14th August: Pakistan Independence Day

Today is Pakistan's Independence Day - here are 10 things you might not know about Pakistan:

1. Pakistan means "Land of the Pure" in Urdu and Persian.
2. It is the 36th largest country in the world -796,095 km2 (307,374 sq mi), that is, as big as France and the UK combined. It has the 26th largest economy and the 6th largest population - 191.71 million in 2015.
3. Pakistan is home to the world's second highest mountain, K2, and also the world's highest paved international road (the Karakoram Highway at 15,397 ft between China and Pakistan) and the highest polo ground at Shandur Top, Gilgit at 12,200 ft.
4. Over half of the world's footballs are made in Sialkot, Pakistan - in a World Cup year, about 60 million hand-stitched footballs are made here.
5. However, the national sport is not Football, or polo - it's field hockey.
6. Pakistan has an active space programme. It was the first South Asian nation to launch a rocket into space in 1962. The rocket was called Rehbar-1, which is Urdu for "One who leads the way".
7. The capital is Islamabad, and the largest city is Karachi.
8. Muhammad Iqbal is Pakistan's national poet. He was an academic, poet, barrister, philosopher, and politician in British India, widely regarded as having inspired the Pakistan Movement. He is considered one of the most important figures in Urdu literature, with literary work in both the Urdu and Persian languages. His birthday, December 25th, is celebrated as a national holiday in Pakistan.
9. Other national holidays include Kashmir Solidarity Day (February 5), Independence Day (August 14), Kashmir Black Day (October 27, the day when India landed its army in Jammu and Kashmir, considered to be the blackest day in Kashmir's history) and Cricket day (June 25).
10. Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto was the first Muslim woman to serve as prime minister of a democratic state and Islamic country.

13th August: New York Taxis

On this date in 1907, the first taxicabs took to the streets of New York. Today, the New York Yellow cab is an iconic feature of the city. Here are some things you might not know about them.

1. They were not always yellow. Up until 1968, each fleet of taxis had its own colour scheme. There was, however, a big problem with illegal cabs, and so the City Council decreed that all licensed cabs should be painted yellow by 1970.
2. In order to legally pick up passengers in the street, a cab must have a CPNC (Certificate of Public Necessity and Convenience) commonly known as a medallion (possibly because the official name sounds like something that would be issued to a public toilet). The medallion is attached to the bonnet of the car. Because the city imposes limits on how many taxis there can be (around 14,000), medallions are at a premium and therefore very expensive. They can cost up to a million dollars. So how does a cab driver afford to pay for this? Some take out a loan, rather like a mortgage. Others lease the medallion from an investment company.
3. There are more than 13,000 taxis operating in New York.
4. Taxicabs are licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), a New York City government agency. The TLC also regulates car services, or taxis which are not allowed to pick up passengers in the street, but take customers who have called the company to order a car.
5. Up until 1954, the taxicab regulations demanded that a taxi must be able to carry five passengers behind the driver and have a trunk-mounted luggage rack. There was also a regulation that there must be a grill in the trunk (or boot) so that dead bodies couldn't be transported in there.
6. The Ford Crown Victoria accounted for 92% of all taxicabs in 2005. However, a few years ago New York City Mayor Bloomberg declared that the city would select its type of taxi for the next ten years. The "Taxi of Tomorrow" contest was won by the Nissan NV200, so this will be changing.
7. According to the The New York City Taxicab Fact Book Published in 2006 (it hasn't been updated since then - but it is crammed with facts and information for the taxi nerd and can be found at http://www.schallerconsult.com/taxi/taxifb.pdf) 91% of New York taxi drivers are immigrants, largely from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, but many other countries are represented including Afghanistan, Haiti, Egypt and even Russia. Only 1% of drivers in 2005 were women.
8. More figures from 2005 - New York City taxicabs travelled a total of 811 million miles that year, that's 64,600 miles per cab. They generated $1.82 billion in fares (including surcharges and tips) and accounted for a quarter of the revenue of any type of public transport in New York (including buses, the subway and other car services). In the borough of Manhattan this rose to 45%. The drivers earned an average of $158 per shift.
9. 71% of taxi rides are taken by people who live in Manhattan. An adult resident of Manhattan will take on average 100 cabs a year. The rest of the customers are people from the rest of New York, visitors from the rest of the US and foreign tourists. 50% more people take a taxi from the airport than to it.
10. A New York cab is available for hire when the centre light on the roof is lit. This light shows the medallion number. When the lights on either side of this light are lit, it means the driver is off duty and not taking passengers. If the round yellow light at the rear of the cab is lit, it indicates that the driver needs help.

12th August: Day of the Otter

According to the French Revolutionary Calendar, today is the Day of the Otter. Here are 10 things you may not know about otters:

1. Otters belong to the Mustelidae family, which means they are related to weasels, martens, minks, polecats, Badgers, honey badgers and wolverines.
2. The old English word for an otter (otor or oter) comes from the same root as the word for Water.
3. An otter can stay underwater for about eight minutes. They can close off their nostrils and ears while they are underwater.
4. They have a very high rate of metabolism. A meal will take just an hour to get through an otter's digestive system. Their high metabolism means they must eat 15% of their body weight each day, and Sea otters 20 to 25%, that's 100 g (3.5 oz) of fish per hour. Consequently, otters will spend five to eight hours a day hunting.
5. When they are not hunting, they like to play. They have been observed making and using waterslides, and playing with stones.
6. An otter's den is called a holt or couch.
7. Male otters are called dogs, females are called bitches, and their offspring are called pups. Collective nouns for otters are bevy, family, lodge, romp or, when in water, raft. Their droppings are known as spraints and are said to smell of musky mown hay to rotting fish.
8. In Bangladesh, fishermen have domesticated otters which they use to chase fish into their nets.
9. The Oriental small-clawed otter is the smallest otter species and the giant otter and sea otter are the largest.
10. In Korea, it is said to be very unlucky to see an otter. Anyone who sees one will attract 'rain clouds' for the rest of their lives.

11th August: Chad Independence Day

Today is Chad's Independence Day. here are 10 things you may not know about the Republic of Chad.

1. The Republic of Chad is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is slightly smaller than Peru and slightly larger than South Africa, and is the world's 21st-largest country.
2. Its capital and largest city is N'Djamena, which is twinned with Toulouse, France and Stupino, Stupinsky District, Moscow Oblast, Russia.
3. Most of the 10,300,000 population live in the southernmost fifth of the country. There are over 200 different ethnic groups. The main ones are the Sara, Arabs and the nomadic Toubous.
4. It is a very poor country in which 80% of the people live below the poverty line. Civil wars have made it difficult at times for aid to get through.
5. Chad's official languages are French and Arabic, but over 100 languages and dialects are spoken.
6. There are some unusual musical instruments in Chad - the kinde, a type of bow harp; the kakaki, a long tin horn; and the hu hu, a stringed instrument that uses calabashes (gourds) as loudspeakers.
7. The staple food is millet. It is made into balls of paste which are dipped into sauces. Fish is a popular food, too. Drinks include Carcaje, a sweet red tea extracted from hibiscus leaves, and in the south, millet beer.
8. 39% of women are in polygamous marriages. Polygamy is legal and automatically allowed unless spouses have specified at the time of marriage that it is unacceptable to them.
9. Because it is a long way from the sea and has a largely desert climate, Chad is sometimes referred to as the "Dead Heart of Africa".
10. The country's dominant physical structure is a wide basin bounded to the north and east by the Ennedi Plateau and Tibesti Mountains, which include Emi Koussi, a dormant volcano which is 3,414 metres (11,201 ft) above sea level. Lake Chad, after which the country is named, is the remains of an immense lake that occupied 330,000 square kilometres (130,000 sq mi) of the Chad Basin 7,000 years ago.

10th August: Edinburgh Royal Military Tattoo

In full swing in Scotland at this time of year is the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Here are some things about the event which you may not know.

1. The word "Tattoo" comes from the Dutch phrase "Doe den tap toe", or just "tap toe", meaning "last orders" or literally, "close the (beer) tap". It was a signal, played by a regiment's Corps of Drums or Pipes and Drums each night, to tavern owners telling them to turn off the taps of their ale kegs so that the soldiers would go home to bed at a reasonable hour. By the 18th century, it was being used to mean the last duty call of the day, and also a ceremonial form of evening entertainment performed by Military musicians.
2. The first Tattoo to be held in Edinburgh took place at at the Ross Bandstand at Princes Street Gardens in 1949. Its theme was "Something About a Soldier". The first to be held at the castle was in 1950, in front of an audience of 6,000.
3. Now, the audience is more like 217,000 and it has sold out completely in advance for the past ten years.
4. If you can't get tickets, never fear - it is always broadcast by the BBC and is shown in 30 countries. In Australia, it is traditionally shown on New Year's Eve.
5. The Tattoo has never been cancelled due to inclement weather.
6. The first regiment from outside the UK to take part was the Band of the Royal Netherlands Grenadiers in 1952. The first non-military drum corps to participate were the Swiss Top Secret Drum Corps, who first performed at the 2003 Tattoo.
7. The Tattoo has been known as the "Royal" Edinburgh Military Tattoo after HM Queen Elizabeth awarded the title in celebration of six decades of the event.
8. Princess Anne is the patron and the main corporate sponsor is the Royal Bank of Scotland. As well as raising over £5 million for charity over the years, it generates £88 million in revenue for Edinburgh's economy annually.
9. The British Armed Forces (ie the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, the British Army and the Royal Air Force) take it in turns to be the lead service, and each year's event has a theme celebrating an anniversary, organisation or event. The theme for 2015, the 66th Tattoo, is "East Meets West".
10. Each performance ends with a rendition of the National Anthem and Auld Lang Syne, then a Flag lowering ceremony with a lone piper playing from the ramparts. The performers then march off the esplanade and down the Royal Mile to the tune of Scotland the Brave.

9th August: Singapore National Day

Today is Singapore's National Day - so here are some things you might not know about Singapore.

1. The name Singapore means "Lion City". The name was given to it by Sang Nila Utama, who thought he saw a lion there. He probably didn't, as there's no evidence that lions ever lived there, except, perhaps in the zoo. The animal he saw was more likely to have been a Malayan Tiger.
2. Singapore consists of 63 islands, including the main island, known as Singapore Island or Pulau Ujong in Malay, literally meaning "End Island". (According to a third century book about foreign countries, the first inhabitants of Singapore island were cannibals with five to six inch tails - I suspect they were no more real than the lion!) The land area was 581.5 km2 (224.5 sq mi) in the 1960s, and it has been getting bigger ever since thanks to ongoing land reclamation projects. At time of writing it stands at 718.3 km2 (277.3 sq mi), and is still growing.
3. Singapore is one of only three city states in the world, the others being Monaco and Vatican City. It's also the second most densely populated place in the world (after Monaco).
4. Singapore is home to the world's largest fountain (at Suntec City, made of cast bronze, it cost an estimated US$6 million to build in 1997); the world’s highest man-made waterfall (30 metres high, at Jurong BirdPark); the world's most expensive building (Marina Bay Sands, an Integrated Resort at Marina Bay -fyi that's the odd looking building that looks like three skyscrapers with a ship on top that you can see in the picture above); and the world's first night zoo.
5. The Bukit Timah Nature Reserve in Singapore contains more species of trees than the entire North American continent. The highest point is also here - Bukit Timah Hill at 163.63 m (537 ft).
6. Singapore has the world's highest percentage of millionaires, with one out of every six households having at least one million US dollars in disposable wealth. Only a millionaire could afford to run a car in Singapore. Not only are cars expensive to buy in the first place, but drivers must also pay for a Singaporean Certificate of Entitlement (COE), which entitles them to drive the car in Singapore for ten years. The COE itself costs as much as a Porsche would in the US.
7. The national symbol is the "Merlion", half lion, half fish - the lion for the name of the name of the country and the fish for its maritime history. The national flower of Singapore is the Vanda 'Miss Joaquim' named in memory of the woman who discovered the flower in her garden at Tanjong Pagar in 1893. The "national fruit" of Singapore is the durian, an exotic fruit known for being extremely smelly - so much so that it is banned on public transport in many places. It tastes better than it smells. Novelist Anthony Burgess wrote that eating durian is "like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory".
8. The words to Singapore's National Anthem, “Onward Singapore,” are written in microtext on the back of the $1000 note.
9. The Singapore Sling was first served in 1915 at the Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel (named for Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles who founded modern Singapore in 1819). The ingredients are gin, Cointreau, cherry brandy, Dom Benedictine, pineapple juice, Grenadine, Angoustura bitters and limes.
10. The people of Singapore have the fastest walking speed in the world, according to research by the British Council. They clock up 18 metres in 10.55 seconds, or 6.15km an hour, which is, incidentally, the flight speed of a bumble bee.

8th August: Sara Teasdale

American poet Sara Teasdale was born on this date in 1884. Here are ten Sara Teasdale quotes:

1. I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.
2. Beauty, more than bitterness, makes the heart break.
3. No one worth possessing can be quite possessed.
4. It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise.
5. I have no riches but my thoughts. Yet these are wealth enough for me.
6. Though I know he loves me, tonight my heart is sad; his kiss was not so wonderful as all the dreams I had.
7. You will recognize your own path when you come upon it because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need.
8. Life is but thought.
9. Look for a lovely thing and you will find it, it is not far, it never will be far.
10. Never fear the thing you feel-- Only by love is life made real.