14 January: Seattle

On this date in 1865 Seattle was first incorporated as a town. Here are ten things you might not know about Seattle.

1. The name comes from Chief Seattle, a Duwamish Indian chief who befriended the early settlers. They’d changed the name – the town was originally going to be New York Alki. Alki is a Chinook word which translates to ‘by-and-by.’ Seattle’s nickname is The Emerald City because the city and surrounding areas are filled with greenery all year round, even in the winter due to all the evergreen trees. It’s also been known as Queen City and Rainy City.
2. Talking of which, Seattle has a reputation for being grey and wet. It isn’t, however, the rainiest city in the US. The average annual rainfall is about 38 inches, less than Houston, New York, Atlanta, and Boston. It might be that the rain often falls as drizzle rather than downpours. In spite of this, People in Seattle buy more Sunglasses than in any other city in the world.
3. Even if it doesn’t rain cats and dogs all the time, pets are still very popular there. In fact, there are more Cats and Dogs in Seattle than children according to the Seattle Times. Seattle is ‘second only to San Francisco for the scarcity of children.’
4. It’s also said to be the most educated and literate city in the US with over half the population over 25 having a university degree, and more bookshops and Libraries per capita than any other US city. One of those libraries broke the world record for a domino chain – made of books. The chain snaked through the library, with a segment which spelled the word “read”.
5. Seattle’s most iconic structure is probably the Space Needle. In 1959, a Seattle hotel executive and organiser of the 1962 World’s Fair, named Edward E. Carlson, travelled to Stuttgart, Germany. He was so impressed by the Stuttgart Tower, a TV tower with a restaurant on top, that he thought it would be a great idea to build something like it back home for the World’s Fair. He famously doodled the initial design for the space needle on the back of a napkin. However, despite being an icon, the tower isn’t the most photographed object in Seattle. That honour goes to a rotating Pink Elephant Car Wash sign.
6. In company with several other cities like Chicago and London, Seattle had a Great Fire. Seattle’s was in 1889 and was started by an overturned glue pot. As the original business district was largely made of wooden buildings, it was basically toast. After the fire, it was decided to rebuild the city on top of the old one, which means many parts of the current day Seattle sit 22 feet above the original city.
7. Between 2011 and 2014, Seattle had a team of real life superheroes. A mixed martial arts fighter called Ben Fodor, using the name Phoenix Jones, and a bunch of others using the names Thorn, Buster Doe, Green Reaper, Gemini, No Name, Catastrophe, Thunder 88 and Penelope, became the Rainy City Superhero Movement. They would patrol the city each night. It’s said that they stopped car jackings, confronted vandals, and escorted people safely to their cars. Once, during an interview with detectives, Jones apologised for not being in full costume, because it had been damaged during a confrontation with a drug dealer, and was in the repair shop. Rather than cruise the streets of Seattle in a vehicle like the Batmobile, the car the bad guys needed to look out for was a Kia.
8. There’s a bridge in Seattle with a troll under it. The Aurora Bridge was built in 1932 and numerous people reported seeing a troll underneath it. Since 1989 there has been a statue of a giant troll, 18 feet high, made by sculptor Steve Badanes and inspired by the troll in Three Billy Goats Gruff. Though it is a Volkswagen Beetle, rather than a goat, which it is crushing in its gigantic hands. Staying with the supernatural, Seattle also has more UFO sightings per capita than anywhere else in the US, 78.2 sightings per 100,000 people to be exact. That’s more than Roswell, New Mexico, Area 51, and the ‘UFO Highway.’ In fact, it was a Seattle resident named Kenneth Arnold who first coined the phrase, “flying saucer”.
9. There’s a wall there which is covered in thousands of pieces of chewed gum. In Post Alley, the Gum Wall is covered in multi-coloured blobs of gum to a height of 20 feet. It all started in 1990 when people waiting to get into shows at Unexpected Productions would discard their gum on the wall and sometimes stick coins in it, too.
10. Some other things you might find in Seattle include a giant bronze statue of a Pig, named Rachel; an all black, angular building nicknamed the ‘Darth Vader Building’; the longest floating bridge in the world; and more glass-blowing studios than anywhere else in the country. In fact, the only place in the world to have more is the Italian island of Murano.

Character birthday

Wilhelmina Warner: Superwil’s younger sister. Born in Ireland, but left home as a teenager with a galactic adventurer she had started a relationship with. A life of cruising the galaxy with a space motorcycle gang held an irresistible appeal for her. She occasionally visits Earth to see her family. Find her in Eternal Flame and A Very Variant Christmas.

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.

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