7th June: The Epsom Derby

It's Derby Day 2014. 10 things you may not know about the Big Race:

The closing stages of the 1886 Epsom Derby by Charles Hunt

1. But for the toss of a coin, we might have been watching The Bunbury today. The idea for the race was conceived by Lord Derby and Sir Charles Bunbury, who agreed that it should be named after one of them. The urban legend is that they tossed a coin, although Wikipedia thinks it is more likely that Bunbury conceded to someone of a higher status than him.
2. The first Epsom Derby was on 4 May 1780, a Thursday. The first winner was a Horse named Diomed, which happened to belong to Sir Charles Bunbury - consolation, perhaps for not having the race named after him. The prize money was £1,065 15s.
3. Since 1995 the race has been run on the first Saturday in June. Before that it was usually on a Wednesday or Thursday. Parliament would even be adjourned so that MPs could go to the race.
4. There used to be a fair with musicians, Clowns, stalls, and rides which would last for ten days around the time of the race. People would come from London for the fair as much as for the race. However, as time went on fewer and fewer people went to the fair, and since 2009 the site of the fair has been a car park.
5. The length of the course is one mile, four furlongs and 10 yards (2,423 metres).
6. Not every Derby was run at Epsom. During the two world wars, the race moved to Newmarket.
7. The record for the most wins is held by Lester Piggott, who has won nine times.
8. The fastest time was achieved by Workforce in 2010 - 2m 31.33s.
9. In 1913, the suffragette Emily Davison threw herself in front of the King's horse, Anmer. In spite of her efforts, she didn't live to see women get the vote, as she died from her injuries four days later.
10. The first female jockey was Alex Greaves in 1996. She came last.

6th June: D-Day

Today is the 70th anniversary of D-Day - some things you might not know about D-Day:

1. The D in D-Day stands for "Day", a common term in the planning of military operations likely to last several days. D-Day meant the day the operation would begin, the next day was D+1, the one after that D+2 and so on. H-Hour was also used to indicate the time the operation was to start. Then, if the date or time of the operation had to change, there were less alterations to make to the plans.
2. This was in fact the case with D-Day 1944. It was planned to take place on June 5th but the weather was too bad (well, it was Britain!) It almost didn't happen on June 6th, either, because although the weather had improved a bit, conditions still weren't perfect. However, General Eisenhower decided to go ahead - the attack was to start before dawn, so they needed the full moon and also high tide, which meant there were only a few days in the month when the attack would be possible. The weather did make the invasion more difficult, but also provided an advantage because it lulled the Germans into a false sense of security ("They won't attack in this weather") and so the Allies took them by surprise.
3. The whole operation was cloaked in secrecy. The Germans knew the invasion would come sooner or later - their intelligence had noticed all the forces amassing in Britain - but they didn't know exactly when or where, and it was vital they didn't find out until D-Day. Hence the code names - Operation Overlord for the whole invasion, Neptune for the beach assault. Even the troops had no idea until the last minute. The maps they used for training had false names on them. The plan was to mislead the Germans into thinking the allied attack was going to be in a different location entirely.
4. The five beaches in the location were all given code names, Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. Each beach was divided into zones, with each zone also having a code name: Omaha was divided into Charlie, Dog, Easy and Fox zones; Utah, Tare Green, Uncle Red and Victor; Gold, How, Item, Jig and King zones; Juno, Love, Mike and Nan zones, and Sword Oboe, Peter, Queen and Roger zones.
5. Authorities had a scare that the secret was compromised when, as they completed their daily Times Crossword, the solutions to the clues, over several weeks just before the attack, included the code words for all five beaches, the code words for the operation, Overlord and Neptune, and the codeword for the floating harbours used in the landings, Mulberry. MI5 mobilised and brought in the crossword compiler for questioning. Leonard Dawe, a Surrey headmaster, and his colleague Melville Jones were put through the mill, but no evidence of spying or foul play was found. It seemed as if the whole thing was just a spooky coincidence. More recently, though, a possible explanation has emerged. Dawe's method of crossword compilation was to invite pupils into his study and get them to fill solutions into a crossword grid, then Dawe would make up clues to the words they used. There were American and Canadian soldiers camped near the school, and it seems likely that boys overheard conversations including the code words which then came out, perfectly innocently, when they were asked to provide words for the crossword.
6. The first troops to attack on D-Day were paratroopers. They jumped out of planes and landed in the dead of night behind enemy lines. Their mission was to destroy key targets and capture bridges so that the main invasion force could move. In this phase, as well as the troops, thousands of dummies were thrown out of the planes as well, to confuse the Germans and draw fire.
7. The 82nd Airborne Division of the US Army lost around 16% of their troops on D-Day, because of the time it took to unbuckle their parachutes once they were on the ground, which gave the Germans enough time to shoot them. As a consequence, the American troops started using British quick release buckles from then on.
8. The first British casualties on D-Day were Lt. Den Brotheridge of the 6th Airborne Division (shot in the neck) and Lance Corporal Fred Greehalgh (drowned). The first US casualty was Lt. Robert Mathias of the 82nd Airborne Division. He sustained a bullet wound in the chest right before he jumped out of his aircraft. He commanded his men to follow his lead as he jumped from the plane, but he died before he reached the ground.
9. Taking part in the assault were 156,000 Allied troops, 5,000 boats, 50,000 vehicles and 11,000 planes. The troops were mostly from Britain, the USA, Canada, France and Norway, but there were also soldiers from Australia, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Poland. It was the largest seaborne invasion in history.
10. The French Resistance also played a significant part, and had their own missions with code names to carry out: Plan Vert was to sabotage the rail system; Plan Bleu, destroying electrical facilities; Plan Tortue was a delaying operation aimed at the enemy forces that would potentially reinforce Axis forces at Normandy, and Plan Violet, cutting underground telephone and teleprinter cables. The BBC's French radio service transmitted coded messages disguised as quotations from poetry or literature gave the Resistance their signals to begin each operation. An increase in radio transmissions on June 5th did alert the Germans, but sheer volume of previous transmissions and false alarms meant that most of them ignored it.

5th June: Destruction of Atlantis

June 5th 8498 BC is the traditional date of the natural calamity that destroyed the ancient civilization of Atlantis. Whether you believe that the lost city of Atlantis really existed, or if it was purely a figment of Plato's imagination, it's still fascinating. Here are 10 things you may not know about Atlantis:

 Ruin by the Sea, oil painting by Arnold Böcklin, 1881

1. The first mention of it was in two dialogues written by Plato in 360BC, Timaeus and Critias.
2. Plato's story was steeped in Greek mythology - when the Greek gods divided up the land so that each God had a place to rule, Poseidon got Atlantis. He was happy with this arrangement, as he discovered that the humans who lived there were exceptionally beautiful and intelligent. He fell in love with a princess, Cleito, and their union produced five sets of male twins. The eldest was Atlas, who became king of the island. The island and the Atlantic Ocean were named after him.
3. The island was larger than Ancient Libya and Asia Minor combined, with mountains in the north and fertile plains in the south. Poseidon turned one of the mountains into a palace and surrounded it with three moats.
4. The people who lived there produced their fair share of architects and engineers, who built bridges and canals to connect the rings of land and tunnels big enough for ships to sail through. They built walls from red, white and black rock quarried from the moats, and the walls were decorated with brass, tin and a metal not known anywhere else, orichalum. There was also a temple to Poseidon which was so tall that clouds drifted around its roof. Inside was a giant statue of the god built from gold.
5. Even in ancient times opinion was divided as to whether the place had ever really existed or not. Some philosophers, including Crantor, Strabo and Posidonius thought it was real, but early Christian writers declared it to be a pagan myth.
6. The modern day myths of Atlantis were stimulated by Ignatius L. Donnelly who wrote a book called Atlantis: the Antediluvian World in 1882. It was he who put forward the theory that all ancient civilizations were descended from the people of Atlantis, who were extremely technologically advanced. Donnelly believed that the Biblical flood was the disaster that wiped it out.
7. Donnelly's book was followed in 1888 by Madame Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, in which she claims the Atlanteans were a superior race, possibly of extra-terrestrial origin, from which the "Aryan race" (to which she belonged, naturally) was descended. They had supernatural powers, which included manipulating the weather and volcanic eruptions. Their misuse of these powers is what destroyed them. Her work was a gift to the Nazis, who claimed it was a valid precedent to their ideology.
8. The psychic Edgar Cayce, whose claim to fame was that he could go into a trance and channel information about the health (or otherwise) of his clients, and their past lives. Atlantis featured heavily in his work, with many of his subjects being told that they had lived there in their past lives. Cayce claimed that Atlantis would reappear in the 1960s (it didn't), and that the ancient texts of Atlantis are buried underneath the Sphinx in Egypt and that these will be revealed when the time is right (not proven).
9. Theories abound as to where it was located, including the Mediterranean Sea, especially the island of Santorini where there is geological evidence of an ancient volcanic eruption of massive proportions; on the mainland of Spain, because of archaeological discoveries of ancient civilizations there; somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, because of the name connection; The Canary Islands; Antarctica (well, who knows what might be under all that ice) and the Bermuda Triangle.
10. Whether there is any truth in any of it or not, Atlantis has certainly provided plenty of inspiration for writers and film makers. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a science fiction novel, The Maracot Deep, about the discovery of Atlantis by deep sea divers; It is an ancient city on the other side of the universe linked to us by a StarGate (StarGate Atlantis); the home of the comic character Aquaman; and many more stories in all types of entertainment media. Fictional characters who have been there include Asterix, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Batman, Flipper the Dolphin, SpongeBob Squarepants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and of course, Doctor Who.

4th June: National Cognac Day

Today is National Cognac Day, so here are 10 things you may not know about Cognac brandy:

1. Cognac is a variety of brandy. Just as not every sparkling wine can be called Champagne, not every brandy can be called Cognac, just that which is produced in the Cognac region of France, north of Bordeaux.
2. Only 3% of the Cognac produced is consumed in France. Most of it is exported, and the Chinese can't get enough of it.
3. As with any brandy, Cognac is made by fermenting Ugni Blanc Grapes and then distilling the wine twice. The word "brandy comes from the Dutch word brandewijn, meaning "burnt wine" because of this. The liquid produced from the two distillations is called "eau-de-vie," French for "water of life." This liquid is aged in wooden barrels for at least two years, usually much longer.
4. Ugni Blanc grapes are quite acidic and low in alcohol, so they wouldn't make very nice wine. They are ideal for making brandy, though.
5. It would take 10 litres of wine to produce one litre of eau-de-vie,
6. The double distillation originated in the 17th century when it was done to preserve wine on sea voyages. It wasn't long before the merchants realised this process and the storage in wood made the wine even more tasty.
7. Cognac is graded according to how long it was aged. VS (very special), is aged for two to four years. VSOP (very special old pale), has been aged four or more years. XO (extra old) is at least 6 but more often closer to 20 years old. (I do wonder, though, why these grade letters stand for English words when the stuff is produced in France!) Anything aged for more than 20 years is an extra special blend that will cost an arm and a leg. Cognacs aged for up to 200 years exist.
8. In the beginning, the warehouses for storing Cognac were built near rivers so that it was easy to load the stuff onto boats in order to transport it. However, the producers learned that the inevitable dampness of the cellars produced better Cognac. Even though today, it ought to make more sense to have the warehouses near the airport, they still build them near rivers for this reason.
9. Distillation only takes place between November and March, by French law. The grapes produce the best juice in winter.
10. The wood used to make the barrels comes mainly from one-hundred-year-old trees from the forests of Limousin and Tron. The wood is stacked and seasoned for at least three years before being made into barrels. No glue or nails is used in the making of the barrels. They are held together by metal bands.

3rd June: Egg Day

Today is Egg Day, so here are 10 things you may not know about eggs:

1. The colour of an egg is determined by the colour of the Chicken. White hens will lay white eggs and brown hens lay brown eggs. There are even breeds of chicken that produce blue, blue-green or speckled eggs.
2. The colour of the yolk is related to the hen's diet. If the hen eats grain with yellow or Orange pigments in it, the yolk is more Yellow.
3. The shell is made of calcium carbonate, and makes up 9-12% of the weight of the egg.
4. Egg white is made from albumen, a protein, and also contains B vitamins, chlorine, magnesium, Potassium, sodium and sulfur.
5. Eggs are said to be the best possible source of protein. They also contain vitamin D, one of very few foods which do. What it doesn't have is Vitamin C - the chick will produce that itself once it is hatched and starts eating.
6. It takes about a day for an egg to form inside a hen. Then, after the egg is laid, 30 minutes later, the hen starts producing the next one.
7. Eggs are laid large end first.
8. The Guinness World Record for omelette making is held by Howard Helmer, who made 427 omelettes in 30 minutes.
9. To work out if an egg is fresh, fill a bowl with enough water to cover the egg, and put the egg in. If an egg sinks to the bottom, it's fresh. If it floats to the top, it's not.
10. The largest egg on record weighed 2.589 kg (5 lb 11.36 oz) and was laid by an ostrich at a farm in Borlänge, Sweden, on 17 May 2008.

2nd June: Edward Elgar

On June 2 1857 Edward Elgar, composer whose works include Pomp and Circumstance and Enigma Variations was born. He said, "There is music in the air, music all around us, the world is full of it and you simply take as much as you require." 10 things you may not know about Edward Elgar:

1. Elgar began composing music when he was about ten years of age. He wrote music for a play that he performed with his brothers and sisters when he was ten, which he rearranged and published as The Wand of Youth forty years later. He only made minor changes.
2. As a young man his ambition was to study at the Leipzig Conservatory, and he even began learning German in preparation for this. He was very disappointed when his father could not afford to send him there.
3. He married one of his pupils, Caroline Alice Roberts, who was eight years older than him. Her family were of a higher social standing than Elgar's, and disinherited her for marrying a musician who was not only unknown, but a Roman Catholic. She acted as his social secretary and business manager, trying to get him noticed in influential society with limited success. "The care of a genius is enough of a life work for any woman," she wrote in her diary.
4. Elgar wrote the Enigma Variations when he was 42. Each of the 14 variations was named after the nicknames of some of his close friends and were intended as a musical representation of those people. Elgar said that there was a fifteenth theme, overarching all the others, but he never revealed what that was.
5. The Dream of Gerontius was banned by the Dean of Gloucester in 1901, because of its Catholic influences.
6. "I've got a tune that will knock 'em – will knock 'em flat", Elgar said to his friend Dora Penny. He was right. When it was first played at a Promenade Concert in 1901, the tune got a standing ovation and the only double encore for an orchestral item ever at the Proms. No prizes for guessing that the piece was the Pomp and Circumstance March (Land of Hope and Glory).
7. Dora Penny is also remembered as the recipient of the Dorabella Cipher - two letters written by Elgar in a code which was never deciphered, even by Dora herself.
8. He was a keen amateur chemist and had a laboratory in his back garden.
9. He wrote an anthem for Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C., called He Banged the Leather for Goal.
10. He and his wife were keen cyclists in their younger days. Elgar nicknamed his bicycle "Mr Phoebus".

1st June: Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was born on this date in 1926. There was wit and wisdom behind her dizzy blonde image as these 10 quotes should show.

1. If you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.
2. It's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.
3. Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius.
4. Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.
5. We are all of us stars, and we deserve to twinkle.
6. If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything.
7. A woman knows by intuition, or instinct, what is best for herself.
8. A smart girl leaves before she is left.
9. I don't want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.
10. What do I wear in bed? Why, Chanel No. 5, of course.