1 April: Herefordshire

The ceremonial county of Herefordshire was established on this date in 1998. Since 1974 the administrative county of Herefordshire, formed in 1889, was merged with neighbouring Worcestershire to form Hereford and Worcester. However, on this date in 1998 the two counties were separated again.

1. The name Hereford is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word “Here-ford”, meaning “army crossing”.

2. It is bordered by Gloucestershire to the south-east, Worcestershire to the east, Shropshire to the north and the Welsh counties of Monmouthshire and Powys to the west.

3. Hereford is the largest settlement with about a third of the county’s population living there. Other significant places including Leominster, Ross-on-Wye, and Ledbury.

4. The county is home to the largest cider factory in the world, Bulmer’s. Bulmer’s has the largest largest vat too: installed in 1975 and holding 15 million gallons of Cider.

5. Hereford cattle are sought after worldwide as well. Cattle in Hereford have been bred to maximise beef yield since 1742. Which is probably why the Hereford United Football team is nicknamed The Bulls.

6. Speaking of which, The Bulls are in the record books for a dubious reason. In 1992 they had the most players sent off in a single game – four. Nevertheless they managed a 1-1 draw against Northampton Town despite finishing the game with only seven players.

7. There are two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the county. The Wye Valley, located south of Hereford, and the Malvern Hills in the east of the county, along its border with Worcestershire.

8. In 2004 a public vote chose Mistletoe as the country flower of Herefordshire.

9. Writers who found the area inspiring include Catherine Cookson, whose first novel was inspired by her stay in a hospital just outside Hereford in 1950, while in the late 1960s, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the bulk of Jesus Christ Superstar in a Herefordshire country hotel.

10. Famous people from the county include Sir Edward Elgar, Mike Oldfield, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Noele Gordon (Crossroads actress), serial killer Fred West, Richard Hammond (Top Gear presenter), Mark Labett (aka The Beast on The Chase), writer Dennis Potter, and, believe it or not, Frank Oz, the puppeteer who gave us the Muppets and Yoda.

31 March: Isaac Newton quotes

Isaac Newton died on this date in 1727, so here are some quotes:

1. I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.

2. If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

3. No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.

4. What goes up must come down.

5. Live your life as an exclamation rather than an explanation.

6. Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

7. What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.

8. Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.

9. The best way to understanding is a few good examples.

10. When two forces unite, their efficiency doubles.

30 March: The Turin Shroud

On Holy Saturday, 30 March 2013, images of the Turin Shroud were streamed on various websites and on television. 10 things you might not know about the shroud of Turin:

1. It measures approximately 4.4 by 1.1 metres (14 ft 5 in × 3 ft 7 in). It bears a faint image of a naked man with his hands folded across his groin. He has a Beard, moustache, and shoulder-length Hair parted in the middle. He is muscular and tall (approx 1.70 to 1.88 m or 5 ft 7 in to 6 ft 2 in). Reddish brown stains on the cloth are consistent with the wounds Christ would have suffered during crucifixion. It’s also consistent with the way bodies would have been wrapped for burial in Christ’s time. Although bodies would normally have been washed before being wrapped, this may have been a task delayed until after Passover.

2. The first historical record of the shroud was in Lirey, France during the 1350s. The story goes that a knight called Geoffroi de Charny showed up at a local church with it, and presented it to the Dean as Jesus’ authentic burial shroud. How Geoffroi got his hands on it, or where it had been for the previous 1300 years was not recorded.

3. The Catholic church declared it was a forgery just 30 years later. In about 1389, Pierre d’Arcis, bishop of Troyes, sent a report to Pope Clement VII claiming an artist had confessed to forging the shroud. D’Arcis accused the dean in Lirey of knowing it was a fake and using it to raise Money anyway. In response, the pope declared the shroud wasn’t authentic, but the Lirey church could still display it provided it was acknowledged as a man-made religious “icon,” not a historic “relic.” It was very common at the time for people to forge relics and sell them to make a quick buck.

4. The de Charnay family’s involvement wasn’t quite over. In 1418, with the Hundred Years War getting dangerously close to Lirey, Geoffroi’s granddaughter Margaret offered to hide the shroud in her castle for safe keeping. She then broke her promise to return it, and took it on tour, displaying it as authentic. In 1453, she sold the shroud for two castles to the royal house of Savoy. As punishment for selling the shroud, she was excommunicated.

5. It has narrowly escaped being destroyed by Fire twice. The first time was in 1532 in the Sainte-Chapelle in Chambéry, where the Savoy family had put it. The silver container it was kept in partially melted during the fire and drops of molten silver fell on the shroud. The burn marks and the water stains from where the fire was extinguished are still visible today. The second time was in 1997 when a fire broke out in the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, where the shroud has been kept since 1578. Firefighters had to hammer through four layers of bulletproof Glass to save the shroud.

6. The first photograph of the shroud was taken in 1899. What became clear then was that the image on the shroud was a negative. The photographic negative showed a positive image in which more details not previously visible could be observed. Which raises questions, since a medieval forger wouldn’t have had any concept of negative images.

7. Direct access to the shroud for scientific study was granted in 1978. There was extensive testing carried out on the material and the pigments forming the image. Carbon dating was carried out and determined with 95% accuracy that it dated to 1260-1390. Later on Italian scientists analysed the dust collected when the shroud and its backing cloth were vacuumed. They found traces of 19 different plants, originating from all over the world.

8. The bloodstains are actually human Blood. The blood is type AB and further tests revealed that some of the blood had come from a living person and some had come from a corpse. This showed that if it’s a forgery, the forger paid incredible attention to detail for the time. One theory is that the forger was an embalmer, who used one of the bodies he was working on to create the image. However, to create the image as it is they would have to press the material onto the corpse which would have distorted the image.

9. There is a word for the formal study of the shroud: Sindonology. It’s derived from the Greek word the Gospel of Mark uses for the burial shroud.

10. Real or fake, there is evidence that the shroud influenced the way people visualise Jesus. Images of Jesus before the shroud image was widely known depicted him as clean-shaven and baby-faced with short hair. Those images changed over time to match that of the face on the shroud.

29 March: Lemming Day

Today is Lemming day. 10 facts about lemmings:

1. There are about 19 species of lemming. They belong to the family Cricetidae and are most closely related to Hamsters, voles and muskrats.

2. They are native to USA, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Greenland, China and Russia.

3. The different species vary in size but on average they are 7-14cm in length (not including their tails) and weigh between 30g and 115g.

4. They don’t hibernate in winter. Those living in extremely cold climates will burrow in Snow to keep warm and eat tree bark and twigs. In summer they eat grass, moss, berries, shoots and roots.

5. They are solitary creatures as a rule, only coming together to mate. Although it has to be said, they mate a lot. The breeding season is usually during the warmer summer months from June to September, although some especially determined (or randy) individuals may start mating in January. In the summer the females are continually pregnant and can produce two or three litters of about seven (but possibly as many as 13) each year. The young are sexually mature after just two weeks and can start producing litters of their own.

6. It has been observed that lemming populations fluctuate wildly. Some years there will be lots, others they may seem to virtually disappear altogether. There have been a number of wacky theories which try to explain this, dating back to 1532 when Jacob Ziegler put forward the suggestion that lemmings fall from the sky during storms, and die when the first grass grows in spring.

7. Whatever the reason, one thing it definitely isn’t is that they throw themselves off cliffs in huge numbers when the population gets too large. This is a myth perpetrated by Disney. Although the concept dates back to the 19^th century when a magazine called Popular Science Monthly suggested that lemmings throw themselves in the sea so they can swim off in search of the lost continent of Lemuria. And no, this article appeared in August, not April 1^st! A 1958 Disney documentary called White Wilderness is to blame for popularising the myth, as it included footage of lemmings running across the tundra and apparently throwing themselves off a cliff. It was completely staged involving snowy turntables, clever editing, and it has to be said, a lot of cruelty to lemmings. The truth came out in 1983 and the backlash from scientists and animal rights activists resulted in White Wilderness being removed from the list of films on Disney’s website.

8. A much more likely explanation is that, while lemmings don’t migrate en masse, they will disperse if an area gets too crowded, in search of food and territory. They might tend to go in the same direction but not as a pack. They can swim, and might attempt to cross a river if it’s in their path, but will avoid doing so if they can. If they drown, it’s not intentional.

9. In the 90’s there was a popular video game called ‘Lemmings’, where players had to guide lemmings through various obstacles to stop them killing themselves.

10. Even if they get lucky, they only live for a year or two. They are seen as a tasty snack by many predators like Foxes, weasels, Owls, Wolves, wolverines, hawks, gulls, and falcons. There’s another myth that lemmings will explode if threatened. Needless to say it’s not true, but they will expose their sharp teeth and screech.

28 March: Lollipops

Today is National Something on a Stick Day, so here are 10 facts about lollipops:

1. The concept of something sweet on a stick goes back to prehistoric times when people used sticks to scrape Honey out of beehives. Ancient African and Asian societies had fruit and nut treats candied in honey, which is a natural preservative. They inserted a stick into the treats to make them easier to eat.

2. Lollipops as we know them began to emerge in the 17^th century when Sugar became more available.

3. Other words for a lollipop include lolly, sticky-pop and sucker.

4. The word was first recorded by English lexicographer Francis Grose in 1796. It may have derived from "lolly" (tongue) and "pop" (slap); or it might be of Romani origin, related to the Roma tradition of selling candy Apples on a stick. Red apple in the Romani language is loli phaba.

5. All that said, lollipops were allegedly invented by a man called George Smith from Connecticut who made hard candy treats on a stick back in 1908 and trademarked the name lollipop in 1913. He got the name from a famous racehorse of the time, Lolly Pop.

6. National Lollipop Day is on 20 July.

7. Lollipops can help save lives. Putting medicine in lollipops makes it easier for children to take.

8. A famous company making lollipops is the Dum Dum company, which started in 1923. Its founder thought that name would be easy for children to remember and say. One of the things the company is famous for it its “mystery flavour” which is actually created when one flavour is running out so they add a new one to the same vat, so it’s actually a combination of two random flavours.

9. The largest lollipop in the world was created in California in 2012. It was Chocolate flavour, 4 feet long, 6.5 feet wide and 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighing 3176.5 kg (7003 lb). The stick didn’t count towards the record but was 11 feet and 10 inches tall.

10. Other lollipop related world records are the most people licking lollipops together, 12,831, at a lollipop licking event in Valladolid, Spain in 2008; and the longest line of lollipops, 11,602, on Durban Beachfront Promenade, South Africa, in 2022, in aid of the National Sea Rescue Institute.

27 March: Gloria Swanson

Actress Gloria Swanson was born on this date in 1899. Here are 10 facts about her:

1. Her name at birth was Gloria May Josephine Svensson. She was born in Chicago.

2. Her father was attached to the US Army and so she moved around a lot as a child. She was an only child. Her mother dressed her flamboyantly to draw attention away from her large teeth.

3. She didn’t set out to become a movie star and when she left school her first job was as a sales clerk in a department store. She had a crush on an actor called Francis X. Bushman, and decided to take a tour of the studio where he worked. The tour guide saw her potential as a star and as a result, she got her first film role in The Fable of Elvira and Farina and the Meal Ticket.

4. Her early roles tended to be in slapstick comedies, of which she wasn’t a great fan. At one point she worked with Charlie Chaplin, but the pair weren’t the least bit impressed with each other. “All morning I felt like a cow trying to dance with a toy poodle,” she would later write, and Chaplin demanded she be replaced. Not that it was any skin off Gloria’s nose. “I would have been mortified if anybody I knew had ever seen me get kicked in the pants…by an odd sprite in a hobo outfit,” she wrote.

5. In 1925, she founded her own production company, Gloria Productions, giving her greater control over her career.

6. She was the original inspiration for illustrations of Morticia Addams in the New Yorker in the 1930s.

7. She was quite superstitious and one of her quirks was always sleeping with her head pointing due north. She would demand that hotel rooms be rearranged to accommodate this.

8. She had six husbands and had numerous affairs. She married for the first time at 17, to Wallace Beery and realised right away this had been a terrible mistake and filed for divorce when he gave her pills for morning sickness which caused a miscarriage. She went on to wed Herbert K. Somborn but he divorced her citing affairs with 13 men; Henri, Marquis de la Falaise, who despite the marriage ending in divorce remained a friend and with him she helped scientists flee from Nazi Germany; Michael Farmer, who she only married because she got pregnant and he threatened to ruin her career by going public with the news; William Davey, who tried to divorce her for mental cruelty when she tried to get him to admit he was an alcoholic. He died soon after and left her nothing in his will; and William Dufty, to whom she remained married until she died.

9. She was considered for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.

10. She was an early advocate of healthy eating and was known for bringing her own food to public functions.

26 March: Alfred Edward Housman Quotes

Alfred Edward Housman was born on this date in 1859, so here are 10 quotes from him:

1. All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.

2. Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

3. The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.

4. I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.

5. Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure.

6. Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free.

7. Whistle and I'll be there.

8. Oh when I was in love with you, Then I was clean and brave, And miles around the wonder grew How well did I behave. And now the fancy passes by, And nothing will remain, And miles around they'll say that I Am quite myself again.

9. I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.

10. Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders and brains, not pudding, in your head.

25 March: Day of Tourists

Today is Day of Tourists. 10 quotes about tourism:

1. I could spend my life arriving each evening in a new city. Bill Bryson

2. Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travellers don’t know where they’re going. Paul Theroux

3. The other day I went to a tourist information booth and asked, “Tell me about some of the people who were here last year.” Steven Wright

4. People don't take trips, trips take people. John Steinbeck.

5. The traveller sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see. Gilbert K. Chesterton

6. A tourist follows a trail; a mountaineer finds one. Reinhold Messner

7. The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist. Russell Baker

8. The average tourist wants to go to places where there are no tourists. Sam Ewing

9. Stay away from restaurants that have menus in five languages. That's always a tourist trap. You want to eat where the locals eat. Curtis Stone

10. When I land in a new country, I'm a tourist. I can't become a local in one day. Nuseir Yassin

24 March: Palm Sunday 2024

Palm Sunday falls on this date in 2024, so here are ten facts about Palm Sunday:

1. Palm Sunday is a Christian moveable feast, celebrated the Sunday before Easter. It is also the sixth Sunday and final day of Lent.

2. It marks the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, which is told in all four of the gospels: Matthew 21:1-11, Mark 11:1-11, Luke 19:28-44, and John 12:12-19.

3. On the first Palm Sunday, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a Donkey while crowds spread palm leaves and items of clothing in front of him, and cried, “Hosanna” which translates as “save us!” This fulfilled a prophecy in the Old Testament in Zechariah 9:9, about 500 years earlier. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.”

4. Why a donkey? Wouldn’t you expect a king to show up on a fine white horse? Perhaps, but this would send a signal that the king had come to wage war. It was traditional for a king to ride on a donkey if he came in peace. Exactly the message that Jesus would have wanted to convey.

5. In the ancient Near East, it was customary to cover the path of someone deemed worthy of great honour.

6. The Christian church marks Palm Sunday by blessing palm branches, which may be woven into crosses, and handing them out to the congregation. The crosses are kept until just before Lent the following year, when they are collected and burned to make ash to use on Ash Wednesday.

7. The palm branch represented goodness, well-being and victory, so is particularly appropriate to symbolise Christ’s victory over death.

8. Of course, palm trees aren’t available everywhere in the world, so in some countries it’s necessary to use a substitute. In Ireland, for example, they’ll use Yew, silver fir, spruce or Cypress instead and the day is known as “Yew Sunday” instead. In India, Marigolds are strewn on the ground on this day.

9. In Latvia, it’s called "Pussy Willow Sunday". Children are traditionally woken this morning by being swiped with a willow branch. Congregations at church will be given pussy Willow, which symbolise new life.

10. The colour Red is associated with Palm Sunday. Catholic priests wear red robes on this day.

23 March: Joan Crawford

Today is the birth date of the actress Joan Crawford. 10 things you might not know about her:

1. Her real name was Lucille LeSueur, although she was known for a while as Billie Cassin, thanks to a step-father who was briefly around. She ended up with the name Joan Crawford because her bosses at MGM didn’t like either of her other names. LeSueur, for example, sounded too much like “sewer”. So they held a competition in which the general public were invited to choose a name for the new star. The judges chose “Joan Arden”, but it turned out they couldn’t use that as another actress was already using it. So they reverted to the runner up suggestion of Joan Crawford, which had been submitted by Mrs. Marie M. Tisdale from Albany, New York, who won $500. Joan disliked the name. The surname sounded like “Crawfish” to her, and she asked at first that people called her Joanne rather than Joan. She was lucky not to be saddled with Boaty McBoatface if you ask me!

2. No birth certificate exists for her, so although 23 March is agreed by everyone to be her birthday, the year she was born varies according to source. Crawford always claimed 1908, but 1905, 1906 and 1904 are all often quoted. 1904 is unlikely to be correct, though, as she had a brother who was born in September 1903.

3. She always wanted to be a dancer, but nearly lost that dream when she trod on a piece of Glass as a child. Doctors said she’d never walk without a limp, but she was determined and practised walking and dancing every day until she could do it without pain. She went on to win Charleston contests and after that, in stage shows. She was spotted in the chorus of The Passing Show in 1924 by MGM producer Harry Rapf.

4. She was 5’ 3" with red hair and freckles. The freckles would be covered with make up and her hair colour varied depending o n the role she was playing.

5. She married four times: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Franchot Tone, and Phillip Terry and Pepsi-Cola president Alfred Steele. She also had many lovers. Rumour has it that Clark Gable, Vincent Sherman, and Spencer Tracy had affairs with her, and also that she was bisexual and had affairs with women, too. It has been rumoured that Joan had affairs with Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Greta Garbo, and possibly even Marilyn Monroe.

6. After several miscarriages, she was told she would never have a baby, so she adopted five children. However, the birth mother of one boy, called Christopher, showed up at Crawford’s home and demanded she give the baby back. The mother then went and sold the baby to another family. Crawford was single when she adopted her three daughters, Christina and fraternal twins Cathy and Cindy. In California at the time it was illegal for a single woman to adopt so she used illegal baby brokers. She adopted another boy while married to Phillip Terry and named him Philip, but when she divorced Terry, she renamed the boy Christopher.

7. It was Christina who published the damning memoir, Mommie Dearest, in 1978. Christina claimed that Joan was abusive, alcoholic and always put her career before her children. The book was a best seller and was made into a film, although Cathy and Cindy and even Christina’s husband claimed that most of Christina’s claims weren’t true.

8. Joan Crawford was probably OCD and a germ phobe. Whenever she stayed in a hotel, no matter how reputable it was, she always scrubbed the bathroom herself before using it. She used to wash her hands every ten minutes and follow guests around her house wiping everything they touched, especially doorknobs and pieces from her china set.

9. She would always reply to letters sent by fans and spent a lot of time writing personal replies and signing them. She was also more than happy to give her autograph to anyone who asked. She was also a supporter of a number of charities, and it was discovered after she died that she’d secretly paid for the medical treatment of hundreds of people who couldn’t afford it. Even the patients themselves had no idea who was footing their bills.

10. In later life, she became a Christian Scientist and due to her beliefs, refused treatment for the cancer which killed her in 1977.

22 March: Shopping malls

On this date in 1954 one of the first shopping malls opened in Southfield, Michigan. 10 things you might not know about shopping malls:

1. The earliest shopping malls as we know them today were designed by Victor Gruen, who took his inspiration from his home town of Vienna. The shops were arranged around an indoor court with fountains, goldfish ponds, sculptures, and plant life, so that people could socialise and hang out there as well as go shopping. His design quickly caught on and similar centres began springing up all over the USA.

2. From the start the architect Frank Lloyd Wright hated the idea. After visiting one, he commented, “You’ve got a garden court that has all the evils of the village street and none of its charm. Who wants to sit in that desolate-looking spot?”

3. Victor Gruen himself wasn’t a fan of what his creation evolved into in the end. He felt that the sense of community had been lost in the numerous copies and became nothing but “Giant shopping machines”. In a speech he made in 1978 he declared: “I refuse to pay alimony for those bastard developments.”

4. Malls, or shopping centres as we call them on my side of the pond, have their origins in public markets and bazaars. The first covered shopping passage was the Passage du Caire in Paris. The Burlington Arcade in London was opened in 1819. In the US, The Arcade in Providence, Rhode Island lays claim to being the country’s first shopping arcade, in 1828.

5. Key features of a mall are a food court, where a number of food outlets and a seating area are located, and at least one large chain store, which was necessary to draw in the shoppers in the hope they would also visit the smaller shops around them. These larger stores are termed anchor stores or draw tenants. In the UK these might be Marks and Spencers and John Lewis.

6. Sources differ as to which is the largest shopping mall in the world. According to Wikipedia it’s Iran Mall, in Tehran 1,950,000 m2 (21,000,000 sq ft), but the Guinness World Record is apparently held by The Dubai Mall which allegedly attracts more tourist visitors per year than the Eiffel Tower, Disney World and Niagara Falls combined.

7. The largest mall in America (and the world, according to some) is Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. Its area is 520,257 m2 (5,600,000 sq ft), but that figure excludes other attractions such as a theme park associated with it. Perhaps if you count all the extra attractions as well as the shops it would beat all the rest.

8. Films set in shopping malls include Chopping Mall (1986), Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge (1989), Eight-Legged Freaks (2002) and Night of the Living Dead (1968).

9. Like casinos, shopping malls are designed to make people lose their sense of time and get lost and hopefully make more impulse buys as they wander around looking for the way out which is by design not clearly signposted. It’s a not altogether unpleasant feeling and even has a name, the “Gruen Transfer,” after the designer of the first malls. Fact 3 suggests he might be turning in his grave, however.

10. While as recently as the 1990s, 140 new malls were being built in the US every year, there proved to be a limit to how many of them even the US economy could support. Many of them closed and were abandoned, and in 2007 no new malls were built in America at all. Abandoned malls became known as "greyfields" or "dead malls"perhaps only useful as locations for horror movies! Victor Gruen’s first mall was a victim, too, when its final anchor store closed on 22 March, 2015, exactly 61 years to the date of the mall's opening. There’s a website dedicated to abandoned malls: deadmalls.com.

21 March: Chanel No 5

As today is Fragrance Day, here are 10 facts about Chanel No 5, the first perfume launched by French couturier Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel in 1921.

1. Before Chanel No 5, Perfumes fell into two categories. Floral scents for fine ladies and musky scents for ladies of the night. Coco Chanel decided the market needed a new kind of fragrance for the modern woman of the time.

2. She asked French-Russian chemist and perfumer Ernest Beaux to come up with some samples. The story goes that she picked the fifth sample he presented to her and that’s how the name No. 5 came about.

3. Although possibly she’d have picked the fifth one even if it smelled disgusting, because Coco Chanel was especially fond of the number 5 anyway. She spent six years in a convent orphanage from the age of twelve, and the number five had a special significance there. The number five was the number of quintessence: the symphony of earth, water, wind, fire, and spirit; the pure embodiment of a thing, its spirit and meaning. The paths leading to the cathedral featured patterns relating to the number. Chanel would launch her new products on the fifth of May because she believed it was an auspicious date.

4. Chanel No 5 has over 80 ingredients including May rose, Jasmine, ylang-ylang and neroli from the town of Grasse in France, sandalwood and Vanilla. The formula has changed little since 1921, except for changes to certain animal based products in line with current fragrance industry requirements. It takes one tonne of flowers to create 1.5 kilograms of its “absolute”, the concentrated oil used in perfumery.

5. During the second world war, the resistance used modified Chanel No 5 bottles to carry secret messages, literally under the noses of the German occupiers. They didn’t suspect a well dressed woman carrying a luxury accessory. At the end of the war, American soldiers queued in Paris to buy bottles of it to take home for their wives and girlfriends.

6. The simple design of the bottle contrasted with other brands at the time, which went for romantic and complicated designs. Chanel based it on her lover’s Whiskey decanters. There was also a design feature only obvious when looking at the bottle from above. It’s the same shape as Paris’s Place Vendôme.

7. Coco Chanel herself was the first face of the brand in 1937. Since then a number of famous faces have appeared in the advertisements, including Ali MacGraw, Jean Shrimpton, Catherine Deneuve, Nicole Kidman (who starred in the most expensive TV advertisement of the time, directed by Baz Luhrmann, which cost US$33 million to produce), and Brad Pitt (the first man to appear in an advert for women's perfume). The face of Chanel No 5 at time of writing is Marion Cotillard.

8. A bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume is sold worldwide every 30 seconds.

9. In April 1952, Marilyn Monroe was asked what she wore in bed, to which she replied, “I only wear Chanel No. 5.”

10. The most expensive bottle of the stuff was a 30.4-ounce Chanel No. 5 Limited Edition Grand Extrait in red, handcrafted from Baccarat crystal in 2018. Only 55 bottles were ever made and it would set you back $30,000.

20 March: Henrik Ibsen

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen was born on this date in 1828. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. He was born into an affluent merchant family in the port town of Skien, Norway.

2. When Ibsen was about seven years old, his family’s finances took a turn for the worse. They had to sell their main family home and live in their summer residence outside of the city.

3. When he was 15, he left school to train as a pharmacist’s assistant. He considered university, but had already got the writing bug and decided to concentrate on writing plays instead.

4. His first play was called Catilina, written in 1850, when Ibsen was 22. He published it under the pseudonym "Brynjolf Bjarme". It was never performed.

5. His first play which made it to the stage was called The Burial Mound. It wasn’t a great success. Ibsen worked as a theatre director for some time, producing and writing plays. None of his plays during this era were great successes.

6. However, in due course he went on to write Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, When We Dead Awaken, Rosmersholm, and The Master Builder.

7. It’s thought that he based many of his plays on his own life and family. Common themes include financial problems, moral conflicts and deep dark secrets.

8. Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism".

9. Ibsen wrote his plays in Danish, which was the common written language of Denmark and Norway during his lifetime.

10. He married Suzannah Thoresen on 18 June 1858. They had one child, Sigurd. The couple lived in difficult financial circumstances and eventually, Ibsen became disenchanted with Norway and emigrated to Italy. Living in Italy and Germany he rarely visited Norway at all, although most of his plays were still set there.

19 March: Joseph Name Day

Today is the Name Day for people called Joseph.

Joseph is a male given name, derived from the Hebrew Yosef. Joseph was one of the two names, along with Robert, to have remained in the top 10 boys' names list in the US from 1925 to 1972.

Ten famous Josephs:

1. Joseph: son of Jacob in the Hebrew Bible book of Genesis, the one whose story was adapted into the musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

2. Joseph Heller: American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His best-known work is the 1961 novel Catch-22, a satire on war and bureaucracy.

3. St Joseph: husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

4. Joseph Dimaggio: American baseball playerr who played his entire 13-year career in Major League Baseball for the New York Yankees. Nicknamed "Joltin' Joe", "the Yankee Clipper" and "Joe D."

5. Joseph of Arimathea: secret disciple of Jesus, the man who assumed responsibility for the burial of Jesus after his crucifixion.

6. Joseph Stalin: General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1953).

7. Joseph "Joe" Barbera: American animator and cartoonist, best known as the co-founder of the animation studio Hanna-Barbera.

8. Joseph Frazier: American professional boxer regarded as one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time. Nicknamed "Smokin' Joe".

9. Joseph Carey Merrick: the "Elephant Man".

10. Joseph Jonas: American singer, songwriter, and actor. He rose to fame as a member of the pop rock band the Jonas Brothers, alongside his brothers Kevin and Nick.

18 March: The Severn Tunnel

On this date in 1873 construction began on the Severn Tunnel. 10 things you might not know about the Severn Tunnel:

1. At 7,008 m (4.355 mi) long it’s the longest rail tunnel in the British Isles outside of the London Underground network and the Channel Tunnel. It was the longest underwater tunnel in the world until 1987.

2. It runs under the estuary of the River Severn.

3. Only 3,621 m (2.250 mi) of it is under the river. Of the remainder about half a mile is in Gloucestershire and the rest is in Monmouthshire.

4. It took 14 years to build, opening in 1886.

5. It was constructed by the Great Western Railway (GWR) between 1873 and 1886 to shorten journey times between South Wales and Western England. Before that, a train journey would have to include a ferry crossing which was dependent on the state of the tide.

6. In Welsh, the tunnel is called Twnnel Hafren.

7. As of 2012, an average of 200 trains per day use the tunnel.

8. In 1924, the Great Western Railway started a car shuttle train service using the tunnel, so that drivers could avoid ferry crossings or a long detour by road. This service became redundant when the Severn Bridge opened in 1966.

9. On average, around 50 million litres of water per day infiltrates the tunnel. This comes from a large fresh water spring which was pierced by the construction on October 16, 1879. On that day, water poured in at the rate of 6,000 gallons a minute, overwhelming the pumps. Luckily no lives were lost, but the workers did get a bit wet! Someone presumably said, “We’re going to need a bigger pump” and several large pumping engines were duly installed, and continue working to this day. The source of the water is known as “The Great Spring”.

10. There is a 1 in 100 gradient on the Bristol side, and 1 in 90 on the Welsh side, which makes the operation of heavy goods trains difficult.

17 March: Irish blessings

Happy St Patrick's Day! Here are ten Irish blessings:

1. May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields, and, until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

2. May the leprechauns dance over your bed and bring you sweet dreams.

3. May the roof above us never fall in. And may the friends gathered below it never fall out.

4. If God sends you down a stony path, may He give you strong shoes.

5. May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead.

6. May those who love us love us. And those that don't love us, may God turn their hearts. And if He doesn't turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles, so we'll know them by their limping.

7. May you get all your wishes but one, so you always have something to strive for.

8. May the Lord keep you in His hand, and never close His fist too tight.

9. May the winds of fortune sail you, may you sail a gentle sea. May it always be the other guy who says this drink's on me.

10. May the saddest day of your future be no worse than the happiest day of your past.

16 March: James Madison

James Madison, the 4^th US President, elected in 1809 was born on this date in 1751. 10 facts about him:

1. James Madison was born in Virginia. His father owned a Tobacco plantation.

2. He attended Princeton (then called the College of New Jersey). He’s considered to be the university’s first graduate student, having completed his four year course in half the allotted time. Spending all his time studying and sleeping for just four hours a night didn’t leave much time to think about what he was going to do after graduation and so he ended up staying another year and studying some more. While Madison wasn’t awarded an advanced degree, the University now considers him its original graduate student.

3. He wasn’t exactly an imposing figure at just 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighing 100 pounds. His health wasn’t great and he had difficulty projecting his voice when making speeches. Despite his intelligence, his critics made much of his smallness and weakness. Washington Irving described him as “but a withered little apple-John.”

4. He was, by all accounts, a bit of a nerd. His hobbies consisted of playing Chess and reading Latin and Greek literature in their original languages.

5. His wife, Dolley, however, was a social butterfly and is said to have defined the role of First Lady as we know it today. She was a young widow when Madison first noticed her and asked Aaron Burr to introduce them. They married after just four months of courtship. He was 43, she was 26. Dolley hosted the first ever Inaugural Ball, and was also known for her work with an orphanage for young girls, thus beginning the tradition of first ladies taking on a public outreach project.

6. Despite his poor health, James Madison outlived two Vice-Presidents. His original VP George Clinton died in 1812, and Clinton’s successor Elbridge Gerry later suffered a fatal haemorrhage in 1814. Madison didn’t appoint another VP after that (or maybe nobody wanted the job, perhaps seeing it as a death sentence!) and finished his presidential term without one.

7. James Madison is known for writing, along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, a series of essays called The Federalist Papers, which made a major contribution to the ratification of the US Constitution. Hence he became known as the “Father of the Constitution.” To which he asserted that the document was not “the off-spring of a single brain,” but “the work of many heads and many hands.”

8. He once lost an election because he didn’t give alcohol to voters. When seeking election to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1777, he refused to adhere to the custom of “swilling the planters with bumbo,” or giving voters free booze on election day.

9. When British forces marched on Washington DC during the War of 1812, Madison, despite being weak and nerdy, didn’t run away. Instead, he borrowed a pair of duelling pistols and set off to the lines to help rally his troops. Sadly, the Americans still lost and the White House had to be evacuated, with Dolley overseeing the rescue of a portrait of George Washington. Hence James Madison is one of only two presidents to actually be present at a military engagement, the other being Abraham Lincoln at the Battle of Fort Stevens during the Civil War.

10. He died on 28 June 1836 at the age of 85, of heart failure, having refused medication that would keep him alive until 4 July so he could die on Independence Day like Jefferson, John Adams and James Monroe had done. He was the last surviving signer of the Constitution.