15 August: Tivoli Gardens

On this date in 1843 The Tivoli Pleasure Gardens opened in Copenhagen, Denmark. 10 facts you might not know.

1. It’s the second oldest amusement park in the world. The oldest is Dyrehavsbakken in Klampenborg, also in Denmark.

2. It was named after gardens in Paris and London, its initial name being "Tivoli & Vauxhall". The name was taken from the Jardin de Tivoli in Paris and Vauxhall Gardens in London.

3. It was founded by Georg Carstensen, who talked King Christian VIII into giving him a charter to create it by telling him, "when the people are amusing themselves, they do not think about politics". In other words, “if I distract them with an amusement park, they won’t think about deposing you.” The King gave Carstensen use of roughly 15 acres (61,000 m2) of land for an annual rent. Until the 1850s the park was outside the city.

4. One of the attractions there is Rutschebanen, one of the oldest still operating wooden Roller Coasters in the world, which I’m guessing is fairly tame compared to the more recent addition, Dæmonen (The Demon) which features an Immelmann loop, a vertical loop, and a zero-G roll in a ride of just one minute and forty six seconds.

5. Tivoli Gardens’ first Ferris Wheel was a steam-powered attraction with six gondolas, debuted in 1884. The gondolas were shaped like Hot air balloons. The Ferris wheel that is there now dates back to 1943 and is the third one to stand there. It was inaugurated for Tivoli’s 100th anniversary.

6. The park has inspired writers and film makers, starting with Hans Christian Andersen, who visited early on and used it as inspiration for his tale The Nightingale. It has been mentioned in numerous books and used as a film location, and possibly inspired Disneyland, too. Walt Disney is known to have visited before Disneyland opened, and he echoed Carstensen’s comment that "Tivoli will never, so to speak, be finished," when he said "Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world".

7. Tivoli Lake was originally part of the city’s moat. It was created in 1887 when the western ramparts of Copenhagen’s fortifications were demolished.

8. Performing arts are also a feature, with a theatre specifically for performances of Pantomimes, a concert hall, and an open air stage. There’s also the Tivoli Youth Guard, which Carstensen established in 1844 as a new attraction. It is a marching band made up of boys (and today girls, too) aged 9-16 and became so popular that it was one of Denmark’s best music education programs for children.

9. During the second world war, the Nazis attacked and destroyed several of the park’s buildings including burning down the Concert Hall in 1943 and bombing parts of Rutschebanen in 1944. Repairs and renovations happened very quickly as the Danish Government thought it important for morale to get the park working again as quickly as possible.

10. Carstensen held the position of director for just five years. He was fired by the board for breach of contract in 1848, when he went to fight in the First Schleswig War. He later returned to Denmark with plans to open a rival theme park in Frederiksberg called the Alhambra. It opened in 1857, but Carstensen wasn’t there – he’d died of pneumonia earlier that year, aged just 44.

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/

7 July: Jon Pertwee

Born on this date in 1919: Jon Pertwee, actor best known for playing Doctor Who, the third incarnation of the Doctor from 1970 to 1974, and as the title character in the series Worzel Gummidge.

1. His surname is an Anglicisation of "Perthuis", "de Perthuis de Laillevault", a family of counts descended from Charlemange. Pertwee himself was born in Chelsea.

2. One of his childhood friends was Christopher Robin Milne.

3. He got expelled from several schools, once for swinging from lavatory chains, pretending to be Tarzan. He was expelled from RADA as well, although accounts differ as to the reason. Some say he wrote rude words on the toilet walls; others say it was because he refused to play a Greek wind in a play.

4. He was a top class scuba diver and water skier and loved fast cars and motorbikes. His love of bikes was lifelong. As a schoolboy he worked as a circus performer riding the wall of death on a motorcycle with a toothless Lion in the sidecar; and he was still riding his last bike, a Honda VT500E, at the age of 74.

5. He served in the Navy and British Intelligence. During his time in the Navy, he got drunk one night and got a tattoo of a cobra on his arm, and narrowly missed being a casualty on HMS Hood, sunk by the Bismark. He’d transferred off the Hood days earlier for officer training. He went on to serve in the top secret Naval Intelligence Division, reporting directly to Prime Minister Winston Churchill. One of his colleagues there was future James Bond author Ian Fleming, giving rise to rumours that he was one of the people used as inspiration for Bond.

6. He and his brother Michael were founder members of The Waistcoat Club, set up in 1953 as a protest against the drabness of male attire. Pertwee collected waistcoats and had a huge collection, some of which were 300 years old. Peter Cushing was also a member.

7. Although most famous for playing Doctor Who, his favourite role was that of Worzel Gummidge. As Worzel, he had a hit record in 1980 with Worzel's Song, and specified in his will that he wanted to be cremated with an effigy of Worzel attached to his coffin. That didn’t go entirely to plan as the effigy fell off the coffin as the curtains closed. "That's Jon for you. Always playing it for laughs", opined one of the mourners present.

8. His favourite Doctor Who episode was The Dæmons: Episode One (1971) and his favourite aliens were the Draconians from the 1973 story Frontier in Space. His favourite song was Georgia on My Mind by Ray Charles. His favourite animated film was Aladdin, and he would have arguments with his friend Spike Milligan over which of them was the biggest Aladdin fan.

9. Pertwee was considered for the role of Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army and also that of Alfred Pennyworth in a Batman adaptation starring Harrison Ford that Stephen Spielberg almost made. His son Sean would play the role of Alfred in Gotham in 2014.

10. He wrote two autobiographies: Moon Boots and Dinner Suits in 1984 and I Am The Doctor in 1996.

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/

2 July: Blithe Spirit

On this date in 1941, 85 years ago, Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit premièred in London. Ten facts about the play.

1. The title is taken from Shelley's poem To a Skylark, ("Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! / Bird thou never wert").

2. What’s it about? A novelist called Charles Condomine holds a séance at his house in order to gather material for his next book. The clairvoyant medium is called Madame Arcati. The séance has the unfortunate side effect of summoning the ghost of Condomine’s deceased first wife, Elvira, who continues to haunt him afterwards and tries to disrupt his second marriage to Ruth. Charles can see and hear the ghost; Ruth cannot. Elvira’s plot to get Charles to join her in the spirit world by sabotaging his car backfires when Ruth uses the car and is killed instead. Her spirit returns to get revenge on Elvira. Charles can’t see Ruth, but can tell something is tormenting Elvira. He calls Madame Arcati back to exorcise both the spirits, but instead she unintentionally materialises Ruth. It turns out, one of the housemaids is psychic and has been the conduit for the ghosts. With that knowledge, Madame Arcati manages to make the ghosts vanish, but warns that just because Charles can’t see them doesn’t mean they are not still there potentially causing havoc and that he should move as far away as possible. He takes her advice and after he leaves the ghosts trash the house.

3. Coward had been toying with the idea of a play about ghosts for some time. His original idea was not unlike the concept of the BBC TV series Ghosts: an old house haunted by spirits from different periods in history, only set in Paris, with humour arising from their different attitudes to things. However, he could never quite figure out an exact plot.

4. The breakthrough came after Coward’s flat was bombed during The Blitz and he took a holiday in Wales, Portmeirion on the coast of Snowdonia, to be exact. His companion for the trip was Joyce Carey, an actress who was writing a play about John Keats. Sitting on the beach one morning, Coward ended up bouncing ideas off of Carey and later wrote that by lunchtime he had a basic plot, the title and the names of the main characters. The next morning, Coward sat down at a Typewriter and started writing.

5. The script changed little from that first draft, although he did tone down some of Madame Arcati’s humorous lines as he decided she should be a person who took herself rather seriously.

6. He had to change the name of one person referred to in the séance. The late “old Mrs Leggatt” had to change because of a tragic event in real life. Lord Monkton’s secretary Shelagh Leggatt was killed in a plane crash around that time and it made the news. The script was immediately changed to say ‘Mrs Plummet’, which, you could argue, wasn’t much better!

7. The reception from critics was positive. The Manchester Guardian thought it "not untouched by genius of a sort”, and The Times said it compared favourably, not only with Coward’s previous plays but also with Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

8. This was in spite of initial reservations that writing a comedy about death in the middle of a world war was a bit of a risk. The risk paid off, though, and showed Coward’s sheer talent as he was able to pull it off. Blithe Spirit ran for 1,997 performances, a new record for a non-musical play in London.

9. Charles Condomine was played by Coward himself at some points during the play’s tour and also by John Gielgud. The role of Madam Arcati has been taken on by some big names, too. Actors who have played her include Margaret Rutherford (in the original 1941 production), Beryl Reid, Dora Bryan, Penelope Keith, Alison Steadman, Hattie Jacques, Angela Lansbury and Jennifer Saunders. Twiggy also played Elvira in one production.

10. Blithe Spirit has been turned into a musical, High Spirits, and has been adapted for film twice, in 1945 and 2020. It has also been adapted for TV and radio.

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/

8 May: Sir David Attenborough

Happy birthday to Sir David Attenborough, who is 100 today. 10 things you might not know about him.

1. His father was the principal of University College Leicester, so he was raised around the campus. As a boy he collected fossils and at the age of 11 struck a deal with staff at the university whereby he would catch Newts for the laboratories at a nearby pond, and receive 3 pence per newt.

2. He served in the Royal Navy on an aircraft carrier for national service. After that he worked in publishing, editing children’s science textbooks.

3. In 1950, he applied for a job as a radio talk producer with The BBC but didn’t get it. Nevertheless, his CV was in the system and after a few months it came to the notice of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department. She thought this young man had promise and offered him three months training and then a permanent job in 1952. At the time he started in the role, he didn’t own a Television and had only seen one TV programme in his life.

4. He became a producer of factual shows (Mary Adams didn’t place him in front of the camera at first as she was of the opinion that his teeth were too big). The first show he produced was called Coelacanth, a documentary about a prehistoric Fish.

5. Nature shows weren’t his only area of influence. As controller of BBC Two, he oversaw the first ever colour broadcasts in Europe, winning the race against Germany to be the first nation in Europe to broadcast in colour. He was also responsible for commissioning Monty Python’s Flying Circus as well as the documentaries Civilization and The Ascent of Man. The first show resembling the nature shows we know and love today was called Zoo Quest.

6. Although happy to handle venomous Snakes and Scorpions and the like for the camera, he’d draw the line at rats. Rats are the only animals he really dislikes. His fear of them started when filming on location in the Solomon Islands, when he woke one night to find his room was full of them. On another occasion, in India, a rat jumped out of a Toilet. “I’ve handled deadly spiders, snakes, and scorpions without batting an eyelid, but if I see a rat, I’ll be the first to run,” he said.

7. He doesn’t own a car. In fact, he never passed his driving test.

8. Although he generally wants nothing to do with modern technology and would rather write a letter than send a text or email, he did join Instagram in 2020 at the age of 94 and broke the record for being the fastest to reach a million followers, in four hours and 44 minutes. He only stayed on the platform for a few weeks. His record was broken soon afterwards by 43 minutes by Harry Potter actor Rupert Grint.

9. He is the only person to have won BAFTA Awards in black-and-white, colour, high-definition, 3D and 4K resolution. He’s also been knighted twice by Queen Elizabeth II and holds more honorary degrees from British universities than any other celebrity.

10. He’s also had a lot of things named after him, including a building at Cambridge University and many animals and plants. The latter include the Attenborosaurus (Attenborosaurus conybeari), a marine Dinosaur; a Peruvian rubber Frog (Pristimantis attenboroughi); a flightless beetle and a species of hawkweed found only in the Brecon Beacons. He also had a polar research ship named after him. RRS Sir David Attenborough was the name chosen despite the public vote overwhelmingly choosing Boaty McBoatface.

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/

21 April: Play School

On this date in 1964 BBC television launched Playschool. 10 facts about the show:

1. Play School was originally commissioned by Michael Peacock, the chief of programmes for BBC2, who’d noticed there was a lack of programmes for small children. It was created by Joy Whitby.

2. It was the first programme ever shown on BBC2, although that wasn’t planned. A more grand opening schedule was intended, but was scuppered by a power failure, so Play School was shown instead.

3. There were many presenters over the years, some of whom went on to become household names. They included: Brian Cant; Julie Stevens; Johnny Ball; Wally Whyton; Derek Griffiths; Floella Benjamin; Eric Thompson and Phyllida Law. Paul Danquah was the first black host of a children's show. The first show was presented by Virginia Stride and Gordon Rollings.

4. There was also a succession of guest storytellers which included Val Doonican, Richard Baker, Rolf Harris, Clive Dunn, Roy Castle, Pat Coombs, Patricia Hayes, Roy Kinnear, George Chisholm, Ted Moult and Cilla Black.

5. A feature of the show was a short educational film. Viewers were invited to guess which of three Windows the film would appear through – a round, square or arched window. A triangular window was added in the 1980s. The shape of the window chosen actually had a pattern to it, depending on the subject of the film. If it was about something round, like balloons or wheels, it would be the round window. Square things like boxes or houses would be viewed through the square window and fountains or arches through the arched window. The arched window was used the least often.

6. There were a number of pets, including Bit and Bob the Goldfish, a cockatoo called Katoo and numerous Mice. The Play School pets were originally sourced by Harrods pet buyers Ken Exall and Anna Thompson and from 1965-88 were looked after by Wendy Duggan, a fellow of the Royal Zoological Society. Katoo has the distinction of making Johnny Ball swear on camera when it bit his finger.

7. Then there were the toys: Jemima, a rag doll with long red and white striped legs; Humpty, a dark green egg-shaped soft toy; Big Ted; Little Ted; a rocking horse named Dapple; and the unfortunate Hamble, who it seems, everyone hated. Hamble dolls were once quite popular and sold in Woolworth’s, but by this time there were only two known to be in existence, the Play School one and another owned by a woman in Chester, who would hire it to the BBC for £40 a week whenever the Play School regular got broken. She might not have been so keen had she known how poor Hamble got treated by the presenters, some of whom would kick her around the room, hence her understudy was frequently required. Presenters didn’t like her because she wasn’t as cuddly as the others and wouldn’t sit up. One confessed to sticking a knitting needle up Hamble’s bum so she’d sit up straight. None of the foreign broadcasters who took up the show kept Hamble in it, and she was eventually replaced in the UK by Poppy, a black doll, officially to make the toys more inclusive, but also because poor Hamble was getting a bit worse for wear.

8. At Brian Cant’s audition with Joy Whitby, she kicked a box out from under a table, and instructed Brian to 'Get in the box, and row out to sea'. He did it, with a running monologue about his “boat” and got the job.

9. Each day had a different theme: Monday: Useful Box Day; Tuesday: Dressing Up Day; Wednesday: Pets Day; Thursday: Imagination Day; and Friday: Science Day.

10. Almost 5700 editions aired between 1964 and the last show on 11 March 1988, but only 1900 are currently known to survive thanks to the BBC policy of the time to record over anything not deemed useful enough.

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/

19 April: Carousel

On this date in 1945 The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel opened on Broadway. 10 facts about it:

1. It was the second musical Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote together, the first being Oklahoma! two years earlier.

2. Carousel was based on a 1909 play by Ferenc Molnár which was written in Hungarian and set in Budapest. The play was called Liliom, and wasn’t a hit first time around, but when it was revived after the first world war it was a success. Rodgers and Hammerstein saw a production of it and liked the story, but at first were unsure about acquiring the rights to it. Molnár had refused to grant the rights in the past; also the ending of his play was possibly too dark for musical theatre.

3. However, they did get the rights. They changed the setting to Maine and re-worked the ending so that it was more hopeful.

4. So what’s it about? It’s the story of a carousel barker Billy Bigelow who gets together with millworker Julie Jordan. They marry, she gets pregnant, but they both lose their jobs. Billy plans a robbery with his friend Jigger, but it fails and Billy commits suicide. In the afterlife, he is processed by a Starkeeper who tells him he’s not good enough to get into heaven but after fifteen years of purgatory he gets a chance to return to Earth for a day to try and redeem himself by helping his daughter, Louise. In the original play, he fails and goes to hell; in the musical, he succeeds and also tells Julie that he loves her, and is allowed into heaven.

5. The leading actors in that first production were John Raitt as Billy and Jan Clayton as Julie. Carousel initially ran for 890 performances on Broadway. Stephen Douglass and Iva Withers played the lead roles when it opened in London’s West End in 1950. A film version was made in 1956, starring Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones.

6. Carousel won the first-ever New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Musical in 1945-1946.

7. The dress rehearsal went badly, and some last minute changes were made to the pantomime scene. There were fears the show would be a flop. Indeed, Rodgers thought it was as he watched the opening performance. He had a back injury at the time and had to watch it propped up in a box behind the curtain, dosed up on pain killers. He couldn’t see all of the stage and couldn’t hear the audience applauding. He only found out later what a resounding success it had been.

8. The best known songs from the show are If I Loved You, June is Bustin’ Out All Over and You’ll Never Walk Alone.

9. Act One begins with a scene which has become known as “The Bench Scene.” This scene is seen as an exemplary example of a musical theatre scene, and is studied in most musical theatre performance classes.

10. Carousel, like many productions of its time, is not without its issues for audiences today. Billy is abusive to both Julie and Louise. At the time, the fact that Billy is a good man at heart, that he never actually plans to hit women, and doesn’t hit them very hard, doesn’t cut much ice in the 21^st century.

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/

18 April: St Elsewhere

St Elsewhere, series set in Boston’s St Eligius Hospital, was first broadcast in the UK on this date in 1983.

1. The show was co-created by Joshua Brand and John Falsey, also known for Northern Exposure. The producer was Bruce Paltrow, also known for having a daughter called Gwyneth. While she wasn’t actually in it, her name got a mention or two – doctors being paged over the hospital’s PA system often used the names of the cast and crew’s family members, so a Dr. Gwyneth Paltrow was paged a few times.

2. It was originally pitched as “Hill Street Blues in a hospital.”

3. St Elsewhere wasn’t the actual name of the teaching hospital in the show. It was St. Eligius, named for a saint who is said to have healed a demon-possessed Horse by amputating and miraculously reattaching the horse's foreleg. He’s the patron saint of veterinarians, sick horses, metalsmiths and cabmen, and his Feast day is 1 December.

4. The facade used for the hospital is the Franklin House at 11 East Newton Street in Boston. Built in 1868 the building has served as a hotel, a Conservatory of Music and affordable housing.

5. The production company’s mascot was a Cat called Mimsie, a rip off of the MGM Lion. Mimsie would be shown wearing hospital scrubs at the end of each episode. At the end of the last episode, Mimsie was shown on life support and flatlining. 2 months after the show ended, the cat died for real.

6. When St. Eligius was taken over by a large company called Ecumena, A real health care company called Humana actually sued the show for trademark infringement. The judge’s ruling was that there should be a disclaimer at the end of episodes: “Ecumena is a fictional company that does not represent any actual company or corporation."

7. Dr. Daniel Auschlander was the Chief at St. Eligius and a long running character, although at the start he was only intended to appear in four episodes, because he was dying of cancer. However, the producers liked him so much that they had him go into remission which lasted until the final episode.

8. Howie Mandel was a stand up comedian before getting the role. When he auditioned, he was under the impression the show was a comedy set in a hospital, and commented, ‘Their new comedy? Not that funny at all!’

9. Back in the 80s, nudity wasn’t seen on TV so often, but a pair of naked buttocks did make it into the final cut of one episode. Just before leaving the show, Donald Westphall decides to tell Ronny Cox, an Ecumena employee who is always trying to make savings, exactly what he thinks of his penny pinching policies – by mooning him and saying, “kiss my ass, pal.” This scene took 20 takes.

10. Spoiler alert. It had a somewhat controversial ending. The whole thing turned out to be a figment of the imagination of an autistic child. The child in question was Tommy Westphall, son of Donald, who conjured up the hospital and all its staff and stories in a snow globe. Since there were numerous cross overs with other shows (for example, a character in Cheers gave birth to a baby at St. Eligius) it has been argued that a number of other shows were conjured up in the snow globe as well.

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/

12 February: Marie Lloyd

Born this day in 1870 was Marie Lloyd, English music hall singer and comedienne. 10 facts about her.

1. Her real name was Matilda Alice Victoria Wood, known to her family as Tilley. Her father was a waiter and artificial Flower arranger, and her mother a dressmaker and costume designer. She was the eldest of nine children. The family lived in Hoxton, East London.

2. She didn’t like school and often played truant to look after her siblings. She and her sister Alice organised them into an act called the Fairy Bell troupe. They would perform at temperance missions, singing songs about the dangers of alcohol abuse.

3. Her father was proud of her talent and got her a job as a table singer at the Eagle Tavern in Hoxton, where he worked as a waiter.

4. She also had a couple of day jobs, making babies' boots and curled feathers for hats. However, she didn’t always apply herself and was eventually fired for dancing on the tables at work. She went home and declared that she wanted to work full time in show business.

5. She made her professional solo stage début at the Grecian music hall in Hoxton at the age of 15. At first, she used her actual name, Matilda Wood, but as she grew more popular her agent suggested she change her name. She chose Marie because it sounded French and quite posh, and the Lloyd came from Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper.

6. She was known for her somewhat risqué and ad lib performances, and her best known songs are The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery and My Old Man (Said Follow the Van).

7. She made her own costumes, using skills she’d learned from her mother.

8. She married three times and all three marriages were turbulent, ending in separation and/or divorce. Her first husband was Percy Courtenay, a ticket tout from Streatham. He once pulled a decorative sword off the wall in her dressing room and threatened to kill her with it, and she reported him to the police. Her second was Alec Hurley, a singer, and finally Bernard Dillon, a jockey.

9. She toured in America but her trip there started badly. She and Dillon had applied for an entry visa as Mr and Mrs Dillon, but they weren’t married at the time. The authorities found out and detained them and threatened them with deportation on the grounds of “moral turpitude”. She was threatened by the theatre manager with breach of contract proceedings after episodes of domestic abuse from Dillon caused her to miss performances. When she left, she vowed she would never sing in America again, no matter how much money she was offered.

10. Towards the end of her life, her performances grew erratic. She’d stumble on stage which audiences thought at first was all part of the act, but was taken ill on stage with stomach cramps. She died later that evening of heart and kidney failure at the age of 52.

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/

8 February: The Hollywood Walk of Fame

On this date in 1960, construction on the Hollywood Walk of Fame officially began. 10 facts about the Hollywood Walk of fame:

1. It started as a marketing tactic by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. The idea was first suggested by that organisation’s volunteer president E. M. Stuart in 1953 to “maintain the glory of a community whose name means glamour and excitement in the four corners of the world.” In January 1956 an official proposal was submitted to the Los Angeles City Council. Initially, the proposal was to have a caricature of the star honoured rather than a star, and placed along Brown and Blue sidewalks. The caricature idea was rejected because it would be too complicated and the colours because they’d clash with a building being erected along the route at the time.

2. Who the recipient of the first star was depends on what you count. Before the official inauguration, a temporary installation to raise awareness and support was unveiled in August 1958. Olive Borden, Ronald Colman, Louise Fazenda, Preston Foster, Burt Lancaster, Edward Sedgwick, Ernest Torrence, and Joanne Woodward were the stars to receive the honours. Joanne Woodward is sometimes said to have been the first, although in truth that was probably because she happened to be the first to have her picture taken with her star. The first star to be installed in the Walk of Fame proper was Film-maker Stanley Kramer, whose star was put in place on 28 March 1960.

3. In August 2025 there were 2,818 stars at 6-foot (1.8 m) intervals along the sidewalk. Wikipedia describes the stars as “five-point, coral-pink terrazzo rimmed with brass and inlaid into a 3-by-3-foot (0.91 by 0.91 m) charcoal-coloured terrazzo background. The honoree's name is inlaid in brass block letters in the upper portion of each star, and below the name, a round inlaid brass emblem indicates the category of the honoree's contributions.” There are also several hundred blank stars, as placeholders for future recipients. Stars face east or west on Hollywood Boulevard and north or south on Vine Street so that whichever direction you walk there will be stars facing you.

4. That said, not all the stars are in the sidewalk and not all of them are stars. Four of the plaques are moons, dedicated to the astronauts and TV coverage of the Apollo 11 Moon landing; and one star is in a wall. That one is for boxer Muhammad Ali who, since he shares his name with a certain prophet, requested that the star be placed where it would not be walked on.

5. There are seven categories for which a star can be awarded: motion pictures; Television; recording/Music; live performance/theatre; Radio; sports entertainment and a special category for other achievements the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce deem worthy of inclusion, like the Apollo 11 astronauts. Muhammad Ali, incidentally, received his star before the sports entertainment category was introduced in 2023 – boxing was deemed to be a kind of live performance in order to allow him the star. Two sports teams have been honoured since: the Harlem Globetrotters and Los Angeles Dodgers.

6. A star can request a location for their star. A few are placed in quite ironic locations. Carol Burnett’s is in front of the cinema where she was fired as an usherette for advising a couple of latecomers to wait for the next showing of the movie as seeing the ending might spoil it for them; Jay Leno requested his star be near Hollywood and Highland because he was twice picked up by police for vagrancy there; Mike Myers's star was placed outside an adult store called the International Love Boutique; Roger Moore's and Daniel Craig's are located at 7007 Hollywood Boulevard. Michael Jackson refused to attend the unveiling of his star if it wasn’t outside Grauman's Chinese Theater. The Chamber agreed, and the unveiling of his star turned out to be a record breaker with around five thousand people turning up to watch.

7. As of October 2025, 44% of the stars were in the motion pictures category, 25% in television, 19% in audio recording or music, 9% in radio, fewer than 3% in theatre/live performance, and fewer than 1% in sports entertainment and the "special category" combined. 5.1% honoured African-Americans, 3.4% honoured Hispanic people, and 0.4% honoured Asians, all significantly less than those minorities' percentage of the overall population.

8. Gene Autry is the star nominated in the most categories: five. Bob Hope and Roy Rogers have been honoured in four. The family with the most individuals recognised is the Barrymores, with five. The line up also includes three dogs: Lassie, Rin Tin Tin and Strongheart. Lassie was the first fictional character to be included, although some claim Lassie was an animal actor in her own right although she was often portrayed by a male canine actor called Pal. If you don’t count Lassie, the first fictional character included was Mickey Mouse. They have since been joined by many more, including Snoopy, Kermit the Frog, Minnie Mouse and Batman, the first superhero to receive a star. Inventors who influenced the entertainment industry and have been recognised with stars include George Eastman, inventor of roll film; Thomas Edison for the phonograph, motion picture camera and lightbulb; and Ray Dolby, pioneer in surround sound. One inventor also has a star in the motion picture category: actress Hedy Lamarr, co-inventor of a frequency-hopping radio guidance system that was a precursor to Wi-Fi networks. There are two murderers: Spade Cooley and Gig Young. There are politicians there, too, unsurprisingly, Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ignacy Paderewski, Prime Minister of Poland between World War I and II, is the only foreign head of government represented. Even Trump has one, for his work on the Miss Universe pageant and The Apprentice although there have been a lot of protests and calls for his star to be revoked, including one from West Hollywood City Council, who made a statement: "The Hollywood Walk of Fame is an honour. When one belittles and attacks minorities, immigrants, Muslims, people with disabilities or women – the honour no longer exists." His star has also been vandalised many times, including by one protester who let his dog poo on it and posted the result on Twitter.

9. The nomination process is strict. Anyone can make a nomination, including fans, although the nominee or their management must be in agreement and there is a hefty fee to pay. Nominees must have a history of "charitable contributions" and a minimum of five years' experience in their category; and they must agree to attend the unveiling of their star or the nomination will be rejected. In the case of deceased honorees, (who must have been dead for at least two years) a member of their family must agree to attend. I’m not sure what happens in the case of fictional characters! Some stars have declined to have stars on the walk, including Madonna (because she thinks it’s cheesy), Clint Eastwood and Prince. Leonardo DiCaprio, Julia Roberts, Bruce Springsteen, and Denzel Washington all ruled themselves out by refusing to attend their ceremonies.

10. There are two pairs of stars bearing the same name but representing different people. There are two Harrison Fords, one for the silent film actor and the other for the present-day actor, and two Michael Jacksons, one for the pop singer and the other for the radio personality. There might have been three, but for the correction of a typo. Actor Don Haggerty was awarded a star in 1960 that was wrongly engraved as Dan Haggerty. The star was replaced, and in 1994 an actor who was actually called Dan Haggerty (Grizzly Adams) received a star, too. Typos do happen. Julia Louis-Dreyfus's star read "Julia Luis Dreyfus". Dick van Dyke's star misspelled his last name as "Vandyke". Both stars were said to be amused rather than angry. Van Dyke took a marker pen and corrected the mistake. Both stars were replaced with the correct names in due course but a handful of mistakes live on. Carmen Miranda was honoured in the motion picture category but her star bears the television emblem, and four names remain mispelled: Lotte Lehmann (spelled as "Lottie"), Merian C. Cooper ("Meriam"), Auguste Lumière ("August"), and Mary Livingstone ("Livingston").

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/

29 January: Sudoku

Today is National Puzzle Day, so here are ten things you might not know about a popular kind of puzzle, Sudoku.

1. The word comes from the Japanese name for the puzzle as it appeared in the paper Monthly Nikolist in April 1984, which was “Sūji wa dokushin ni kagiru” meaning "the digits must be single". “Dokushin” means an "unmarried person" in Japanese. This was later abbreviated to Sudoku.

2. Puzzles of this type have been around since the 19^th century, albeit in slightly different formats. A French newspaper published a puzzle which was a 9×9 magic square with 3×3 subsquares and numbers missing as early as 1892. Unlike sudoku, however, this puzzle contained double digit numbers and required mathematical ability to solve (Sudoku, despite using numbers, is actually a logic puzzle rather than a maths one). In 1895, another French newspaper published a puzzle called carré magique diabolique ("diabolical magic square") in which each row, column and diagonal contained the digits 1 to 9, but didn’t have subsquares.

3. The US was publishing sudoku puzzles from 1979, thus beating Japan to it, in a publication called Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games. It appeared in this magazine as “Number Place”. We don’t know for certain who the inventor was, but using logic based on which contributor’s name always appeared in issues containing a Number Place and didn’t in issues without one. That method points to one Howard Garns, a retired architect and freelance puzzle compiler from Connersville, Indiana. Sadly, he died in 1989 and didn’t live to see his puzzles absolutely everywhere.

4. The first newspaper outside of Japan to publish a Sudoku puzzle was The Conway Daily Sun (New Hampshire), which published a puzzle by Wayne Gould in September 2004. Gould was a judge based in Hong Kong who came across a partially completed sudoku in a bookshop while visiting Japan. He produced a computer programme to make the puzzles and began pitching them to Newspapers.

5. The first UK newspaper to pick up sudoku was The Times on 12 November 2004. The very next day The Times published its first letter about the puzzle, from one Ian Payn of Brentford, who complained that the puzzle was so absorbing it caused him to miss his stop on the tube.

6. The minimum number of clues for a Sudoku puzzle to have a unique solution is 17.

7. There are 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 possible Sudoku grid configurations.

8. It has been made into a game show. The first sudoku themed game show was broadcast on Sky One in 2005. Hosted by Carol Vorderman (who else?) and featured nine teams of nine people, including one celebrity from different regions of the UK competing to solve a puzzle. Later in 2005, The BBC launched SUDO-Q, a game show that combined Sudoku with general knowledge, although it used smaller grids of 4x4 and 6x6. Since 2006 there has been an annual World Sudoku Championship. The first was held in Italy and was won by Junichi Tanaka from Japan.

9. Japan has a sudoku themed museum, "Sudoku Kaikan," which is dedicated to the history and culture of Sudoku; and a theme park, "Sudokuland," which has a Sudoku-themed roller coaster and a Sudoku-themed maze among its attractions.

10. Some sudoku records: The fastest recorded time to solve a Sudoku puzzle was set in November 2018, by Wang Shiyao who completed a standard 9×9 Sudoku grid in just 54.44 seconds. The largest Sudoku puzzle had a grid size of 9,999 x 9,999 and was created by researchers at the University of Liverpool. It needed a computer to solve it and even so took over 100 hours to solve.

See also: Crosswords

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/

23 January: The A Team

On this date in 1983 The A Team premièred on US TV. 10 A Team facts:

1. This show was created by Stephen J. Cannell and Frank Lupo, and is about a squad of former U.S. Army Special Forces commandos who, after being falsely accused of the murder of their commanding officer, escape military prison and become soldiers of fortune. The members of the A Team are Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith, Lieutenant Templeton "Faceman" Peck, Sergeant B.A. “Bad Attitude” (real name Bosco Albert) Baracus, and Captain H.M. “Howling Mad” Murdock (real first name never revealed).

2. A Team is an actual term used in military operations. The A Team, or Alpha Team, will advance first, supported by a Beta, or B team. Alpha Team can also refer to a small special forces unit.

3. The part of Face was written by Frank Lupo and Stephen J. Cannell with Dirk Benedict in mind, but NBC had other ideas. They wanted Tim Dunigan for the role. Dunigan appeared in a pilot episode, after which it was conceded that Dunigan was "too tall and too young", so Benedict got the gig after all.

4. The opening credits have a nod to one of Benedict’s previous roles, as Lieutenant Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica. He is shown reacting to a Cylon walking past.

5. The show had plenty of shooting and things crashing and getting blown up, but nobody ever died. There was always a shot of the bad guys climbing out of their mangled, burning vehicle and running away. No injuries shown on screen were worse than an arm in a sling or a limp. According to Stephen J. Cannell, the writers had a running gag about this, and did it to test the limits of realism.

6. George Peppard (Hannibal) might never have got the part had he not been fired after one week on Dynasty, because producers didn’t think he made a convincing patriarch. He was allegedly quite difficult to work with and famously didn’t get along with Mr T. Peppard resented the fact that Mr T was more popular with audiences, was being paid more and got more fan mail. According to Dirk Benedict, George Peppard refused to talk to Mr. T and would use Benedict as a messenger; and would never refer to Mr T by name, only as "the man with the Gold."

7. Talking of which, Mr. T's gold weighed 35-40 lb (16-18 kg). Mr T was a member of the Military Police in real life, and it has been suggested that the uniform he wears in some episodes is his actual real life uniform. The role of B.A. Baracus was written especially for Mr. T.

8. The original main theme was composed by Mike Post and Pete Carpenter. Post admitted that he included a Guitar riff from the Cream song Sunshine of Your Love.

9. Murdock may not be as mad as he’s painted, but rather an example of the fine line between genius and insanity. He's fluent in Chinese (Mandarin), German, Japanese, Spanish, Vietnamese and basic Russian. He can communicate in Morse Code, has a photographic memory and a vast knowledge of many subjects.

10. The final episode was supposed to be one called “The Grey Team”. In it, Murdock is shown wearing a shirt that reads “fini” (French for “end”). However, a previously unseen episode called “Without Reservations” was shown in March 1987. In this episode, Murdock wears a shirt which reads “almost fini.”

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/