24 May: Bermuda Day

Bermuda Day is a Public holiday in the islands of Bermuda. The first Bermuda Day was celebrated in 1979, replacing Empire Day which celebrated Queen Victoria's birthday. It's also the day when Bermudians go swimming for the first time in the year to celebrate the end of winter.

1. Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory located in the Atlantic Ocean (not the Caribbean). It is an archipelago, made up of seven main islands and many smaller ones. From the air, it looks like a fishhook.
2. The total land area of Bermuda is 20.5 square miles (53.2 square kilometres), which is about a seventh of the size of the Isle of Wight. In 2018 its population was 71,176 making it the most populous British Overseas Territory as well as the oldest.
3. The capital is Hamilton, and the largest city is St George's.
4. Bermuda was named after Juan de Bermúdez who claimed the islands for Spain in 1503, though he never actually landed there.
5. In those days, people weren't all that keen to land there. As well as the treacherous reefs surrounding the island, at dusk the sailors would hear strange noises coming from the island, which sounded to them like hundreds of screaming babies. They believed the island was haunted by monsters, Witches and demons. There was, of course, a more natural explanation - the sound was the cries of thousands of seabirds - cahows (aka Bermuda petrels) to be exact. Eventually in 1563, Spaniard Don Pedro Menendez de Avila did land there, looking for his son, who'd been shipwrecked. He didn't find his son but left some Pigs behind so that anyone else who got shipwrecked would have something to eat. The pigs decimated the bird population which had evolved without any ground predators. Human beings and Rats saw off virtually all of them and cahows were thought to be extinct until a small colony was found on one of the islets in 1951. There are now over 100 pairs of birds living at a sanctuary on Nonsuch Island.
6. The islands weren't settled until 1609 after a British ship called Sea Venture sank in its waters. Bermuda's flag is the only national flag to have a picture of a sinking ship on it, commemorating this event.
7. Nowhere on Bermuda is more than a mile from the sea.
8. The island in Shakespeare's play The Tempest is thought to have been based on Bermuda. His island was located in the Mediterranean, but is described as being filled with pigs, noisy birds, and a drink made of cedarberries. (Early settlers on Bermuda had to make liquor out of whatever they could find, and Bermuda had a lot of cedar trees.)
9. Bermuda has more golf courses per person than any other country.
10. In the 19th century, Bermuda's main export was Onions. The word "onion" came to mean something really cool. On New Year's Eve, a giant illuminated onion is dropped from the Town Hall in St. George’s Town Square.

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

Available from:

Amazon (Paperback)

Amazon Kindle

Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two

              

23 May: Neighbour Day

Today is Neighbour Day. Here are some quotes about having, and being, a neighbour.

1. It is your own interest that is at stake when your neighbour's wall is ablaze. Horace
2. Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door. Charles Dickens
3. A good neighbour is a fellow who smiles at you over the back fence, but doesn't climb over it. Arthur Baer
4. Love thy neighbour - and if he happens to be tall, debonair and devastating, it will be that much easier. Mae West
5. You can be a good neighbour only if you have good neighbours. Howard E. Koch
6. Love your neighbour as yourself; but don't take down the fence. Carl Sandburg
7. Nothing makes you more tolerant of a neighbour's noisy party than being there. Franklin P. Jones
8. It is folly to punish your neighbour by fire when you live next door. Publilius Syrus
9. A bad neighbour is as great a calamity as a good one is a great advantage. Hesiod
10. Definition of good neighbour: someone to be trusted; a courteous, friendly source of help when help is needed; someone you can count on; someone who cares. Edward B. Rust, Jr.

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

Available from:

Amazon (Paperback)

Amazon Kindle

Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two

              

22 May: Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner, German composer famous for the Ring Cycle and Tristan and Isolde was born on this date in 1813. 10 things you might not know about him.

1. Wilhelm Richard Wagner was born in the Jewish quarter of Leipzig. Officially, he was the son of Carl Friedrich Wagner, a police clerk, and his wife, Johanna. Carl died not long after Wagner's birth and Johanna moved in with actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer. Until he was fourteen, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. It's even possible that he was actually Geyer's son, not Carl Wagner's.
2. Unlike many composers, Wagner was not a child prodigy in Music. He wasn't all that good at it, and struggled to play scales on the Piano. He was much more interested in writing plays and showed little interest in music until he realised the most successful dramas included music. Only then did he set out to learn music.
3. He wrote his first Opera when he was 20. It was called Die Feen ('The Fairies') but it was never performed in his lifetime.
4. His next opera was called Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), based on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. By now, Wagner had a post as musical director at the opera house in Magdeburg and Das Liebesverbot was performed there, but only once. It closed after the first performance and the theatre went bankrupt leaving Wagner in debt.
5. He'd fallen in love with one of his leading actresses, Christine Wilhelmine "Minna" Planer. He followed her to Königsberg, where she helped him to get an engagement at a theatre there. The couple married but the marriage wasn't a happy one. They both had affairs and separated more than once. When she died, Wagner didn't attend her funeral. When Minna died, he was already involved with a woman called Cosima von Bülow, wife of Hans von Bülow, and the daughter of one of Franz Liszt's lovers. She had a daughter fathered by Wagner while she was still married to von Bülow. She asked him for a divorce but it wasn't until she'd had two more of Wagner's children that he granted her one. After her divorce she married Wagner and they remained married for the rest of Wagner's life.
6. Wagner spent 12 years in exile from Germany after taking part in the unsuccessful May Uprising in Dresden in 1849. He had to get his friend Franz Liszt to stage his opera Lohengrin in his absence.
7. His political views remain controversial to this day. He wrote antisemitic articles, despite having been born and brought up in a Jewish area, having Jewish friends and possibly even being Jewish himself. He may well have started writing the essay Jewishness in Music because he was jealous of the success of Jewish composers at a time when he wasn't successful himself. The fact that Hitler was a fan hasn't helped his reputation. Hitler allegedly said: "Whoever wants to understand National Socialist Germany must know Wagner," and there is evidence Wagner's music was played to prisoners at Dachau concentration camp to "re-educate" them.
8. On a more positive note, Wagner was an animal lover and was very fond of his Dogs. He had a spaniel called Pep, to whom he'd play his compositions. He became a vegetarian after reading an anti-vivisection tract book called The Torture Chambers of Science. Other things we know about his likes and dislikes: he loved satin, velvet and silk, and would run silk through his fingers to get him in the mood for composing. He seemed somewhat obsessive about the curative properties of Water. His daily routine included getting up at 5.30am and applying a wet pack, a cold bath at 7am, followed by a walk, two enemas, a cold compress on his abdomen, a wet rubdown followed by another walk - all before lunch. He didn't like England much, describing his trip there to to conduct eight concerts for the Philharmonic Society, as being like “a damned soul in hell”.
9. One thing Wagner is famous for is leitmotifs - melodies associated with particular characters or situations in a drama. Modern films make use of them all the time. An example of a leitmotif is the Imperial March in Star Wars, which represents Darth Vader. Wagner didn't invent them but was the first composer to make extensive use of them.
10. He died of a heart attack in Venice in 1883. Rumour has it that the heart attack was brought on by an argument with his wife about his interest in another woman called Carrie Pringle, but there's no concrete evidence for that.

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

Available from:

Amazon (Paperback)

Amazon Kindle

Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two

              

21 May: Plato

Today is Greek Philosopher's Day, which celebrates Plato, Greek philosopher and author of The Republic and other books, born around 429 BC. Here are 10 things you might not know about Plato.

1. Plato wasn't his real name. His actual name was Aristocles, which means "well named". Plato was a nickname, meaning "broad". How he ended up with this nickname isn't known, but it may have been because he had a broad chest and shoulders, or it may have been down to the breadth of his wisdom.
2. He may well have had a broad chest and shoulders, as he was a wrestler, and may even have competed at the Isthmian games. He also served as a soldier during the war with Sparta.
3. We don't know much about his early life. According to tradition rather than documented evidence, Plato's father Ariston was descended from the king of Athens, Codrus, and the king of Messenia, Melanthus, and his mother was Perictione, a relative of one of the seven sages. He was probably born in Athens. His father died when he was a child and his mother got married again to a politician called Pyrilampes.
4. There's a legend that says when Plato was a baby, Bees came and settled on his Lips, foretelling the sweetness of his words in the future.
5. He was a student of Socrates, and was, in fact, one of the youths Socrates was accused of corrupting. Socrates left no written works of his own, so much of what we know about him comes from Plato's works.
6. After Socrates was forced to commit suicide, Plato left Athens for a time and went travelling for 12 years. He went to Italy, Sicily and Egypt, and studied with other great philosophers, including Pythagoras.
7. He returned to Athens when he was about forty and founded what is probably the first university in the world. He named it the Academy, possibly after the Greek hero Academus, or possibly after the former owner of the land who was also called Academus. Lectures took place in the open air. One of its most famous students was Aristotle.
8. Plato's writing is in the form of letters or dialogues. Thirty-five dialogues and thirteen letters are ascribed to him.
9. Some of his beliefs are as follows: the soul is immortal and there is an afterlife; the best thing to do with romantic desire is to turn it into friendship and "truth seeking" (this is where we get the idea of Platonic love from); wisdom is less a matter of learning things than remembering what the soul already knows; and that the flute was an undignified instrument which should be banned in most societies in favour of the lyre. He may even have predicted television and computers in this quotation: "Someday, in the distant future, our grand-children's grand-children will develop a new equivalent of our classrooms. They will spend many hours in front of boxes with fires glowing within. May they have the wisdom to know the difference between light and knowledge."
10. Again according to legend, Plato died on his birthday at the age of either 81, 82 or 84. Some accounts say he died at a wedding feast, others say he died in bed. In spite of his apparent dislike of the flute, one story of his death recounts that he asked a young girl to play the flute for him as he lay dying.

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

Available from:

Amazon (Paperback)

Amazon Kindle

Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two

              

20 May: Weights and Measures Day

Weights and Measures Day is the anniversary of the 1875 signing of a treaty establishing the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. Here are 10 weights and measures facts.

1. In the metric system, units smaller than a metre have Latin prefixes - deci- centi- and milli- for example, while units larger than a metre have Greek prefixes - deca- hecto- or kilo- for example.
2. There are only three countries in the world which don't officially use the metric system. These are Myanmar, Liberia and the USA.
3. The science of measurement standards and methods is known as metrology.
4. The word "pint" comes from an old French word for "painted", for marks painted on the side of a container to indicate capacity.
5. Early units of measurement were based either on the human body or objects found in nature. A "foot" for example was initially the length of a human foot. Of course, measurements based on the size of people's Feet, arms or hands inevitably ran into problems because people aren't all the same size. Hence the measurements would be based on the size of an individual's foot, usually the king.
6. The word "mile" comes from the Latin world for a thousand, Mille. The first miles were Roman miles, which were the length of a thousand paces taken by Roman soldiers on the march. A league, similarly, was a unit of measurement based on the distance a person could walk in an hour.
7. A mile on land and a mile at sea are not the same thing. A nautical Mile is 6,080 feet. A land or statute Mile is 5,280 feet.
8. "Inch" and "ounce" both derive from the same root - the Latin word uncia, meaning one twelfth.
9. A "furlong" is a measurement dating back to Anglo Saxon times and derives from the Old English words furh (furrow) and lang (long). It was originally the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting.
10. The standard unit of measurement for precious metals and gemstones is a carat. This unit of measurement is based on the weight of a carob seed, which was used as a weighing standard by jewellers in Africa and the Middle East. The word "Carat" is believed to be derived from an Arabic word meaning "bean" or "seed."

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

Available from:

Amazon (Paperback)

Amazon Kindle

Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two

              

19 May: Dennis Potter Quotes

Born on this date in 1935, Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist. He is best known for his BBC TV serials Pennies from Heaven, The Singing Detective, and the television plays Blue Remembered Hills and Brimstone and Treacle. 10 quotes:

1. Children are very cruel, yes. Of course. Children are extraordinarily cruel little creatures.
2. I think childhood is to everyone a lost land.
3. It is a dangerous thing to have instant access to your emotions.
4. You have to assert something about yourself in order to be yourself.
5. The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous.
6. I was given talent, and if you are given it, it is your obligation to use it.
7. A writer helps to show you things you knew but didn't know you knew.
8. The thing about imagination is that by the very act of putting it down, there must be some truth in one's own imagination.
9. People endure what they endure and they deal with it. It may corrupt them. It may lead them into all sorts of compensatory excesses.
10. The loss of Eden is personally experienced by every one of us as we leave the wonder and magic and also the pains and terrors of childhood.

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

Available from:

Amazon (Paperback)

Amazon Kindle

Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two

              

18 May: 18

On the 18th day of the month, 10 things you might not know about the number 18.

1. 18 is a lucky number in Chinese culture, because the word for 18 in Chinese sounds similar to the Chinese words for 'to get rich for sure'. However, the Chinese also believe that hell has 18 levels.
2. In many countries, 18 is the age of majority, the age at which a young person gets to vote and officially becomes an adult. According to the Talmud, 18 is an appropriate age to get married.
3. 18 is an important number in Judaism because the Hebrew word for "life" (chai), has a numerical value of 18. This is why, in the Jewish community, gifts and charitable donations are often given in multiples of 18 to symbolise blessings and a long life. It was for this reason that Joseph Heller was originally going to call his novel Catch 22 Catch 18, but the title was changed because there was already a war novel called Mila 18.
4. In chemistry, group 18 of the periodic table is called the noble gases; the element with the atomic number 18 is argon.
5. The Druid alphabet has 18 letters, each letter deriving its name from the tree of which it is the initial. There are 5 vowels and 13 consonants. The alphabet was used for divining, and each moth of the Druid year was named for one of the letters.
6. There are 18 chapters in the Bhagavad Gita, and the Mahabharata has 18 books.
7. James Joyce's epic novel Ulysses has 18 chapters.
8. Neo Nazis use 18 to represent Adolph Hitler since his initials are the first and eighth letters of the alphabet.
9. In music, 18 is an album by Moby and also a song written by Ed Sheeran for One Direction. The song appears on their album, Four.
10. In numerology, 18 is usually reduced to the sum of its digits - 9. Hence people with a birth number of 18 are said to be influenced by the numbers 1, 8 and 9. 9 is a spiritual number, 1 is a leadership number and 8 is a power number. It's therefore a powerful number and those under its influence can go on to achieve great things and use their wealth or connections for philanthropic purposes.

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

Available from:

Amazon (Paperback)

Amazon Kindle

Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two