8 April: Mary Pickford

Silent film actress Mary Pickford, known as "America's Sweetheart" was born on this date in 1892. 10 things you might not know about her:

1. Despite being known as America's sweetheart, she was actually Canadian. She was born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto.
2. Her acting career started when she was seven, when she toured with her family as Baby Gladys Smith. Her two siblings, Jack and Lottie, were both actors, too.
3. As a child, she used to eat rose petals, because she believed that doing so would make her as beautiful as a Rose.
4. In 1907, Mary decided that if she didn't land a role in a Broadway play by the end of the year, she would give up acting for a more lucrative career. She did get a role, and two years later went for her first film audition, for the Biograph Company's film Pippa Passes. She didn't get that part, but she did catch the eye of director D. W. Griffith, who signed her for other roles.
5. The Biograph Company didn't do actor's credits. Stars of their films were never listed by name so at first the fan following she quickly amassed didn't even know her name. They referred to her as "The Biograph Girl" or "The Girl with the Golden Curls". The cinemas used these nicknames on their advertising to let potential customers one of her films was showing.
6. Mary was less than five feet tall and many of her roles were young girls such as Pollyanna or Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. In fact, she was so young looking that when she first met her future stepson Douglas Fairbanks Jr, then still a boy, he thought she was a play date his father had brought for him and asked her to join him playing with his train set. She did.
7. After her mother died, Mary cut off her famous curls. Her action was possibly motivated by grief as the two had been very close; but it could also have been that she no longer wanted to be known as a "little girl". The fact that she'd had a haircut made the front page of the papers in New York. It didn't go down well with some of her fans, who sent her hate mail because of it.
8. Mary Pickford was married three times. She was married to actor/writer Owen Moore from 1911-1920, to actor/writer/producer Douglas Fairbanks from 1920-1936, and to Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers from 1937 to her death in 1979. Marrying Fairbanks led to her being Joan Crawford's mother in law when her stepson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., married her in 1929.
9. She didn't welcome the advent of talkies. She once said, "Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus DeMilo." While it was true that her film acting career pretty much ended with the talkies (although it could also have been that she was getting to old to play young girls and other roles didn't suit her so well) she starred in some plays and also went into the production side as a businesswoman. Mary co-founded United Artists along with Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, and Douglas Fairbanks while she was still acting and got more involved with the production side after she retired. She also became a philanthropist. At the end of WWI, she helped found the Motion Picture Relief Fund to help needy actors, and started a scheme where people in the industry would pledge a tiny percentage of their salary to the fund. The fund provided a retirement home, the Motion Picture Country House, for actors who couldn't afford a retirement home.
10. She was the first actress to sign a million dollar contract; the first to receive a percentage of a film's profits; the first artist to have her name in marquee lights and be billed as an “International” Star; and the first, along with Douglas Fairbanks, to leave her handprints at Grauman's Chinese Theater. Even if the tale that Norma Talmadge was first, because she accidentally walked through the wet concrete and gave Sid Grauman the idea, Mary Pickford was still the first to do it deliberately.

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• Alternative dimensions
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7 April: Matches

On this date in 1827 the first friction matches went on sale. 10 things you might not know about matches:

1. Like many things, the earliest matches appeared in China. Chinese court ladies were using sulphur coated pine sticks to light fires as early as AD 577.
2. The word "match" derives from Old French "mèche" referring to the wick of a candle. Historically, it was the word used for what we would now call a fuse, a piece of chord used to fire guns or cannons. They were known as quick matches or slow matches depending on how long they took to burn.
3. The earliest matches in Europe were invented in the early 19th century by Jean Chancel of Paris. The head of the match consisted of a mixture of potassium chlorate, sulphur, rubber and Sugar. In order to light them, they had to be dipped in a small bottle of sulphuric acid. Needless to say they didn't catch on.
4. Nevertheless, a portable means of starting fires was something people wanted and there were numerous attempts at inventing such a thing in the early 19th century. They went by names like the "Promethean match", "Euperion", "Vesuvian" or "Lucifers". They were all reliant on dangerous chemicals like sulphuric acid to make them work.
5. In 1826, John Walker, a chemist from County Durham was experimenting with similar inventions when he accidentally invented the friction match when he dropped one of his matches and it caught light through friction on his hearth. His matches contained sulphur, sulphide of antimony, chlorate of potash, and gum, with camphor added to make them smell better. He sold 50 of them for a shilling (5p), and named them "Congreves" in honour of the inventor and rocket pioneer Sir William Congreve. They still weren't all that safe. In fact, their use was banned in France and Germany.
6. Making matches was even more dangerous as white phosphorus was a common ingredient in mass produced matches. This stuff was highly toxic and inevitably, workers in match factories would breathe it in. This caused a condition called phossy jaw, in which the bones of the jaw disintegrated. In 1888, following a campaign by social activist Annie Besant, the women who worked at the Bryant & May factories went on strike demanding better working conditions and health and safety measures.
7. So called "safety matches" which we have today are still dangerous enough to be banned by some airlines. The term "safety match" originated when white phosphorous was phased out of match production so making or using them didn't poison people. Later it came to mean matches with the striking surface outside of the box. Early matches were packed with the striking surface inside the box with them, which needless to say wasn't the safest option.
8. Books of matches were invented in the 1890s by the American Joshua Pusey.
9. Around the world about half a trillion matches are used every year.
10. The hobby of collecting match-related items, such as matchcovers and matchbox labels, is known as phillumeny. The first written use of the word ‘phillumenist’ for a collector of matchbox covers occurred in 1943.

My Books:

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• Psychic detectives
• Romance
• Alternative dimensions
• Time travel 
• Secrets
• Friendship
• Family relationships
• Ghosts
• Adventure
• Crime

If you want to read about superheroes who aren't the usual Marvel/DC staples, who don't all live in the USA.

If you like quirky tales.

If you like to support independent self published authors.

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6 April: Larch

In the French Revolutionary Calendar, today was the day of the Larch. 10 things you might not know about these trees:

1. Larches are conifers in the genus Larix, and belong to the pine family. There are eleven species of Larch.
2. They are conifers, meaning they produce cones like pine trees and have needles, but unlike pine trees they shed their needles in the autumn.
3. The larch is native to Northern Europe and Asia and Northern parts of North America. They like cold, mountainous areas.
4. A larch can grow to 30m tall and live for 250 years or more.
5. They're good for wildlife. Red Squirrels and several types of bird eat the seeds while Moth caterpillars eat the foliage and cone scales.
6. The cones start off as Pink flowers and change colour as they mature. It's possible to eat them, although they become bitter as they mature, so they're best eaten in the pink flower stage.
7. The sap of the larch tree contains a natural Sugar gelatin. Native Americans used to chew the sap like gum.
8. The wood is tough and water resistant and so has been used in boat building and for exterior cladding of buildings. Otzi the Iceman used larch to build part of his pack frame.
9. In legends where there is a "world tree", it is often depicted as a larch.
10. Burning or wearing larch was said to protect people from enchantment by evil spirits.

My Books:

If you like stories about:

• Superheroes
• Psychic detectives
• Romance
• Alternative dimensions
• Time travel 
• Secrets
• Friendship
• Family relationships
• Ghosts
• Adventure
• Crime

If you want to read about superheroes who aren't the usual Marvel/DC staples, who don't all live in the USA.

If you like quirky tales.

If you like to support independent self published authors.

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5 April: Noah's Ark

It is estimated that on this date in 2348 BC, Noah's ark grounded on Mt Ararat. Here are 10 things you might not know about Noah and his ark, gleaned from the Genesis story and other Jewish texts:

1. Noah is a 10th generation descendant of Adam, descended from Seth, one of Adam's sons. His father's name was Lamech and his grandfather was Methuselah, the oldest person mentioned in the Bible, who lived to be 969. Noah had three sons called Ham, Shem and Japheth. The Bible doesn't mention the names of Noah's mother, his wife, or the wives of his sons.
2. Noah lived a pretty long life, too. The first 500 years were uneventful but at 500, he became a father. He was 600 years old when he built the Ark. He lived for another 350 years after the flood, finally shuffling off this mortal coil at the grand old age of 950. As well as being a righteous person, God's choice to build the Ark was even more appropriate since Noah was a farmer by profession and therefore perfectly qualified to take care of all those animals.
3. According to ancient Jewish texts, as Noah was building the Ark, he tried to warn his neighbours that a flood was coming, but they just laughed at him. Later on, though, when they realised Noah had been right, God placed Lions and other ferocious animals to stop the neighbours from forcing their way onto the Ark.
4. Popular culture always imagines the Ark with pairs of each type of animal on board, but the Bible says that there were more than two of some animals – there were seven pairs of every "clean" animal and just one pair of the "unclean ones". Since the definitions of which animals were clean and which were not didn't come along until much later, Noah would have no way of knowing which was which. However, the "clean" animals helped out by kneeling before him as they approached the Ark. Some versions of the story say Noah didn't sleep for the entire time because caring for the animals took 24 hours a day. The animals, however, obligingly didn't procreate and were extremely well behaved.
5. How big was the Ark? The Bible gives the dimensions in cubits: 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. A cubit isn't a precise measurement as it's defined as the distance from a man’s (presumably Noah in this case) elbow to the tip of his middle finger. This would normally be around 18 and 21 inches, although we can't be certain people weren't bigger in Noah's time. Assuming they weren't, the Ark's dimensions in modern measurements would be 440×72×43 ft or 134×22×13 m. That's about a third the size of the Titanic. Which could fit about 1,300 standard 20-foot shipping containers, although since they were all going to be on board for several months, there would have to be living space and room to store enough food for animals which couldn't live exclusively on fish. Some sources say that one of the three decks was used simply to store the huge amounts of animal poo that must have been generated, until it could be shovelled into the sea. Estimates as to how many animals would fit range from 16,000 to over two million. There was no steering wheel on the Ark. It was made to float, and be steered by God.
6. What was it made of? The Bible says it was made from "gopher wood" but there's no such thing. It's not even mentioned anywhere else in the Bible. Scholars suspect something was lost in translation. Perhaps the translators got confused with "koper", a word meaning meaning pitch or bitumen, which would have been used to smear the vessel to make it waterproof. Historians believe it may have actually been made from cypress wood, which was a common material in ship building in ancient times.
7. According to the Bible, the Water was 15 cubits high, or about 23 feet. The floodwaters stayed for 150 days, then they receded for another 100 days. As one source put it, "Noah and his family (wife, sons and sons’ wives) were stuck on the Ark for one year and ten days." As the pandemic drags on, we all know how he must have felt! They knew it was coming to an end when a dove was sent out and returned with an Olive branch. A Raven had been sent out prior to that, somewhat reluctantly, but hadn't come back. Hence ravens came to be seen as somewhat evil birds while doves are symbols of peace.
8. So what did Noah and his family do after the flood? Presumably one priority was to repopulate the Earth. However, according to the Bible, they didn't get going on that for a couple of years. According to Genesis 11:10 the first baby born after the flood was Arphaxad, the son of Noah’s son Shem. I suspect, however, that there were more babies before that, but they were probably all girls – and since the Bible didn't bother mentioning the names of any of the women on board the Ark or Noah's mother or grandmother, it's entirely likely the author of the book of Genesis didn't think them worth mentioning. Noah, meanwhile, planted a vineyard and, the story goes, got so completely blotto on the Wine that he passed out naked in his tent. His son Ham found him that way, and rather than help him, called to his brothers to come and look. I imagine that today, he would have taken his phone out and posted pictures of his Dad naked and drunk all over social media. Shem and Japheth were allegedly more helpful. They dragged Noah out of the tent, covering their eyes so they didn't see him naked. Ham was cursed to be their slave for not being helpful.
9. The Jewish and Christian religions aren't the only ones to tell of mankind being saved from a flood by a bloke with a big boat. The Quran tells the story, too, and refers to the Ark as "Safina Nūḥ" or "Noah's Boat". In fact, around 300 cultures agree there was a catastrophic flood. The first such story originated with the Mesopotamians in which the hero is called King Ziusudra. The name means "He of long life." The Babylonian version features a man called Atrahasis whose name means the same thing. The various tales feature round or cube shaped arks.
10. The Bible says the Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat. So is it still there? Or on another mountain nearby? If there is anything there, it's buried under centuries of Snow and ice so finding it would be tricky. That hasn't stopped people from trying. Marco Polo went looking for it, and Ark hunters in modern times have included astronaut, James Irwin—the eighth man to walk on the moon. Bob Cornuke, president of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration (BASE) Institute, believes that the Ark may be on a different mountain. Referring to scriptures supporting the idea that the Ark settled in the nearby Elborz Mountains, he took a team of people to investigate in 2007. They did make an intriguing discovery. A rock formation 14000 above sea level, which not only looked like fossilized wooden beams, but which was surrounded by fossilized sea shells.

My Books:

Obsidian's Ark

Teenage years bring no end of problems. Daniel Moran's include getting hold of computer games his parents don't think he should have; a full blown crush on the beautiful Suki from Zorostan; maintaining his status as a prefect and getting his homework done. He must also keep from his parents and sister the fact that he is a superhero with a sword from another world.

Trish wonders how to get science whizz Tom to notice her; how to persuade him that the best way to stand up to the school bully is to fight back. She doesn't want her friends, especially not Tom, to know she is a genetic variant with superpowers. Little does she know that Tom has secrets of his own.

Suki struggles to make friends at school when she cannot understand everyday cultural references, and they all suspect her of being a terrorist. She, too, has a secret, but is it what her classmates assume?

When Daniel stumbles upon a plot by an alliance of supervillains to plunge the world into war, he tries to alert the established superheroes, but none of them believe him. When the Prime Minister's only daughter, Yasmin Miller, is abducted, Daniel knows the villains' plan is underway. It seems humanity's only hope may be Daniel and the ragtag bunch of teenage superheroes he recruits. Can he pull together, not only his own team, but the older heroes as well, in a bid to save the Earth from a devastating war?

Available from:

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4 April: 4

It's the fourth day of the fourth month, so here are 10 things you might not know about the number 4:

1. Four is the only number in the English language which has the same number of letters as its value.
2. The symbol 4 evolved from Brahmic numerals, which used a cross to represent four.
3. In China, four is considered an unlucky number because the word for it in Chinese is similar to the Chinese word for death. In China many buildings don't have a fourth floor and either skip if completely or call it "Floor F" and many brands skip over the number in their product series. Tetraphobia, or the irrational fear of the number four is more common in China than in the West.
4. In English it sounds like the word "for" and so in text speak has come to be a shorthand for that word, for example, "4u" meaning "for you".
5. In computing, four bits (half a byte) are sometimes called a nibble.
6. It's the atomic number of Beryllium (Be), a relatively rare element in the universe because in the cores of stars, it's usually fused into heavier elements, and on Earth only exists naturally in minerals, in combination with other elements. Gemstones which contain beryllium include beryl and chrysoberyl.
7. Four is the number of strings on a Violin, a viola, a cello, double bass, a cuatro and a Ukulele.
8. In numerology, four represents foundations, structure and stability. People with a strong representation of the digit in their numerology profile tend to be practical, patient, reliable, punctual and trustworthy.
9. "The four corners of the world" is a common phrase which derives from ancient cosmological and mythological systems. There's usually something important in the middle of their world view – a sacred mountain, garden, world tree, with four rivers running from it, one to each of the four corners, which roughly correspond to the four compass points.
10. The Gang of Four was the popular name for four Chinese Communist Party leaders, including Mao's widow, Jiang Qing. Since then, any political faction with four prominent people tends to be dubbed "Gang of four". There are a number of gangs, or groups, of four, some of which I have listed below:

• The four Gospels/Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
• The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
• The four books in Islam: Torah, Zaboor, Injeel, Quran.
• Four seasons: Spring, summer, Autumn, Winter.
• Four cardinal directions: north, south, east, west.
• Four Humours: Blood, yellow bile, black bile, phlegm.
• Four Greek classical elements: Fire, air, Water, earth.
• Four basic operations of arithmetic: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division.
• Four suits of Playing cards: hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades.
• Four nations of the United Kingdom (At time of writing, anyway): England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland.
• Four provinces of Ireland: Munster, Ulster, Leinster, Connacht.
• Four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael.
• The Beatles aka the "Fab Four": John Lennon, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Paul McCartney.
• The Fantastic Four: Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Human Torch, The Thing.
• Four Houses of Hogwarts: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin.
• Four known continents of the world in the A Song of Ice and Fire series: Westeros, Essos, Sothoryos, Ulthos.
• Four cardinal virtues: justice, prudence, temperance, fortitude.
• Four nucleobase types in DNA and RNA – adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine.
• Four basic states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.
• Four fundamental forces: electromagnetism, gravitation, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force.

My Books:

If you like stories about:

• Superheroes
• Psychic detectives
• Romance
• Alternative dimensions
• Time travel 
• Secrets
• Friendship
• Family relationships
• Ghosts
• Adventure
• Crime

If you want to read about superheroes who aren't the usual Marvel/DC staples, who don't all live in the USA.

If you like quirky tales.

If you like to support independent self published authors.

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3 April: Fans

Sally Rand (Harriet Helen Gould Beck), burlesque dancer and actress, known for the fan dance, was born on this date in 1904. To celebrate her birth anniversary, here are 10 facts about fans:

1. There is pictorial evidence that fans have been used to cool people down since about 3000 BC by the Egyptians, Greeks, Etruscans and Romans.
2. How does a fan work to cool a person down? The movement of a fan increases air flow on the skin which not only aids the evaporation of sweat but displaces the warmer air from around the skin.
3. Keeping cool was rarely the primary use of a fan throughout most of history. In Japan, fans were status symbols. They were often made of cypress wood and the number of strips of wood on the fan was an indication of the social status of its owner. There were even laws banning the plebs from using them. A fan was considered a suitable gift for the emperor of China in 988. Fans became important export items by the 18th century and found their way into the hands of high class Europeans.
4. Fans were used as means of communication. Some examples of the language of fans: carried open in the left hand was an invitation to talk; drawing a folded fan through the hand meant "I hate you", but drawing it across the cheek meant "I love you". If a woman fanned herself as a man approached her, it was a signal to him that she was engaged or married and to back off. Letting it rest on the right cheek meant Yes; letting it rest on the left cheek meant No. Putting the handle to the lips meant "Kiss me". It could even be used to indicate the time for an assignation by showing a particular number of sticks.
5. As well as in love, fans were used in Japan to communicate during war. Commanders would use war fans to signal their orders to their troops. Some war fans would also contain hidden weapons.
6. They had their uses in religion, too, as liturgical objects. In the 6th century, they had a practical use – keeping insects away from the consecrated Bread and Wine. While the use of fans died out in Western Europe, the Eastern Orthodox and Ethiopian Churches still use them as part of the communion service.
7. Another use, which continues to this day, is in performance art. Fans as props for dances are used in Asia and are an integral part of the Cariñosa, a national dance of the Philippines. Today, they are common accessories for drag artists. Their fans are as large and ostentatious as possible and used for comic effect to punctuate speech. There's even a word for the slapping open of a folding fan – a "thworp". There's also a form of Japanese comedy called The harisen, meaning "slapping fan", in which a performer gets whacked with a giant fan made from Paper.
8. Another early use for fans was displaying artwork. Artists would paint masterpieces on them and Fabergé fans, made by the ornamental egg makers, were a thing, too. As cheaper materials and ways to make fans came along, they became accessible to everyone. Art on fans began to include Biblical scenes and later more contemporary designs. Now, they're often used in advertising, decorated by company logos.
9. The skeleton of a fan is called a monture.
10. The hand fan is a symbol of Islami Andolan Bangladesh, an Islamic political party in Bangladesh.

My Books:

If you like stories about:

• Superheroes
• Psychic detectives
• Romance
• Alternative dimensions
• Time travel 
• Secrets
• Friendship
• Family relationships
• Ghosts
• Adventure
• Crime

If you want to read about superheroes who aren't the usual Marvel/DC staples, who don't all live in the USA.

If you like quirky tales.

If you like to support independent self published authors.

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2 April: Aluminium

On this date in 1889, Charles M. Hall patented a cheaper way to produce aluminium. 10 things you might not know about this element.

1. Its atomic number is 13 and its atomic symbol is Al.
2. Its melting point is 1,220.58 degrees Fahrenheit/660.32 degrees Celsius, and it boils at 4,566 degrees F/2,519 degrees Celsius.
3. Aluminium is the twelfth most common element in the Universe and the third most abundant element in the earth’s crust, after Oxygen and silicon, at 8.2%. It's therefore the most abundant metal on Earth.
4. Not only is there lots of it, but it has numerous other advantages. It's lightweight – a third the weight of steel and doesn't rust. It does oxidise, but the oxidation process creates a protective layer which actually makes it stronger. Both good reasons why aeroplanes are made from it.
5. It's great stuff when it comes to recycling, too. Recycling it takes just 5% of the energy required to produce it in the first place, and there's very little waste. 75% of all the aluminium ever produced is still in use. Recycling a drinks can made from it saves enough energy to power an MP3 player for long enough to listen to an album; and the turnaround is pretty quick, too. It can be made into a new can in as little as 60 days after you throw the old one in the bin.
6. Despite being abundant, pure aluminium doesn't exist in the Earth's crust – it has to be extracted and smelted. It was the late 19th century before a cost effective way to do it was invented by Paul Heroult and Charles Hall independently – the Hall-Heroult process. Hence in ancient times, it was perceived as extremely rare and therefore more precious than Gold. Napoleon the Third showed off by serving food to guests on Aluminium plates, with Aluminium cutlery. Its main use in ancient Greece and Rome was as alum, a compound used to dye fabrics.
7. The element was named by British chemist Humphrey Davy, who was one of the scientists who tried to figure out ways to extract it from ores. The name ultimately derives from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning "bitter" or "beer".
8. While on the subject of the name, is it "aluminium" or "aluminum"? It depends, in part, on which side of the Pond you happen to be. Davy originally called it aluminum, but another British scientist called Thomas Young suggested aluminium instead because it sounded less classical. His suggestion caught on and most scientists used it, even in America. So why did that change? Partly because American lexicographer Noah Webster used "aluminum" in his dictionary, and also Charles Hall preferred that spelling, because it made the metal sound more valuable, like platinum. The American Chemical Society adopted this spelling in 1925.
9. Despite its abundance, aluminium plays no role in biology. It's not toxic for most people and any that gets ingested is usually harmlessly disposed of by the body. There has been a suggestion that it might cause Alzheimer's disease, but at time of writing more than 40 years of research had failed to prove any link. A small number of people have contact allergies which can cause a variety of symptoms.
10. As well as aeroplanes (A Boeing 747 contains 66,000 kg of it) it's widely used in food packaging because aluminium foil reflects both heat and light and is completely impermeable. Nothing gets in or out, including heat or cold. Which is why they also make emergency blankets out of it.

My Books:

If you like stories about:

• Superheroes
• Psychic detectives
• Romance
• Alternative dimensions
• Time travel 
• Secrets
• Friendship
• Family relationships
• Ghosts
• Adventure
• Crime

If you want to read about superheroes who aren't the usual Marvel/DC staples, who don't all live in the USA.

If you like quirky tales.

If you like to support independent self published authors.

Check out my books page.