Issue #498 - 19th October 2018
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Contents | — – o o O o o – — |
^ WORD OF THE WEEK
Koumpounophobia |
Friday 19th October - The Vandals under King Gaiseric captured Carthage, 439. King John of England died, 1216. Philosopher Marsilio Ficino born, 1433. Satirist & writer Jonathan Swift died, 1745. Representatives of Lord Cornwallis formally surrendered to George Washington and the comte de Rochambeau, 1781. Poet Leigh Hunt born, 1784. President Richard Nixon declined an Appeal Court decision that he hand over the Watergate tapes to investigators, 1973. Cellist Jacqueline du Pré died, 1987. Sailor Abby Sunderland born, 1993. Saturday 20th October - Scholar Thomas Linacre died, 1524. Architect & scientist Christopher Wren born, 1632. Pirate Calico Jack was captured by the Royal Navy, 1720. Noblewoman Pauline Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon, born, 1780. The first code of the American football rules was drafted by Yale, Columbia, Rutgers & Princeton universities, 1873. Explorer & translator Richard Burton died, 1890. Baseball player Mickey Mantle born, 1931. Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom & Commonwealth opened the Sydney Opera House, 1973. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, Prime Minister of Libya, killed by militants, 2011. World Osteoporosis Day. Sunday 21st October - The Siege of Antioch in the First Crusade began, 1097. King Charles VI of France died, 1422. Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge born, 1772. Admiral Horatio Nelson died at the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805. Florence Nightingale and her 38-strong nursing staff were sent to the Crimean War, 1854. Trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie born, 1917. A Japanese fighter plane made the first kamikaze attack, 1944. Model & showgirl Mandy Rice-Davies born, 1944. Writer Jack Kerouac died, 1969. Monday 22nd October - The Japanese capital was relocated to Heian-kyō (present-day Kyoto), 794. Composer Johannes Brassart died, 1455. Astronomer Erasmus Reinhold born, 1511. Four Royal Navy ships ran aground in the Scilly naval disaster, 1707. Actress Sarah Bernhardt born, 1844. Artist Paul Cézanne died, 1906. Dr Crippen was convicted of poisoning his wife, 1910. Nobel laureate writer Doris Lessing born, 1919. Suffragette Hannah Mitchell died, 1956. Tuesday 23rd October - Philologist Pieter Burman the Younger born, 1713. Actress Anne Oldfield died, 1730. The War of Jenkins' Ear began, 1739. Adlai Stevenson, 2nd Vice President of the United States, born, 1835. The first American National Women's Rights Convention began in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1850. Writer Théophile Gautier died, 1872. Soccer player Pelé born, 1940. Illustrator Josh Kirby died, 2001. BBC Ceefax, the world's first teletext service, ceased broadcast as the UK's digital TV switchover was completed, 2012. Mole Day (International). Wednesday 24th October - Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII of England, died, 1537. Anthony Babington, leader of the eponymous plot against Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, born, 1561. John White, governor of the second Roanoke Colony, returned to England having failed to find the "lost" colonists, 1590. Composer Alessandro Scarlatti died, 1725. Sheffield F.C., the oldest extant association football club, was founded, 1857. Explorer & writer Alexandra David-Néel born, 1868. Engineer Louis Renault died, 1944. Ninety percent of employed women in Iceland went on strike to protest gender pay gaps, 1975. Rapper Drake born, 1986. United Nations Day. Thursday 25th October - Poet Geoffrey Chaucer died, 1400. The English under Henry V defeated the French at the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years' War, 1415. Elisabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain, born, 1692. King George II of Great Britain died, 1760. The Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava, 1854. Artist Pablo Picasso born, 1881. The Daily Mail newspaper published the fraudulent Zinoviev letter, later blamed by the Labour Party for handing an election landslide win to the Conservatives, 1924. Singer Natasha Khan, aka Bat for Lashes, born, 1979. Actor Vincent Price died, 1993.
This week, Pablo Picasso:I paint things as I think of them, not as I see them.
A selection of quotations from films with a common actor or actress. Answers next issue or from the regular address.Last issue's quotations were from films starring Robin Williams:
- You get hurt, hurt 'em back. You get killed... walk it off.
- Perhaps you're the woman I never met.
- I love Americans. You all have a good taste.
- Let me properly introduce you. That is Henri. He likes to be called Chim-chim but we don't always get what we like.
- Time has no respect for beauty.
- Anything's possible Lawrence. If it can be dreamed, it can be done. Hence the twenty-foot jackal staring right at you. ... Don't make eye contact!
-- Night at the Museum [2006]- We'll take the house. Honey, the chances of another plane hitting this house are astronomical. It's been pre-disastered. We're going to be safe here.
-- The World According to Garp [1982]- Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever.
-- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen [1988]- Carpe diem, seize the day. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.
-- Dead Poets Society [1989]- You just saw three monkeys go by on a motorcycle, didn't you?
-- Jumanji [1995]
Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- HISTORY! Archaeologists in South Africa have discovered a "lost" settlement dating to the 15th century outside Johannesburg, using laser technology. The settlement was home to around 10,000 Tswana people, and their descendants are now demanding to have the city, called Kweneng, recognised as their homeland. ● A piece of graffiti might rewrite history. It has been assumed for the last several centuries that Vesuvius erupted on 24 August 79, burying the cities of Pompeii, Oplontis, Stabiae & Herculaneum, based on the writings of Pliny the Younger, who witnessed the eruption from across the Gulf of Naples, writing 25 years after the event. The original writings are long-lost, historians instead relying on various later copies and translations, many of which give different dates. The newly-discovered inscription, written in charcoal on a wall in Pompeii, and thought to have been made by a workman, bears a date 16 days before the "calends" of November, or 17 October in the modern dating system, after the traditionally accepted date, and, because it is fragile charcoal, unlikely to survive for long in open air, it suggests to archaeologists that the eruption was more likely to have occurred on 24 October. ● A recently-excavated body of a child in Lugnano, Italy, was found with a stone wedged in its mouth, an ancient folklore practice to stop bodies rising from the dead as vampires. The skeleton was found during an excavation of the 5th Century Cemetary of Children, which has also turned up evidence of witchcraft.
- NATURE! Two males penguins - Sphen and Magic - who bonded last year at Sydney Aquarium in Australia, were given a dummy egg to care for. The couple had built a nest of pebbles, as Gentoo penguins do, and keepers - aware that the two were unable to produce their own egg, gave them the dummy one. So successful were they at alternating incubating the egg, that the keepers have let them foster a real egg from another penguin couple who produced two. Sydney Aquarium issued a statement saying that their "gay" penguins "make a great team". ● DNA extracted from the remains of dogs found in archaeological sites across Asia and Europe has suggested that the domestication of dogs from wolves began far earlier than previously thought, possibly in separate populations thousands of miles apart, with Middle Eastern dogs interbreeding with European ones as groups of humans spread across the regions. ● New Zealand has voted the kereru its Bird of the Year 2018. The kereru, one of the few native species that is not endangered, has a reputation for eating fermented fruits, and so being "drunk, clumsy and a bit of a clown." Megan Hubscher, of the Forest & Bird group that runs the vote, told reporters that "There are a lot of videos around of kereru getting drunk and stumbling around in a comical manner. That's part of the charm, they're just very lovable birds."
- SCIENCE! An analysis of studies into how kindness affects the brain has found a distinction between 'strategic' kindness where some reward is expected ("I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine") and 'altruistic' kindness, where none is expected. 'Strategic' kindness makes the striatal areas of the brain activate, giving a feeling of reward, while altruistic kindness activates the striatal region, the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, which makes a person feel happy, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which affects decision-making and empathy. ● Scientists at Great Ormond Street Hospital and the Francis Crick Institute in London have grown a bio-engineered oesophagus - the pipe carrying food from the mouth to the stomach - in the lab. They stripped a rat oespophagus of everything but its collagen scaffold then grew new muscle and connective tissue on it using cells from mice, rats and humans (so they could determine which parts grew from which cells). Sections of the oesophagus were then implanted into the abdomens of mice, where they connected with blood vessels within a week. It is hoped that the technique could eventually be used to treat the around 1 in 3000 babies born with a faulty or gapped oesophagus that affects the ability to consume food and drink. ● Less than a week since NASA's Hubble space telescope automatically went into safe mode following a gyroscope failure the orbiting Chandra X-Ray observatory has also shut down, although NASA are unsure why. Like Hubble, Chandra has long outlived its expected lifetime, having been launched almost 20 years ago with an expected duration of 5 years. NASA's exoplanet-detecting Kepler space telescope suffered failures in 2012 and 2013, but was repurposed to continue a slightly modified mission and NASA announced the 1,000th confirmed exoplanet discovery made using it in January 2015.
- PEOPLE! Christopher Pavlovski was due to be born on 1 October this year, but with no sign of his arrival his mother Tsetomira was told to go to Arrowe Park Hospital on the Wirral five days later, so labour could be induced. The night before she was due to go, she went into labour and Christopher was born in the early hours of 6 October. Nurses were amazed when Mr Pavlovski told them that 6 October was not only his birthday as well as his son's, but his father's too. All things being equal, the odds of a father and son sharing the same birthday are roughly 1 in 365, but the odds of three generations sharing the day are about 1 in 130,000. All three generations will be united next year when the Pavlovskis take their son to Macedonia to meet his grandfather. ● Norah and Malcolm Yates were married at a hotel in Prestatyn, Wales, earlier this week after 30 years together. Mr Yates is 74, his wife 100. A pageboy pushed her down the aisle in a wheelchair to Abba's "Dancing Queen". She told reporters that "I only feel about 20". ● Matt Burke, 34, was working as a scaffolder in 2012 when a ladder gave way beneath him, causing him to fall and resulting in a bleed on his brain that required a five-hour operation and left him unable to walk or talk. Last weekend he ran the ASDA Yorkshire Marathon. "It's been a long road since the accident", he had said, adding that his father had helped him get into the right frame of mind to start his rehabilitation. Burke had set himself a target of 4 hours 30 minutes to complete the course; he did it in 4 hours 21 minutes.
- CRIME! American police officers acting on a tip-off have dicovered the bodies of 11 babies hidden in the ceiling of a closed Detroit funeral home. The business was forced to close earlier this year for illegal and unsafe storage of bodies that resulted in mould growth. Some of the infants and still-born babies have been identified through DNA, work continues to trace the families of the others. The building was being converted into a community centre when the tip-off was made to the local council. ● Charlie Condell, 18, is bidding to become the youngest person to cycle solo around the world, but the British teenager ran into a problem in Townsville, Australia, having gone through 21 countries in more than 100 days. He woke up in a hostel to discover that his bike had been stolen overnight, along with his passport, camping gear and other equipment worth around £4,000 ($5,200). Locals are said to have offered him accomodation, clothing and a replacement bike, and he hopes to complete his journey in March next year, with New Zealand and the United States still to go. The current record holder is fellow Brit Tom Davies, who was 19 when he made the trip in 2015. ● Police were called to a Domino's pizza restaurant in Gloucester earlier this month after a family staged a sit-in protest. Fay James had ordered a home delivery meal only for it to arrive stone cold over an hour later and 40 minutes after the order had been flagged as out for delivery. The driver ignored her complaints, and the restaurant manager told her on the phone that they were too busy to provide a replacement for three hours, and James should call customer services. Instead, she took the family to the restaurant and dropped the boxes on the counter, but the manager refused to talk to them, so they spent 90 minutes sitting waiting for either a refund or replacement. At 11pm the manager told them she was closing up and they had to leave or she would press the panic button. They refused, and she did. Police arrived, and the manager told them the family had been aggressive and damaged the door, neither of which was true, as phone video footage showed, so the police told the manager to refund the order. Domino's issued a statement apologising, offered discount vouchers as well as the refund, and saying that their staff had been reminded of the "high standard of service required at all times."
IN BRIEF: Apple fixes bagel emoji. ● Company behind Bloodhound supersonic vehicle aiming be first car to pass 1,000mph (1,609 km/h) goes into administration. ● Bottle of 1945 Romanée-Conti Burgundy wine auctions for $558,000 (£424,000) in New York. ● Claim that putting a couple of items of clothing in a tumble dryer with a couple of ice cubes will steam creases out, so no ironing needed. ● Someone stuck googly eyes on the statue of Nathaneal Greene in Savannah, Georgia. ● Earlier this week 84 ice cream van drivers in Crewe beat the world record for the longest parade of ice cream vans. ● Postcard sent from Taunton, Somerset, to Bugle, Cornwall, about 100 miles apart, delivered 21 years late. ● Gift bags given to members of the public chosen by ballot to enter grounds of Windsor Castle to follow proceedings of Princess Eugenie's wedding this week turn up on auction site eBay within 24 hours. ● UK Parliament's Education Committee interviews school robot in gimmick with pre-arranged questions. ● Snapchat adds selfie filters for cats. ● Bank of England to follow plastic £5, £10 notes (and £20 notes in 2020) with plastic £50 notes. ● US embassy in Canberra accidentally emails cat photo instead of invitation. ● Claimed photo of time traveller in 1943 Cornwall beach photo allegedly looking at mobile phone, more probably rolling a cigarette. ● Cafe in Manchester selling toasties filled with curry, apple and custard, Nutella or instant noodles. ● Company behind underwear claimed to remove smell of farts now selling jeans with the same purpose - for £100 ($131).
TRUMPWATCH - Some of the stranger things in reports about the US president. A dating app for supporters of Donald Trump that featured on - where else? - Fox News has been found to have poor security that exposed the names of the 1,600 or so people registered, their photos, personal messages and login tokens, pretty much everything except credit card numbers. SAD. ● During Kanye West's much-mocked White House meeting with Trump, he wanted to show the president a picture of an electric plane on his phone, but chose to log into the device in full view of cameras, revealing that his password was '000000'... SAD. ● An op-ed piece by Trump published by USA Today contained, according to CNN, "the record for the number of falsehoods from a President ever published in a newspaper." The online version of the article contained links, many of which were to pages that explicitly contradicted the claims being made about the administration's healthcare policies and record. The links were later removed. STABLE GENIUS.
UPDATES: A second 47-year-old plastic washing-up liquid bottle was reported washed up, on an Isle of Man beach shortly after the last issue went out. ● The family of Olive Harrison, the gardener whose 1898 application for a scholarship at the Royal Horticultural Society was turned down because she was a woman, have come forward to fill in her story. Having 'won' the scholarship after coming first on a course at Swanley College of Horticulture she took a second course there when the RHS turned her down and then became a gardener at Northfield Manor in Birmingham until she married and gave up her career to raise her four children. Her granddaughter remembers her as someone who helped her with her garden and knew all the plants' names, and there is a memorial stone to her in Settle, where she moved to in the 1960s. ● The unidentified European woman who paid £1m ($1.3m) at auction for an original print of Banksy's Girl With Balloon only for it to pass halfway through a shredder hidden in the frame, shortly after the hammer drop, has decided to keep it. The piece, officially retitled Love is in the Bin, is almost certainly now worth more than the sale price, as the only artwork created during its own auction.
Leaked footage from Star Wars: Episode IX hints at Emperor Palpatine cameo. ● Jennifer Garner claims Alias reboot on the cards, and she wants at least a guest appearance. ● Hologram of Amy Winehouse to tour with live band; fans' opinion divided. ● Ant McPartlin, wife, granted divorce in 30s court hearing. ● David Bowie statue in Aylesbury vandalised for second time. ● Blue Peter turns 60, marks event with reunion of former presenters. ● Anna Burns becomes first winner of Man Booker Prize from Northern Ireland, for Troubles-set novel Milkman. ● Foo Fighters invite 10-year-old fan Collier Cash Rule onstage during gig, so impressed with his skills Dave Grohl gives him a guitar. ● Hannah Berry named UK comics laureate, vows to fight "stigma" surrounding comics & graphic novels. ● Frugal-living actor Chow Yun-fat to donate entire net worth of 5.6bn Hong Kong dollars (£542m; $710m) to charity. ● Musician Perry Serpa releasing album based on fictional album described in Nick Hornby's 2009 book Juliet, Naked. ● Netflix cancels Marvel's Iron Fist after second series. ● Julian Fellowes writing series of TV dramas based on paintings in the Queen's collection, with Simon Cowell's company Syco, for ITV. ● Musical The Assassination of Katie Hopkins, based on the fictional death of rentagob journalist, named best musical at UK Theatre Awards. ● Lindsey Buckingham suing Fleetwood Mac for breach of oral contract, breach of fiduciary duty & intentional interference with prospective economic advantage, other charges, after they fired him and were allegedly instructed not to speak to him. ● Guadeloupe author Maryse Conde wins alternative Nobel Literature Prize. ● Michael Bublé announces intention to retire from music industry following son's successful battle with cancer as "my whole being's changed". ● Netflix gained 7m new customers in 2018 Q3 on back of 135% increase in original new content. ● Peter Jackson's restored, colourised World War I footage documentary to get extended 3D screenings in cinemas after planned one-off screening sold out; 2D version will be broadcast by the BBC on November 11. ● Ralph Fiennes to receive European Achievement in World Cinema award at 2018 European Film Awards. ● Rob Lowe to play American police chief relocated to UK in ITV's Wild Bill. ● The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band named most popular British album in history by Official Charts Company, based on physical, digital sales and streaming, ahead of Adele's 21 & Oasis' (What's the Story) Morning Glory?. ● Sony reportedly fix messaging bug that let PS4 console be crashed with specific message. ● Idris Elba joining Cats movie as McCavity, the Mystery Cat. ● Lady Gaga, talent agent Christian Carino, engaged. ● Christian Schwochow to direct Mars colonisation drama series Children of Mars after completing series 3 of The Crown. ● Tilda Swinton admits that elderly actor Lutz Ebersdorf who played psychoanalyst Dr Josef Klemperer in Suspiria remake was actually her in full prosthetics. ● Palme d'Or winner Shoplifters picks up most popular international feature award at Vancouver Film Festival. ● Online video site YouTube (more than 400 hours of content uploaded by users every minute) goes down for 2 hours; Twitterati predict apocalypse. ● Chris Chibnall wants J.K. Rowling to write Doctor Who episode; consolidated viewing figures give Jodie Whittaker's debut episode the largest audience for the show since the 2005 reboot premiered with Christopher Eccleston. ● Epic Games suing Fortnite player Brandon Lucas, who uses YouTube channel, website, to promote, profit from, cheating at Fortnite online Battle Royale game (in 2006 Blizzard won a similar lawsuit over MDY Industries' WoWGlider bot software cheat for World of Warcraft).
Technologist & philanthropist Paul Allen (Seattle Seahawks, Portland Trailblazers, co-founder of Microsoft, 65), novelist Arto Paasilinna (The Year of the Hare, 76), environmentalist Ian Kiernan (Clean Up Australia, Clean Up the World, 78), politician Pik Botha (South African Minister of Foreign Affairs 1977-1994, 86), brewer William Coors (grandson of Coors Brewing Company founder Adolph Coors, 102).
^ DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!
Dumbledore Bear, our in-house psychic predicts that the following numbers will be lucky:16, 18, 49, 51, 55, 59[UK National Lottery, number range 1-59]
You can get your very own prediction at http://www.simonlamont.co.uk/tfir/dumbledore.htm.
Little Jennifer had come home from school with a full-blown pout on. "What's the matter, Little Jennifer?" her father asked her.
"Miss sent me to the headmaster's office, Daddy!"
"Why? What did you do?"
"Nothing, Daddy! We were doing maths and Miss asked me what 7+8 is. So I said 15."
"But that's correct."
"I know, Daddy! She said it was, but then she asked me what 8+7 is."
"Well that's a bloody stupid question - it's the same thing."
"That's exactly what I said!"
^ ...end of line