Friday 11 February 2022

12 February

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 12 February:

Charles Darwin

  1. Two famous people from history were born on this date in 1809: Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the US, who was the tallest president at six feet, and Charles Darwin, English naturalist, famous for his five year journey on the Beagle, and for proposing the theory of evolution. "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change," he said.
  2. On this date in 1554, Lady Jane Grey, who had been queen of England for nine days, was beheaded after being charged with treason. She was 17 years old.
  3. In 1872, a Toothpick-making machine was patented by Silas Noble and James P. Cooley of Granville, Massachusetts. It could turn a block of wood into 7.5 million toothpicks.
  4. In 1982, a house mouse in Blackpool gave birth to a record litter of 34.
  5. In 2018, all flights to and from London City Airport were cancelled when an unexploded World War II bomb was found in the River Thames at King George V Dock.
  6. It was on this date in 1984 that Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean skated Bolero at the Olympics, receiving perfect scores and the gold medal.
  7. In 1429, the English and French waged the Battle of the Herrings. This oddly named battle was an incident during the siege of Orléans by the English in the Hundred Years War. Sir John Fastolf was attacked by the French while conveying provisions to the English troops who were besieging Orléans. The English managed to fight the French off by lobbing barrels of herrings at them, hence the name.
  8. In 1924, Howard Carter, opened the sarcophagus of Tutenkhamen to reveal a golden effigy of the young king. There was a small wreath of flowers inside which had retained their original colours.
  9. The first Barbie doll was sold on this date in 1959. According to Mattel, her full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts, and she is from Willows, Wisconsin.
  10. In 1996, children in Skokie Illinois had a marshmallow fight using 230,000 marshmallows. They'd wanted to get into the record books for the world’s largest snowball fight, but it didn’t snow, so they used Marshmallows instead.



A superhero love story:

The Power of Love

Willow believes in crystal healing, cosmic  ordering  and the significance of chance  encounters. She believes there's a spiritual  explanation for everything. Except she struggles to find a reason why she can turn herself into  mist and create a wave of energy which can slam a would-be mugger into a wall. Or why the love of  her life left her for a mysterious woman in sunglasses, who then disappeared without trace. 
 

A chance encounter with Firebolt, leader of the Freedom League superhero team, in a Glastonbury coffee shop, does turn out to be significant. He offers her a new start and the chance to use her powers for good.

Servant is a Christian who has joined the Freedom League in order to use his teleporting power to serve God. He and Willow clash from the start, yet they are drawn inexorably to one another.

When Willow leaves the team abruptly for reasons unknown, Servant knows he must put her out of his mind and find a nice Christian girl to settle down with. He is about to propose to devout and straight-laced Ruth, when Willow returns and turns his entire world upside down.


Available from Amazon:

Paperback


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