12 April

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 12 April:

1. In 65 CE the Roman philosopher Seneca was sentenced to death by Nero. He was ordered to slash his veins. His wife, Pompeia Paulina, elected to die the same way. Nero, however, ordered that she be saved. Her wounds were bound up, and she did not make a second attempt. Seneca, meanwhile, was taking a long time to die because his advanced age made his Blood flow slowly. He took poison, which didn't work, so he jumped into a hot pool to make the blood flow faster. He finally died of suffocation from the steam rising from the pool.
2. In 1727, Richard Smith, a Leicestershire youth, paid the ultimate price for poking fun at an army recruiting sergeant, who ran him through with his pike. Smith was buried in Hinckley churchyard and his tombstone is said to sweat blood on this day each year.
3. Someone who failed to die on this date in 1814 was Napoleon, who, faced with exile, tried to commit suicide by taking poison. He only succeeded in giving himself hiccups.
4. Someone in Toulouse, France, discovered a substantial amount of cash in their attic on this date in 2016. A painting, Judith Beheading Holofernes, believed to be by the Italian painter Caravaggio, was discovered in their loft.
5. Bill Haley and the Comets recorded Rock Around the Clock. on this date in 1954. It was originally the B-side of a song called Thirteen Women, long since forgotten. Rock Around the Clock became a hit in its own right when it was included in the film Blackboard Jungle.
6. In 1934, the highest velocity wind ever recorded on Earth, 231 mph, occurred on Mt Washington, NH.
7. In 1990, the Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Centre announced that Asteroids 4147-4150 would be named Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr after The Beatles.
8. In 1861, Confederate troops fired the first shot of the Civil War against Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
9. In 1997, Sri Lankan Sattmbiye Sriyaratne, a 36 year old entrepreneur, was arrested. Having won an award for being Sri Lanka’s best female entrepreneur, it was discovered he was actually a man.
10. In 1996 the 88 storey Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur became the tallest building in the world, beating the Sears Tower, Chicago by 33 feet. It wasn't, however, as clean cut as it seemed. Petronas was declared the tallest after a ruling by the Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, which ruled that the spires should be counted. Petronas is actually 200 feet shorter than the Sears Tower without the spires.

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.

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