7 July: Figs

Caprotina was a Fig Tree Festival celebrated by Roman women on this date. Here are ten things you might not know about figs.

1. Ficus carica is a species of small tree in the flowering plant family Moraceae, native to the Mediterranean region, western and southern Asia. There are over 750 known Ficus species in the world.

2. Nearly all of those species have co-evolved with a type of wasp which depends on the tree for food and a place to breed, and the tree in turn depends on the wasps for pollination. Neither could survive without the other. In fact, the fig tree doesn’t have Flowers as we know them; the flowers are inside the fruit. They are pollinated when a wasp crawls in to feed or lay eggs (the latter is in the male fruit while we only eat the female fruit, so eating a fig doesn’t mean you’re eating wasp eggs).

3. These trees are also pretty important to hornbills in Africa. When they’re about to lay eggs, the females shut themselves away in the trunks of fig trees and nest there for anything from 90-130 days, while the males bring food for them and the chicks, passing it through a small hole in the bark.

4. Figs have been around for millions of years, and would have survived the mass extinction event that wiped out the Dinosaurs. Figs are probably the first fruits to be cultivated by humans. Remains of fig trees have been found in Neolithic sites dating back to 5000 BCE and there are Sumerian stone tablets from 2500 BCE which mention them being used in cooking.

5. Fig trees probably arrived in Britain thanks to the Romans. Fig seeds have been found during the excavation of Roman settlements, but we don’t know for sure whether the Romans actually planted and cultivated the trees or if discarded seeds just sprouted on their own. The first documented fig tree in the UK was planted by Cardinal Reginald Pole, a sworn enemy of Henry VIII, in the 16^th century.

6. For a long time it was only the upper classes that ate figs. In the 18^th century, rich people grew them on south facing walls. The lower classes, however, didn’t care for them much, hence the phrase “not worth a fig”.

7. In the US, they have missionaries from Spain to thank for their fig trees. George Washington was a big fan of figs and believed everyone should have a patch of land with a fig tree on which to live in peace. He often quoted a verse from the Bible ("But they shall sit every man under his own vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.”) in his letters. Washington had fig trees planted on his Mount Vernon estate in February 1798, and when he retired, he wrote to the Marquis de Lafayette: “I have once more retreated to the shades of my own Vine and Fig tree.”

8. It’s possible that the forbidden fruit in the Bible wasn’t an Apple at all, but a fig. The idea that it was an apple may have been a medieval translator getting mixed up with the word “malum”, which can mean both apple and evil. Jewish scholars have concluded that the notorious fruit is more likely to have been a fig, and Michelangelo agreed. On the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the serpent handing the fruit to Eve is coiled around a fig tree. Which makes the idea of Adam and Eve using fig leaves to cover their naughty bits make even more sense.

9. Christianity isn’t the only faith which mentions figs in their traditions. The Prophet Muhammad liked them. He called them “a fruit that descended from paradise” and recommended them as a remedy for piles and gout. In East Africa, Maasai people say when the earth and the sky became separated, all that connected them was a sacred fig tree.

10. In Hong Kong, there’s a widely held belief that spirits live in the fig trees, and that they will grant wishes. People would write their wishes on red or gold paper, tie them to a piece of string and tie the other end to an orange, and throw it into the tree. If the wish got stuck in the tree, it would come true, and the higher the branch it stuck to, the more likely it was that the wish would be granted. However, that tradition was scuppered by Elf and Safety after the weight of the wishes caused a branch to snap off, so now people can only throw their wishes into fake fig trees.

Character birthday

Sean “Fingers” Fingale, a small time criminal in England. He and his friend Darren Suggs one day found a small boy asleep in their secret hide out. Rather than notify the authorities that they’d found the missing child, they saw that he might be useful as an accomplice and took care of him, using him as a look out when they were committing crimes. When the boy grew up, he used his intelligence and genetic variant super-senses to plan more ambitious crimes and Fingers and Suggs became the accomplices to the notorious burglar known as “The Fox”. He appears in From a Jack to a King.

From A Jack To A King

A royal palace is burning. The King and Queen are dead. The only hopes for an ancient dynasty flee to England for their lives.

A boy runs from his mother and the people he believes want to mutilate him, and vanishes, seemingly forever.

Gary Winchcombe, the experimental "super-cop" pursues a notorious gang of bank robbers, and starts to discover that his friends and neighbours have secrets he never could have imagined.

Tod Reynard wants to turn his life around. When he meets and falls in love with the beautiful Jade, he knows she might just be the one to help him change his life for the better. He cannot possibly know just how much.

When Jade's twin sister Gloria is kidnapped, old rivalries must be put aside and new associations formed in order to save Gloria's life and restore the rightful order of things.

Available from: Amazon, Amazon Kindle

187

Today is the 187th day of the year, so here are ten things you might not know about the number 187:

1. 187 was a common year starting on Sunday. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Quintius and Aelianus.
2. London bus route 187 runs between Central Middlesex Hospital and O2 Centre / Sainsbury's.
3. There are 187 chapters in the Hebrew Torah.
4. Section 187 (often referred to in slang simply as 187) of the California Penal Code defines the crime of murder.
5. Samuel L. Jackson’s first starring role was in a film called One Eight Seven, a crime thriller released in 1997. Jackson plays a Los Angeles teacher caught with gang trouble in an urban high school.
6. 187 Lockdown was a British speed garage act, comprising Danny Harrison and Julian Jonah. The duo produced one album, with four singles released from it, and remixed many songs towards the end of the 1990s.
7. In England, the A187 road runs between Heaton and North Shields.
8. 187 is a character in the film Dracula 3000.
9. The Roman numeral for 187 is CLXXXVII and in Binary it’s 10111011.
10. In numerology 187 resonates with both literary and scientific approaches to life. It is a studious energy which tends to be independent and self-reliant. It has organisational skills and is quite efficient when it sets out to do something. There is a tendency to explore new ways to do business and to organise things to be more effective.

Character birthday

Sten, the sharp shooting character from Combat Team Beta. At age 13 he was abducted by the aliens known as Orbs and trained as one of their fighting force. They fitted him with a bio-integrated gun. During his time with the aliens, he met a woman called Chrissie, who was being used by the aliens for breeding, and helped her escape, at the expense of his own attempt to escape.

He later managed to escape himself and returned to Earth. He refused to talk about where he got his tattoo or weapon. He had no qualifications or experience, other than as a fighter, and struggled to find a job, until a vacancy came up in Combat Team Beta. Also on the team was Magpie, Chrissie's sister, who was stealing in order to pay for her sister's care. Chrissie was catatonic and unresponsive until Sten came to her apartment with Magpie. The sight of the man who'd helped her escape brought her out of the coma. Chrissie and Sten started a relationship, but Chrissie died giving birth to their child. He and Magpie took on caring for the child and in due course fell in love.

5 July: Gerbil Day

Today is Gerbil Day. Here are ten things you might not know about these popular pets.

1. There are about 110 species of gerbil in the world. If you have one as a pet it will be a Mongolian gerbil or Mongolian jird (Meriones unguiculatus), a small rodent, but in the wild, there is a species of gerbil, the Great gerbil, which can grow up to 16 inches long. There are also fat-tailed gerbils, native to the northern Sahara, which have thick tails that they use for storing water.
2. Your pet gerbil will be a descendant of the 20 males and 26 females which were brought to the United States from eastern Mongolia for scientific testing in the 1950s. The scientists soon realised they made great pets. Gerbils were brought to the United Kingdom in 1964 from the United States.
3. A gerbil can jump a foot into the air. This makes them good at escaping from their enclosures but it also means you can teach them fun tricks. While they may not be quite as intelligent as Rats and Mice, they’re certainly not stupid and can be taught to navigate a maze.
4. They can also be house trained. As desert animals, they’ve evolved not to urinate very often and when they do, tend to do it in the same place in their cage. Put a small sandbox in that spot and they’ll soon start to use it like a litter tray.
5. Also as desert animals, they use sand to clean themselves. Pet gerbils need to be provided with sand for this purpose.
6. Gerbils can hear and vocalise in a wide range of frequencies. The squeaks you hear are only a tiny fraction of the vocalisations they are making to one another. This is one of the reasons scientists wanted to study them, because they may be a more suitable model of human hearing loss than mice and rats.
7. Gerbils used to be referred to as ‘desert rats’. The reason for this isn’t clear. While they do live in deserts they are not related to rats.
8. There are more than 40 gerbil coat pigmentations. Many of them are a golden colour, which would be the best camouflage in the wild, but pet gerbils have been selectively bred to come in a range of colours.
9. Gerbils’ teeth continually grow throughout their lives. In the wild, they’ll gnaw on tree bark to stop their teeth from getting too long.
10. It is illegal to purchase, import, or keep a gerbil as a pet in the U.S. states of California or Hawaii. It is also illegal to import these animals into New Zealand.

Character birthday

Reflex, a member of the Earth Guard, from the dimension of Infinitus. He defends himself with a hand held gun. While wormhole travel is likely to have given him a power of some sort, it is not yet known what that is.

4 July: Ann Landers quotes

Advice columnist Ann Landers was born on this date in 1918. 10 quotes from her:

1. Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognise them.

2. At every party there are two kinds of people – those who want to go home and those who don't. The trouble is, they are usually married to each other.

3. The trouble with talking too fast is you may say something you haven't thought of yet.

4. Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.

5. One out of four people in this country is mentally unbalanced. Think of your three closes friends; if they seem OK, then you're the one.

6. The best way to find something you have lost is to buy a replacement.

7. One trouble with trouble is that it usually starts out like fun.

8. Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.

9. All marriages are happy, it's living together afterward that's tough.

10. If at first you do succeed, try something harder.

Character birthday

July, a member of the Calendar Mob, She is immune to fire and can create a pyrotechnic light show with firecracker type explosions. Her power was discovered when, as a child on holiday in Disneyland, she wandered off and went exploring where she shouldn't have. As a result, she was caught up in a conflagration of fireworks. Instead of being burned to a crisp, she survived unscathed. It is thought that, although her immunity to fire had saved her, her other powers came about as a result of a chemical reaction with the gunpowder and other chemicals in the fireworks.

Her tendency to sneak into places she shouldn't continued into adulthood and she became a professional criminal.

3 July: World Meerkat Day

Today is World Meerkat Day, so here are ten facts about meerkats:

1. The word 'meerkat' derives from the Dutch name for a kind of Monkey, which in turn comes from the Old High German mericazza, possibly as a combination of meer ('lake') and kat ('Cat'). The native South African name for the meerkat is 'suricate'.

2. Meerkats are social animals which live in groups of anything from 15 to 50 individuals. A group of meerkats is known as a mob.

3. Mob is actually quite an appropriate name as, despite their cuteness, they can be highly aggressive. Mobs sometimes go to war against each other over territories. About 20% of meerkat deaths are actually murders by other meerkats, making them the most murderous animals on the planet. Not sure whether humans were included in the studies.

4. Within a mob, individuals will have their own assigned jobs to do. There will be a leader, usually a female, and others will be hunters, babysitters or lookouts. The lookout will go to its vantage point and when it gets there will emit a particular call to signal that it is in position. While everything is safe, they will make a peeping noise, like a watchman's song. If they spot a bird of prey, they'll sound a shrill alarm so the rest of the group knows to take cover. They are so attuned to looking for birds of prey that young meerkats have been known to run for cover when a plane flies over.

5. Meerkats are immune to the venom of Snakes and Scorpions.

6. When there is a vacancy for mob leader, the eldest and biggest daughter of the previous leader usually takes over. However, if there is a sister quite close in size, they will actually engage in an eating contest to determine who takes the crown. Or more accurately, a growing contest. Meerkats have been observed to alter their diet in order to make themselves bigger. However, they seem to know there’s a fine line between getting big enough to rule the mob and getting too fat to run away from a predator.

7. Their eyes are well adapted for a life in the desert. The distinctive dark patches around their Eyes help cut down the glare of the Sun and their pupils are horizontal. This unusual shape gives them a wide range of vision without having to move their heads. They also have a membrane (or third eyelid) which covers their eyes to protect them from flying sand and other debris when they are digging.

8. They live underground. Often they will move in to a burrow abandoned by another animal like a ground squirrel and adapt it for their own use. Meerkat tunnels can have up to 15 entrances and chambers and tunnels up to six feet deep. They have separate chambers for sleeping in and to use as a toilet. A meerkat mob usually has several burrow systems and will relocate every few months.

9. Meerkats are omnivores. They’ll eat insects, scorpions, grubs, eggs, small animals and birds, plants and fruit. They don’t need to drink Water as they get all the moisture they need from their food.

10. Meerkats can live up to eight years in the wild. In captivity they live between 12 – 14 years and have been known to live up to 20 years.

Character birthday

Mahogany Stone, male model and body builder who joined Sword Keeper and his group to help rescue Yasmin Miller when she was kidnapped by the Power League and Sinister Squad. He had been in a relationship with Ebony, Obsidian’s adopted daughter, but had come to realise her true nature. After she tried to kill him, he turned against her and joined the good guys. He is Boulder’s nephew. He appears in Obsidian’s Ark.

2 July: Middle age

 As today is the Middle day of the year, here are 10 quotes about middle age.

1. Middle age is When a narrow waist and a broad mind begin to change places.

2. The really frightening thing about middle age is the knowledge that you’ll grow out of it. Doris Day

3. Middle age is when you stop criticizing the older generation and start criticising the younger one. Laurence J Peter

4. The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down. George Eliot

5. Middle age is Having a choice of two temptations and choosing the one that will get you home earlier.

6. The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age. Orson Welles

7. Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men. Kin Hubbard

8. Of middle age the best that can be said is that a middle-aged person has likely learned how to have a little fun in spite of his troubles. Don Marquis

9. There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged. TH White

10. Setting a good example for your children takes all the fun out of middle age. William Feather

Character birthday

Jade Winchcombe: eldest daughter of Gary Winchcombe (Chain) and Amanda Somerset-Liquorish.

1 July: Amy Johnson

Amy Johnson was the first female pilot to fly alone from England to Australia. She was born on this date in 1903. 10 things you might not know about her:

1. She was born in Hull, the eldest of three sisters. Her grandfather was a mayor of Hull.

2. She studied economics at the University of Sheffield and then got a job working for a solicitor in London. Soon after that, she discovered flying as a hobby.

3. Her first two planes were both called Jason. Her father helped her fundraise to buy her first, a second-hand Gipsy Moth. She named it Jason after her father’s fish business trademark. Johnson next obtained a de Havilland DH.80 Puss Moth G-AAZV which she named Jason II.

4. She was 26 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo to Australia. On 26 May 1930, she completed the 11,000 mile round-trip from Croydon to Darwin in 19 days.

5. Although she didn’t break the time record on this trip, she went on to set many other records including becoming the first pilot to fly from London to Moscow in a day, she set a record time for Britain to Japan with her co-pilot Jack Humphreys and a solo record for the flight between London and Cape Town.

6. She was a pioneer on the ground as well as in the air. She was the first British-trained woman ground engineer — for a while, she was the only woman in the world to hold that job title.

7. Amy married Scottish Aviator, Jim Mollison, in 1932. The story goes that he proposed to her during a flight together, at which point they had known each other for just eight hours. They divorced in 1938.

8. In September 1934, Johnson (under her married name of Mollison) became the youngest President of the Women's Engineering Society.

9. She modelled clothes for the designer Elsa Schiaparelli and created a travelling bag sold under her own name.

10. She died in 1941 when her plane crashed in the Thames Estuary. She was 37 years old. At the time, she was flying an Airspeed Oxford for the ATA from Prestwick via RAF Squires Gate to RAF Kidlington near Oxford, and went off course in adverse weather conditions. Reportedly out of fuel, she bailed out as her aircraft crashed into the Thames Estuary near Herne Bay. Her body was never found. There are, of course, rumours of a cover up. It has been suggested that her plane was mistaken for an enemy aircraft and shot down when she failed to give the correct identification code; and that an attempt by a nearby vessel to rescue her ended in disaster and she was lost under the boat.

Character Birthday

Dale Castle, founding member of the Greenroom Society, a band of villains associated with show business.

Dale's early life was difficult. His natural form is ugly and deformed; his deeply religious parents hid him away for many years, believing their son's deformity was a punishment from God. They feared they would be banned from the church if the "punishment" was known about by anyone else. Confined to the basement, the young Dale amused himself by listening to and composing music. Despite his appearance, his singing voice was beautiful.

At puberty, his power began to manifest. He was able to change his shape to that of a handsome young man. His parents now wanted to show him off, passing him off as a nephew from out of state and encouraging him to sing in church.

Angered by their hypocrisy, he ran away to seek his fortune in show business. Hearing about a TV reality talent show, he set out to become a contestant. Although he didn't win the contest, it did give him a platform from which he built a highly successful career. He created the Greenroom Society to bring together genetic variants in showbusiness, first of all to ensure they weren't discriminated against, but later became a means to maximise their success and wealth. It is a secret society with membership by invitation only. Genetic variants who refused to join were generally killed so that the secrets would never be revealed.