7 May

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 7 May:

1. This date in 1919 saw the birth of Eva Peron, second wife of President Juan Domingo Perón. She served as First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death from cancer at the age of 33. She is often referred to as Evita, which literally translates into English as "Little Eva".

2. In 2010, Caroline Lucas became the first ever Green Party MP, having won the Brighton Pavilion constituency with a majority of 1,252.

3. In 2017 there was an election in France. Emmanuel Macron won the election, becoming the youngest French head of state since Napoleon.

4. In 1660, Isaack B Fubine of Savoy, in The Hague, patented Macaroni.

5. In 1994 Norway's most famous painting, The Scream by Edvard Munch, was found undamaged in a hotel in south Norway, almost three months after it was stolen from an Oslo museum.

6. In 1996, Harvard researchers concluded that sex was unlikely to cause heart attacks.

7. In 1988, the first gathering of people claiming to have been abducted by aliens took place in Boston.

8. In 1765, HMS Victory, the British battleship and flagship of Lord Nelson, was launched at Chatham, Kent.

9. In 2002, American college student Lucas Helder was arrested on firearms and explosives charges. He'd planted 18 pipe and bottle bombs across several states including Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa, Colorado, Texas and Indiana. Helder confessed to it all quite cheerfully, claiming that his aim had been to make a smiley face on the map.

10. In 1985, the first Pig racing season began in Tulsa. First-year favourites included Marvin Hogler and Bruce Pigsteen.

The Power of Love

Willow believes in crystal healing, cosmic  ordering  and the significance of chance  encounters. She believes there's a spiritual  explanation for everything. Except she struggles to find a reason why she can turn herself into  mist and create a wave of energy which can slam a would-be mugger into a wall. Or why the love of  her life left her for a mysterious woman in sunglasses, who then disappeared without trace.  

A chance encounter with Firebolt, leader of the Freedom League superhero team, in a Glastonbury coffee shop, does turn out to be significant. He offers her a new start and the chance to use her powers for good.

Servant is a Christian who has joined the Freedom League in order to use his teleporting power to serve God. He and Willow clash from the start, yet they are drawn inexorably to one another.

When Willow leaves the team abruptly for reasons unknown, Servant knows he must put her out of his mind and find a nice Christian girl to settle down with. He is about to propose to devout and straight-laced Ruth, when Willow returns and turns his entire world upside down.

Available from Amazon:

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Kindle

6 May

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 6 May:

1. In 1910, George V acceded to the throne following the death of King Edward VII. He celebrated his Silver Jubilee with Queen Mary in 1935.

2. In 1851, John Gorrie was granted a US patent for an ice-making machine for treating yellow fever. Gorrie is considered the father of refrigeration and air-conditioning.

3. Meanwhile, in Newport, New York, Linus Yale also received a patent: for the clock-type lock. Yale locks are among the top brands of security devices sold today.

4. In 2012, Japan shut down its last nuclear reactor, leaving the country without nuclear power for the first time since 1970.

5. In 1782, James Price, a Guildford chemist, began an experiment to turn Mercury into Gold (although some sources say it was sulphur, or half a grain of ‘a certain powder of deep red colour’ with some heated mercury; or a white powder with mercury, borax and nitre, as well as Silver). He presented some of his alleged gold to King George III, and was awarded the degree of MD by Oxford University.

6. In 1994, England and France were linked for the first time since the end of the Great Ice Age as Queen Elizabeth II and the French President François Mitterrand inaugurated the opening of the Channel Tunnel.

7. The first Kentucky Derby was run on this date in 1874, at Churchhill Downs track, Louisville, Kentucky, and has been run on the first Saturday in May ever since.

8. In 2349 BC, according to 17^th Century Irish Bishop James Ussher, Noah's Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat. He worked this out using astronomy and an old Hebrew Calendar. He also declared that it was a Wednesday.

9. In 1937, the German airship, Hindenburg, arrived at Lakehurst, New Jersey from Frankfurt. Radio commentator Herb Morrison, was describing the event when the airship struck the landing mast and exploded. ‘Oh, the humanity, all the passengers, I don’t believe it,’ he cried, in his historic recording. 36 of 97 on board died. On this same date in 1919, the British Admiralty had recommended Helium as a safe substitute for hydrogen-filled balloons and airships. The Hindenburg had been designed for helium but had been filled with hydrogen. The official cause of the explosion was listed as "St. Elmo's Fire."

10. In 1996, Venetian gondoliers went on strike. They stopped serenading their customers when told this made them freelance musicians and therefore liable to pay into a state pension fund.

The Power of Love

Willow believes in crystal healing, cosmic  ordering  and the significance of chance  encounters. She believes there's a spiritual  explanation for everything. Except she struggles to find a reason why she can turn herself into  mist and create a wave of energy which can slam a would-be mugger into a wall. Or why the love of  her life left her for a mysterious woman in sunglasses, who then disappeared without trace.  

A chance encounter with Firebolt, leader of the Freedom League superhero team, in a Glastonbury coffee shop, does turn out to be significant. He offers her a new start and the chance to use her powers for good.

Servant is a Christian who has joined the Freedom League in order to use his teleporting power to serve God. He and Willow clash from the start, yet they are drawn inexorably to one another.

When Willow leaves the team abruptly for reasons unknown, Servant knows he must put her out of his mind and find a nice Christian girl to settle down with. He is about to propose to devout and straight-laced Ruth, when Willow returns and turns his entire world upside down.

Available from Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

5 May

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 5 May:

Mount Everest

1. This date in 1867 saw the birth of Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, aka Nellie Bly, American journalist and women's rights advocate. She wrote about controversial topics like divorce, mental illness and poverty. She set out to beat the fictional Phileas Fogg, and travelled around the world in 72 days. She is most famous for an undercover exposé (Ten Days in a Mad-House) in which she faked insanity in order to study a mental institution from within.

2. The first live television broadcast from the summit of Mount Everest was transmitted by Japanese television on this date in 1988.

3. In 1987 more than 130 girls fainted during a gig by Curiosity Killed The Cat in Liverpool.

4. In 1891, The Music Hall (now known as Carnegie Hall) had its grand opening and first public performance. Tchaikovsky was the guest conductor.

5. A Grand Alignment: Sun, Moon, and five planets all aligned within 26 degrees in the sign of Taurus, occurred on this date in 2000. The last such alignment occurred in April 1882. Richard W Noone predicted: "On May 5 of the year 2000, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn will be aligned with the Earth for the first time in 6,000 years. On that day the ice build-up at the South Pole will upset the earth's axis, sending trillions of tons of ice in the water sweeping over the surface of our planet." This was also the date that the lost continent of Mu was supposed to reappear according to the Lemurian fellowship.

6. In 1988, Australian yachtswoman Kay Cottee became the first woman to sail solo and non-stop around the world.

7. In 1893, the "Panic of 1893" hit the New York Stock Exchange. Various factors were blamed for the panic, including the bankruptcy of a major railway and shrinking national Gold reserves.

8. In 1991, the last US cruise missile left Greenham Common Air Base, after a decade of strident women's anti-nuclear protests.

9. In 2015, scientists announced the discovery of EGS-zs8-1, the oldest and most distant galaxy ever observed.

10. In 1760, Earl Ferrers was the last British peer to be executed, hanged in London for murdering his steward. The hangman’s drop was used for the first time at his execution. It has been said that as a concession to status the rope used was made of silk.

The Power of Love

Willow believes in crystal healing, cosmic  ordering  and the significance of chance  encounters. She believes there's a spiritual  explanation for everything. Except she struggles to find a reason why she can turn herself into  mist and create a wave of energy which can slam a would-be mugger into a wall. Or why the love of  her life left her for a mysterious woman in sunglasses, who then disappeared without trace.  

A chance encounter with Firebolt, leader of the Freedom League superhero team, in a Glastonbury coffee shop, does turn out to be significant. He offers her a new start and the chance to use her powers for good.

Servant is a Christian who has joined the Freedom League in order to use his teleporting power to serve God. He and Willow clash from the start, yet they are drawn inexorably to one another.

When Willow leaves the team abruptly for reasons unknown, Servant knows he must put her out of his mind and find a nice Christian girl to settle down with. He is about to propose to devout and straight-laced Ruth, when Willow returns and turns his entire world upside down.

Available from Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

4 May

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 4 May:

1. This date in 1929 saw the birth of one Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Rusten, who is better known as Audrey Hepburn, iconic actress whose films include Roman Holiday, Breakfast at Tiffany's and My Fair Lady. She was also Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF.

2. In 1990, Jesse Tafero was executed in Florida by means of the electric chair. However, the machine, dubbed "Old Sparky", malfunctioned, causing six-inch flames to shoot out of Tafero's head. Three jolts of electricity were required to kill him, a process that took 6.5 minutes. This was thought to be because they were using the wrong type of sponge in the headpiece. The Jesse Tafero case became the cause célèbre among death penalty opponents, who cited the brutal circumstances of his execution as reasons it should be abolished.

3. In 1994, Health freak Franz Heinan choked to death on vitamin pills in Brussels after lecturing friends on their eating habits.

4. On a popular date for elections, in 1979 Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party won the British general election, making her the first woman prime minister of a major European nation, and in 2000, Londoners elected Ken Livingstone as their first elected mayor.

5. In 1968, the first McDonalds Big Mac Hamburger was sold.

6. Staying with hamburgers, in 1973, the world record for hamburger eating was set by Rhode Island student Bob Matern, who ate 83 of them in 2½ hours.

7. The first Derby horse race was run at Epsom on this date in 1780. The race covered a distance of one and a half miles and was won by Diomed. It was followed by a cock fight.

8. In 1996, British Airways stewardess Joanne Savage looked out of the window of a jumbo jet 34,000ft above the Atlantic and spotted a boat on fire. She was able to raise the alarm and three fishermen were consequently rescued.

9. In 1995, Japanese Psychologists announced that they had trained Pigeons to distinguish between works by Picasso and Monet. However, the pigeons had a long way to go before they could be considered art experts, since they couldn't tell a Cezanne from a Renoir.

10. It wouldn't be out of place in a Dan Brown novel: in 1998 in Vatican City, the commander of the Swiss Guard, Alois Estermann and his wife were found shot dead in their flat; a Vatican inquiry concluded that a corporal, Cedric Tornay, had shot the couple and then turned the gun on himself. 

The Power of Love

Willow believes in crystal healing, cosmic  ordering  and the significance of chance  encounters. She believes there's a spiritual  explanation for everything. Except she struggles to find a reason why she can turn herself into  mist and create a wave of energy which can slam a would-be mugger into a wall. Or why the love of  her life left her for a mysterious woman in sunglasses, who then disappeared without trace.  

A chance encounter with Firebolt, leader of the Freedom League superhero team, in a Glastonbury coffee shop, does turn out to be significant. He offers her a new start and the chance to use her powers for good.

Servant is a Christian who has joined the Freedom League in order to use his teleporting power to serve God. He and Willow clash from the start, yet they are drawn inexorably to one another.

When Willow leaves the team abruptly for reasons unknown, Servant knows he must put her out of his mind and find a nice Christian girl to settle down with. He is about to propose to devout and straight-laced Ruth, when Willow returns and turns his entire world upside down.

Available from Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

3 May

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 3 May:

Machiavelli

1. This date in 1469 saw the birth of Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, Italian statesman, best known for his work The Prince, which was responsible for the term "Machiavellian". Some say the expression “Old Nick” for the Devil also originated with him.

2. Christopher Columbus discovered Jamaica on this date in 1494. He named it "St Iago".

3. In 1997 Katrina And The Waves won the Eurovision song contest in Dublin with the song Love Shine A Light, making them the first UK winners since Bucks Fizz in 1981.

4. The fastest tornado ever recorded hit the suburbs of Oklahoma City on this date in 1999. Its speed reached 318 MPH or 509 KM/H.

5. The first toll bridge in the US opened this date in 1654. A bridge in Rowley, Massachusetts, was permitted to charge a toll for animals, while people crossed for free.

6. The first landing by an aeroplane at the geographic North Pole by Joseph Fletcher and William Benedict took place on this date in 1952.

7. In 1675, a law was enacted in Massachusetts requiring church doors to be locked during services, to stop people leaving before the end of long sermons.

8. In 1747, the Battle of Cape Finisterre took place, at which the British defeated the French.

9. The first duel fought from two Hot air balloons took place above Paris on this date in 1808. The shots were carefully aimed, and a Monsieur Le Pique was killed.

10. In 1944, the Daily Telegraph Crossword solution included the word Utah, a secret code word for a landing beach for the planned invasion of France. Over the next few days, other code words relating to the invasion appeared in the puzzle, and agents questioned the puzzle setter. They established he was not a spy but no-one could explain the coincidences.

The Power of Love

Willow believes in crystal healing, cosmic  ordering  and the significance of chance  encounters. She believes there's a spiritual  explanation for everything. Except she struggles to find a reason why she can turn herself into  mist and create a wave of energy which can slam a would-be mugger into a wall. Or why the love of  her life left her for a mysterious woman in sunglasses, who then disappeared without trace.  

A chance encounter with Firebolt, leader of the Freedom League superhero team, in a Glastonbury coffee shop, does turn out to be significant. He offers her a new start and the chance to use her powers for good.

Servant is a Christian who has joined the Freedom League in order to use his teleporting power to serve God. He and Willow clash from the start, yet they are drawn inexorably to one another.

When Willow leaves the team abruptly for reasons unknown, Servant knows he must put her out of his mind and find a nice Christian girl to settle down with. He is about to propose to devout and straight-laced Ruth, when Willow returns and turns his entire world upside down.

Available from Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

2 May

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 2 May:

The Queen Elizabeth II

1. This date in 1844 saw the birth of Elijah McCoy, an American inventor, who held 57 patents. Most of them were related to lubrication, but he also invented a folding ironing board and a Lawn sprinkler. The saying "the real McCoy," meaning the real thing, is said to derive from one of Elijah's inventions, a locomotive lubricator. The legend says that railway engineers, looking to avoid inferior products, would enquire if a locomotive was fitted with "the real McCoy".

2. On this date in 2011 Osama bin Laden, the Islamic extremist best known for the September 11 attacks on the United States was shot and killed by US Navy Seals in his hideout. Bin Laden's body was handled in accordance with Islamic practice and tradition, and buried at sea so his grave would not become a "terrorist shrine".

3. In 1997, Tony Blair became Britain's youngest prime minister in 185 years, at the age of 44.

4. In 1969, the passenger liner Queen Elizabeth II sailed from Southampton on its first voyage.

5. In 2009, Bob Dylan paid £16 and joined 13 other tourists on a National Trust minibus tour to John Lennon's childhood home in Woolton, Liverpool, where Lennon grew up with his aunt Mimi and uncle George. Dylan was on a day off from his European tour.

6. The first paid fire department was established in New York on this date in 1865.

7. The Inverness Courier reported the sighting of a “Strange Spectacle on Loch Ness” on this date in 1033.

8. In 1995, the world’s first international convention for tramps was held in Argentina.

9. In 2006, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, 62, was released from a New Zealand hospital after suffering "mild concussion" when he fell out of a coconut tree while on holiday in Fiji.

10. In 1670, the Hudson Bay Company was chartered by King Charles II, giving them ownership of "Rupert's Land," which comprises much of what is now central and western Canada.

The Power of Love

Willow believes in crystal healing, cosmic  ordering  and the significance of chance  encounters. She believes there's a spiritual  explanation for everything. Except she struggles to find a reason why she can turn herself into  mist and create a wave of energy which can slam a would-be mugger into a wall. Or why the love of  her life left her for a mysterious woman in sunglasses, who then disappeared without trace.  

A chance encounter with Firebolt, leader of the Freedom League superhero team, in a Glastonbury coffee shop, does turn out to be significant. He offers her a new start and the chance to use her powers for good.

Servant is a Christian who has joined the Freedom League in order to use his teleporting power to serve God. He and Willow clash from the start, yet they are drawn inexorably to one another.

When Willow leaves the team abruptly for reasons unknown, Servant knows he must put her out of his mind and find a nice Christian girl to settle down with. He is about to propose to devout and straight-laced Ruth, when Willow returns and turns his entire world upside down.

Available from Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle