11th August: Alcatraz Day

Alcatraz day On this date in 1934, 80 years ago, the first prisoners arrived at Alcatraz. 137 of them were transferred from the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas by train, along with 60 special FBI agents, U.S. Marshals and railway security officials. Waiting for them were 155 prison staff, including the first warden James A. Johnston and associate warden J. E. Shuttleworth, both considered to be "iron men". The staff were highly trained in security, but not rehabilitation. 10 things you may not know about Alcatraz:

1. Historically, Native Americans believed the island to be cursed. They called it "Evil Island" and kept well away from it.
2. The first person to survey the island was Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775, when he was charting San Francisco Bay. He named it "La Isla de los Alcatraces," which translates as "The Island of the Pelicans," because large numbers of the birds were nesting there.
3. The earliest recorded owner of the island of Alcatraz is Julian Workman, to whom it was given by Mexican governor Pio Pico in June, 1846, with the understanding that Workman would build a lighthouse on it.
4. In 1853, the US Army started to build a fortress there to defend the city. When the US Civil War broke out, it was used as an arsenal - a safe place to store firearms where the Confederates couldn't get at them.
5. From 1907 to 1933, Alcatraz was a military prison. During World War I, the prison held conscientious objectors.
6. A gangster named Alvin "Creepy" Karpis spent the most time (26 years) in the prison.
7. One of the most famous inmates was Robert Franklin Stroud, also known as the Birdman of Alcatraz. He never kept any birds in Alcatraz, though. At Leavenworth, he kept, raised and sold birds and became a respected ornithologist, but he was forced to leave them all behind when transferred to Alcatraz, where birds weren't allowed.
8. The authorities claimed that no prisoners ever escaped from Alcatraz, although 36 of them tried (and two tried twice). 23 were caught, 6 shot and killed and two drowned. There are five, including three men who tried to escape in an inflatable raft in June 1962, who were never accounted for, but were presumed to have drowned.
9. By 1969, the Native Americans had overcome their fear of the island. After the prison closed, a group of Native American students occupied the island in protest. They wanted it to be given back to the Native American peoples, who had discovered it thousands of years before the white people did, and turned into a Native American cultural centre. While that didn't happen, the occupation did raise awareness and led to Richard Nixon changing Government policy on Native Americans. Today, Native Americans still hold sunrise ceremonies on the island on Columbus Day and Thanksgiving Day.
10. A proposal to knock down the prison and build a peace centre was defeated in 2008. The argument that the prison was too rich in history to be destroyed won the day. Those who wanted the prison knocked down will just have to wait until 2259 when the Starship Vengeance crashes on it (Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)).

10th August: Herbert Hoover

Former US President Herbert Hoover was born on this date in 1874. Here are 10 things he said:

1. About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
2. Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.
3. All men are equal before fish.
4. Peace is not made at the council table or by treaties, but in the hearts of men.
5. Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.
6. A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus.
7. New discoveries in science will continue to create a thousand new frontiers for those who still would adventure.
8. Being a politician is a poor profession. Being a public servant is a noble one.
9. Whatever doubt there may be as to the quality or purpose of our free speech we certainly have ample volumes in production.
10. Many women are now holding posts of grave responsibility in city and country and state and nation, and their number must be greatly increased.

9th August PL Travers

On this date in 1899 P. L. Travers (Helen Lyndon Goff), writer, creator of Mary Poppins, was born. 10 facts about her:

1. Her real name was Helen Lyndon Goff, known as Lyndon to her family.
2. She was an actress as well as a writer, using Pamela Lyndon Travers as her stage name. Travers was her father's name.
3. She was a big fan of J.M. Barrie, who wrote Peter Pan, and her first publisher was Peter Llewelyn Davies, Barrie's adopted son, widely regarded as the model for Peter Pan.
4. Travers was very interested in mythology, and spent two summers living among the Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo peoples studying their mythology and folklore.
5. She also studied Zen mysticism in Japan.
6. At the age of 40, she adopted a son, Camillus, who was one of seven grandchildren of W.B. Yeats's biographer. Camillus had a twin brother, Anthony, but Travers only took one of the twins, on advice from an astrologer. Camillus had no idea he had a brother until he was 17, and his brother arrived at their house, drunk and demanding to see his twin. After a row with his adopted mother, Camillus went and found his brother in a pub on King's Road.
7. The inspiration for Mary Poppins may have been Travers's great aunt, Helen Morehead, who used to say 'Spit spot, into bed'.
8. Although there were several Mary Poppins novels, only one was made into a film. The rest never were, because Travers hated the Disney film, especially the animation, and refused to allow Disney to make any more.
9. She also wrote a number of non-fiction books, including What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol and Story.
10. She died aged 96, according to her grandchildren, "loving no one and with no one loving her".

8th August: Mont Blanc

It was on this date in 1786 that Dr Michel Gabriel Paccard and his porter, Jacques Balmat, reached the summit of Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in Europe at 4,810 m (15,781 ft) above sea level. 10 things you might not know about Mont Blanc:

1. The name Mont Blanc and the Italian Monte Bianco mean "White Mountain". It is also sometimes known as La Dame Blanche (French for "the White Lady") or Il Bianco (Italian for "the White One.")
2. Paccard and Balmat's ascent is said to have marked the beginning of modern mountaineering. Their motivation was no doubt influenced by the fact that Horace-Bénédict de Saussure was offering a prize for the first successful climb.
3. The first woman to reach the summit was Marie Paradis in 1808.
4. There was once an observatory at the summit. Gustave Eiffel, of Eiffel Tower fame, agreed to take on the project if there was a firm foundation to build it on. There wasn't, and he gave up, but the observatory was built anyway in 1893 and lasted until 1909, when a crevasse started to open under it and it had to be abandoned.
5. There have been two plane crashes on the mountain, in 1950 and 1966. Both were Air India flights bound for Geneva.
6. Since 1965, there has been a tunnel underneath it, which connects Chamonix, France and Courmayeur, Italy. It is one of the major trans-Alpine transport routes between the two countries. 39 people were killed in a fire in the tunnel in 1999, which led to the tunnel being closed for three years for renovations and safety improvements.
7. In 1886, Theodore Roosevelt led an expedition to the peak.
8. In 1960 pilot Henri Giraud landed a plane on the summit which is only 30m (98 ft) long.
9. Mont Blanc is the location of the highest Toilets in Europe, at a height of 4,260 metres, 13,976 feet. They were taken up by Helicopter, and are also serviced by helicopter.
10. In 2007, twenty people set up a hot tub at the summit.

August 7th: Mata Hari

Mata Hari, famous World War I spy and exotic dancer was born on this date in 1876. 10 things you might not know about Mata Hari:

1. Her real name was Margaretha Geertruida Zelle
2. Her stage name, Mata Hari, is Malay for "sun", literally "eye of the day".
3. Her first choice of career was as a kindergarten teacher, but her godfather took her out of the school when the headmaster began flirting with her.
4. At 18 she married a man twenty years older than she was, Captain Rudolf MacLeod - he had advertised in a Dutch newspaper looking for a wife, and she answered, possibly attracted by the fact that he was of a higher social class than she and would offer financial security. The marriage was not happy - he was a violent alcoholic who openly kept a concubine.
5. She had two children, Jeanne and Norman. Both children contracted syphilis from their parents and the treatment made them very ill, although some maintain the children were poisoned by a disgruntled servant or one of MacLeod's enemies. Norman died, Jeanne survived, but only lived to the age of 21.
6. When her marriage broke down, Mata Hari moved to Paris and performed as a circus horse rider. At that time she was calling herself Lady MacLeod, which seriously offended her husband's family.
7. While working as an exotic dancer, she was often photographed nearly nude - MacLeod used some of the pictures to ensure she did not get custody of their daughter.
8. Although famous for flaunting her body, Mata Hari was self conscious about her small breasts and was rarely seen without a Bra.
9. As a Dutch citizen, she could travel freely around Europe during World War I because the Netherlands had remained neutral. She had affairs with high ranking army officials. French intelligence agents identified her as the spy with the code name H-21 and arrested her. Although there was no definite evidence against her, they seemed to have it in for her - her lawyer was even denied the permission to travel to the trial to cross-examine witnesses. She was executed by firing squad in 1917, aged 41.
10. Her body was given to medical science. Her head was embalmed and kept in the Museum of Anatomy in Paris, but in 2000, archivists discovered that her head had disappeared.

August 6th: Alexander Fleming

On this date in 1881 the scientist Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin was born, so here are 10 things you may not know about him and his discoveries:

1. Fleming served in the London Scottish Regiment of the Volunteer Force and was a member of the rifle club at medical school.
2. He originally planned to become a surgeon, but took a temporary job in bacteriology and realised that was where his interest lay.
3. He was known as a brilliant scientist but not for being tidy. We probably have his untidiness to thank for his greatest discovery, which was made when he returned from his holiday, having stacked up his Bacteria cultures on a bench in a corner, and fungus had started growing on some of them. He noticed the effect the fungus was having on the colonies of bacteria and famously commented, "That's funny..."
4. At first, though, Fleming didn't think penicillin would be all that useful as it was difficult to produce large quantities of it and it seemed to act too slowly. Nevertheless he published his work. Two more scientists, Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain, built on that and worked out how to mass produce penicillin so that it could be used to treat wounded soldiers in World War II.
5. Fleming, Florey and Chain jointly received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1945.
6. The laboratory in which Fleming discovered and tested penicillin is preserved as the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum in St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington.
7. Before penicillin, he also discovered lysozyme, a mildly antiseptic enzyme present in body fluids. This was another accidental discovery: he had a cold and a drop of mucus from his nose dropped onto a culture of bacteria. He decided to see what effect this had on the bacteria and found it killed them, although it was not as effective as penicillin. It was a significant contribution to human immune system research.
8. There is a statue of Alexander Fleming outside the main bullring in Madrid, erected by matadors, because penicillin meant they were much more likely to survive injuries sustained in the ring.
9. He was also named Honorary Chief Doy-gei-tau of the Native American Kiowa tribe.
10. And he has an Asteroid named after him: 91006 Fleming.

5th August: The Elephant Man

Joseph Merrick, “The Elephant Man”, was born on 5th August 1862. 10 Elephant Man facts:

1. After leaving school at 13, Joseph did work for a time rolling cigars in a factory but eventually his hands became too deformed for him to do this. He found work as a hawker, or salesman, but wasn't successful as his appearance used to put off potential customers. He lived in a workhouse for four years before writing to showman Sam Torr and asking for work as an exhibit in a travelling show.
2. His association with the London Hospital began while he was an exhibit in a Whitechapel "penny gaff" shop, across the road from the hospital. (The shop is now a sari shop.) Medical students would frequently go and look, and one of them brought "The Elephant Man" to the attention of his superior, Frederick Treves. Treves invited Joseph to the hospital so he could take photographs and investigate his condition, which led, eventually, to the two becoming friends.
3. Although Merrick at one point decided he did not wish to be photographed any more and left London to tour Europe, he was robbed and abandoned by his manager in Belgium. He somehow made his way back to London and was picked up by police who could not understand anything he said. All they could find on him was Treves' business card. Suffering from bronchitis, Merrick could be admitted to the hospital. In time, Treves managed to arrange for permanent rooms for Merrick in the basement of the hospital. The rooms contained a specially constructed bed and no mirrors.
4. As Treves grew used to Merrick's speech, he realised he was not an imbecile as first thought, but highly intelligent and sensitive. Treves would arrange for Merrick to experience things most people took for granted, such as holidays in the country and a trip to the theatre. Merrick had hardly ever met any women in his life, and those he did meet were frightened of him - so Treves arranged for one of his female friends, Leila Maturin, to visit. Having a woman smile at him and shake his hand for the first time was an experience he would never forget. Leila and Merrick remained in contact by letter. Later, he met Princess Alexandra when she came to the hospital with her husband to open a new building. She, too, shook his hand and spent time with him, and sent him a Christmas card each year.
5. Merrick's hobbies were reading and making model buildings out of card. He would sometimes go for walks in the hospital courtyard after dark.
6. Merrick believed that his condition was caused by his mother being frightened by an elephant while she was pregnant with him.
7. Doctors believe he suffered from neurofibromatosis type I, or Proteus syndrome, both congenital conditions. Some believe he may have had both.
8. Joseph Merrick died aged just 27. The cause of death was determined to be asphyxia, caused by a dislocated neck. Treves concluded that, although for most of his life, Merrick slept sitting up, because of the weight of his head, on this occasion he must have decided to try sleeping lying down in an attempt to be normal. His desire to be like other people was literally the death of him.
9. The inquest into his death was held by Wynne Edwin Baxter, who was also famous for conducting the inquests into Jack the Ripper's victims.
10. On stage and screen, the Elephant Man has been portrayed by Philip Anglim, David Bowie and John Hurt.