30 November: Mark Twain

This date in 1835 saw the birth of Mark Twain, US writer. Here are 10 things you might not know about him.

1. His premature birth and his death both coincided with appearances of Halley's Comet. He predicted his own death, commenting the year before the comet's appearance that he had been born to it and would leave with it.
2. Because he was born prematurely, his mother didn't think he would survive childhood. He was a weak child until he was seven. Even after that things didn't look good - he loved to play in water even though he didn’t know how to swim, and consequently nearly drowned nine times before he reached the age of 13.
3. His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. The pen name Mark Twain comes from a nautical term meaning 'two fathoms deep'. Mark Twain wasn't the only pen name he used – he also wrote under Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab, Sergeant Fathom, and Rambler.
4. He is most famous for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but neither of those was his best seller during his lifetime. That was Innocents Abroad, Twain’s first book. Not all his writing was wholesome stuff suitable for children. He once wrote a pornographic story set in Elizabethan times. It was written as an excerpt from a diary written by Queen Elizabeth I’s cup-bearer.
5. He was also an inventor and there are three inventions patented by him. One was a self-pasting scrapbook, a kind of forerunner of post it notes; another was a memory game to help people remember history, which didn't do well, and an improved design for trouser braces, which would evolve into the modern Bra-strap.
6. He was a supporter of civil rights and against vivisection. He was also a keen investor in new technology. The latter didn't always go well. He invested in the Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter designed to replace human typesetters with a mechanical arm. The machine failed because it was complex and broke down a lot. It cost Twain around $300,000 ($8,200,000 in today's money). This, and the failure of his publishing house, Charles L. Webster and Company, bankrupted him. He embarked on a lecture tour in order to recover financially, and even though he wasn't legally required to, paid back all his creditors in full.
7. His lecture tours were akin to today's performances by stand-up comedians, which may have been why he was able to claw himself back from bankruptcy by embarking on them. His lectures were on subjects like ‘The First Watermelon I Ever Stole’. He wasn't afraid to talk about controversial topics, either. Another of his lectures was called ‘Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism’, which was basically about masturbation.
8. He was a good friend of the scientist, Nikola Tesla. Twain allowed Tesla to pass an electric current through him. This caused Twain to sh*t himself, but far from being annoyed, Twain believed the Electricity had cured him of chronic constipation.
9. Twain is said to have been the first novelist to write a book on a Typewriter.
10. As well as predicting his own death, Twain had a predictive dream about the demise of his brother, Henry. In the dream, Henry lay in a metal coffin with a bouquet of white flowers on his chest, with a red rose in the middle. After Henry died in a boiler explosion on the boat he was working on, Twain went to view the body and it was exactly as it had been in the dream. Twain was stricken with guilt, believing he was responsible for his brother's death in some way.

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29 November: Louisa May Alcott

Here are some things you might not know about Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women, and was born on this date in 1832.

1. Her father was Amos Bronson Alcott, a philosopher, teacher and transcendentalist. Her mother was a social worker called Abigail May, and she had four sisters. Amos Bronson was a principled man who supported the abolition of slavery and vegetarianism. He taught his daughters the alphabet by getting them to make the shapes of the letters with their bodies (eg standing tall and straight for “I”) and made his entire family keep diaries every day.
2. Louisa grew up around some famous family friends, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau. Louisa went on nature walks with Henry David Thoreau.
3. The family weren't well off, so both Louisa and her sisters had to work to help support the family. Louisa worked as a teacher, seamstress, governess, and domestic servant, and also as a writer. She first found her way into print when a magazine published one of her poems when she was 19, under the pen name Flora Fairfield. The first time she published under her own name was at 22, when she published a collection of fairy tales she had written for Ellen, Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter.
4. She's best remembered for the wholesome tale of Little Women, but she also wrote Gothic pulp fiction using the pen name A.M. Barnard. The subject matter of these stories included cross-dressers, spies, revenge, and hashish.
5. In fact, she wasn't keen on the idea of writing Little Women at all at first. That she write a novel for girls, rather than fairy stories, was suggested by Thomas Niles, an editor at a publishing house. Louisa, a tomboy, didn't think she'd have enough material. However, soon after that, Louisa's father was trying to convince Niles to publish his manuscript about philosophy. Louisa agreed to write a novel about girls because Niles told her father that if she did, he'd publish the philosophy book. So she really only wrote it to help her father. Little Women took her 10 weeks to write.
6. The four sisters in Little Women were based on Louisa herself and her three sisters. It was a runaway success and soon attracted a fan following. Louisa wasn't comfortable with fame and would sometimes pretend to be a servant if fans came calling. Louisa originally wanted Jo to remain single, as she had herself, but fans repeatedly asked her to marry Jo off to Laurie, the boy next door. “Girls write to ask who the little women marry,” Louisa wrote in her diary, “as if that was the only aim and end of a woman’s life. I won’t marry Jo to Laurie to please anyone.” When she eventually married Jo to Professor Bhaer rather than Laurie, it isn't known whether it was a compromise or a move to spite them for their preoccupation with who Jo would marry.
7. Louisa never did marry, and once said in an interview that she wondered if she was “a man's soul put by some freak of nature into a woman's body”. However, while she didn't have any biological children, when her sister May died in childbirth, she adopted her daughter, named Louisa after her, and brought her up until she was eight.
8. She believed in votes for women and was the first woman in her town who registered to vote. She wrote for a women’s rights periodical and went door-to-door in Massachusetts to encourage women to vote. Her family also opposed slavery and would house fugitive slaves as part of the “Underground Railroad”.
9. She was also ahead of her time in that she had a fitness regime – she went running. She kept up running until she died. She wrote about running in her diary and also encouraged other young women to take it up.
10. She did a stint as an army nurse during the US Civil War. She wrote a book, Hospital Sketches, about her experiences. Sadly, though, nursing may have contributed to her premature death at the age of 55. She caught typhoid after about six weeks of nursing. The treatment at the time was a toxic Mercury compound called calomel. She survived the bout of typhoid only to suffer from symptoms of mercury poisoning for the rest of her life. Doctors today think she may have suffered from an autoimmune disorder, such as lupus, rather than mercury poisoning, although the mercury wouldn't have done her immune system any good. She died of a stroke, aged 55, two days after her father died. Louisa's last known words were "Is it not meningitis?"

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November 28: Bedfordshire Day

Today is Bedfordshire Day. Why today? Because it is likely to have been the birthdate of one of the county's famous residents, John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress. While there's no record of his birthdate, he was baptised on the 30^th, leading people to conclude he was probably born two days before. The date for Bedfordshire Day was agreed in 2015 after a public vote organised by the Friends of Bedfordshire Society.

1. The county town is Bedford, and the name means Beda's river crossing.
2. In an alphabetical list of current English counties, Bedfordshire comes first.
3. Bedfordshire has an unusual dish called the clanger, which, in the 19^th century was a staple for farm workers out in the fields. It's basically a suet pastry which has meat, Potatoes and vegetables at one end and jam or fruit at the other – a complete meal in one pastry. “Clangers” has become a nickname for people who live in Bedfordshire.
4. Famous “clangers” include, as well as John Bunyan, Victoria Pendleton, Paula Radcliffe, John Le Mesurier, Ronnie Barker and Carol Vorderman.
5. Half the population of Bedfordshire lives in either Bedford or Luton.
6. RAF Twinwood Farm, a disused World War II airfield in Bedfordshire, is the place from which Glenn Miller set off on his fateful final flight after entertaining American troops in December 1944. The control tower of the airfield is now a museum dedicated to Glenn Miller. Also on an aviation theme, Shuttleworth near Biggleswade is home to the Shuttleworth Collection, a collection of over 50 aircraft charting the history of aviation. You'll also find the Cardington airship sheds, originally used for the building of airships during the first world war. Nowadays, they make films in them. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Batman Begins were made here. You might even catch a glimpse of Take That, who use it as a rehearsal space. Oh, and there's a modern airship building company located there, too.
7. Other historical industries in Bedfordshire include brick making in the 1950s, which is the reason why 10% of the population are of Italian descent – the London Brick Company recruited workers from Puglia, Campania, Calabria and Sicily. In the 1700s, Luton was famous for hat making, which is why the local Football team is nicknamed “The Hatters”. Biggleswade is the birthplace of the tractor, invented by Dan Albone in 1902. Finally, perhaps the strangest industry in the county - Leighton Buzzard exports sand to Saudi Arabia.
8. Tourist attractions include the Shuttleworth Collection, Houghton House, Woburn Abbey, Woburn Safari Park and the Chiltern Hills, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. There's a museum in Bedford dedicated to John Bunyan and a full size replica of Captain Cook‘s ship, Endeavour, in Stondon Transport Museum near Henlow.
9. The highest point is 243 metres (797 ft) on Dunstable Downs in the Chilterns.
10. There are Hamlets in Bedfordshire called California and Ireland.

See also

Buckinghamshire 
Cornwall 
Devon 
Dorset 
Lancashire
Northamptonshire
Oxfordshire
Shropshire 
Somerset 
Sussex  
Yorkshire 

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November 27: Jimi Hendrix

This date in 1942 saw the birth of Jimi Hendrix. Here are 10 things you might not know about the legendary artist.

1. When he was born on November 27th 1942 in Seattle, his mother named him John Allen Hendrix. His father was away fighting in the second world war at the time. When he got back, the couple divorced and his father, James “Al” Hendrix took him from his mother and re-named him James Marshall. James got shortened to Jimi in 1966, at the suggestion of his manager, Chas Chandler.
2. At first, Jimi's father wasn't keen on the idea of his son having a Guitar, but when Jimi was 15 he gave in and bought him an acoustic guitar. Soon after that, Jimi joined a band called the Velvetones. He quickly realised that an acoustic guitar wouldn't be heard over the rest of the band, and he needed an electric one. A year later Al stumped up for his son's first electric guitar, a Supro Ozark 1560S.
3. He trained as a paratrooper. Strictly speaking, it wasn't a chosen career as he was caught with stolen cars twice in his teens and was given the choice – the army or prison. He was a member of ‘The Screaming Eagles’ 101st Airborne Division in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, but his conduct as a soldier didn't impress his superiors. His sergeant wrote, "He has no interest whatsoever in the Army ... It is my opinion that Private Hendrix will never come up to the standards required of a soldier. I feel that the military service will benefit if he is discharged as soon as possible." Jimi himself preferred the story that he was discharged after breaking his ankle on a jump.
4. He arrived in the UK in September 1966 with just a small case containing his guitar, a change of clothes, Pink plastic hair curlers and a jar of Valderma cream for his acne. He'd accepted Chas Chandler's invitation to move to the UK in the hope that he might meet his idol Eric Clapton.
5. Hendrix is known for unorthodox ways of playing the guitar – behind his back, with his teeth, without touching the strings, and upside down. While most of it was showmanship, playing the guitar upside down was for a much more mundane practical reason – he was left handed. His father believed being left handed was a sign of the devil.
6. He was self taught and never learned to read Music.
7. By 1969, Hendrix was the world's highest-paid rock musician. On his way there, he played backup for Sam Cooke, Little Richard, Wilson Pickett, Ike and Tina Turner, and The Isley Brothers.
8. He called his music “electric church” because he believed music was his religion.
9. He lived in a flat in Mayfair, in a building which had also been home to George Handel from 1723 until his death in 1759. The building now holds museums dedicated to both musicians.
10. Jimi Hendrix died aged 27 from an overdose of his girlfriend's sleeping tablets.

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26 November: National Cake Day

Today is National Cake Day. 10 quotes about cake to enjoy:

1. A party without cake is just a meeting. Julia Child
2. You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake. Bob Hope
3. It's so comforting to have a small piece of cake. Just one slice. Mary Berry
4. My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it. Boris Johnson
5. There are many temptations in this life, but cake is probably one of the biggest of them. Alexander McCall Smith
6. Knowledge may be power, but cake has great bargaining properties. Julia Seitz
7. There's nothing better than cake but more cake. Harry S. Truman
8. Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie. Jim Davis
9. If the people have no bread, let them eat cake. Marie Antoinette
10. Where there is cake, there is hope. And there is always cake. Dean Koontz

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25 November: St Catherine of Alexandria

Today is the feast day of St Catherine of Alexandria. Here are some things you may or may not know about her:

1. She's also known as St Catherine of the Wheel, because her executioners tried to kill her by tying her to a spiked wheel, but when they tried to do so, the wheel shattered. The Catherine Wheel Firework is named after her.
2. As well as the wheel, she is often pictured with a dove (because one fed her when she was in prison) hailstones, a bridal veil and ring, a sword, a crown and a book.
3. She was the daughter of Constus, the governor of Egyptian Alexandria during the reign of the emperor Maximian. A studious child, she read a lot, and one day had a vision of The Virgin Mary who persuaded her to convert to Christianity.
4. According to Rufinus, her name at birth wasn't Catherine, but Dorothea. She took the name Catherine when she became a Christian, because it means 'pure'.
5. She went to the emperor himself to make a case for Christianity and to try and stop his cruelty to Christians. According to the legend, the emperor, rather than immediately have her killed as he would anyone else, possibly because she was just a young girl, called in fifty of his philosophers to argue with her and persuade her to put aside her Christian faith. Several of the philosophers were so impressed by her arguments that they became Christians on the spot. The emperor was less lenient to them – they were executed on the spot.
6. Catherine, meanwhile, was whipped severely, then put in prison. She wasn't given any food, the plan being that she'd starve to death, but God sent a dove to bring her food, and Angels to put ointment on her wounds. While in prison, she had over 200 visitors, all of which she converted to Christianity and all of which were executed.
7. At this point, the emperor decided to change tack. Torture and starvation clearly weren't working, so he asked Catherine to marry him instead. She turned him down, of course, because she had dedicated herself to Christ.
8. This was when he ordered her death by being tied to a wheel. When that didn't work, he had her beheaded. The legend says that instead of Blood, a milky substance flowed from her neck. It's also said that her body produced a constant stream of healing oil.
9. St Catherine is patron of unmarried girls. There are traditions whereby young single women pray or recite rhymes to St Catherine to help them find suitable husbands. In France, on her feast day, women are allowed to propose marriage to men. Also in France, young women who are not married by the 25 November after their 25^th birthday are known as Catherinettes and a special celebration was held for them. Another custom was for such young women to have a beautiful headdress made for St Catherine's statue. "Capping Saint Catherine" became an expression meaning to still be an old maid at 25.
10. St Catherine is also the patron of: craftspeople who work with wheels (such as spinners or potters); librarians; dying people; knife sharpeners; mechanics; millers; milliners; hat-makers; nurses; philosophers; preachers; scholars; schoolchildren; scribes; secretaries; tanners; several towns in the Philippines, Malta and Greece; and Balliol College.

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24 November: Grace Darling

Born 24 November 1815, Grace Darling, a lighthouse keeper's daughter, was famous for participating in the rescue of survivors from the shipwrecked Forfarshire in 1838.

1. Her full name was Grace Horsley Darling, and she was born at her grandfather's cottage in Bamburgh in Northumberland. Her father became the Lighthouse keeper on Brownsman Island, one of the Farne Islands, and Grace moved there when she was a few weeks old.
2. When she was ten, Grace's family moved to a newly constructed lighthouse on Longstone Island where Grace would live for the rest of her life.
3. When she was five, she made a pet of an eider duck which had nested close to the lighthouse.
4. She never went to school but was educated at home by her father. As well as reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography and religious studies, Grace and her four brothers and four sisters learned from their father how to maintain the lighthouse, how to recognise the different types of sea vessels, where they were going and what they were carrying. They learned to look out for anything unusual. They learned how to row and navigate a small boat around the rocks, and about tides and the weather. Rowing a boat, therefore, was something which would have come naturally to Grace by the time she was twelve.
5. In time, most of her brothers and sisters left home, sought careers elsewhere and/or got married. At the time of the shipwreck, only Grace and one brother, William, were still living at home. On the night of the wreck, William was away fishing so Grace and her parents were the only ones there.
6. In the early hours of 7 September 1838 Grace was unable to sleep and was watching the storm from a window. Thanks to her training to look out for anything unusual, she spotted the wreck and survivors of the Forfarshire on Big Harcar, a nearby low rocky island. Having alerted her father, they decided that the weather was too bad for the lifeboat to put out, so they decided to rescue the survivors themselves. The boat they used was a 21 ft, 4-man Northumberland coble.
7. Together they rowed for nearly a mile to the survivors. Grace held the boat steady while her father helped the survivors into it. On that trip they rescued four men and the only woman to survive, a Mrs Dawson, whose two young children had died before the Darlings could get there. Two of the crew went back with Mr Darling for the remaining survivors while Grace stayed at the lighthouse. When the lifeboat arrived, they only found the bodies of Mrs Dawson's children and a clergyman. As it was too dangerous to return to the mainland, the lifeboat crew went to the lighthouse as well and stayed there for three days until the storm died down. One of the lifeboat crew happened to be Grace's brother, William. The whole rescue took two hours, from 7.00am to 9.00am.
8. Grace and her father were awarded the Silver Medal for bravery by the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, later named the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). Grace became an instant celebrity as news of the rescue spread. People sent her presents, money, letters and even marriage proposals. Even Queen Victoria herself sent Grace £50. Grace, as the youngest daughter, believed it was her duty to stay with her parents and look after them in their old age, so she turned all the proposals down.
9. It seems as if Grace was somewhat of an introvert, too, preferring a quiet, simple life away from the public eye, but now, people would hire boats and row out to the lighthouse in order to meet her, touch her or merely stand and stare at her. Even her home didn't allow her much privacy, since her widowed, pregnant sister had returned to live at home by now as well. In fact, Grace needed a holiday. She went to visit her brother and then her cousins, hiding below deck when people realised she was on board their vessel.
10. Sometime during the trip, she contracted tuberculosis, and despite her otherwise strong constitution, and going to the mainland to convalesce, she died aged only 26.

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23 November: Doctor Who Day

Today is Doctor Who Day, because the first ever episode, An Unearthly Child, first appeared on BBC TV on 23 November 1963. It went on to become the longest running and most successful sci-fi show on TV, according to the Guinness Book of Records. 10 things you might not know about Doctor Who:

1. The title of the first episode, An Unearthly Child, referred to the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan, who attended school on Earth and astounded teachers with her alien intelligence. The timing of the broadcast was a little unfortunate since it was the day after the Assassination of John F Kennedy, which eclipsed it somewhat, so it was shown again the following week before the second episode. The first episode to be filmed in colour was Spearhead From Space.
2. The word TARDIS is an acronym for Time and Relative Dimension in Space. It's common knowledge that it is bigger on the inside than on the outside, but here are some lesser known facts. The sound it makes was produced by rubbing a key along the bass strings of piano and messing around with the recording. Why does it look like a police box? It's not actually meant to. A TARDIS has a "chameleon circuit" which should make it blend into the environment it finds itself in by looking like something which would normally be found there. However, when the Doctor visited 1960s Earth, the chameleon circuit broke, so the TARDIS got stuck in that form. TARDIS, along with Dalek, are both Doctor Who words which have made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. Finally, the TARDIS has an Asteroid named after it: Asteroid 3325, a small main belt asteroid discovered in 1984.
3. The series was first created by Head of Drama at the BBC, Sydney Newman, and was intended to be an educational programme for children. The time travel aspect was included so children could learn about historical figures as well as science. However, due to the time travel, the show is banned in China, because the authorities there don't want to promote the idea that history could be re-written.
4. The character of the doctor was inspired to some extent by Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps it isn't surprising, then, that one of the actors to turn the role down was Benedict Cumberbatch. Other actors who declined include Ron Moody (Fagin), Geoffrey Bayldon, Bill Nighy and Hugh Grant. Robbie Williams might have been the voice of the Doctor in an animated series, but wasn't available. Michael Jackson and Bill Cosby were once considered to play the part in a feature film. The idea of a female Doctor isn't new, either – it was first suggested by Sydney Newman in the 1980s when the ratings for the original show were plummeting.
5. The iconic theme music was composed by Ron Grainer and created by Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. There have been any number of remixes of it. In 2010, a version was performed at the Glastonbury Festival by the band Orbital, with a special guest performing with them – Matt Smith, the 11^th Doctor.
6. Matt Smith is the youngest actor to play The Doctor, starting at 26 years old. The oldest was William Hartnell, who took the role at the age of 55. Peter Capaldi, also 55 when he took the role, was a few months younger. The actor who played the Doctor longest was Tom Baker (seven years) while the shortest stint was Paul McGann, who starred in just one feature-length episode in 1996. Although in one 1976 episode, some even earlier than William Hartnell incarnations appeared briefly on screen, who were members of the production team. Peter Capaldi (The 12th Doctor) and Karen Gillan (Amy Pond) both had bit parts in an earlier episode called The Fires of Pompeii; both Capaldi and David Tennant were huge fans as teenagers. Capaldi, at 14, aspired to be the head of the Doctor Who Fan Club and was seriously miffed when that role went to Keith Miller instead.
7. Who or what is the Doctor, anyway? We know he's a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, but we don't know his real name. The Master, River Song and Clara Oswald are among the few who know it. He may actually be a real doctor – in a 1967 episode called The Moonbase, he claimed to have obtained a medical degree in Glasgow in 1888, studying under Lister. You may know that the Doctor has two hearts, but lesser known facts are that Time Lords have "respiratory bypass system" that allows them to go without air for much longer than a human, an internal body temperature of 15-16C, and the ability to absorb, withstand, and expel large amounts of radiation. The Doctor has been married three times that we know of - to Queen Elizabeth I, Marilyn Monroe, and River Song.
8. The regeneration idea came in 1966 when William Hartnell was going to have to give up the role because of failing health. Regeneration meant that the BBC could carry on making the show using a different actor in the lead role. Internal memos of the time claimed the process was based on “a bad LSD trip”, ie, a horrible experience. Usually, the outgoing Doctor would return for one episode for a transition scene. However, Colin Baker, who was miffed because he'd been blamed for low ratings and had been fired, refused to co-operate – so Sylvester McCoy, his replacement, had to play both roles, wearing a wig so he'd look like Baker.
9. Torchwood is a spin off series of Doctor Who and is an anagram of it. Originally, Torchwood was used as a code name for the first series, to prevent the tapes from being stolen in transit and pirated.
10. A whole lot of episodes from the 60s and 70s are missing. The BBC wiped several of the tapes in order to re-use them or save space. While audio recordings of all the episodes exist, the video tapes for many are gone forever. The first episode was thought to have gone forever, until it was found in a mislabelled film can in 1978. The BBC are always on the lookout for any old recordings of episodes featuring the first two Doctors, and they still occasionally turn up, one as recently as 2011. So if you have such a recording in your attic, the BBC would love to hear from you.

See also: Daleks

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22 November: The Assassination of John F Kennedy

On this date in 1963 President John F. Kennedy was killed by a sniper while riding in an open car in Dallas, Texas. Here are 10 things you might not know about the Kennedy assassination.

1. Why was JFK in Dallas in the first place? He'd gone there to sort out a rift between members of his party. Jacqueline Kennedy rarely travelled with her husband on political trips but decided to go with him on this one.
2. It wasn't the first time someone had attempted to assassinate Kennedy. There were six assassination plots in his lifetime including one in which a retired postman called Richard Paul Pavlick filled his car with dynamite and was going to ram it into Kennedy's – a suicide bombing. However, when Pavlick saw that Kennedy had his family in the car with him, he changed his mind. Before he could try again he was arrested and put in a mental institution.
3. Kennedy's last words were ironic. As his car entered Dealey Plaza, one of the other passengers, Nellie Connally, the First Lady of Texas, turned to the President and commented, "Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you," to which President Kennedy replied, "No, you certainly can't."
4. The assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a former marine. He had been living in Russia for three years before the assassination, and had a Russian wife. He stated to US embassy officials in Moscow that he was a Marxist. He applied to return to the USA, and the US government lent him the money to pay for his travel.
5. The murder weapon was a 6.5 mm Italian carbine rifle that Oswald had bought for $19.95. It is alleged he fired three shots at Kennedy with a mail-order rifle from an open window on the sixth floor of The Texas Book Depository Company. Immediately afterwards, he hid the gun, bought a soft drink from a vending machine, left the building and went into a cinema, where he was arrested. The film that was on was called War Is Hell!.
6. It was the second shot which killed Kennedy. The first shot entered his upper back, slightly damaged a spinal vertebra and the top of his right lung. The bullet exited his throat just below his larynx. The doctor who treated him said later that he could have survived that, and it was the second shot to the back of his head that was fatal. Dr. Kenneth Salyer went on to say that Kennedy had been wearing a back brace because of previous severe back problems which restricted his movement. Had he not been wearing it, he might have slumped forward when the first shot hit and the second shot would then have missed him.
7. A spectator was slightly injured bullet or bullet fragment with no copper casing struck the nearby Main Street south curb. James Tague felt something sting his cheek and a nearby policeman pointed out his cheek was bleeding. The curb was removed for analysis and the metallic residue found on it was consistent with that of the lead core in Oswald's ammunition.
8. The President was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m., CST. 99 minutes later, Lyndon B. Johnson took the oath of office aboard Air Force One. Jacqueline Kennedy was present, still wearing the Pink suit stained with her husband's Blood. She'd refused to change out of it, telling Lady Bird Johnson, "I want them to see what they have done to Jack." The suit, which has never been cleaned, is in the National Archives. The Kennedy family have specified that it should not go on public display before 2103.
9. The limousine Kennedy was riding in was a 1961 Lincoln Continental four-door convertible code-named the X-100. After it was examined for evidence the car was overhauled, cleaned and returned to service at the White House. It continued to carry Presidents until early 1977. It is now on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The Texas School Book Depository's sixth floor, is now a museum dedicated to JFK's assassination.
10. We can't leave this topic without mentioning conspiracy theories and curses. Conspiracy theories have abounded ever since. The fact that several official enquiries into the incident came up with differing theories as to whether Oswald acted alone didn't help. Lyndon Johnson said in an interview with Walter Cronkite in 1969 that he did not discount the possibility Kennedy's death was the work of a foreign power: "I can't honestly say that I've ever been completely relieved of the fact that there might have been international connections," he said. Johnson requested the comment be removed from the interview for national security reasons and it only aired after his death. In the film JFK, directed by Oliver Stone, a closing scene suggests that Americans cannot trust official public conclusions when those conclusions have been made in secret. Later in the year, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, known as the JFK Records Act, which would make the records public by October 2017 unless the President decided they should remain classified. The Kennedy family suffered a string of misfortunes around that time, including the later assassination of his brother Bobby. Members of the family suffered life changing injuries, illnesses and premature deaths, leading to speculation that the family was cursed. There's also The Curse of Tippecanoe (also known as Tecumseh's Curse). Proponents claim there is a pattern in which US Presidents elected in years ending in zero will die in office. The presidents elected in 1840, 1860, 1880, 1900, 1920, 1940 and 1960 all died in office. Those elected in 1980 and 2000 survived their terms but both were the victims of assassination attempts.

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21 November: North Carolina Ratification Day

Today is North Carolina Ratification Day. Here are 10 facts about North Carolina.

1. North Carolina is named after King Charles I of England. His son, Charles II of England granted a charter to start a colony and named it after his father. The state's nickname is 'Tar Heel State' because tar and pitch was made from the state's native trees. The capital, Raleigh, was named after Sir Walter.
2. Way before Charles I, Walter Raleigh founded a colony on Roanoke Island. The first English child born in America was born there in 1587. Her name was Virginia Dare, and there has been a re-enactment of her story performed every year since 1937. The colony also saw the first baptism of a Native American - Manteo, a Croatan Indian who had befriended the colony, taught them all about their new home and to speak Algonquin. However, the colony mysteriously vanished. The only trace they left behind was the word "Croatoan" scrawled on a tree.
3. More firsts for the state – Kitty Hawk, where the Wright Brothers made their first flight in 1903, is in North Carolina. It was also the first state to declare independence from the British, have a Gold rush, establish a state university and a state museum of art.
4. People from North Carolina include three presidents: Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson and James K. Polk. Also from here are actresses Ava Gardner and Julianne Moore, singers Ben E King, Roberta Flack and Nina Simone, the evangelist Billy Graham and Anna McNeill Whistler, the subject of the famous painting, Whistler's Mother.
5. Murphy, the westernmost county in North Carolina, is closer to the capitals of six other states than it is to its own.
6. North Carolina has some rare creatures: white squirrels (not albino ones) and fireflies which have blue green lights.
7. There are lots of breweries and wineries in the state, but the official state beverage is Milk. Other state symbols include: Bird: Cardinal; flower: Dogwood; insect: Honey Bee; vegetable: sweet potato (the state is the US's biggest producer); rock: granite; gem: emerald; plant: Venus fly trap (native to the state); mammal: grey Squirrel; tree: longleaf pine. It even has a state Tartan – Carolina tartan.
8. The only private park in the world to be designated by the United Nations as an International Biosphere Reserve in in North Carolina. It's called Grandfather Mountain. One of its features is a mile high swing bridge.
9. The largest private home in America is here, too. The Biltmore is a 250 room mansion in Asheville, built for the Vanderbilts in the late 1800s. It stands in 8,000 acres of grounds.
10. If you're thinking of choosing North Carolina for a romantic getaway, bear in mind that by law, beds in hotel rooms must be single and at least two feet apart. Having sex in the gap between the beds is illegal. So is having sex in a churchyard. The only legal position is the missionary position and the blinds must be drawn. Also bear in mind that under state law, if a couple who are not married go to a hotel and register as married, this makes them legally married under state law. It's also against the law here to sing off key, ride a Bicycle without having both hands on the handlebars, or to use an Elephant to plough a Cotton field.

More details about my books. Follow this link if you like Superheroes, Psychics and/or quirky short stories. 

I've listed the themes each novel touches on here for easy reference.

Like my author page on Facebook for news on new books and blog posts.

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