used to produce oil, but somewhere along the way figured out the leaves were pretty tasty, too.
3. The name derives from as lactuca (lac meaning Milk in Latin), the name given to the plant by the Romans, because of the white stuff that seeps out of cut stems. That stuff is called latex today.
4. The latex contains mild narcotic substances, which have led to it being called "lettuce opium". The Anglo Saxons called lettuce "sleepwort". This is more pronounced in wild lettuces. This could be the reason folk medicine used lettuce as a cure for tension, nervousness, pain, rheumatism, coughs and insanity, even though modern science has found no proof that it works. It has also been touted by early American settlers, as a cure for smallpox and typhoid.
5. China is the top world producer of lettuce, but the Chinese eat most of it themselves, so Spain is the biggest exporter.
6. Lettuce is an excellent source of vitamin K, vitamin A, folate and Iron.
7. Lettuce is usually eaten raw, in a salad (a tradition started by the Romans), although it can be cooked. (According to Wikipedia, it is a major ingredient of... wait for it ... lettuce soup. I'd never have guessed that, Wikipedia, so thanks!!) A more surprising use is that lettuce leaves are used in the production of tobacco-free cigarettes.
8. Lettuce is usually harvested 65–130 days from planting, before they flower, as once they've flowered, the leaves turn bitter. If they were allowed to flower they develop flower stalks up to 3 feet (0.9 m) high with small Yellow blossoms. Varieties grown for their seeds flower quicker than the leafy types.
9. The Egyptians and the Romans believe lettuce to be an aphrodisiac. The Egyptians believed lettuce helped their reproduction god, Min, "perform the sexual act untiringly" and so it was sacred to him.
10. The ancient Greeks and 19th century women disagreed. The Greeks thought it made men impotent and Victorian women believed it caused infertility and sterility.

4th April: World Rat Day

It's World Rat Day, so here are 10 things you may not know about the creatures:

1. When most people think about rats, what comes to mind are the two common species, the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus (Norway rat). There are actually 64 different species, including the Gambian Pouched Rat, which can grow up to 15lbs in weight. They have proved useful to humans. Not only can they be eaten as bushmeat, but they can be trained to detect landmines, while still being too small to set them off. They can also help diagnose TB by sniffing it out.
2. Male rats are called bucks, unmated females are called does, pregnant or parent females are called dams, and infants are called kittens or pups. A group of rats is referred to as a mischief. The fear of rats is muriphobia - rats are lumped together with Mice for the purpose of naming phobias.
3. Rats are said to have originated in Asia, but have spread throughout the world due to their adaptability. The only continent where there are no rats is Antarctica, because it is too cold, and there aren't many people. Another place to emigrate to if you don't like rats is Alberta, Canada - thanks to it being a long way from the sea, pretty cold, and a mass eradication programme, there are no rats in the human towns and cities. This amounts to an area bigger than most European countries with no Brown or Black rats.
4. Some people love rats and keep them as pets. Even Queen Victoria had pet rats, thanks to her rat catcher, Jack Black, who, whenever he found a different coloured rat, would catch it and domesticate it. His pet rats were very popular. Victoria kept them, and so did Beatrix Potter.
5. Rats are pretty badass. A rat can fall 50 feet or five stories without injuring itself. It can swim for half a mile across open Water, and survive being flushed down the Toilet. It might even swim back up again. It can go longer without water than a Camel. It can survive large doses of radiation and build up immunities to some poisons. It is capable of chewing through cement, brick, wood and Lead pipes (in fact, they have to gnaw on things, because their front teeth grow 4½ to 5½ inches each year, and need to be worn down).
6. Rats are sociable, intelligent and clean, which is why they make popular pets. They spend several hours per day grooming and eat their own poo - for nutritional reasons - so no need for a litter tray.
7. They don't squeak often, usually only when in distress. Most of their vocalisations are too high pitched for humans to hear. When rats are happy or playing, they let out a cheerful sound, a bit like Laughter.
8. Rats are worshipped in some parts of India. There is a Hindu goddess, Karni Mata, who is said to have reincarnated as a rat. Her temple in Deshnoke, India,is therefore a safe haven for rats, and over 20,000 of them live there. People travel for miles to pay respect to the rats (and presumably feed them).
9. Rats don't sweat. They regulate their temperature by constricting or expanding the blood vessels in their tails.
10. The rat is the first animal in the Chinese Zodiac. People born in the year of the rat are said to be creative, quick-witted, resourceful, intelligent, honest and generous. As a rat myself, I'd say that was true!

3rd April: Bar Code Day

It's Bar Code Day. So here are ten things you may not know about barcodes:

1. The first barcodes were used to label railway cars.
2. The first barcode for groceries was invented by Bernard Silver and Norman Joseph Woodland, who'd been asked by the food chain, Food Fair, to find out if there was a way to read product information at the checkout.
3. The first item ever to be scanned was a pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum, in Ohio, in 1974. The gum is now in the Smithsonian museum.
4. In the UK, the first product to have a barcode was Melrose 100 Century teabags in 1978.
5. In China, all barcodes start with a figure eight, because it is pronounced the same way as the word for "prosperity" and is considered to be a lucky number.
6. Talking of numbers, conspiracy theorists have suggested that the Guard bars, the bit containing patterns at the beginning, middle, and end of a barcode, look like the coding for the number 6 and are therefore code for the number of the beast, 666. The developer of the UPC code, George J. Laurer made a statement to reassure people that there was nothing sinister about it, it was a coincidence, like the fact that all three of his names had six letters.
7. By entering personal information at http://www.barcodeart.com/artwork/netart/yourself/index.html you can get your own personal barcode which you can download, print, and scan to find out how much you are worth!
8. Five billion barcodes are scanned worldwide every day.
9. The first barcode scanners were the size of a Washing machine because they contained components that had to be water-cooled.
10. The world's smallest barcode has lines one thousandth of an inch wide. Why so small? Because they were attached to bees to monitor their mating habits.

2nd April: Malvinas Day (Falkland Islands)

More islands today, as it is Malvinas Day, a holiday in the Falkland Islands. So here are ten things you might not know about the Falkland Islands:

1. The official name for these islands depends which language you speak. In every language apart from Spanish, it's Falkland Islands (Malvinas). In Spanish, it's Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands). So ruled the United Nations. The Spanish name was actually given to the islands by the French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville in 1764. It derives from St. Malo, the port from which his expedition set out. The English name comes from Falkland Sound, the strait separating the archipelago's two main islands, which was coined by John Strong, captain of an English expedition which landed on the islands in 1690. He named it for Anthony Cary, 5th Viscount of Falkland, who'd sponsored his trip. The Viscount's title originates from the town of Falkland, Scotland, and means "land held by folk-right".
2. There are two main islands, East Falkland and West Falkland, and 776 smaller islands. Its area is 4,700 square miles (12,000 square kilometres) and the population was 2,932 inhabitants in 2012. Most of the people are descended from Scottish and Welsh immigrants who settled the territory in 1833.
3. Over 2,000 of those people live in the capital, and only town, Stanley. Stanley was founded in 1843 and is situated on East Falkland.
4. For a time in the 20th century, the population declined as many young people went abroad to find work. A significant number went to England, in particular, Southampton, which was therefore nicknamed "Stanley North".
5. The islands have two weekly newspapers: Teaberry Express and The Penguin News.
6. There are no chain stores on the islands, and no cash machines. There is one bank and seven pubs, which only sell Beer in bottles (no pints).
7. There are 500,000 sheep on the islands, with most of the land used as pasture for them. There is a ram on the island's coat of arms representing the sheep farming industry. Seismic surveys suggest there are substantial oil reserves in the seabed surrounding the Falkland Islands, so the future of the islands' economy may well lie in oil.
8. Falkland Islanders are British citizens, since the islands are a British territory. Hence their currency is the Falkland Islands pound, which is pegged to the British pound sterling. Argentina also lays claim to them and famously invaded them in 1982 - but Britain won them back.
9. The archipelago's highest point is Mount Usborne, at 2,313 feet (705 m). East Falkland.
10. Five different types of Penguin breed on the islands.

1st April: Home Rule for the Faroe Islands

The Faroe Islands were Home Rule on this date in 1948. Here are ten things you might not know about these islands:

1. The Faroe Islands are an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located halfway between Norway and Iceland, and 320 kilometres (200 mi) north-northwest of Great Britain. The country consists of 18 major islands.
2. The area of the islands is approximately 1,400 km2 (540 sq mi) and you are never more than 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the ocean. In 2015 the population was 48,700.
3. The name derives from Danish and means "Island of Sheep".
4. Connecting the islands Streymoy and Eysturoy is the Streymin bridge, which has the distinction of being the only bridge anywhere over the Atlantic Ocean.
5. The island has no prison (crime is low, but if a prison sentence is needed the convict is shipped to Denmark), no McDonalds (although there is a Burger King).
6. There are only three Traffic Lights. These are situated very close to one another in the capital, Tórshavn (which is also where the Burger King is).
7. There are few trees growing on the islands - few trees survive because of the North Atlantic winds. However, a few trees imported from Alaska and Tierra del Fuego do thrive there.
8. National costume is a big tradition there. Children get a set of traditional clothes handed down to them, and in their teens will start to collect their own adult outfit. Traditionally, they will have collected these clothes to wear at their wedding. Each item of clothing is hand made - even the cloth will have been woven by hand, and intricately embroidered with depictions of native plants and flowers. After this, a row of Faroese solid silver buttons are sewn on. Hence collecting one's national costume takes a lot of time and money.
9. The highest point is Slættaratindur, 882 metres (2,894 ft) above sea level.
10. One town, Gásadalur on the island of Vágar, was even more isolated then the rest of the country because it was separated by mountains. The postman had to walk over the mountains every day to deliver the mail. In 2006, a tunnel was opened through the mountains, which to begin with, only residents of Gásadalur could use. The tunnel was locked and each resident would have a key.

31st March: Franz Josef Haydn

The composer Franz Josef Haydn was born on this date in 1732. Here are ten facts you may not know about him:

1. Franz Josef Haydn is nicknamed "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet".
2. Neither of his parents could read Music, but they were a musical family and soon recognised that their son had a gift. They sent him away at the age of six to Johann Matthias Frankh, the schoolmaster and choirmaster in Hainburg so that he'd get proper musical training. He wasn't well cared for there - he was often hungry and had shabby clothes. However, it was during his time here that Georg von Reutter, the director of music in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, was looking for new choirboys, and happened to hear him sing.
3. He sang in the choir for some years but was eventually thrown out when his voice changed and his inability to sing the high notes drew complaints from high places - Empress Maria Theresa complained about his singing, calling it "crowing". Around this time, he cut off another chorister's pigtail as a joke, which was the final straw. He was caned and dismissed. It could have been worse - it had been suggested by the choirmaster that Haydn should have a certain operation to stop his voice from changing, but his father intervened and the composer remained intact.
4. He married Maria Anna Theresia Keller the sister of Therese, with whom Haydn had previously been in love. It wasn't a happy marriage, and since divorce wasn't an option for them, they both took lovers.
5. Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. This isolated him from the current musical trends of the time, and as he put it himself, he was "forced to become original".
6. Haydn's solution for composer's block, as a devout Catholic, was to say the Rosary. He began the manuscript of each composition with "in nomine Domini" ("in the name of the Lord") and ended it with "Laus Deo" ("praise be to God").
7. Later in his career, he travelled to London, where he was so inspired by the British National Anthem that he decided to write a piece of patriotic music himself, for Austria. The tune he wrote is now Germany's national anthem.
8. Haydn's Symphony no. 96 was nicknamed the 'Miracle' Symphony because a huge chandelier fell from the ceiling during the première, yet nobody was injured.
9. Napoleon Bonaparte was a fan of his music, to the extent that when he invaded Vienna in 1809, he placed a guard at the home of the old and frail composer so he would not come to any harm. Haydn died soon afterwards, anyway, from natural causes.
10. After he died, graverobbers stole his head. Their motive? An interest in phrenology, the idea that people's personalities and talents can be ascertained by studying the bumps in their Skull. The thieves wanted to see if Haydn's skull had a "bump of music" (their conclusion was that it did). One of the perpetrators, Johann Nepomuk Peter, kept Haydn's skull for some years after that. He kept it in a custom-made black wooden box, with a golden lyre on top, glass windows, and a white cushion. In 1820, Haydn's old patron Prince Nikolaus Esterházy II remembered that he had intended to have Haydn's remains transferred to the family seat in Eisenstadt. The Prince was enraged to discover the skull missing. He had a good idea who might be responsible and he sent his soldiers round to Peter's house to retrieve it. Peter and his wife hid the skull in a mattress, and Mrs. Peter lay on it, claiming to have her period, so the soldiers wouldn't touch it during their search and went home empty-handed. The Prince was later given a different skull and told it was Haydn's, and the other skull was laid to rest with the rest of Haydn's remains. Eventually, Haydn's real skull was reunited with the rest of his body, but the substitute skull was also left in the grave - so Haydn's tomb contains two heads.

30th March: The Shard

On this date in 2012 The spire of the Shard London Bridge was put in place. So here are 10 facts about the Shard.

1. English Heritage unwittingly named the building (which was to be called London Bridge Tower) when they criticised the design, saying the building would be "a shard of glass through the heart of historic London".
2. It was designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. He was inspired by the London spires in paintings by the 18th-century Venetian artist Canaletto, and the masts of sailing ships. He designed it to look like a spire emerging from the river Thames.
3. The Shard is 309.6 metres (1,016 ft) high with 96 floors, the tallest building in London and in the European Union. At time of writing it is the 87th tallest building in the world.
4. Only 72 of the floors are habitable. Floors 73-95 are the spire. The 72nd floor is a viewing gallery, The View from The Shard, which, according to its website, is almost twice the height of any other viewing platform in the capital, and offers visitors unparalleled 360-degree views for up to 40 miles. It doesn't come cheap, though. An adult ticket is £25.95. There is, however, a bad weather guarantee - so if you book and it turns out to be a foggy day, you can return again for free.
5. In the rest of the building there are apartments, a hotel, restaurants, a healthcare clinic and offices. Companies with offices there include Gallup, Al Jazeera, Warwick Business School and IO Oil and Gas. The most recent addition is digital marketing agency Jellyfish who will be moving into the Shard in May 2016, occupying the 22nd floor.
6. The spire was put in place by a specially constructed crane, which was the tallest crane ever built in Britain. Before it was put in place in London, there was a test run in Yorkshire.
7. It almost wasn't built at all. In late 2007, uncertainty in the global financial markets sparked concerns about the viability of the Shard. However, a consortium of Qatari investors came to the rescue and put in £150 million to secure an 80% stake in the project. Today the State of Qatar owns 95% of The Shard with Sellar Property owning the remaining 5%.
8. The Shard has 11,000 panes of glass, with a total surface area of 56,000 square metres (600,000 sq ft). The panes are angled so that they reflect sunlight and the sky, so its appearance changes with the weather.
9. Its postal address is 32 London Bridge St, London SE1 9SG.
10. Like most tall buildings, The Shard has had its fair share of illegal climbers, base jumpers and trespassers. A group called the Place Hackers got in in December 2011 and took pictures of the view, which they posted on the internet. Base jumper Dan Witchalls is said to have jumped off The Shard four times. He filmed one of his jumps with a helmet-mounted camera. The highest jump was said to have been from a height of 850 feet (260 m). A legitimate event was on 3 September 2012 when a team of 40 people, including Prince Andrew, Duke of York, abseiled from the tower's 87th floor to to raise money for the Outward Bound Trust and the Royal Marines Charitable Trust Fund.

29th March: Vesta

Vesta, minor-planet designation 4 Vesta, was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers on 29 March 1807.

1. Vesta was the fourth Asteroid to be discovered, hence the number 4 in its formal designation.
2. Vesta is the second largest body in the asteroid belt after the dwarf planet Ceres. It has a mean diameter of 525 kilometres (326 mi). Its surface area is about about 800,000 square kilometers, which is about the size of Pakistan.
3. It's also the brightest asteroid visible from Earth. It is sometimes visible to the naked eye, but only in very dark skies without light pollution.
4. Vesta was the first asteroid to have its mass determined.
5. Vesta takes 3.6 years to orbit the Sun.
6. It is named after Vesta, the virgin goddess of home and hearth from Roman mythology. It is known as Vesta in most places, except for Greece and China, who have named it after their own goddess of hearth and home - Hestia in Greece and zàoshénxīng in China.
7. Scientists have estimated that temperatures on Vesta's surface range between about −20 °C when the Sun is overhead, to about −190 °C at the winter pole.
8. The surface was photographed by the Dawn spacecraft in 1912 (now on its way to visit another asteroid, Ceres). Surface features discovered include two enormous craters dubbed Rheasilvia and Veneneia which are 500-kilometre (310 mi) and 400 kilometres (250 mi) wide respectively. There is also a group of smaller craters officially called Marcia, Calpurnia, and Minucia, but informally known as The "snowman craters" because their configuration resembles a snowman.
9. Some smaller asteroids are suspected to be fragments of Vesta which broke off during impacts.
10. In astrology, Vesta represents focus, dedication, mental clarity and self-respect, and rules the metabolism and the upper intestine; also locks and keys, sisters, security, investments, insurance, inheritance, home and family, ritual, chastity and sexuality, and devotion.

28th March: Maxim Gorky

Today, 10 quotes by Maxim Gorky, who was born on this date in 1868.

1. Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.
2. When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery.
3. When everything is easy one quickly gets stupid.
4. You can't do without philosophy, since everything has its hidden meaning which we must know.
5. Many contemporary authors drink more than they write.
6. Everybody, my friend, everybody lives for something better to come. That's why we want to be considerate of every man - Who knows what's in him, why he was born and what he can do?
7. In the carriages of the past you can't go anywhere.
8. Keep reading books, but remember that a book’s only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself.
9. Writers build castles in the air, the reader lives inside, and the publisher inns the rent.
10. For sadness and gladness live within us side by side, almost inseparable; the one succeeding the other with an elusive, inappreciable swiftness.

27th March: Fly a Kite Day

Today is Fly A Kite Day. So here are ten facts about kites:

1. The first kites were flown in China in the 5th-century BC. Chinese philosophers Mozi (also Mo Di) and Lu Ban (also Gongshu Ban) were said to have invented them. These first kites were made from silk with Bamboo frames.
2. Marco Polo arrived back from his travels towards the end of the 13th century with tales of kites. Actual kites were brought back to Europe by sailors from Japan and Malaysia in the 16th and 17th centuries.
3. Kites have had numerous uses throughout the centuries, including measuring distances, fishing, testing the wind, lifting men, signalling, and communication.
4. Kites fly because air flows over the surface producing low pressure above and high pressure below. This same principle, known as "lift" is the reason aeroplanes can fly. In fact, the Wright Brothers used to experiment with kites prior to building their flying machine.
5. The principle of lift applies in liquids as well as in air - so there are such things as underwater kites. They are being developed to harvest renewable power from the flow of water.
6. In 1750 Benjamin Franklin published a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning was caused by electricity by flying a kite in a storm. Although he is famous for this experiment, it's not known whether he ever actually tried it. Scientists did make use of kites in the 19th century though, for such purposes as meteorology, aeronautics, wireless communications and photography.
7. In Asian countries, kite flying is often kite fighting, where the purpose it to cut other kites down. Participants may pass their kite strings through ground glass and glue to make the strings abrasive. Kite fighting in Kabul is most famously depicted in Khaled Hosseini's novel, The Kite Runner. Kite flying was one of the many recreations banned by those miserable killjoys, the Taliban.
8. In some countries, wind pipes and flutes are attached to kites so they play a tune when flown.
9. The World record for the highest kite was set on September 23, 2014. A team of four flew a 120 square feet (11 m2) kite to 16,009 feet (4,880 m) above ground level. The biggest-ever kite flown for at least 20 minutes was a kite with lifting area of 10,971 square feet (1,019 m2).
10. Weifang, Shandong, China is the kite capital of the world. The largest kite museum in the world is there. The museum has thousands of kites in a display area of 87,188 square feet (8,100 m2). Weifang also hosts an annual international kite festival on large salt flats south of the city.

26th March: Solitude Day

Solitude Day. Neo-Pagans spend all or part of the day alone, meditating in solitude to reconnect with their "inner selves. They might take a quiet walk through the woods, or along a remote river or beach and listen to Nature's music. So today, ten quotes on the subject of solitude.

1. Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god. Francis Bacon
2. Solitude sometimes is best society. John Milton
3. A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free. Arthur Schopenhauer
4. Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone. Paul Tillich
5. There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall. Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
6. The thoughtful soul to solitude retires. Omar Khayyam
7. Who hears music feels his solitude peopled at once. Robert Browning
8. When you have a lot of solitude, any living thing becomes a companion. Jose Mujica
9. Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones. Sydney Smith
10. It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it. Rainer Maria Rilke

25th March: Titan, Saturn's moon

On this date in 1655 Dutch physicist and astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan, a moon of Saturn. Here are 10 facts about Titan:

1. Huygens, inspired by Galileo's discovery of four of Jupiter's moons, started building telescopes with his brother's help, and, using one of his own Telescopes, was the first to observe a moon orbiting Saturn. He named it simply Saturni Luna (Latin for "Saturn's moon"). As more moons were discovered around Saturn, astronomers began to number them. Titan has been known as Saturn II, Saturn IV and Saturn VI, the latter being its final and official number when the number system was frozen to prevent confusion. John Herschel later suggested the names of the mythological Titans (the brothers and sisters of Cronus, the Greek Saturn) as suitable names for Saturn's largest moons.
2. It is the second-largest moon in the Solar System, after Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Titan is larger than the smallest planet, Mercury. It is 50% bigger than Earth's Moon.
3. It is the only moon to have a dense atmosphere (as far as we know, anyway). Titan's atmosphere is 98.4% nitrogen, 1.4% methane and 0.1–0.2% hydrogen.
4. It used to be thought that Titan was bigger than Ganymede because of Titan's thick, opaque atmosphere. It was only when Voyager I passed close by it in 1980 that we realised this.
5. It is also the only moon where liquid has been observed on its surface. There is only one other object in the Solar system which has liquid on its surface - planet Earth. The liquid on Titan is thought to be liquid methane, and it has weather patterns and surface features similar to those we find on earth, only caused by liquid methane, not Water.
6. The temperature on Titan is about 94 K (−179.2 °C), so it's effing cold up there. Titan only gets 1% as much sunlight as Earth does. It would be even colder if it wasn't for the methane in the atmosphere creating a greenhouse effect.
7. Titan orbits Saturn once every 15 days and 22 hours. Like our own moon, it rotates at the same rate as it orbits, which means if Saturn had inhabitants, they would always see the same side of Titan. Titan has seasons, too - long ones as its year lasts 30 Earth years.
8. In 2004, a spacecraft named Cassini–Huygens (after the discoverers of the various moons) reached the Saturn system and began mapping Titan by radar. The Cassini probe flew by Titan on October 26, 2004, and took the highest-resolution images ever of Titan's surface. On January 14, 2005 Huygens landed on Titan, making Titan the most distant body from Earth to have a space probe land on it.
9. Therefore, scientists have been able to observe, and name, some of the surface features of Titan. These include Xanadu, a large, reflective equatorial area about the size of Australia, which is filled with hills, valleys and chasms. There are also lakes of liquid methane, one of which has a feature called the “magic island,” spotted in images from the Cassini spacecraft taken in 2013 and 2014. It measures about 260 square kilometers (100 square miles) in size – roughly the size of Washington DC. What makes it fascinating is that it was not present in the images taken in 2007 or in later ones taken in 2015. This suggests that Titan’s liquid hydrocarbon seas are active. The predominant theory as to what caused the "magic island" to appear is waves moving slowly on the surface. This theory is supported by the fact that the moon’s Northern Hemisphere, where the sea is located, is entering its summer, and winds are expected to pick up at this time, causing waves.
10. Could there be life on Titan? Dr. Robert Zubrin has pointed out that Titan possesses an abundance of all the elements necessary to support life, and that it might be the most hospitable place in the Solar System for humans to colonise. There may, he says, be liquid water under the surface which could be used to make breathable air, and Nitrogen, methane and ammonia can all be used to produce fertilizer for growing food. The problems would be living in low gravity, and the extreme cold.

24th March: Joseph Priestley

This date in 1733 saw the birth of Joseph Priestley, English clergyman and scientist who discovered Oxygen, sulphur dioxide, silicon fluoride and ammonia. Here are ten facts about him you may not be aware of:

1. He never took a formal science course in his entire life. He was primarily a clergyman (classic case of nominative determinism here - a clergyman called Priestley!) with an interest in science.
2. At the age of four he could recite all 107 questions and answers of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, leading his aunt, with whom he lived, to pursue the best education for him with a view to him entering the ministry.
3. When he was about 17, he became seriously ill and thought he was going to die. The illness shook up his religious beliefs and left him with a stutter, which delayed his entry to the ministry for a while.
4. His first position as a minister was in Needham Market, Suffolk. It didn't work out well. He missed urban life and theological debate. His congregation were traditional in their beliefs and many stopped attending his church when they found out how progressive he was. He moved to Cheshire which turned out to be a much more suitable placement.
5. His interest in science was nurtured by his friendship with Benjamin Franklin (the one who flew Kites in thunderstorms). Priestley began reproducing some of Franklin's experiments which led to his discovery that graphite conducts Electricity. Priestley went on to write a book about electricity - The History of Electricity, which was well received by the scientific community.
6. When he moved to a position as a pastor in Leeds, he lived next door to a brewery and became intrigued by the gas (which he called "air") which was given off by the fermenting grain, would float to the ground and extinguish smouldering wood chips. This was carbon dioxide. He was so interested in it that he found a way to make it at home. One of the things he tried doing with it was dissolving it in Water. He found it made the water taste tangy. He'd just invented soda water. This got him elected to the French Academy of Sciences.
7. Priestley was considered for the position of astronomer on James Cook's second voyage to the South Seas, but wasn't chosen. However, he told the crew how to make soda water, which he believed might be a cure for scurvy.
8. He found a way to collect gases by floating them on Mercury and heating them. One of the gases he found in this way was oxygen, which interested him because, unlike the other gases he'd found, he could burn candles in it and Mice put in the chamber didn't die. He was also the first to observe photosynthesis in plants.
9. Priestley was also the person who first discovered that India gum could be used to rub out lead Pencil marks. He invented the eraser, or rubber.
10. Priestley persisted in some antiquated beliefs about science, however. Even though he discovered oxygen, he rejected the idea that it was oxygen that made things burn. He believed in a theory called phlogiston theory, that there was an element present in combustible materials that was released as they burned. He refused to accept the new theories scientists were coming up with, which we accept as correct today. The 19th-century French naturalist George Cuvier said of him that he was "the father of modern chemistry [who] never acknowledged his daughter". 

23rd March: Asparagus

The French Revolutionary Calendar celebrated asparagus today, so here are ten facts about asparagus you may not know:

1. The earliest depiction of asparagus was on an Egyptian frieze dating back to 3,000 BC. It’s said Queen Nefertiti proclaimed it to be the food of the Gods. By 160BC people like Cato The Elder, a Roman statesman, were writing about how to grow it. The Romans loved asparagus. Caesar Augustus would send out special “asparagus fleets” to collect the very best plants, and have his fastest runners take them to the Alps to be frozen. France’s King Louis XIV dubbed asparagus the “king of vegetables” and was first to have them cultivated in greenhouses. Nicholas Culpeper, a 17th century English botanist, herbalist, physician and astrologer wrote in The English Phystian that asparagus “stirreth up bodily lust in Man or Woman”, in other words, it's an aphrodisiac.
2. The Romans had a saying, “Velocius quam asparagi conquantur!” or “Faster than cooking asparagus,” which meant "hurry up!"
3. The word asparagus originates from the Persian word for "sprout" or "shoot". It is sometimes called "sparrow grass".
4. The country which produces the most asparagus is China, followed by Peru and Germany.
5. Asparagus contains no fat or cholesterol. It is high in asparagine (an amino acid which acts as a diuretic) and helpful for removing salts from the body which is good for people with oedema, high blood pressure, or other heart-related issues. Asparagus is one of the best vegetable sources for riboflavin (Vitamin B2) which studies have shown can help reduce the frequency of migraine headaches. It is believed that the vegetable helps certain enzymes break down alcohol so it can also be a hangover cure. The aphrodisiac label probably comes from the amount of Vitamin E in it.
6. OK, so we can't do asparagus without mentioning smelly urine. Certain compounds in asparagus are metabolised to ammonia and various sulfur-containing products, including thiols and thioesters, which give urine the characteristic smell. What you may not know is that only about 25% of people can smell this - those with a specific gene.
7. Most asparagus is Green, although there is a purple variety. White asparagus is basically green asparagus which has been deprived of sunlight. If white asparagus isn't put in a sealed box as soon as it is picked, it will turn Pink, and there is no market for pink asparagus.
8. Most of the asparagus on your plate is a male clone. This is because the female plants expend too much energy producing red berries.
9. Once planted, it takes three years for an asparagus plant to produce a harvest, but they can be harvested for around 15 years after that. The plants are fast growing, too - when it's hot, asparagus plants can grow up to 7 inches a day.
10. There is a museum dedicated to asparagus. The European Asparagus Museum (Europäisches Spargelmuseum in German), is in Schrobenhausen, Bavaria, Germany and contains everything about asparagus - its history, botany, cultivation, art and curiosities.

22 March: First metered London taxis

On this date in 1907 the first cabs with taxi meters began operating in London. Some things you may not know about London taxis.

1. While the majority of them are Black, it isn't a legal requirement. Black is popular because it makes them recognisable. They come in a variety of colours and company liveries, including "Newspaper" ones. 50 golden cabs were produced for the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2002.
2. You may know that the test London taxi drivers have to pass to get their licence is called "The Knowledge". You may not know that it involves memorising 25,000 streets and 20,000 landmarks; that there are two levels - Green, which covers central London and Yellow, which covers smaller suburban areas; that there is an 80% failure rate; and that neurologists have found that London taxi drivers have larger hippocampuses (the part of the Brain responsible for spacial navigation) than regular people.
3. Only around 2% of London's black cab drivers are women.
4. There are approximately 21,000 black cabs in London. 200,000 cab journeys are made in the city every day, 3.2 miles in length on average; at an average speed 9mph. The average fare is £11.79. On average a cab driver will make 5226 journeys a year.
5. Oliver Cromwell set up the Fellowship of Master Hackney Carriages by Act of Parliament in 1654. Motorised taxis didn't appear until the early 20th century.
6. The vehicles used as black cabs are called TX4s. This is the iconic London black cab and they are built by The London Taxi Company. These are gradually being replaced by TX1s, introduced in 1997, a more modern vehicle which allegedly has a button the passenger can press to mute the driver if he talks too much!
7. The Governor's official car In the Falkland Islands was a London taxi between 1976 and 2010.
8. The ward “taxi” comes from taximeter, the counter used to calculate the fare. “Cab” was short for “cabriolet”, a French word for “to leap”, because that is what one did in order to get off.
9. It's da law! It is a legal requirement for a London taxi to have a turning circle of 25 feet. This is so they can negotiate the small roundabout in front of the Savoy Hotel. There are some wacky laws which may have been repealed now, but which persisted for a long time, such as, taxicabs had to be tall enough for a passenger to sit comfortably while wearing a Bowler hat, and were legally required (even when motorised) to carry a bale of hay for the Horse. Some say it is legal to urinate on a London taxi’s left rear wheel provided that the driver’s right hand is touching the cab. They support this by quoting the Town Police Clauses Act of 1847, but the Law Commission tends to disagree. Hailing a cab is fraught with legalities, too. It's technically against the law to hail one by yelling "taxi!" In reality, it's likely they simply wouldn't hear you. The correct way is to signal by holding out your arm. Finally, you could get in trouble with the law if you happen to have bubonic plague and try to hail a cab as this was illegal. The Public Health (Control of Disease) Act of 1984 still requires anyone suffering from a notifiable disease to inform the cab driver, who can then decide whether or not to take the fare. If he does, he is required to notify the authorities and disinfect the cab before taking another fare.
10. There are a handful of black cabs which would never stop for you - the ones owned by celebrities. Celebs who own black cabs for their personal use include Stephen Fry, Kate Moss, Yvette Fielding, Bez of the Happy Mondays, Noel Edmonds and Prince Philip.