^{^} ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Friday 2nd April		-		Arthur, Prince of Wales, died, 1502. Explorer Juan Ponce de León first sighted what is now Florida, 1513. Librarian, adventurer and womanizer Giacomo Casanova born, 1725. The RMS Titanic began sea trials, 1912. Actress Penelope Keith born, 1940. Novelist Lillian O'Donnell died, 2005. International Children's Book Day. World Autism Awareness Day.
Saturday 3rd April		-		The coronation of Edward the Confessor, 1043. Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire, died, 1538. Surgeon John Abernethy born, 1764. Composer Johannes Brahms died, 1897. Motorola employee Martin Cooper made the first handheld mobile phone call, to Bell Labs' Joel S. Engel, 1973. Actress, writer and producer Rachel Bloom born, 1987.
Sunday 4th April		-		The first historical record of Moscow was made, in reference to a meeting of two princes, 1147. Mathematician John Napier died, 1617. Sculptor Grinling Gibbons born, 1648. The World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York City were dedicated, 1973. Actress Amanda Righetti born, 1983. Astronomer Liisi Oterma died, 2001.
Monday 5th April		-		Russian forces repelled an invasion attempt by the Teutonic Knights at the Battle on the Ice, 1242. Philosopher Thomas Hobbes born, 1588. Engraver Diana Scultori died, 1612. Archaeologists working at Knossos, Crete, discovered a large cache of clay tablets with writing in the hieroglyphic Linear B script, 1900. Actress Hayley Atwell born, 1982. Singer-songwriter Gene Pitney died, 2006.
Tuesday 6th April		-		King Richard I of England died, 1199. The Dover Straits earthquake, one of the largest recorded in England, Flanders or Northern France, occurred, 1580. Artist Raphael born, 1483. Celluloid was patented, 1869. Cycling activist Claire Morissette born, 1950. Singer-songwriter Tammy Wynette died, 1998.
Wednesday 7th April		-		Atilla the Hun sacked Metz, 451. Artist El Greco died, 1614. Poet William Wordsworth born, 1770. Chemist John Walker sold the first friction matches, 1827. Singer-songwriter Billie Holiday born, 1915. Actress Theda Bara died, 1955. World Health Day.
Thursday 8th April		-		Lorenzo de' Medici, de facto ruler of the Florentine Empire, died, 1492. German noblewoman Barbara of Hesse born, 1536. The Venus de Milo was discovered on Milos, 1820. Film director, producer and special effects artist Douglas Trumbull born, 1942. A group of computer manufacturers, users and academics met to discuss the creation of the COBOL programming language, 1959. Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom [1979-1990], died, 2013.

^{^} THE WISDOM OF...

This week, Billie Holiday:

No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music, or it isn't music.

^{^} FILM QUIZ

A selection of quotations from films released in the same year. Answers next issue or from the regular address.

• This is the generation who grew up, and forgot to lead their lives.
• I am the man with the power to create catastrophe.
• Anybody hungry? Oh, the marvels of American science. Here we are millions of miles from earth, and we can still send out for pizza.
• All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand enemies. And when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you; digger, listener, runner, Prince with the swift warning. Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.
• We all have our little faults. Mine's in California.

Last issue's quotations were from films released in 1988:

• Penny Pingleton, you know you are punished. From now on you're wearing a giant P on your blouse every day to school so that the whole world knows that Penny Pingleton is permanently, positively, punished.
      -- Hairspray
• How could he be afraid of heights? He's so tall!
      -- Switching Channels
• - As soon as we get settled, we'll build you a darkroom in the basement, okay?
  - My whole life is a dark room. One big dark room.
      -- Beetlejuice
• Don't play with that wand! It holds vast powers. Only a real sorcerer can use it, not a stupid peck like you.
      -- Willow
• - You don't know how hard it is being a woman looking the way I do.
  - You don't know how hard it is being a man looking at a woman looking the way you do.
  - I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way.
      -- Who Framed Roger Rabbit

^{^} WEIRD WORLD NEWS

Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...

• Staff at a Dollar General store in Kenansville, North Carolina, got fed up with a large stray dog that wandered into the shop five times, always making off with a large purple stuffed unicorn, so they called animal control to collect him. The officer who came out saw how attached he obviously was to the unicorn so they bought it for him. After pictures of the dog, dubbed 'Sisu', cuddling his unicorn at the county animal shelter went viral he was adopted within 24 hours - along with his unicorn. ● Online estate agents' listings are often a delight for nosy neighbours, but one man who was checking out a neighbour's house when it was up for sale on Zoopla got a shock. Photographed lounging on one of the beds was his pet cat, and given that it had not been shooed off the bed for the photograph he could only assume that it was a frequent visitor to the house. ● Customers at a Costco supermarket in Anchorage, Alaska, have found that an unkindness [yes, that is the collective noun] of ravens have been stealing food from their shopping bags while their backs were turned to load their cars. "They know what they're doing; it's not the first time," shopper Matt Lewallen said, "They're very fat so I think they've got a whole system there." ● A flock of Rhea birds have been running wild on a housing estate in Maple Cross, Hertfordshire, leaving police, council and highway teams scrambling to come up with a way to catch the birds, believed to number around 20. It is not known where they escaped from, but Rheas, originally from South America, can run at up to 50mph (80km/h) and have been known to attack smaller animals including dogs. Because of their size and speed they have been compared to the cartoon character Road Runner. [Just don't deploy a coyote... -Ed] ● Residents in Northampton in the East Midlands are also have bird trouble. For the last five years on one specific block of houses a swan has been rattling letterboxes and hitting doors with his beak. He does not cause any damage, and nobody knows why he does it. ● Vish Singh, 6, from Walsall, like many children, loves dinosaurs, and was given a fossil-hunting kit for Christmas. Recently, while digging for worms in his garden he found a chunk of fossilised horn coral. The next day he found a block of compressed sand containing fossilised molluscs, shells and a crinoid resembling part of a squid tentacle. The fossils date to 251-488 million years ago, known as the Paleozoic Era when Earth's landmasses formed the Pangea supercontinent and what is now England was underwater.


• After a spate of news reports about the Apophis near-Earth asteroid and claims that it could impact the planet in 2029, 2036 or 2068 NASA has released a statement confirming its earlier dismissal of an impact in 2029 or 2036 and, following new analysis, also ruling out a 2068 impact, indeed it will not hit Earth in the next 100 years. Apophis - named for the ancient Egyptian god of chaos and darkness - is an estimated 1,210' (370m) across and was discovered in 2004. If it did hit the Earth it is estimated that it would release the equivalent of 1,200 megatons of TNT, about 120 times that of the Tunguska event in 1908 and the Arizona Meteor Crater impact, but a fraction of the Chicxulub impact believed to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Depending on where it landed it could still cause tsunamis, a 17,000'- (5.1km)-wide crater or an impact winter similar to the effects of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. ● A study of astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent 340 days aboard the International Space Station has shown that without having to fight the normal load from gravity to pump blood around his body Kelly's heart shrank by around a quarter. It returned to normal size after he returned to Earth. ● When SpaceX began launching its network of Starlink satellites there was an outcry from ground-based astronomers that the planned thousands of 'cubesats' would play havoc with observations, but little actual evidence. A new analysis of nighttime conditions has found that sunlight reflecting from the thousands of satellites and pieces of space mission debris already orbiting the Earth has already brightened the night sky by 10%, even away from built-up areas. The result is that fainter stars have become harder to see from Earth. SpaceX is reportedly trying to reduce the reflection from its satellites, but for astronomers, the damage may have already been done. ● Data from a seismometer on NASA's InSight lander, which landed on Mars in 2018, has shown that the core of the red planet is roughly half the size of Earth's and may be entirely liquid. The Earth's core is composed of a solid core surrounded by a liquid comprising mostly molten iron and nickel. Mars' core might also have a higher oxygen content than Earth's.


• A 121-year-old bar of chocolate, one of a batch commissioned by Queen Victoria to boost the morale of British troops fighting in the Boer War, has been found still in its paper wrapper and tin, inside a Boer War helmet case in at attic of the National Trust-owned Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk. Anna Forest, the Trust's cultural heritage curator described it as "a remarkable find", although being well past its use-by date "you wouldn't want it as your Easter treat." ● A road in Buckshaw Village, Lancashire, is named Barnes Wallis Way after the designer of the WW2 Dambusters' 'bouncing bomb' and the geodesic construction technique used in aircraft including the Wellington to both lighten and strengthen their fuselage, but when the road signs were replaced in 2016 the name was misspelled as "Barnes Wallace Way". They were quickly corrected. This year the signs have been renewed again, and once again they misspell the name, this time as "Barns Wallis Way". Chorley Council are arranging for the signs to be replaced with corrected ones. Again. ● Weather researcher Mila Zinkova has suggested that multiple eyewitness accounts of seeing aurora at the latitude and time that the RMS Titanic sank could mean that in addition to a fire in a coal bunker and missing binoculars in the crow's nest, the ship's compass and telegraph equipment could have been adversely affected leading to its position being falsely recorded and delays in sending a distress message. ● A 6,000-year-old salt-making complex, including kilns and ceramic bowls has been found in Yorkshire, pushing the earliest-known date for the mass production of salt, and therefore the preservation of beef and the development of the Neolithic economy, back by almost 2,400 years. ● With 22 royal mummies due to be transferred to a new museum in Egypt in April, the recent spate of unfortunate events to hit the county, including a train crash in Sohoq, a bridge collapse, fire-ravaged shops and most widely-known, the blocking of the Suez Canal by the Ever Given container ship [more on that below], former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass has publicly denied that the "curse of the pharaohs" has struck. The legend of the curse - said to affect anyone who disturbs a mummy - became widely known after the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1923 and the coincidental deaths of several of those involved. ● Andrew Webb, 45, and his 11-year-old daughter Matilda spent the recent lockdown recreating the famous Sutton Hoo helmet in Lego, and have won praise for it from the National Trust, which owns the site in Suffolk, and the hope of displaying it alongside replica helmets at the site. Their design - using about 1,000 bricks, has also been submitted to Lego Ideas, where visitors can vote on designs to be considered for sale as official Lego kits.


• Last week French police proudly announced the interception of a €1m (£860,000; $1.2m) shipment of MDMA, better known as the drug ecstasy. Analysis of the haul after the initial press release found that it was not MDMA. It was strawberry-flavoured gummy sweets, specifically Haribo Tagada, which had been ground into powder for unknown reasons. One person arrested in the suspected narcotics packaging plant where the 'MDMA' was found was still charged - with having stolen mobile phones and a machine used to manufacture ecstasy tablets. ● An Italian gangster who had been on the run for seven years after evading police who wanted him for allegedly trafficking cocaine into the Netherlands, was arrested in the Dominican Republic on Wednesday. He was located after posting a cooking video to YouTube. Although he was careful not to show his face, his lower arms and hands were clearly visible, with a number of distinguishing tattoos.


• With a significant reduction in air pollution caused by the drop-off of air travel during the pandemic, analysis of flights by environmental groups has suggested that a small minority of frequent flyers make a majority of flights. In the UK 70% of flights were taken by 15% of the population, while 57% took no flights abroad. In the US 12% of people accounted for 66% of flights, while in India 45% of flights were taken by just 1% of the population. Similar figures were found in other countries. Both Greenpeace in the UK and Possible, a climate campaign group in America, are calling for a levy on frequent flyers and the abolition of air miles, which encourage frequent flying.


• Over the four years of the previous US presidency we perhaps became immune to the childish tweets issuing from the top levels of the US government, but last weekend the US Strategic Command's Twitter account tweeted ";l;;gmlxzssaw", leading to fears that it had been hacked by a foreign power. Mikael Thalen, a writer at news site The Daily Dot, filed a Freedom of Information Act request and got at the truth. As he later tweeted, "Turns out their Twitter manager left his computer unattended, resulting in his "very young child" commandeering the keyboard." [Lucky it wasn't David Lightman... -Ed]


• If biting into an ice cream or taking a swig of a really cold drink gives you a sharp pain, scientists have now worked out how. They have identified the cells and nerve signals in sensitive teeth, specifically in the dentine between the inner pulp and the hard enamel, which could pave the way for new treatments including toothpastes, patches or medical chewing gum. Such treatments would also help with regular toothache.


• If you have £4.25m ($5.85) to spare and are looking for somewhere with a sea view, a 23-bedroom former military marine fort with a 7-bedroom staff accomodation, its own restaurant, five themed bars, a traditional English pub, a sauna, a fire pit barbecue, a spa with four treatment rooms and its own helideck is on the market. No Mans Fort, off the coast of the Isle of Wight, is just 35 minutes from Portsmouth by boat, or 20 minutes from central London by helicopter. The fort was originally built as a coastal defence in the 1860s and was refurbished in 2015. ● Also on the market is a 5.5 acre 7-bedroom, 13-bathroom property with a gym, 8-car garage, two guesthouses, and a home theatre in Montecito, California, once owned by actor Rob Lowe. Described by its realtor as embodying "the epitome of Montecito and Southern California" the house is on the market for $22.5m (£16.35m). It also comes with privacy-obsessed neighbours, except for when they, er, accidentally gave a 2-hour interview to Oprah Winfrey that was broadcast around the world and continues to receive news coverage weeks later, that is...


• Captain Sir Tom Moore walked 100 laps of his garden for his 100^th birthday to raise money for NHS charities. RAF veteran John Wilcock is rollerskating 90 laps of his courtyard to mark his 90^th and to raise money for hungry families. Five-year-old Tony Hudgell, who had to have both legs amputated, walked 33' (10m) a day on his prosthetic limbs and crutches throughout July to raise money for the hospital that saved his life. There are many other examples. If there has been one memorable reaction to the pandemic, it is surely people pushing themselves for charitable causes. Australian Tom Dury came up with a plan to skateboard across the country to raise money to build the first skatepark in Laos, where the skateboarding community has developed over the last decade. By March 29^th he had completed 1,864 miles (3,000km), with another 621 miles (1,000km) to go. As he told reporters "I didn;t realise how big Australia was. It's hard work, but it's really really rewarding." At the time of writing he has surpassed his fundraising goal.


• There has been much well-deserved criticism of AI systems in the last few years. Now Google's AI has come up with possibly the best reason for the whole concept to be immediately, and permanently, stopped. No, not global thermonuclear war, or deepfaked evidence of US electoral fraud. It is a recipe. Sara Robinson, an engineer and developer advocate at Google Machine Learning trained an AI model with a database of recipes for biscuits [in the British sense], cakes, scones and traybakes to produce an AI-optimised cake recipe. At some point chopped Maltesers (a chocolate-coated honeycombed malted dough confectionary) were added in, at which point it seems that the AI decided to balance the sweetness of the Maltesers with something savoury. Specifically Marmite, the yeast-based spread that has given its name to describe things that people either love or hate. Yes, the AI created a recipe for a Maltesers-based cake with a buttercream Marmite icing... You can find Robinson's introductions and the recipe itself here (Google blog). Just don't send us a slice. Please. [Love Marmite - on toast, hate Maltesers... /shrug -Ed]

IN BRIEF: A "For Sale" sign on a house in a Boston, MA, neighbourhood, has an added notice reading "NOT HAUNTED"... ● A 38' (11.5m) pink and white boat in Florida, apparently envious of the Ever Given, being transported along Interstate 10 fell off its trailer and ended up blocking the entire road for a few hours. ● Rapper Lil Nas X launched customised Nike Air Max 97 trainers reportedly containing a drop of real blood and embossed with a pentagram as "Satan Shoes"; Nike respond by suing for copyright infringement because they had nothing to do with the shoe customisation and, presumably, do not want to be seen to endorse Satan... ● Slough, Berkshire, is to be the UK testbed for China's "sponge city" technology, a permeable surface on roads that absorbs surface water to help reduce the impact of flooding. ● A 67-year-old Thai man who went to the doctor complaining of stomach ache was found to have tapeworm eggs in a stool sample. After being given deworming medicine he excreted a 59'- (18m)-long tapeworm. ● A TikTok user who claims to have travelled in time to 2027 has claimed that humanity will be extinct within six years, and posted videos of a deserted Valencia, Spain, to "prove" it, although apparently the electricity and internet seemed to be working fine in the videos, and shelves in the "empty" stores were fully stocked. [Its as if everywhere was deserted because of something like, we don't know, say a global pandemic in 2021... -Ed] ● A private boys' school in Perth, Australia, has banned pupils from having mullet haircuts because they are "untidy" and "not acceptable". ● A Volkwagen press release announcing that the company is to rebrand itself as 'Voltswagen' as it switches to electric car production was later admitted to be an April Fool's Day joke that was accidentally released early.

CORONAVIRUS ROUND-UP: Police broke up a rave under a Junction 4 bridge of the M6 motorway. ● A group of 12 people were fined after police found them inside a derelict building in Cheshire, having travelled from as far afield as Yorkshire and Derbyshire. Some claimed to be "urban explorers", others to be "ghost hunters". ● As the first steps out of lockdown in the UK began with up to six people from two households officially allowed to meet outdoors, crowds flooded parks and beaches in the hot weather leaving piles of rubbish, and in some cases, human waste, to be cleared up after them, often by volunteers who saw the mess left behind, online. A number of parks and beaches have been closed as a result.

UPDATES: The walrus seen off County Kerry, Ireland, then at Broad Haven on the west coast of Wales appears to be travelling around the coast. It was most recently seen basking on the RNLI slipway at Tenby on the southwest coast of Wales. ● The Ever Given, which became stuck across the Suez Canal on March 23^rd was successfully refloated on the 29^th thanks to the efforts of eleven harbour tugs, two seagoing tugs, the removal of water ballast, a high tide and the dredging of just over a million cubic feet (30,000m³) of sand from under the prow by mechanical diggers [or was it the dachshunds (Facebook video)?]. If you miss the sight of the Suez Canal blocked by a 200,000-tonne container ship and have the latest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator there is an add-on (flightsim.to) which will add it to the game's scenery.

^{^} OBITUARIES

Film director Bertrand Tavernier (The Clockmaker, In the Electric Mist, Round Midnight, 79), actress Jessica Walter (Arrested Development, Play Misty For Me, Archer, 80), author and screenwriter Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment, The Last Picture Show, 84), conspirator G. Gordon Liddy (chief operative of the 'White House Plumbers' unit in the Watergate Scandal, 90), businesswoman and philanthropist Doreen Lofthouse (transformed a family pharmacy's local business into the worldwide producer of Fishermen's Friend lozenges, 91), author Beverly Cleary (Ramona novels, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Dear Mr Henshaw, 104).

^{^} DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!

Dumbledore Bear, our in-house psychic predicts that the following numbers will be lucky:

17, 24, 25, 34, 38, 47

[UK National Lottery, number range 1-59]
You can get your very own prediction at http://www.simonlamont.co.uk/tfir/dumbledore.htm.

^{^} AND FINALLY...

    The teacher had asked the class what they would do to make the world a better place. Little Simon put his hand up. "Yes, Little Simon?"
    "I would make littering illegal, Miss."
    "Very good. Yes, Little Mary?"
    "Miss, I would ban wars."
    "OK. Who else has an idea?"
    The children looked thoughtful, then Little Jennifer raised her hand. "Yes, Little Jennifer?"
    Little Jennifer smiled as only she could. "I would declare ice cream a main course instead of a pudding, Miss!"

---

^{^} ...end of line