9 July: The Hayward Gallery

This date in 1968 was the official opening of the Hayward Gallery on London’s South Bank. 10 things you might not know:

1. The address of the gallery is Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX. The nearest tube stations are Waterloo and Embankment.

2. Its close neighbours in the Southbank Centre include the Queen Elizabeth Hall/Purcell Room, the BFI Southbank repertory cinema, the Royal Festival Hall and the National Theatre.

3. The gallery is named after Sir Isaac Hayward who was the leader of the London County Council when the gallery was built.

4. It was designed by a group of young architects which included Dennis Crompton, Warren Chalk, and Ron Herron, who were part of the architectural collective, Archigram. It was built by a company called Higgs and Hill.

5. It is the only gallery in the world to be built in the Brutalist style of architecture, which was popular in the 1960s.

6. Another thing which makes it different is that it doesn’t have its own permanent art collection but rather hosts a series of temporary exhibitions.

7. The Hayward Gallery’s main focus is modern art; has a reputation for taking risks and showing art that is not necessarily mainstream, but is more experimental. Well known names who have featured in the Hayward’s exhibitions include Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Antony Gormley, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, and Grayson Perry. That said, artists from before the modern era, such as Leonardo da Vinci, have on occasion been shown here as well.

8. The founding director was Joanna Drew. At time of writing the position is held by Sally Tallant, who took over from Ralph Rugoff in 2026.

9. The original plan for the Hayward Gallery included five main art spaces. There are two levels of indoor galleries and three outdoor sculpture courts. It has a large, glass-fronted foyer designed by Haworth Tompkins and added in 2003. A new glass pavilion, designed by Dan Graham, was also added above a new cafe.

10. Not based anywhere near London? The gallery has formed a partnership with Google Arts & Culture to create virtual exhibitions that can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

5 May: Carnegie Hall

On this date in 1891, Carnegie Hall, one of the world's most renowned concert halls, opened in New York. 10 things you might not know about Carnegie Hall.

1. The opening event was an orchestral concert, and one of the conductors was Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who conducted five of his own pieces. During his visit he kept a notebook which he called Trip to America, which was found after his death. In it, he listed a number of things he wondered about prior to the trip, such as whether it was safe to drink the water, what kind of hats people wore and whether he could get his laundry done.

2. The hall is situated 881 Seventh Avenue, between 56th and 57th Streets, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, and has a footprint of 27,618 square feet (2,565.8 m2).

3. There are three auditoriums with a total of 3,671 seats. 2,790 of these are in the Stern Auditorium which was named after violinist, cultural ambassador, social advocate, and civic leader Isaac Stern. The other two are Zankel Hall, and Weill Recital Hall.

4. The hall itself is named after steel magnate Andrew Carnegie who stumped up the cash to pay for it. It was designed by American architect William Burnet Tuthill, who’d never designed a concert hall before, but got the job through serving on a board with Carnegie. Tuthill also happened to be an amateur cellist. The style is Renaissance Revival, originally developed in Florence in the 14^th century.

5. When it was first built, it was known as the Music Hall and it was intended to make a profit (it’s a non-profit organisation today). Carnegie’s wife and conductor Walter Damrosch nagged him to build a concert hall to rival those in Europe. The need to make money affected how the building looks today. An original mansard roof was removed in 1894 to make room for studios musicians could rent in order to cover a deficit. It still wasn’t enough so an extra tower was added. This was designed by a different architect, Henry Hardenbergh, because Tuthill had got a bit pissed off that his masterpiece was being tampered with. The beams from the original roof are now a feature of the building’s offices.

6. The area in which the hall was built was known at the time as Goat Hill, where there was a brewery, which had been built there to take advantage of a natural spring. The brewery was demolished to make way for the hall’s extension. There were fears at the time that it was too far uptown to be a popular venue.

7. It fell into disrepair in the 1950s and at one point was scheduled to be demolished and a skyscraper built on the site. Civic leaders lobbied the city of New York to buy the venue for $5 million and establish the non-profit Carnegie Hall Corp. to manage it.

8. Many iconic classical works had their world premieres at Carnegie Hall, including Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 (From the New World); Symphonia Domestica by Richard Strauss, conducted by the composer; Concerto in F by George Gershwin with the composer on piano, and Variations on a Theme of Corelli by Sergei Rachmaninov, also with the composer on piano.

9. Zankel Hall was an art house cinema for a while and was allegedly showing porn movies in the 1970s.

10. There’s also a museum called the Rose Museum, which is open to the public, concert schedule’s permitting. People with tickets to events at Stern can also visit the museum in the hour before the concert starts.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

15 April: Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral

On this date in 2019, a fire broke out at the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral. 10 things you might not know about Notre Dame (“Our Lady of Paris”):

1. Its postal address is 6 Parvis Notre-Dame – Pl. Jean-Paul II, 75004 Paris, France, and its vital statistics are: Length: 420 feet (128 meters); Width: 157 feet (48 meters); Nave roof height: 115 feet (35 meters); Tower height: 226 feet (69 meters); Spire height: 315 feet (96 meters). The two towers aren’t identical: the south tower is slightly smaller.

2. Construction began in 1163 and was mostly completed by 1345. It may have been built on the site of a Roman Temple. An excavation in the 18^th century discovered pieces of a sculpted altar dedicated to Jupiter. It’s not known for sure, however, that these pieces hadn’t been recycled there from elsewhere. It is known that this is the case for one of the cathedral’s three portals: the Portal Sainte-Anne features a much earlier style of sacred sculpture than the others. This tympanum (semi-circular area of decoration), was recycled from a previous Romanesque church and had been adapted to fit the new space.

3. For centuries it was the home of what was believed to be the Crown of Thorns that was placed on Jesus Christ’s head during the crucifixion. This was one of the things which survived the 2019 fire and is currently being kept in The Louvre.

4. Among the survivors of the fire is a hive of around 180,000 Buckfast bees. The hive was installed in 2013 on the Notre-Dame sacristy. Buckfast bees were originally bred by a monk named Brother Adam and are known for being gentle. They make their Honey from Flowers in nearby gardens, and the honey was distributed free of charge to the poor. When the fire broke out, the bees simply hunkered down in the hive, protecting their queen and lived off their honey until it was safe to emerge. By 2020, they were back in business, producing honey as usual.

5. The ancient timber frames dating back to the 12^th century weren’t so lucky. Before the Fire this was one of the oldest surviving structures of its type. Each beam was made from an individual tree sourced from 52 acres of trees. This framework was, for this reason, nicknamed “The Forest”.

6. There was some damage done during the French Revolution when most churches were rededicated to the new Cult of Reason. Statues of Biblical kings inside the cathedral were decapitated by mobs and thrown away to be used as building materials. In 1977, however, they were found during work on the basement of the French Bank of Foreign Trade and installed at the nearby Musée de Cluny. Another casualty was most of the bells. Aside from a large one called Emmanuel which dated back to 1681, they were melted down to make cannons. New bells installed in the 19^th century weren’t as tuneful and it was 2013 before new bells were installed which sounded as good as the original ones.

7. Statues of the 12 apostles surround the spire. St Thomas bears the face of the architect, Viollet-le-Duc.

8. Notre Dame may have the largest organ in France. It has almost 8000 pipes (some dating back to the 18th century) and five keyboards. It was restored in 2013 to mark the 850th anniversary of the cathedral, and survived the fire with only some water damage caused by firefighters putting the fire out. Some some claim, however, that Saint-Eustache has a larger organ.

9. By the 19th century, Notre Dame de Paris had fallen into disrepair and could have crumbled to a ruin if not for two people. One was Napoleon Bonaparte who decided it was the perfect venue for his coronation, and Victor Hugo who raised awareness of the cathedral and its plight in his novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Incidentally, the main character in the story was always intended to be the cathedral and not the hunchback.

10. It was one of the earliest buildings to make use of flying buttresses. They were constructed around its nave in the 12th century to lend support to the thin walls. There’s some debate over whether Notre-Dame was the first church to have them, but whether it was or not, it certainly set a trend for them in Gothic architecture.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

3 November: Tunnel Day

Today is Tunnel Day, which celebrates the building of the first tunnel between two countries in 1930. The Detroit-Windsor tunnel was the world's first vehicular tunnel from the USA to a foreign country (Canada). Here are 10 facts about tunnels:

1. The word "tunnel" comes from the Middle English tonnelle, meaning "a net". This in turn comes from Old French tonnel, a diminutive of tonne ("cask"). So the word started life as a metaphor for a confined space like the inside of a barrel.

2. The first tunnels were probably made by prehistoric people who wanted to make their homes (ie caves) a bit bigger.

3. The first artificial tunnel was built in around 2200 BC by the Babylonians, to connect the temple of Belos with the royal palace.

4. In the middle ages, people in Europe were building small tunnels called erdstalls. This word derives from old German words for earth and mineshafts. They are typically just 1.0 to 1.4 metres (3 ft 3 in to 4 ft 7 in) high and a maximum of about 60 centimetres (24 in) wide. Nobody knows what they were used for. Possibly they were to escape or hide from something, but most historians believe they had a religious purpose.

5. The longest tunnel in the world is used to carry drinking water from reservoirs upstate to to New York City. It’s 137,000 m (85.128 miles) long.

6. The longest tunnel which conveys people is the Suzhou Metro Line 3-11 in ChinaSuzhou, China, which is 86,542 m (53.775 miles) long.

7. Some tunnels go underwater, allowing people and traffic to cross bodies of Water. Why not just build a Bridge, you might ask, since it’s way cheaper to build a bridge than a tunnel. There are many reasons why a tunnel is more practical than a bridge in some locations. It might be because of tides, or shipping traffic. It might be because building a bridge might spoil an iconic view as was the case with The Sydney Harbour Tunnel. The 1934 Queensway Tunnel under the River Mersey in Liverpool was chosen over a bridge because a bridge could get bombed or act as a landmark for enemy aircraft. The longest underwater tunnel is the 31-mile Channel Tunnel linking France and England.

8. The deepest tunnel in the world is the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland. It reaches a depth of 2,300 meters (7,546 feet) at its deepest point under the Swiss Alps.

9. There are numerous secret tunnels in the world. These are used for smuggling, like the smuggling tunnels in the Gaza Strip which connect it to Egypt, or Metro-2, a deep underground metro system in the Moscow metropolitan area designed to provide the Soviet leadership with secure wartime evacuation routes. There are probably any number of secret tunnels in existence now that by definition, we don’t know about. Yet.

10. Toronto has 30 kilometres of tunnels underneath its downtown area, connecting shops, subway stations and restaurants so people don’t have to go outside in severe weather.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

1 May: Chimneys

Today is Chimney Sweeps Day, so here are ten things you might not know about Chimneys.

1. The word “chimney” comes from the Latin word “caminus”, meaning “room heated by a Fire”. The space inside a chimney is called a flue.

2. The stuff used to seal the area where the chimney penetrates the roof is called flashing. The down-slope piece is called an apron, the sides are called step flashing and the upper part which diverts water around the upper side of the chimney is called a cricket.

3. The first chimneys were made by the Romans, who used tubes embedded in the walls to draw smoke out of bakeries.

4. Chimneys didn’t start appearing on houses until the 12^th century. The earliest surviving example of an English chimney is at the keep of Conisbrough Castle in Yorkshire, which dates from 1185 AD.

5. The Tudors passed laws to make chimneys safer. In 1582 it became illegal to build a chimney out of wood or any other flammable material. They had to be made from Brick or stone. The law also stated that the chimney must be swept four times a year to prevent chimney fires. If you didn’t do it and your chimney caught fire you could be fined 3 shillings and 4 pence.

6. The world’s tallest chimney is in Ekibastuz, Kazakhstan. Built in 1987, it’s 1,377 feet tall.

7. Chimneys aren’t just found on buildings. Ships and locomotive engines have them, too, although they might in these instances be referred to as smokestacks or funnels.

8. How does a chimney work? A fire warms the air in the flue, which rises, carrying the smoke with it.

9. Why does Santa Claus climb down the chimney instead of coming in through a door or window? St Nicholas was from Europe where it was deemed far too cold in winter to leave a Door or Window open for Santa to get in, leaving the chimney as the next best option. Also when Saint Nicholas wanted to throw coins through windows of a poor family and found the window locked, he’d throw the Money down the chimney instead.

10. Chimney fires can reach temperatures of up to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and can damage the structure of the chimney. They happen when soot builds up in the flue and a layer of creosote builds up. Having the chimney cleaned regularly helps prevent them. While they can be noisy and explosive and visible to people passing by as flames shooting out of the top, and people inside the house hearing a sound like a train or low flying aircraft, some chimney fires smoulder away quietly and you might never know you’d had one until you have your chimney inspected.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

5 October: Versailles

On this date in 1789 a crowd of angry women, protesting about the price of bread, gathered in the marketplaces of Paris. They were joined by revolutionaries and in due course thousands of people marched on the Palace of Versailles. This was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution. And a good excuse to present 10 facts about the Palace of Versailles.

1. The Palace of Versailles is located in the Yvelines département, Île-de-France région, northern France, 10 miles (16 km) west-southwest of Paris. It attracts over 8 million visitors a year. Since 1979 the palace has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

2. It started life as a hunting lodge for Louis XIII and his family. He enjoyed hunting and wanted a place to stay in the country rather than have to travel home in the dark. His son Louis XIV, “the Sun King” installed the Court and government there in 1682 and set about transforming the place in to the palace it is today. Every detail of its construction was intended to glorify the king. The entire property is laid out from East to West, following the daily path of the Sun.

3. The gardens were designed by André Le Nôtre and took 40 years to create. The gardens covered more than 30,000 acres, with 400 sculptures and 1,400 fountains. There were so many exotic plants and Flowers that the combined smells were said to make people in the nearby town feel sick. That didn’t stop members of the public from coming to visit the gardens, which were open to the public. There was a strict dress code, although if you didn’t own the right kind of clothing you could rent an outfit for the duration of your visit.

4. It was the location of the first Toilet in France. It was installed for Marie Antoinette and was known as the “lieu anglaise” or “place of the English”. This may well be where we get the English slang word “loo” from. However, nobody else had an en suite. Everyone else had a chamber pot. Made from Silver, of course. These were emptied out of the windows. It was said people carried leather Umbrellas in the courtyards to avoid being hit by something nasty.

5. The fountains caused problems. Versailles was not located near a river so sourcing the Water for them wasn’t easy. Artificial ponds had to be created, but even they didn’t provide enough water to keep the fountains going 24/7. Hence the gardeners devised a secret whistling code in order to warn each other when the king was walking in the gardens, so that as he approached, the fountains could be turned on and off again when he’d passed by, allowing him to think it was all working perfectly. Eventually, to have enough water for everything to work as planned, they had to pump water from Seine. Some of the fountains still use the same hydraulics network today.

6. Inside, the palace has 2153 Windows, 1200 fireplaces, 700 rooms (although sources differ and some say over 2,000 rooms) and 67 staircases. Everything used to construct and decorate the Palace was created in France.

7. Which brings us to the Hall of Mirrors. This room contains 357 mirrors and is flanked on opposite ends by the Salon of Peace and the Salon of War. Impressive as it is, it was designed merely as a passageway to get from one room to another and wasn’t a venue for ceremonies. The mirrors, however, posed a problem for the designers in their quest to make sure everything in the palace was made in France. This was because at the time, Venice was the only place making mirrors. So, they lured some of the mirror makers to France. Venice wasn’t happy about this and ordered all the mirror makers who’d gone to France executed for giving away the secrets of mirror making. The treaty that ended World War I, the Treaty of Versailles, was signed in the Hall of Mirrors.

8. The palace was so huge that there was quite some distance between the kitchen and the king’s dining room. Hence the meals would have left the kitchen piping hot but would have been cold by the time they reached the king. The sheer amount of marble used in the palace didn’t help, making it so cold in winter that it has been said that in March 1695, Wine froze in glasses on the King’s table.

9. Marie Antoinette had a rustic village built in the grounds which it was said was for her to go and play at being poor with her ladies, doing their own cleaning and cooking for themselves. Officially, though, it was a working farm and may equally have been a place for royal children to learn about farming.

10. In 1789, the French Revolution forced the royal family to return to Paris. The golden gate of the palace was destroyed by revolutionaries (there is a replica there now, installed in 2008) and many of the artworks were moved to The Louvre. The palace itself wasn’t ransacked however. Rather the king’s servants saw it as a chance to do repairs. It was never again a royal residence. It became the Museum of the History of France in 1837 by order of King Louis-Philippe.

NEW!!

The Gingerbread Man

A short story collection including aliens, princes and princesses, dragons, superhero origin stories and of course, a gingerbread man.

Paperback

  E-book

18 September: Royal Opera House

On this date in 1809, the Royal Opera House in London opened. 10 things you might not know about it:

1. The building which opened in 1809 was the second of three theatres to stand on the site. The first opened in December 1732, having been commissioned by an actor/manager named John Rich. He was carried there on opening night by his actors and the first performance held there was Congreve's The Way of the World. The theatre then was primarily a playhouse. King Charles II gave it, along with Drury Lane, almost sole rights to present spoken drama in the capital.

2. In 1808 the theatre was destroyed by a Fire and a new one, designed by Robert Smirke, opened on 18 September 1809 with a performance of Macbeth followed by a musical entertainment called The Quaker. This building was also destroyed by a fire in 1856.

3. Work began on the third theatre, the nucleus of the Royal Opera House as it is today, in 1857. This one was designed by Edward Middleton Barry, opened in 1858. Barry wisely designed it as a fireproof building. It opened on 15 May 1858 with a performance of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots.

4. The main auditorium seats 2,256 people, making it the third largest in London. It consists of four tiers of boxes and balconies and the amphitheatre gallery.

5. It is the home of not only the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet, but it also has the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and the Royal Opera Chorus. Both were established in 1946.

6. During the first world war, the theatre was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works for use as a furniture repository. During the second world war, the building was used as a dance hall.

7. A number of firsts took place in the various buildings during the site’s history, including: the first 'ballet d'action'. That is, a ballet which tells a story through dance. This was Pygmalion, performed in 1734; the first public performance on a Piano in England on 16 May, 1767. A Miss Bricker sang a song from Handel's Judith accompanied on a piano by Charles Dibdin. The first solo performance on a piano happened the following year on 2 June 1768, by Johann Christian Bach, Johann Sebastian's youngest son; it was the first theatre to use limelight indoors for the first time in 1837.

8. There was also a famous last. A famous actress called Sarah Siddons gave her last performance at the Royal Opera House. She gave a 10-minute long farewell speech after her final performance, as Lady Macbeth in 1812.

9. E M Barry designed a building adjacent to the theatre called the Floral Hall (now called The Paul Hamlyn Hall). It was originally a flower market opened in 1860. It too succumbed to a fire in 1956 and was derelict for a time. It was acquired by the Opera House in 1977 and used as storage space. It is now the atrium for the theatre and houses a champagne bar, restaurant and other hospitality services. Its original facade was stored away and eventually bought by Borough Market for £1 and added to the market’s structure in 2003.

10. The covid plague did the Opera House no favours. In fact, it lost 60% of its income as a result of the restrictions. It was forced to sell the 1971 Portrait of Sir David Webster by David Hockney which had hung there for decades, in an auction at Christie’s. It sold for £12.8 million and allowed the institution to survive.

NEW!!

The Gingerbread Man

A short story collection including aliens, princes and princesses, dragons, superhero origin stories and of course, a gingerbread man.

Paperback

  E-book

2 September: The Monument

On this date in 1666 the Great fire of London began. Today in London there is a Monument which commemorates this event. Here are 10 things you might not know about The Monument:

1. At 202 feet (62 metres) high it is the tallest isolated stone column in the world. The height is significant. 202 feet is the distance from the location of the Monument to the exact spot the Great Fire of London Started in Pudding Lane. It stands on the site of the first church to be destroyed by the Great Fire, St Margaret, New Fish Street.

2. It is a fluted Doric column made from Portland stone topped with a gilded urn of Fire.

3. Once it was decided that a monument should be built, the surveyor-general of the King's Works was asked to submit a design. The person in that post at the time was none other than Christopher Wren. He wasn’t entirely responsible for the design, though. Evidence suggests that he delegated the task to one Robert Hooke, an architect in his employ. It’s not known to what extent the two worked together on the design, but Hooke’s drawings still exist, signed by Wren, meaning it’s possible all Wren did was approve them.

4. Wren and Hooke saw this commission as a chance to make the building a scientific instrument as well as a monument. It has a central shaft that was intended for experiments with gravity and pendulums, and there’s a tiny science lab beneath it, which is accessible through a hatch in the floor of the ticket office. The top of the shaft is covered by a lid on the urn at the top of the structure. The laboratory wasn’t used much, however, as it was found that vibrations from the heavy traffic in the area interfered with the work.

5. All four sides of the base have inscriptions. The South side describes, in Latin, the actions taken by King Charles II following the fire. The east side describes how the monument was built and which mayors had an influence. The North side describes how the fire started and how much damage was done. The west side has a relief sculpture representing the destruction and restoration of the city. In 1681, anti-Catholic aldermen added to the inscriptions about the fire, placing the blame firmly on Catholicism, translating from Latin as “but Popish frenzy, which wrought such horrors, is not yet quenched”; and "burning of this protestant city, begun and carried on by the treachery and malice of the popish faction”. These words were chiselled out in 1830.

6. Construction began in 1671 and took six years, due to Portland stone being difficult to source.

7. The cost of building it was £13,450 11s 9d.

8. It is Grade I-listed and a scheduled monument.

9. It’s possible to climb the 311 steps to a viewing platform for panoramic views of London.

10. There’s also a monument on the spot where the fire was eventually put out. It’s called the Golden Boy of Pye Corner and is located on the intersection of Giltspur Street and Cock Lane. It’s a statue of a chubby cherub, intended as a reminder that gluttony was the cause of the fire.

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

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24 May: The Ashmolean Museum

On this date in 1683 the oldest public museum, the Ashmolean, was opened by Elias Ashmole in Oxford. 10 things you might not know about it:

1. It originated from a “cabinet of curiosities”, a collection of geological specimens, antique coins, books and zoological specimens collected by the gardener John Tradescant the Elder and his son, John Tradescant the Younger. The collection was inherited by one Elias Ashmole, who donated it to Oxford University.

2. One of the items in the collection was a stuffed Dodo, the last ever dodo seen in Europe. However, by 1755 the stuffed dodo was so moth-eaten that it was destroyed, except for its head and one claw.

3. In the early days, people who wished to view the collection were charged according to the amount of time they spent in the museum, rather than a flat rate.

4. The naturalist Robert Plot was the first keeper.

5. The first Museum was opened on Broad Street in Oxford in a building sometimes attributed to Sir Christopher Wren or Thomas Wood. It moved to its current location in Beaumont Street in 1894. The present Ashmolean Museum building was designed in the Neoclassical style by C.R. Cockerel. The old building is now the History of Science Museum.

6. In 2000, the Chinese Picture Gallery, designed by van Heyningen and Haward Architects, opened at the entrance. It is the only museum gallery in Britain devoted to Chinese paintings.

7. Other famous paintings you will find here include: The Hunt in the Forest, painted around 1470, by Italian artist Paolo Uccello. The subject matter is unusual for this period because religious paintings were the usual order of the day. The painting shows early use of perspective; The High Street, Oxford, painted by JMW Turner in 1810, Turner's only full-size townscape in oils; John Constable’s Willy Lott's House from the Stour (The Valley Farm), which is the building in his more famous painting The Hay Wain from a different angle. There are also drawings by Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci and paintings by Pablo Picasso, Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Paul Cézanne and Titian.

8. Other items include: a Viking hoard that was discovered near Watlington in South Oxfordshire in 2015; a collection of 61 historic English embroideries which span the whole of the seventeenth century; The Messiah Stradivarius, a Violin made by Antonio Stradivari; Arab ceremonial dress owned by Lawrence of Arabia; the death mask of Oliver Cromwell and the lantern that Gunpowder Plot conspirator Guy Fawkes carried in 1605.

9. The museum featured in episodes of Inspector Morse and Lewis. the painting The Hunt in the Forest (see fact 7) is a key plot element in the episode Point of Vanishing where the characters are instructed on the painting’s features by an art expert before solving the case.

10. There’s a real life unsolved art theft mystery associated with the museum as well. The theft took place on 31 December 1999, during the Fireworks that accompanied the celebration of the millennium. Thieves used scaffolding on an adjoining building to climb onto the roof of the museum and stole Cézanne’s landscape painting View of Auvers-sur-Oise, valued at £3 million. As they just took the one painting and it has never been offered for sale it is speculated that this was a case of an artwork stolen to order. To this day, the painting’s whereabouts are unknown.

New!!!

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

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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.