28 June: Tennis

If this was a normal year, Wimbledon would be starting today. At time of writing I don't know whether this year's tournament will be another victim of the covid plague. Here are 10 facts about tennis, anyway.

1. Tennis evolved from a 12th century game played by monks in France. Their game was called ‘paume’. They didn't have racquets but would hit the ball to each other using their hands. Racquets evolved from the Gloves people started to wear when playing the game. The origin of the word tennis dates from this time, too as the players would often shout “tenez,” which means to take heed.
2. Tennis was, for a time, a game mostly played by royalty and nobility. The first person known by name to be a keen tennis player was King Louis X of France. In fact, tennis proved to be the death of him, since after one particularly strenuous game he downed a large quantity of Wine and died because the wine had either gone off or had been poisoned. King Charles V of France had a court set up at the Louvre Palace, and across the Channel, Henry VIII had a tennis court at Hampton Court Palace, dating back to 1529. That one is still used today, making it the world's oldest tennis court. According to legend he received the news of Queen Anne Boleyn's execution while he was playing tennis on this court.
3. "Tennis balles" are mentioned by William Shakespeare in his play Henry V, when a basket of them is given to King Henry to poke fun at his youth and playfulness.
4. OK, so what's with the odd scoring system which goes Love, 15, 30 and 40? This originated in France as well. Love, meaning zero, comes from the word “l’oeuf,” meaning Egg, because a zero resembles an egg. The number progression is thought to come from the fact that early players used a Clock face as a scoreboard and would move the hands by a quarter of an hour when a point was scored. The first person to 60 would win. So shouldn't the final point be 45, then? This came from a rule that the winner should win by two points and so 40 and 50 minutes were used. Another theory has to do with old tennis courts being 90 yards long and whenever a point was scored the players moved 15 feet forward.
5. In the early days, tennis courts were hourglass shaped. The rectangular courts we know today were introduced in 1875 by the All England Croquet Club at Wimbledon. A standard tennis court today is 78 feet long. The width depends on whether it's a singles match (27 feet) or a doubles (36 feet). The net is 3 feet, 6 inches high.
6. A tennis racquet must not be more than 29 inches (74 cm) long and 12.5 inches (32 cm) wide. There's also a rule which says rackets must not provide any kind of communication, instruction or advice to the player during the match, so talking tennis racquets are out.
7. The diameter of a tennis ball is 65.41–68.58 mm (2.575–2.700 in) and it must weigh between 56.0 and 59.4 g (1.98 and 2.10 oz).
8. The four Grand Slam tournaments are the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open.
9. Players often grunt or shriek when hitting the ball and quite loudly, too. Players like Maria Sharapova and Michelle Larcher de Brito have reached over 100 decibels. That means they are louder than motorcycle, a Lawnmower or a small aircraft landing, about the same as an ambulance siren and just 5 decibels quieter than a Lion roaring.
10. The longest tennis match ever lasted 11 hours and 5 minutes. It was between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut. John Isner won, after serving 113 aces during the match.

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27 June: 178

27 June is the 178th day of the year. Here are 10 things you might not know about the number 178:

1. 178 is written CLXXVIII in Roman numerals.
2. It's 10110010 in Binary.
3. The London Bus 178 runs between Calderwood Street and Lewisham Station.
4. The Heinkel He 178 was the first aircraft to fly under turbojet power which made it the first practical jet aircraft.
5. Takao Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922) was a Supreme Court case in which a Japanese man named Takao Ozawa challenged the fact he'd been turned down for US citizenship on the grounds that he did not fall into the category of "free white persons" or "persons of African nativity or persons of African descent", the only groups allowed to naturalise at the time. He was arguing that Japanese people should be classified as "free white persons." He lost.
6. The A178 road that runs from Hartlepool in County Durham to Middlesbrough in North Yorkshire, England.
7. The year 178 was a common year starting on Wednesday. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Scipio and Rufus.
8. 178 Belisana is a stony Asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 38 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered in 1877 Johann Palisa and was named after the Celtic goddess Belisama.
9. The divisors of 178 are 1, 2, 89, and 178.
10. In numerology, a person affected by 178 energy will be independent with an aptitude for business whose goals include acquisition of knowledge and wisdom. 178 can be spiritual and also intuitive, with an intuitive approach to solving problems.

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26 June: Phoenixes

According to Pharaoh’s Egyptian astrology we are currently in the sign of the Phoenix. 10 things you might not know about phoenixes:

1. A phoenix is a mythological bird which lives for a long time, anything from 500 years to 97,000 years depending on the myth, then bursts into flames and is reborn from the ashes. When the time comes for it to die it builds a nest which is either ignited by a clap of its wings, or by the Sun. Once it's burned to a crisp, a worm would crawl out of the ashes which would turn into a tiny phoenix. The new phoenix's first job would be to gather up the ashes and turn them into a ball of incense which it would fly to the temple of the sun god for burial.
2. There would only ever be one phoenix alive at a time, always a male.
3. Scholars disagree about whether the concept of a phoenix first appeared in Greek or Egyptian mythology. The origin of the phoenix was attributed to Ancient Egypt by Herodotus. It may be that the Egyptian phoenix was actually Bennu, a deity that looked like a heron and was reborn every 500 years.
4. In fact, there are birds similar to phoenixes in any number of mythologies. There's a Chinese version (Feng Huang), a Japanese version (Ho-Oo, which appears at the start of a new dynasty), a Slavic version (Firebird), a Hindu version (Garuda, king of the birds, an eagle like bird who was also the mount of the god Vishnu), a Native American version (Thunderbird) and a Jewish version (Milcham, a bird which lived in the Garden of Eden and refused to eat the fruit offered to it by Eve and so God granted it immortality).
5. The word comes from the Greek language, possibly deriving from a word which meant "griffin" or "palm tree" or the word for a Red dye called madder. The word Phoenician, meaning those who work with red dyes comes from the same root. So phoenix may mean 'the Phoenician bird' or 'the purplish-red bird'.
6. So a phoenix is red, then? Depends which mythology you subscribe to. While they all agree it would be a colourful bird which would stand out from all the rest, it was sometimes described as being red and Yellow, sometimes blue like a peacock with red legs and yellow eyes. Others said it had yellow/gold legs with sapphire Blue eyes and rose coloured talons. Its size varied as well, with some saying it was the size of an eagle and others saying it was much bigger, more like the size of an ostrich.
7. Greek mythology says that the phoenix would bathe in a well in Arabia each morning and would sing while it bathed. Its song was so beautiful that the sun god would stop his chariot to listen.
8. In heraldry, the phoenix is depicted as the head, chest and wings of an eagle rising from flames. The whole bird is never shown. It's commonly adopted as an emblem by places or entities which have been destroyed by something and been rebuilt. San Francisco's flag has one, because it was rebuilt after the earthquake in 1906, and Coventry's university and football club have one because the city was rebuilt after the Blitz.
9. The bird is commonly associated with the sun, immortality and resurrection. It's therefore a common symbol for Jesus Christ.
10. In the Harry Potter books, Dumbledore had a phoenix as a familiar. Hans Christian Anderson wrote about ‘The Phoenix Bird’ which was born under the tree of good and evil from a blossomed rose in the Garden of Eden. Finally, there is the X-Men character Phoenix, an alias used by Jean Grey and Rachel Summers.

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25 June: George Michael

The late singer George Michael was born in 1963, meaning he would have been 58 today. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. His real name was Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou.
2. He was born in East Finchley in London. His father was a restaurateur called Kyriacos Panayiotou, who'd moved to England in the 1950s. His mother was a dancer called Lesley Angold. Her mother was Jewish, but had raised her children with no knowledge of their Jewish background because of the persecution during World War 2.
3. George attended Bushey Meads School in Bushey, which is where he met his future Wham! partner Andrew Ridgeley. Before the duo formed Wham! in 1981, they were part of a short-lived ska band called The Executive, with Andrew's brother Paul, Andrew Leaver, and David Mortimer.
4. Wham! split in 1986 after several massive hits including Young Guns, Wham Rap!, Club Tropicana, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Freedom, and Careless Whisper. Their last single was The Edge of Heaven.
5. Michael's first hit as a solo artist was I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me), a duet with Aretha Franklin, in 1987. He released five studio albums: Faith, Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, Older, Songs from the Last Century and Patience.
6. Michael cited David Cassidy as one of his major career influences. He sang backing vocals on Cassidy's hit The Last Kiss in 1985. He also contributed background vocals to Elton John's hit Nikita.
7. He wrote Careless Whisper when he was 17 and working as a cinema usher. He wrote the song on the Bus on the way to work.
8. George Michael did a lot for charity and donated millions. He was involved in very public charity events like Band Aid, but most of what he did was anonymous and it only came out after he'd died just how many good causes he supported. He donated to Childline, Macmillan Cancer Support and the Terrence Higgins Trust. There were several occasions when he stepped up and donated thousands to ordinary people when he happened to learn they were in need. He once gave a barmaid a £5,000 tip when he overheard that she was a student nurse and was in debt. Another time he heard a woman crying in a cafe about her outstanding debts and wrote her a cheque for £25,000. He bought the Piano John Lennon played on the single Imagine and donated it to The Beatles' Story museum in Liverpool.
9. He was known as a gay man, but as a young man he was also attracted to women and described himself as bisexual. He dated a lot of women but his only longer term girlfriend was Kathy Jeung, who was described as his muse in the 1980s. In 1992 he started a relationship with Anselmo Feleppa, a Brazilian dress designer, who sadly died from an AIDS-related brain haemorrhage. George's single Jesus to a Child is a tribute to Feleppa. His next long term partner was Kenny Goss, a former flight attendant and sportswear executive. At the time of his death, he was in a relationship with Fadi Fawaz, an Australian hairstylist and photographer.
10. He was just 53 when he died of natural causes at his home in Goring-on-Thames, on Christmas Day 2916. George was buried at Highgate Cemetery in north London, near his mother.

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24 June: 175

Today is the 175th day of the year. 10 things you might not know about the number 175.

1. 175 is the atomic number of a theoretical chemical element called Unseptpentium.
2. According to the Bible, Abraham lived to the age of 175.
3. 175 Andromache is a main-belt Asteroid discovered by J. C. Watson in 1877, and named after Andromache, wife of Hector during the Trojan War.
4. The year 175 was a common year starting on Saturday and known at the time as the Year of the Consulship of Piso and Iulianus. In this year, Pope Eleuterus succeeded Pope Soter as the thirteenth pope.
5. Paragraph 175 was the section of the German Criminal Code that made homosexual acts between males a crime. A 2000 documentary about it was entitled Paragraph 175. It was directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, and narrated by Rupert Everett. The film tells the stories of several gay men and a lesbian who were persecuted by the Nazis. Between 1933 and 1945, 100,000 men were arrested under Paragraph 175. Some were imprisoned, others were sent to concentration camps. Only about 4,000 survived.
6. United Airlines Flight 175 was a Boston-Los Angeles flight which crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center after being hijacked by terrorists in New York City on September 11, 2001. A 2006 documentary Flight 175: As the World Watched tells the story.
7. United Nations Security Council Resolution 175, adopted on September 12 1962, recommended to the General Assembly that the State of Trinidad and Tobago be admitted as a member state.
8. 175 is the fire emergency number in Lebanon.
9. In Roman numerals, 175 is written CLXXV, and in Binary it's 10101111.
10. In numerology the energy of 175 is focussed and pays attention to detail. It focuses on security and a firm foundation for the future. However, it doesn't rule out doing things on a whim just for the hell of it on occasion. It's self-reliant, independent and curious.

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23 June: American Rivers

June is American rivers month. 10 facts about rivers in the USA:

1. There are more than 250,000 rivers in the USA, equating to about 3,500,000 miles of rivers.
2. The longest of them is the Missouri at 2,540 miles long and the deepest is the Mississippi.
3. The oldest river in the US and the second oldest in the world after the Nile, is in West Virginia. Ironically, it's known as The New River.
4. 65% of America's drinking Water comes from its rivers.
5. So does a lot of its hydroelectric power. There are approximately 8,100 dams in the country and the rivers provide enough power for about 96 million households.
6. Pollution is a problem. There's a river in Cleveland, Ohio which was at one time so polluted that it caught Fire 13 times in the 1960s. Fires on the Cuyahoga river helped start the American environmental movement. Fish in the Hudson River in New York have actually evolved so that they are better able to cope with pollution.
7. Rivers are often natural borders between states and counties. At one point, the Mississippi formed the Western border of the US, but as people began to move further west, it became the symbolic start of the frontier instead. The Rio Grande forms part of the border between the US and Mexico.
8. In 1812 there were earthquakes in America that were so powerful that they made the Mississippi River flow backwards. The Chicago River flows backwards because early 20th century engineers wanted it to, and deliberately changed its course.
9. Rivers in the US are in the public domain, which means if you can navigate it in a canoe or a raft, you are free to do so, although the land around the river may be privately owned so it may not be legal to access the rivers from just anywhere.
10. There is a project underway to map America's waterways so they can be seen online, rather like Google Streetview on water. The Riverview Project have been paddling canoes equipped with multi-lens cameras to capture 360 degrees of imagery as they go.

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22 June: 173

Today is the 173rd day of the year. 10 things you might not know about the number 173:

1. The A173 is a major road in North Yorkshire, England. It runs from Stokesley to Skelton.
2. 173 is the atomic number of a theoretical chemical element called Unsepttrium.
3. 173 Ino is a large Asteroid discovered in 1877 by Alphonse Borrelly and named after the queen Ino from Greek mythology.
4. In True Blood, the Vampire Bill Compton is 173 years old.
5. United Nations Security Council Resolution 173, adopted on July 26, 1962, recommended to the General Assembly that the Kingdom of Burundi be admitted.
6. 173 Hours In Captivity: The Hijacking of IC 814 is a book by Neelesh Misra about the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814 on its journey from Kathmandu to New Delhi on December 24, 1999.
7. SCP-173 is a fictional statue locked in the fictional SCP secure facility. Rather like the weeping angels in Doctor Who, it can't move as long as someone is looking at it, but blink and it will snap your neck. It's kept in a locked cell which needs to be cleaned twice a week because the statue oozes a noxious substance. Cleaning the cell is a three person job. One person to clean and two to maintain eye contact with the monster at all times.
8. 173 is 10101101 in binary and CLXXIII in Roman numerals.
9. London bus route 173 runs from Beckton Bus Station to King George Hospital.
10. In numerology the number 173 represents deep and solid friendship. The kind in which people can pursue separate goals, and come together to share their experiences. The kind of friends who would do anything for each other, and always support one another.

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If you like quirky tales.

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