August 21st: William IV

Born on this date in 1765 was William IV, King of Hanover and of Great Britain and Ireland.

1. William was the third son of George III, so it wasn't expected that he'd ever be king. However, when his two older brothers both died without having any legitimate children, he ascended to the throne at the age of 64, the oldest person so far to do so.
2. He was known as "the Sailor King" because he served in the Royal Navy from the age of thirteen. He lived the life of a normal sailor, doing his share of the cooking and going out with his shipmates to get drunk. He even got arrested in Gibraltar after a brawl, but once the authorities realised who he was they let him go. The only difference in his life and that of other sailors was that he had a tutor on board. Later in his career he served under Horatio Nelson and became good friends, often eating together. William gave the bride away at Nelson's wedding.
3. While serving in New York during the American War of Independence, he narrowly escaped being kidnapped by George Washington's men. George Washington fully approved of the plot, provided the prisoners would be treated with dignity. However, it never happened because the British got wind of it and assigned bodyguards to William, so he no longer walked around the city on his own.
4. William left the Navy in 1790, but three years later when Britain declared war on France, he wanted to be made captain of a ship so he could join in. He repeatedly asked for a ship, but his requests were ignored. The fact he'd broken his arm after falling downstairs when drunk didn't help, and possibly the fact he'd spoken in the House of Lords against the war helped even less. Even though he did what we would call a U-turn today and spoke in favour of it the next year, the Admiralty still ignored him. He did get appointed an admiral eventually, but only nominally. He got to visit the troops and watch Antwerp being bombarded from a church steeple. On that occasion, he narrowly escaped death when a bullet pierced his coat.
5. His other career was in politics. For some reason, his father refused to make him a duke like his older brothers; so William threatened to stand as a prospective MP in the Commons instead. George III clearly thought William being a duke was the lesser of the two evils and made him Duke of Clarence and St Andrews and Earl of Munster. As a politician, he opposed the abolition of slavery, believing freedom did slaves little good, having seen the poverty some of them lived in out in the colonies. On the other hand, he was in favour of abolishing laws against dissenting Christians and allowing people who had committed adultery to marry again.
6. Because he was not expected to be king, marriage and legitimate issue wasn't a priority at first. There was a law at the time which stated that descendants of George II had to seek permission from the monarch or the Privy Council before they could marry - which meant William and his brothers had mistresses rather than wives. William lived with an actress called Dorothea Bland, better known by her stage name, Mrs. Jordan ("Mrs" to explain a pregnancy at the start of her career, and "Jordan" because she had crossed the water from Ireland to Britain). They had ten illegitimate children who were given the surname "FitzClarence". After 20 years they split up. Mrs Jordan was given custody of her daughters and an allowance, on condition she didn't go back to acting. Eventually she did, when one of her daughters' husbands got into debt - and lost her remaining daughters and the allowance. She had to flee to France when she was in debt herself and died in poverty there in 1816.
7. In 1817, Princess Charlotte of Wales, then second-in-line to the British throne, died, leaving the king with twelve children but no legitimate grandchildren. So it became imperative that one of the dukes had to produce an heir. Both William's brothers were in poor health and their wives were past childbearing age, so the pressure was on William. He courted several potential wives, but they were either disapproved of by the Prince Regent or they turned him down. William did marry, eventually - he married Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, the daughter of George I, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. He was 50, she was 25. However, another heir to the throne was not to be - the couple had two daughters, neither of which lived very long, and Adelaide had three miscarriages.
8. William had a habit of going for walks by himself in London or Brighton. Perhaps that was why he was healthier than his older brothers.
9. He was a popular king at first. The people saw him as approachable and down to earth and the Prime Minister at the time, Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, is known to have said that he got more work done with William in a few minutes than he had with his brother in several days.
10. William too died without having any legitimate children, but by now there was another niece to succeed him - Victoria. He and Adelaide were fond of her, and William hoped to live until the girl was 18, because he disliked her mother and dreaded the thought of her being made Regent. He died a month after Victoria's 18th birthday.

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20th August: World Mosquito Day

Today is World Mosquito Day. It was on August 20 1897 when British doctor Sir Ronald Ross worked out that mosquitoes carry malaria. He described the creature as a “grey moquito with dappled wings”. This discovery won him the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1902, the first Nobel prize to be won by a British person.

1. The word mosquito is Spanish and literally means, "little fly."
2. The first reference to a mosquito in English was in 1572. It was described as “A certeine gnat or flie … which biteth both men and women in their sleepe.”
3. Not all mosquitoes will bite you. There are more than 3,500 species of mosquito but only about 200 bite people. Some only bite birds or reptiles. Even within the species that do like human Blood, they won't all bite you. A male mosquito isn't interested in your blood at all. They much prefer flower nectar. It is only the females which bite, and even then only when they are preparing to lay eggs. They are only doing it for their children. When not about to lay eggs they will eat nectar as well.
4. Why do mosquito bites itch? They're not technically bites as mosquitoes don't have teeth. They pierce your skin with a long pointy proboscis with two tubes. They suck up the blood though one, and use the other to inject saliva to stop the blood coagulating before they've finished their meal. The reason "bites" itch is because most people have an allergic reaction to mosquito spit.
5. A mosquito can guzzle up to three times its own weight in blood. However, since they are so tiny it would take about 1.2 million bites to drain a human body of all its blood.
6. Mosquitoes lay their eggs in stagnant Water, about 300 at a time. For some species, a puddle is sufficient. The eggs hatch into larvae known as wrigglers which feed on organic material in the water. They then pupate and become adults in a few days.
7. Mosquitoes' wings beat at 300-600 times a second, which is why they make that annoying whining sound. What you may not know is that mosquitoes looking for a mate listen out for this sound. When they meet a suitable mate, their wing beats synchronise.
8. They don't fly very fast - top speed is about 1.5mph - about a quarter of human walking speed, so a mosquito isn't going to chase you down to feed on you - it would never catch you! They don't tend to travel very far from their hatching place, although there is a species that lives in Salt marshes which can travel about 40 miles in its lifetime. Which isn't very long. Male mosquitoes only live about 10 days. Females can live up to eight weeks in good conditions.
9. How do they locate you? They can smell the CO2 on your breath and follow it like a trail. They can also smell human sweat and unlike us, find it attractive. They can detect octenol, a chemical released in sweat, as well as cholesterol, folic acid, certain bacteria, skin lotions, and perfume. They also have heat sensors which can detect the warm blood in your veins.
10. How to avoid them? Scientists reckon that DEET remains the most effective repellent. Or only go out when the temperature is less than 50 degrees F, when most species shut down and hibernate, or in the hottest part of the day, when they'll be resting. Don't wear dark clothing as dark colours absorb heat making it easier for them to find you. Using a fan helps, too - the movement of air caused by a fan makes it difficult for the tiny creatures to control their flight.

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19 August: World Orangutan Day

Today is World Orangutan Day. Here are ten facts about these amazing creatures.

1. The word Orangutan comes from the Malay language and means “person of the forest.”
2. They are among our closest relatives. A human and an Orangutan share almost 97% of the same DNA.
3. Orangutans are the largest tree-dwelling animals on Earth. They spend most of their time in trees - about 90% of their lives.
4. They're not particularly sociable. Males in particular spend most of their lives alone. Females form close bonds with their offspring which are often not weaned until they are well over five years old. A female only breeds about once every eight to ten years - the longest interval of any mammal. A juvenile may stick around for a while to help with subsequent offspring.
5. Males are much bigger than females - as much as three times as big. Somewhere between the ages of 13 and 30, the males develop cheekpads. Although they may be capable of breeding before that, it is usually when the cheekpads develop that the male starts competing for females. It's thought these pads, as well as making the male's head look bigger, helps him project the calls he makes to attract receptive females.
6. Orangutans eat during the day and their diet consists mostly of fruit and leaves, but they will eat bark, insects and bird's eggs. They can eat while swinging from branch to branch which helps spread seeds and regenerate forests. They have even been observed eating soil or rock, which helps them gain mineral nutrients. It's possible they eat soil to help treat tummy upsets. They may spend up to six hours a day eating or looking for food.
7. Orangutans are highly intelligent and can learn to use tools. They have opposable thumbs like we do, and also opposable big toes. They are about seven times stronger than an adult human.
8. Their arms are longer than their bodies - the arms of an adult male can be up to 8ft or 2m from fingertip to fingertip. They are about 1.2m to 1.5m tall and can weigh up to 100kg.
9. Scientists don't know why orangutans are Orange. Their orange colour only really shows up in sunlight. In the shade, they are darker in colour because their skin absorbs all the light, so they look Black.
10. Orangutans only live on two islands, Borneo and northern Sumatra. There are only around 60,000 of them left in the world.

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18th August: Phobos, Moon of Mars

On this date in 1877 American astronomer Asaph Hall discovered the moon of Mars, which he named Phobos. 

1. Phobos is the innermost moon of Mars and is seven times as massive as the other moon, Deimos.
2. Phobos orbits 6,000 km (3,700 miles) from the Martian surface. It is, in fact, the moon which is closest to its planet than any other in the Solar System, and it orbits faster than the planet rotates. An orbit takes 7 hours and 39 minutes. If people ever go to Mars, they will see it rise in the west, move across the sky in four hours, fifteen minutes before setting in the east - twice a day.
3. They would also see it transit the Sun, casting a shadow on the planet's surface. It's not big enough to cause a Solar Eclipse.
4. It's too small to have much in the way of gravity, either and hence has no atmosphere. It's lack of mass is also a reason why it's basically a pile of rubble held together by a thin crust - it never had enough gravity to become rounded.
5. In the late 1950s and 1960s there was speculation that Phobos might be hollow and its crust made of a "thin sheet metal", ie that it was made by aliens. Subsequent studies have pretty much ruled that out.
6. Phobos is named after the Greek god Phobos, son of Ares (Mars) and Aphrodite (Venus). He is the personification of horror, the origin of the word phobia, meaning an irrational fear.
7. People may land on Phobos before they land on Mars. It could be a stepping stone to the red planet, because it would be easier and cheaper to land on Phobos than on Mars itself.
8. Phobos gets closer to Mars by about 2 meters every hundred years, Eventually, and we're talking 30-50 million years, it will either collide with the planet or break up to form a planetary ring.
9. We don't know much about the composition of Phobos. There have been several attempts to send a probe but things always seem to go wrong and even the one probe which managed to get there failed fairly quickly. Observations of Phobos in the thermal infrared suggest a composition of mainly phyllosilicates. The unique Kaidun meteorite that fell on a Soviet military base in Yemen in 1980 might be a part of Phobos, but because we don't know exactly what Phobos is made of we cannot be certain.
10. Surface features on Phobos are named after astronomers who studied Phobos and people and places from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. The biggest feature is an impact crater called Stickney, after Chloe Angeline Stickney Hall, Asaph Hall's wife, who encouraged him not to give up the search for the moons of Mars. Stickney is 9 km (5.6 mi) in diameter and has a smaller crater inside it - Limtoc, after a character in Gulliver's Travels, which is about 2 km (1.2 miles) in diameter. Any people who get to Mars may well be able to see Stickney with the naked eye.

See Also

Deimos 

Mars

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17th August: Davy Crockett Day

Today is Davy Crockett Day, celebrating the birth of "the King of the Wild Frontier" on August 17 1786.

1. The name "Crockett" was French in origin. One of Crockett's ancestors was Monsieur de la Croquetagne, a captain of the Royal Guard of French King Louis XIV. He settled in Ireland, and changed his name to make it more Irish. Adventuring was in Crockett's blood - his grandfather was killed by Indians and his father fought as a soldier in the American Revolutionary War.
2. He was born in what is now Tennessee, but in 1786, his birthplace was in a territory called Franklin which had declared independence from North Carolina. Franklin applied to become a state, but failed.
3. Davy Crockett only went to school for four days. He didn't start school until the age of thirteen, and after four days had a run in with the school bully. Obviously, this is Davy Crockett we're talking about, so he wasn't going to let a mere bully get the better of him. He ambushed the bully on the way home and beat him up. However, he did seem more deterred at the thought of punishment from the teachers and his father. He played truant to avoid the beating he knew he'd get at school. When his father found out and was going to beat him for it, Davy ran away and travelled with cattle drovers and learned the first of many trades - teamster, farmhand and hat maker’s apprentice. It was a few years before he went home, by which time his family no longer recognised him. He stayed home long enough to work and help pay off family debts, and then left home for good.
4. During this period of work, Crockett fell in love with a girl called Margaret Elder, and got engaged to her. However, she found Crockett's wild ways a bit too much and, knowing she'd never tame him, married someone else. The broken-hearted Davy declared then that he was “only born for hardship, misery, and disappointment,” and that he'd have nothing more to do with women. He must have relented a little eventually, however, as he had two wives - Polly Finley, from 1806 to 1815, when she died, and Elizabeth Patton; their marriage lasted from 1815 to 1836.
5. He nearly died twice. Once when he contracted malaria and was so ill his travelling companions left him by the side of the road to die. Nevertheless, he recovered and went home. Ten years later, while working in yet another profession - that of a barrel maker, he was transporting barrel staves along the river when his boat capsized and he was trapped underneath it. Luckily the rest of the crew managed to pull him out through a small opening.
6. Another of his jobs was as a politician. He served three non-consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, and was known for his larger than life folk hero persona, his advocacy for the poor, and a sharp tongue. Needless to say not everyone liked him and in particular, he was at odds with the then president, Andrew Jackson because he opposed the president's Indian Removal Act. He often missed political sessions and eventually lost his seat. (Politics doesn't change much, does it?) All the same, when someone tried to assassinate Andrew Jackson, Crockett didn't stand by and let them. He pitched in with a number of bystanders and wrestled the gunman to the ground. Crockett's career as a politician wouldn't have made him famous by itself, though. In six years in Congress, he failed to get a single bill passed.
7. He was a folk hero even in his lifetime - his fame was spread by a play called The Lion of the West, which, although it didn't mention Crockett's name at all, the protagonist, Nimrod Wildfire, was obviously based on him. A lot of tall tales about Crockett's adventures began to circulate. An unauthorised biography claimed he rode on a streak of Lightning, and stole a tail off a comet to save the world. Even in the modern day, a song about him claims he killed a Bear at the age of three (he actually learned to shoot when he was eight). Crockett decided to set the record straight and published his autobiography. He can't have been too upset about the play, though. He actually went to see it when it came to Washington and at one point, his eyes met those of the actor playing Nimrod Wildfire - and they ceremoniously bowed to each other.
8. Davy Crockett was a Freemason. The Weakly Lodge in Tennessee still has his masonic apron, since he left it with them to look after when he left on his final journey.
9. Crockett had had enough of politics and losing his final bid for Congress in 1835 was the last straw. He declared, “You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.” Some believe he had a long term goal of running for political office there, but we'll never know because he joined up in the war against Mexico and was posted to the Alamo. Santa Anna and his Mexican forces laid siege to the Alamo on March 6, 1836. In the ensuing battle, Crockett and was killed along with 200 others. Exactly how he died isn't known. His reputation as a hero might have led to stories that his body was found with a heap of enemy corpses. More likely, the story told in a Mexican officer's diary was the nearest to the truth. That account says he survived the battle but he and a handful of survivors were executed.
10. During his lifetime, Crockett owned two guns which he named "Betsy" - "Old Betsy" and "Fancy Betsy". He may have named these guns after his oldest sister or his second wife - or possibly even both.

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16th August: Rum

Today is National Rum Day. Rum is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from sugarcane by-products, such as molasses, or directly from sugarcane juice. So what else is there to know?

1. Rum, or the precursors of it, were the first distilled spirits the human race ever made. India and China are believed to be the first places to try it. In the 14th century, Marco Polo wrote about a "very good wine of sugar" offered to him in the area that became modern-day Iran. A liquid identified as rum was found in a Tin bottle found on the Swedish warship Vasa, which sank in 1628.
2. Nobody knows for sure what the origin of the word "rum" is, but there is no shortage of theories. It's British slang for "the best" as in "having a rum time" (unlikely as early rum issued by the Royal Navy wasn't that nice); it comes from the last syllable of the Latin word for sugar, saccharum; it comes from a Romani word for strong or potent; it comes from the Dutch word for a drinking glass; or from the Devon dialect word “Rumbullion”, which means an uproar or tumult, which is what you'd get if a bunch of people drank too much of it.
3. The origin of rum as we know it today was on the sugarcane plantations of the Caribbean in the 17th century, most likely on the island of Barbados. Slaves working the plantations noticed that a by-product of sugar production, molasses, could be fermented into a nice drink.
4. It proved equally popular with the slave owners, and from there, in Colonial North America. The first rum distillery in the British colonies of North America was set up in 1664 on present-day Staten Island. New England later became the centre of rum production because there was plenty of wood to make barrels and people who knew how to make barrels. It's thought everyone in the American colonies was drinking 14 litres of rum a year on average. It was so popular it was used as currency. There is an account of a slave called Venture Smith who was sold in Africa for four gallons of rum and a piece of calico.
5. Think our politicians are corrupt and peddling in lies? In colonial America, an election would often be won on the basis of which candidate was most generous with rum. The candidates drank rum and distributed it at hustings to show they were "down with the people". There is even an account of one candidate who won an election because he allowed people to help themselves to his rum rather than pouring it out for them as his rival did.
6. Think of rum and you think of sailors and pirates. The association of rum with pirates started, of course, with the fact that rum was used as currency, and was reinforced by pirate stories such as Treasure Island.
7. Sailors in the Royal Navy were issued with rum rations every day as recently as 1970, when the practice was finally abolished. This started as a way to stop the sailors from getting scurvy (although it was the lime juice it was served with, rather than the rum, which prevented the disease). The rum and lime mixture was later watered down with Water or Beer, because the sailors would get drunk on it. The watered down mixture became known as "grog". While sailors no longer get a daily tot of rum, it can still be issued on very special occasions - such as royal weddings. The order "splice the mainbrace" once meant that the crew had to perform one of the most difficult and arduous tasks on board a ship - fixing the mainbrace, often in the middle of a raging battle. The job was so difficult that once it was done, the sailors who'd done it got extra booze. Now, it just means extra booze without the hard work. However, the order can now only be given by a member of the Royal Family or the Admiralty.
8. Other names for rum are Nelson's Blood, kill-devil, demon water, pirate's drink, navy neaters, and Barbados water. The name Nelson's blood comes from the legend concerning Nelson's corpse being preserved in a cask of rum when it was being transported back to Britain for burial. When the cask arrived in England, it was opened and the rum was all gone. Closer inspection revealed that a hole had been drilled in the cask presumably so the sailors could drink the rum. This is also the origin of the term "tapping the Admiral" meaning to take a surreptitious drink from a cask through a Straw. The official record of the voyage, however, doesn't mention this, only that Nelson's body was placed in "refined spirits".
9. Today, most of the world's rum production occurs in the Caribbean and Latin America. 80% of it comes from Puerto Rico.
10. Cocktails which contain rum include the Cuba libre, Daquiri, mojito, mai tai, zombie and Pina Colada. The rum sour was created in Barbados and originally served in a conch shell.

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August 15: Edna Ferber

This date in 1887 saw the birth of Pulitzer Prize-winning Novelist and playwright Edna Ferber.

1. Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way.
2. Perhaps too much of everything is as bad as too little.
3. Big doesn't necessarily mean better. Sunflowers aren't better than violets.
4. A closed mind is a dying mind.
5. It's terrible to realize you don't learn how to live until you're ready to die, and then it's too late.
6. Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death.
7. Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle.
8. If men ever discovered how tough women actually are, they would be scared to death.
9. Home isn't always the place where you were born and bred. Home is the place where your everyday clothes are, and where somebody or something needs you.
10. About mistakes it's funny. You've got to make your own; and not only that, if you try to keep people from making theirs, they get mad.

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