14 October: ee cummings

This date in 1894 saw the birth of e e (Edward Estlin) cummings, US poet and painter, famous for never using capital letters. Here are some quotes with capital letters added where I think they should be!

1. It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
2. The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
3. Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
4. To destroy is always the first step in any creation.
5. The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.
6. I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.
7. The first step to expanding your reality is to discard the tendency to exclude things from possibility.
8. I'd rather have two good friends, than 500,000 admirers.
9. Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense.
10. It may take two people to make a really beautiful mistake.

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October 13th: Failure Day

In Finland, today is Failure Day, a day to celebrate failure and see it as an opportunity to learn from mistakes. Here are 10 quotes about failure.

1. I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work. Thomas Edison
2. Success is most often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable. Coco Chanel
3. Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement. CS Lewis
4. Failure to prepare is preparing to fail. Mike Murdock
5. Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. Henry Ford
6. Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour. Truman Capote
7. I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. Bill Cosby
8. If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure. Dan Quayle
9. If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style. Quentin Crisp
10. Failure isn't fatal, but failure to change might be. John Wooden

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12th October: Wolves

The second full week of October is National Wolf awareness week. So here are some facts about wolves.

1. There are two species of true wolf - the Grey wolf and the Red wolf. Red wolves are smaller. Black wolves don't occur naturally - black fur is the result of a mutation which occurs in domestic Dogs, not wolves. So a black wolf will have ancestors which at some stage, mated with a domestic dog.
2. Although dogs evolved from wolves, wolves don't make good pets or even guard dogs - they are more likely to hide from intruders than confront them.
3. A wolf pack is usually a family group with the pack leaders being the parents. Wolves mate for life. Lower ranking or younger females in a pack will not mate but will help raise any cubs.
4. When wolves howl, it is usually either to rally their own pack or to keep rival packs away. A howl usually lasts around five seconds. When wolves howl together, they harmonize rather than sing on one note to give the illusion of greater numbers.
5. Wolves are born with Blue eyes. Their eyes turn Yellow by about eight months.
6. Wolves can smell other animals more than one mile (1.6 kilometres) away, and they see and hear well, too. Their night vision is also good.
7. A wolf's jaw has a crushing pressure of nearly 1,500 pounds per square inch (compared with about 750 for a large dog), and their jaws can open wider than those of a dog. They have 42 teeth. All adapted to help them eat as much as 20 pounds of meat in a single meal. To put that into perspective, that's the equivalent of 100 burgers.
8. A wolf can run about 20 miles (32 km) per hour, and can reach a speed of 40 miles (56 km) per hour for a short time if necessary. If they are travelling all day they will move at a pace of around 5 miles (8km) per hour. Wolves run on their toes, so they can stop and turn quickly. This also prevents their foot pads from wearing down. They can swim, too - up to 8 miles (13 kilometres). They even have small webs between their toes to help them move through the water.
9. In the 1600s, Ireland was called “Wolf-land” because there were so many wolves there. Wolf hunting was a popular sport among the Irish nobility, who used Irish wolfhounds to outrun and kill wolves.
10. Wolves have a fearsome reputation as fierce predators. However, there have been only 2 human deaths attributed to wolves in North America in the 21st century.

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11 October: Airline food

The first airline meals were served on a Handley-Page flight from London to Paris on this date in 1919. Read on to find out why it's a challenge to airlines to provide great food in the air and some of the ways they try to meet the challenge.

1. The first airline meal, served on 11 October 1919, on a Handley Page flight from London to Paris, was a selection of Sandwiches and fruit.
2. Now, airline food is big business, produced by large companies like LSG Sky Chefs, a subsidiary of Lufthansa. They are the largest airline catering company in the world and produce a million meals every day for over 300 airlines and 191 airports. Other providers include Gate Gourmet, the world’s largest independent airline caterer; Chelsea Food Services, a subsidiary of United Airlines; Servair, a subsidiary of Air France; and Emirates Flight Catering, owned and operated by Emirates. They serve up 192 tons of beef a year.
3. The food is largely cooked on the ground, since both conventional ovens and Microwaves are banned on planes for safety reasons - but they can have dry air convection ovens, which are used to re-heat the food and finish cooking the meat, which will have been partially cooked on the ground. If airline meals seem dry to you, this is possibly why.
4. Food tastes different in the air. The pressure and humidity level in the air affects your taste buds. The dry air in an aircraft cabin slows down the process of transporting taste and smell from the mouth to the Brain. It's a big effect - things will taste 20-50% less sweet or salty. Advice from the food scientists as to the best meal to choose if you can - stew, Rice or Curry.
5. Hence providing you with a tasty meal in the air is a challenge for airlines. Concentrating on unami tasting food and adding more spices are two strategies. A more surprising one is issuing passengers with noise-cancelling headphones. The sounds and pressure in your ear can affect how food tastes, so if you listen to music on your iPod while eating, it will taste better. Tomato juice is more popular in the air than on the ground. Alcoholic drinks change in taste, too, so the drinks served also need to be tested. There are actually people out there who are paid to sit and drink booze on a plane to make sure it tastes all right before it is served to passengers. Nice work if you can get it.
6. Some airlines, such as Singapore Airlines, go to the lengths of having simulated aircraft cabins for their chefs to test the food in. That may be why Singapore Airlines is one of the five airlines critics say serve the best food, along with Austrian Airlines, Qatar Airways, Turkish Airlines and Air France.
7. It's a myth that if your flight is delayed by several hours, you're at greater risk of food poisoning because the meals sit there all that time. There are strict regulations in place which demand that in the case of a long delay, the meals are replaced. It's also a myth that airlines put things in the food to calm people down and make them fall asleep. Though as someone who can never, ever, sleep on a plane I'm not sure I'd mind if they did!
8. Left over meals are not taken home by the cabin crew after the flight. In fact, they could be fired for taking the food home. This is because of customs regulations in many countries which prohibit food being brought in. Generally, any left-over food is simply burned, although many airlines and airports are now looking at ways of cutting down the waste and donating the food to charities instead. In some places the cabin crew and airport staff can polish off uneaten meals provided they do so before leaving the airport. Taking an alcoholic drink off a plane could not only get cabin crew fired, but charged with smuggling. That said, some of the uneaten food does make it out of the airport - In India, for example, you may find airline meals, soft drinks and even alcohol from airlines being sold off cheaply at markets. Possibly these items have been smuggled out by staff, or stolen from airport bins.
9. American Airlines saved $40,000 by removing one Olive from each of their salads.
10. A man named Nik Loukas has been documenting every airline meal he has been served since 2012 and publishing his findings on his website. His unusual hobby brought him to the attention of the airlines and he now has a career in airline catering logistics. You can find it at http://www.inflightfeed.com/ireviews/.

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10th October: Sunflowers

Today I'm giving you ten facts about Sunflowers. Sunflowers were today's plant of the day in the French Revolutionary Calendar.

1. The scientific name for sunflowers is helianthus - helia meaning Sun and anthus meaning flower.
2. The French word for them is "tournesol," which means "turns with the sun." This is exactly what they do. When the flowers are young, before they get too heavy and the stalks thicken, they face east in the morning and follow the sun throughout the day. The scientific word for this is heliotropism. Once the flowers are too heavy to move easily, they remain facing east.
3. Sunflowers are native to the Americas. The Aztecs worshipped them as a manifestation of the sun god. Images of sunflowers made of Gold have been found in their temples. They were cultivated as far back as 3000BCE for food, Yellow dye, oil and medicines.
4. When the Spanish arrived in the area, in the 1500s they were taken with these flowers and took them back to Europe. Tsar Peter the Great liked them and introduced them to Russia. They became popular there because the Russian Orthodox Church banned oils during Lent - but since sunflowers were a new thing, they weren't on the list of banned oils.
5. Sunflowers are the national flower of Russia and Ukraine and the state flower of Kansas.
6. Each sunflower bloom is actually made up of as many as 2,000 smaller flowers, which can self pollinate and each produce a seed.
7. They grow fast and tall, generally up to about 12 feet. The record for the tallest sunflower is held by M Heijims in Oirschot, Netherlands, who grew one in 1986 which reached 25 feet 5 ½ inches. The biggest bloom was grown in Canada and measures 32.5 inches across. At the other end of the scale, sunflowers just two inches tall have been grown using the Bonsai technique.
8. There are about 70 different species of sunflower. They are not all yellow. Some are Orange, Red, peach or even striped. There are even some which are shaped like puffballs.
9. They're not just pretty to look at. Native Americans and Mexicans used them as medicines for chest pain, pulmonary troubles and kidney complaints. Sunflower oil is rich in calcium, Iron and vitamins A and D. They're good at clearing toxins from the soil where they grow, too, even the real nasties like Lead, arsenic and Uranium. Millions were planted for that purpose after the tsunami destroyed reactors in the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan.
10. Finally, some folklore. Sunflowers are connected with the zodiac sign of Leo. If you sleep with one under your pillow, you'll become wise, but it is unlucky to cut one down.

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9 October: John Lennon

Born on this date in 1940 - John Lennon. He would have been 77 today. Here are some things you might not know about him.

1. The first musical instrument John Lennon learned to play was the harmonica. His mother taught him how to play the banjo and bought him his first Guitar.
2. He didn't do especially well at school, despite his obvious creative talents. "Certainly on the road to failure ... hopeless ... rather a Clown in class ... wasting other pupils' time," his school reports read. He failed all his O levels, and Liverpool College of Art only allowed him to study there when his aunt and headmaster intervened. At college, he disrupted classes and ridiculed the teachers, and continued to fail exams, so never completed the course.
3. He met his first wife, Cynthia Powell, at art college and was attracted to her because she looked a bit like Brigitte Bardot. The couple married in in 1962 when Cynthia got pregnant. The Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, thought it would be bad for the Beatles' image if one of them was married with a child so the marriage was generally kept secret, to the extent that Cynthia was stopped from boarding the train the Beatles were travelling on because the policeman didn't know who she was. He wasn't a good husband or father in those days. He performed nearly every night, was possessive, jealous and even violent towards his wife. Once, he refused to speak to her for two days because she'd had her hair cut.
4. His full name was John Winston Ono Lennon. John after his grandfather, Winston after Winston Churchill. He added the Ono himself after marrying Yoko Ono.
5. He owned an uninhabited island off the coast of Ireland. It was called Dorinish, and he bought it in 1967 for £1,700. After he died, Yoko sold it for £30,000 and donated the money to an orphanage in Ireland.
6. John Lennon may have been voted as one of the greatest singers in rock and roll history, but he hated the sound of his own voice, and would ask the producer to disguise it in recordings. After the Beatles split up, he confessed to the same producer that he was never satisfied with any of their records and wished he could re-record the lot.
7. He was a big fan of Monopoly and would take a set on tour. His favourite properties on the board were “Boardwalk” and “Park Place”. It didn't matter if he lost the game, as long as he'd managed to buy those two properties.
8. He was the last of the Beatles to pass his driving test, being a terrible driver. Even after passing, he had an accident in Scotland in which his Aston Martin was written off. He gave up driving after that and used a chauffeur instead. Yoko had the wrecked car mounted on a pillar at their home. Perhaps his lack of skill at driving can be explained by the fact that later in his life, it was discovered that his eyesight was so bad he was actually legally blind. He also found out late in life that he was dyslexic.
9. When asked what his favourite lyric from any of his songs was, he replied, “That’s easy, All you need is love”.
10. In the last photo taken of him before his death, he was signing an album for a fan. The fan was none other than Mark David Chapman who was to shoot him in the back four times later that same day and kill him.

Related post: John Lennon Quotes

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8th October: World Octopus Day

World Octopus Day - here are ten things you may not know about octopuses (and yes, that is the plural, not, as many believe, octopi).

1. It's widely believed that octopuses have eight tentacles. In actual fact, they don't have any - the correct biological term for the eight limbs of an octopus is arms.
2. Each arm can operate independently from the brain, because most of an octopus's neurones are in the arms. If an arm gets cut off, it will continue without the body for several hours, even grabbing food and trying to put it in the mouth which is no longer there. Scientists have even found that the arms of a given octopus can have different "personalities" - some are bolder than others and will go after food in an unfamiliar place, while others will hesitate.
3. On the arms are dozens of suckers. The suckers are pretty amazing too as they have chemoreceptors, so the octopus can taste or smell with them. Each sucker can operate independently as well, pinching in a similar way to a human's finger and thumb.
4. There are about 300 species of octopus. They are all venomous, but only one is actually deadly. This one is the blue-ringed octopus, especially deadly since it is only 5-8 inches in size, yet has enough venom to kill 26 people. Not only that, but if a person is bitten by one, they won't even realise, because the bites are painless, until paralysis sets in. What's more, there's no antidote.
5. Octopuses have good eyeSight, even though many species are colour blind. The pupils of their eyes always stay aligned with the horizon, no matter which way up the animal is. They can see with their skin as well as their eyes, which may help explain why they can camouflage themselves so quickly. They can not only blend in with their surroundings but can disguise themselves as other things, such as dangerous sea animals like sea snakes and lionfish. There is even a species living in Indonesia which disguises itself as a coconut rolling with the current. At least, that is science's best guess so far as to what it is doing.
6. Octopuses have three Hearts, two of which are situated near the gills, which pump oxygenated Blood to the main heart. Because octopus blood is based on Copper compounds and not iron ones like ours, their blood is Blue.
7. A male Octopus's sex organs are on one of its arms. The male has a groove and a grasping tip called a ligula, which in some species inflates with blood like a mammal penis. The female has a groove on its mantle or head where the sperm is deposited. Once this is done the ligula breaks off. While octopuses can regenerate limbs, the male cannot grow a new sex arm, and it will die within months of mating. Females fare little better - they usually die within a few months of their eggs hatching. One species incubates her eggs for over four years, though (the longest brood of any animal). The reason is that when an octopuses sex glands mature, the hormones they produce deactivate the digestive glands and the creature starves. One final fact about octopus sex - there is a species, the Blanket octopus, in which the female is 40,000 times bigger than the male - the largest gender size discrepancy in the animal kingdom.
8. Octopuses are known for their intelligence. They have been taught to recognise shapes and patterns, solve mazes and can even open child-proof pill bottles (meaning they are more intelligent than the average toddler). Relative to body weight, they have larger brains than any animals except birds and mammals. In the wild, they use tools - such as coconut shells to make shelters. In captivity, they get bored easily, and have been observed playing - throwing objects into currents in the aquarium and then catching them. There are anecdotal accounts of exceedingly intelligent behaviour, such as one in a New Zealand aquarium, which got out of its tank, crawled across the floor and into a pipe leading to the ocean; and Otto, in Germany, who disliked a bright light which shone into his tank - so he'd climb up to the rim of the tank and spray water on the light, shorting it out. For all that, though, they are not good at telling the sex of another octopus and will try to copulate with another placed in the tank with it, regardless of gender.
9. This may be because they are generally solitary creatures - although if they are forced to co-exist in captivity, they have been observed to communicate and establish a pecking order. This tendency, along with their intelligence, has led to the UK giving them the same legal status as vertebrates in animal cruelty legislation.
10. Probably the most famous octopus in the world was Paul, who was hatched in Weymouth, England but moved to Germany. His keepers noticed his particular intelligence early in his life - he showed curiosity about the visitors who peered into his tank. Paul's claim to fame was that, during the 2010 FIFA World Cup, he would correctly predict whether Germany would win or lose each of their matches, by selecting a container of food with either the German flag, or the flag of the opposing team. The box Paul opened first was predicted as the winner. Scientists say it is entirely possible Paul's guesses were pure luck, and he was simply the luckiest of several octopuses which were attempting the same thing. Paul belonged to a colourblind species, but octopuses can see contrasts, and studies have found them to be attracted to horizontal shapes in particular. Paul even received death threats from fans of the teams whose flags he didn't choose.

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