22nd May: Clover

The French Revolutionary calendar celebrates Clover today. Here are a few things you might not know about clover.

1. There are about 300 different species of clover. They are plants in the genus Trifolium, which comes from the Latin for three leaves. The genus is part of the leguminous Pea family Fabaceae.
2. While gardeners might not like to see clover growing in their pristine Lawns, farmers actively cultivate it alongside grass crops. It's abundant, and makes good, nutritious food for livestock. Clover fixes nitrogen, too, reducing the need for fertilizers. Bees like it too, and clover is one of the main sources of nectar for Honey Bees.
3. People can eat clover, too, particularly the flower heads, which were traditionally prescribed for eczema and psoriasis. made into syrup or Tea, they are used to treat coughs.
4. The shamrock, the symbol of Ireland, is basically clover. The word derives from the Irish for "young clover". For a long time there was debate about which species of clover shamrock was. In the end, a survey was carried out by the Irish National Botanic Gardens. The survey asked people from all over Ireland to send in plants they believed to be shamrock so that the botanists could figure out which species was shamrock. About half the respondents sent in examples of Trifolium dubium or Lesser Clover, and a third sent in Trifolium repens or White Clover, with the remainder divided among several other species, such as Trifolium pratense, Medicago lupulina, Oxalis acetosella. The conclusion was that there is no distinct species of shamrock and it is not unique to Ireland, as all the species sent in grow elsewhere, too.
5. Clover typically has three leaflets, hence St Patrick using it to explain the Holy Trinity. However, one in about ten thousand clovers have four leaflets. The fourth leaf is often smaller and of a different shade than the other three. Five and six leaf clovers also occur but are much rarer. The clover with the most leaflets ever found had 56 and was discovered in 2009 by the same person who'd held the previous records by finding 18 and 21 leafed clovers. Scientists think multiple leafed clovers are a mutation which may be influenced by environmental factors, so lucky and/or record breaking clovers are likely to occur several times on the same plant. Four leafed clover collecting is a thing, with some collectors finding as many as 160,000.
6. Four leafed clovers are traditionally symbols of good luck. The leaflets all represent something: the first is for faith, the second is for hope, the third is for love, and the fourth is for luck. Should you find a five leafed clover, the fifth leaf stands for Money. There is no meaning assigned to the sixth leaf and above. If you find a four leafed clover and immediately give it to someone else, your luck will double.
7. Abraham Lincoln used to carry a four-leaf clover with him everywhere for good luck - but on the night of his assassination, he had forgotten it.
8. Children in the Middle Ages believed they could see Fairies if they carried a four-leaf clover.
9. As well as the Irish shamrock, clover has been adopted as a symbol by other places and sports teams. Red clover is the state flower of Vermont. Four leafed clovers appear on the badge of Glasgow's Celtic Football Club, and Italian car maker Alfa Romeo used to paint a four-leaf clover on the side of their racing cars, after one of their drivers, Ugo Sivocci, painted one on his car for luck in 1923.
10. SpaceX's first successful rocket launch in 2008 had used a four leafed clover on its mission patch for luck. Now every SpaceX mission patch features one.

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21st May: Twins

Gemini zodiac sign begins today. How much do you know about twins? 

1. About one in 30 babies born in the USA, one in 63 in the UK and one in 80 in Australia is a twin. The number may be even larger, since scientists believe as many as one in eight pregnancies start out as twins, but in many cases, only one foetus survives. One may die before the mother has any scans and is reabsorbed into her body or that of the other twin so many of us could be twins and not even our mothers ever knew.
2. A woman is more likely to have twins if: she is Yoruba - the diet the Yoruba people eat contributes, it's thought, to stimulate more eggs to be released; lives in Linha São Pedro, a tiny Brazilian settlement in which as many as one in five pregnancies has resulted in twins; lives in the US states of Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey; is tall; eats a lot of dairy products or has twins in the family. Women who live in New Mexico or Hawaii, or who are vegans are less likely to have twins.
3. How many types of twin are there? Most people can only think of two or three - identical twins, non-identical (fraternal) twins and co-joined (Siamese) twins. There are several more: half-identical, mirror image twins, mixed chromosome twins, superfecundation, and superfetation. Though the latter types are rare.
4. Even if twins are truly identical there are ways to tell them apart. They'll have different fingerprints, as fingerprints aren't genetically determined. Nor are belly buttons, so a quicker way to distinguish identical twins from each other would be by looking at their navels.
5. Identical twins share 99.99% of their DNA - so there are tiny, tiny differences, but not enough to figure out which twin committed a crime. For example, in 2009, $6.8 million worth of jewellery was stolen in Berlin. Police extracted DNA from the scene and tracked down two people, Hassan and Abbas O., who were identical twins. They both said the other one did it. Because police couldn’t identify which of the twins the DNA belonged to, both ended up walking free.
6. If two sets of identical twins marry each other, their children are genetically all full siblings, although society would see them as cousins.
7. Twins are much more likely to be left handed than the general population. 22% of twins are left handed, compared to 10% of singletons.
8. 40% of twins make up their own languages. This is possibly because they are as likely to model each other when learning to talk as they are adults or older siblings. It can happen, too, when two babies who are not twins are around each other a lot and develop at a similar rate. The phenomenon is called “idioglossia” and most twins grow out of it, although there was a case in the 1980s of twin girls, known as "The Silent Twins" only ever spoke to each other in their own private language.
9. Twins who are separated at birth and never know each other often live eerily similar lives - they have the same type of pets and give them the same names; drive the same type of car, smoke the same brand of cigarettes and even marry spouses with the same names.
10. Famous twins include Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Ross and Norris McWhirter (Guinness World Records), Robin and Maurice Gibb (Bee Gees), Matt and Luke Goss (Bros), Ronnie and Reggie Kray, Angela and Maria Eagle (British MPs), Carol and Mark Thatcher, and John and Edward Grimes (Jedward). Some famous people are twins but their twin isn't as famous. These include Kiefer Sutherland, Scarlett Johansson, Kofi Annan, Keith Chegwin, Henry Cooper, Vin Diesel, Duffy, Jerry Hall, Linda Hamilton, Ashton Kutcher, Alanis Morissette, Olly Murs and Jason Orange. Liberace, Philip K. Dick and Elvis Presley all had twins who died soon after birth. Twins in fiction include Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, Cersei and Jaime Lannister, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, and Jade and Gloria, characters in my own novel, From A Jack to A King.

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May 20th: Christopher Columbus

Today is the anniversary of the death of Christopher Columbus, who died in 1506.

1. We don't know exactly when or where Columbus was born. We know he was born sometime in 1451 and somewhere in the Republic of Genoa, Italy. We do know his name wasn't actually Christopher Columbus at all but Cristoforo Colombo. His name has been altered in other languages, too - in Spanish it is Cristóbal Colón, and in Swedish it is Kristoffer Kolumbus.
2. His family were wool merchants and quite well off. Christopher was probably expected to take over the family business since he was the eldest son (he had three brothers: Bartolomeo, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo. He also had a sister, Bianchinetta); but at 14 he left to become the apprentice of a merchant on a trading ship. At 19, he took his first long voyage on one of his employer’s ships to the island of Chios in the Aegean Sea, and learned to navigate. At 25, he was shipwrecked and had to swim six miles to shore clinging to driftwood. This narrow escape convinced him he had been chosen by God for a great purpose.
3. He was a bit of a religious nut, it has to be said. One of the main reasons for his voyages was to convert heathen races to Christianity (which would also have the effect of making them more controllable). When he discovered islands, he would usually give them religious names; he wanted, in later life, to go on a crusade to rescue Jerusalem from Muslims. He also took to wearing a monk's habit all the time - nobody knows why. At the same time, he started writing a book called Book of Prophecies, in which he claimed all his voyages had been divine missions directed by God, and that he, Columbus, was bringing about the end of the world.
4. A lot of what he did was motivated by greed, too. For all his religious fervour, he wasn't above using deception in order to hold on to his money! On his 1492 voyage, he promised a bag of Gold to the crew member who spotted land first. However, when a sailor named Rodrigo de Triana spotted a small island, which would later be named San Salvador, Columbus claimed all he'd seen was a trick of the light and never paid up. (Rodrigo eventually got a statue commemorating him in Seville but that would have been little comfort to him at the time.) As a governor in the New World, Columbus demanded tributes of gold dust from the natives, and if he didn't get them, he'd chop their hands off. He even lied to his sailors about just how far they'd travelled from home, by keeping a second log book in which he reduced the number of miles they'd covered while recording the actual distance in a private log just for himself. Later on he let his greed fester - he didn't get everything he'd been promised by the Spanish crown and so he wrote a book listing all the promises they'd made and how they'd not kept them. Manipulating facts saved his life once. In 1504, he was stuck in Jamaica and the angry natives wouldn't give him any food. Columbus happened to know there was about to be a lunar eclipse, so he told the natives God was angry with them and was going to take the moon away. When the eclipse happened, they started feeding him.
5. He may have made epic discoveries, but my reading about Columbus suggests it was more by luck than judgement! He lost about half the ships he commanded - nine of them. He ran aground at least once, and had to spend a year marooned in Jamaica because another ship had rotted away. In 1492, he had to abandon 40 of his crew on Hispaniola after Santa Maria ran aground. While this was the first European settlement in the Americas, La Navidad, a year later all the men were dead. If navigation includes the art of knowing where you are, Columbus wasn't much good at that, either. When he landed in the Bahamas he thought he was near China but was out by a whopping eight thousand miles. Arriving in the Americas he thought he was in the Indies which is why Natives of the Americas still get called "Indians" to this day.
6. When Queen Isabella agreed to sponsor the voyage in 1492, Columbus had already been trying for ten years to get various royal families to cough up. Portugal, England, and France all said no, because they thought he was a crackpot, and that his calculations about the size of the earth were wrong, and it was much bigger than he claimed. They were right. Columbus had used Arab maps and had misinterpreted the distance the Arab mapmakers had used for a mile, so Columbus thought the Earth was only three quarters of its actual size. He also used a book by Marco Polo in which the size of China had been vastly over-estimated, making it much nearer than it actually is. Was he misinformed or was he sloppy in not checking his sources? You decide. Isabella was all set to say no as well until a priest told her the voyages would result in heathens being converted.
7. The ships Columbus and his men sailed in in 1492 were the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina. Or were they? Ships in Spain at that time were nearly always named after saints. "Pinta" is actually Spanish for “the painted one” or “prostitute,” so it's unlikely this was the ship's real name. It was common for sailors to give their vessels less than saintly nicknames - so we don't know what the Pinta was really called. The Nina's official name was Santa Clara, but was nicknamed after its owner, Juan Nino. The Santa Maria's real name is the one that went down in history, but she had a nickname, too. In fact, she had more than one, One was La Gallega, after the province of Galicia in which it was built, and the other was Marigalante, or "Dirty Mary".
8. Columbus's contribution to history is a mixed bag. Yes, he discovered the Americas (albeit by accident) but he also started the slave trade. When the places he landed in were not found to be rich in precious resources like gold, Columbus traded the people instead. Native populations were decimated within fifty years of his arrival, through murder, suicide and declining birthrates but mostly through the diseases Columbus and his men brought with them, such as dysentery, tuberculosis, and influenza. It was a two way trade - when Columbus and his men returned to Europe, they brought syphilis with them. On the plus side, he introduced Horses to the New World.
9. What did Columbus look like? We don't know for sure as he never sat for a portrait. There are pictures of him, but they are of what the artists imagined he looked like. Records from the time do tell us that he was well above the average height for the time, with pale skin which burned easily, a hooked nose, pale blue eyes and red-blond hair, although his hair had turned completely white by his thirties.
10. Columbus died on May 20, 1506, at the age of 55 in Valladolid, Spain. His death wasn't recorded until ten days later. He was initially buried there but his remains have been moved several times since - to Seville, then to Hispaniola, and later to Cuba and then back to Seville. Yet there is still a tomb with his name on it and human remains inside in the Santo Domingo cathedral. Modern DNA tests showed at least some of his remains are in Seville, but the Dominican Republic has refused to allow testing of their remains. So it's possible his remains are scattered on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

More Explorers

Amerigo Vespucci
Ferdinand Magellan 

Francis Drake

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19th May: Victoria Wood

Victoria Wood, who sadly died in 2016, was born on this date in 1953. Here are ten quotes to remember her by.

1. All my friends started getting boyfriends, but I didn't want a boyfriend, I wanted a thirteen-colour biro.
2. Life's not fair, is it? Some of us drink champagne in the fast lane, and some of us eat our sandwiches by the loose chippings on the A597.
3. Sexual harassment at work... is it a problem for the self-employed?
4. I once went to one of those parties where everyone throws their car keys into the middle of the room. I don't know who got my moped, but I drove that Peugeot for years.
5. When I’m not working so much I do go out with my friends and have cups of tea and sometimes cups of champagne.
6. In London it's easy not to be the focus of attention, especially when Sting lives in the house just behind you.
7. Beat me on the bottom with a Woman’s Weekly.
8. My children won't even eat chips because some know-all bastard at school told them a potato was a vegetable.
9. Radio killed variety and TV killed radio, and the internet will kill television and it will go on and on.
10. I sometimes think that being widowed is God's way of telling you to come off the Pill.

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18th May: Mustard

Today is the day of mustard according to the French Revolutionary Calendar. Here are some things you might not know about this popular condiment.

1. Mustard is made from the ground seeds of a mustard plant, Water, vinegar, and depending on the variety, flavourings and spices.
2. The mustard plant is a member of the Brassica genus and is related to Broccoli, Cauliflower, Turnips, and Cabbage. As well as grinding up the seeds to make "prepared mustard", the seeds can be used as a spice or to make oil, and the leaves are edible too and can be eaten in a salad or cooked like Spinach.
3. It is believed that mustard was first cultivated in India around 3000 BC. Mustard seeds were found in Tutenkhamen's tomb. It was possibly the first condiment humans ever used. It was the Romans who came up with the idea of mixing it into a paste with Wine or vinegar. The word comes from Latin - mustum ardens meaning “burning wine,” because the Romans mixed it up with "must" or unfermented Grape juice.
4. It's good for you. It has less calories than mayonnaise or ketchup - a teaspoonful contains less than 20 calories. It has no sugar or fat and very little sodium. Mustard seeds contain selenium, omega-3 and 6, Potassium, magnesium and calcium, which have anti-inflammatory properties and are also supposed to speed up the metabolism and lower blood pressure. The leaves are an excellent source of vitamins A, C and K.
5. Mustard had its medicinal uses, too. Pythagoras recommended it as a cure for Scorpion stings and Hippocrates used it as a painkiller. The Romans used it to cure toothache. Even in modern times it has been used to stimulate appetite, clear sinuses, as a weight loss supplement, asthma suppressant, hair growth stimulant, immunity booster, cholesterol regulator, dermatitis treatment, and to ward off gastrointestinal cancer. Mustard flour sprinkled in your Socks helps prevent frostbite.
6. Dijon mustard originated in France and uses wine rather than vinegar to mix the paste. There is no regulation which says Dijon mustard must come from Dijon, though. It can be made anywhere. In fact, the country which produces by far most of the world's mustard is Canada. The biggest consumers are the Americans who on average eat 12 ounces of it a year each.
7. Crushed mustard seeds are actually pale Yellow. The bright yellow colour we associate with mustard actually comes from turmeric, a spice which is added to the mix.
8. There are, around the world, various superstitions and traditions associated with mustard. In Denmark and India it is thought that spreading mustard seeds around the outside of your house wards off evil spirits. German brides sew mustard seeds into the hem of their wedding dresses to assure their dominance in the household.
9. Pope John Paul XXII loved mustard so much that in the early 1300’s he created a new Vatican position of mustard-maker to the pope.
10. There is a mustard museum in Wisconsin, USA which has a collection of over 5,000 jars of mustard from all 50 states and 60 countries. There is even a National Mustard day - the first Saturday in August.

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17 May: Sandro Botticelli

On this date in 1510, Sandro Botticelli died. I usually celebrate people on their birthdates, but his isn't known. Here are a few facts we do know about him, though.

1. Sandro Botticelli was born in 1445 - we don't know the date, in Florence. He was given the name Alessandro Mariana Vanni Filipepi.
2. His father was a tanner who had a shop in Santo Spirito. He had a brother, Antonio, who was a goldsmith. We know his brother taught him the goldsmith's art before he turned to painting.
3. He was about 14 when apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi. It's thought that as an apprentice, he may have gone to Hungary with his master to help produce a fresco in Esztergom ordered by the archbishop of Hungary.
4. By 1470, when he would have been about 25, Botticelli had his own workshop.
5. Botticelli never married. He claimed that the idea of marriage gave him nightmares. Some believe he was in love with a married woman, Simonetta Vespucci, who may have been the model for The Birth of Venus. He asked to be buried at her feet when he died. It might also have been because he was gay - a charge was made on him once that he "kept a boy". The charge was dropped, and may have been no more than slander.
6. He was popular in his time, particularly with the Medici family, and was commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel.
7. He got religion in later life, becoming a follower of Savonarola, a friar who preached in Florence. Savonarola was executed in 1498, after which Botticelli went downhill - he stopped painting and had no income.
8. Botticelli was called upon more than once in his life to serve on committees making artistic decisions. In In 1491, he served on a committee to decide upon a façade for the Cathedral of Florence. Later, In 1504 he was a member of the committee appointed to decide where to put Michaelangelo's David.
9. For Botticelli, beauty was more important than realistic portrayals, so his female subjects weren't always anatomically correct. They'd have longer limbs, narrower shoulders and be in impossible positions. “If Botticelli were alive now he’d be working for Vogue,” actor Peter Ustinov once remarked.
10. Botticelli has a crater on Mercury named after him and also an Asteroid discovered in 1996.

More painters

Eduoard Manet

LS Lowry

Michaelangelo

Pablo Picasso
Pierre Auguste Renoir 
Raphael 

Salvador Dali

Toulouse Lautrec

Vincent Van Gogh

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16 May: Sea Monkey Day

People of a certain age will remember seeing these creatures advertised in comic books. Today is national Sea Monkey Day so here are some facts about them.

1. They're not monkeys. They are actually a type of brine Shrimp called Artemia NYOS.
2. They don't actually exist in nature. They are hybrids bred by an inventor called Harold von Braunhut. They were selectively bred so they would live longer.
3. The adverts in comic books portrayed sea monkeys as little Pink humanoid creatures with pot bellies and crowns on their heads. Needless to say, they don't look like that, but they do have tails resembling those of monkeys.
4. Harold von Braunhut was inspired by the creatures when he saw them on sale in pet shops as fish food. He was also very interested in ant farms and came up with the idea for an instant pet as a way to educate children about nature.
5. Up until 1964, they were marketed as "Instant Life". What you got if you sent off for sea monkeys was a packet of what looked like dust. The dust contained shrimp eggs and nutrients and when you added Water and put them in a tank, they would appear to spring to life.
6. This works because the shrimps, which live in Salt lakes (not the sea) and when the water evaporates they can go into a state of suspended animation called cryptobiosis in protective casings. When water is added they hatch.
7. Sea-Monkeys are born with one eye, and develop two more eyes as they grow. They breathe through their feathery feet.
8. They are naturally attracted to light, so will appear to follow the beam of a torch. They'll also fight. If you see two sea monkeys, both with whiskers, locked together, it's two males fighting. If one of the participants has no whiskers, one's a female and they're doing something else...
9. Sea monkeys have featured in several TV shows including South Park, Spin City, Roseanne, Night Court, The Simpsons, 3rd Rock from the Sun, American Dad, It's Garry Shandling's Show and Desperate Housewives. There have been songs written about them and video games based on them. They've even been to space. Astronaut John Glenn took several million sea monkey eggs up in the Space Shuttle in 1998. On return to Earth, they hatched with no ill effects.
10. Harold von Braunhut invented other things you may have seen advertised in comics in the 1960s, like X-Ray specs. He also invented the dolls' eyes that close when you lay the doll down, and the game of Balderdash. He wasn't all fun and games, though. He had a darker side. There is evidence that he was associated with white supremacist groups and believed that Hitler was merely a victim of "bad press".

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