16th January: Appreciate a Dragon Day

Today is Appreciate a Dragon Day so let's have some quotes about dragons:

1. If the sky could dream, it would dream of dragons.
2. Beware most that which is guarded by dragons.
3. Speak clearly, enunciate, project, smile, and have a dragon stand behind you. #Public speaking.
4. Want a challenge? Dragon herder - because cats would be too easy.
5. Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
6. It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. JRR Tolkien
7. Brave men do not kill dragons. Brave men ride them.
8. A dragon's heart burns fiercely, even in the face of evil. S.G. Rogers
9. Never laugh at live dragons. J.R.R. Tolkien
10. Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. GK Chesterton

15th January: Wikipedia

Wikipedia was launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on this date in 2001. Some things you might not know about Wikipedia.

1. The name "Wikipedia" is a "portmanteau word", a combination of "wiki", from the Hawaiian word for "quick" and encyclopedia. So it means "quick encyclopaedia".
2. The symbols on the jigsaw pieces on the globe in the logo represent the letter "w" or the sound "wi" in different writing systems.
3. Wikipedia is the seventh-most popular website (behind Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo, Baidu and Amazon) with 500 million people visiting it each month (as of February 2014).
4. A 2011 survey found that the average age of these visitors was 36, and a roughly equal proportion of men and women. The picture for those who contribute to it is rather different - only 13% of editors are women and the average age is mid-20s.
5. In September 2007 the English version hit two million articles. This made it the largest encyclopaedia ever, a record that had been previously held by the Yongle Encyclopaedia for 600 years. (The Yongle Encyclopaedia was commissioned by the Chinese Ming dynasty emperor Yongle in 1403 and was referred to as the "Great Canon of Yongle".) Now, Wikipedia has over 4.6 million articles.
6. There are over 200 versions of Wikipedia in different Languages, although at the very start it was only available in English.
7. In the early days, anyone could edit an article and their changes would be immediately published; but this left the site open to vandalism - people could introduce irrelevant, inaccurate or blatantly false information very easily - leading to criticisms that Wikipedia was notoriously unreliable. Now, only registered editors can contribute, and some sensitive pages are further restricted so that only certain editors or administrators can make changes.
8. Despite these criticisms, a study by the journal Nature in 2005, which compared a sample of Wikipedia articles with their counterparts in Encyclopaedia Britannica, found that, for science articles at least, there was not a lot of difference in accuracy.
9. Every article has a "Talk Page" which is where unregistered people can make suggestions for changes to the page.
10. There is an award for particularly hard working or diligent contributors, called a Barnstar. Another user can place a star image on a contributor's talk page, explaining the reasons for the award. Barnstars, according to Wikipedia, are a kind of "warm fuzzy" and their purpose is to "promote civility and WikiLove."

January 14: Take a Missionary to Lunch Day

Today is Take a Missionary to Lunch Day, which celebrates the birthday of Albert Schweitzer, a Nobel prize-winning missionary to Africa. Call me twisted, but my first thought on reading the name of this observance was, I bet the cannibals look forward to this one! So thought I'd share 10 cannibal jokes.

1. Two cannibals talking after dinner: Your wife makes a perfect pot roast. Yes, but I’ll miss her.
2. What should you do for a starving cannibal? Give him a hand.
3. What does a cannibal who is late for dinner get? The cold shoulder.
4. What did the cannibal say when he saw the missionary asleep? Aha! Breakfast in bed.
5. Just because there are cannibals here there is no need to get into a stew.
6. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other, “Does this taste funny to you?”
7. I'm a cannibal. And frankly I'm fed up with people.
8. 1^st cannibal: Are you enjoying your meal? 2^nd cannibal: Yes, I’m having a ball.
9. New style Russian roulette: a man goes to bed with six women. One of them is a cannibal.
10. What does Hannibal Lecter call someone who is in a really good mood? A happy meal.

13th January: Frisbees

The Wham-O Company developed the first frisbee on this date in 1957. The word Frisbee is a registered trademark of the Wham-O company. Although it is generally used to describe any similar toy, unless they are made by Wham-O they should be referred to as "flying discs."

1. The first frisbees were Cake tins. The inventor, Fred Morrison, was playing on a California beach with a cake tin he had bought for five cents - he and his wife were throwing it back and forth to one another. It looked so much fun that people who had been watching them came up and offered him 25 cents for the cake tin. That was when he realised there was a business opportunity.
2. Early names for the toy were Whirlo-Way, Flyin’ Saucer, Pluto Platter and Flyin’ Cake Pans.
3. The name Frisbee was coined by students after the Frisbie Pie Company. Wham-O, who had bought the rights from Fred Morrison, quickly adopted the name. Fred Morrison hated the name at first, but changed his mind when the royalty payments started rolling in.
4. The name wasn't the only reason for the toy's success. Marketing was key as well. The man responsible for that was Edward Headrick, head of marketing a Wham-O. When he died, he was cremated and his ashes were made into frisbees for his family and close friends.
5. In the early days, people found it hard to believe that it was possible to make a frisbee hover by the skill of the throw alone, without using wires. Salesmen took advantage of that. When demonstrating it they would say, "The Flyin-Saucer is free, but the invisible wire is $1."
6. The longest recorded disc throw is by Simon Lizotte with a distance of 263.2 meters.
7. There is a team sport played with frisbees instead of a ball. It is called Ultimate, and it has been demonstrated that it requires a higher cardiovascular fitness level than any other field game.
8. The game was invented by a high school student in 1969. His name was Joel Silver - he went on to be a film producer and is known for producing the Matrix trilogy.
9. Other games played using a frisbee include Disc Golf (throwing a disc at a series of targets - there are 700 Disc Golf courses in the U.S.); guts (the oldest disc game where teams of people throw discs at each other - so called because according to legend, before frisbees were invented they'd use circular saw blades); Polish horseshoes (throwing a frisbee at a bottle on a stick - the rules state that while throwing, the players must hold a drink in one hand) and disc dog (humans throwing specially designed frisbees for their dogs to catch).
10. Flying discs made before 1964 are considered antiques by collectors.

12 January: Zanzibar Revolution Day

Today is Zanzibar Revolution Day, a public holiday in Zanzibar (a semi-autonomous region of Tanzania) celebrating the Zanzibar Revolution in 1964 and the overthrow of the Sultan. Some facts about Zanzibar.

Sultan's Palace, Zanzibar

1. It was the location of the world's shortest ever war, which lasted just 38 minutes in 1896. It happened because Britain did not like the new Sultan, Sultan Khalid bin Barghash.
2. The region is composed of the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, 25–50 kilometres (16–31 mi) off the coast of the mainland. It consists of two large islands: Unguja (the main island, referred to informally as Zanzibar) and Pemba. There are also numerous small islands.
3. The capital is Zanzibar City, on the island of Unguja. Its historic centre is Stone Town, which is a World Heritage Site.
4. Zanzibar's main industries are spices, raffia, and tourism. In particular, the islands produce Cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and black pepper. For this reason, the islands, together with Tanzania's Mafia Island, are sometimes called the Spice Islands.
5. The most famous person to come from Zanzibar was Freddie Mercury, (born Farrokh Bulsara). He was born in Stone Town, Zanzibar.
6. The name Zanzibar means ‘the coast of black people’, and comes from the Persian word Zangibar – ‘zangi’ meaning black-skinned and ‘bar’ meaning coast.
7. One of the most famous events to occur in Zanzibar is the Zanzibar International Film Festival. It is thought to be the largest cultural event in East Africa, giving out 12 international awards presented by 5 international juries.
8. Zanzibar was the first area in Africa to introduce colour television, in 1974. The mainland didn't get television at all until 1994, because the President disapproved of it.
9. Zanzibar has the largest number of carved doors in East Africa.
10. Zanzibar's oldest building is the 11th century mosque at Kizimkazi.

11th January: William James/Use More of Your Mind Day

William James, who said that we only use 10% of our minds, was born on this date in 1842, which is why today is Use More of Your Mind Day. Looking up quotes by him made it clear that he was an early adopter of the concept that we create our own reality, as some of the quotations below will illustrate:

1. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
2. Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.
3. Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
4. Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing.
5. The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
6. Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second.
7. To change one's life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.
8. I don't sing because I'm happy; I'm happy because I sing.
9. Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
10. Truth is what works.

10th January: London Underground

The London Underground railway was opened by Prime Minister Gladstone on this date in 1863. The first route of the Metropolitan Railway went from Paddington to Farringdon Street stopping at seven stations. The trains ran every 15 minutes; the full journey took 33 minutes. It carried 30,000 passengers on its first day, in spite of Punch magazine’s assessment of it as “the sewer railway” and a preacher who said that it was “a road down into Hell to meet the Devil”.

1. "Underground" is a bit of a misnomer because 60% of the stations are above ground.
2. Only 29 of the 287 stations are south of the River Thames. That's less than 10%.
3. American talk show host Jerry Springer was born at East Finchley station during the Second World War after his mother took shelter from an air raid.
4. In cockney rhyming slang, the London Underground is known as the Oxo (Cube/ Tube).
5. The Tube's logo is known as “the roundel” (a red circle crossed by a horizontal blue bar).
6. The "Mind the gap" recording dates back to 1968. The voice is that of Peter Lodge, who had a recording company in Bayswater. His voice is still in use at many stations, but some lines use recordings by a Manchester voice artist called Emma Clarke. On the Piccadilly Line the recording is the voice of Tim Bentinck, who plays David Archer in The Archers.
7. Amersham is also the highest station at 150 meters above sea level. The deepest station is Hampstead on the Northern Line, which runs down to 58.5 meters.
8. The shortest distance between two adjacent stations is 260 metres between Leicester Square and Covent Garden on the Piccadilly Line, which takes only about 20 seconds. The longest distance between stations is on the Metropolitan line from Chesham to Chalfont and Latimer: 3.89 miles.
9. Most people know that tube stations were used as air raid shelters in the second world war. A lesser known fact, which was an official secret until the 1980s, was that the Central Line was converted into a fighter aircraft factory that stretched for over two miles, with its own railway system.
10. The air in the underground is on average 10 degrees celcius hotter than the air on the surface.

*****

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