1 March: Frederic Chopin

Frederic Chopin, Polish pianist and composer, was born on this date in 1810. Here are ten things you might not know about him.

1. His father was a Frenchman from Lorraine who had emigrated to Poland at the age of 16. He was working as a tutor to a rich family when he met and married one of the poor relations, Justyna Krzyżanowska, a Piano teacher. Frederic was born in a house belonging to the family estate.
2. It sounds as if having a mother who was a piano teacher gave Chopin a head start. He was writing and composing poetry at age 6; he performed his first public concerto at 8. By the time he was 12, Chopin had performed in the drawing rooms of several Polish aristocrats and was already writing original compositions.
3. He was a somewhat shy person who, from childhood, preferred to play the piano in the dark. This included if he played at a party or event – he'd ask the hosts to turn the lights off before he played. He didn't like public concerts much and only ever played about 30 of them, much preferring intimate gatherings in people's homes.
4. He was one of many Polish people who left their homeland as a result of the failure of the uprising there in 1830. His initial plan was to go to Italy but there was violent unrest there, too, so he initiated plan B – Paris. It wasn't plain sailing. He was at first refused a visa to go there and eventually got a transit visa giving him permission to stay in Paris "on the way to London". He spent the rest of his life in Paris and used to joke that he was only there "in passing".
5. Unlike many well-known composers, he didn't write huge symphonies. He didn't write any symphonies at all and just a handful of sonatas. His pieces were usually around 3-5 minutes long, about the same length as a modern pop single. One of his famous pieces is The Minute Waltz, 138 bars long, although it doesn't actually last a minute, but around 90-120 seconds. It was the publishers which gave the piece that nickname. Another of his works is Op. 64 Waltz, which is nicknamed the Little Dog Waltz because the inspiration for it was apparently watching a small dog chasing its tail.
6. In 1836 he became engaged to Maria Wodzińska, the daughter of a countess. He'd first met her when she was 11. However, Maria got cold feet, possibly because Chopin's health wasn't good, or because she'd heard rumours that he was carrying on with other women in Paris. The last letter she wrote him was a lukewarm thanks for an album of his music that he'd sent her, and then her mother wrote to tell him the engagement was off. Chopin placed the letters he had received from Maria and her mother into a large envelope, wrote "My sorrow" on it, and kept in in a drawer for the rest of his life.
7. Meanwhile, another woman, an author using the name George Sand (her real name was Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin) had her eye on him. They'd been introduced at a get together at Franz Liszt's house. It wasn't exactly love at first sight for Chopin though, who at that first meeting, didn't like her at all. He commented, "What an unattractive person la Sand is. Is she really a woman?" However, she clearly grew on him as they eventually become lovers and were together for 10 years, until they fell out over a disagreement about Sand's daughter from her previous marriage.
8. He had a love-hate relationship with Liszt. While they admired each other's work and would each perform pieces written by the other, they both got annoyed with the way the other interpreted their work. Chopin thought Liszt played his works rather too well while Liszt got annoyed when Chopin added embellishments to his. They both had the impression that the other was getting too interested in their mistress, which didn't help. That said, Liszt wrote the first biography of Chopin’s life, and is quoted as saying, 27 years after Chopin’s death, that “no one compared to him: he shines lonely, peerless in the firmament of art.”
9. Chopin's health was never good, but it's entirely possible he milked it and was a bit of a hypochondriac and a drama queen. George Sand commented after they split that a lot of his health issues were mostly in his head. That said, she did agree to spend a winter in Majorca for the sake of his health, and that of her son. Not that it worked out that way, since once the conservative population of the island worked out this couple was living in sin, accommodation became very hard to find. All they could get in the end was in a former Carthusian monastery in Valldemossa, which was cold and damp and ultimately did Chopin's health more harm than good. As if that wasn't enough, there were problems getting his favourite piano shipped there, and when they left, he had to abandon it to avoid paying even more customs duties.
10. Chopin died at the age of 39 in 1849, probably of TB. He might well have been justified in having his tombstone engraved with "I told you I was ill". Although he'd emigrated to France, Chopin always thought of himself as Polish and as he lay dying he asked the woman caring for him to sing the Polish national anthem. It's said he expired just as she finished singing. His last words, presumably before she started singing, were “mother, my poor mother.” In his will, he asked two things. One that his Heart be removed from his body and taken back to Poland. His sister had it preserved in alcohol for the trip. Chopin's heart is now sealed in a pillar of the Holy Cross Church. His other wish, however, was ignored – that all of his unpublished compositions be destroyed. Thanks to his family disregarding that, several dozen compositions were published posthumously.

Who's That Girl?

Matt Webster lives in a tower block and attends a failing school. He dreams of being a spy like James Bond. Little does he know that he is being watched by someone who can make him into even more than that – a superhero.

His first solo mission is to attend a ball at the Decembrian Embassy and discover who is planning to steal a priceless diamond. While there, he meets the mysterious Lady Antonia du Cane, and is powerfully drawn to her. It soon becomes clear, however, that Lady du Cane is not what she seems. Matt’s quest to discover who she really is almost costs him his career.

A modern day Guy Fawkes gathers a coterie around him with the aim of blowing up Parliament with a nuclear bomb. To achieve this, they need money. Lots of it. Selling the Heart of Decembria Diamond will provide more than enough. All that stands in their way is the Freedom League – but the League is beset by internal disagreements. Can the heroes put their differences aside in time to save the day?

Prime Minister Richard Miller and his wife Fiona grieve for their daughter, Yasmin, who has been missing for three years, and is presumed to be dead. Viper agent Violet Parker could hold the key to what happened to Yasmin, but Violet is accused of giving away the organisation’s secrets. She is to be executed without trial. Will she take her knowledge of what happened to Yasmin with her to her grave?

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-Book

28 February: Linus Pauling

Born on this date in 1901 was Linus Pauling, American scientist. 10 quotes from him to celebrate his 120th birthday:

1. Facts are the air of scientists. Without them you can never fly.
2. Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.
3. The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away.
4. Do not let either the medical authorities or the politicians mislead you. Find out what the facts are, and make your own decisions about how to live a happy life and how to work for a better world.
5. Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.
6. Science is the search for truth – it is not a game in which one tries to beat his opponent, to do harm to others.
7. Just one living cell in the human body is, more complex than New York City.
8. I have something that I call my Golden Rule. It goes something like this: 'Do unto others twenty-five percent better than you expect them to do unto you.' … The twenty-five percent is for error.
9. I think every person should be able to enjoy life. Try to decide what you most enjoy doing, and then look around to see if there is a job for which you could prepare yourself that would enable you to continue having this sort of joy.
10. I believe all complicated phenomena can be explained by simpler scientific principles.

Who's That Girl?

Matt Webster lives in a tower block and attends a failing school. He dreams of being a spy like James Bond. Little does he know that he is being watched by someone who can make him into even more than that – a superhero.

His first solo mission is to attend a ball at the Decembrian Embassy and discover who is planning to steal a priceless diamond. While there, he meets the mysterious Lady Antonia du Cane, and is powerfully drawn to her. It soon becomes clear, however, that Lady du Cane is not what she seems. Matt’s quest to discover who she really is almost costs him his career.

A modern day Guy Fawkes gathers a coterie around him with the aim of blowing up Parliament with a nuclear bomb. To achieve this, they need money. Lots of it. Selling the Heart of Decembria Diamond will provide more than enough. All that stands in their way is the Freedom League – but the League is beset by internal disagreements. Can the heroes put their differences aside in time to save the day?

Prime Minister Richard Miller and his wife Fiona grieve for their daughter, Yasmin, who has been missing for three years, and is presumed to be dead. Viper agent Violet Parker could hold the key to what happened to Yasmin, but Violet is accused of giving away the organisation’s secrets. She is to be executed without trial. Will she take her knowledge of what happened to Yasmin with her to her grave?

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-Book

27 February: Sword Swallowing

The last Saturday in February is World Sword Swallower's Day. Here are 10 things you might not know about the art of sword swallowing.

1. Sword swallowing began in India as a religious practice among shaman priests around 2000 BC, to show that they were invulnerable and connected to the gods (Fire walking and Snake handling were also common practices of the time). It later spread to Greece, Rome, China and Japan and became a performance associated with street theatre in Europe.
2. In 1893, sword swallowing was performed at the Chicago World Fair, but that same year was made illegal in Scandinavia.
3. Calling the process sword swallowing is a misnomer – the performer is actually suppressing the reflex to swallow to allow a sword to be inserted through their mouth into their oesophagus.
4. There is an association for sword swallowers called the Sword Swallowers Association International. It was this organisation which founded World Sword Swallower's day in 2008, in conjunction with National Swallowing Disorders Month. The event is co-sponsored by Ripley's Believe It Or Not.
5. There aren't that many people in the world who swallow swords. Just a few dozen, compared to 750 people who have been into space and 12,000 or so professional bull riders.
6. Which is probably why, despite it being so dangerous, only 29 deaths have been recorded as a result of sword swallowing injuries since 1880.
7. Doctors in the 19th century made use of sword swallowers in order to study the oesophagus and stomach and the digestive process by getting a sword swallower to swallow a tube with a mirror, or filled with pieces of meat.
8. More recently, in the early 2000s, doctors were looking at whether the techniques used by sword swallowers could help people with swallowing disorders or who had suffered trauma to the throat.
9. There are a number of Guinness World Records associated with sword swallowing. The longest sword ever swallowed – 63cm/25 inches, by Yrj Lehvonen in 1964. The most swords swallowed at once is 52, by Red Stuart in 2008; the most swords swallowed at once and twisted inside the throat – 24, by Dan Meyer in 2015. The most swords swallowed underwater – 5, by Chris Steele. There is even a sword which holds a record – it's called "The Sword of Swords" and it holds the record for the most swallowed sword. 40 different people have swallowed it. There's an extensive list of sword swallowing records at swordswallow.com/records.php.
10. There are also records for the number of swords swallowed while juggling (18), and while riding a unicycle (3). The above mentioned Chris Steele was not only the first to swallow a sword underwater in 2006, but he did it while submerged in a tank of live Sharks. Chayne Hultgren swallowed a sword and had it struck by artificial Lightning produced by a Tesla coil.

Who's That Girl?

Matt Webster lives in a tower block and attends a failing school. He dreams of being a spy like James Bond. Little does he know that he is being watched by someone who can make him into even more than that – a superhero.

His first solo mission is to attend a ball at the Decembrian Embassy and discover who is planning to steal a priceless diamond. While there, he meets the mysterious Lady Antonia du Cane, and is powerfully drawn to her. It soon becomes clear, however, that Lady du Cane is not what she seems. Matt’s quest to discover who she really is almost costs him his career.

A modern day Guy Fawkes gathers a coterie around him with the aim of blowing up Parliament with a nuclear bomb. To achieve this, they need money. Lots of it. Selling the Heart of Decembria Diamond will provide more than enough. All that stands in their way is the Freedom League – but the League is beset by internal disagreements. Can the heroes put their differences aside in time to save the day?

Prime Minister Richard Miller and his wife Fiona grieve for their daughter, Yasmin, who has been missing for three years, and is presumed to be dead. Viper agent Violet Parker could hold the key to what happened to Yasmin, but Violet is accused of giving away the organisation’s secrets. She is to be executed without trial. Will she take her knowledge of what happened to Yasmin with her to her grave?

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-Book

26 February: Victor Hugo

Born on this date in 1802 was Victor Hugo, the French writer, author of Notre-Dame de Paris (aka the Hunchback of Notre Dame) and Les Misérables. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. He was born in Eastern France. His father was Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo, known as Léopold, a general in the Napoleonic army, and his mother's name was Sophie Trébuchet. Around June 1801, Léopold's army duties had him battling smugglers in the mountains. One day he was up on Mount Donon with Sophie, 3000 feet above sea level, doing what came naturally. The result was Victor. Léopold told his son he was destined to be a genius because he was conceived at such a great height. Today, the location of Hugo’s conception is marked with a stone tablet which reads: “In this place / on 5 floreal, year 9 / Victor Hugo / was conceived."
2. Hugo was 21 when he wrote his first novel. It was called Han d’Islande (Hans of Iceland). His second, Bug-Jargal followed 3 years later.
3. When suffering from writer's block, his solution was to shut himself in a room with no distractions, not even his clothes. He'd write naked, having asked his servants to take his clothes away and not return them until he'd done his writing for the day.
4. As well as writing novels, he also wrote plays and poetry, and not only that, he was an illustrator, too. However, he wanted to be seen as a writer rather than an artist and so only shared his drawings with family and friends. Hugo’s drawings were relatively small, and usually done in black and white.
5. He was very involved in politics and activism. He fought for social reform, free education and the abolition of the death penalty. His most famous novels had political motives behind them – Les Misérables highlighted the conditions under which poor people lived, and in France, was denounced for portraying the revolutionaries in a bad light and encouraging riots. It was even banned by the Catholic church, but was well received outside of France. It was particularly popular among soldiers in the American Civil War. Hugo also published a short novel, Le Dernier Jour d’un Condamné (The Last Day of a Condemned Man), which described the thoughts of a man condemned to death by the guillotine. The novel raised awareness of how brutal the death penalty was and has been credited with prompting countries like Portugal and Colombia to abolish the death penalty.
6. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, too, had a political motive behind it. Hugo wanted to raise awareness of the state of disrepair the magnificent cathedral had fallen into and the importance of preserving Gothic architecture. The book contains long descriptions of the building, and to Hugo, the building was the principal character. Hence he was not happy when the English translation ended up being called The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Nevertheless, his ploy worked and led to major renovations and restorations of the cathedral.
7. Hugo wasn't happy with Napoléon III's proposed anti-parliamentary constitution in 1851. He publicly denounced Napoléon as a traitor to France, which led to him being forced into exile. He fled to Brussels, and then to Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Hugo lived in exile from 1855 to 1870. It was a productive time for him. While he was exiled, he published pamphlets and completed and published Les Misérables.
8. He sounds like something of a sex addict. He married his childhood sweetheart Adèle Foucher. He might have married her sooner, but for the fact his mother didn't like her and so they couldn't marry properly until after his mother's death. Hugo boasted that he made love to his wife nine times on his wedding night. Adèle wasn't always as willing as Victor would have liked, and so he had numerous affairs and was sexually active well into his old age. At 70, he courted a woman who was just 22, and at 80, he was said to have made a successful pass at his maid. His affairs seem to have numbered in the hundreds. One of his mistresses, Juliette Drouet, was so obsessed with Hugo that she went into exile with him. Another was Léonie d’Aunet, a married woman. When they got caught in the act in 1845, was sentenced to 2 months in prison, and another 6 months at a convent, while Hugo got off Scot free. We know about his liaisons because he wrote about them in his diary and know that his conquests included servants, maids, actresses, prostitutes and revolutionaries like Louise Michel. The initials S.B. found in one of his diaries could even refer to the actress Sarah Bernhardt.
9. In spite of all that, he stayed married to his wife for 50 years, until she died. They had five children. One son died in infancy. One of his daughters, Léopoldine, died tragically at the age of 19. She was out boating with her new husband when the boat turned over and she drowned, thanks to the heavy skirts women wore in those days. Her husband drowned, too, trying to save her. Hugo was away travelling in the South of France at the time, and first heard the news when he read it in a newspaper he picked up in a café.
10. Brought up as a Catholic, Hugo distanced himself more and more from the church during his lifetime. Whether it was because he thought the church didn't do enough to help the poor or because the church banned his books we don't know. He didn't lose his belief in God or life after death. He described himself as a free-thinker – he prayed daily and wrote, "Thanksgiving has wings and flies to its right destination. Your prayer knows its way better than you do". He dabbled in spiritualism, too, attending séances. Hugo died at the age of 83 in Paris, having left a note reading "To love is to act", and a will stipulating that he wanted to be buried without any Catholic rites. He is venerated as a saint in Vietnam, in the religion Cao Dai. The reason? He is said to have made contact with devotees during séances, along with Thomas Jefferson, and Joan of Arc.

Who's That Girl?

Matt Webster lives in a tower block and attends a failing school. He dreams of being a spy like James Bond. Little does he know that he is being watched by someone who can make him into even more than that – a superhero.

His first solo mission is to attend a ball at the Decembrian Embassy and discover who is planning to steal a priceless diamond. While there, he meets the mysterious Lady Antonia du Cane, and is powerfully drawn to her. It soon becomes clear, however, that Lady du Cane is not what she seems. Matt’s quest to discover who she really is almost costs him his career.

A modern day Guy Fawkes gathers a coterie around him with the aim of blowing up Parliament with a nuclear bomb. To achieve this, they need money. Lots of it. Selling the Heart of Decembria Diamond will provide more than enough. All that stands in their way is the Freedom League – but the League is beset by internal disagreements. Can the heroes put their differences aside in time to save the day?

Prime Minister Richard Miller and his wife Fiona grieve for their daughter, Yasmin, who has been missing for three years, and is presumed to be dead. Viper agent Violet Parker could hold the key to what happened to Yasmin, but Violet is accused of giving away the organisation’s secrets. She is to be executed without trial. Will she take her knowledge of what happened to Yasmin with her to her grave?

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-Book

25 February: 56

Today is the 56th day of the year. Here are 10 things you might not know about the number 56:

1. 56 is the atomic number of barium.
2. Child star Shirley Temple always had exactly 56 curls in her hair. Her mother made sure of this, every day.
3. 56 men signed the US Declaration of Independence in 1776.
4. The Minor Arcana of a Tarot deck has 56 cards.
5. According to Aristotle, there are 56 layers to the universe: Earth itself plus 55 crystalline spheres above it.
6. The Pythagoreans associated a polygon of 56 sides with Typhon, a deadly mythical giant Snake.
7. It is impossible to construct a polygon of 56 sides using a compass and straight edge alone, but it can be done if an angle trisector is used. The builders of Stonehenge appear to have done it, though, as there are 56 Aubrey holes there, holes thought to have once contained wooden posts.
8. Isoroku Yamamoto was Japanese Marshal Admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy and commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II. His first name is an old Japanese term meaning 56. He was so called because his father was 56 years old when he was born.
9. In the USA there are 56 counties in the state of Montana. There's also a town in Arkansas called Fifty-Six, which, at the 2010 census, had a population of 173.
10. In numerology, 56 is a co-operative number which also wants to express its personal freedom. A person with 56 in their numerology profile is likely to belong to a number of social groups reflecting their many and shifting interests. Home and family is also very important to them.

Who's That Girl?

Matt Webster lives in a tower block and attends a failing school. He dreams of being a spy like James Bond. Little does he know that he is being watched by someone who can make him into even more than that – a superhero.

His first solo mission is to attend a ball at the Decembrian Embassy and discover who is planning to steal a priceless diamond. While there, he meets the mysterious Lady Antonia du Cane, and is powerfully drawn to her. It soon becomes clear, however, that Lady du Cane is not what she seems. Matt’s quest to discover who she really is almost costs him his career.

A modern day Guy Fawkes gathers a coterie around him with the aim of blowing up Parliament with a nuclear bomb. To achieve this, they need money. Lots of it. Selling the Heart of Decembria Diamond will provide more than enough. All that stands in their way is the Freedom League – but the League is beset by internal disagreements. Can the heroes put their differences aside in time to save the day?

Prime Minister Richard Miller and his wife Fiona grieve for their daughter, Yasmin, who has been missing for three years, and is presumed to be dead. Viper agent Violet Parker could hold the key to what happened to Yasmin, but Violet is accused of giving away the organisation’s secrets. She is to be executed without trial. Will she take her knowledge of what happened to Yasmin with her to her grave?

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-Book

24 February: Tortilla Chips

Today is National Tortilla Chip Day. 10 things you might not know about tortilla chips:

1. The word tortilla comes from the Spanish word, torta, which means round cake.
2. A tortilla is a type of unleavened Bread made from corn which means they are naturally gluten free. That said, some manufacturers do add Wheat.
3. Legend has it that tortillas were invented by a Mayan peasant to serve to his king.
4. Tortilla chips were invented in the 1940s by a woman called Rebecca Webb Carranza who owned a tortilla factory and Mexican delicatessen in Los Angeles. Their automated tortilla maker sometimes churned out a less than perfect tortilla, so rather than waste them, Rebecca came up with the idea of cutting them into triangles, frying them and selling them for a dime a bag. They were so popular that eventually, the company produced nothing else.
5. Her idea netted her a Golden Tortilla award in 1994 for her contribution to the Mexican food industry.
6. Tortilla chips with salsa is the official state snack of Texas.
7. The world's largest tortilla chip, however, was made in the UK at a Brewers Fayre restaurant in 2012. It measured 32 square feet and weighed 110lb. It required a 10 foot deep oven and took over 50 hours to make.
8. There are around 51 different brands of tortilla chip on sale on Amazon.
9. 100 grams of tortilla chips contain 465 calories. Also Sodium, Potassium, calcium and magnesium.
10. The name of the best selling brand, Doritos, means "Little golden things."

Who's That Girl?

Matt Webster lives in a tower block and attends a failing school. He dreams of being a spy like James Bond. Little does he know that he is being watched by someone who can make him into even more than that – a superhero.

His first solo mission is to attend a ball at the Decembrian Embassy and discover who is planning to steal a priceless diamond. While there, he meets the mysterious Lady Antonia du Cane, and is powerfully drawn to her. It soon becomes clear, however, that Lady du Cane is not what she seems. Matt’s quest to discover who she really is almost costs him his career.

A modern day Guy Fawkes gathers a coterie around him with the aim of blowing up Parliament with a nuclear bomb. To achieve this, they need money. Lots of it. Selling the Heart of Decembria Diamond will provide more than enough. All that stands in their way is the Freedom League – but the League is beset by internal disagreements. Can the heroes put their differences aside in time to save the day?

Prime Minister Richard Miller and his wife Fiona grieve for their daughter, Yasmin, who has been missing for three years, and is presumed to be dead. Viper agent Violet Parker could hold the key to what happened to Yasmin, but Violet is accused of giving away the organisation’s secrets. She is to be executed without trial. Will she take her knowledge of what happened to Yasmin with her to her grave?

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-Book

23 February: The X-Files

Dana Katherine Scully was born to William and Margaret "Maggie" Scully on this date in 1964. 10 things you might not know about The X-Files:

1. Creator Chris Carter got the original idea for the show from a survey, in which it was revealed that at least 3.7 million Americans may have been abducted by Aliens. “Everybody wants to hear that story,” Carter told Entertainment Weekly. Other influences were Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Twin Peaks, The Thin Blue Line, Prime Suspect, Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View, All the President's Men and The Silence of the Lambs.
2. Talking of which, Dana Scully was named after sports broadcaster Vin Scully and the character was in part based on Clarice Starling. Carter admitted it was no co-incidence that Scully had red hair. Especially when we remember that Gillian Anderson, who plays her, is actually blonde. There's another link – Anderson would later go on to star in the TV adaption of Hannibal as Bedelia Du Maurier, Lector’s former psychiatrist and accomplice. Jodie Foster in turn was the voice of a talking tattoo in the X Files season four episode Never Again.
3. While Carter thought Anderson was perfect for the role from the beginning, studio executives wanted someone taller and sexier. They had Pamela Anderson in mind. The actor who plays Mulder, David Duchovny, had yet another actress in mind that he wanted to work with – his friend, Jennifer Beals. Carter, however was adamant that he wanted a more "cerebral" woman for the role. He was so taken with Gillian Anderson, who was just 24 when she auditioned, that he coached her secretly on how to get the part.
4. She did get the part, as we know, but was paid substantially less than her co-star, Duchovny. Even for the 2016 re-boot, Anderson had to fight to be paid on an equal footing. Not only that, but for the first few episodes, she was expected to walk a few steps behind Duchovny instead of by his side. Even then her role wasn't assured. The network wanted to cast someone else when Anderson got pregnant. Again, Carter stepped in and created the storyline about Scully being abducted by aliens to allow her some time off. Her abduction would inspire several other story arcs in later seasons.
5. In real life, Gillian Anderson is the believer and Duchovny the Skeptic. Also the two actors didn't really get on in the beginning and used to argue a lot on set. It wasn't until 2008 when they were filming The X-Files: I Want to Believe that they realised they actually rather liked one another and became friends.
6. The Cigarette Smoking Man, played by William Davis, was intended, in the beginning to be an extra with no dialogue. Gradually, however, he was given lines and eventually became a major antagonist. More trivia about him – when he was cast in the role, Davis was a former smoker who hadn't had a cigarette for 20 years. Having to smoke and inhale on set was therefore a challenge. Later on, he was allowed to smoke herbal cigarettes instead.
7. David Duchovny believes he was given the part of Mulder because he showed up at the audition wearing a tie with little pink Pigs on it. His character was so named because Mulder was the maiden name of Chris Carter's mother. And finally on Mulder, Rebecca Toolan, who plays Fox Mulder's mother, is actually only one year older than David Duchovny.
8. The theme tune was inspired by a Smiths song – How Soon is Now, from their 1985 album Meat is Murder. A cover of the same song was used in the soundtrack of the series Charmed. The echo effect used for the X-Files came about by accident. Composer Mark Snow was struggling to find inspiration when he accidentally turned on the delay effect when he leaned his arm on the keyboard.
9. There are some recurring numbers in the show, too. 42, the answer to life, the universe, and everything, is Mulder's apartment number; he also claims to have seen Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) 42 times. Chris Carter's production company is named Ten Thirteen, because his birthday is on 13 October. 1013 is also the silo number that Alex Krycek is locked into in season three, and 10:13 is often the time shown at the start of episodes. Carter's wife's birthday (21 November) is another recurring number, although it appears as 1121 because they're American.
10. Because it's illegal, even for a cop show, to make a fake FBI badge, the ones in the opening titles have a different quote to the real ones. The real ones bear the words "Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Department of Justice" and the X-Files ones read "Federal Bureau of Justice, United States Department of Investigation."

Who's That Girl?

Matt Webster lives in a tower block and attends a failing school. He dreams of being a spy like James Bond. Little does he know that he is being watched by someone who can make him into even more than that – a superhero.

His first solo mission is to attend a ball at the Decembrian Embassy and discover who is planning to steal a priceless diamond. While there, he meets the mysterious Lady Antonia du Cane, and is powerfully drawn to her. It soon becomes clear, however, that Lady du Cane is not what she seems. Matt’s quest to discover who she really is almost costs him his career.

A modern day Guy Fawkes gathers a coterie around him with the aim of blowing up Parliament with a nuclear bomb. To achieve this, they need money. Lots of it. Selling the Heart of Decembria Diamond will provide more than enough. All that stands in their way is the Freedom League – but the League is beset by internal disagreements. Can the heroes put their differences aside in time to save the day?

Prime Minister Richard Miller and his wife Fiona grieve for their daughter, Yasmin, who has been missing for three years, and is presumed to be dead. Viper agent Violet Parker could hold the key to what happened to Yasmin, but Violet is accused of giving away the organisation’s secrets. She is to be executed without trial. Will she take her knowledge of what happened to Yasmin with her to her grave?

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-Book

22 February: Heinrich Hertz

Today was the birthday of physicist Heinrich Hertz, born in 1857. Here are ten things you might not know about him:

1. He was born in Hamburg, Germany. His father was Gustav Ferdinand Hertz, and his mother was Anna Elisabeth Pfefferkorn.
2. His father's family had converted to Lutheranism from Judaism when his father was a child. Hertz therefore wouldn't have considered himself to be Jewish, but he was Jewish enough for the Nazis to do their best to discredit him. They removed his portrait was removed from its prominent position in Hamburg's City Hall and tried to get the hertz unit of measurement renamed the helmholtz, for Hermann von Helmholtz, one of Hertz's teachers, which meant they could have kept the abbreviation, Hz. The scientific community, however, weren't having it – so the name remained.
3. As a boy, Hertz showed an aptitude for a number of subjects as well as science. He was good at languages, too, and learned Arabic and Sanskrit. He also had an aptitude for woodwork. When his woodwork teacher heard that he had become a professor of physics, he commented: “What a pity! What a fine wood turner he would have made!” The only subject Hertz was bad at was Music. He was excused from singing lessons at school because his singing voice was so bad.
4. He's best known for his work in proving James Clerk Maxwell's theories of electromagnetism. Maxwell had theorised, through mathematics, the functions of Electricity and magnetism. He also predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves. Hertz built a dipole antenna with a spark gap between the elements, and produced Radio waves with it, which he went on to measure. He established that the velocity of the waves was the same as the speed of light. He showed that light and other waves were all a form of electromagnetic radiation which could be defined by Maxwell's equations. He proved that electromagnetic waves can and do move through the air.
5. His work led, ultimately, to telegraphy, radio broadcasting, television, satellite broadcasting, cell phones and radio astronomy. During his lifetime, however, Hertz didn't think his work was of any practical use. "It's of no use whatsoever," he said.
6. Radio waves weren't the only thing he studied. He did a lot of work on contact mechanics, the study of solid matter objects that touch each other, and how they are affected by stress and friction. He also studied a concept called the photoelectric effect, which occurs when an object with electrical charge loses that charge very quickly when it is exposed to light, although he never got around to describing why it happened. It was Albert Einstein who continued the work and provided the explanation. Hertz's studies and Einstein's work eventually became the basis for quantum mechanics. He also developed a graph which could be used to measure humidity in the atmosphere, so weather forecasters have a lot to thank him for, too.
7. In 1886, Hertz married Elisabeth Doll, the daughter of one of his colleagues. She helped and supported him in his work, and also produced two daughters, Johanna and Mathilde. Mathilde went on to become a scientist in her own right – a biologist.
8. Neither daughter married, however, so there are no direct descendants of Heinrich Hertz. However, his nephew, Gustav Hertz won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1925, and Gustav's son, Carl Hellmuth Hertz, invented medical ultrasonography.
9. Hertz was just 36 years old when he died in 1894. His health had been failing for some time, and in a lecture he gave the previous year, he hinted that he might have some inkling he wasn't going to live much longer. “If anything should happen to me," he said. “You should not grieve, but be glad that I will then be one of the chosen ones who live only for a short time and yet live enough. I did not wish for this fate, but I have to be happy with what I am given. If I had a choice to make, I might have chosen this myself.” He died of sepsis after an operation to try and relieve his severe migraines. There's also some evidence that he may have had cancer.
10. In 1930, thirty-six years after Hertz's death, the International Electrotechnical Commission designated the "hertz" as the number of cycles per second of a periodic occurrence. The hertz is used to measure everything from radio waves to CPUs. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers awards the IEEE Heinrich Hertz Medal annually to individuals for "achievements which are theoretical or experimental in nature." There's also a crater on the Moon named after him.

Who's That Girl?

Matt Webster lives in a tower block and attends a failing school. He dreams of being a spy like James Bond. Little does he know that he is being watched by someone who can make him into even more than that – a superhero.

His first solo mission is to attend a ball at the Decembrian Embassy and discover who is planning to steal a priceless diamond. While there, he meets the mysterious Lady Antonia du Cane, and is powerfully drawn to her. It soon becomes clear, however, that Lady du Cane is not what she seems. Matt’s quest to discover who she really is almost costs him his career.

A modern day Guy Fawkes gathers a coterie around him with the aim of blowing up Parliament with a nuclear bomb. To achieve this, they need money. Lots of it. Selling the Heart of Decembria Diamond will provide more than enough. All that stands in their way is the Freedom League – but the League is beset by internal disagreements. Can the heroes put their differences aside in time to save the day?

Prime Minister Richard Miller and his wife Fiona grieve for their daughter, Yasmin, who has been missing for three years, and is presumed to be dead. Viper agent Violet Parker could hold the key to what happened to Yasmin, but Violet is accused of giving away the organisation’s secrets. She is to be executed without trial. Will she take her knowledge of what happened to Yasmin with her to her grave?

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-Book

21 February: Tarot Cards

Today is Card Reading Day. It's a day to read cards. There is no particular evidence associating it with tarot cards, but mention card reading and that's probably what springs to most people's minds. So here are ten things you might not know about tarot cards:

1. When they were first invented, they had nothing to do with fortune telling at all. They were purely and simply a game invented in Italy around the 15th century. It was called Tarocchi and it was a storytelling game. The object of the game was for players to make up poems and stories relating to the cards they were dealt.
2. It's not true that modern Playing cards evolved from tarot. Playing cards came from Muslim Spain, and pre-dated tarot by about 50 years.
3. There are 78 cards in the deck. The deck is divided into two sections called the major arcana and the minor arcana. The major arcana in the original game were the trump cards. There are 22 of them: The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Strength, The Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement, The World, and The Fool. They are all numbered apart from The Fool, although this is sometimes assigned the number 0. In card readings, these cards represent major life events.
4. There are 56 cards in the minor arcana and they are divided into four suits – Cups (related to the element Water; in readings they're related to emotions and relationships), Pentacles (The Earth element, relates to career, security and money), Swords (Air, relating to the mind and conflicts and life's challenges) and Wands (Fire – productivity, projects and goals).
5. The cards might have carried on being nothing more than a game if not for 18th century French occultists. Jean-Baptiste Alliette was the first to claim a magical element, and in in 1781, Antoine Court de Gebelin claimed that tarot cards were based on Egyptian religious texts.
6. It's not even strictly true that the church banned tarot cards as evil or heresy. They're not even mentioned in the list of things the Spanish Inquisition considered as evidence of heresy. (You weren't expecting that, I bet!) Cards might be used in gambling, so any bans were more likely to do with that than fortune telling. In fact, tarot cards were often exempted from bans because it was a game played by the upper classes, a bit like today when you can't have a children's party because of covid but a hunting trip is perfectly okay. The only thing the church did take exception to was cards depicting Popes.
7. There are numerous different tarot decks with countless themes and focusses (like the Aura Soma deck which links each card to a combination of colours) but the best known deck is The Rider-Waite Deck, which was commissioned by an occultist named Arthur Waite, a prominent member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, in 1909. The cards were drawn by Pamela Colman Smith, who was responsible for much of the symbolism associated with the individual cards.
8. Another myth is that gypsies brought the tarot to Europe and spread its use. There's no historical evidence for that. Gypsies told fortunes by reading palms and with standard playing cards. The idea that they used tarot was invented by Victorian writers.
9. Each card has a meaning, but the interpretations depend entirely on the person doing the reading. An identical spread of cards could be interpreted entirely differently by two different readers. They're not hard and fast predictors of the future, either, but show up possible possible opportunities, challenges, and outcomes. Nor is there any such thing as a "bad" card. Some methods of reading assign positive and negative meanings to cards depending on whether they land on the table the right way up or upside down. Drawing the Death card doesn't mean you're about to die. Most card readers interpret Death as something coming to an end and something new about to start.
10. Everyone has a personal card in the major arcana based on their birthdate. Want to know yours? Simply add up the digits in your date of birth and add together the digits in the total until you get a number which is 21 or less. That is the number of your card.

Who's That Girl?

Matt Webster lives in a tower block and attends a failing school. He dreams of being a spy like James Bond. Little does he know that he is being watched by someone who can make him into even more than that – a superhero.

His first solo mission is to attend a ball at the Decembrian Embassy and discover who is planning to steal a priceless diamond. While there, he meets the mysterious Lady Antonia du Cane, and is powerfully drawn to her. It soon becomes clear, however, that Lady du Cane is not what she seems. Matt’s quest to discover who she really is almost costs him his career.

A modern day Guy Fawkes gathers a coterie around him with the aim of blowing up Parliament with a nuclear bomb. To achieve this, they need money. Lots of it. Selling the Heart of Decembria Diamond will provide more than enough. All that stands in their way is the Freedom League – but the League is beset by internal disagreements. Can the heroes put their differences aside in time to save the day?

Prime Minister Richard Miller and his wife Fiona grieve for their daughter, Yasmin, who has been missing for three years, and is presumed to be dead. Viper agent Violet Parker could hold the key to what happened to Yasmin, but Violet is accused of giving away the organisation’s secrets. She is to be executed without trial. Will she take her knowledge of what happened to Yasmin with her to her grave?

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-Book