8 July: Twister

On this date in 1966, a patent was granted for the game of Twister. 10 things you might not know about Twister.

1. Twister was invented by Ron Guyer, when he was working in his father’s ad design office trying to come up with an idea for an ad for shoe polish when he suddenly had a completely unrelated idea: What if there was a game where the players are the pieces?

2. Guyer experimented with a few ideas and eventually applied for a patent for the game we know today, although his original name for it was “Pretzel” because that was what the players would end up looking like.

3. Pretzel, however, was already in use as a name for a toy dog already on the market, so toy company Milton Bradley changed the name to Twister. Guyer hated the name, however, as he associated it with deadly Tornadoes and not a fun evening playing games with family and friends.

4. Its first tagline was ‘The game that ties you up in knots.’

5. It got off to a rocky start because some retailers, including Sears, decided it was too racy to sell. They called it ‘sex in a box’ and boycotted it. Even some executives at Milton Bradley agreed and thought mixed sex games would be in poor taste. Even using cartoon characters on the box rather than photographs of real people failed to placate the detractors.

6. The company were about to give up on Twister, but they’d already forked out for a promotional slot on Johnny Carson’s show. That went ahead, with Carson playing Twister with actress Eva Gabor. Which, you’d think, would only reinforce the risqué reputation. In any event, the public loved it. The day after the show aired, people were queuing outside Abercrombie and Fitch, one of the few shops which hadn’t boycotted the game. Guyer says. “By Christmas 1966, we were the game of the year.” There were subsequent press reports that teenagers were playing the game naked, which would have dealt a severe blow in relatively prudish 1960s America, but it all blew over and Twister, and the company, survived.

7. Twister was banned in Germany, not because it was too sexy, but because at the time, it was frowned upon in that country for women to take their shoes off in public.

8. Colour blind and even totally blind people can play, thanks to adaptations to make it more accessible, using textures and Braille. Sighted players can join in wearing blindfolds. Blindfolded Twister is an accessible variant with four different tactile symbols on the mat.

9. In 2015, Twister was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame.

10. The record for the world’s largest Twister board was set in 2015 country music singer Thomas Rhett spliced together 1200 regular-sized mats to create a 27,159 square-foot playing area as a publicity stunt at one of his concerts. The record for the most players, however, wasn’t broken at this event. The 1987 record of 4,160 players was still held by students at the University of Massachusetts.

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/

6 April: Hula Hoops

On this date in 1987 Roxann Rose set the record for continuous revolution of a hula hoop (90 hours). 10 facts about hula hoops:

1. Roxann Rose’s record has since been broken and at time of writing the record holder is Jenny Doan who hula hooped for 100 hours.

2. There are also records for hula hooping on one leg (Leanna Fernandez (UK) - 2 hours, 30 minutes, 19 seconds in 2021); hula hooping in plank position (Reger Maffei (USA) - 7 minutes, 41.28 seconds in 2024); spinning the most hoops at once (Marawa Ibrahim (Australia) 200); The most people hula-hooping simultaneously (4,183 by the Department of Health and the Ministry of Public Health in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2013. The hula hoops remained in continuous motion for two minutes); and running a half marathon while hula hooping (two hours and 29 minutes by Tamara "Tats" Ward (UK) in 2025.

3. Items resembling modern hula hoops have been used since at least 500 BC.

4. The Native American Hoop Dance is a form of storytelling dance using hoops as props.

5. The modern hula hoop was inspired by Australian children playing with Bamboo hoops as the owners of an American toy company, Wham-O, happened to be driving past. They went home and made similar toys for their own children, who loved them. Even adults at cocktail parties were keen to have a go, especially when they’d imbibed a few cocktails! This told Wham-O that they had a hit on their hands and began selling them in 1958. It became a craze. More than 20 million people bought them in that year.

6. The name hula comes from the Hawaiian dance which uses similar hip movements.

7. Not all countries embraced the craze as America did. Indonesia banned them because they “might stimulate passion”; Japan forbade them on public streets; China called hula hoops “a nauseating craze” and in the Soviet Union, the hoop branded a “symbol of the emptiness of American culture.”

8. Hula hooping is nowadays a popular fitness activity with hula hooping included in the Nintendo Wii exercise package. That said, British Medical Journal has reported that the hula hoop was responsible for an increase in back, neck, and abdominal injuries.

9. At the height of the craze there were hit songs about hula hoops: one by Georgia Gibbs and another by Maureen Evans.

10. Hula Hooping Girl, a 2020 street art painting by Banksy in Nottingham portrays a young girl hula-hooping with a bicycle tyre.

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/

6 September: Sonic The Hedgehog

Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog, TV Cartoon Adventure, made its debut on this date in 1993. 10 things you might not know about Sonic the Hedgehog.

1. He was created by the Japanese game designers Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima.

2. Sonic was created because Sega wanted a character which would be as popular as the Nintendo character Mario. Initial drafts of the proposed character made him a Rabbit who could pick things up and attack with his ears. However, this was rejected almost immediately because they wanted a fast paced game and a rabbit stopping to pick things up would slow it down too much. They started looking at animals that could roll and the final choice was between a Hedgehog and an armadillo. Even though Sega feared that Americans wouldn’t know what a hedgehog was, the hedgehog won.

3. Even once they’d decided on the species, there was still a way to go before Sonic as we know him emerged. He was originally named Mr Needlemouse and was the leader of a rock band. The rabbit was a member of the band along with a parakeet who is often mistaken for a Chicken, a Monkey and a Crocodile. Sonic was also a skilled break dancer and had a girlfriend, a human woman called Madonna.

4. In the games as we know them, Sonic’s love interest is a tomboyish Pink hedgehog called Amy Rose. At least, she believes she is his girlfriend and wants to marry him although Sonic isn’t really that interested. She’s not as strong or as fast as the other characters but follows them around nevertheless, trying to attract Sonic’s attention. She has a Hammer which she uses to defend herself.

5. Sonic’s best friend is Tails, a Fox cub with two tails. Tails is his nickname. His actual name is Miles Prower, a pun on “miles per hour.” He also has a friendly rival called Knuckles the Echidna, who is a red echidna.

6. His arch enemy is Doctor Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik, who is a mad scientist who tries to steal the Chaos Emeralds and take over the world. He is a bald man who wears Black, Red and Yellow clothes, has a large moustache and pince-nez Sunglasses.

7. Sonic is billed as “the world's fastest hedgehog” and was indeed the fastest video game character ever when the game was first released. His power to run at supersonic speed is down to the “power sneakers” that he wears, rather than a superpower. If he manages to collect all the Chaos Emeralds, he becomes even faster and gains the power of flight. His eyes then turn red and his body turns from blue to gold in this “super sonic” form. Sonic's catchphrase is “Gotta go fast!”

8. His main weakness is that he can’t swim. This is because Yuji Naka believed that real hedgehogs couldn’t swim. Sonic sinks like a stone if he lands in water. Except, that is, in the Sonic the Hedgehog Adventure Gamebooks, in which he does have the ability to swim.

9. The music in the game is provided by Japanese pop group Dreams Come True, formed as a trio in 1988. Their music can also be heard in Sleepless in Seattle and The Swan Princess.

10. There’s a hidden message in the game. Sega had banned post game credits, but Yuji Naka believed the names of the people who’d worked on the game should be displayed. So he did so, but in a sneaky way. At the beginning of the game, he included them all, but in black text on a black background and so invisible to anyone who didn’t have the cheat code.

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

29 August: Whist

Edmond Hoyle's Short Treatise on the game of Whist was published on this date in 1742. It became the standard text and rules for the game for the next hundred years. 10 things you might not know about whist:

1. It appears to have evolved from a number of other card games prior to the 18^th century, such as ruff, ruff and honours, whisk and swabbers, whisk, trump, honours, slamm and ruff. All these games are thought to have evolved from an Italian card game called Ronfa, now lost in the mists of time. Whist began, presumably, as another variation of this family of card games.

2. The name whist may come from an old English word meaning calm, quiet, and attentiveness, which was common in the 17th century. The modern word wistful comes from the same root.

3. In the 18^th century, whist was seen as a game fit only for servants, country squires and hunting men, not at all suitable for people of quality or ladies.

4. Edmond Hoyle was a member of a group of men who met up in the Crown Coffee House in Bedford Row, London, to play the game according to scientific principles. He began to teach wealthy young men how to play, which is no doubt why he wrote his book.

5. More than a century later, another whist writer emerged, one Henry Jones, aka "Cavendish", who in 1862 published a book with the snappy title of The Principles of Whist Stated and Explained, and Its Practice Illustrated on an Original System, by Means of Hands Played Completely Through which then became the standard text.

6. In the 19^th century another game came along which rather eclipsed whist as the card game of choice in English society, namely, bridge.

7. Whist, however, remained popular as a social game and even today there are events known as whist drives, often held as fundraisers for charity in which players play 24 hands against different opponents.

8. The game is played with a standard 52 card deck. Each player is dealt 13 cards and the aim of the game is to win tricks. In the game’s early days the trump suit was determined by the next card turned over from the top of the pack after the hands were dealt, but more recently there is a cycle followed the trump suit cycles through hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs every four deals, or there is a five deal variation in which the fifth deal has no trumps at all.

9. Three of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories feature whist: The Adventure of the Empty House, Ronald Adair plays whist at one of his clubs shortly before he is murdered. In The Adventure of the Devil's Foot, Brenda Tregennis plays whist with her brothers shortly before she is murdered. In The Red-Headed League, the banker Mr. Merryweather complains that he is missing his regular game of whist in order to help Holmes catch a bank robber. Edgar Allan Poe briefly mentioned whist in his tale The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

10. Several characters in literature are whist players. One such is Phileas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days, where he is described by Jules Verne thus: “His only pastime was reading the papers and playing whist. He frequently won at this quiet game, so very appropriate to his nature.” Charles Dickens’s Mr Pickwick and Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind are others. In more recent literature, Outlander author Diana Gabaldon describes a whist game between Jamie Fraser and Phylip Wylie.

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

12 November: Cabbage Patch Kids

 On this date in 1983 Cabbage Patch Dolls made their début. 10 things you might not know about Cabbage Patch Kids:

1. They were created by a 21 year old student named Xavier Roberts. Although you could argue he copied them from an artist called Martha Nelson, who had created a line of doll babies, which, like the Cabbage Patch Kids, came with an adoption certificate. Roberts modified her idea enough to get a copyright, although Nelson would eventually sue him.

2. Roberts initially dubbed his creation “Little People” but had to change it to "Cabbage Patch Kids" because Fisher-Price already owned the name "Little People".

3. Each doll is unique, despite being mass produced. Computers were used to randomise the various features so each doll was different.

4. You didn’t buy a Cabbage Patch Kid, you adopted one – for a fee, of course. Roberts would correct anyone who referred to them as “dolls,” preferring to call them “babies” or “kids.” In fact, he adopted one himself, named it Otis Lee, and took it everywhere with him, eventually making it chairman of the board.

5. The origin story was written by Roger L. Schlaifer and his wife. The kids were born in Cabbage patches (referencing the lie often told to kids about where their new baby sibling came from). The cabbages were pollinated by a creature called a bunnybee, a cross between a bee and a Rabbit. These creatures used their rabbit ears to fly and would pollinate the plants in the magical cabbage patch with magic crystals. Xavier Roberts insisted on being written into the story and appears as a boy who follows a bunnybee behind a waterfall and finds cabbages having babies in an abandoned garden. I have to wonder what kind of drugs they were all on at the time! To continue the story, it turned out that the “babies” were being abducted by villains called Lavender McDade, Cabbage Jack and Beau Weasel and sent to work in gold mines. So Roberts made it his mission to save the “babies” by finding people to adopt them.

6. Numerous companies have manufactured the cloth dolls with plastic heads, the first being Coleco Industries in 1982. Most toy manufacturers initially turned down the dolls because they were deemed too ugly to be a best seller. Coleco was a computer company with a failing product and were diversifying into the toy market. While the dolls saved the company at the time, they eventually went bankrupt anyway and so the dolls were made, at various times, by Hasbro, Mattel, Toys R Us, and JAKKS Pacific (their current manufacturer).

7. The original outlet for Cabbage Patch Kids was an old medical clinic which had been converted to a toy shop, with staff acting as doctors and nurses. It was called Babyland General Hospital and was located in in Cleveland, Georgia. In 2007, the state of Georgia declared December 1st to be Official Cabbage Patch Kids Day.

8. The most expensive Cabbage Patch Kids are a set based on 2008 US presidential/vice presidential candidates—President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Senator John McCain, and Sarah Palin—for $59,999.99 ($15,000 each) on ebay. For comparison, a Cabbage Patch Doll based on Donald Trump would set you back just $6,750.

9. Over the years there have been Cabbage Patch Kids which could talk and for a time in the 1990s, there was a line of them that could eat plastic food – Cabbage Patch Snacktime Kids. The mechanism was a pair of one-way metal rollers behind the lips. The snacks would exit the doll into a backpack on its back. However, these were withdrawn on safety grounds after real children got their fingers or hair caught in the mechanism.

10. Like any toy, Cabbage Patch Kids were sometimes damaged by real children, mauled by dogs and various other accidents. They could be returned to Coleco to be repaired, or, to keep up the pretence, sent to the doll hospital for treatment. It was said that if Coleco received a doll that was broken beyond repair they would issue its owner with a death certificate.

NEW!!

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

2 August: National Colouring Book Day

Today is National Colouring Book Day. 10 facts about colouring books:

1. Some of the earliest colouring books were produced in Germany and published in Philadelphia by John Weik & Co." around 1858.

2. However, it was probably the children’s illustrator Kate Greenaway who helped make them popular. In the late 1870s, she teamed up with publisher Cassell Petter & Galpin for The ‘Little Folks’ Painting Book, a reference to a children’s magazine that Cassell Petter & Galpin published. Children could enter their coloured in pictures into competitions to win prizes.

3. In the 19^th century, colouring books were mainly for the education of children and improving their minds.

4. The first colouring book for adults was published in 1961 and was a satire about office culture. "This is me. I am an executive. Executives are important. They go to important offices and do important things. Color my underwear important."

5. Similar satirical colouring books followed, poking fun at other subjects like political extremism, social movements, the Soviet Union, communism, President John F. Kennedy, and mental illness. People would often buy them for a laugh rather than to actually colour them in.

6. Barbra Streisand had a hit in 1962 with a song called My Coloring Book.

7. Colouring in is good for you. Researchers have found that people who coloured in mandalas experienced lower levels of anxiety than people who simply coloured on a blank piece of paper. Focusing on different shapes and patterns in a structured way helps people to shut off negative thoughts, and become calmer. Colouring books are also used in rehabilitation of accident victims to aid recovery of hand–eye coordination, and with autistic children for entertainment and for their soothing effect.

8. Digital colouring is a thing as well. A number of websites offer this including Disney, which offers Disney Color and Play, an app that lets you use your smartphone or tablet to transform 2D images of Disney characters into colourful, digital 3D artworks.

9. There’s even a company that will turn your photographs into personalised colouring books.

10. Finally, there’s even a Reverse Colouring Book available on Amazon which provides pages of watercoloured abstract art, and you add the lines.

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

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

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

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10 March: Mario Day

Today is Mario Day, so here are 10 facts about the character Super Mario:

1. 10 March is Mario day because if you write the date US style, abbreviating the month, it’s Mar10, which looks like Mario. It’s not his birthday – it has been stated by Nintendo that Mario’s birthday is 11 October.

2. Mario was created by Shigeru Miyamoto as an extra character in his 1981 game, Donkey Kong.

3. He was originally known as Jumpman. However, the story goes that the employees in Nintendo’s US office had decided there must be a better name for the character to appeal to American audiences. They were working at trying to come up with one when their landlord arrived to demand the rent. The landlord’s name was Mario Segale, and they ended up naming the character after him.

4. Mario has appeared in a number of games and seems to be trying to emulate Barbie in the number of occupations he’s had. He was a carpenter in Donkey Kong, a plumber in Super Mario Bros. His officially recognised jobs are; plumber, doctor, racer, martial artist, professional Baseball player, Soccer player, and Basketball player, but there have been at least four unofficial ones as well.

5. Mario’s appearance was heavily influenced by the limitations of computer graphics in 1981. His Red overalls and Blue shirt were chosen to contrast against the background, and each other so it would be easy to see what he was doing. He wears a cap so the animators wouldn’t have to worry about animating his hairstyle as he moved. His large nose and moustache saved them having to worry too much about facial expressions.

6. Mario and his younger brother Luigi are actually Twins. This was stated in a 1995 platform game from the Mario franchise, Yoshi’s Island. They are delivered together by the Stork but get separated. Hence Yoshi’s mission in the game is to bring the brothers back together.

7. The games are mostly set in the Mushroom Kingdom with Mario and Luigi attempting to rescue Princess Peach from the villain Bowser. Miyamoto originally envisaged Bowser as an ox, but his preliminary sketch was misinterpreted as a Turtle.

8. If Mario and Luigi are the Super Mario Brothers, then it implies that Mario’s full name is actually Mario Mario. For a long time, Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata asserted that Mario didn’t have a last name, but after he died in 2015, his creator Shigeru Miyamoto re-asserted that the character’s name was Mario Mario.

9. Charles Martinet was the voice of Mario from 1991 to 2023. Since then the voice has been that of Kevin Afghani. Martinet moved on to become a "Mario Ambassador", promoting the franchise.

10. The theme tune is called Ground Theme. It was composed by Koji Kondo and is said to be one of the most recognised pieces of game Music ever. The tune remained in the Billboard ringtone charts for 125 weeks and has been performed in concert by live orchestras.

6 March: Silly putty

On this date in 1950 Silly Putty was introduced to the public. 10 things you might not know about silly putty:

1. First of all, what is it? It’s a substance containing silicone polymers which is marketed as a toy. It can flow like a liquid or behave like an elastic solid.

2. Discovery of this stuff is usually credited to James Wright, who was charged, during WWII, with finding a substitute for rubber. He mixed boric acid and silicone oil together, which almost fit the bill except it melted too easily.

3. It was first sold as a toy by Ruth Fallgatter in New Haven, Connecticut. However, by 1950 she’d lost interest in it and handed it over to a marketing consultant named Peter Hodgson and the rest is history.

4. Silly putty is usually sold in Egg shaped containers. This is because when Hodgson was first marketing it, Easter was coming, and the egg shape stuck.

5. Hodgson took Silly Putty to the 1950 International Toy Fair, where it wasn’t a massive hit, although there were a few takers. Neiman-Marcus and Doubleday bookstores picked it up, and from there, The New Yorker ran some articles on the novelty product and then it took off.

6. Today, Silly Putty is owned by Crayola, and they make it in the same factory as their Crayons.

7. It has uses other than as a toy. In the home it can be used to remove dirt, lint, pet hair, or ink from various surfaces.

8. Athletes use Silly Putty to strengthen their grip—a practice popularised by football player Raymond Barry. Occupational therapists use it for rehabilitative therapy of hand injuries.

9. Silly Putty has been to space. In 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts took Silly Putty to lunar orbit with them in a specially crafted sterling-silver egg. It had a more practical purpose than something for the astronauts to play with: It was used to hold down tools in zero gravity.

10. Scientists in Ireland have found another scientific application. Mix it with graphene and, they claim, it can be used as an extremely sensitive pressure sensor. It’s so sensitive that it can measure the footprints of a Spider walking over it.

13 November: Dominoes

At time of writing, the most recent domino day took place in 2009 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, when 4,491,863 dominoes were toppled, breaking the world record. 10 things you might not know about dominoes and domino day:

1. A game similar to dominoes was played in Song Dynasty China, around the 12^th century. Yuan Dynasty describe it as a gambling game sold by peddlers. They referred to the game as ‘pupai‘.

2. Some centuries later, a similar game was being played in Europe. It’s not known whether it evolved independently from the Chinese version or if travelling missionaries brought the game home with them.

3. The origin of the name is unclear, too. Some say it came from the resemblance to a kind of carnival costume worn during the Venetian Carnival, often consisting of a black-hooded robe and a white mask. Others believe it was derived from the Latin word ‘dominus’ meaning ‘lord’ or ‘master’.

4. A European domino set consists of 28 tiles, the Chinese sets have 32.

5. The tiles are sometimes referred to as “bones”, probably because they were traditionally made from bone or ivory. Sometimes they were made from ebony or mother of pearl. Today, however, they are made from synthetic materials which mimic the feel or bone or ivory, such as Bakelite or plastics.

6. The most commonly played domino games are Domino Whist, Matador, and Muggins (All Fives). Other popular games include Texas 42, Chicken Foot, Concentration, Double Fives, and Mexican Train. In Britain, the most popular pub game is Fives and Threes.

7. Domino toppling is the activity of standing up dominoes in sequence known as a domino run, and triggering the first one in line to create a chain reaction where they all fall over. This activity has given its name to the domino effect, or a cumulative effect produced when one event sets off a chain of other events, usually within a relatively small time frame.

8. Domino Day was once an annual event in the Netherlands, starting in 1998, when an attempt would be made at breaking the world record for domino toppling. Organisational and financial constraints put a stop to it in 2010. Although it was set to return in 2020 the covid plague put a stop to that and no further dates have been announced at time of writing.

9. In 2005, a Sparrow got into the building where the domino run had been set up and created a domino effect of its own, toppling 23,000 of the 4 million carefully placed tiles. The organisers of the event had the sparrow shot, which caused an outcry and a court case initiated by animal rights activists which ended up with the hired exterminator being fined €200.

10. In 2008, as well as the record for the most tiles toppled (4,345,027) several other records were also set: the longest domino spiral (200 m); the highest domino climb (12 m); the smallest domino stone (7 mm); the largest domino stone (4.8 m); the longest domino wall (16 m); the largest domino structure (25,000 stones); the fastest topple of 30 metres of domino stones (4.21 sec); the largest number of domino stones resting on a single domino (727 stones) and the largest rectangular level domino field (1 million stones).

Character birthday

Kelyane Opeia, younger sister of Cassandra (Cassie) Opeia. Cassie caught the eye of a crown prince in Classica, who attempted to hold her hostage until she married him, although Cassie was at the time on a quest to find her lover, who had gone missing. Cassie escaped when the prince allowed her a visit from her family, and he fell in love with Kelyane instead.

Over the Rainbow

'We're not in Trinity anymore,' says Leonard Marx, quoting a line from an old Innovian  movie. The moon is different; the planes flying overhead are different. Nobody has any idea where they are or if it's possible to get home. 

In this strange new world, people from the highly technical Innovia and the less advanced Classica must co-operate in order to survive. In addition, travel through the inter-dimensional wormhole has given some people unusual and unexpected powers.

Innovia mourns the loss of its superhero, Power Blaster, last seen carrying a nuclear bomb to the upper atmosphere away from the inhabited Bird Island. They don't believe he could possibly have survived.  Power Blaster has survived, but is close to death and stranded in the new dimension. He is nursed back to health by a Classican woman, Elena. She has no idea who he is, only that she is falling in love with the handsome stranger.  

Shanna sets out to discover what happened to Nathan Tate, who didn't return from his hiking holiday, not knowing her life is about to be turned inside out and upside down. 

Meanwhile, Desi Troyes, the man responsible for the catastrophe, is at large on the new world, plotting how he can transfer his plans for world domination to the planet he now finds himself on - Earth. 

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle

9 November: Snakes and Ladders

In Mirano, Italy on this date, the town holds its annual human-scale Snakes and Ladders game. 10 things you might not know about snakes and ladders:

1. The game originated in ancient India, where it was known as Mokshapat or Moksha Patamu. The game is thought to have been played as early as the second century B.C. Back then it was more than just a game. It was a moral guide for children: the squares that included Ladders represented virtues (ie. Faith, Reliability, Generosity, Knowledge and Asceticism) while the squares that featured Snakes represented evils (ie. Disobedience, Vanity, Vulgarity, Theft, Lying, Drunkenness, Debt, Murder, Rage, Greed, Pride and Lust). Progression up the board represented a life journey.

2. The message of the game was that salvation is attainable through righteous deeds, while evil deeds lead to rebirth in lower forms of life. The top of the boards might be decorated with gods, Angels and other majestic beings, while the bottom featured humans, animals and Flowers, to help illustrate this concept. Snakes outnumbered ladders, signifying that a moral path is more difficult than a life of bad deeds.

3. There’s also a 16^th century Muslim version based on sufi philosophy, in which the game represents the dervish's quest to leave behind the trappings of worldly life and achieve union with God.

4. The game reached Britain in the 19^th century when colonial rulers modified it to suit Victorian values and the messages people of that time wanted to instil in their children: Ladders of thrift, penitence and industry led to squares of fulfilment, grace and success, while illness, disgrace and poverty were found at the bottom of snakes on indulgence, disobedience and indolence.

5. The English version featured an equal number of snakes and ladders, symbolising the idea that for each sin, there exists an opportunity for redemption.

6. An American version was created by Milton Bradley in 1943. This was called Chutes and Ladders and had more of a playground theme, with slides replacing snakes. Some Canadian editions featured toboggan runs instead of snakes.

7. The size of the grid varies, but is most commonly 8×8, 10×10 or 12×12 squares. The largest Snakes and Ladders game ever was created in India in 2011, with a board measuring 60 feet.

8. The phrase ‘back to square one’ originates from snakes and ladders.

9. It’s purely a matter of luck who wins and who loses. The player that moves first in the 100-square Milton Bradley version has a 50.9% chance of winning if two players are playing, while a game is completed, on average, after 48 turns.

10. In SpongeBob SquarePants, the episode "Sailor Mouth" features a board game called Eels and Escalators, clearly based on Snakes and Ladders.

Character birthday

Jordan Petros, a Galorvian republican activist, responsible for many of the attempts on the lives of members of the Galorvian royal family.

28 August: Space Hoppers

The record for the most bounces on a space hopper in one minute is 108 and was achieved by Mark Little (UK) at Butlins, Bognor Regis, UK, on 28 August 2011. 10 things you might not know about space hoppers:

1. In case you don’t know what this is, a space hopper is a heavy rubber ball about 60–70 centimetres (24–28 in) in diameter, with two rubber handles protruding from the top. The classic version is Orange with a Kangaroo face on it.

2. The space hopper was invented by Aquilino Cosani who worked for an Italian company which made rubber balls. He patented the idea in Italy in 1968.

3. He called it a “Pon-pon” after the sound it made as it bounced.

4. A British company called Wembley repackaged the Pon-pon and came up with the name Space Hopper.

5. In the USA these toys are called Hippity Hops.

6. Bouncing on a Space Hopper isn’t actually a very efficient way to get around, it’s just fun.

7. In 2018 Steven Payne from Chichester bought a space hopper on eBay and hopped 76 miles from Italy to Grenoble in Switzerland.

8. Mark Little’s bouncing record was equalled by Shane Summer at Blackpool Pleasure Beach on 26 July 2019.

9. The record for the most people on Space Hoppers simultaneously is 2,943 and was part of a campaign for energy efficiency organised by Eskom Holdings SOC Limited (South Africa) in 2013. The participants bounced on a kinetics plate to transform kinetic energy into electrical energy.

10. In science fiction, there is a race of aliens, “Hoppas” which live on the planet Profania Alpha, and are basically Space Hoppers. They appear in Terry Cooper's humorous science fiction trilogy Kangazang.

Character birthdays

Maisie O’Donnell Jr, Boulder’s sister.

Angel, Cham, Gauntlet, Goliath and Wolf, a group of beings with superpowers who return to Earth whenever the threat from their evil counterparts becomes significant. In Golden Thread, they appear on 28 August, as abandoned babies. They grow up and come together as adults to fight the threat. The group also includes two wolves. In Golden Thread, Gauntlet suffers amnesia, still traumatised from his experiences in Hiroshima during WWII. He is nevertheless drawn to the others although he cannot remember why.

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

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