19 April: Ruby Wax Quotes

Born on this date in 1953 was the comedian Ruby Wax. 10 words of wisdom from her.

1. Why, when you have a mental disease, is it always considered an act of imagination? Why is it that every organ in your body can get sick and you get sympathy except the brain?
2. People who say ... they're perfectly fine [are] more insane than the rest of us.
3. Only if you're kind to yourself, can you be kind to others.
4. Thoughts aren't fact, so don't take them seriously.
5. You shouldn't run away from your problems, you need to aim straight for the heart of the beast.
6. On the toilet no one is a star. Remember that and you will go far in life.
7. We never see the world as it really is but only how we see it. And because we’re trapped in our own interpretation, we are prepared to go to war with other people caught in their view of reality – and never the twain shall meet.
8. It’s amazing how we will suffer pain and abuse to keep our lives predictable. We’ll let our inner voices brutalize us, rather than live with the possibility that we might be wrong about how we see things. We’ll think, ‘Well at least it’s a pain that’s familiar’.
9. No matter how many decathlons you run, how many shoes you buy or how famous you get, those unresolved, unbearable feelings exist below. Freud was on the button when he said you have to bring your darkness into the light if you want to free yourself from those deep unconscious emotions. Just like a virus has to be sweated out, your malignant thoughts and feelings have to surface.
10. My final word on this is that only if you find something you love doing and then do it, is life worth living.

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18 April: Earthquakes

On this date in 1906 At 5:13 am the city of San Francisco was struck by an enormous earthquake. Here are ten things you might not know about earthquakes.

1. Early civilizations, without the benefits of modern science, came up with myths to explain why the ground shook violently every so often. In Japan, it was said a giant Catfish called Namazu caused them when the god responsible for restraining him let his guard down. Norse mythology says earthquakes happen because trickster god Loki was imprisoned in a cave with a snake dripping venom over him. Loki's wife catches most of the venom in a bowl but when the bowl is full and she has to empty it, a drip of poison lands on Loki's face and he thrashes about in pain. In Greece, earthquakes happened because the god Poseidon was in a bad mood. In Hindu mythology, Earth is held in place by eight gigantic elephants, all balanced on the back of turtle, which itself stands on the coils of a snake. If any of these creatures move, it causes an earthquake.
2. Time passes, and Greek philosophers began to look for more scientific explanations. Tensions between air and water, water in general, air escaping from underground caves, and underground thunderstorms were among the theories they came up with.
3. Today, we know that most earthquakes are caused by movements of the earth's tectonic plates, although some human activity can cause them as well, such as mining, drilling, building, build up of water behind dams, and nuclear testing.
4. Some Earthquake related words: the study of earthquakes is called seismology and an instrument for measuring them is a seismograph (invented by an Englishman called John Milne in 1880, although a device for detecting them was invented in China 2,000 years ago by a Chinese astronomer named Zhang Heng). The extent to which an area is prone to earthquakes is its seismicity. Where the quake actually occurs is called the “focus” or “hypocentre”. The epicentre is the point above the hypocentre, at ground level. An aftershock is a quake that happens after the main one, caused by the fault plane adjusting to the effects of the first one. They are usually lower in magnitude. If an aftershock occurs which has a greater magnitude than the previous quake, the original main shock will be re-designated as a foreshock.
5. The first scale for measuring earthquake magnitudes was developed by Charles F. Richter in 1935. News reports about earthquakes will usually mention what it measured on the Richter Scale. Scientists, however, don't use that scale so much, as it was developed around Southern California and Nevada, and differences in the earth's crust in other places make it inaccurate. They have developed other scales, and the one they are most likely to use now is the moment magnitude scale, based on the actual energy released by an earthquake. Richter influenced subsequent scales, however. Like the Richter Scale they are usually logarithmic, so each unit represents a ten-fold increase in the amplitude of the seismic waves.
6. Which places in the world are most prone to earthquakes? 90%, of them, including 81% of the largest, happen in the vicinity of a 40,000 km (25,000 mi) horseshoe shaped chain of oceanic trenches, volcanic arcs, and volcanic belts known as the circum-Pacific belt, or Ring of Fire, in the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, Peru, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, the Azores in Portugal, Turkey, New Zealand, Greece, Italy, India, Nepal and Japan are the most earthquake-prone nations. In the USA, while most people associate earthquakes with California, (Parkfield, California, is known as “The Earthquake Capital of the World” and has a bridge that spans two tectonic plates) the most earthquake prone state is actually Alaska. More earthquakes happen in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere.
7. It is estimated that around 500,000 earthquakes occur each year, but four fifths of them cannot be felt by humans. The earthquake prone places listed above will be experiencing minor tremors virtually all the time. Earthquakes below a magnitude of four wouldn't be felt by most people. Scientists believe animals can detect weaker quakes because they can sense electrical impulses caused by moving rocks. An earthquake is considered major if it measures 7 or above.
8. The UK is a low seismicity area, but that doesn't mean we don't get any at all. I am writing this the day after a 4.2 quake in Wales which actually made items in my study shake a couple of hundred miles away in Somerset. No doubt this influenced my choice of subject for today. A magnitude 4 earthquake happens in Britain roughly every two years, a magnitude 5 roughly every 10–20 years, and one of 5.6 or more every 100 years. Research suggests that the largest possible earthquake in the UK would be around 6.5. The largest known British earthquake occurred near the Dogger Bank, 60 miles off shore, in 1931, with a magnitude of 6.1. It caused minor damage to buildings on the east coast. The North Sea is the most active area around the UK. On the mainland, they are most likely to occur in the west, while eastern Scotland, north east England and Ireland hardly ever have earthquakes. The ones we do get in the UK are mostly caused by tectonic plate movement resulting from the melting of the ice from the ice age.
9. The earliest recorded earthquake is from 1831 B.C. in the Shandong province in China. The worst ones? An earthquake in A.D. 1201 in the eastern Mediterranean is thought to be the worst earthquake in history - it claimed an estimated one million lives. Since records began, the most devastating was in Shansi, China on January 23, 1556. An estimated 830,000 people died. That wasn't the most powerful earthquake ever recorded, however. That was in Valdivia, Chile in 1960, with a magnitude of 9.5. The next most powerful earthquake ever recorded was the Good Friday earthquake in 1964 in Prince William Sound, Alaska - which released only about half the energy of the one in Chile. On average, an earthquake lasts about a minute. The longest on record was the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake which lasted nearly 10 minutes. The 9.0 quake that hit Japan in 2011 was pretty bad, too. It created a tsunami with waves as high as 30 feet (10 meters) and a 186-mile long and 93 mile wide rift 15 miles under the ocean. It also moved Japan slightly closer to the United States and shifted the planet’s axis by 6.5 inches. It caused the planet to spin faster and shortening the day by 1.6 microseconds. A quake in Sumatra in 2004 shortened the day by 6.8 microseconds. Earthquakes kill approximately 8,000 people each year.
10. Quakes occur on the Moon, too. They are called moonquakes and they are usually weaker than earthquakes.

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17 April: Ceres

Around this time of year in ancient Rome, celebrations and games would be in full swing honouring the goddess Ceres, Goddess of agriculture, grain crops, fertility and the love of a mother for her child. This Festival culminated in the Cerealia, on the 19th.

1. Her name comes from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning to satiate, or feed. From the same root word comes the Latin word crescere "to grow", from which we get the English words create and increase. From Ceres, we also get the word cereal, for edible grains.
2. She was the daughter of Saturn and Ops, and the lover of Jupiter (who was also her brother). They had a daughter, Proserpine.
3. The best known myth about Ceres is the one where Pluto, god of the underworld, took a fancy to Proserpine and carried her off to the underworld to marry her. Jupiter was okay with it, and gave Pluto permission to marry his daughter, but Ceres was furious. She stopped all the plants from growing, causing a famine. No amount of persuasion from Jupiter and the other gods would change her mind. Jupiter went to Pluto to ask for Proserpine back. While Pluto seemed to comply, he secretly gave Proserpine some food before she left. Once a person has eaten in the underworld it means they can never permanently leave. Hence Proserpine has to spend four months of every year with Pluto in the underworld. During that time, Ceres stops all the plants from growing. When Proserpine comes back to her, she allows things to start growing again. This is how the ancient Romans explained the cycle of the seasons.
4. Ceres is the goddess responsible for teaching the human race agriculture. Until she came along, people lived on acorns and wandered the land without any laws. Ceres showed them how to plough the soil, plant, grow and harvest Wheat. She introduced laws to protect the crops. Breaking these laws, which included allowing livestock to graze on someone else's wheat field, casting spells on a neighbour's crops, disrespecting field boundaries and stealing grain, resulted in severe penalties, including heavy fines, whipping and even death - being hanged "for Ceres".
5. She was also the goddess who protected the transitions of women from girlhood to womanhood, from unmarried to married life and motherhood; and the boundaries between the lands of the living and the dead.
6. At Roman weddings, the procession would be led by a boy carrying the torch of Ceres, made from may wood to symbolise fertility. Rites for funerals included, if the family could afford it, the sacrifice of a Pig. Ceres didn't actually like pigs very much because they'd dig up crops - so killing one in her name was helping protect the harvest. Poorer families would offer wheat or flowers instead.
7. The week long festival of Ceres every April would begin with a Horse race in the Circus Maximus, beginning opposite her temple. Afterwards, there was a cruel event where people set foxes' tails on fire and release them into the circus. For some reason torturing foxes in this way was supposed to cleanse the crops and protect them from vermin. There was a festival held in the fields in May which also honoured Ceres. Three times a year, on August 24, October 5 and November 8, a pit called the mundus cerialis or "world of Ceres" was opened up for people to bring offerings to Ceres in her role as guardian of the boundaries between the living and the dead. On these occasions the spirits of the dead could visit the world of the living for the day. In January, a pregnant sow would be sacrificed for her, and a small offering of grain would be made just before the harvest. According to Ovid, this didn't need to be much - Ceres was content with small offerings as long as they were pure.
8. The Romans had an expression, "fit for Ceres," meaning splendid.
9. The dwarf planet Ceres is named after her and so you could say so was the chemical element cerium, which was named after the planet.
10. Even in modern day America Ceres has her place as a symbol of prosperity and fertility. She was depicted on ten and twenty Confederate States of America dollar notes; her statue is on top of the Missouri State Capitol and the Vermont State House, both states where agriculture is important to the economy; and on top of the Chicago Board of Trade Building, where trading of agricultural commodities takes place.

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16 April: Kingsley Amis Quotes

This date in 1922 saw the birth of Kingsley Amis, the English author who wrote Lucky Jim. Here are some Kingsley Amis quotes.

1. If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing.
2. There was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.
3. It is no wonder that people are so horrible when they start their life as children.
4. Sex is a momentary itch, love never lets you go.
5. Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.
6. The rewards for being sane may not be very many, but knowing what's funny is one of them.
7. Only a world without love strikes me as instantly and decisively more terrible than one without music.
8. The real trouble with liars ... was that there could never be any guarantee against their occasionally telling the truth.
9. The first, indeed the only, requirement of a diet is that is should lose you weight without reducing your alcoholic intake by the smallest degree.
10. Cats are only human, they have their faults.

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April 15: Lilac

The French Revolutionary Calendar celebrates Lilac on this date. Here are ten things you might not know about lilac.

1. Lilacs belong to the same family as the Olive tree.
2. There are about 25 species of lilac which include flowers in various colours as well as lilac. Lilacs come in White, pale Yellow, Red and Pink, too.
3. Lilac is native to southeastern Europe and eastern Asia. Trees range from a height of 2m to 10m (6 to 10 feet).
4. Most Lilac trees bloom in the spring, for about 2-3 weeks. Easter often falls in their blooming time, so in Greece, Lebanon and Cyprus, the lilac is a symbol of Easter. There are, however, varieties which bloom several times a year.
5. The scientific name for lilac is Syringa vulgaris. The name is derived from the Greek word “syrinks” meaning pipe. This is thanks to a tale from Greek mythology about the origin of the plant. A nymph named Syringa was being pursued through a forest by the god Pan, who was in love with her. She wasn't interested, and if the truth be told, was a little afraid of him. She turned herself into a lilac bush in order to hide from him. Pan gave up looking for her when he found the shrub and noticed it had hollow reeds. He cut them to make the first Pan pipes.
6. In the language of flowers, lilacs represent spring and renewal, and also confidence, which is why they are commonly given to graduates. They also have a variety of meanings depending on the colour. Lilac means first love, white is purity and innocence, violet is spirituality, blue is happiness and tranquillity, and magenta is love and passion. In Victorian times, they also symbolised the memory of a lost love, and were often worn by widows.
7. Purple lilacs have the strongest scent. The strong fragrance was the reason the Celts believed they were magical flowers.
8. The lilac is the official flower of a couple’s 8th wedding anniversary.
9. It is also the state flower of New Hampshire and as such represents the hardy nature of its people.
10. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were fond of lilacs and grew them in their gardens, while Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet used to paint them. Walt Whitman wrote poetry about them. His poem, When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d, is about the last days of Abraham Lincoln.

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April 14: The Highway Code

On this date in 1931 The Ministry of Transport issued the first Highway Code.

1. The first edition cost 1d and had advertisements in it. It included signals for drivers of Horse carts to make with their whips, and arm signals to be given by drivers and police officers controlling traffic. It didn't mention mirrors.
2. The first edition was just 18 pages long. Today it is 145 pages long.
3. Illustrations of road signs didn't appear until the second edition in 1934, but the code wasn't published in colour until 1954. Motorway driving was included in the fifth edition, and photographs in the sixth edition.
4. The UK Government website says “Knowing and applying the rules contained in The Highway Code could significantly reduce road casualties. Cutting the number of deaths and injuries that occur on our roads every day is a responsibility we all share. The Highway Code can help us discharge that responsibility.” It seems to have worked. In 1931 there were only about 2 million motorists in the UK, but there were somewhere in the region of 7,000 road deaths. Now, there are about 27 million cars and only half the number of deaths. Although you could argue that driving tests and modern technology helped as well.
5. Although the majority of copies are bought by people preparing for their driving tests, it isn't just for car drivers. There is guidance in there for applies to drivers of animals, pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists as well.
6. Anything in the Highway Code that is a legal requirement will be identified by the words ‘must’ or ‘must not’, and include a reference to the relevant legislation. While failure to comply with the rest of it may not be an offence in itself, it can be taken into account by a court and considered to be careless driving.
7. We all know using a phone while driving is an offence, and that includes using a phone while stuck in a jam. As long as your engine is running, it's an offence. The code advises not using mobiles to call the emergency services in the event of an accident, but to use the emergency roadside phones instead - because not only are they free, but they transmit your exact location to the emergency services.
8. In 2004, over a million copies were sold.
9. There are seven different types of pedestrian crossing covered in the code. These are: zebra, puffin, pelican, toucan, staggered puffin, staggered pelican and Traffic Lights. There's another type of crossing it doesn't cover (not yet anyway) called a pegasus crossing, which is for people riding horses. Named after the the mythical winged horse, Pegasus, they will have extra features such as a 2m high control panel for people on horseback, as well as one at the usual height for other pedestrians or dismounted riders and the "green man" (walk) and "red man" (stop) pictograms are replaced with horses.
10. It's not just a book anymore, either. You can get it as an e-book, an audio book, a CD ROM, an iphone/ipad app and as a PDF. You can also follow it on Facebook and Twitter, along with parodies of it including “Not the Highway Code” and Top Gear’s “Alternative Highway Code”.

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13th April: Sicily

On this date in 1848 Sicily gained independence from Naples. 10 things you didn't know about Sicily.

1. Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, covering around 10,000 square miles. It is an autonomous region of Italy. Its population is around 5.82 million, about 8.5% of the population of Italy.
2. The capital is Palermo, which was, in 2015, elected as the European capital of street food by Forbes, and in 2018 was named “the culture capital of Italy”. It is home to the largest Opera house in Italy, the Teatro Massimo, built in 1897. Other towns include Catania, Messina and Vittoria.
3. There is an area within the metropolitan area of Palermo called Corleone, which is where the family in Mario Puzo's book and Francis Ford Coppola's film The Godfather came from, and adopted as their surname. You can't do an article on Sicily without mentioning the Mafia, a criminal underground economy particularly associated with the island. It is said by some that the word Mafia originates from the phrase “Morte Alla Francia, Italia Anela” (“Death to the French is Italy’s Cry”) which was the motto of Sicilians fighting the French in 1282. The Italian word "mafioso" means bravado or swagger, while a Sicilian word, mafie refers to some caves on the island where criminals used to hide. It is based around families, and its members often refer to it as "Cosa Nostra" ("our thing").
4. The poetic form of the sonnet originated not with Shakespeare, but in Sicily. A poet from the Sicilian school of poetry, Giacoma da Lentini, invented the sonnet in the 13th century.
5. The longest river in Sicily is The Salso, which is 89 miles long. The island doesn't have many natural rivers - those it has aren't navigable.
6. Sicily once belonged to the Greeks, and it is said that Sicily has more beautiful ancient Greek ruins than Greece itself. The Greeks also deemed that the crater of Mount Etna was the home of cyclops and the god of blacksmiths, Hephaestus. In Greek mythology, there are two sea monsters which guard the passage between Sicily and Calabria. They are called Scylla and Charibdys. A local expression, “between Scylla and Charybdis” is similar in meaning to “between a rock and a hard place.”
7. Sicily's flag was adopted in 1282 and features a trinacria (which is the same shape as the triskelion, which is the symbol of the Isle of Man in the British Isles), the head of Medusa and three Wheat ears.
8. Sicily is just 1.5 miles from the mainland of Italy. Since 1865 there has been talk of building a bridge between the two, with the most recent proposal in the 21st century being the Strait of Messina Bridge, which, if it ever did get built would be the longest suspension bridge in the world. None of the proposals so far have ever been implemented.
9. Surrounded by the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Ionian Sea, Sicily has been of great strategic importance throughout history. As recently as the second world war the invasion of Sicily by the Allies in 1943 (Operation Husky) was a significant turning point for the Allies. Once they'd occupied Sicily the Allies were able to control the Mediterranean sea, force the German soldiers to the North of France, where they would be defeated on the better known Invasion of Normandy, or D-Day.
10. Famous people from Sicily include the mathematician Archimedes, fashion designer Domenico Dolce (of Dolce and Gabbana), St Lucy of Syracuse and composer Vincenzo Bellini.

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