19th May: Edward de Bono

Edward de Bono was born on this date in 1933, in Malta. He is the author and psychologist who coined the term lateral thinking.

1. If you never change your mind, why have one?
2. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple.
3. To be successful you have to be lucky, or a little mad, or very talented, or find yourself in a rapid growth field.
4. An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.
5. Humour is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.
6. The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas.
7. Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.
8. Everyone has the right to doubt everything as often as he pleases and the duty to do it at least once.
9. It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
10. You cannot have a beautiful mind if you do not know how to listen.

18th May: World Goodwill Day

It's World Goodwill Day - so here are some quotes about being nice to people:

1. Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves. J.M. Barrie
2. I always prefer to believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble. Rudyard Kipling
3. Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do. Voltaire
4. No-one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another. Charles Dickens
5. Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstandings, mistrust and hostility to evaporate. Albert Schmeitzer
6. Where there is no love, pour love in and you will draw love out. St John of the Cross
7. Commit random acts of kindness and senseless beauty. Dante Alighieri
8. The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr
9. If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world. Francis Bacon
10. In helping others, we shall help ourselves, for whatever good we give out completes the circle and comes back to us. Flora Edwards

17 May: Rubber Band Day

It's Rubber Band Day! A day, apparently, to celebrate another of those humble items we take for granted around the house.

1. Alternative names for a rubber band are binder, elastic band, lackey band, laggy band or gum band.
2. Aztecs and Mayans used a form of rubber band as early as 1600 B.C.
3. The rubber band as we know it today was patented in England on March 17, 1845 by Stephen Perry.
4. Many rubber products are made from synthetic rubber, but not the rubber band. They are still made from natural rubber because of its elasticity. The rubber is mixed with sulphur, which initiates the vulcanisation process. This stabilises and strengthens the rubber so it does not become brittle at cold temperatures. The rubber is heated to 260 degrees C then rolled out like pie dough into sheets. The sheets are made into tubes; the tubes are cut very thin to produce the rubber bands.
5. They come in a variety of sizes. A rubber band has three basic dimensions: length, width, and thickness. For marketing purposes, the sizes are given numbers. Rubber bands numbered 8-19 are 1/16 inch wide, with lengths from 7/8 inch to 31⁄2 inches. Rubber band numbers 30-34 are 1/8 inch wide. For bands longer than 32 inches, numbers are above 100, again starting at width 1/16 inch.
6. The physics bit. Rubber has an unusual property in that heating causes the rubber band to contract, and cooling causes expansion. When a rubber band is stretched, it releases heat, which is why, if you stretch one and place it against your lips, it feels warm. Releasing it after it has been stretched will make it absorb heat, causing its surroundings to become cooler.
7. In the UK, the largest user of rubber bands is probably Royal Mail. They use nearly 1 billion rubber bands a year to tie together bundles of letters at sorting offices - that's one rubber band being used for every 28 letters. This caused a littering problem around 2004 as posties had a tendency to drop them as they delivered the letters. The Royal Mail's solution was to make their rubber bands red, so if someone dropped one, they'd be more likely to spot it and pick it up. Since 2010 they have reverted back to brown ones.
8. Animals have reason to hate rubber bands. As well as small animals like Hedgehogs getting their heads stuck in them, they are used by farmers for castration. They use a rubber band to cut off the Blood supply to an animal's testicles so that they atrophy and drop off.
9. Other uses for rubber bands include: Guitar strings, Hair bands, bungee jumps for Teddy bears, Bracelets, Bicycle clips, Pencil-top erasers, Waistband expanders, Anti-slip devices for mixing spoons, Saucepan handle covers, Jar openers, an aide memoire, to barter for stamps (good luck with that), Gardening string and of course, powering small free-flight model aeroplanes.
10. Joel Waul, from Florida, spent six years constructing the world's largest rubber band ball. The ball stands 6 feet, 7 inches tall and weighs in at 9,032 pounds, twice as big as the previous record holder. Eventually, his neighbours got fed up of it standing in his driveway (it was allegedly very smelly as well as being an eyesore) so Joel had to get rid of it. He found a willing new owner in Ripley's Believe It Or Not, who already owned the largest string and barbed-wire balls. "This is now my holy trinity, I guess," said Ripley's Vice President Edward Meyer. They had to use a crane to take it away.

16 May: Cayman Islands Discovery Day

The second Monday in May is Discovery Day in the Cayman Islands. Here are 10 things you might not know about the Cayman Islands.

1. The Cayman Islands are three islands: Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, located south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica.
2. The capital is George Town, although at one time the capital was Bodden Town, which got its name because of the large number of residents whose surname was Bodden.
3. There is no archaeological evidence for an indigenous people on the islands. The people born there are descended from settlers throughout history. These include pirates, refugees from the Jenna Inquisition, shipwrecked sailors, and deserters from Oliver Cromwell's army in Jamaica. The first recorded birth there was Isaac Bodden, who was born on Grand Cayman around 1661. He was the grandson of a settler who was probably one of Oliver Cromwell's soldiers at the taking of Jamaica in 1655.
4. In mid-2011 the Cayman Islands had an estimated population of about 56,000, representing a mix of more than 100 nationalities.
5. The Cayman Islands are a tax haven and have more registered businesses than people. It is a British Territory and the story goes that King George III was so grateful to the islanders for rescuing the crews of a group of ten merchant ships, including HMS Convert, which had struck a reef and run aground during rough seas, that he proclaimed he would never take taxes off them. This is a myth.
6. The national flower of the Cayman Islands is the Banana Orchid.
7. The national animal is the green sea Turtle. There is a turtle farm on the islands which is home to 16,000 of them. The endangered blue Iguana is endemic to Grand Cayman.
8. The highest point is The Bluff on the eastern side of Cayman Brac, at 43 m (141 ft) above sea level. The rest of the 264-square-kilometre (102-square-mile) territory is mostly flat.
9. Orlando Bloom starred in a film about the Cayman Islands - Haven. It was made by the Caymanian director Frank E. Flowers, and shot in West Bay on Grand Cayman.
10. Tourism is important to the economy as well as finance. One of Grand Cayman's main attractions is Seven Mile Beach, which is actually five and a half miles long. There is a 75 foot high observation tower which is free to the public and it is also very popular with scuba divers. There are 159 dive sites on Grand Cayman and two shipwrecks to explore. Even so, tourism could get quite slow in winter, so in 1977, then Minister of Tourism, Jim Bodden, started Pirates Week, an annual 11 day festival in November.

15th May: L. Frank Baum

L. (Lyman) Frank Baum, who wrote Wizard of Oz, was born on this date in 1856. Here are some things he said:

1. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
2. No thief, however skilful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.
3. Never give up... No one knows what's going to happen next.
4. There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.
5. Once I had brains, and a heart also; so, having tried them both, I should much rather have a heart.
6. Never question the truth of what you fail to understand, for the world is filled with wonders.
7. A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.
8. Everything in life is unusual until you get accustomed to it.
9. Do not despair whatever happens for behind the clouds is always the rainbow.
10. It isn't what we are, but what folks think we are, that counts in this world.

14th May: Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri, the Italian poet was born on this date in 1265.

1. Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground.
2. There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.
3. Remember tonight... for it is the beginning of always.
4. From a little spark may burst a flame.
5. Nature is the art of God.
6. The secret of getting things done is to act!
7. The path to paradise begins in hell.
8. He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it.
9. O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?
10. I wept not, so to stone within I grew.

13th May: Hawthorn

Today is the 1st day of Huath (Hawthorn) in the Celtic tree Calendar. Here are 10 things you may not know about the hawthorn:

1. Other common names for hawthorn include may, mayblossom, maythorn, quickthorn, whitethorn, motherdie, and haw. It was sometimes called the Bread and Cheese tree, because the young leaves could be eaten in times of hardship.
2. The sayings "Ne'er cast a cloot till may is out" and "gathering nuts in may" come from the hawthorn. The first is a warning not to shed any cloots (clothes) before the may flowers (hawthorn blossoms) are in bloom, and the latter referred to the collection of knots of may blossom rather than nuts.
3. Hawthorn blossoms are associated with May Day and Beltane although they rarely flower these days before the middle of May. In the Scottish Highlands the flowers may be seen as late as the middle of June. However, before Europe adopted the Gregorian calendar, they would have flowered in early May.
4. The oldest tree in France is a hawthorn. It is beside the church at Saint Mars sur la Futaie, Mayenne. It is 9 m (30 feet) tall and has a girth of 265 cm (8'8").There is a plaque beneath it which reads: "This hawthorn is probably the oldest tree in France. Its origin goes back to St Julien (3rd century)." The oldest hawthorn in the United Kingdom is probably The Hethel Old Thorn in the churchyard in the village of Hethel, Norfolk. It is reputed to be more than 700 years old, having been planted in the 13th century. The Glastonbury Thorn is also a hawthorn tree.
5. The ancient Greeks regarded it as a symbol of hope, often carried at weddings.
6. Plucking from a hawthorn tree at any time other than May Day or damaging one is said to be extremely unlucky. Not only would doing so bring sickness and death, but the tree might even scream. Even hanging out your washing on one was a bad idea, as it might cover up the faeries' clothes already hanging on it. It has been suggested that the ill luck of the De Lorean Motor Company was associated with the destruction of a fairy thorn to make way for a production facility.
7. The trees are said to scream and cry on Good Friday, because the tree was the source of Jesus's crown of thorns.
8. Medieval people claimed that hawthorn flowers smelled like death which added to the superstition that it was unlucky to have them in the house. Botanists have more recently discovered that the flowers contain the chemical trimethylamine, which is one of the first chemicals formed in decaying animal tissue, so there may have been some truth in that.
9. Witches supposedly to make their brooms from it, and it was also said to be the best type of wood to make a stake with which to kill a Vampire.
10. The Hawthorn is the state flower of the US state of Missouri.