30 December

10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 30 December:

1. Rudyard Kipling, author and poet was born on this date in 1865, He's best known for The Jungle Book, Kim, many short stories, including The Man Who Would Be King and his poems, including Mandalay, Gunga Din and If. In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English language writer to receive the prize, and he is still its youngest recipient. He was sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, all of which he declined.
2. The world’s heaviest quintuplets were born on this date in 1956 in Pondicherry, India, weighing in at a total of 25lb.
3. Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley got married on this date in 1816, two and a half years after eloping to Switzerland, on learning that Shelley's first wife had drowned herself.
4. The first public concert was held in London on this date in 1672. The musicians performed behind a curtain while the audience ate cakes and drank ale.
5. In 1887, a petition was delivered to the Home Secretary for Queen Victoria, with over one million signatures from women appealing for public houses to be closed on Sundays.
6. The first subway in the Orient was dedicated in Tokyo, Japan on this date in 1927. Its last extension was added in 1980, making the Tokyo underground railroad network the sixth longest in the world at 135 miles. It is surpassed only by the subway systems in Washington DC, London, New York, Paris and Moscow.
7. In 1853, a dinner party for 20 was held inside a life-size model of Iguanodon created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and Sir Richard Owen in south London.
8. In 2017, Nepal banned solo climbers, double amputees and blind climbers from scaling its mountains, including Mount Everest, in a bid to reduce accidents.
9. In 1962, Pop Singer Brenda Lee was slightly injured when she ran into her burning Nashville home to rescue her poodle, Cee Cee. Sadly, despite her bravery, the dog, which toured the world with Lee, succumbed to smoke inhalation.
10. In 1980, The Selective Service System sent a warning to Mickey Mouse at Disneyland: Register for the draft or else! The Selective Service claimed Mickey was in violation of registration compliance. Mickey, aged 52 at the time, so presumably too old for the draft anyway, sent in his registration card proving that he was a World War II veteran.

New!!

A Superhero love story.

Sent away to school to get her away from undesirable company, Agnes finds herself homesick and lonely. A brief connection with Jason Warner leads to the teenage crush to end all teenage crushes. Jason is barely aware Agnes exists, but she plans her whole future around him.

It is only when they meet again as adults that the connection becomes mutual; but before it can develop, Jason makes a discovery which rocks his entire world. He needs time alone, away from everyone, including Agnes. When Jason is finally ready to go back to his old life, Agnes has moved on and he cannot find her.

Agnes is now a single parent to the remarkable Seraphina. The Power League want to harness Seraphina's powers for evil before the Freedom League become aware of her. Agnes has no idea her new colleague and friend is a supervillain with his own agenda, and his willingness to babysit is not as innocent as she thinks. As Incendio starts teaching Seraphina to use her powers, the Freedom League intervene. Little do they know that they have found one of their own.

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