10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 15 April:
- This date in 1452 saw the birth of Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer. He painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. As an engineer, Leonardo's ideas were vastly ahead of his time: a Helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. He designed bridges and aqueducts, flying machines, parachutes and Submarines. He sketched underwater breathing devices, cranes, pulley systems and even contact lenses. He proposed that the Earth rotates around the Sun and that the moon's light is reflected sunlight, and created the first textbook of human anatomy.
- Not a good day for record breaking Snakes. Two of them died on this date: Colossus, the longest and heaviest snake ever held in captivity in 1963; and Popeye, at 40, the oldest snake in captivity, in 1977.
- In 2001, a driver in Memphis, Tennessee drove around the closed gates of a level crossing to try and beat the train. He was killed in a head on collision with another driver who was trying to do the same thing from the opposite direction. The train passed by unimpeded on the other side of the tracks to the accident.
- In 1942, the entire population of the island of Malta was awarded the George Cross by George VI for the gallantry they showed against the Germans and Italians during World War II.
- In 1770, English chemist Joseph Priestley coined the term "eraser'' when he discovered that a small cube of latex could be used to rub out Pencil marks.
- In 1925, Sir James Barrie donated the copyright fee of his play, Peter Pan, to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children.
- In 2006, more than 285 cooks spent 3½ hours making the world's longest cake in Alanya, Turkey. The cake was was only 16 cm wide, but a record breaking 2,710 meters long.
- In 1738 the bottle opener invented. on the same date in 1852 the invention that could make them obsolete, screw-top bottles, were first patented by François Joseph Belzung of Paris.
- It was on this date in 1802 that William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy went for a walk on a blustery day in Grasmere and came across some Daffodils, inspiring the poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.
- In 1984 comedian and magician Tommy Cooper, collapsed from a heart attack on stage during a live television broadcast at the age of 63. Although he was an accomplished magician and member of The Magic Circle, his act generally involved bungling magic tricks. Hence, the audience thought it was part of his act at first and laughed, until it became apparent that he was seriously ill. He was pulled behind the stage curtains and given CPR, to no avail. For legal and medical reasons, Cooper's body could not be removed from the stage except by paramedics or the police, and as they say in the business, the show must go on, so the other acts were confined to the limited space in front of the curtains, at least until the next scheduled commercial break when the paramedics could come in and whisk Tommy away to hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
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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