15 May: Swimming

Learn to Swim Day is celebrated on the third Saturday in May. Here are 10 things you might not know about swimming:

1. People have been swimming since the Stone Age, since back then, it was the only way to cross rivers or lakes. The earliest records of people swimming are Egyptian drawings from 2500 BC, and stone age paintings in the Cave of Swimmers which are even older.
2. People have been writing about swimming for a long time, too. It is mentioned in the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Bible, Beowulf and the Quran. The first book about swimming was published in 1538. It was by a Swiss–German professor called Nikolaus Wynmann, and went by the snappy title of The Swimmer, or A Dialogue on the Art of Swimming and Joyful and Pleasant to Read.
3. In professional swimming, there are four official strokes: freestyle, butterfly, breaststroke, and backstroke. Of these, the oldest is breaststroke, which is also the slowest. Freestyle is fastest. In German, the name for the butterfly stroke translates as "Dolphin". In the country of Georgia, there is another style of competitive swimming which involves swimming with hands and feet bound. Legendary warriors from that country used to swim that way as part of their training. Not only did it help increase stamina, but it would enable soldiers to escape from a ship even when they were tied up. In the 1960s the method was revived for modern swimmers.
4. Swimming was deemed important for Roman soldiers, who had to pass a swimming test in order to join the army. Swimming was also important for Samurai in Japan, for whom is was a noble skill. The first swimming races took place in Japan in 36BC.
5. Professional swimmers need flexible Feet and ankles – a professional swimmer could lie on their back with their legs stretched out and touch the floor with their toes.
6. They'll also shave all their exposed flesh before a competition. In fact, they not only remove the hair but the top layer of dead skin. This reduces drag and can "shave" milliseconds off their time, but more importantly it increases their sensitivity to the Water, so they can adjust their technique in response to pressure changes.
7. The youngest competitive swimmer is Alzain Tareq from Bahrain who made her world championship debut in 2015 at the age of 10. The oldest is Mieko Nagaoka from Japan, who took part in the 1500-meter freestyle swim that same year, aged 100. She had only taken up swimming 20 years before, at 80, to help recover from a knee injury.
8. The first swimming goggles were made from tortoise shells, during the 14th century in Persia.
9. Swimming for an hour uses around 40% more calories than cycling and 30% more than running. It's also good for you because it strengthens the heart and lungs. Also, you'll sweat just as much swimming as you would running or cycling, though it's hard to tell in the water. An Australian study found that on average, swimmers lost about 125ml of sweat for every kilometre they swam.
10. Around half the population of the USA are unable to swim.

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14 May: Barbecues

The weekend starts here! The second weekend in May is usually when the International Barbecue festival takes place in Owensboro, Kentucky, and has done since 1979. Whether there'll be one this year remains to be seen at time of writing. I suspect the plague will have put paid to it for the second year in a row, but here are 10 facts about barbecues anyway. Hopefully by the time we're allowed to have parties, even in our gardens, again you might just about remember some of them.

1. Humans have been cooking meat over open fires since time immemorial. Since 29,000 B.C. at least. Archaeologists found the remains of a cooking pit in 2009 which dated back that far. There were mammoth ribs and conch shells found in and around it. Perhaps that's why mammoths went extinct. Remains of what might have been barbecue type feasts have also been found in the archaeological excavations around Stonehenge. There’s evidence that humans started cooking their meat with controlled Fire about 1.6 million years ago.
2. Some scientists have even suggested that barbecuing was responsible for the evolution of the human Brain. Cooking meat makes the protein in it easier to digest, so energy previously used to digest raw meat could be used for developing better brains, instead.
3. There are numerous theories as to where the word "barbecue" came from. One is that it derived from a West Indian word, "barbacoa," meaning "slow cooking over hot coals." Another is that it derives from French; the original pirates of the Caribbean would cook animals whole on a spit and this gave rise to the term that the animal was cooked “whiskers to tail” or “de barbe a`queue.”
4. The barbecue as we know it may have originated with cowboys in the late 19th century. Cattle barons were too stingy to provide the best meat for their workers and the cowboys quickly learned that the best way to cook it was to barbecue it.
5. A barbecue was first called a barbecue in 1733, when Benjamin Lynde of Salem, Massachusetts, wrote in his diary on August 31st, “Fair and hot; Browne; Barbacue. hack overset.” The abbreviation “barbie” was first recorded in Australia in 1976; and the abbreviation BBQ was first recorded in Los Angeles in 1938.
6. America may say that barbecues are as American as apple pie, but they're also popular in other countries. Australia is the obvious one, and in 2019 the UK and Germany tied as the most barbecue loving countries in Europe, hosting approximately 137 million barbecues each. They're certainly growing in popularity in the UK. In 2009 British households would hold an average of 2.5 barbecues per summer. In 2019 the figure had risen to more than 10. At time of writing, it's a heinous crime to host any kind of get together in the UK, but hopefully one day we'll be able to get the barbies out again.
7. In the UK, the average amount spent on food and drink for a barbecue is £41.
8. In Australia, the phrase “barbecue stopper” is defined as “a topic liable to generate intense debate at a social gathering”.
9. The USA has two cities which claim to be the Barbecue Capital of America – Memphis, Tennessee and Kansas City, Missouri, while Lexington, North Carolina claims to be the Barbecue Capital of the World. There's also a town in North Carolina called Barbecue.
10. The first US President to host a barbecue at the White House was Lyndon B. Johnson.

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13 May: Irene Name Day

Today is the Latvian name day for people named Irene. The name Irene is derived from the Greek for "peace". 10 famous Irenes:

1. Eirene: Greek goddess, one of the Horae, the personification of peace. She was pictured as a beautiful young woman carrying a cornucopia, sceptre, and a torch. She is said to be the daughter of Zeus and Themis and sister of Dike and Eunomia. Her Roman equivalent was Pax.
2. Irène Joliot-Curie: Eldest daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie, and wife of Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Jointly with her husband, Joliot-Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for their discovery of artificial radioactivity. This made the Curies the family with the most Nobel laureates to date. She was also one of the first three women to be a member of a French government, becoming undersecretary for Scientific Research under the Popular Front in 1936.
3. Irene Cara: American singer and actress who co-wrote and sang the song Flashdance... What a Feeling. She is also known for playing the role of Coco Hernandez in the 1980 film Fame, and for recording the film's title song.
4. Saint Irene of Rome: a Christian woman in the Roman Empire during the reign of Diocletian. She was the wife of Saint Castulus. She attended to Saint Sebastian after he was wounded by Mauretanian archers.
5. Saint Irene of Tomar was a Christian who was martyred for her faith in Portugal. Her parents, wishing to protect her, sent her to a convent school and hired a private tutor. The only times she left her house was to attend Mass or pray at the sanctuary of St Peter.
6. Irene Adler: fictional character in the Sherlock Holmes stories. A former opera singer and antagonist to Holmes, she appeared in the short story A Scandal in Bohemia.
7. Holmes isn't the only fictional character to have an enemy called Irene Adler. The X-Men do, too, as Irene Adler is the real name of their blind adversary, Destiny.
8. Hurricane Irene was a Category 3 hurricane which affected much of the Caribbean and East Coast of the United States during late August 2011.
9. The royal families of Greece and Denmark, and of the Netherlands, both have princesses named Irene.
10. Irene is the stage name of a South Korean singer and actress whose real name is Bae Joo-hyun. She is a member of the South Korean girl group Red Velvet.

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12 May: 132

On the 132nd day of the year, 10 things you didn't know about the number 132:

1. 132 is written as CXXXII in Roman numerals and 10000100 in Binary.
2. 132 is the fire emergency telephone number in Chile.
3. An Oompa-Loompa is 132cm tall (4 feet 4 inches in old money). This is because all 165 Oompa-Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were played by one man, actor/stuntman Gurdeep Roy, known professionally as Deep Roy, and that's how tall he is. He also played Teeny Weeny in The NeverEnding Story and Keenser in Star Trek, as well as appearing in Star Wars movies in various body double roles.
4. Yo Soy 132 was a protest movement which began as opposition to the Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate Enrique Peña Nieto and the Mexican media's allegedly biased coverage of the 2012 general election. The name Yo Soy 132, Spanish for "I Am 132", originated as an expression of solidarity with the original 132 protesters.
5. London Buses route 132 is a Transport for London contracted bus route running between North Greenwich and Bexleyheath.
6. AIM-132 Advanced Short Range Air-to-Air Missile is a British infrared homing ("heat seeking") air-to-air missile in service in the Royal Air Force.
7. 132 Aethra is a main belt asteroid discovered by James Craig Watson in 1873. It has a rather eccentric orbit that sometimes brings it closer to the Sun than the planet Mars. It is named after Aethra, the mother of Theseus in Greek mythology.
8. The A132 road is a road in England connecting Pitsea and South Woodham Ferrers.
9. The Fiat 132 is a large family car produced by Fiat from 1972 to 1981. An updated version of the 132, called the Argenta, was produced from 1981 to 1985.
10. In numerology, the energy of the number 132 is family and nurturing. Someone who is concerned with assisting the growth and development of those it counts as part of its family. At the same time, 132 values independence. 132s make great team members, who will listen to everyone's opinion and take it into account but who can make independent decisions when they need to.

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11 May: Baron Münchhausen

This date in 1720 saw the birth of Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen, on whom the fictional Baron Münchhausen was based. 10 things you might not know:

1. The real baron was born in Bodenwerder, Electorate of Hanover. He was a younger son of an aristocratic family in the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg. His cousin, Gerlach Adolph von Münchhausen, was the founder of the University of Göttingen and later the Prime Minister of the Electorate of Hanover.
2. Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen had a military career – he served with the Russian army against the Turks, rose to the rank of Rittmeister (Captain) in the Russian cavalry and retired in 1760 to become a country gentleman. He was known in general as an honest man, although he was given to telling tall tales at parties about his life as a soldier, hunter, and sportsman, incorporating stories from other sources, such as folk tales.
3. He married twice. His first wife was Jacobine von Dunten. They were married in 1744; she died in 1790. They had no children. In 1794, Münchhausen married Bernardine von Brunn, who was 57 years younger than him. Soon after the wedding, he was taken ill and the couple spent the summer of 1794 in the spa town of Bad Pyrmont. According to the gossip of the time, Bernadine spent her time going to balls and flirting with other men; and nine months later, she had a daughter, who Münchhausen declared was not his and spent the last years of his life in divorce proceedings and alimony litigation, until he died on 22 February 1797.
4. Author Rudolf Erich Raspe published a collection of short stories based on the kinds of tall tales the Baron told. It was called Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia. The stories in Raspe's book are told in first-person, with the note: "the Baron is supposed to relate these extraordinary Adventures over his Bottle, when surrounded by his Friends". The book was published anonymously in London in 1785. Other writers jumped on the bandwagon and published similar collections, most of which had nothing whatever to do with the stories the real Baron told.
5. Even so, some readers made the connection and the real Baron gained the reputation of being a notorious liar and was nicknamed 'Lügenbaron', the Lying Baron.
6. Decades before Terry Gilliam's film in 1988, French film-maker Georges Méliès made a movie based on the Baron's exploits in 1911. It was called Baron Munchausen's Dream, and wasn't particularly true to the Raspe book. It was a short film about a surreal Dream the Baron had when drunk. An earlier Georges Méliès film, made in 1902, A Trip to the Moon, may also have been based on the Baron's adventures.
7. So what sort of escapades did the Baron get up to? His adventures include going to the Moon in a Hot air balloon, fighting a forty-foot Crocodile, meeting the goddess Venus, riding on a cannonball, being swallowed by a giant fish, saving himself from drowning by pulling on his own hair, getting a wolf to pull his sleigh, and using laurel tree branches to fix his horse when it is accidentally cut in half.
8. Some snippets about Terry Gilliam's film: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was the third of an unofficial trilogy representing the three stages of man: youth, middle age and old age, the others being Time Bandits and Brazil. It was Uma Thurman's film debut, although some of her later work actually hit screens before Gilliam's film did. She played Venus. The title role was played by John Neville, at least in part because he was a big Monty Python fan and was keen to work with Gilliam. According to the credits, the King of the Moon was played by Ray D. Tutto. There's no such person. It's the English translation of the Italian “Re di Tutto” which means “King of everything” - how the character introduces himself to the Baron. The role was actually played by Robin Williams, who agreed to do it for free and uncredited, since by the time they came to casting that role, the budget for the film had run out.
9. In 1951, British doctor Richard Asher proposed the name Münchausen Syndrome for cases of patients lying about their illnesses. Other doctors criticised the suggestion on the grounds that it trivialised the condition and that the historical Baron never suffered from it. Nevertheless the name stuck and even spawned the names of two related syndromes: Munchausen syndrome by proxy, in which people invent illnesses and symptoms for people they are caring for, and Munchausen by Internet, in which people go online and lie about being ill.
10. In 2004, a fan club calling itself Munchausen's Grandchildren was founded in Kaliningrad, Russia. Their exploits included collecting items which they claimed provided historical proof of the Baron's tall tales. These include a skeleton of a sperm whale, which they said was the very cetacean in whose belly the Baron was trapped. In 1994, a main belt Asteroid was named 14014 Münchhausen in honour of both the real and the fictional Baron.

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10 May: 130

 On the 130th day of the year, 10 things you didn't know about the number 130:

1. In London, the 130 Bus runs between between New Addington and Thornton Heath.
2. The A130 is a major road in England connecting Little Waltham near Chelmsford to Canvey Island in Essex.
3. In the USA, Route 130 is a road located completely within the state of New Jersey. It passes through many towns including Penns Grove, Bridgeport, Westville, Camden, Pennsauken, Burlington, Bordentown, Hightstown, and North Brunswick.
4. The Roman numeral for 130 is CXXX, and in Binary it's written 10000010.
5. The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is an American four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft capable of using unprepared runways for take-offs and landings. More than 40 variants of the Hercules operate in more than 60 countries.
6. The Book of Genesis states that Adam had his son Seth at the age of 130.
7. The Second Book of Chronicles says that Jehoiada died at the age of 130. He was a prominent priest in the kingdom of Judah during the reigns of Ahaziah, Athaliah and Joash. Jehoiada became King Ahaziah's brother-in-law when he married princess Jehosheba.
8. 130 Liberty Street is an alternative name for 5 World Trade Center, a proposed skyscraper in New York City. It will be a joint venture between Silverstein Properties and Brookfield Properties.
9. Form I-130 is the form one has to fill in as the first step in helping an eligible relative abroad migrate to the US and obtain a Green Card.
10. In numerology 130 is a substantial and well-grounded number with a focus on building a firm foundation for the future. It is conscientious, reliable, pragmatic and independent. It makes for an efficient manager who will always be looking for ways to do things better.

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9 May: Mother Ocean Day

Mother Ocean Day is the second Sunday in May. A day to celebrate the beauty and wonder of the ocean.

1. While we envisage the ocean as being made up of five oceans (The Arctic, Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Southern/Antarctic) and a plethora of seas, gulfs, straits and so on, they're actually all interconnected and make up one big ocean known as The World Ocean. The World Ocean is also collectively known as just "the sea". The term "Seven Seas", which dates back to Sumerian times, divides the two largest, the Pacific and Atlantic, into two, creating the North and South Atlantic and the North and South Pacific.
2. The word Ocean comes from Oceanus, the oldest of the Titans in Greek mythology, who was seen as the personification of the sea.
3. 71% of the surface of the Earth is covered in seawater. That's 361,000,000 km2 or 139,000,000 square miles. The ocean contains 97% of Earth's water and 94% of its living species. More than 70% of the Oxygen we breathe is produced by marine plants, mostly algae. Yet only about 5% of it has been explored and many of the living species remain a mystery too. According to the World Register of Marine Species there are about 240,470 accepted species living in the ocean, but this is believed to be only a tiny proportion of them. New marine species are being discovered every day.
4. You may know that the deepest part of the ocean is the Mariana Trench, located in the Pacific Ocean near the Northern Mariana Islands. Its maximum depth has been estimated as 10,971 meters/35,994 feet (plus or minus 11 meters). The deepest part of it is called Challenger Deep, after the British naval vessel Challenger II, which surveyed the trench in 1951. Not many people have been down there. Less, in fact, than have been to the Moon. One of the people who has been down there is the film director, James Cameron. It's extremely inhospitable down there. The pressure of the Water would be the equivalent of having 50 jumbo jets piled on top of you, it's pitch dark because light cannot penetrate that far down and the water, thanks to hydrothermal vents in the sea floor, can reach 400º Celsius (750º Fahrenheit). The intense pressure is what stops it from boiling away.
5. The most remote place in the Ocean is located in the South Pacific. It's called Point Nemo (Latin for "no-one"), and is about 1,600 kilometres from any land at all and around 2,700 kilometres from the nearest inhabited land. In fact, the nearest people to it are the astronauts in the International Space Station, when it passes overhead at an orbit of no more than 258 miles/416km. You may not find people there very often, but there is still human rubbish – space agencies use it as a dumping ground, and it's estimated that over a hundred decommissioned spacecraft are lying beneath the surface.
6. Which brings us to shipwrecks. There are 3 million shipwrecks in the ocean, according to UNESCO. Between them, they contain more artifacts and treasure than all the world's museums. Over 60 billion dollars worth, according to one estimate. Not only that, but the ocean contains enough diluted Gold for everyone on the planet to have 9lbs of it. Its concentration is only a few parts per trillion. The ocean floor has undissolved gold embedded in it, but it's not cost-effective to mine it.
7. Earth’s longest chain of mountains isn't the Andes. It's the Mid-Ocean Ridge, which is almost entirely beneath the ocean, and stretches 65,000 kilometres. Yet, it's said, we know the mountain ranges of Venus and Mars better than we know this one. The largest living structure is also in the ocean – the Great Barrier Reef. Measuring around 2,600km, which can be seen from space.
8. There are rivers and lakes and even waterfalls under the sea. This happens when salt water and hydrogen sulphide combine, making some of the water denser. Temperature differences in the water can create waterfalls. The tallest waterfall on land is Angel Falls in Venezuela which has a drop of over 3,200 feet, but under the sea is the Denmark Strait Cataract, located between Greenland and Iceland with a drop of 11,500 feet, and a flow rate 50,000 times that of Niagara Falls.
9. Why is the ocean Blue? Water absorbs the Red and Orange part of the spectrum and reflects the blue, so it's the blue that hits our eyes. Because blue wavelengths penetrate much deeper than some other wavelengths, the deeper you go in the ocean, the "bluer" it gets. In case you're wondering, a glass of water isn't blue because you need a heck of a lot of molecules to reflect enough blue light to make it look blue, and a glass of water simply doesn't have enough.
10. The largest of the oceans is the Pacific. It was named by Magellan who named it after the Latin Tepre Pacificum, meaning “peaceful sea”, since it was calm when he first saw it. At its widest point, from Indonesia to Colombia, the Pacific Ocean is more than five times the diameter of the moon. The area of the Pacific is 59 million square miles and there are about 25,000 islands.

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