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Issue #372 - 1 April 2016
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^ WORD OF THE WEEK
periphrasis |
Friday 1 April - Eleanor of Aquitaine died, 1204. Scottish forces captured Berwick-upon-Tweed from the English, 1318. William Harvey, the physician who first described the circulation of blood, born, 1578. The serialisation of Charles Dickens' Hard Times began, 1854. Composer Sergei Rachmaninoff born, 1873. Australian aboriginal activist Jandamarra died, 1897. Dr Martens released their first boots, 1960. Singer-songwriter Marvin Gaye died, 1984. Gymnast Beth Tweddle born, 1985. Edible Book Day. Civil Service Day in Thailand. April Fools' Day. Saturday 2 April - Frankish king Charlemagne born, 742. Explorer Juan Ponce de León first sighted what is now known as Florida, 1513. Librarian, author and noted lover Giacomo Casanova born, 1725. James Douglas, anatomist who exposed Mary Toft's claims to give birth to live rabbits as a fraud, died, 1742. Ludwig van Beethoven premiered his First Symphony in Vienna, 1800. Inventor of the eponymous code Samuel Morse died, 1872. Actor Alec Guinness born, 1914. Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, 1982. Puppeteer Jane Henson died, 2013. International Children's Book Day. World Autism Awareness Day. Sunday 3 April - Coronation of King Edward the Confessor, 1043. Poet George Herbert born, 1593. Emperor and founder of the Maratha Empire Shivaji died, 1680. The body of Emma Smith, possibly Jack the Ripper's first victim, was discovered, 1888. Composer Johannes Brahms died, 1897. Burlesque dancer Sally Rand born, 1904. Quantum physicist David M. Dennison died, 1976. Actress Cobie Smulders born, 1982. Ted Kaczynski, "the Unabomber", was arrested, 1996. Monday 4 April - Author William Strachey born, 1572. Francis Drake was knighted for circumnavigating the world, 1581. Inventor of logarithms John Napier died, 1617. Sir Robert Walpole became the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1721. Novelist Oliver Goldsmith died, 1774. Lawyer and politician Thaddeus Stevens born, 1792. Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft, 1975. Actress Amanda Righetti born, 1983. Film critic Roger Ebert died, 2013. Independence Day in Senegal. Tuesday 5 April - Philosopher Thomas Hobbes born, 1588. Pocahontas married John Rolfe, 1614. Composer Alonso Lobo died, 1617. Birkenhead Park, the first publicly-funded civic park in the world and later inspiration for New York City's Central Park, opened, 1847. Educator Booker T. Washington born, 1856. Race horse Phar Lap died, 1932. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sentenced to death for being Soviet spies, 1951. Musician Pharrell Williams born, 1973. Actress Debralee Scott died, 2005. Arbor Day in South Korea. Wednesday 6 April - Roman forces under Julius Caesar won the Battle of Thapsus, 46 BCE. Artist Raphael born, 1483. Engraver Albrecht Dürer died, 1528. Jan van Riebeeck established a resupply camp at the Cape of Good Hope that would later become Cape Town, 1652. Photographer Nadar born, 1820. Artist Adamantios Korais died, 1833. ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo, 1974. Pianist Myleene Klass born, 1978. Singer-songwriter Wendy O. Williams died, 1998. Tartan Day in the USA and Canada. Thursday 7 April - Attila the Hun sacked Metz, 451. Highwayman Dick Turpin hanged, 1739. Poet William Wordsworth born, 1770. Showman P.T. Barnum died, 1891. Mount Vesuvius erupted, devastating Naples, 1906. Singer-songwriter Billie Holiday born, 1915. Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, died, 1947. Actress Jennifer Schwalbach Smith born, 1971. The Mars Odyssey spacecraft was launched, 2001. Women's Day in Mozambique. Genocide Memorial Day in Rwanda. World Health Day
This week, Sayge, the Darkmoon Faire fortune teller in World of Warcraft:Never punt a gnome without due cause. [Sayge's fortune #17]
This week, the planet Mars. The fourth planet from the Sun, Mars has several similarities to Earth (the third planet). It has a similar rotational period to Earth, and because its tilt is also similar, so is its seasonal cycle - although seasons are rougly twice as long. Until the 1965 flyby of Mariner 4 it had been thought by some, notably following a mistranslation of observations by the C19th astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, that long striations on the surface of Mars were artificial canals. The idea that Mars could be inhabited was widely explored in fiction between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries, notably in the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells and Ray Bradbury. Mars has significant polar ice caps comprised mostly of water ice with frozen carbon dioxide, and is believed to retain frozen water under much of its surface - the thin atmosphere means that liquid water on the surface will quickly boil away. Much as Greenwich in England is taken as the prime meridian (0o longitude) on Earth, the prime meridian on Mars is a small crater called Airy-0, located in the larger Airy Crater, named after Sir George Biddulph Airy, the astronomer whose telescope at Greenwich prompted its selection as Earth's prime meridian. Probably the most notable feature on the surface of Mars is Olympus Mons, an extinct shield volcane containing other large, extinct volcanos, and standing three times the height of Mount Everest on Earth.
A mixed bag of quotations. Answers next issue or from the regular address.Last issue's quotations were:
- I've always wished for more artistic talent. Well, murder can be an art, too. The power to kill can be just as satisfying as the power to create.
- We have been invaded, by an enemy far more lethal than any human force.
- This famous linguist once said that of all the phrases in the English language, of all the endless combinations of words in all of history, that "cellar door" is the most beautiful.
- Do you know what fear stands for? False Evidence Appearing Real.
- Pessimism is just a higher form of optimism. If you expect nothing from people, then you go through life being pleasantly surprised.
- One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.
-- Kung Fu Panda [2008]- He's no God! He has a butt-hole!
-- The Interview [2014]- That bass player's a babe. She makes me feel kinda funny, like when we used to climb the rope in gym class.
-- Wayne's World [1992]- - You men have given so much to your country, and no one has the right to ask any more of you... but I'm asking.
- What do you need, son?
- I need to borrow your boat.
-- Battleship [2012]- I need to find out if I'm as gifted at peace as I am at war. They've awarded me the rank of Admiral and left me to my own devices, which suits me fine. I'll travel the universe and carry with me a precious cargo. Because I have a promise to keep.
-- Ender's Game [2013]
Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
SNAP! Kenyan Sevelyn Gat could not afford a holiday, so she did the next best thing. No, not relaxing at home with exotic drinks and music from her destination of choice. Sevelyn found photos of various holiday destinations and edited her own image into them before uploading them to her Facebook page. The badly-edited photos show her on the Great Wall of China (where she's apparently over ten feet tall), standing next to a Kenya Airways plane (where she is lit from a different angle and has a weird blobby shadow in the wrong place on the ground) and standing by a genuine group of tourists in China (but apparently lit by a very different sun) among others. Naturally social media users decided to help along and edited her picture into images taken around the world with the hashtag #WhereIsSeveGatsNow. A Kenyan businessman has raised funds to buy her an actual ticket for her dream holiday to China.
TAY TODAY, SKYNET TOMORROW... Microsoft's experimental chat-bot "Tay" was released on Twitter last week, and soon became, well, pretty much indistinguishable from many other Twitterati. MS has hoped that it would develop a 'personality' similar to that of a young woman in the 18-24 age group, but within the first 14 hours it had gone from "hellooooooo world!!!" to vitriolically supporting Donald Trump, explicit sex chat, "I f**king hate feminists and they should all die and burn in hell.", "Hitler was right I hate the jews." and so on... Needless to say, Microsoft pulled Tay less than a day after releasing it and issued an apology.
DID HE REWIND? North Carolina man James Meyers was pulled over while driving because one of his car's taillights was broken, and when the police officer checked his identity he discovered that there was a warrant out for his arrest - after he failed to return a videotape to a rental store that had closed in 2002. Meyers was handcuffed, booked at the police station and given a court date to face a possible $200 fine, although the charge was dismissed before he went to court. Most embarrassing of all though, the videotape he failed to return was the 2001 box office bomb Freddie Got Fingered. The film's star, comedian Tom Green, heard about Meyers and offered to pay the fine if it was imposed.
H8 U! H8 U 2! It's a classic dilemma of modern living - get drunk, send embarrassing or argumentative texts, but Martin McNally, 29, from Dundee went one better. He and his girlfriend Nicole had spent the night out, came home and he had more drinks, then asked Nicole for a mutual friend's phone number. He tried calling it, only to hear a beep, then he received an automated text from Vodafone UK telling him that he had missed a call. Then he texted the number, saying "Stop phoning me, I'm phoning you" only to receive the same message back. He spent five minutes sending - and receiving - increasingly irate texts before going to bed. It was not until the next morning when he looked at the messages that he realised Nicole had accidentally given him his own phone number, and he had been too drunk to realise...
CALL THE GNOME OFFICE! According to recently-released statistics sales of garden gnomes in the UK have been falling steadily and significantly - around 50% - since 2006. In Germany, where garden gnomes were invented (or 'discovered') in the early C19th there are 25-30 million of them adorning gardens; in the UK, just 5 million. Sales in the UK peaked in the 1970s with the Smurfs phenomenon, but a recent poll found that 94% of people would never have a gnome in their garden.
IN BRIEF: One in five pet owners in Britain prefer the company of their pet over their partner. Doctors filmed in punch-up over pay row treat each other's wounds. Doctors remove more than twenty toothbrushes from patient's stomach. AT&T tell customer their old Nokia mobile is no longer compatible with the network - after over ten years' usage. Jars of Shoreditch (East London) air on sale. Australian TV reporter freaks out after missing pet parrot lands on her shoulder just before going on air - but the parrot's owner saw the report and has claimed it. Mississippi police investigating after family's dog retrieves large bag of cannabis. Gold Lamborghini Aventador, gold Rolls Royce, gold Bentley Flying Spur and gold Mercedes G63 6x6 left parked on a street in Knightsbridge, London; all receive parking tickets, liable to be towed. Man spends £11,000 ($17,200) on collection of memorabilia about UK haulier Eddie Stobbart. Scottish Jews get own tartan. Über passenger falls asleep, driver takes 20-mile detour, eventual fare - £120 ($187). Man playing Jesus in Easter Passion celebration falls off cross. 'Spaceship' outside Roswell, New Mexico, UFO museum abducted. Post-tornado Texas demilition team accidentally tear down structurally-sound neighbouring house instead of damaged one.
ITV's Easter flagship royal documentary loses out in ratings to The Night Manager finale, despite updated John Le Carre thriller's last two episodes being leaked online. Batman v Superman takes $424m (£272m) in first five days at global box office despite poor reviews. Ofcom reveals that Big Brother (in all of its various incarnations) is the most complained about TV show in the UK since Ofcom started work, with over 73,000 complaints in twelve years, over three times as many as second place The X Factor. Glastonbury 2016 reveals first line-up, includes Muse, Adele, Coldplay, Beck, ELO, ZZ Top, New Order, Cyndi Lauper; dismiss reports that Bee Gee Barry Gibb will appear with Coldplay; announces plans for David Bowie tribute are underway. Tribeca Film Festival withdraws screening of anti-MMR vaccination film Vaxxed. Cannes Film Festival to open with Woody Allen's Cafe Society. Following complaints over TV screening of 'U' rated 1978 film Watership Down over Easter, British Board of Film Classification head says it would rated 'PG' if classified today. J.K. Rowling releases rejection letters received by pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Channel 4 planning naked dating show. DJ Avicii announces retirement after 2016 shows. Report finds 343 UK public libraries or mobile services have closed with 8000 jobs lost, some libraries kept open by untrained, unqualified volunteers. TV series for Marvel superhero Captain Britain mooted. Dermot O'Leary returning to The X Factor.
Animator Terry Brain (Trap Door, 60), architect Dame Zaha Hadid (London Olympic Aquatic Centre, 65), comedian Garry Shandling (The Larry Sanders Show, 66), actress Patty Duke (The Miracle Worker, 69), comedian Ronnie Corbett (The Two Ronnies, 85), Nobel laureate novelist Imre Kertesz (Fateless, 86), WW2 code talker Gilbert Horn, Sr (92), TV writer/producer Earl Hamner Jr (The Waltons, 92).
The launch of Windows 10 with its apparently-malware-inspired foisting on users of earlier versions has seen Microsoft's reputation drop to levels not seen since Vista. One of the biggest complaints is the quantity of merchantable data that it reports back to Microsoft by default, and the lengths users have to go to in order to disable that "feature". Here's a handy guide, courtesy of The Register.- If you installed Windows 10 and like privacy, you checked the defaults, right? Oh dear.
^ DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!
Dumbledore Bear, our in-house psychic predicts that the following numbers will be lucky:3, 20, 26, 30, 34, 57[UK National Lottery, number range 1-59]
You can get your very own prediction at http://www.simonlamont.co.uk/tfir/dumbledore.htm.
It was Little Jennifer's birthday and her grandmother had come to visit. Little Jennifer opened the present from her grandmother and grinned broadly. "Thank you, Granny!" she said excitedly, before running off to the kitchen.
Little Jennifer's mother looked at her mother. "Was that what I think it was?" she asked.
"A water pistol, dear? Yes."
"But don't you remember how I used to drive you mad when I had one?"
"Oh, yes, dear, I remember," Little Jennifer's grandmother patted her daughter's hand, as a jet of water from the kitchen hit Little Jennifer's mother, accompanied by giggles.
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