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Issue #541 - 22nd November 2019
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| Contents | — – o o O o o – — |
^ WORD OF THE WEEK
erythrophobia |
Friday 22nd November - Pope Clement V issued the Pastoralis Praeeminentiae papal bull, calling for the arrest of all Templars in Europe and the seizure of their assets, 1307. Pirate Edward Teach, known as 'Blackbeard', killed by a Royal Navy boarding party, 1718. Novelist and poet George Eliot born, 1819. The Cutty Sark, now the last-surviving clipper, was launched in Dumbarton, 1869. Tennis player Billie Jean King born, 1943. British television producer Verity Lambert died, 2007. Saturday 23rd November - Thespis of Ithaca became the first recorded actor to play a character on a stage, 534 BCE. Perkin Warbeck, pretender to the English throne, hanged, 1499. Botanist Prospero Alpini born, 1553. The BBC broadcast the first episode of Doctor Who, 1963. Model and actress Kelly Brook born, 1979. Self-appointed moral guardian Mary Whitehouse died, 2001. Sunday 24th November - Magnús Óláfsson, King of Mann and the Isles, died, 1265. Abel Tasman discovered the island he called Van Diemen's Land (present day Tasmania), 1642. Writer Laurence Sterne born, 1713. "D.B. Cooper" parachuted out of a hijacked plane over Washington state with $200,000 ransom money and vanished, 1971. Actress Sarah Hyland born, 1990. Photographer Marion Post Wolcott died, 1990. Evolution Day. Monday 25th November - King Malcolm II of Scotland died, 1034. Elizabeth of York was crowned Queen of England as consort of King Henry VII, 1487. Businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie born, 1835. Writer Yukio Mishima committed seppuku following a failed coup attempt, 1970. Ethiopian famine-relief charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was recorded, 1984. Tennis player Ana Bogdan born, 1992. International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Tuesday 26th November - Isabella I, Queen of Castile and Léon, died, 1504. Historian James Ware born, 1594. Captain James Cook became the first European to set foot on Maui, 1778. Activist Bill W., co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, born, 1895. The National Hockey League was formed, in Canada, 1917. Animator Stephen Hillenberg, creator of SpongeBob SquarePants, died, 2018. Wednesday 27th November - Poet Horace died, 8 BCE. Physicist Anders Celsius born, 1701. The first Eddystone Lighthouse was destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703. Mathematician and computer scientist Ada Lovelace died, 1852. Richard Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra premiered in Frankfurt, 1896. Aviator Dora Dougherty Strother born, 1921. Thursday 28th November - William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway paid a £40 bond for their marriage licence in Stratford-upon-Avon, 1582. Sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini died, 1680. Artist and poet William Blake born, 1757. The Times of London became the first newspaper to be printed on a steam-powered press, 1814. Actress Hope Lange born, 1933. Writer Enid Blyton died, 1968. Thanksgiving in the U.S.
This week, Andrew Carnegie:There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.
A selection of quotations from films with a common director. Answers next issue or from the regular address.Last issue's quotations were from films directed by Wed Craven:
- There are only two things to remember in a modern naval battle, Captain. Good intelligence from shore; so that you know what to expect when you see it. Good spotting on your own ship; so that you know what you see when you expect it.
- Ah, there's June. She walks in beauty, like the night... Only she's cycling and it's daytime.
- If we don't know what we are doing, the enemy certainly can't anticipate our future actions.
- You are objectionable when sober, and abominable when drunk!
- Now out of my way, you masters of a thousand fleas. Allah be with you, but I doubt it.
- Nancy, you are going to get some sleep tonight if it kills me.
-- A Nightmare on Elm Street [1984]- Everything's a dream when you're alone.
-- Swamp Thing [1982]- People treat me like I'm the anti-Christ of television journalism.
-- Scream [1996]- Christophe, I need you to remember what happened before you died.
-- The Serpent and the Rainbow [1988]- - Hey, man, my pops always said the quickest way to a woman's heart - the church.
- It's actually through the ribcage, but that's a bit messy.
-- Vampire in Brooklyn [1995]
Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- A driver on the M6 motorway in north west England failed to pull over in response to a marked police car flashing its lights until the driver phoned his mother who told him to pull over and stop. He was issued with a Traffic Offense Report, presumably including using a phone whilst driving, and ordered to attend a driver awareness course.
- North Dakota resident Jill Rosenow's daughter Alice went missing over the summer and no trace of her could be found until late last month when a friend recently saw a news item on TV about homeless people in Denver, Colorado, coping with the freezing weather, in which Alice was interviewed. Jill and other family members from as far away as Seattle flew to Denver, spoke to the reporter who filed the piece and hundreds of other people, to whom they showed Alice's picture, but still could not find her. On the verge of giving up they went to Union Station where Alice's aunt Theresa Brown visited the restroom and heard Alice's voice coming from a stall. They were reported as staying in Denver until Alice was well enough to fly, after which her mother planned to get her into rehab for drug addiction.
- Prolific shoplifter Anna Burns, 33, appeared in court in Swindon recently, and was so sure she was heading to jail that she took a packed suitcase with her, but Judge Peter Crabtree had other ideas, telling her "Someone needs to do something that stops you repeatedly committing offences and coming back [to court]. That may be custody but I will look at all options." Despite the charge of shoplifting goods worth £347 ($448) from Sainsbury's and Marks & Spencer as well as failing to turn up to an earlier hearing, he released her with strict conditions. She has been banned from going into every shop across England except for a local Tesco Metro minimarket and the NHS Walk-In Centre near her home.
- Anna McNuff, a former Olympic rower, has completed a 168-day challenge, running the equivalent of 90 marathons across England barefoot. The ambassador for Girlguiding UK started in the Shetland Islands last June and ended up at Cannizzaro Park in Wimbledon last Sunday, having run 2,352 miles, visiting 143 towns and speaking to over 1,500 Girl Guides. At the end of the final run she tweeted that it had seemed like a bizarre dream, "and crikey on a crumpet - what a finish!" Apart from cutting her foot on a tree root and struggling in cold weather her feet were in remarkably good condition. "Time to put them in some slipper" she said.
- Pigs are remarkably clever animals, and have often been trained to sniff out truffles. Italian police wiretapping four suspected drugs traffickers found out about another talent recently. The criminals, suspecting of belonging to a gang smuggling cocaine from Albania to Italy, were complaining that a feral wild boar had sniffed out a stash of cocaine they had buried in a forest, dug it up, presumably consumed some and scattered the rest. Two of the gang were arrested, the other two put on house arrest. It is not reported what happened to the boar but it probably had a major headache the next day.
- A giant breast has been inflated outside Facebook's UK headquarters in protest at their non-contextual censorship of images of women's nipples after medical tattoist Vicky Martin's work was blocked as pornograpy - she tattoos realistic nipples on the chests of women who have lost breasts to masectomy following breast cancer, and was accompanied at her demonstration by around 50 supporters, many of whom have benefitted from her work. Facebook apologised and said the suspension of her account was a mistake.
- Last Sunday a wooden plank on a suspension bridge three stories above ground at the Tarzan's Treehouse attraction in the Disneyland theme park, California, broke after a man repeatedly jumped up and down on it. He had been trying to show his children the bridge was safe to cross. Nobody was injured, according to officials, and the attraction reopened on Monday after repairs.
- Three children near Ohrdruf in eastern Germany were fishing in a pond with a powerful magnet when they pulled up several unexploded World War II shells and bullets. They called police who cordoned off the area while the munitions were dealt with. Such finds are commmon across Germany, but more often turn up on building sites.
- Scientists at Penn State University in America have developed an ultra-slippery coating for lavatory bowls that they claim could cut the water requirement for flushing "sticky" faeces by 90%. "Our team has developed a robust bio-inspired, liquid, sludge- and bacteria-repellent coating that can essentially make a toilet self-cleaning", Tak-Sing Wong, associate professor of mechanical engineering, told reporters. It is not immune to damage from urine, however, and would need to be reapplied every fifty or so flushes. The researchers claim that the amount of water used to flush toilets around the world each day is six times the total daily water consumption of Africa.
- The problem of plastic packaging has been much in the news of late, and Lucy Hughes, 24, has won the £30,000 ($38,700) 2019 international James Dyson award (UK category) for inventing MarinaTex, a plastic-like film made from fish off-cuts, red algae and other natural substances that could replace plastic in food wrappings, bakery bags, small plastic bags and sandwich packaging, and fully biodegrades at room temperature. She is now researching how to mass manufacture the product. ● Plastic trays used for eggs, fruit and vegetables are also in the firing line, with researchers at Bangor University in Wales developing a substitute material from leftover crop farming materials including grass, straw and maize stalks, mashed up and moulded. They are working with scientists at Makerere University in Uganda as the technique, if successful, could provide additional income for arable farmers in Africa.
IN BRIEF: Jet suit inventor Richard Browning has broken his own 2017 speed record by more than 50mph (80km/h), reaching 85.06mph (136.9km/h). ● Gold friendship ring, believed to have been given by Oscar Wilde, stolen from Magdalen College, Oxford in 2002, recovered ● UK Highways agency issues warning after convoy of drivers filmed going the wrong way on the M5 motorway to avoid long queues caused by an accident. ● Oxygen levels in the Martian atmosphere increase by 30% in the spring and summer, NASA trying to discover why - most likely geological but a microbial cause has not been ruled out. ● Parsonage Museum, Haworth, finally acquires the fifth surviving "little book" (originally of 6) handwritten by 14-year-old Charlotte Brontë, already has other four. ● Attempted theft of two Rembrandt paintings from Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, thwarted by security, police. ● App developed to show what people's dogs would look like if they were cats... ● Fish popular with Australian diners identified as previously-unknown species. ● China cancels project to monitor schoolchildren's brainwaves. ● Mystery surrounds man filmed lying on the boardroom floor during a recent episode of the U.K. version of The Apprentice.
The public impeachment hearings got off to, well, the way they have been going ever since, with Republican congressmen, most notably Devin Nunes (R-CA, currently suing, amongst others, a fake cow on Twitter for 'defamation', i.e. legally-protected satire) slapped down for demanding the original, anonymous, whistleblower appear, and peddling disproven conspiracy theories, although Jim Jordan (R-OH)'s request for "[the] one witness that they won't bring in front of us, they won't bring in front of the American people, and that's the guy who started it all, the whistleblower" to appear was met with the response from Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) that "I would be glad to have the person who started it all come in and testify. President Trump is welcome to take a seat right there." ● In the middle of former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch's testimony Trump, who previously said he had no interest in following the "fake hearings" live-tweeted criticism of her, which was almost immediately brought into the hearing by chairman and former federal prosecutor Adam Schiff (D-CA) as potential witness tampering. Hours later former Trump campaign strategist Roger Stone was sentenced on seven counts including witness tampering for trying to dissuade Randy Credico from testifying before the same committee now investigating Trump, then investigating the 2016 election. Yovanovitch received a standing ovation from the audience when she finished her testimony. ● One of the key witnesses in the inquiry is Gordon Sondland, testifying as this issue is being written, who was appointed Ambassador to the EU despite having no diplomatic experience, after donating $1m (£0.78m) to Trump's inaugural committee. ● Nancy Pelosi perfectly responded to Trump's calling the inquiry a trial without defence by saying "It's called an inquiry, and if the president has something exculpatory - Mr President, that means that you have anything that shows your innocence - then he should make that known." ● Among evidence sought by the inquiry is the secret grand jury evidence from the Mueller Russia probe, because, as Douglas Letter, general counsel for the House of Representatives said, "there is evidence, very sadly, that the president might have provided untruthful answers..." [Trump publicly told 13,435 proven falsehoods between 20 January 2017 and 9 October 2019, and most of what he says is either untrue or projecting his own faults onto others, so it's quite probable]. ● Allan Lichman, professor of history at American University, who correctly predicted every presidential election since 1984, has said that Trump's impeachment "is inevitable". ● After Donald Trump, Jr [already proven to lack any sense of irony, viz TFIrs passim] tweeted that Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, who gave evidence on Tuesday, was "a low level partisan bureacrat and nothing more" who was "trying to remember the Catch Phrases he was well coached on" talk show host Jimmy Kimmel responded "That's right, the slicked-back sperm sample who never served anybody is questioning the integrity of a lieutenant colonel with a Purple Heart [award to servicemen injured in the line of duty]. Daddy Bone Spurs must be very proud of him."
Speculation is growing about Trump's health after he was rushed to Walter Reed hospital on Saturday, then cancelled his schedule for Sunday. His doctor issued a statement that Trump had been for "a routine, planned interim checkup as part of the regular, primary preventative care he receives through the year" - although it was not in his calendar, and the annual presidential health check-up is not split into parts across different days. Additionally, a military doctor would not normally comment on non-medical matters, like the visit being off the record. Doctor David Schneider, who treated Barack Obama for over twenty years before his presidency has raised concerns that Trump might have suffered a series of mini-strokes, given his occasional slurred speech and forgetting what he is saying and has been told. White House insiders also point to his irritability and trouble synthesising information. Trump often denies having said various things as a means of avoiding responsibility but there is evidence that he sometimes genuinely forgets.
Trump claimed that the Secret Service wanted the 2020 G-7 summit to be held at his failing Doral resort near Miami, Florida, despite it being unsuitable in high summer, and plagued by health issues. Newly released records from the Secret Service and emails from Doral city officials have shown that that Doral was only added as a possibility for consideration a month after other sites had been visited for review, and almost every aspect that Trump used to justify its choice was rejected. The G7 summit will be held at Camp David, while the Republican National Congress will be paying the Trump empire [again] to enjoy Doral's notorious bedbugs for their annual convention.
Late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel recently took to the streets to present Trump supporters with a list of things "the president" had done or said and ask their opinions. All were enthusiastic until Kimmel pointed out that the president whose actions were being presented was actually Richard Nixon... ● New York State Supreme Judge Jennifer G. Schecter has denied an interim stay requested by Trump's lawyers in the defamation case brought by former The Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos who alleged that Trump had sexually assaulted her at a hotel in 2007. Trump denied the assault, and she brought the defamation case against him. The denial of the stay and expediting of the motion means that, unless Trump's lawyers can block it by other means, he might be forced to testify in court (or probably by writing, read out by his lawyers) by the end of January. ● The U.S. Supreme Court has put a temporary block on the lower court order that Trump's tax returns should be released to Congressional Democrats as part of the impeachment probe. The block is not permanent, and calls for both sides to file the necessary paperwork by today [Thursday] before the court decides whether to consider the case.
Comic book artist Tom Lyle (Peter Parker: Spider Man, Starman, Comet, 66), actress Jean Fergusson (Last of the Summer Wine, Coronation Street, 1998 Olivier Award winner, 74), photographer Terry O'Neill (London's Swinging Sixties, Queen Elizabeth II, 81), Auschwitz survivor and two-time Oscar-winning film producer Branko Lustig (Schindler's List, Gladiator, The Peacemaker, 88), athlete Harrison Dillard (oldest living American Olympic gold medallist - 1948 100m sprint & 4x100m relay and 1952 110m men's hurdles & 4x100m relay, 96).
^ DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!
Dumbledore Bear, our in-house psychic predicts that the following numbers will be lucky:11, 29, 43, 50, 54, 56[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's class were having a lesson about America. "George Washington was the first President of America," the teacher said, holding up a picture of Washington, "Now, who can tell me who came after him?"
The class sat in silence, thinking. Then Little Jennifer tentatively put her hand up. "Yes, Little Jennifer?"
"The second President of America, Miss?"
^ ...end of line