December 7th: Delaware

On this date in1787 Delaware, the First State, was the first colony to ratify the proposed US Constitution and was admitted, first, to the Union. Here are ten things you may not know about Delaware.

1. Delaware was named for Lord de la Warr, the first governor of Virginia.
2. It is the second smallest state (Rhode Island is the smallest) with a land area of 1,948 sq. miles. It is the lowest state, with an average elevation of 60ft above sea level, and the least populated and has the fewest counties - just three.
3. Any lack of numbers in the population is made up for in the intelligence of the people - Delaware has the largest percentage of any state of people with PhD's in science and engineering and the highest percentage of people with patent awards.
4. The capital, Dover, is home to the Dover International Speedway, also known as the “Monster Mile,” which hosts two NASCAR races each year. The largest city is Wilmington.
5. The state symbols are as follows: State Bird: The Blue Hen chicken (which gives rise to one of Delaware's nicknames, the Blue Hen State. Soldiers in the Revolutionary War used these birds for cock fighting and they were legendary); State insect: the lady bug; Tree: American holly; Flower: peach blossom; Fossil: Belemnite (a type of squid with a conical shell); Fish: Weakfish; Marine animal: horseshoe crab; and animal, the gray fox, a species indigenous to the state, believed to be between 7 and 10 million years old, able to run at 28mph and is the only member of the canid family which can climb trees.
6. Delaware is the only state which doesn't have any national parks, seashores, historic sites, battlefields, memorials, or monuments. It does however, have a National Wildlife Refuge, Bombay Hook.
7. When in Delaware, do not pawn your wooden leg or wear Trousers that are tight around the waist, as it is against the law.
8. The first American beauty pageant took place in Delaware in 1880. The inventor Thomas Edison was one of the judges.
9. Delaware holds the record for the longest poker game (36 hours, 34 minutes and 11 seconds) and the largest LEGO tower (11 stories, 112 feet, using well over 500,000 bricks).
10. Heinrich Heimlich, the man responsible for inventing the procedure for alleviating choking, was born in Wilmington. Other famous people from Delaware include Joe Biden, 47th Vice President of the United States and actors Judge Reinhold and Elisabeth Shue.

What happens when superheroes get together for Christmas! My latest novel. Perfect if you want to lose yourself in a book after Christmas lunch!

A Very Variant Christmas

Last year, Jade and Gloria were embroiled in a bitter conflict to win back their throne and their ancestral home. This year, Queen Jade and Princess Gloria want to host the biggest and best Christmas party ever in their palace. They invite all their friends to come and bring guests. Not even the birth of Jade's heir just before Christmas will stop them.

The guest list includes most of Britain's complement of super-powered crime-fighters, their families and friends. What could possibly go wrong?

Gatecrashers, unexpected arrivals, exploding Christmas crackers and a kidnapping, for starters.

Far away in space, the Constellations, a cosmic peacekeeping force, have suffered a tragic loss. They need to recruit a new member to replace their dead colleague. The two top candidates are both at Jade and Gloria's party. The arrival of the recruitment delegation on Christmas Eve is a surprise for everyone; but their visit means one guest now faces a life-changing decision.

Meanwhile, an alliance of the enemies of various guests at the party has infiltrated the palace; they hide in the dungeon, plotting how best to get rid of the crime-fighters and the royal family once and for all. Problem is, they all have their own agendas and differences of opinion on how to achieve their aims.

Not to mention that this year, the ghosts who walk the corridors of the palace on Christmas Eve will be as surprised by the living as the living are by them.

Available from Createspace, Amazon and Amazon Kindle

6 December: Steven Wright

Today we have ten one liners from Steven Wright, who was born on this date in 1955.

1. Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.
2. A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
3. You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
4. If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.
5. I intend to live forever. So far, so good.
6. I'm going to get an MRI to find out whether I have claustrophobia.
7. I installed a skylight in my apartment... the people who live above me are furious!
8. It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.
9. When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child... eventually.
10. All those who believe in psychokinesis - raise my hand. 

What happens when superheroes get together for Christmas! My latest novel. Perfect if you want to lose yourself in a book after Christmas lunch!

A Very Variant Christmas

Last year, Jade and Gloria were embroiled in a bitter conflict to win back their throne and their ancestral home. This year, Queen Jade and Princess Gloria want to host the biggest and best Christmas party ever in their palace. They invite all their friends to come and bring guests. Not even the birth of Jade's heir just before Christmas will stop them.

The guest list includes most of Britain's complement of super-powered crime-fighters, their families and friends. What could possibly go wrong?

Gatecrashers, unexpected arrivals, exploding Christmas crackers and a kidnapping, for starters.

Far away in space, the Constellations, a cosmic peacekeeping force, have suffered a tragic loss. They need to recruit a new member to replace their dead colleague. The two top candidates are both at Jade and Gloria's party. The arrival of the recruitment delegation on Christmas Eve is a surprise for everyone; but their visit means one guest now faces a life-changing decision.

Meanwhile, an alliance of the enemies of various guests at the party has infiltrated the palace; they hide in the dungeon, plotting how best to get rid of the crime-fighters and the royal family once and for all. Problem is, they all have their own agendas and differences of opinion on how to achieve their aims.

Not to mention that this year, the ghosts who walk the corridors of the palace on Christmas Eve will be as surprised by the living as the living are by them.

Available from Createspace, Amazon and Amazon Kindle

5th December: Walt Disney

Walt Disney was born 115 years ago today, so here are ten things you may not have known about Walt Disney, the man behind Mickey Mouse.

1. The name Disney was derived from the French family name of D'Isigny.
2. Walt Disney has won more Academy Awards than anyone else, and has also been nominated more times than anyone else. He won 22 Academy Awards and was nominated 59 times. At the 1938 Oscars, Disney was presented with one normal-size statuette and seven miniature ones for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
3. He created Mickey Mouse at the age of 27, on the way home from an unsuccessful business meeting. He sketched the character while riding on the train. The mouse was originally going to be called Mortimer, but Disney's wife persuaded him the name sounded to pompous, and to call the mouse Mickey instead.
4. Between 1928 and 1947, Disney himself was the voice of Mickey Mouse.
5. At 16, Disney dropped out of school to join the army, but was rejected because he was too young. He wasn't deterred and became an ambulance driver instead and served in France during the first world war.
6. Rumours persist to this day that Disney was anti-Semitic and racist. In the 1930s, Disney attended meetings of a pro-Nazi organization, and hosted a known Nazi propagandist and filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, and gave her a tour of Disney Studios. However, he also had many supporters who denied the rumours. We'll probably never know.
7. Disney's attention to detail was legendary. He placed the bins at Disney World exactly 25 steps away from the hot dog stall, because this was how long it took him to eat a hot dog.
8. He was a train fanatic from an early age, as he could watch trains passing by his house. His uncle, a train conductor, would blow the whistle as a greeting. As an adult, Disney built a miniature railway in his back garden.
9. He died of lung cancer in 1966. His last words were written rather than spoken. He wrote "Kurt Russell" on a piece of paper and nobody to this day knows why. Kurt Russell was a child actor who had just been signed to the Disney company at the time. Not even Kurt Russell himself knows why Disney wrote his name down on his deathbead.
10. A minor planet is named after Disney - 4017 Disneya, discovered by Lyudmila Karachkina in 1980.

What happens when superheroes get together for Christmas! My latest novel. Perfect if you want to lose yourself in a book after Christmas lunch!

A Very Variant Christmas

Last year, Jade and Gloria were embroiled in a bitter conflict to win back their throne and their ancestral home. This year, Queen Jade and Princess Gloria want to host the biggest and best Christmas party ever in their palace. They invite all their friends to come and bring guests. Not even the birth of Jade's heir just before Christmas will stop them.

The guest list includes most of Britain's complement of super-powered crime-fighters, their families and friends. What could possibly go wrong?

Gatecrashers, unexpected arrivals, exploding Christmas crackers and a kidnapping, for starters.

Far away in space, the Constellations, a cosmic peacekeeping force, have suffered a tragic loss. They need to recruit a new member to replace their dead colleague. The two top candidates are both at Jade and Gloria's party. The arrival of the recruitment delegation on Christmas Eve is a surprise for everyone; but their visit means one guest now faces a life-changing decision.

Meanwhile, an alliance of the enemies of various guests at the party has infiltrated the palace; they hide in the dungeon, plotting how best to get rid of the crime-fighters and the royal family once and for all. Problem is, they all have their own agendas and differences of opinion on how to achieve their aims.

Not to mention that this year, the ghosts who walk the corridors of the palace on Christmas Eve will be as surprised by the living as the living are by them.

Available from Createspace, Amazon and Amazon Kindle

4 December: Dice Day

One for all my gamer friends today - Dice Day and 10 things you may not know about dice.

1. The word dice comes from the Old French dé; and the Latin datum "something which is given or played".
2. The word dice is plural. If you have just one of them, the correct word is "die".
3. Dice have been around a long time. British archaeologist Leonard Woolley discovered dice in the Royal Cemetery at Ur with a board game known as the Royal Game of Ur. The ancient Egyptians played a dice game called Senet, which was probably a racing game of some kind.
4. It's thought that dice evolved from knuklebones, an ancient game of skill and method of fortune telling using the bones of hoofed animals.
5. Gaming isn't the only use dice have been put to. Divination using dice is called cleromancy.
6. Mention "dice" to most people and they think of a six sided cube with different numbers of dots (or pips) on each side. Dice don't have to be cubes. People who play role playing games will be familiar with four, eight, twelve and twenty sided dice. Just as on a six-sided dice, the numbers on opposite sides always add up to seven, opposite numbers on a ten, twelve or twenty sided dice will add up to nine, thirteen and twenty-one respectively. Four sided dice work slightly differently as they don't have a side facing upwards when thrown, so numbers will either be placed on the points or in the middles of the edges.
7. Any solid shape can be made into dice. Rarer examples are 24, 30, 48, 50 60, 100 and 120 sided dice, and even dice with an odd number of faces. There are even spherical dice. Often these are joke dice with just one pip on them, but there are specially weighted spheres which have the numbers one to six on them.
8. Dice are usually made by a plastic injection moulding process. The mould includes the indents for the pips. The dice are submerged in paint and then tumble polished so that all the paint comes off except for in the indents for the pips.
9. Dice don't always have numbers on them. Some games require dice to have other symbols on them, common ones being Playing card symbols on poker dice and letters for the game of Boggle. I've also seen them with colours, animals and worms. Wikipedia mentions dice with sexual positions depicted on them, but I don't play those sorts of games!
10. A loaded die is one that has been tampered with to increase the odds that a certain number will come up. Dice may be loaded with weights or by shaving off edges. Casinos take the precision of their dice very seriously - they all have serial numbers, so dice cannot be swapped, and they measure each dice with a micrometer before play.

What happens when superheroes get together for Christmas! My latest novel. Perfect if you want to lose yourself in a book after Christmas lunch!

A Very Variant Christmas

Last year, Jade and Gloria were embroiled in a bitter conflict to win back their throne and their ancestral home. This year, Queen Jade and Princess Gloria want to host the biggest and best Christmas party ever in their palace. They invite all their friends to come and bring guests. Not even the birth of Jade's heir just before Christmas will stop them.

The guest list includes most of Britain's complement of super-powered crime-fighters, their families and friends. What could possibly go wrong?

Gatecrashers, unexpected arrivals, exploding Christmas crackers and a kidnapping, for starters.

Far away in space, the Constellations, a cosmic peacekeeping force, have suffered a tragic loss. They need to recruit a new member to replace their dead colleague. The two top candidates are both at Jade and Gloria's party. The arrival of the recruitment delegation on Christmas Eve is a surprise for everyone; but their visit means one guest now faces a life-changing decision.

Meanwhile, an alliance of the enemies of various guests at the party has infiltrated the palace; they hide in the dungeon, plotting how best to get rid of the crime-fighters and the royal family once and for all. Problem is, they all have their own agendas and differences of opinion on how to achieve their aims.

Not to mention that this year, the ghosts who walk the corridors of the palace on Christmas Eve will be as surprised by the living as the living are by them.

Available from Createspace, Amazon and Amazon Kindle

3rd December: Illinois Admission Day

On this date in 1818, Illinois became the 21st state of the Union.

1. Illinois gets its name from the Native American Illiniwek people. The name translates to "ordinary speaker."
2. The capital is Springfield. Kaskaskia and Vandalia were both state capitals before this. None of these places is the largest city, though - that is Chicago.
3. The world's first Skyscraper was built in Chicago in 1885. Today, the city is home to The Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower), the second tallest building in the USA, with Lifts that travel at 1,600 ft. per minute. From the top of Willis Tower, you can see four states.
4. The first nuclear fission reactor was created in Illinois in 1942 by Enrico Fermi and his associates. They built it on a squash court under the football stadium at the University of Chicago.
5. Other things Illinois was first to do include opening an aquarium, building the world's first farming Tower Silo, open a McDonalds, and ratify the the 13th amendment to abolish slavery.
6. There is an actual city called Metropolis in Illinois, which naturally cashes in on the Superman connection. It has a Superman museum and hosts an annual Superman Celebration. The local newspaper is the Metropolis Planet - but it is published weekly rather than daily.
7. Famous people from Illinois include Robert Pershing Wadlow, the world's tallest man, who was 8’11” tall, Elzie Crisler Segar, the creator of Popeye the Sailorman, and President Ronald Reagan.
8. The state symbols are as follows. Animal: white-tailed deer; bird: the cardinal; flower: the violet; fish: the bluegill; tree is the white oak; dance is square dancing; fruit: the Goldrush apple; reptile: the painted turtle; mineral: fluorite; insect: the monarch butterfly; amphibian: the eastern tiger salamander; snack food: popcorn; fossil,Tullimonstrum gregarium, or Tully Monster. Illinois also has a state prairie grass, big bluestem, and a state soil, the Drummer soil series, a silty clay loam that covers over 1.5 million acres of the state.
9. More people have personalised number plates in Illinois than in any other state.
10. Some wacky laws which exist in parts of Illinois include: girls can legally throw snowballs at trees, but it is against the law for boys to do so; drivers are legally obliged to notify the police before entering a city in a motor vehicle; you may not sit on the curb and drink Beer out of a bucket; it's illegal to make a face at a dog, or to give it Whiskey or a lighted cigar; roosters must not crow within 300 feet of a house; you mustn't put cake in a cookie jar, fish while sitting on a Giraffe's neck, speak English or drive repetitively (whatever that means!).

What happens when superheroes get together for Christmas! My latest novel. Perfect if you want to lose yourself in a book after Christmas lunch!

A Very Variant Christmas

Last year, Jade and Gloria were embroiled in a bitter conflict to win back their throne and their ancestral home. This year, Queen Jade and Princess Gloria want to host the biggest and best Christmas party ever in their palace. They invite all their friends to come and bring guests. Not even the birth of Jade's heir just before Christmas will stop them.

The guest list includes most of Britain's complement of super-powered crime-fighters, their families and friends. What could possibly go wrong?

Gatecrashers, unexpected arrivals, exploding Christmas crackers and a kidnapping, for starters.

Far away in space, the Constellations, a cosmic peacekeeping force, have suffered a tragic loss. They need to recruit a new member to replace their dead colleague. The two top candidates are both at Jade and Gloria's party. The arrival of the recruitment delegation on Christmas Eve is a surprise for everyone; but their visit means one guest now faces a life-changing decision.

Meanwhile, an alliance of the enemies of various guests at the party has infiltrated the palace; they hide in the dungeon, plotting how best to get rid of the crime-fighters and the royal family once and for all. Problem is, they all have their own agendas and differences of opinion on how to achieve their aims.

Not to mention that this year, the ghosts who walk the corridors of the palace on Christmas Eve will be as surprised by the living as the living are by them.

Available from Createspace, Amazon and Amazon Kindle

2nd December: St Paul's Cathedral

On 2nd December 1697 St Paul's Cathedral was consecrated so here are 10 things you may not know about this historic building.

1. St Paul's as we know it today is by no means the first church to stand on this site. There have been churches there since 604 when a church was built there for Mellitus, Bishop of the East Saxons. It burned down in 674. A second was built in 684 - this one was destroyed by Vikings in 962. The next one was Old St Paul’s, completed in 1240. That burned down in the Great fire of London in 1666.
2. Some vital statistics of the cathedral are as follows: Length 518ft (158m); Width across transepts 246ft (75m); Height 365ft (111m) (St Paul’s was the tallest structure in London until 1962, when the BT Tower (or as it was known, the Post Office Tower) was built); Dome diameter (outer) 112ft (34m) (The dome of St Paul's Cathedral is the second biggest dome in the world, after St Peter's in Rome).
3. St Paul's has a number of bells which chime the hour, but its most notable bells are the two largest, which are named Great Tom and Great Paul. Great Paul was cast in 1881 by Taylor's bell foundry of Loughborough. At 16½ tons it was the largest bell in the British Isles until the casting of the Olympic Bell for the 2012 London Olympic Games. This bell traditionally sounded at 1 o'clock each day, but hasn't chimed for many years due to a faulty chiming mechanism. Great Tom was moved from St Stephen's Chapel at the Palace of Westminster and strikes the hour. Great Tom is tolled for the death of a member of the royal family, the Bishop of London, or the Lord Mayor of London. An exception was made once, for U.S. President James Garfield. The last time it rang was for the death of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother in 2002.
4. The organ is the fourth largest in the UK. It has 7,266 pipes and 108 stops.
5. St Paul's has had a choir since 1127. Today the choir is made up of 30 choirboys, eight probationers, and the Vicars Choral, 12 men who are professional singers.
6. Notable services which were held at St Paul's include: the funerals of Lord Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Winston Churchill, and Margaret Thatcher; jubilee celebrations for Queen Victoria and Elizabeth II; peace services marking the end of the First and Second World Wars; the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer, the launch of the Festival of Britain.
7. There are many memorials to famous historical figures including the cathedral's designer, Sir Christopher Wren. The Latin epitaph on his tomb is translated as "Reader, if you seek his memorial look around you". The cathedral’s largest monument is that to the Duke of Wellington, depicting the Duke riding a horse. This monument wasn't installed until 1912, because objections were raised to having the statue of a horse inside the cathedral. Other memorials include Admiral Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, and Sir Alexander Fleming, Florence Nightingale, JMW Turner, Arthur Sullivan, Samuel Johnson, Lawrence of Arabia, William Blake. Residents of the local parish have also been buried there.
8. One of the best known features is the Whispering Gallery, Whispering on one side can be heard on the other side 112 feet away. To get there you have to climb 257 steps; but that's nothing compared to the climb of 530 steps to the Golden Gallery, an observation platform atop the dome of the cathedral.
9. During World War II the cathedral was hit three times by bombs. One of the bombs was time delayed, and was defused before it went off - if it hadn't been, St Paul's would have been toast. Suffragettes planted a bomb there in 1913 to bring attention to their cause, but it was also diffused before it could explode.
10. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a sermon there in 1964 while he was in London meeting with peace movement leaders.

What happens when superheroes get together for Christmas! My latest novel. Perfect if you want to lose yourself in a book after Christmas lunch!

A Very Variant Christmas

Last year, Jade and Gloria were embroiled in a bitter conflict to win back their throne and their ancestral home. This year, Queen Jade and Princess Gloria want to host the biggest and best Christmas party ever in their palace. They invite all their friends to come and bring guests. Not even the birth of Jade's heir just before Christmas will stop them.

The guest list includes most of Britain's complement of super-powered crime-fighters, their families and friends. What could possibly go wrong?

Gatecrashers, unexpected arrivals, exploding Christmas crackers and a kidnapping, for starters.

Far away in space, the Constellations, a cosmic peacekeeping force, have suffered a tragic loss. They need to recruit a new member to replace their dead colleague. The two top candidates are both at Jade and Gloria's party. The arrival of the recruitment delegation on Christmas Eve is a surprise for everyone; but their visit means one guest now faces a life-changing decision.

Meanwhile, an alliance of the enemies of various guests at the party has infiltrated the palace; they hide in the dungeon, plotting how best to get rid of the crime-fighters and the royal family once and for all. Problem is, they all have their own agendas and differences of opinion on how to achieve their aims.

Not to mention that this year, the ghosts who walk the corridors of the palace on Christmas Eve will be as surprised by the living as the living are by them.

Available from Createspace, Amazon and Amazon Kindle

1st December: Advent Calendars

Today is the first day we open a door on our Advent Calendar. Here are a few things you probably didn't know about Advent Calendars.

1. What is Advent anyway? The word Advent comes from the Latin adventus, meaning “arrival”. It was a season of fasting and contemplation, in preparation for the feast of Christmas.
2. Although December 1 is the day we start opening the doors on Advent calendars, Advent actually begins on Advent Sunday, the fourth Sunday before Christmas. There’s only a one-in-seven chance of this falling on December 1.
3. The concept of the Advent calendar was first thought of by German Lutherans in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was an extension of their custom of marking the days leading up to Christmas with chalk on a blackboard and lighting a candle.
4. The first advent calendars were hand made. The first printed one to go up for sale was created by Gerhard Lang in 1908. These were known as "Munich Calendars".
5. There were no Advent calendars produced during World War II because of shortages of Paper.
6. Traditionally, the windows would open to reveal a picture, a poem or a Bible verse for Christians to use as part of their meditation and prayer in the run up to Christmas. Small gifts were soon included for children.
7. Cadbury first started producing Advent calendars with chocolate in them in 1958.
8. In Scandinavia, they have a radio show which is essentially an Advent calendar. The programmes are typically short, about five minutes long and are broadcast daily during Advent. They feature Christmas songs, brief interviews about Christmas and a description of the image revealed by that day's Advent Calendar window.
9. The largest Advent calendar in the world is in Gengenbach, a town on the edge of the Black Forest in Germany. Its 18th century town hall conveniently has 24 Windows facing the main square, so each year it is turned into an Advent calendar.
10. The magazine Country Life includes an Advent calendar in its last issue in November each year.

What happens when superheroes get together for Christmas! My latest novel. Perfect if you want to lose yourself in a book after Christmas lunch!

A Very Variant Christmas

Last year, Jade and Gloria were embroiled in a bitter conflict to win back their throne and their ancestral home. This year, Queen Jade and Princess Gloria want to host the biggest and best Christmas party ever in their palace. They invite all their friends to come and bring guests. Not even the birth of Jade's heir just before Christmas will stop them.

The guest list includes most of Britain's complement of super-powered crime-fighters, their families and friends. What could possibly go wrong?

Gatecrashers, unexpected arrivals, exploding Christmas crackers and a kidnapping, for starters.

Far away in space, the Constellations, a cosmic peacekeeping force, have suffered a tragic loss. They need to recruit a new member to replace their dead colleague. The two top candidates are both at Jade and Gloria's party. The arrival of the recruitment delegation on Christmas Eve is a surprise for everyone; but their visit means one guest now faces a life-changing decision.

Meanwhile, an alliance of the enemies of various guests at the party has infiltrated the palace; they hide in the dungeon, plotting how best to get rid of the crime-fighters and the royal family once and for all. Problem is, they all have their own agendas and differences of opinion on how to achieve their aims.

Not to mention that this year, the ghosts who walk the corridors of the palace on Christmas Eve will be as surprised by the living as the living are by them.

Available from Createspace, Amazon and Amazon Kindle