7th October: Neils Bohr

Neils Bohr is a physicist who won the Nobel Prize in 1922 for contributions to quantum mechanics. He was born 7 October 1885. 10 quotes from him:

1. Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.
2. Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.
3. The opposite of a trivial truth is false; the opposite of a great truth is also true.
4. If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.
5. Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
6. Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.
7. Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.
8. An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
9. The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning.
10. A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself.

6th October: Discovery of Potassium

Potassium was first discovered on this date in 1807 by Sir Humphrey Davy. 10 things you might not know about potassium:

1. It is a very light and soft metal. It is so soft that in its pure form, it can be cut with a knife. Freshly cut potassium is silvery in appearance, but it begins to tarnish toward grey immediately after being exposed to air.
2. Potassium compounds emit a lilac or violet flame when burned.
3. Potassium is the second least dense metal after lithium.
4. Potassium was the first metal to be isolated using electrolysis.
5. In its various compounds, potassium makes up about 2.6% of the weight of the Earth's crust and is the seventh most abundant element. Granite contains 5% potassium, well above the average in the Earth's crust.
6. In nature, it is only found in compounds, because it reacts violently with many other things, most notably oxygen and water. It was originally created inside type II supernovas.
7. The name potassium was derived from potash, from which the element was first isolated. It has the unlikely seeming chemical symbol K from a Neo-Latin word, Kalium, meaning alkali, which in turn came from an Arabic word meaning "plant ashes".
8. Potassium is a vital element for all living cells, including ours. It helps with nerve transmissions. Foods rich in potassium include yam, Parsley, dried Apricots, dried Milk, Chocolate, various nuts (especially Almonds and Pistachios), Potatoes, Bamboo shoots, Bananas, Avocados, soybeans, and bran, although it is also present in sufficient quantities in most fruits, vegetables, meat and fish.
9. Potassium carbonate (K2CO3 or potash) is used in the manufacture of glass, soap, colour TV tubes, fluorescent lamps, textile dyes and pigments. In 1840, Justus Liebig discovered that potassium is a necessary element for plants and that most types of soil lack potassium. His discovery caused a steep rise in demand for potassium based fertilizers.
10. The superoxide KO2 is an orange solid that acts as a portable source of Oxygen and a carbon dioxide absorber. It is widely used in respiration systems in mines, submarines and spacecraft because it takes up less volume than gaseous oxygen.

5th October: Ray Kroc's birthday

Ray Kroc was the founder of McDonald's and was born on this date in 1902. He opened his first restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955. It is now the site of a McDonald's museum. So here are 10 things you didn't know about McDonald’s.

1. The Queen owns a McDonald's restaurant as part of her property portfolio.
2. 68 million people a day eat at a McDonald's somewhere in the world. That's more than the population of the UK. Yet McDonald’s isn't the world's largest fast-food chain. Subway is.
3. McDonald's has 761,000 employees worldwide. That's more than the population of Luxembourg.
4. When McDonald’s first opened, they didn't sell Hamburgers, but Hot dogs.
5. Surveys have shown that 88% of people could identify the golden arches logo (designed by Jim Schindler in 1962) while only 54% could recognise the Christian cross.
6. Their salads are more fattening than their burgers. A McDonald’s crispy chicken and bacon salad offers 380 calories, while a hamburger is a mere 250.
7. In Japan, where 'r' is rarely pronounced, Ronald McDonald is Donald McDonald.
8. The world's largest McDonald’s is in Orlando, Florida, a multi-level McDonald’s which measures 30,000 square feet. The biggest UK McDonald’s restaurant is in the Olympic Park in London. It opened just in time for the London 2012 Games.
9. McDonald's is the world's largest distributor of toys, with one included in 20% of all sales.
10. In 2005 a man called Ronald McDonald robbed... a Wendy's.

4th October: Belgium Independence Day

Belgium, official name Kingdom of Belgium, is a small but densely populated country in Europe bordered by France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. It became a constitutional monarchy on this date in 1815, so here are 10 things you might not know about Belgium.

1. Most people know that Belgium is famous for its Chocolate. It produces 220,000 tonnes of the stuff every year and the world's biggest chocolate selling point is Brussels National Airport - but you may not know that Belgium is the world's leading exporter of billiard balls. 80% of the world's Billiard balls come from Belgium. It also produces 800 different types of beer and the greatest variety of bricks in the world.
2. The highest point in Belgium is lower than the world's tallest building – the Signal de Botrange on the High Fens plateau in the far east of the country, is the highest point in Belgium at just 694 metres high.
3. It is compulsory to vote in Belgium. People get fined if they don't vote. On the subject of politics, Belgium has the highest proportion of female ministers in the world.
4. Belgium has more castles per kilometre than any other country in the world.
5. The Belgian motorway system is the only man-made structure visible from the moon (at night, due to the lights all along the motorway network). The one piece of art left on the Moon, Fallen Astronaut, is by the Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonck.
6. Belgium is home to the longest tram line in the world (the Belgian coast tram (68 km), which opened in 1885 and operates between De Panne and Knokke-Heist, from the French border to the Dutch border), the smallest town (Durbay, which has a population of less than 500 but has never lost the status granted to it in medieval times) and (until recently) the deepest swimming pool (Nemo33, in Brussels, 35 metres deep).
7. In the town of Berlotte, there is a tiny museum dedicated to Carrots, with an associated Carrot Club which only men are allowed to join.
8. The actress Audrey Hepburn was born in Brussels.
9. Belgium has its fair share of inventors and pioneers. Oil painting was invented there (probably by Jan van Eyck); The word "gas" was proposed by Flemish chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont as a phonetic spelling of his Dutch pronunciation of the Greek word "chaos"; Inline Skates were invented by the Belgian John Joseph Merlin; and Belgian mathematician Lambert Adolphe Quetelet invented the Body Mass Index (BMI).
10. The word ‘spa’ for a health resort comes from the town of Spa in Belgium where the ancient Romans enjoyed the health-giving springs.

3rd October: James Herriot

James Herriot, vet and novelist, was born on this date in 1916. He would have been 98 today. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. His real name was James Alfred Wight. He wrote using a pen name, because his books might have been construed as an advertisement for his services and therefore a breach of professional etiquette. The name James Herriot was inspired by a football match between Birmingham City and Manchester United: Birmingham's goalie in that match was Jim Herriot.
2. James Herriot was a lifelong supporter of Sunderland Football Club his father had been before him. In 1992 he was named a Life President of the club.
3. Wight served in the Royal Air Force in World War II as a Leading Aircraftman.
4. Although he'd always wanted to write a book, he didn't start writing until he was 50 years old, after a challenge from his wife. He started writing stories about football and other topics which only met with rejection. When he started writing about his veterinary practice, ie. what he knew best, he became an instant hit.
5. The books aren't entirely autobiographical, as many people believe. Many of the stories in the books are only loosely based on real events, and while all the cases are set in the 1930s, some of them are based on cases he attended as late as the 1970s. Nor are the books really about animals, but about Yorkshire country life and the relationships between animals and their owners.
6. In 2009, Grand Central Railway, which operates train services from Sunderland to London King's Cross (calling at Thirsk), named a train after him.
7. When he died in 1995, the Reader's Digest Condensed Book volume containing All Creatures Great And Small was the most popular book in that series' history.
8. In his home town of Thirsk. there is a "World of James Herriot" museum, at 23 Kirkgate, where his practice was. Parts of the BBC TV series set are on display there. The town also boasts a a pub called the "Darrowby Inn". Many of the original contents of his surgery can be found at the Yorkshire Museum of Farming in Murton, York.
9. In 2011 the BBC broadcast a three-part drama called Young James Herriot, based on his life and training in Scotland. The producers had exclusive access to the diaries and case notes he kept during his student days in Glasgow.
10. James Herriot also wrote several books for children including Blossom Comes Home, Only One Woof, The Christmas Day Kitten and Smudge, the Little Lost Lamb.

2nd October: Richard III

King Richard III was born on this date in 1452. He's been in the news more recently because his remains were found buried under a car park in Leicester. 10 things you might not know about Richard III:

1. He was only king for two years, from 1483 to 1485.
2. Richard III has a reputation of being treacherous and disfigured, but it's likely he wasn't as bad as he was painted. Some of it may have been propaganda put about by the Tudors to gain support for their own claims to the throne.
3. It's possible he had his nephews (the Princes in the Tower) killed so that he could take the throne, but no-one knows what actually happened to the princes and whether Richard III was responsible for their deaths or not.
4. He did do some good things. He introduced the Court of Requests, a court to which poor people who could not afford legal representation could apply for their grievances to be heard. He also introduced the concept of bail into English law to protect people from being imprisoned and their assets seized before they had been properly tried.
5. He banned restrictions on the printing and sale of books.
6. If not for Richard III legal documents could all be written in Latin and UK court proceedings could still take place in French. Richard III was the one who made English the official language of his courts of law.
7. He was a champion of the North of England and set up a Council of the North to improve conditions there.
8. He did have a deformity of the spine. Studies of his skeleton have found he had idiopathic scoliosis which caused a curvature of the spine. Doctors said it probably didn't cause him major problems and it was likely he could disguise it with clothing.
9. He died on 22nd August 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth. He was the last King of England to be killed in battle. Richard’s body, discovered in 2013, was found to be wounded in 10 places. He had 8 head wounds and part of his skull had been hacked away (probably by a sword blade).
10. His body was famously found under a Leicester car park in 2012. Once the scientific analysis of his remains were done, the argument started over where he should be re-buried. Some said it should be Westminster Abbey, where his wife is buried; others said it should be York Minster because that is what he would have wanted. In the end, the High Court were involved and concluded that his body should remain in Leicester. So from March 2015, he will lie in Leicester Cathedral in a new tomb.

1st October: Opening of St Pancras railway station

On 1st October 1868 St Pancras railway station in London was formally opened as a terminus of the Midland Railway. 10 things you may not know about St Pancras station:

Photograph © Andrew Dunn, 27 October 2004.

1. When it was first built it was the largest enclosed space in the world (The William Barlow designed train shed arch spans 240 feet and is over 100 feet high at its apex).
2. The station contains 60 million bricks. All the bricks were made in Nottingham.
3. Because approaching trains had to cross the Regents Canal, the lines at the station are 12 to 17 ft (3.7 to 5.2 m) above ground level. Originally, the space underneath them was just going to be filled with rubble from the building works, but due to high value of land in the area, it was used for storage of freight, and in particular, Beer.
4. It was very nearly demolished in the 1960s, but there was a successful campaign to save it led by the future Poet Laureate, John Betjeman. This is why there is a statue of him in the station.
5. On the subject of art in the station, the frieze around the bottom of Paul Day's The Meeting Place (the statue of a couple Kissing) was originally going to contain a depiction of someone falling or jumping under a train driven by the Grim Reaper. This was revised before it was installed, presumably because someone pointed out to Day that it was in rather bad taste.
6. On one of the outside walls there is a replica of a nose. The nose belongs to the artist Rick Buckley, who created about 35 plaster of Paris noses and stuck them to public buildings in 1997 in protest at the number of CCTV cameras in London. The one at St Pancras is one of only about ten which still survive.
7. The station has a famous clock, which is actually a replica of the one in the original station. A rich American bought the original in the 1980s for £250,000, but as it was being taken down so the American could ship it home, it fell and broke, so the deal fell through. However, a railway engineer from Nottinghamshire took the parts home in a wheelbarrow and rebuilt it. It now adorns the side of his barn.
8. The name of the station is so often mispronounced (as St Pancreas) that the stations public relations team commissioned a study into mispronounced words in March 2014.
9. The station is home to Searcy’s Champagne Bar, the longest champagne bar in Europe at 96m long and 110 seats. It sells around 1,000 glasses a day.
10. The station is named after a church, St Pancras Old Church, one of the oldest churches in Britain. The church was dedicated to a Roman boy who was beheaded for his faith at the age of 14, and whose name means "the one that holds everything". His feast day is on May 14 and he is the patron saint of children, jobs and health and invoked against cramp, false witness, headaches and perjury.