1 February: Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire’s flag was adopted on this date in 2015. 10 things you might not know about Cambridgeshire:

1. The flag consists of three gold crowns to represent East Anglia, with wavy light blue lines representing the river Cam in the colours of Cambridge University on a dark blue background. The coat of arms features two Great bustard birds supporting the arms containing five blue lines representing the county's rivers, with the tip of a castle tower at the top. The motto is 'Corde uno sapientes simus' in Latin, which translates to 'Let us be wise with one heart'.
2. The lowest point in the UK is situated here, at Holme Fen, 2.75 m (9 ft) below sea level. The highest point in the county is in the village of Great Chishill at 146 m (480 ft) above sea level.
3. There are three cities in the county: Ely, Peterborough and Cambridge. The latter is unusual because it doesn’t have a cathedral despite having been granted city status in 1951.
4. Cambridgeshire was recorded in the Domesday Book as Grantbridgeshire, referring to the river Granta.
5. Cambridgeshire's county flower is the Pasqueflower.
6. Traditional nicknames for people from Cambridgeshire are "Cambridgeshire Camel" or "Cambridgeshire Crane", the latter referring to birds which were once abundant in the fens. "Fenners" was a name given to those who come from the flat country to the north of Cambridge. This term is considered to be derogatory these days.
7. Ely is basically an island, and the name comes from the eels in the waters around it. Its cathedral has the only Gothic Dome in the world, and it’s the place where St Audrey’s fair was held. St Audrey’s Fair was famous for selling cheap trinkets and baubles, giving us the word “tawdry”.
8. There’s a pub in Cambridgeshire which has been serving alcohol since 560AD and is therefore possibly the oldest inn still in use in Britain. It’s the Old Ferryboat Inn at Holywell near St Ives if you want to pay it a visit, but beware of the ghost. It’s haunted by the spirit of a girl called Juliet who died in 1050. The pub expanded over the site of her grave, now a stone slab in the bar floor.
9. Dishes originating from Cambridgeshire include College Pudding, a steamed suet pudding served to students in the halls of the Cambridge colleges, thought to be the fore-runner of Christmas Pudding. Huntingdon has given us Fidget Pie, traditionally filled with Bacon, Onions and Apples and served to workers at harvest time. Ely’s specialities include Celery Baked in Cream, because over half of Britain’s celery comes from there. Though it is probably more famous for Eels.
10. Famous people from Cambridgeshire include Christopher Cockerell (inventor of the Hovercraft), Clive James, Douglas Adams, economist John Maynard Keynes, Olivia Newton-John, Roger Waters and Oliver Cromwell.

Character birthday

Questor: A member of Combat Team Epsilon whose power is the ability to ask questions to which the being asked is compelled to tell the truth. Questor grew up in a children's home after his parents were killed in a suspected racially motivated attack. In the home, he became close friends with Suzy (Touchstone) and Chuck (Arrow). All three were abused by a member of staff. One night, the three crept out after curfew to cast a spell on the staff member in the hope the abuse would stop.

While they were out, a meteorite hit the orphanage, killing everyone inside. Questor found a fragment of the meteor at the scene and kept it. All three were adopted by one of the fire-fighters who attended the scene. The meteor fragment gave all three their powers, but also made them dependent upon it, so that none of them could be far away from it for more than a few hours before becoming dangerously ill. It also meant the three could never be far away from each other. The Combat Team Programme was an opportunity for them to use their powers, but only Combat Team Epsilon could offer all three a place.

31 January: Bingo

The Federation of European Bingo Associations was formed on this date in 2005. Here are ten things you might not know about the game of Bingo.

1. The game of Bingo evolved from an Italian national lottery which has been played since 1530. French aristocrats developed a taste for the game, where it was known as ‘Le Lotto’. Bingo as we know it was first popularised by a New York toy salesman called Edwin S Lowe when he heard about a game being played at fairs in Germany in the late 1920s. He reproduced the game for his friends, and named it “Beano” as players would use beans to cover the numbers as they were called, and call out “Beano!” when they won. Only one of his friends called out “Bingo!” by mistake and it stuck.
2. The word itself originated as slang used by British customs officers, used when the search of a suspected smuggler proved successful.
3. In the UK, 8% of the population play Bingo on a regular basis. 10% of all women and 5% of all men. And it’s not just old people, either, as many believe. Over one third of online bingo players are in the 25-34 age bracket. It’s also way more popular in Scotland, where one in five people play regularly, compared to one in twenty in the south of England.
4. Without Bingo, Catherine Zeta Jones might never have found fame: her dad won enough at Bingo to pay for her theatre school. A number of celebrities started their careers as bingo callers, including Simon from boy band Blue, Shane Richie, Russell Crowe, Kian from West Life and Chris Tarrant. Her Majesty the Queen was allegedly a Bingo fan, too, although when she won, she didn’t call “House!” (an alternative to calling out “Bingo!”) but would call “Palace!” instead.
5. Bingo cards were used in Germany in the 1800s as an educational tool to help students learn their multiplication tables.
6. In the UK, more money is spent on bingo tickets every year than on all footballing events combined.
7. Bingo cards are produced in strips of six, because it allows every number from 1 to 90 to appear across all six tickets. This way, a player can cross off a number each time one is called.
8. The most common winner’s name, statistically, is Margaret. So if your name is Margaret, you are more likely to win at Bingo than anyone else.
9. The average bingo game lasts between 3 and 6 minutes.
10. Bingo calling is almost a language in itself. “Eyes down” is what a caller says to indicate the game is about to begin and each number between one and ninety has a nickname or two. Often these represent rhyming slang such as “clickety-click” (66) or “Garden gate” (8). Others represent what the number look like, such as “legs eleven” (11) “two little ducks” (22) or “two fat ladies” (88). See below for some of the more interesting names for Bingo numbers.

1: Kelly’s Eye: military slang, possibly a reference to Ned Kelly, from Ned Kelly's helmet, the eye slot resembling the number 1.

9: Doctor’s orders: Number 9 was a laxative pill given out by army doctors in WWII.

10: At time of writing, Rishi’s Den, a reference to 10 Downing Street, the home of the UK Prime Minister. (previously Maggie’s Den, Boris’s Den, etc).

13: Unlucky for some, reference to 13 being seen as an unlucky number. Conversely, 7 is called as “Lucky 7”.

17: Dancing Queen. Not only a rhyme but the number appears in the lyrics of the Abba song.

21: Key of the door. A nod to the age of majority in the UK previously being 21. (It’s now 18.)

23: The Lord is My Shepherd. The first words of Psalm 23.

30: Dirty Gertie. A rhyme derived from the given name Gertrude, a nickname for the statue La Delivrance installed in North London in 1927. There was also a bawdy song called Dirty Gertie from Bizerte, a bawdy song sung by Allied soldiers in North Africa during the Second World War.

40: Life begins.

50: Bullseye, refers to the darts score; or 5–0, 5–0, it's off to work we go, referring to Snow White’s seven dwarfs.

53: Here comes Herbie! 53 being the racing number of Herbie the VW Beetle. Players reply, "beep beep!"

56: Was she worth it? Refers to the pre-decimal price of a marriage licence in Britain, 5/6d. The players shout back "Every Penny!"

57: Heinz varieties. Refers to "Heinz 57" slogan.

76: Trombones. Refers to the song Seventy-Six Trombones from the musical The Music Man.

77: Sunset Strip. From the 1960s television series 77 Sunset Strip.

80: Gandhi's breakfast. "Ate nothing", referring to his fasting.

90: Top of the shop. The highest number in bingo.

Character birthday

Sparkler, aka Ingrid Wheeler, is a nuclear physicist whose powers originate from exposure to radiation at the nuclear power plant where she worked. However, as well as the ability to emit high energy particles, the exposure has also given her cancer, which she knows will kill her eventually. Angry at the lax safety standards which led to the accident, and the refusal of her doctors to prescribe a drug which was effective against her cancer in the US, but was deemed not cost effective, she teamed up with Guy Fawkes, a man who was also angry at the government. Fawkes and Wheeler gathered like-minded individuals around them and formed the Gunpowder Lot, a group intent on overthrowing the government which they believed had wronged them all in various ways.

30 January: Robin Name Day

Today’s Czech name day is Robin.

The name is derived from old Germanic, and means “bright”. It Europe it’s primarily a masculine name, but in the US it’s much more popular as a feminine name.

10 famous Robins:

1. Robin Williams: American actor and comedian whose films include Good Morning Vietnam, Dead Poets Society and What Dreams May Come.
2. Robin Hobb: American fantasy author, known for the Farseer, Liveship Traders and Soldier son novels. Also writes as Megan Lindholme.
3. Sir Robin Day: British political commentator and journalist, famous for his TV interviews.
4. Robin Hood, an outlaw in English folklore, known for robbing the rich to give to the poor.
5. Robin Cousins: British Olympic gold medal figure skater, now head judge on Dancing on Ice.
6. Robin Gibb: member of the Bee Gees.
7. Robin Givens: American actress whose films include On Angel's Wings, The Family That Preys and The Expendables.
8. Robin Knox-Johnston: British sailor, first person to sail non-stop and single-handed around the world. In 2007, at the age of 67, he set a record as the oldest yachtsman to complete a round the world solo voyage.
9. Robin: Batman's crime fighting partner in the DC Comic Universe.
10. Robin Thicke: Canadian-American R&B singer-songwriter and musician. He is best known for his 2013 hit single Blurred Lines, and is currently a judge on the American version of The Masked Singer.

Character birthday

Didgeridoo: He was born to a family of nomadic Aborigines, somewhere in the Australian outback. His birth coincided with the arrival of an alien spacecraft, leading his family to believe they had been visited by gods who wanted their newborn son as a sacrifice. The aliens were bemused to find the baby left on a flat rock outside their craft with a didgeridoo, boomerang and blowpipe – but, wanting to study the human race, took the child in.

He grew up among the aliens who studied him extensively as he grew. He always knew he was not one of them, and on reaching adulthood, requested permission to go on a quest to his planet of origin and discover his roots. Permission was granted, and although he didn't find his family, he did encounter Captain Australia on a vision quest in the outback. The two became firm friends and frequently work together.

29 January: Pasiphae

On this date in 1880, Philibert Jacques Melotte, the astronomer who discovered Jupiter's 8th moon, Pasiphae, was born. Here are 10 facts about his discovery:

1. Pasiphae is the largest of a group of Jupiter’s moons which have retrograde (opposite direction to the planet) and eccentric (elliptical) orbits.
2. It was discovered in 1908 at the Royal Greenwich Observatory when it was spotted on a photographic plate.
3. When it was first discovered, astronomers weren’t sure whether it was a moon or an Asteroid, so they called it 1908 CJ.
4. Once they figured out it was a moon, they called it Jupiter VIII or sometimes "Poseidon".
5. It wasn’t until 1975 that Pasiphae was finally named. A name ending in "e" was chosen for this moon in accordance with the International Astronomical Union's policy that outer moons with retrograde orbits should all have names ending in “e”.
6. The moon is named after the wife of Minos, king of Crete. The best known legend about her is that Poseidon made her fall in love with a bull, and she disguised herself as a cow in order to have sex with the bull. Hence she became the mother of the Minotaur, a human-flesh-eating monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull.
7. Pasiphae is 14.6 million miles (23.6 million kilometres) from Jupiter.
8. The satellite takes about 744 Earth days to complete one orbit.
9. It’s thought that Pasiphae and the other moons in the group were originally an asteroid which got captured by Jupiter’s gravity and then collided with something. Because Pasiphae is the largest moon of her group, astronomers generally believe this natural satellite to be the largest piece of the original asteroid.
10. Pasiphae is affected by something called secular resonance, which means Jupiter “tugs” at it from time to time which means its orbit is gradually changing. The only other moon of Jupiter with this characteristic is Sinope.

Character birthday

Reptilicus: Reptilicus is amphibious and can live on land or water. He is happiest in water. While he is on land and under Obsidian's control, he is a vicious opponent to any land based creature. He will not, however, fight any fish, reptile or amphibian, or even human water-breathing variants, while they are in water. He lives in a large greenhouse on Obsidian's country estate, which has been converted into a tropical grotto. He can be seen there on occasion, lounging beside the pool and reading a newspaper. His origin is unknown.

28 January: Jackson Pollock

The artist Jackson Pollock was born on this date in 1912. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. He was born in Cody, Wyoming, the youngest of five brothers, and was named Paul Jackson Pollock.
2. He was usually quiet and introspective, but struggled with alcohol addiction, and was a completely different person when drunk, becoming aggressive and violent. In fact, people would buy him drinks just to see what he got up to when inebriated.
3. He’s famous for a technique called drip painting in which paint is dripped or poured onto the canvas, with the artist often using their own body and frenetic movements, like dancing. Another word used for it was action painting. Jackson Pollock is the most famous practitioner of drip painting, and was dubbed “Jack the Dripper” by Time magazine.
4. Pollock would give his paintings numbers, rather than names, so people would appreciate the painting for what it was and not try to find images in them.
5. His paintings get sold for insane amounts of money. In 2016, Pollock's painting titled Number 17A was reported to have fetched US$200 million.
6. Which brings us to the tale of Teri Horton, a truck driver from California. In 1992 she bought a painting for $5 to cheer up a friend. The friend didn’t like it, so Horton decided to sell it on at a yard sale. A local art teacher suggested to her that the $5 painting might be the work of Jackson Pollock. She is said to have replied, “Who the $&% Is Jackson Pollock?” which would become the title of the documentary about her subsequent research and quest to find out, by means of forensic experts, whether it actually was one of his. While the forensic experts concluded it was, the art world is still undecided. Meanwhile, Horton hung on to the painting, declining offers of $2 million and $9 million for it.
7. One of Pollock’s paintings has a fly in it. As he largely painted in an outbuilding of his home in East Hampton, insects would often get in and get stuck on the canvas. One fly’s final resting place is encased in paint in Number 31, 1950, which is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
8. Physicist Richard Taylor conducted computer analysis of Pollock’s paintings in 1992 and concluded that the fractal dimensions of Pollock’s earlier drip paintings closely resemble those found in nature. Pollock may have had some inkling this might be the case, as he once said, “I am Nature”. Moreover, the term Fractal Expressionism has been coined to describe Pollock’s painting style.
9. Despite having numerous exhibitions abroad, Pollock never travelled outside of the United States.
10. Pollock’s alcohol abuse would eventually be the death of him. He died aged 44 in 1956 in a single-car crash in his Oldsmobile convertible when driving under the influence.

Character birthday

Chain, aka Gary Winchcombe. A police officer, he was selected as the experimental “Super Cop” by the Metropolitan Police Force. He has no powers but is extremely fit and athletic, and trained in hand to hand combat. He wears a suit made of a fine chain mail (hence the code name Chain) which is bullet proof, water proof, heat proof, cold proof and more. He discovered, when he began working for the programme, that several of his friends had genetic variant powers, and they banded together to become the Chain Gang. In later years, Gary would move from field work to counter terrorism intelligence. He appears in From a Jack to a King and Killing Me Softly.

27 January: JD Salinger

J.D. (Jerome David) Salinger died on this date in 2010 at the age of 91. Here are ten facts about him:

1. Jerome David Salinger was born in Manhattan, New York on January 1st, 1919. His father was Jewish, of Lithuanian descent.
2. At school, the young Jerome, usually known as Jerry, was into acting rather than writing. He signed his yearbook with the names of characters he’d played.
3. Although Salinger was a prolific writer of short stories, he only ever published one novel, Catcher in the Rye, a coming of age story about a young man named Holden Caulfield trying to find himself after being expelled from school. This book is often on school reading lists, including mine – I recall reading it aged about 15. At the same time, it’s also one of the most frequently banned books of the past 50 years because there’s a fair amount of swearing and sex in it. It has been a favourite of killers, as well. Mark David Chapman, John Lennon's assassin, was obsessed with The Catcher in the Rye, and claimed, “The reason I killed John Lennon was to promote the reading of J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye”. Police found a copy of the novel in John Hinckley Jr’s apartment after he shot Ronald Reagan in 1981, and in 1989, Robert John Bardo had a copy in his pocket when he was arrested for murdering actress Rebecca Schaeffer.
4. Salinger served in WWII, and was writing Catcher in the Rye at the time. He carried pages of the manuscript with him into battle. He was present at Utah Beach on D-Day, in the Battle of Bulge and the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. After the war, he suffered a nervous breakdown, which today may well have been diagnosed as PTSD.
5. He met his first wife while working for the Counter-intelligence Corps in Germany. Her name was Sylvia Welter. She was a doctor, of French and German heritage. When Salinger and Welter married, they avoided the non-fraternisation rules by forging Welter’s papers so she didn’t appear to be German. It probably goes without saying that Salinger’s Jewish family weren’t impressed when he showed up back home with a German wife. The marriage only lasted 8 months, and may have ended when Salinger heard rumours Sylvia had actually been a member of the Gestapo. She returned to Germany.
6. Sylvia was the only love interest of Salinger’s who was the same age as him. Mostly, he went for much younger women. At 23, he was dating Oona O’Neill, who was 16. She clearly had a thing for older men as she dumped him for someone even older – Charlie Chaplin, who was 53, and became his fourth wife. Salinger’s second wife was Claire Douglas, who was 16 when they met. He was 31, and still involved with Jean Miller, a woman he’d met when she was just 14. Salinger dumped her after she persuaded him to sleep with her when she was 20, and went looking for Claire, who by now had married someone else. He enticed her away from her husband and they married in 1955, and had two children. Their daughter would later claim that the only reason Salinger married and had a family at all was because he’d read the teachings of Lahiri Mahasaya, a guru who wrote that being a “householder” was the way to enlightenment.
7. Salinger explored and studied a number of religions during his lifetime, including Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, Christian Science and Scientology. It’s possible part of the reason Claire and he divorced was that he’d frequently come home from his travels insisting the family follow a new religion. After the divorce, he built himself a house just down the road from where Claire and the children lived so he could visit them often. At 53, he started a relationship with Joyce Maynard, 19. She moved in with him after they’d corresponded for a while. “Getting a letter from J.D. Salinger was like getting a letter from Holden Caulfield but written just to me — It was a pretty strong drug. It was the only drug I took in college,” she would later write in her memoir. They were together for 8 months. Maynard states that she later found out that he’d written to many other young women, grooming them to be his future partners, including one while he and Maynard were together. He dumped her, possibly because she’d started expressing a desire to have children, or because he’d already met his future third wife, Colleen O'Neill, who was 40 years younger than him.
8. In 1948, producer Darryl Zanuck purchased the rights to one of his short stories, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut. Released as My Foolish Heart in 1949, it earned Susan Hayward an Oscar nomination, but Salinger hated it. He refused to sell the rights for Catcher in the Rye, although he didn’t rule out a film after he died, since he’d never have to see it.
9. He had a blazing row with one of his editors once. When submitting a short story, he’d insist that it must be published exactly as he’d written it, or not at all. The editor, A. E. Hotchner, was okay with that and agreed, but one of his colleagues changed the title and Hotchner didn’t find out until it was too late. Salinger stormed out, and the two never saw each other again. Salinger only ever gave one interview, to a high school student for the school magazine and was horrified when the local paper got hold of it and printed it. He also sued author Ian Hamilton for attempting to write a biography of him.
10. W.P. Kinsella did manage to publish a book with a character based on JD Salinger without getting sued. The book was called Shoeless Joe, and was made into a film, Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones.

Character birthday

Slim, aka Mortimer Fortelli. He is a member of one of three rival gangster families based in New York City. Slim is good looking, suave and charming; he is also the business brains of the family, dealing with the accounts and financial aspects of the “family business”.

26 January: Paul Newman

Paul Newman was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio on this date in 1925. Here are 10 things you might not know about him.

1. Acting wasn’t his first choice of career. He attended college on a football scholarship, but got kicked off the team for fighting. This was when, possibly influenced by his mother’s love of theatre, he decided to study drama.
2. He served in WWII as a radioman and rear gunner in Hawaii. He had started to train to be a pilot but it was discovered he was colour-blind which put an end to that. He narrowly escaped getting killed when his pilot went down with an ear infection and the whole crew was grounded. The rest of the unit were on board a ship which was targeted by a kamikaze attack.
3. The first starring role he had was in a film called The Silver Chalice, about a Greek slave who crafts the cup used during the Last Supper. The film was a flop, and Newman later admitted that he hated it.
4. In 1969 he starred in a film called Winning, about car racing. This gave Newman a lifelong passion for the sport. At 70, he was part of the winning team in the 1995 Daytona 24-Hours sports car endurance race making him the oldest driver to win that race. His love of racing would also net him a voice role in the Pixar film Cars, as Doc Hudson, the retired racing car.
5. He was a dab hand in the kitchen, too, and enjoyed making salad dressings, which he gave as Christmas gifts to friends and neighbours. One of his neighbours in 1980 was Martha Stewart who reported that a blind taste test had gone in favour of Newman’s recipe. Newman agreed to put his face on the bottle and call it Newman’s Own. The dressing and other foods added later did very well. Newman donated all the profits to charity. By 2015, the company had delivered about $430 million to charitable causes.
6. Newman, a Democrat by politics, found himself on Richard Nixon’s list of enemies because he’d supported 1968 presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey and was against the war in Vietnam. By coincidence, the two men were sharing the use of a car at one point, with Nixon and Newman both using a Jaguar from a car hire dealer for part of the week. Newman left a note for Nixon saying Nixon should find no trouble operating a car with a “tricky clutch.” Newman would later get a copy of Nixon’s enemies list with his name on it and have it framed.
7. He was a bit of a practical joker and frequently played pranks on directors, which often involved faking his own death. While making Slap Shot, he crawled behind the wheel of a wrecked car and pretended he had been in an accident, and while making Exodus, made director Otto Preminger collapse in shock when he threw a dummy off a roof to make it look like he’d fallen or jumped to his death.
8. On realising that he and his male co-star in the film Twilight in 1998 were being paid way more than Susan Sarandon, despite her having equal billing with them, he offered to give part of his salary to her to even things up.
9. Newman was married twice. His first marriage was to Jackie Witte. He divorced her after meeting Joanne Woodward during the production of Picnic on Broadway. He and Woodward stayed married for 50 years, until Newman’s death in 2008. They made 16 films together and were among the first Hollywood couples to move out of California to bring up their families. They lived in Westport, Connecticut.
10. It’s alleged that Newman once commented that there were 24 beers in a case, and 24 hours in a day, and that this is surely not a coincidence. This led students at his old college to start a tradition called Newman Day, on which students try to drink 24 beers in 24 hours. Newman himself disapproved of this behaviour and asked that Princeton University disassociate the event from his name.

Character birthday

Repp: Repp is the grandson of the founder of Hyperion Engineering. As such, he was born into a rich and privileged family and never needed to work. He also inherited a probability altering suit from his grandfather, the origin of which is unknown. He is a member of Combat Team Gamma. He is known for his playboy nature and is somewhat unreliable. He will always turn up for Combat Team fixtures, but often skips training sessions.

25 January: Cosi fan tutte

On this date in 1790 the comic Opera, Cosi fan tutte, premièred in Vienna. 10 things you might not know about it:

1. The full title is Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti, which translates to Thus do all [women], or The School for Lovers, but it is often simplified to “Women are like that.”
2. The music was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. He also wrote Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni.
3. The first performance took place at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 26 January 1790. It’s run only lasted for five performances, cut short by the death of the Emperor Joseph II and a period of official mourning. It ran again for about five performances in the summer 1790, and after that was never performed in Vienna again during Mozart's lifetime.
4. The first performance in the UK was in May 1811 at the King's Theatre, London. It was 1922 before the United States got to see it.
5. Reasons why it wasn’t performed much include critics of the time not liking it much, and also because the plot was seen as rather naughty and scandalous in the 18^th century. When it was performed it was often altered, or accompanied by an apology for the frivolous plot.
6. So what is the story? It’s about two soldiers called Guglielmo and Ferrando, and their girlfriends, sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella. The two soldiers are out drinking and the barman bets them that the women will be unfaithful to them given half a chance. The soldiers agree to the bet, and tell their girlfriends that they have been called to the front. Then they return, disguised as Albanians and set about wooing each other’s girlfriends. With some help from a conniving maid called Despina, they both persuade the women to marry them. A double wedding is arranged, but on the day the bridegrooms whip off their disguises and accuse the women of adultery.
7. The opera is set in Naples in the 18th century.
8. Mozart’s contemporary Antonio Salieri tried to write his own opera using Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto, but never finished it.
9. The opera is in two acts, is 180 minutes long and the orchestra consists of 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, harpsichord, strings, a chorus, and the soloists.
10. A version was performed by the Finnish National Opera in 2020 which used some of Mozart’s music along with other songs. This reworking was called Covid fan tutte, and was about a group of opera singers coping with restrictions and uncertainties.

Character birthday

Cat Burglar. As well as genetic variant powers, she is trained in hand to hand combat and other spy/Ninja type skills. Breaking in to high security locations and stealing artefacts is her speciality. She is also a master of disguise. Her story is told in Who’s That Girl?.

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?

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24 January: Desmond Morris Quotes

Born on this date in 1928 was Desmond Morris, zoologist and author. 10 quotes from him:

1. We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species.
2. I viewed my fellow man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape.
3. Biologically speaking, if something bites you, it is more likely to be female.
4. The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.
5. The news that is brought to us is nearly always bad news, but for every act of violence or destruction that occurs there are a million acts of peaceful friendliness.
6. Under crowded conditions the friendly social interactions between members of a group become reduced, and the destructive and aggressive patterns show a marked rise in frequency and intensity.
7. We are to put it mildly, in a mess, and there is a strong chance that we shall have exterminated ourselves by the end of the century. Our only consolation will be that as a species, we have had an exciting term of office.
8. Artists like cats; soldiers like dogs.
9. The roots of our Soccer Tribe lie deep in our primeval past.
10. If we did not carry in us the basic biological urge to co-operate with our fellow men, we would never have survived as a species.

Character birthday

Jet Stream: A solo hero about whom little is known. He wears power armour which absorbs moisture from the air and stores it until needed. His attack is jets of water.

23 January: National Handwriting Day

Today is National handwriting day. 10 facts about handwriting:

1. Why is there a national handwriting day, anyway? It started in 1970 and was created by the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association for advertising purposes. More recently, it has become a day to celebrate the vintage art of handwriting.
2. Andy why today? 23 January was the birthday of John Hancock, the first person to sign the US declaration of independence, which, like many other historic documents, including the Magna Carta, was originally written by hand.
3. The world’s first handwriting system was Cuneiform, the Sumerian writing system that emerged from Mesopotamia 5000 years ago. It consisted of writing etched into small clay tablets, tiny and hard to read.
4. Charlemange promoted standardised script as early as the 9^th century, in fact, he decreed that everyone in the Holy Roman Empire should use the same system. Called Carolingian minuscule, this uniform script dominated writing in France, Germany, Northern Italy, and England until the 11th century. Charlemagne himself, however, was illiterate.
5. In fact, most historic writing is hard to read. In Medieval times, after the Romans had gone, writing evolved differently in different regions, so there were basically accents in writing as well as speech. All books were written in Latin, but the letters were so different that many scribes couldn’t read writing from other regions. Needless to say, historians wanting to study old handwritten documents have to study the form of writing of their chosen period or region for years, and they still can’t decipher most of it.
6. Cursive writing is writing in which the letters are joined together in a flowing manner. It evolved to make writing faster and was first seen in the 1600s. The term derives from Middle French cursif from Medieval Latin cursivus, which literally means running.
7. Everyone’s handwriting is different, as unique as a fingerprint. Identical twins will have different writing styles to one another. This means it can easily be proved who wrote a letter or a document.
8. Some believe that a person’s personality can be determined by studying their handwriting. This is called graphology. While many dismiss it as pseudoscience with no evidence to support it, that doesn’t stop something like 3,000 businesses in the UK from using graphology as part of their selection process. In the USA, this is illegal.
9. It’s often claimed, even so, that good, legible handwriting is a sign of balance, organisation and good memory and is therefore to be encouraged. If your handwriting is awful, however, don’t be discouraged. Some say this is a sign of intelligence, and that you think faster than you can write, and you’re an independent thinker.
10. The inability to produce clear and coherent handwriting is known as dysgraphia.

Character birthday

Ebony: As a teenage street kid, she tried to steal Obsidian’s wallet. Obsidian, impressed by her skills and courage, took her under his wing. He was experimenting at the time with techniques to replicate genetic variant powers in un-powered people, and used this experimental technique on Ebony, who did gain powers, although not as strongly as Obsidian had hoped. Nevertheless, he still adopted her and trained her up to become a member of his team of super-villains, the Sinister Squad. Ebony appears in Eternal Flame.

Eternal Flame

The Freedom League's numbers have dwindled to three - but leader Unicorn knows his team isn't finished yet. The turning point comes with Russell, a boy with bright red hair and a genetic variant ability to start fires. He's the first of an influx of new members who will take the League into the future. 

Judith and Wil are child prodigies - Judith in physics and electronics, and Wil in medicine. They have another thing in common - they are both genetic variants. And another thing - they both have fiery red hair. They are drawn to one another as their destinies intertwine, but the course of true love doesn't always run smoothly!

Richard is not a variant. He's an Olympic athlete who has picked up useful knowledge from his unusual friends to add to his own natural abilities. A chance encounter with a dying alien throws him into a Freedom League mission in which his skills are put to the ultimate test, along with theirs.

The Freedom League's arch-enemy, the super-villain Obsidian, wants his family fortune all to himself. One person stands in his way - his niece, Fiona. Fiona, devastated by a family tragedy and her failure to get in to her first choice university, is miserable and has few friends. When she realises her brother's death was no accident, and his killer is also after her, she fears it may be too late to gather allies around her and learn how to use her own genetic variant powers.

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle

22 January: Vinegar

Today is the feast day of Saint Vincent of Saragossa, patron of vinegar-makers. Here are ten things you might not know about vinegar:

1. Vinegar is basically diluted acetic acid which has the chemical formula C2H4O2. The vinegar you put on your chips is usually 5% acetic acid mixed with Water.
2. The word vinegar is derived from French, “vin aigre,” literally meaning sour Wine.
3. You could argue that’s exactly what it is, a continuation of the chemical reactions which first turn the Sugar in fruits to alcohol and then the alcohol breaks down to acetic acid. It can happen naturally as wine spoils, or, if vinegar is the desired end product, acetic acid Bacteria can be added to aid the process.
4. Vinegar can be made from a variety of substances, including Barley, Rice, palm fruits including coconuts and dates, Grapes and Apples.
5. The Babylonians knew about it in 5,000 BC. They used it as a condiment and preservative and would add herbs and spices for extra flavour.
6. It gets several mentions in the Bible. For example, in Ruth 2:14, after working hard in the fields, Ruth was invited by Boaz to eat bread and dip it in vinegar. It was also an ingredient in the concoction Jesus was offered to drink on the cross. Matthew says it was mixed with gall and Mark says it was mixed with myrrh. Jesus refused it at first because the drink was typically mixed with a drug to dull the senses and He wanted to fully experience the suffering. Later, however, when close to death and severely dehydrated, He did drink it, so he would be able to declare, “It is finished” just before He died.
7. Staying with Bibles, The Vinegar Bible is a version of the King James Bible printed in 1717 by John Baskett, “printer to the King’s most excellent majesty” since 1709. Baskett went to great effort to produce a Bible with illustrations and accurate text. An experienced proof reader, William Denison, and several others, were employed to make sure the final product was perfect. However, it wasn’t. Quite a number of errors got through but the notable one was the chapter heading of Luke 20 which should have read ‘The parable of the vineyard’. Instead it reads, ‘the parable of the vinegar’ hence the title the Vinegar Bible.
8. Vinegar can be used as a cleaning agent. Uses I came across include disinfecting chopping boards and butcher blocks; removing wine stains from Cotton and cleaning Glass and steel. Cleaning CDs or DVDs so they stop freezing or sticking was also a suggestion. It is excellent for cleaning the gum on sticker-type price tags, and has been reported as an effective drain cleaner.
9. Medicinal uses it has been put to through the ages include treatment of ulcers, coughs, fevers, bacterial infections, and as a neutraliser for certain Jellyfish stings.
10. Balsamic Vinegar is made with grape must, wine vinegar and, in some cases, a dash of Caramel. It’s then aged in wooden barrels for 60 days to 3 years.

Character birthday

Shifter: Shifter is a native of Mars. He belongs to a highly developed race of Martians who live in an underground complex on a remote area of the planet. Living underground and the use of advanced cloaking technology has allowed his people to remain undetected by the probes sent from Earth. On one occasion they avoided being discovered by a probe by teleporting their entire civilization out of its path.

Shifter is a member of a growing faction of Martians who support making contact with the people of Earth. He was to be part of a mission to Earth, with three others. However, the conservative isolationists sabotaged the mission so their ship was destroyed just outside Earth's atmosphere. Shifter was the only one who managed to save himself by teleporting down to Earth. His actual date of birth isn’t known, but it was on this date that he first arrived on our planet. He made his home here, and is a member of Combat Team Delta.