26 August: Hydrogen

This date in 1743 saw the birth of Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, French chemist and nobleman who stated the first version of the law of conservation of mass, recognised and named hydrogen. 10 things you might not know about hydrogen.

1. Its symbol is H and its atomic number is 1. It is described as a colourless, odourless, tasteless, flammable gaseous substance.

2. Its melting point is −259.16 °C, −434.49 °F and its boiling point is −252.879 °C, −423.182 °F. The very low melting and boiling points are due to weak forces of attraction between the molecules.

3. It is the lightest and most abundant chemical element in the universe, making up 75% of normal matter. That said, on Earth it’s only the third most abundant element. On Earth, most of it is tied up in compounds like hydrocarbons, so it’s present in all living things, and also of course, in water.

4. The name hydrogen is derived from Greek words meaning “maker of Water.”

5. Possibly the first thing scientists discovered about it was that it created water when burned, hence the name. Henry Cavendish discovered this sometime between 1766 and 1781, and in 1783 Antoine Lavoisier repeated the experiment and gave the gas its name. The first scientist to produce liquid hydrogen was James Dewar in 1898, who achieved the low temperatures needed by inventing the vacuum flask. He also produced solid hydrogen the following year.

6. In normal conditions, hydrogen is a gas and exists as a diatomic molecule, which means two hydrogen atoms bound together, hence it has the formula H_2. (dihydrogen) which in turn gives us the formula for water, H₂O, one of these diatomic molecule bound to a single molecule of oxygen.

7. Hydrogen fuels the stars. Our Sun converts 600 million tons of hydrogen to Helium every second, losing 4 million tons as pure energy. Abundant as it is, the universe will eventually run out of the stuff, ushering in the “Dark Era.” But not for about 10¹⁴ years. Hydrogen fuel cells powered the Apollo spacecraft, producing Electricity and drinking water for the astronauts simultaneously.

8. It’s lighter than air, and so people soon figured out you could fill balloons with it and use them to fly. German count Ferdinand von Zeppelin took this idea still further and by 1900, had developed Zeppelins as passenger aircraft. Hydrogen was used in the Hindenberg, which caught fire over New Jersey on 6 May 1937. That disaster put an end to hydrogen being used in airships carrying passengers, although it’s still used in weather balloons.

9. Hydrogen can diffuse through solid metals, embrittling steel and even leaking through intact metal containers over time. Leaks can lead to hydrogen fires, which are tricky to spot because hydrogen burns with an invisible flame in daylight. They have to be detected using UV light.

10. Industrial uses include making ammonia for agricultural fertiliser using something called the Haber process, so we no longer have to ship tons of bird poo from islands off Peru. Hydrogen is used in the production of plastics and pharmaceuticals, for removing sulphur from oil during the refining process, and in food production to make fats, such as Margarine. It’s used as a protective atmosphere for making flat sheets of Glass, and as a flushing gas during the manufacture of Silicon chips.

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/

20 August: Cerium

Swedish chemist Jons Jakob Berzelius, was born on this date in 1779. He is credited with identifying the chemical element cerium. 10 things you might not know about this element.

1. Cerium is a chemical element with the symbol Ce and atomic number 58.

2. It is a soft and ductile silvery-white metal which tarnishes in air and reacts with water. Pure cerium may ignite if scratched with a knife.

3. Its Melting point is 1068 K (795 °C, 1463 °F)

4. Its boiling point is 3716 K (3443 °C, 6229 °F).

5. It’s the most abundant of the rare-earth metals and the 25^th most abundant element overall. It’s actually more plentiful than lead or tin. Its estimated abundance in the Earth's crust is 68 ppm.

6. Cerium occurs in minerals such as bastnasite, monazite, and many others. It also is found among the fission products of Uranium, Plutonium, and thorium.

7. Cerium was discovered in Bastnäs in Sweden by Jöns Jakob Berzelius and Wilhelm Hisinger in 1803. In the same year, Martin Heinrich Klaproth also discovered it, quite independently, in Germany.

8. It was Jöns Jakob Berzelius who named the element, after the asteroid Ceres, which had been discovered two years earlier. The asteroid, in turn, was named after the Roman goddess Ceres, goddess of agriculture.

9. It has no biological role, but isn’t particularly toxic, either, except with intense or continued exposure. Percentage Amount in the Human Body: 0.00006%

10. Its uses in industry include grinding and polishing glass, for precision optical lenses, flat-screen TVs, and mirrors. It’s also used in lighter flints, Catalytic Converters and self-cleaning ovens.

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/

30 June: Strontium

On 30 June 1808 Davy reported to the Royal Society that he had successfully isolated strontium metal for the first time. 10 facts about this element.

1. The chemical symbol for strontium is Sr and its atomic number is 38.

2. It’s a soft silver-white yellowish metallic element which is highly chemically reactive. It is softer than Calcium and harder than Barium.

3. Its melting point is 777 °C and its boiling point is 1377 °C.

4. It was first discovered in 1790 by Adair Crawford and William Cruickshank, who were scientists working on the production of barium, and noticed that an ore found in Lead mines was similar, but also had different properties. Crawford therefore concluded it must be “a new species of earth which has not hitherto been sufficiently examined."

5. The new element was named for Strontian, a village in Scotland close to the lead mines where it was first discovered.

6. Strontium is the 15th most abundant element on Earth.

7. In the 19^th century, its main use was to extract Sugar from sugar beets, using a now obsolete method called the strontian process. In the 20^th century, it was used in the manufacture of cathode ray tubes for Televisions, which has now declined in favour of other display methods. Today, alloys of it have various uses: Strontium aluminate is used in glow in the dark toys; strontium carbonate and other strontium salts are added to Fireworks to give a deep red colour; strontium chloride is sometimes used in Toothpastes for sensitive teeth.

8. Due to its similarities to calcium, the human body can absorb it in a similar way so it can be found in bone. Naturally occurring isotopes are not hazardous to heath at low levels.

9. The same is not true of strontium-90, which is synthetic and highly radioactive, one of the most dangerous components of nuclear fallout, because the body takes it in like calcium.

10. Strontium Dog is a British comics series starring a character called Johnny Alpha, a mutant bounty hunter in Earth's future, after a nuclear war. The series was created in 1978 by writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra for Starlord, a short-lived weekly science fiction comic. When Starlord was cancelled, the series transferred to the British science fiction weekly 2000 AD.

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

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19 June: Blaise Pascal

Today, 10 facts about the scientist, mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, whose birthday was today.

1. He was home schooled by his father, who was a tax collector. From an early age, Pascal showed an aptitude for mathematics and at the age of 12 had worked out Euclid’s first thirty-two geometric propositions all by himself.

2. He almost died at the age of one year from an unknown disease which caused his stomach to swell up and gave him fits. In those days, the cause of such illnesses was generally assumed to be witchcraft, and an elderly woman who sometimes cared for the baby got the blame. At first, Pascal’s father rejected the idea, but when his son got no better he started believing it. The poor old woman was pressured into confessing, but was canny enough to suggest a cure – transferring the spell onto two stray Cats which were then killed by being thrown out of a Window. She probably thought it bought her some time at least, but by a happy coincidence, Pascal started to get better at this point.

3. By the time he was 16, he’d written a work on conic sections and submitted it to the polymath Père Mersenne. It was so good that Rene Descartes was convinced Pascal's father had written it, and it still forms the basis of Pascal’s theorem.

4. At 18, Pascal invented an early calculator, the Pascaline, which he did after watching his father work, wanting to make the laborious calculations he had to do easier. It wasn’t a huge success commercially as it was expensive to make and somewhat cumbersome to use. Rich people and royalty liked them as status symbols and expensive toys with which to show off, but the average tax collector couldn’t afford them.

5. Other inventions and ideas Pascal came up with include the hydraulic press, probability theory, the syringe and the concept of atmospheric pressure. He theorised that mercury in sealed container would rise or fall according to altitude. At this point, he was not very healthy and wasn’t able to climb a Mountain to prove it himself so he sent his brother in law up the mountain instead. Pascal did, however, climb a church bell tower that was 50 metres high in order to observe the effects himself.

6. He’s also credited with inventing public transport. He set up a network of horse drawn carriages called carrosses à cinq sols (5 sols being the flat fare) which followed five set routes and would run whether or not there were any passengers. The idea only enjoyed modest success at the time and by 1675 the venture had folded.

7. Pascal is also known for his works on religion and philosophy. He had a religious experience in 1664, an intense vision, which caused him to note on a scrap of paper: It began with: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars..." and ended with a quote from Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He sewed this note into his coat so it was with hm everywhere he went. When he changed his coat, he transferred the paper. It was found by his servants after he died. He’s famous for a work known as Pascal’s wager, which lays out why a person should strive to believe in God. He described it as a game, similar to a coin toss, with two possible outcomes on which it is compulsory to bet. God exists, or He doesn’t. If the latter is true the player only loses a few pleasures he or she may have given up in order to please God, but if the former is true and God exists, then the player betting against that loses an eternity in heaven, hence it makes sense to bet on God existing. Although the wager is named after him, he may not have thought of it himself as a similar concept appears in eleventh-century Islamic texts and the plays of Euripides.

8. He also theorised that: ‘If Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter, the whole face of the world would have changed.’ Her long nose, he claimed, would have been seen as a sign of strength and good character, which contributed to her legendary beauty which attracted powerful men like Marc Antony and Julius Caesar. Her relationships with them had far reaching consequences. If she’d had a shorter nose, Pascal theorised, Marc and Julius might not have fancied her and the history of the world would have been completely different.

9. He died at the age of 39, having been in poor health for years. He declined medical treatment, saying that suffering was the lot of a Christian, and he would get better if God willed it. God clearly didn’t will it, and Pascal tried to get a place in a home for the terminally ill, but in the end, was too sick to be moved. An autopsy was carried out after he died, but even so it’s not clear what killed him. The autopsy noted stomach and abdominal organ issues and brain damage but came to no definite conclusion about cause of death. Modern speculation has suggested that he had tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or brain cancer or all three.

10. As well as a theorem, a law, a triangle, the SI unit for pressure and numerous university buildings, things named after him include: a programming language, an asteroid, a crater on the moon, islands in Australia and Antarctica, the Otter in the Animal Crossing series and the chameleon in Tangled.

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 June: Rubber

On this date in 1844, Charles Goodyear obtained his first rubber patent. 10 things you might not know about rubber.

1. Rubber comes from Hevea brasiliensis, a tall, softwood tree native to south America. In the wild this tree grows to a height of 34 metres (120 feet), but the trees cultivated for rubber production only reach about 24 metres (80 feet). The carbon they need to grow really tall is contained in the rubber which is harvested, and foliage is removed to make tapping easier.

2. Ancient people in South America knew about rubber 2,000 years ago. They used it to make soles for shoes and balls for ball games. The Mayans extracted white sap from rubber trees; the Olmecs who first created rubber balls. The Aztecs used rubber balls in a game called "ollama".

3. Rubber was brought to the attention of Europeans thanks to Christopher Columbus, who saw natives in Haiti playing with rubber balls in 1493.

4. It was 1735 before anyone made a scientific study of the stuff. This study was by Charles-Marie de La Condamine and François Fresneau of France.

5. The word rubber was coined by Joseph Priestley in 1770 when he found it could be used to rub out Pencil marks. It was Goodyear’s vulcanisation process which made rubber a desirable commodity.

6. The main chemical constituents of rubber are elastomers, or “elastic polymers,” large chainlike molecules that can be stretched to great lengths and yet recover their original shape. The first common elastomer was polyisoprene, from which natural rubber is made.

7. Rubber trees start producing latex when they're around six to seven years old and can be tapped for 20-30 years. During that time, a tree can produce 19 lbs of rubber each year. A tree will be tapped every couple of days, yielding approximately 50 grams (1.7 ounces) of latex. When it comes out of the tree, latex is white. Changes in colour occur when things are added. Tyres are black because carbon black has been added. Tapping is done by scoring the trunk of the tree at an angle of about 30 degrees, as high up as the tapper can reach. Subsequent cuts are made immediately below the previous one. Trees are often rested for a period after heavy tapping.

8. Synthetic rubber was first made in 1909 by Fritz Hofmann in Germany. In 1910, Russian scientist Sergei Lebedev made rubber from a colourless gas, butadiene, which came in handy during both World Wars when natural rubber was in short supply. Today, synthetic rubber has overtaken the use of natural rubber.

9. Hevea brasiliensis isn’t the only plant which produces latex; it’s merely the one that is best at it. One common plant which produces latex is the Dandelion. In Nazi Germany, research projects tried to use dandelions as a base for rubber production, but failed.

10. Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Cameroon, and Liberia are the world’s leading producers of natural rubber. 65% of the rubber produced is used by the automotive industry for mountings, gaskets, belts, hoses, and of course, tyres. 

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

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23 May: Carl Linnaeus

Born on this date in 1707 was Carl Linnaeus, Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist who established conventions for the naming of living organisms that became universally accepted in the scientific world.

1. He was born in Sweden. His father was a curate, who taught his son Latin at a young age. Carl would sometimes use the Latin form of his name, Carolus Linnæus.

2. Carl’s mother wanted him to be a priest and even had him enrolled in priest training school, but he didn’t do well there and ended up having to leave.

3. He loved plants from a young age. He wasn’t very interested in the subjects his teachers expected him to be good at: Greek, Hebrew, mathematics and theology. He much preferred studying plants. One teacher did encourage his interest in botany by letting him work in his garden. His interest in science led his teachers to suggest a career in medicine, so he was given lessons in anatomy and physiology.

4. He studied medicine in Sweden but was expected to finish his degree elsewhere, so he finished his studies at the University of Harderwijk in the Netherlands, where he studied the causes of malaria and studied some more at the University of Leiden.

5. When he returned to Sweden he met Sara Elisabeth Moraeus and wanted to marry her. Her father said no until he’d finished his studies and got a job, proving that he’d be able to support her. He didn’t practice as a doctor for very long. He took a position as professor of medicine at Uppsala and later returned to his first love and became the head of the botanical garden.

6. He’s famous for his work on classifying living things and giving them the two part Latin names we use today. He has been called the "father of modern taxonomy" (the science of classifying living things), Princeps botanicorum (Prince of Botanists) and "The Pliny of the North". He was also the first scientist to treat the human species as an animal to be classified like any other. It was he who coined the name Homo Sapiens.

7. He held grudges and on at least two occasions named things after people he didn’t like. Siegesbeckia, a weed that produces an evil smelling fluid, was named after Johann Siegesbeck, a German scientist who was critical of his work. Aphanus rolandri, a type of beetle, was named after one of his students, Daniel Rolander, who’d refused to show Linnaeus his plant collection.

8. One might expect there are some Amphibians named after his enemies too, since Linnaeus was really not a fan of that particular class of animal. He wrote terribly insulting things about amphibians, describing them as “most terrible and vile animals… ghastly colour, cartilaginous skeleton, foul skin, fierce face, a meditative gaze, a foul odour, a harsh call, a squalid habitat, and terrible venom… an unsightly, hideous naked mob.” He did admit, however, that some Frogs sang beautifully.

9. The Swedish king, Adolf Fredrik, made Linnaeus a noble in 1757, after which he changed his name to Carl Linné.

10. He has some plants named after him. Linnaea and Linnaeosicyos, two kinds of flowering plant.

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 May: The Aurora Borealis

On this date in 1719 The Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) appeared for the first time to New Englanders, USA. 10 facts about the Aurora Borealis:

1. The name was coined by Galileo in the 17^th century. He named the phenomenon after Aurora, the Roman goddess of dawn and Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind. The Aurora Australis which occurs in the southern hemisphere is named for the Greek god of the south wind, Auster.

2. Galileo wasn’t the first to observe an aurora by any means. Cro-Magnon cave paintings in Spain dating to 30,000 BC feature them. The oldest known written record of the aurora was in a Chinese legend written around 2600 BC.

3. So what causes it? Charged particles being emitted by the Sun and hitting the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field. "Coronal mass ejections", when the sun ejects more particles than usual is when you get the most impressive auras. Dr Affelia Wibisono, from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich describes it as “a big sneeze by the Sun."

4. Auroras are colourful. The different colours which can be seen are due to the different gases in the atmosphere. Green lights are caused by Oxygen and the Purples, Blues and Pinks by nitrogen. When particles hit oxygen at very high altitudes, however, it produces a Red glow.

5. The lowest part of an aurora is usually about 50 miles (80 km) above the Earth's surface. The highest part could be 150 miles (800km) above the Earth. This means that Astronauts on the International Space Station sometimes fly right through it.

6. Northern Lights are seen most often in regions close to the North Pole such as Scandinavia, Greenland, Alaska, Canada and Russia, but occasionally further south – they have been seen as far south as the Caribbean. The Southern lights are commonly seen across Antarctica and sometimes in the south of Australia and New Zealand. The northern hemisphere is more densely populated which is why you tend to hear more about the Aurora Borealis than the Aurora Australis.

7. The best time to spot auroras is around the equinoxes (March-April and September-October), because there are more magnetic storms then. The brightest auroras tend to be around 11pm to midnight local time.

8. It’s not just a light show, either. The auroras make sounds as well. People have reported hearing hissing, snapping or popping sounds. This happens when negative charges are released after being trapped in the inversion layer, a part of the atmosphere where temperature increases with altitude, rather than decreases.

9. Since it’s caused by what’s happening on the sun, it stands to reason that the other planets in the solar system get them, too, although they’d look different in terms of colours because the atmospheres are made up of different gases. The Hubble Space Telescope, and the Cassini and Galileo spacecraft have allowed us to see auroras on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

10. Ancient peoples came up with their own explanations of what those lights in the sky meant. These include: a giant Arctic fox running across the sky making sparks with its tail; the gods burning torches; the spirits of the dead giving guidance, messages or warnings, or dancing, or playing football in the sky with a walrus skull.

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/

30 April: World's Fairs

On this date in 1939, the New York World's Fair opened. 10 facts about World’s Fairs.

1. A world’s fair is a global exhibition event with the purpose of showcasing the achievements of the nations taking part. They generally last three to six months and are held at specific locations. World’s fair is the term most often used in America. In Europe and Asia they are called international (or universal) expositions/exhibitions. Since 1958, the word Expo has been used. Since 1995, it has been ruled there must be a gap of at least five years between them.

2. There can, however, be one Specialised Expo in between. These are smaller and shorter, lasting between three weeks and three months, and are usually focussed on a theme, for example, "Future Energy" (Expo 2017 Astana), "The Living Ocean and Coast" (Expo 2012 Yeosu), or "Leisure in the Age of Technology" (Brisbane, Expo '88). The first of these was held in Stockholm in 1936.

3. The first World’s Fair as we know it was held in Prague in 1791. It was timed to coincide with the coronation of Leopold II as king of Bohemia, and was was held in the Clementinum, a historic complex of buildings in Prague which houses the National Library of the Czech Republic. The first in the UK was in 1851 and was Prince Albert’s idea. It was called the "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations" and held in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park.

4. There have been three distinct eras. The Industrialisation era, between 1851–1938, where the exhibitions showed off advances in technology and were big trade fairs. From 1939 in New York they began to shift in emphasis towards cultural themes and social progress. 1939’s theme was "Building the World of Tomorrow". In 1988, the emphasis shifted again and since then they have been a platform for improving and promoting the images of the nations taking part.

5. There is a central organising body called the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) which is based in Paris.

6. At time of writing, the most recent World’s Fair was in Osaka, Japan in 2025 and the next one will be in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 2030. There will be a Specialised Expo in Belgrade in 2027 with the theme of “Play for Humanity – Sport and Music for All”.

7. Buildings and structures are often erected for World’s Fairs, generally meant to be temporary and dismantled when the show is over. However, there are several which have survived and become much loved attractions in the host cities. The most famous of these is perhaps the Eiffel Tower built for the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1889. The Crystal Palace in London has survived a major fire and relocation to South London and Seattle’s Space Needle was built for the 1962 event. Brisbane’s Skyneedle was built for Expo ‘88 and is still there.

8. The Epcot Centre in the Walt Disney World Resort, near Orlando, Florida began as a concept of a permanent World’s Fair and became the new home for many of the exhibitions and rides created for the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. Some of them are still operational today.

9. Innovations first presented at World’s Fairs include Ferris wheels (Chicago, 1893); the new Ford Mustang (1964); IMAX movies (Osaka 1970) and cherry coke (Tennessee, 1982).

10. A US president was assassinated at a World’s Fair in 1901 in Buffalo, New York. During a reception, President William McKinley was shot twice in the stomach by an anarchist and died of gangrene eight days later. He was operated on at the time by an impromptu team at the expo’s small medical facility, which wasn’t equipped to deal with such major surgery. They weren’t able to locate one of the bullets and had to leave it in, and that’s what killed McKinley. Ironically, on display at that very Expo was a device which could have saved him – the X Ray machine, but nobody thought to use it.

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 April: John James Audubon

Born this date in 1785 was John James Audubon, US naturalist and artist, famous for his book about Birds. 10 facts about him:

1. He was born in what is now Haiti. He was the illegitimate son of a French naval officer/plantation owner, Jean Audubon, and a chambermaid named Jeanne Rabin, who died soon after he was born. He was given the name Jean Rabin.

2. In 1791, his father had him and another illegitimate sibling, taken to France so he could formally adopt them. His name was changed to Jean-Jacques Fougère Audubon.

3. At the age of 18, his father sent him to America to avoid being conscripted into Napoleon’s army. He changed his name again to make it sound more English, thus becoming John James Audubon.

4. He opened a shop in Louisville, Kentucky with a partner, Ferdinand Rozier. One fateful day a famous ornithologist of the time called Alexander Wilson visited the shop looking for funding for his book, American Ornithology. Apparently authors would, at this time, ask members of the public for money in a kind of old-fashioned kind of crowd funding. Wilson showed the shopkeepers his drawings, whereupon Rozier commented, in French, that Audubon could draw much better. Hence, they didn’t invest. Wilson never finished his book, but Audubon was inspired to write and illustrate one himself. He was duly snubbed by Wilson’s fans and supporters, making it impossible for him to publish there, so he turned his attention to Europe.

5. At first, it didn’t look as if he’d meet much success there either. This time the reason was that Audubon’s paintings were deemed too large to be turned into a book. Measuring about 39.5 x 26.5 inches, he was told the resulting book would be too large to fit on a table. However, he didn’t give up and returned to the bookseller with samples of his drawings, and won him over. The book got published, with 435 engraved and hand-coloured plates. Should you have one of these rare first editions in your attic, it could sell for $10 million.

6. He was one of the first people to put bands on birds in order to study their migration. He put silver thread on around the legs of Eastern phoebes and found two of the birds returning the following year still sported the threads.

7. Some of his other experiments started a huge controversy in the birding world. He decided to test out whether Vultures had a keen sense of smell. He’d do things like create a dummy dead animal stuffed with grass and found the birds went for that and not the putrefying carcass he’d hidden close by. Some ornithologists supported him but others didn’t and there was a great schism between “nosarians” who believed vultures used their sense of smell, and “anti-nosarians” who believed they used sight and had no sense of smell to speak of. Even Charles Darwin got involved and conducted experiments of his own.

8. Audubon is credited with discovering around 25 species and 12 subspecies of American bird, but at the same time, some of his paintings are of birds that don’t seem to exist in nature. There are five: the carbonated swamp warbler, Cuvier’s kinglet, Townsend’s finch (or Townsend’s bunting), small-headed flycatcher, and blue mountain warbler, that have only ever been seen in his drawings. Today’s scientists believe these must have been hybrids or mutants.

9. The Audubon Society was actually nothing to do with him. It was started after he died, by George Bird Grinnell, who, as a child, had been taught by Audubon’s widow, Lucy. He had great respect for Lucy and named his society and its magazine after her. However, the society folded in around 1889. It was revived a few years later in 1896 by two Boston women, Harriet Lawrence Hemenway and her cousin Minna B. Hall. They’d been horrified to learn that birds were routinely killed for the feathers to make ladies’ hats. They pledged never to wear hats with feathers and persuaded others to do so. Similar conservation societies sprang up in other parts of America and eventually combined to become the National Audubon Society in 1940. This society still exists and concentrates on scientific conservation and education to protect birds.

10. It is somewhat ironic, therefore, when you consider how John James Audubon himself produced his paintings. He would shoot the birds first and prop up the carcasses with wire into natural poses.

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/

14 March: Emeralds

On National Jewel Day: 10 facts about emeralds.

1. Emeralds are always Green (unlike Diamonds, Sapphires and Rubies which can be colours other than the one usually associated with them) although they might not be the exact shade of green known as emerald green. The shade of green varies according to the exact amount of the elements Chromium and Vanadium present in the stone.

2. Emeralds belong to the beryl family of stones.

3. They are actually rarer, and therefore more expensive per carat, than diamonds. An emerald is lower in density than a diamond and so would be larger than a diamond of the same carat value. Emerald measures between 7.5 to 8 on the Mohs Scale of Hardness.

4. Colombia is the world’s biggest emerald producer, accounting for around 90% of the world’s emeralds. Zambia is the second largest producer. Emerald miners in Colombia get an occupational perk called “picando” in which for one day each month they can keep any emeralds they find for themselves.

5. Emeralds are the birth stone for people born in May, or under the astrological sign of Taurus. 55 years is an emerald anniversary.

6. The largest flawless emerald in the world was known as the Rockefeller Emerald until it was sold in an auction to a man called Harry Winston for $5.5 million. Since then it has been known as the Rockefeller-Winston emerald.

7. The word emerald comes to us via Old French, Vulgar Latin and Ancient Greek, and possibly even further back to Sanskrit or Persian. The Ancient Greek word simply meant “green gem”.

8. In Ancient Egypt, emeralds symbolised eternal youth and were often buried with people. Cleopatra loved emeralds so much that she took ownership of all the emerald mines in Egypt. Elizabeth Taylor was another fan. One of her emerald necklaces sold for $6.1 million in 2011. They are also a feature of the British Crown Jewels.

9. There is folklore associated with emeralds. They were once said to counteract poison to the extent that if a venomous creature so much as looked at one it would go blind. It was also said that placing an emerald under the tongue would reveal truth, and grant a person the ability to foresee the future. They protected against evil spells, cured leprosy, improved memory and eyesight and was potentially even a contraceptive as ancient alchemists believed that if a person wearing an emerald ring had sex, the emerald would break.

10. The Emerald City is the capital city of the fictional Land of Oz in L Frank Baum's Oz books.

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/