25 August: 007 Day

The birthday of Sean Connery is 007 Day. Here are ten things you might not know about James Bond.

1. We all know his favourite alcoholic drink is Martini, “shaken, not stirred”, but what about other food and drink preferences? Despite being British, he doesn't like Tea and much prefers Coffee. Tea, he says, tastes like mud and was responsible for the downfall of the British Empire. His favourite meals when not on a mission are grilled sole, oeufs en cocotte and cold roast beef with Potato salad. On average, in the films, Bond has a drink every 10 minutes, 53 seconds.
2. He was the son of Andrew Bond, a Scottish man from Glencoe, and Monique Delacroix, from the Canton de Vaud, Switzerland. He was orphaned at the age of 11 when his parents died in a mountain climbing accident, after which he lived with his aunt, Miss Charmian Bond, in a village called Pett Bottom in England. It was thanks to his father's job as a Vickers armaments company representative that James is fluent in French and German, because the family lived abroad.
3. While Ian Fleming never told us what James Bond's date of birth was, other writers have given him a birthdate of 11 November, in either 1920 or 1921.
4. He went to Eton briefly, but was expelled for “trouble with a maid”. He then went to Fettes College in Scotland, his father's school. He went to university in Geneva and learned to Ski in Kitzbühel. He became a 00 agent at the age of 38.
5. In the films (From Dr. No to Quantum of Solace) Bond has killed 352 people (with Pierce Brosnan being the most murderous, killing 135 people during his tenure) and slept with 52 women (after losing his virginity at the age of 16, in Paris). About two thirds of the women he sleeps with try to kill him. He has been shot at over 5,000 times – so owes his life to the fact that bad guys are always rotten shots.
6. James Bond is a heavy smoker, smoking 70 cigarettes or 3 and a half packs a day. At least, he was. He's not been seen smoking in a film since he had a cigar in Die Another Day. Daniel Craig has never been seen smoking in a Bond film.
7. What does he look like, according to the novels? He has been described as looking like the composer, singer and actor Hoagy Carmichael. The more detailed description says he is of slim build, 183 centimetres (6 feet) in height and 76 kilograms (168 lb) in weight. He has blue-grey eyes and a “cruel mouth”, short, black hair, “a comma of which falls on his forehead”. He has a three-inch scar on his right cheek and a faint scar of a Russian letter, marking him as a spy, carved by a SMERSH agent, on the back of his hand.
8. According to Kingsley Amis, James Bond is good at a lot of things, but isn't the absolute best at everything. He may be the best shot in the Secret Service, but his instructor can still beat him. He may be an excellent driver, but Sir Hugo Drax is better and causes Bond to crash his car. Bond's skills include skiing, hand-to-hand combat, boxing, judo, underwater swimming and golf.
9. When off duty, Bond lives in a flat off the King's Road in Chelsea. He has a Scottish housekeeper called May.
10. He was named after a real life ornithologist and author called James Bond. Ian Fleming happened to have one of his books to hand when trying to come up with a name for his character. James Bond has an Asteroid named after him and also an island in Thailand, at least colloquially. It is about 40 metres (130 ft) from Khao Phing Kan and is 20-metres (66 ft) tall. The proper name is Ko Ta Pu, but since 1974, when they were featured in The Man with the Golden Gun, it has been popularly called James Bond Island.

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Over the Rainbow

'We're not in Trinity anymore,' says Leonard Marx, quoting a line from an old Innovian  movie. The moon is different; the planes flying overhead are different. Nobody has any idea where they are or if it's possible to get home. 

In this strange new world, people from the highly technical Innovia and the less advanced Classica must co-operate in order to survive. In addition, travel through the inter-dimensional wormhole has given some people unusual and unexpected powers.

Innovia mourns the loss of its superhero, Power Blaster, last seen carrying a nuclear bomb to the upper atmosphere away from the inhabited Bird Island. They don't believe he could possibly have survived.  Power Blaster has survived, but is close to death and stranded in the new dimension. He is nursed back to health by a Classican woman, Elena. She has no idea who he is, only that she is falling in love with the handsome stranger.  

Shanna sets out to discover what happened to Nathan Tate, who didn't return from his hiking holiday, not knowing her life is about to be turned inside out and upside down. 

Meanwhile, Desi Troyes, the man responsible for the catastrophe, is at large on the new world, plotting how he can transfer his plans for world domination to the planet he now finds himself on - Earth. 

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