23 August: King Louis XVI

This date in 1754 was the birthdate of King Louis XVI of France, who reigned from 1774 to 1793 and was married to Marie Antoinette. 10 facts about him.

1. He was never supposed to be king. Like Henry VIII, he had an older brother who died young.

2. Because he wasn’t first in line to the throne, the young Louis was virtually ignored by his parents and grandfather while his older brother was with praise and gifts while being groomed for kingship. King Louis XV, his grandfather, called his grandson "ungainly" and "dimwitted", even though he was actually very intelligent.

3. After the death of his elder brother in 1761, and his father in 1765 aged just 36, Louis became the new dauphin at the age of 11 and his kingly education had to begin. His tutors, however, weren’t that good, teaching him that being timid and shy was a great attribute for a king, as was never letting on to anyone what you might be thinking about.

4. Louis was 15 when he married the Austrian princess Marie Antoinette. The marriage was arranged for political reasons. The marriage got off to a bad start when Louis decided he was going to organise the Firework display to end all firework displays as part of the celebrations. He ordered piles of fireworks to be set up on a wooden podium in the middle of Paris. People crowded in to get the best view. The wooden podium caught fire and people fled. 130 people lost their lives in the stampede to get away from the fire. It was here that Louis showed he wasn’t a cruel and heartless king: he met with the families of the victims personally and supported them financially. He did care, and wanted to be liked; he just didn’t know how.

5. Louis and Marie Antoinette had no children for several years, leading to rumours that the king couldn’t “get it up”. There was speculation he suffered from a condition that made the required marital relations very painful for him, if not impossible. In the end, Marie Antoinette’s brother, Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, concerned that the Austria-France alliance was in danger, decided he needed to go to Versailles in person and get to the bottom of the problem. He showed up incognito as the Comte de Falkenstein and stayed for a while. The story goes that Joseph was blunt enough to ask Louis what he and Marie Antoinette actually did when they were in bed together. Joseph wrote that Louis told him that he "introduces the member," but then, "stays there without moving for about two minutes." Then he’d get up and leave. So it seems as well as not teaching him how to rule a country, or the health and safety around fireworks, his teachers didn’t teach him how to do sex properly, either. Presumably Joseph gave him a few pointers and Marie Antoinette got pregnant soon after, although now the rumours circulated that Louis wasn’t actually the father of her kids.

6. Louis became king aged 19, in 1774. He did try and do some good stuff. He signed the 1787 Edict of Versailles (also known as the Edict of Tolerance), giving non-Catholics civil and legal status and freedom of religion in France.

7. He also tried to get France out of debt by introducing new taxes. Needless to say, that didn’t go down well and most of his efforts were blocked by the nobles.

8. Some may dispute that he was a caring sort on reading the following fact. One of his favourite pastimes was shooting Cats. It’s possible Louis developed a dislike for cats because his grandfather Louis XV loved them and let them roam and breed all over Versailles. So whenever Louis XVI came across a cat in the grounds, he’d shoot it. He didn’t stop to consider that it might be someone’s pet and at least once shot a female courtier's beloved moggy by mistake. To be fair, when he realised what he’d done he was most apologetic and even bought the lady a new cat.

9. When the revolution happened, Louis and his family were held in the Tuileries in Paris. While there, Louis came up with an escape plan. They would sneak out at night disguised as servants and flee to safety in Austria, where they would regroup and return in due course to take back the throne. The plan went well to start with. They got out of the Tuileries and made it as far as a small village near the Austrian border before it all went pear-shaped. The story goes that a local man recognised the king because his face was on all the money and shopped him. So the family was captured and returned to a more secure prison in Paris.

10. Louis had made a fatal mistake, because he wrote a manifesto on why he should be kept on as king and left it behind in the Tuileries when he left. Needless to say, it didn’t go down well with the revolutionaries who merely saw it as evidence of treason to be used to condemn him at his trial. Louis XVI was executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793. Just before he was executed he pardoned those who had signed his death warrant and proclaimed his own innocence. His execution marked the end of 1,000 years of continuous French monarchy.

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18 August: Lewis and Clark

This date in 1774 was the birthdate of Meriwether Lewis, American explorer, known as one of the leaders of the Lewis and Clark expedition which took place between 14 May 1804 and 23 September 1806. Some facts about their trip:

1. First of all, why did they go? The voyage of discovery was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson, on the heels of the Louisiana purchase in 1803. Jefferson wanted to find out about what lay to the west, whether there was a navigable river route to the Pacific, whether there were Native American tribes to trade with. There was also the political motivation of establishing American claims to the lands and stopping those pesky Europeans from trying to get a look in.

2. The expedition discovered 122 new species of animal and 200 new species of plant (at least, they were new to the Americans in the East – Native Americans had known about them forever), but scientific discovery was only a secondary purpose to those listed above. Their botanical specimens included bitterroot, ponderosa pine, and Douglas fir, and the new animals included grizzly Bears, prairie dogs, coyotes, jackrabbits, and pronghorn. Jefferson, however, was allegedly somewhat disappointed that they didn’t find a live mastodon.

3. The pesky Europeans did try to mess things up. Spain owned a huge amount of land in North America, and the Spanish government wanted to protect their claim to Gold in the Southwest, so when they got wind of the expedition, thanks to coded messages from one of their spies (James Wilkinson, a former Revolutionary War general known as Agent 13) set out to sabotage it. Spanish forces set out to coerce Lewis and Clark into going home, or to take them prisoner – but never managed to actually find them.

4. Lewis had served under Clark in the military but for the purpose of this trip, requested that they’d be equal co-leaders. The military weren’t having that, and said no, but once out in the wilderness the two men ignored the orders and referred to one another as “Captain” so the rest of the party wouldn’t know any different. There were also members of the party who, at home, would never get a say in anything, but whose expertise and opinions has as much weight as anyone else’s out on the trail.

5. These included the one African-American man in the party, whose name was York. He was Clark's “body servant,” or slave. York was allowed to help with the hunting although he’d never have been allowed to handle a gun at home and had a vote in expedition matters. The Indian tribes they encountered along the way were fascinated by a man with much darker skin and thought he had special powers. Sadly, when York asked for his freedom in exchange for giving up two years of his life and having to be away from his wife for such a long time, Clark refused.

6. There was also one woman in the party, who was also just 16 years old and pregnant. She was the daughter of a chief and her name was Sacagawea who had been traded to a French-Canadian trapper who lived with the tribe. Lewis and Clark hired this trapper as an interpreter, and he brought his young wife along, since she could speak even more languages. Not only that, she knew her way around parts of the unexplored country, having lived there all her life, and she also knew which plants were safe to eat. Even after she gave birth to a son while the company hunkered down for the winter, Sacagawea continued to travel with them, baby and all. It’s possible the company thought a woman and a baby would make them seem less threatening.

7. There was a pet Dog, too. Prior to departure, Lewis bought a Newfoundland dog for $20 and named him Seaman. Seaman was a beloved pet who is mentioned several times in Lewis’s journal. He saved men from drowning many times. When Seaman got attacked by a Beaver, Lewis feared his dog might die; but nursed him back to health. When Native Americans wanted to trade for the dog, Lewis refused. He also named a creek after Seaman, although the name didn’t stick and it’s called Monture Creek today. Although there were times when the party was so short on food they had to resort to eating candle tallow and dog meat, Seaman was strictly off the menu.

8. Although it was a potentially dangerous mission in uncharted territory, only one man died during it. He wasn’t killed by weather or starvation or hostile Native Americans or drowning or wild animals, but from an illness which it’s believed was likely to have been a ruptured appendix, which in those times was a death sentence even back home in the city. His name was Sergeant Charles Floyd, who was fit and healthy when they set off, and was educated and popular. He fell ill three months into the trip. William Clark sat up all night long watching over and trying to help Floyd, but to no avail. They buried him on a high bluff overlooking the Missouri River, placing a red cedar marker at his grave. Floyd River and Floyd Bluff were named for him.

9. York was the only man who’d left a wife at home, and the only woman in the party was spoken for, but that didn’t mean there was no nookie to be had. Some of the Native American tribes believed the party had special powers which, if they had sex with a woman, she would retain them and when she went home she would pass the powers on to her husband in the same way. Hence the party were often gifted with women for the night. That said, there was an incident where the fling was not sanctioned by the woman’s husband and Clark had to give away a pile of trinkets to stop the husband from stabbing his wife’s lover to death. It’s likely members of the party fathered a few children along the way, but unfortunately most of them ended up with sexually transmitted diseases as well.

10. Lewis died when he was just 35, three years after the expedition. The cause was being shot in the head and abdomen, which rather suggests foul play by bandits, as he was on another trip at the time and staying in an inn. That said, Lewis was known to drink heavily and suffer from depression, and had a history of being suicidal. He’d even made a will before setting off. Hence historians don’t know if it was suicide or murder.

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20 July: Sir Edmund Hillary

Born on this date in was 1919 Sir Edmund Hillary, famous for climbing Mount Everest. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. He was a New Zealander, born in Auckland, where he called home for most of his life. He became the first living New Zealander to appear on the country’s banknotes in 1992.

2. His mother was a teacher and his father a beekeeper. His mother Gertrude was famous for breeding and selling queen bees. He followed his father into the beekeeping business, which he could work at during the summer to finance his climbing expeditions in the winter.

3. He was over 6ft tall, although as a child, he was smaller than most of his schoolmates. That, and the fact he lived too far away from his school to take part in after school activities, and was rather shy, meant he didn’t enjoy school much. He took up boxing, which helped him gain confidence as well as getting fit.

4. He discovered his love for climbing on a school trip to Mount Ruapehu when he was 16. He made his first major climb in 1939 reaching the summit of Mount Ollivier in New Zealand.

5. He was 33 years old when he climbed Everest. It has been reported that on his way back down he met another mountaineer called George Lowe, and said to him, “Well, George, we knocked the bastard off.”

6. He seems to have lived a bit of a charmed life, narrowly escaping death several times. During World War II, Hillary served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force, posted to Fiji and the Solomon Islands, where a boating accident left him with severe burns. In 1960, he missed a flight which was involved in the New York Air Disaster, a mid-air collision between two planes that killed all 128 passengers as well as six people on the ground. In 1979, he pulled out of an Antarctic Sightseeing Flight due to work commitments. The flight crashed into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 people on board.

7. Sadly, his first wife, Louise, wasn’t so lucky. He’d married her soon after he climbed Everest in 1953, although even after that achievement he was too shy to propose himself and got his mother to do it for him. Louise was on her way to join him in Nepal with their youngest child, Belinda, in 1975. Both died in a plane crash just after take off from Kathmandu airport. In 1989, he married June Mulgrew, the widow of his close friend Peter Mulgrew, who'd taken his place on the ill-fated flight in 1979.

8. Hillary was the first person ever to reach both the North and South Poles as well as the peak of Everest. This has since become known as the ‘Three Poles’ challenge. He also spent five months in the Himalayas on an expedition looking for the abominable snowman/Yeti. Although he found “yeti scalps” in ancient temples, they were found to be from bears and antelopes, and no concrete evidence of the existence of the yeti was found.

9. He founded the Himalayan Trust in 1960, with the aim of supporting the Sherpa people and building hospitals and schools in remote parts of Nepal. He served as ambassador to Nepal (at the same time as he was New Zealand's High Commissioner to India and Bangladesh) and in 2003 he became the first foreigner to be granted honorary citizenship of Nepal.

10. Things named after him include The Hillary Coast, south of Ross Island, the Hillary Canyon, an undersea feature in the Ross Sea, the ‘Hillary Trail’, a hiking trail near Auckland, and the ‘Hillary Step’, a near vertical 12-metre high rock face near the summit of Everest. In 2003, a 2.3-metre bronze statue of Hillary was unveiled, by Hillary himself, in Mount Cook Village. A New Zealand duet called The Kiwis recorded a tribute song about him called Hillary 88 which became his official memorial song.

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20 May: Socrates

This date in 467 BC was, according to astro.com, the birthday of Socrates. Some facts about him:

1. He was born in Athens, Greece. His father, Sophroniscus, was a stonemason and his mother, Phaenarete, was a midwife.

2. He learned the stonemasonry trade from his father and worked as a mason, too, as he didn’t have enough money to be a philosopher full time.

3. Socrates didn’t write any of his teachings down. We only know about him because some of his students wrote about his life and work. His students included Aristotle, Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes and Alexander the Great.

4. He was said to be extremely ugly, which might explain his belief that the mind was far more important than physical beauty. He’s described as being short with bulging Eyes, a snub nose and a pot belly.

5. He did his compulsory military service during which he served in Peloponnesian War, and was present at the battle of Amphipolis, and the battle of Potidaea. During the latter battle, he saved the life of a general called Alcibiades.

6. Which brings us to his sexuality. He was openly bisexual and attracted to men, and was said to have been in love with the general Alcibiades.

7. Nevertheless, he married a woman, albeit late in life, at the age of 50. Her name was Xanthippe and she was a lot younger than him. They had three sons, Menexenus, Lamprocles, and Sophroniscus who were said to be extremely boring people and nothing like their father at all. Socrates sometimes complained about his wife, but it's unclear if he was serious or not.

8. We already know he didn’t write books or treatises. He didn’t give boring lectures, either. He’d go to the town square on a busy market day and engage in conversation with random people, asking them questions and using biting wit and logic to trap them. He targetted people of all ages and social stations, both men and women, though his most popular discourses were the ones where he brought down high and mighty types. Crowds would gather to watch. Many of his “victims” would simply get annoyed but others had epiphanies. One such was a young poet called Aristocles who went home and burned all his writings. He would later be known as Plato.

9. Socrates got into trouble in the end for allegedly corrupting young people. It wasn’t so much about his sexuality but his rejection of the dominant religion of the time. He saw the widely worshipped Greek gods as no more than power hungry beings who meddled in society and needed to be constantly appeased with sacrifices. Just like politicians. That said, he wouldn’t have described himself as an atheist, either. He believed in a god called diamon, which was benevolent, rational and wise. What peed the authorities off was that he tried to turn young people away from the established gods towards one they’d never heard of.

10. His execution by drinking Hemlock is one of the most famous stories about him. Sentenced to death for his alleged crimes, he declared that he wasn’t afraid to die and refused to allow his friends to bribe the guards into letting him go. Trying to get out of his punishment, he said, was not something a true philosopher would do.

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29 March: John Tyler

This date in 1790 was the birthdate of the 10th president of the United States, John Tyler. Ten facts about him:

1. He was the first vice president to become president without an election, on the death of his predecessor William H Harrison in 1841. The US Constitution wasn’t clear about what should happen if a president died in office. Some, like John Quincy Adams believed the vice president should be an acting president, but Tyler declared that he was president and nobody was able to challenge it successfully. His opponents referred to him as “His accidency”.

2. Tyler fathered more children than any other American president. He married his first wife, Letitia Christian, on his 23rd birthday in 1813 and they had eight. Letitia died of a stroke in September 1842 and in 1844 he married Julia Gardiner and had seven more with her. Julia was 30 years his junior and five years younger than his eldest daughter, who wasn’t well pleased about the marriage. There’s speculation that he could have fathered even more with his slaves and then sold the babies. Hence there are a number of African American families today who claim to be his descendants although none of them have been able to prove it.

3. He claimed to be against slavery, but he’d grown up on a plantation and kept slaves himself, never freeing any of them. He believed it was up to individual states to decide whether slavery should be legal, not the federal government. We don’t know how well he treated his slaves, but historians surmise he treated them well and wasn’t violent towards them.

4. Tyler studied law with his father, gaining admission to the bar in 1809. He was only 19 at the time, and therefore too young to be eligible, but the admitting judge didn’t ask his age.

5. His presidency was somewhat turbulent. He’d defected from the Democrats to run with Harrison as a Whig, but when he became president, the Whigs decided they didn’t trust him and threw him out. For the remainder of his presidency, Tyler was, as he himself said, a man “without a party.” He was the only American president whose party expelled him while he was president.

6. He was also the only president to have had virtually all of his cabinet resign in protest over his veto of a tariff bill; all but his Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, resigned in protest.

7. He was influential in Texas’s journey to statehood. Though the Senate refused to ratify a treaty which would have made Texas statehood possible, Tyler did manage to get them to agree to an annexation bill which he signed three days before he left office.

8. In 1844 he entered the election, but since the Whigs had thrown him out and the Democrats didn’t support him either, he entered as a member of his own party, made up of people loyal to him. His candidacy attracted little support and in August 1844 he withdrew and the winner of that election was James K. Polk.

9. Tyler retired to a Virginia plantation which was called Walnut Grove, but Tyler renamed it Sherwood Forest because he saw himself as being outlawed by the Whig party and therefore identified with Robin Hood.

10. He died of a stroke in 1862 at the age of 71. Tyler's death was the only one in presidential history not to be officially recognised in Washington, because of his allegiance to the Confederate States. Confederate President Jefferson Davis organised a grand funeral even though Tyler had asked for a simple one. His coffin was draped with a Confederate flag, making him the only U.S. president ever buried under a flag not of the United States.

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5 February: Sir Robert Peel

Sir Robert Peel, Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was born on this date in 1788. 10 facts about him:

1. Robert Peel was born in Bury, Lancashire. His father was a wealthy cotton mill owner. Peel was educated at Harrow and Oxford. He graduated with a double first in 1808.

2. His ambitious father was keen for him to do well in the political arena and bought him his Commons seat. It’s said that he told him, “Bob, you dog, if you do not become Prime Minister someday I’ll disinherit you”.

3. He served as MP for several constituencies including including that of Oxford University; but his first election win was for Cashel, Tipperary, just a year after he graduated, in 1809. His maiden speech in the Commons went down extremely well, famously described by the Speaker of the House of Commons as “the best first speech since that of William Pitt”.

4. He married Julia Floyd in 1820. She was the daughter of General Sir John Floyd, 1st Baronet, and his first wife Rebecca Darke. They had seven children.

5. He became Home Secretary in 1822 and it was in this post that he made extensive reforms to the prison and legal system, including creating the Metropolitan Police. This is why police officers are sometimes known as “bobbies” or “peelers.”

6. He was invited to become prime minister by King William IV after Earl Grey resigned in 1834. Peel turned the job down at first, but changed his mind and accepted when the king asked him again in 1835. Confident the voters were behind him, he called an election, but didn’t win the large majority he’d hoped for.

7. He was known to change his mind on a few things during his career. He opposed Catholic emancipation for 20 years, but was then persuaded it might not be such a bad idea if civil unrest was the alternative; so he pushed the Catholic Emancipation Bill through Parliament. During Earl Grey’s administration, he argued against parliamentary reform to no avail: the Reform Act was passed in 1832. When running for election in Tamworth, however, he came out in support of it.

8. As PM, he brought in the Mines Act of 1842, which forbade the employment of women and children in mines; the Factory Act 1844, which improved conditions for women and children working in factories. He also repealed the Corn Laws in 1846, which banned the import of cheap foreign grain. This was unpopular with rich landowners, of course, but there were humanitarian reasons to piss them off. The potato famine was raging in Ireland at the time, and there was not enough grain to send to Ireland to feed people. The public supported the move but the wealthy people didn’t (surprise surprise, things haven’t changed much) and the debate lasted 5 months. Although Peel won the vote on the Corn Laws, there were other votes the same day which he lost, and so he decided to resign for good.

9. Peel was the first British prime minister to be photographed while in office. He is featured on the cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album.

10. Peel was thrown from his horse while riding on Constitution Hill in London on 29 June 1850. The horse stumbled on top of him, and he died three days later at the age of 62 due to complications from a broken collarbone.

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/

26 January: Douglas MacArthur

Douglas MacArthur was an American general who served as a top commander during World War II and the Korean War, achieving the rank of General of the Army. He was born on this date in 1880.

1. Douglas MacArthur was born in Little Rock, Arkansas and was the youngest of three sons born to Arthur MacArthur, Jr., who’d fought in the US civil war for the Union, and Mary “Pinky” Hardy, daughter of a Cotton merchant whose brothers fought for the Confederacy.

2. As a military family the MacArthurs moved to various military posts across the United States. MacArthur recorded in his memoirs that “I learned to ride and shoot even before I could read or write—indeed, almost before I could walk and talk." While at the same time, his mother dressed him in skirts and kept his hair curly and long until he was eight!

3. MacArthur attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and graduated in 1903 with the highest honours in his class.

4. He was then commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. His first duty assignment was to the Philippines.

5. On his return to the US, he served as an aide to President Theodore Roosevelt for a while, then got posted to Vera Cruz in Mexico. His mission there was to venture into enemy territory to locate locomotives that the army could commandeer to transport troops and supplies. MacArthur and his guides were attacked by bandits several times. On one occasion MacArthur killed seven attackers with just a .38 calibre revolver, while escaping with no more than four bullet holes in his clothes. This got him nominated for the Medal of Honor, but it was denied.

6. He married twice. His first wife was Louise Cromwell Brooks, a wealthy socialite. She hated army life, however, and they divorced, citing his inability to provide for her, although she was rich enough to move into an entire floor of a hotel, clearly perfectly capable of providing for herself! In 1937, MacArthur married Jean Marie Faircloth, another wealthy socialite, but she must have been more favourably disposed to army life as they stayed together until MacArthur died. They had a son, Arthur IV.

7. He was living in the Philippines with his family when the US entered world war II. The Japanese didn’t just attack Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, they also attacked the Philippines. MacArthur found himself in charge of the defence of the Philippines against a Japanese invasion. While he managed to hold off the invasion for a while, it did happen eventually and he led the resistance of the US forces on Bataan Peninsula and the Island of Corregidor.

8. In 1932, a group of veterans calling themselves the "Bonus Army" marched to Washington. MacArthur supported them at first, supplying them with food and tents, but then President Herbert Hoover ordered MacArthur to "surround the affected area and clear it without delay". As clashes between demonstrators and the army go, it was relatively non-violent, despite the opposing groups facing each other down with bayonets, sabres, Bricks and rocks. They were cleared out using tear gas and the only casualty was someone killed by a fire started by the gas canisters. This event made MacArthur unpopular with the American people but the right wing republicans loved him for it.

9. After the war, he was placed in charge of the administration of the Occupation of Japan, and helped to rebuild the country. In spite of everything he was quite popular with the Japanese people, as he refused American pressure to strip Emperor Hirohito of his throne and gave women the vote. He also made sure that food and supplies were sent to Japan.

10. It seemed he didn’t always get on well with the presidents he worked with. He had a flaming row with Roosevelt over cuts to the army, but Roosevelt refused to accept his resignation. The argument was apparently so volatile that MacArthur left the White House and puked on the front steps. It was President Truman who eventually fired him in 1951 for insubordination and differences of opinion over the Korean war. He returned to the US for the first time since he married Jean – their 13 year old son, Arthur, had never visited the US. He gave a parting speech to Congress which became famous as his “Old Soldiers Never Die” speech. It went on for much longer than the 36 minutes it would have taken to say the words, because it was interrupted at least 50 times by applause and standing ovations.

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20 January: King Arthur

Today is a Celtic holy day celebrating the day King Arthur was ferried to Avalon for the last time, after his fight with Mordred, to be tended by Morgan, Goddess of Healing. 10 facts about King Arthur:

1. He’s generally thought to be just a legend, but he may well have been based on a real historical person. The first mention of anyone vaguely like him dates to the ninth century when a monk called Nennius wrote about a fifth century warrior called Arthur who led an army against the Saxons. There’s no mention in Nennius’s writings about this Arthur ever being a king, however.

2. It was Geoffrey Monmouth who first made the legend we know today popular. He wrote the Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) in the 12^th century, which he sold as a history of the British monarchy. This book included King Arthur and featured other characters from the legend, including Merlin and Guinevere. Historians today dismiss it as Medieval propaganda.

3. If Arthur and his compatriots were real, they probably didn’t look the way we tend to imagine them. We imagine knights in armour and stone castles, trappings of the 12^th century when Monmouth wrote his book. Arthur would have lived in the 5^th or 6^th centuries when castles were still made of wood, metal armour wasn’t a thing, and he would have been fighting Romans, not Saxons.

4. King Arthur’s parents were King Uther Pendragon and Lady Igraine. His conception was said to be magically aided by Merlin. Igraine died giving birth to him and Uther died not long after, so the young Arthur was adopted by a knight named Ector. He had no idea he was adopted until his adopted mother died and her son Kay told him.

5. Arthur had a famous sword, Excalibur. The best known legend of how he came to be in possession of it is that it had been embedded in a stone and only the true heir of England would be able to pull it out. The young Arthur was looking for a sword to use in some sword trials and came across the sword in the stone. He thought something along the lines of “That’ll do nicely” and pulled it out, thus revealing himself as the true king. The other version is that it was handed to him by the Lady in the Lake.

6. Nobody knows where his home and court, Camelot, was supposed to be. Cadbury Castle in Somerset, Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, Winchester and Caerleon in Wales are among the many places suggested as its location.

7. Camelot was home to the famous round table, around which Arthur and his knights would meet. The idea was that at a round table, nobody is sitting at the head or the foot, so everyone at the meeting is equal. There is a round table hanging on the wall of Winchester Castle, although it was actually put there by Henry VIII. Henry would have grown up hearing the tales as his father, Henry VII, was fond of them and claimed to have traced his family tree back to King Arthur himself, to strengthen his claim to the throne. He even named his eldest son Arthur, but this Arthur died before he could become a definite historical King Arthur, so it was his younger brother Henry who inherited the crown.

8. It’s said that King Arthur never died but is sleeping under a hill somewhere, and will return in Britain’s hour of greatest need. Since he didn’t appear at any point during world war 2, this is generally dismissed as mere legend. A couple of 12^th century monks in Glastonbury Abbey discovered a grave containing the bones of a man and woman, both very tall, and an inscription saying they were Arthur and Guinevere. We can’t be sure, however, that it wasn’t merely a publicity stunt to attract more visitors to Glastonbury.

9. If King Arthur died, it was fighting his son, Mordred, who’d stolen Excalibur and taken over the kingdom. Arthur was mortally wounded in the battle to get it back. His knights left him bleeding out and took the sword Excalibur and threw it back in the lake. It’s at this point that Morgan, goddess of healing, stepped in and took him to Avalon to try and save him.

10. These legends have inspired many writers and film makers over the centuries. Disney’s Sword in the Stone, DC Comics series Camelot 3000, Monty Python and the Holy Grail are among many re-tellings of the tales. Other works, such as Game of Thrones, draw heavily on the basic stories and are set in worlds similar to the one King Arthur is said to have lived in.

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 October: Erik the Red

Today is a day of remembrance for Erik the Red, a Norse explorer. Here are ten facts about him:

1. His actual name was Erik Thorvaldsson, and probably got the nickname of Erik the Red because he had red hair, although there is a theory that he earned the name through having a hot temper.

2. Erik Thorvaldsson was born in Rogaland, Norway in 950 CE, the son of Thorvald Asvaldsson. The family lived there until Erik was 10, at which time Thorvald was convicted of manslaughter and sent into exile. Thorvald and his family then settled in Hornstrandir in north-west Iceland.

3. Erik married a woman called Thjodhild and had four children with her: three sons, Leif, Thorvald and Thorstein, and a daughter, Freydís.

4. Like his father, Erik got himself exiled. Some of his workers caused a landslide on his neighbour’s farm. One of the neighbour’s relatives, Eyjolf the Foul, killed the workers responsible for the landslide, so Erik killed him. Sent into exile, Erik settled in Oxney, in West Iceland.

5. And then got exiled from there as well. While building a house for himself and his family, he left a sacred wooden beam with carvings called a setstokkr with a man called Thorgest for safe keeping. When the house was finished, Erik went to get his setstokkr back, but Thorgest claimed he no longer had it. So Erik killed him, and several of Thorgest’s sons and allies as well when the argument escalated. It was at this point that Erik decided to sail for Greenland.

6. Erik is sometimes credited with discovering Greenland, but that isn’t the case. That accolade goes to a man called Gunnbjörn Ulfsson who came upon Greenland by complete accident some time before. Another man named Snæbjörn Galti tried, unsuccessfully, to settle Greenland. What Erik is famous for is establishing the first successful colony on Greenland, which lasted for 500 years.

7. It was Erik who gave Greenland its name. The name was essentially a somewhat dishonest sales pitch to entice people to come and join his colony. He was suggesting it was a green and fertile place rather than being covered in Snow and ice.

8. At least two of Erik’s sons became explorers in their own right. Leif Erikson was one of the first Europeans to reach North America, and Thorvald followed in his footsteps and explored there, too. It didn’t go well for Thorvald, though. He fell out with the native people and became “the first European to die in North America.” Little is known about the life of the third son, Thorstein, except that he sailed to America to collect his brother’s body and died there. The daughter, Freydis, was a strong-willed woman. She followed her brothers to America. On one occasion the native Americans, known to the Norsemen as skraelings, attacked a settlement and were winning the battle when Freydis, despite being eight months pregnant, grabbed a sword herself, claiming she could fight better than her less than courageous countrymen. It’s alleged that her actions actually scared off the skraelings.

9. When Thjodhild converted to Christianity, a religion brought home by Leif, Erik wasn’t happy at all, as he was a devout follower of the Norse gods. When he complained, Thjodhild retaliated by denying him any more marital relations.

10. Erik died from being superstitious. Leif invited his father to go along on his exploratory journey to the Americas. Erik was all set to go, but on the way to the ship, his Horse threw him. Erik took this as a bad omen and decided not to go, and died in an epidemic at home the following winter.

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

25 October: The Battle of Agincourt

On this date in 1415, an English army under Henry V defeated the French at Agincourt, France. 10 facts about the Battle of Agincourt.

1. This battle took place during the The Hundred Years’ War, a long series of intermittent conflicts between France and England which took place between 24 May 1337 and 10 October 1453, which is actually 116 years, 4 months, 3 weeks and 4 days. It was basically all about kings of England trying to capture territory in France. The battle of Crécy in 1346 and the Battle of Poitiers in 1356 were two other English victories during this war.

2. Two months earlier Henry V had crossed the English Channel with 11,000 men and put siege to Harfleur in Normandy. Although the town surrendered after five weeks, the siege had taken its toll on Henry’s army with around half of them dead from battles or disease. Time for Henry to give up and go home. To get home, it was necessary to get to Calais, where his fleet was waiting.

3. Which the French knew. So they set a trap. A huge army of elite troops commanded by one Jean II Le Maingre, also known as Boucicaut, who was an expert jouster and tactician and out for revenge for the previous battles the English had won, waited near Agincourt, certain they’d be able to easily overcome the decimated English army and capture Henry, who would be worth a fortune in ransom money.

4. Nobody knows for sure, but it’s estimated the French army consisted of as many as 30,000 men, elite cavalry troops, while just 6,000 of Henry’s men were left; so they were outnumbered by 5 to 1. Not great odds.

5. Henry had some sneaky tactics of his own up his sleeve, however. He chose a recently ploughed field surrounded by woods to set up his army for the battle. The woods meant the French troops couldn’t surround them, and narrowed the area in which the troops could actually engage. Not only that, but crossing a muddy field in armour served to slow the French troops down. As they slogged through the Mud, they were shot at by English soldiers armed with longbows. Sitting ducks.

6. Henry’s army was mostly made up of longbowmen, who were paid six pennies a day, or nine pounds a year. They were mostly peasant farmers, who’d been required by law to practice archery every week since childhood. So they were pretty good. The weapons were powerful too. Each longbow weighed 140lb. They could kill an opponent who was 200 yards away and wound one at 400 yards. Each bowman could fire 15 arrows every minute; several thousand of them doing just that created a storm of arrows that, it was said, blocked out the light of the Sun. Not only were many French soldiers shot by arrows, but the arrow storm panicked their Horses, so many more were trampled to death.

7. It’s said Henry actually took part in the fighting, right in the thick of it, defending his brother, who’d been wounded. It’s said Henry was hit on the head by an axe which broke the crown which made up part of his helmet.

8. The French had one small success, however. Ysembart d'Azincourt, leading a small number of men-at-arms and about 600 peasants attacked a baggage train and managed to swipe some treasure, including one of Henry’s crowns.

9. 25 October is Saint Crispin’s Day. He and his brother Crispinian were martyrs whose shrine was in a town called Soissons in Northern France, which had been the site of an earlier battle in which many English soldiers had died. King Henry noted, as the battle in Agincourt was about to begin, that it happened to be St Crispin’s Day, and winning on that feast day would be fitting retribution.

10. The battle inspired William Shakespeare’s play Henry V, written in 1599. The battle forms a significant part of the action and the play includes a famous speech, with the quote “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”

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