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Issue #547 - 17th January 2020
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| Contents | — – o o O o o – — |
^ WORD OF THE WEEK
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Friday 17th January - Giovanni da Verrazzano set sail from Madeira in search of a sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 1524. Physician, astrologer, cosmologist and occultist Robert Fludd born, 1574. Cree tribal chief Big Bear died, 1888. The Volstead Act came into force in the U.S., starting alcohol prohibition, 1920. Singer and actress Eartha Kitt born, 1927. Soprano Lizbeth Webb died, 2013. Saturday 18th January - Catherine, Duchess of Braganza, born, 1540. Privateer Henry Morgan captured Panama, 1670. Writer A.A. Milne born, 1882. Singer Melanie Appleby died, 1990. Airbus unveiled the Airbus A380, the world's largest commercial passenger plane, 2005. Artist and broadcaster Tony Hart died, 2009. Sunday 19th January - Frankish king Dagobert I died, 639. King Henry V of England completed his reconquest of Normandy with the surrender of Rouen, during the Hundred Years' War, 1419. Architect Joseph Bonomi the Elder born, 1739. Photographer Francesca Woodman died, 1981. Apple announced the Apple Lisa, their first personal computer to have a graphical user interface and mouse, 1983. Tennis player Petra Martić born, 1991. Monday 20th January - The first English parliament to include representatives of major towns as well as Lords sat for the first time, in the Palace of Westminster, 1265. Cartographer and cosmographer Sebastian Münster born, 1488. Anne of Austria, queen and regent of France, died, 1666. British forces occupied Hong Kong Island, 1841. Writer and naturalist Joy Adamson born, 1910. Singer-songwriter Etta James died, 2012. Tuesday 21st January - Artist Peter De Wint born, 1784. William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy: or, the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth, the first American novel, was published in Boston, 1789. King Louis XVI of France guillotined in the French Revolution, 1793. A B-52 bomber crashed near Thule Air Base on Greenland, causing extensive radioactive contamination from its payload, 1968. Singer Emma Bunton born, 1976. Actress Susan Strasberg died, 1999. Wednesday 22nd January - Chinese emperor Cao Rui died, 239. Danelaw Vikings defeated the West Saxons led by Æthelred I at the Battle of Basing, 871. Courtier and explorer Sir Walter Raleigh born, 1552. Just over 150 British and colonial troops defended a mission station from a force of up to 4,000 Zulu warriors at the Battle of Rorke's Drift in the Anglo-Zulu War, 1879. Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom died, 1901. Actress Diane Lane born, 1965. Thursday 23rd January - London's Royal Exchange opened, 1571. American general, politician and bearer of an impressive signature John Hancock born, 1737. Brewer Arthur Guinness died, 1803. Inventor Walter Frederick Morrison sold the rights to his flying disc toy to the Wham-O toy company, which would later rename it the "Frisbee", 1957. Journalist and fashion designer Dawn O'Porter born, 1979. Singer and actress Nell Carter died, 2003.
This week, A.A. Milne:One of the advantages of being disorganised is that one is always having surprising discoveries.
A selection of quotations from films with the same director. Answers next issue or from the regular address.Last issue's quotations were from films directed by Billy Wilder:
- - I sure do miss my bed.
- You said that last night.
- No, last night I said I missed my wife, tonight I just miss my dadgum bed.- Its nothing personal, I just happen to think she could be a first rate artist if her damn hormones didn't keep getting in the way.
- Girlie, tough ain't enough.
- My only hope is that whatever doesn't burn up lands on Gerson's house.
- Don't forget your trench coat. How's anybody gonna recognise you without your disguise?
- How could I have known that murder could sometimes smell like honeysuckle?
-- Double Indemnity [1944]- Hey, did you ever try dunking a potato chip in champagne? It's real crazy!
-- The Seven Year Itch [1955]- Ya know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe; I mean, shipwrecked among 8 million people. And then one day I saw a footprint in the sand, and there you were.
-- The Apartment [1960]- Will you look at that! Look how she moves! It's like Jell-O on springs. Must have some sort of built-in motor or something. I tell you, it's a whole different sex!
-- Some Like It Hot [1959]- From the sound of your footsteps, I gathered that you were not in a particularly amiable mood.
-- The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes [1970]
Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- Galapagos giant tortoise Diego is being returned to the wild to retire after helping save his species. Diego was, at one time, one of only two surviving males of his species, but a captive breeding programme at the San Diego Zoo in California saw him father 800 tortoises, and that was just 40% of the increased population - the other male, named E5, fathered the other 60%. Diego, currently in quarantine before being returned to the Galapagos National Parks, is 100 years old and expected to live for at least another 20 years.
- Police officers in Lake Worth Beach, Florida, dispatched to investigate reports of a woman screaming, turned up at a house to find the owner working on his car in the driveway. When they told him why they were there he invited them into his home and introduced them to 'Rambo', his 40-year-old pet parrot who lived in a cage when he was younger and had been trained to squawk "Help, help, let me out!"
- "Kush", a 7-year-old red panda at the Curraghs Wildlife Park on the Isle of Man, who escaped and was recaptured in October last year, escaped again last week. A few days later a member of the public reported seeing him sitting in a tree and park staff spent three hours trying to lure him down but he refused to move because of "exceptionally high winds" across the island. They eventually caught him in a net after sawing through the branch he was on. The park are at a loss to explain how he escaped for a second time as there did not appear to have been "a failure in the enclosure", according to general manager Kathleen Graham.
- ITV daytime show This Morning celebrated being extended by 30 minutes by holding a competition using a spinning wheel to decide what prize a viewer would win. The first winner, called Anne, was awarded an all-expenses-paid getaway trip to Edinburgh, Scotland. To hosts Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby's obvious amusement, Anne already lived in the Scottish capital, so there would not be much expense involved. Schofield offered to spin the wheel again for her, and it came up with the same prize, so he kindly nudged it on, and Anne eventually won a trip to Florence, Italy.
- Twenty years ago there was a (mostly media-led) panic about the 'Y2K bug', wherein computers programmed to store the year in just two digits would, supposedly, interpret changing from '99' to '00' as moving from 1999 to 1900. In practice, it came to nothing as relevant systems were reprogrammed in advance of the new year. The UK Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) seems to have undergone its own version of the Y2K bug 20 years late, as a driver who mailed in a change-of-keeper notification received a reply dated 02/01/1920, some 45 years before the DVLA was founded. The mistake is thought to have been caused by one of the quick fixes back in 1999 that saw some systems reworked to view anything between '00' and '19' as being in the 2000s, allowing time for a permanent and proper solution to be implemented, or not, as at the DVLA, apparently. It is not just the DVLA facing the '19'-'20' problem - parking meters in New York stopped accepting credit card payments when the year rolled over.
- A team of American and Swiss researchers studying the Muchison meteorite that fell in Australia in 1969 have determined that it contains dust grains formed before the Solar System. By analysing how the grains had interacted with cosmic rays they discovered that while most were 4.6-4.9 billion years old the oldest formed around 7.5 billion years ago. The Sun is 4.6 billion years old, and the Earth 4.5 billion years. The grains also provided evidence that they travelled through the cosmos in clumps, rather than individually, as previously thought.
- Police in the U.S. state of Georgia are looking for a man who broke into a Taco Bell restaurant in the early hours of Christmas Day, getting in through a drive-thru window, fired up a fryer, cooked and ate some food, then fell asleep on the floor for three hours before leaving through the same window, taking a laptop and tablet with him. Police released surveillance video of the man's activities in the restaurant, and described him as a black male, wearing sweatpants, a black hooded weatshirt and black shoes.
- On December 5 the Texas Department of Public Safety proudly posted a picture a U-Haul truck stopped by officers on Interstate 40 with dozens of boxes filled with over 3,000lb (1,360kg) of marijuana. Florida resident Aneudy Gonzalez was charged with felony drug possession and and jailed, but walked free a month later with the charge dismissed after it emerged in court that the 'marijuana' was actually hemp, which had been legalised in Texas earlier in the year. The difference is in the level of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the principal psychoactive constituent, which is less than 0.3% in hemp. A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent, called in when Gonzales was stopped, testified that he had been unaware of the legalisation of hemp in the state and confused about the THC content rules. Gonzales' lawyer is seeking the return of the hemp and compensation for the month spent behind bars.
- A 50-year-old man has had a 5" (14cm) 'horn' removed from his back in an operation at the Countess of Chester Hospital. The growth was actually a skin cancer, which had grown outwards over three years, but to doctors' surprise there had been no change to his lymph nodes, through which cancers usually spread around the body. The man was said to be a labourer but with no significant exposure to sunlight on his back. In their report on the case, doctors said they were highlighting that even with "current skin cancer awareness and rigorous healthcare measure, cases like this can still arise and slip through the net."
- When 3-year-old Stefan Snowden's father suffered a seizure and lost consciousness last month Stefan leaped into action, jumping into his toy Paw Patrol truck and heading down a main road to get help. Two women who saw drivers beeping and swerving around him a quarter mile (0.4km) from home stopped the traffic and called police, to whom he said that his "daddy was poorly", and a paramedic was called. Lincolnshire Police inspector Rachel Blackwell praised the women, and another who had kept Stefan entertained until police arrived, and said that Mr Snowden was "doing fine".
IN BRIEF: Train in southern Russia delayed for an hour by camel trotting slowly along the track. ● Sinkhole 32' (10m) across opens up in China, swallows bus and pedestrians. ● Segway self-balancing wheelchair crashes during CES tech trade show demonstration. ● Wolf Curier, 17, discovers planet orbiting two stars on third day of NASA internship. ● Boy, 12, given magnifying glass for Christmas, uses it to set fire to front yard. ● Florida woman charged with threatening to rob McDonald's after being told she had to pay for dipping sauces. ● Guanxi, China, noodle shop owner arrested after putting opium in noodles to make customers addicted so they would keep coming back. ● Building contractor Balfour Beatty misplaces floor plans of MI6 London headquarters during refurbishment. ● Swarm of bees invades pitch during soccer match in Tanzania. ● Prichard, Alabama, Public Works Department distributes 10,000 new residential rubbish bins bearing typo "Mobile Country" instead of "Mobile County". ● Someone in Ukraine is dressing as Pennywise, the evil clown from It, to scare passers-by. ● Brocken spectre weather phenomenon (observer's shadow on clouds) photographed on Snowdon, Wales, on New Year's Day.
While Trump continues to rage tweet and whine about "the stigma" of impeachment - and Nancy Pelosi reminds him that he is, and always will be, an impeached president - senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) admits that the Republican caucus in the Senate does not have enough votes to dismiss the articles of impeachment before a trial can be held. As this issue is being written Congress is due to vote on sending the articles to the Senate. ● Lev Parnas, one of Trump attorney Rudi Giuliani's Ukrainian associates arrested last year has handed over mobile phones containing a cache of SMS and WhatsApp messages and images detailing "interactions with a number of individuals relevant to the impeachment inquiry"; they have been added to the dossier of evidence. ● Giuliani has stated that he wants to be Trump's defense attorney, which could complicate things as he is - allegedly - a co-conspirator and would presumably have to cross-examine himself... ● Trump accused of "engaging in hate speech against an entire religion" after retweeting Photoshopped image of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer in Muslim clothing. ● American cybersecurity firm reports that Russian agents hacked Burisma, the Ukranian gas company potential Democrat nominee Joe Biden's son Hunter worked for, suggesting that Russia is again trying to steal emails to influence a U.S. election.
Trump reportedly trying to divert another $7.2bn (£5.5bn) from military budgets for his vanity border wall which can be cut through with an easily-available DIY saw. ● It is not just Mexicans, Democrats, environmentalists and a majority of Americans who are against the wall, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection radio tower in Kingsville, Texas, is repeatedly finding its communications system failing because of the droppings and vomit* from a committee of 300 vultures. They cannot kill the birds, which are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, so are desperately looking for another solution. [*Vultures vomit on their legs to kill bacteria.]
Canadian food company Maple Leaf Foods' CEO Michael McCain and U.S. Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) have both pinned blame for the Ukrainian passenger jet shot down by an Iranian anti-aircraft missile strike on Trump for escalating tensions in the region by ordering the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. ● Trump tells rally that he kept U.S. troops in Syria "because I kept the oil, which frankly we should have done in Iraq" - this is a war crime. ● Trump's claim of an imminent threat against U.S. embassies to justify the assassination is becoming increasingly threadbare. ● George Conway tweets suggestion that Trump "let all sorts of transgressions by the Iranians go previously, and is perfectly happy to kowtow to evil foreign leaders (KJU, Putin), but suddenly, he chooses the option that the military thought too extreme to actually select, and then threatens war crimes" to distract from impeachment. ● Soleimani's funeral was attended by more people than Trump's inauguration.
A reporter at Trump's Toledo, Ohio, rally asked a MAGA hat-wearing teenage Trump supporter "what is something that you believe the president has done well?" to be met with a lot of umming and ahhing, but no actual answer. ● Last weekend the official White House Twitter account tweeted picture of snow falling in front of the White House captioned "First snow of the year!" The temperature in Washington, D.C., that day reached 68oF (20oC) and was unseasonably warm; it had snowed a few days earlier. Twitterati respond by mentioning the "blizzard of lies" that routinely come from the Trump administration. ● Former GOP strategist Steve Schmidt "can't imagine, I think, a worse possible president, a worse possible leader to stand at the head of America's armed forces at this very dangerous moment [Iran tensions]". ● Trump facing calls to "immediately" release bilions of dollars of congressionally-approved aid to Puerto Rico following devastating series of earthquakes; territory still waiting on billions of dollars due following 2017 hurricane disasters. ● Trump wants to increase the number of coal mines in the U.S., will almost certainly face legal challenges. ● Trump tells Toledo rally he should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing peace to Ethiopia; actually Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed brought peace to Ethiopia, continues to work to bring peace in other African countries and was justly awarded the Peace Prize. ● Twitterati have fun reworking film titles to mock Trump, including Alex Jones's Diary (@MilesToGo13), Once Upon a Crime in The West Wing (@thelovemaster), Honey, I Caged the Kids! (@babawoowa), Raging Bullshit (@awkward_ish), The Big Liebowski (@isntforeveryone), White Pride and Prejudice (@WildBunchTagz) and The Lying King (@Anythingpork). ● Trump must be loving the fact that Barack and Michelle Obama's production company has been nominated for an Oscar for the documentary film American Factory... ● Finally this week, Trump's pronouncement on the evils of terrorism to justify the unapproved assassination of Soleimani included "There are so many people walking around without legs"...
Actor Harry Hains (American Horror Story: Hotel, The OA, Chase, 27), drummer and lyricist Neil Peart (Rush, "Tom Sawyer", "The Spirit of Radio", 67), philosopher Sir Roger Scruton (Salisbury Review, An Intelligent Person's Guide to Pop Culture, 75), Sultan Qaboos bin Saud Al Said of Oman (79), TV snd film producer Tony Garnett (Cathy Come Home, Kes, This Life, 83), boxer Jackie Brown (1958 Commonwealth Games gold medal, British and Commonwealth flyweight title 1962-63, 84), actor and singer Edd Byrnes (Grease, 77 Sunset Strip, "Kookie Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb)", 87), actor, screenwriter and director Buck Henry (The Graduate, Saturday Night Live, Heaven Can Wait, 89).
^ DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!
Dumbledore Bear, our in-house psychic predicts that the following numbers will be lucky:1, 11, 29, 41, 44, 53[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 came home from school and her mother, knowing that it was the day the children sat tests, asked her how it had gone. "I scored 100%, Mummy!" Little Jennifer beamed.
"That's very good, Little Jennifer," her mother said, somewhat surprised, "What subject was that?"
Little Jennifer smiled as only she could. "I got 50% in English, 30% in geography and 20% in maths, Mummy!"
^ ...end of line