Issue ^#712 - 21^st April 2023

Edited by and copyright ©2023 Simon Lamont
( Facebook  /  Twitter / Mastodon )

tfir@simonlamont.co.uk

The latest edition is always available at http://www.simonlamont.co.uk/tfir/index.htm
The archives are at http://www.simonlamont.co.uk/tfir/archive/index.htm

The Friday Irregular does not set any cookies or tracking, but our host and linked sites out of our control might.

Unless otherwise indicated dollar values are in US dollars. Currency conversions are at current rates at time of writing and may be rounded.
The Friday Irregular uses Common Era year notation.

^{^} ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Friday 21st April		-		Rome was founded by Romulus, 753 BCE [traditional date]. King Henry VII of England died, 1509. Writer Charlotte Brontë born, 1816. The Surgeon's photograph, purporting to show the Loch Ness monster (but confirmed as a hoax in 1999), was published in the Daily Mail, 1934. Singer-songwriter Iggy Pop born, 1947. Artist and actress Marjorie Eaton died, 1986. National Tea Day in the UK ☕.
Saturday 22nd April		-		Novelist Henry Fielding born, 1707. Engineer Richard Trevithick died, 1833. Thousands claimed land in the Land Rush of 1889, establishing the cities of Guthrie and Oklahoma City within hours, 1889. Photographer Laura Gilpin born, 1891. Telephone signals were carried over optical fibre for the first time, 1977. Translator Erika Fuchs died, 2005. Earth Day and related observances.
Sunday 23rd April		-		Æthelred the Unready, King of the English, died, 1016. King Edward III of England announced the founding of the Order of the Garter, 1348. James Buchanan, 15th President of the United States, born, 1791. Novelist Teresa de la Parra died, 1936. Actress and model Jaime King born, 1979. Co-founder Jawed Karim uploaded the first YouTube video, titled "Me at the zoo", 2005. World Book Day (UNESCO).
Monday 24th April		-		The marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots and François, Dauphin of France, at Notre Dame de Paris, 1558. Mathematician and physicist Thomas Fincke died, 1656. Novelist Anthony Trollope born, 1815. Ernest Shackleton and five men from the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition set out in a lifeboat from Elephant Island to organise a rescue of their shipmates from the sunken Endurance, 1916. Artist Bridget Riley born, 1931. Businesswoman Estée Lauder died, 2004.
Tuesday 25th April		-		Oliver Cromwell, general and Lord Protector of Great Britain, born, 1599. The Spanish fleet, anchored at Gibraltar, was mostly destroyed by the Dutch fleet, during the Eighty Years' War, 1607. Physicist, mathematician and astronomer Anders Celsius died, 1744. Singer Ella Fitzgerald born, 1917. Bell Telephone Laboratories publicly demonstrated the first practical solar cell, 1954. Actress Bea Arthur died, 2009. World Malaria Day (WHO).
Wednesday 26th April		-		Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius born, 121. Japanese shōgun Ashikaga Yoshihisa died, 1489. Playwright William Shakespeare was baptised in Stratford-upon-Avon (the earliest record of his existence), 1564. Developmental biologist Anne McLaren born, 1927. The Chernobyl disaster occurred, 1986. Broadcaster Jill Dando was killed, 1999. World Intellectual Property Day.
Thursday 27th April		-		Explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed at the Battle of Mactan, 1521. Ceby, the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines, was established, 1565. Samuel Morse, co-inventor of the Morse code, born, 1791. Xerox PARC introduced the computer mouse, 1981. Singer, rapper and flautist Lizzo born, 1988. Archaeologist and WWII secret agent Lorraine Copeland died, 2013.

^{^} THE WISDOM OF...

This week, Henry Fielding:

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

^{^} FILM QUIZ

A selection of quotations from films containing the word 'Jen' in the title, either as a whole word or part of a word. Answers next issue or from the regular address.

• It's the parents who ought to be in the clinics, not the children.
• I suppose I'm drinking myself sober.
• Hell is a teenage girl.
• The strands of our lives are woven together. The world nor time can part us.
• - How come you're so rich?
  - My parents are dead.
  - You lucky bastard.

Last issue's air quotations were from:

• Remind me to send a thank you note to Mr. Boeing.
      -- Airport [1970]
• They somehow managed to get every creep and freak in the universe onto this one plane. And then somehow managed to let them take it over. And then somehow managed to stick us right smack in the middle.
      -- Con Air [1997]
• - Kathryn, if you give a mouse a cookie...
  - It's gonna want a glass of milk.
      -- Air Force One [1997]
• He will begin to change hearts, and it is in the heart that all wars are won.
      -- The Last Airbender [2010]
• Ladies and gentlemen, this is your stewardess speaking... We regret any inconvenience the sudden cabin movement might have caused, this is due to periodic air pockets we encountered, there's no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you enjoy the rest of your flight... By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?
      -- Airplane! [1980]

^{^} WEIRD WORLD NEWS

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

• A rare black fox has been caught on camera around Barry and Sully in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales. Because the species, also known as the silver fox, is not native to the UK but kept as exotic pets police and the RSPCA have asked anyone who sees it to let them know so it can be caught. ● A rare giant anteater has been born at Chester Zoo, only the third to be born there in the zoo's 92-year history. ● A Przewalski's foal, critically endangered in the wild, has been born at Whipsnade Zoo. ● A vet in Devon has successfully removed 3.3' (1m) of yarn from the intestines of a 10-month-old kitten which had swallowed it. ● A fireman in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, removed a drainage grate and lifted out seven ducklings which had fallen through; they were reunited with their mother. ● A man in Windsor opened a bag of bananas bought at a local Tesco supermarket only for a 6" (15cm) spider to crawl out. It had an egg sac which could have contained up to 200 spiderlings. He managed to get it into a plastic container and took it back to the store, where their pest control service identified it as a huntsman spider, one of the largest venomous spiders in the world. ● Mystery surrounds the body of a 10'- (3m)-long python found on rocks at a beach in Broughty Ferry, Scotland. Scottish SPCA officers have been unable to discover how it got there, whether it was already dead and washed ashore or abandoned to die. ● Police and RSPCA officers launched a five-hour rescue mission in Suffolk after therapy emu Roddy jumped his fence while his owners, who keep a number of animals used to support people with mental health issues, were away. Roddy's owner, called back by police, eventually found him a mile away and coaxed him into a car. It is thought that Roddy had been spooked during a storm.


• Astronomers have seen a planet being formed in a disk of gas and dust 374 light years away. It is only the third protoplanet seen and could shed light on how gas giants like Jupiter formed. ● The Ingenuity helicopter is still active on Mars and just completed its 50^th flight just short of the second anniversary of its first. Ingenuity was originally designed to perform just five flights as an aerial scout for the Perseverence rover. On its most recent flight it set a new altitude record of 59' (18m). In total the 4lb (1.8kg) chopper, built mostly of off-the-shelf parts, has (so far) flown for more than 89 minutes and covered 7.1 miles (11.6km). ● Also on Mars the Curiosity rover, which has been trundling across the planet for more than a decade, has received a major software update to amalgamate previous patches, improve control and simplify the software patching process as well as making slight changes to the messages relayed back to Earth. Perhaps most importantly, Curiosity can now analyse its surrounding on the move, as newer rovers can, rather than having to keep stopping. ● The James Webb Space Telescope has returned images of six of the earliest galaxies, which appear to be bigger and older than current theories about the origin of the universe say they should be. ● Also puzzling astronomers is a black hole that appears to be emitting light from is dark spot. It is possible that it is a previously-unseen phenomenon that merely resembles a black hole to our instruments. ● Skywatchers in Alaska were mystified by a massive glowing spiral in the night sky; it was later found to have been caused by a SpaceX rocket launch, though not the Starship rocket, the tallest and most powerful rocket in history, for which the first test launch was abandoned at the last minute because of a frozen valve. ● New research has suggested that much of the Earth's water might have been formed by the interaction of a magma ocean on the young planet with a molecular hydrogen proto-atmosphere, which would also have moved hydrogen into the metallic core and oxidised the mantle. ● The European Space Agency's Jupiter's Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) probe successfully launched from French Guiana a day later than planned because of lightning in the area. The probe will slingshot past the Earth and Moon in August 2024, Venus in August 2025 and Earth again in September 2026 and January 2029 to build up speed to reach Jupiter in July 2031, where it will study the planet's magnetosphere and polar regions before entering orbit around Ganymede, from where it will also study Europa and Callisto. The three icy moons are thought to hold internal liquid water oceans that could potentially harbour organic molecules. JUICE will provide the first detailed analysis of them.


• A team from Historic Environment Scotland (HES) have discovered the site of a small Roman fort in Dunchocher, Clydebank, next to the remains of the Antonine Wall. The fortlet was mentioned in 1707 by antiquarian Robert Sibbald but its location had been lost. It would have been manned by 10-12 soldiers defending a stretch of what was then the northernmost boundary of the Roman empire. HES have applied to have it added to the Antonine Wall's world heritage status. ● Scientists have proposed a new theory to explain how the Antikythera device worked to track and predict astronomical events. The remains of the device were found in a Roman-era shipwreck in 1901, and its sophisticated arrangement of gears, in 82 partially disintegrated fragments, led to it being called the "first analogue computer". It has been theoretically reconstructed with both computer and physical models, but the new theory concerns its front display, proposed to be based on Babylonian and Greek astronomy as well as Plato's theory of the universe, to show the movement of the Sun, Moon and then-known planets. ● Archaeologists on the Calgarth Estate near Windermere in the Lake District have found evidence of the children who were brought there in 1945 after being liberated from Nazi concentration camps, before being rehomed across the UK. Around 300 orphaned Jewish children stayed in homes originally built for workers of the Sunderland Flying Boat Factory and their families. By 1946 they had all been rehomed and the site was demolished. Archaeological finds have included a tube of toothpaste made in the former Czech Republic. ● A collection of 230 classic cars will be auctioned off in Holland next month. They were amassed by businessman Ad Palmen, 82, over the last 40 years, but ill health led to his decision to sell them off. The collection includes a rare Lancia B24 Spider America, Maseratis, Jaguars, Aston Martins, BMWs and Facel Vegas, in pristine condition. The Lancia B24 alone could sell for up to €1m (£880,000; $1.1m). ● A 67 million-year-old 38'- (11.6m)-long 12.8'- (3.9m)-tall fossilised skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex has sold at auction in Switzerland for CHF5.55m (£5m; $6.2m). It is the first T.rex to be auctioned in Europe. More than half of the skeleton is real bone, the rest is casts, all assembled from three specimens retrieved in Montana and Wyoming between 2008 and 2013.


• Police in Blackpool are investigating after arresting a drunk 50-year-old man who was photographed pulling a live seagull across a road on a dog lead. The bird was taken to a vet but had to be put down. Seagulls are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. ● Carly Burd had been using her allotment to grow vegetables for families in need during the cost of living crisis, but was distraught after vandals destroyed over 300 newly-planted potato and onion plants, and salted the ground. After her story went online more than £170,000 ($211,270) was donated to help her. ● Kenyan police are hunting for Makenzie Nthenge, pastor of the Good News International Church, described as a cult, after discovering 15 seriously ill worshippers, four of whom died before they got to hospital. Nthenge is accused of telling his followers that they should starve themselves to meet Jesus. Last month he was released on bail after being charged in connection with the deaths of two children whose parents belonged to his congregation, and police are also investigating a reported mass grave in a forest near his church building. ● Thieves in Philadelphia who broke into a lorry thinking it contained money found that it did contain $750,000 (£600,000), but it was all in dimes (10c coins). They still made off with $100,000 (£80,000) worth of coins; police are unsure just how they did it... ● General Henry Sanbria has been removed from his post as national police director in Bogota after claiming to have used exorcisms to catch drug kingpins and guerrilla leaders. ● The US Secret Service raced into action after someone recently got past the iron fencing around the White House while President Biden was inside. No TIFG^*-inspired insurrectionist though, it was a toddler who had squeezed between the bars and run onto the lawn. A spokesman later told USA Today that "We were going to wait until he learned to talk to question him, but in lieu of that he got a timeout and was sent on [his] way with his parents"... ● Record-holding ultra-marathon runner Joasia Zakrzewski has been disqualified after finishing third in the recent 2023 GB Ultras Manchester to Liverpool 50-mile (80km) race. All runners were tracked using GPX mapping data, which showed that she covered one mile (1.6km) of the race in just 100 seconds. It is suspected, following interviews with stewards, other competitors and Zakrzewski herself, that she travelled by car for 2.5 miles (4km). A friend reportedly commented that she had felt sick and was sorry for any upset.
  
  ^*Thrice^**-indicted Former Guy
  ^**So far...
  
  


• Eleven Indonesian fishermen stranded on a small island off the coast of Australia for six days without food or water after Cyclone Ilsa, the strongest storm to hit the area in 14 years, sank one of their boats and smashed the other onto the island, have been airlifted to safety. Nine others are missing, presumed dead. ● Oceanographers mapping the seafloor off the Galapagos Islands have discovered a previously unknown coral reef. ● The "Great Pacific Garbage Patch", some 79,000 tonnes of mostly-microplastic debris circulating in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre between Hawaii and California is now so extensive and stable that it has developed its own ecosystem. ● Swedish engineers are planning on decontaminating caverns underneath the city of Västerås which were used to store oil in case WWIII broke out, and filling them with 10,600,000 cubic feet (300,000m³) of water that will be naturally heated to temperatures around 95^oC (203^oF). Heat exchangers will transfer around 500MW of heating power from the caverns to a district network that covers 98% of the city's households. ● The Brecon Beacons national park in Wales has had its name and logo changed to drop the association with carbon-producing fires. It is now known as Bannau Brycheiniog (pronounced Ban-eye Bruck-ein-iog), meaning "The Peaks of Brychan's Kingdom". Brychan was the 5^th Century king who ruled the area. ● Actor and former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger recently posted a video online of himself filling in a pothole near his home in the Brentwood neighbourhood of Los Angeles which he said had "upset" his neighbours, "screwing up cars and bicycles for weeks". A spokesman for the City of Los Angeles later told NBC Los Angeles that it was not a pothole, but "a service trench [for] permitted work being performed at the location by SoCalGas, who expect the work to be completed by the end of May"...


• German photographer Boris Elgdagsen recently won the creative open category of the Sony World Photography Awards with a photograph of a young woman with an older woman standing behind her. Soon afterwards he turned down the prize, revealing that the photograph had been created by an AI (artificial intelligence) system. "I applied as a cheeky monkey, to find out if the competitions are prepared for AI images to enter. They are not", he said in a statement on his website. ● Music streaming services Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and Tidal have pulled a song that used the cloned voices of Drake and The Weeknd, created by an AI. The song had gone viral last weekend but was pulled after Universal Music Group issued copyright takedown notices to the services as well as video services TikTok and YouTube, which are also withdrawing it.

IN BRIEF: A 13-year-old boy had to be rescued from a Charlotte, North Carolina, arcade claw machine after he tried climbing inside to get a plush toy prize. ● Adam Stanton-Wharmby, who has cerebral palsy, has travelled the length of mainland Britain from John O'Groats to Land's End in what is thought to be the first electric motorised wheelchair to be modified by Formula 1 engineers to give it more range and speed. ● Two women are in hospital with critical injuries after one fell from a muiltistorey car park in Wood Green, London, landing on the other. ● The Lord of the Rings fan Ben Coyles, 22, was on a birthday pub crawl in Bristol dressed as Gandalf when he ran into Sir Ian McKellan, who famously played Gandalf in both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies and was in the city at the conclusion of a 145-date touring production of the pantomime Mother Goose. ● Australian father Lucas Helmke, 33, has set a new world record for push-ups, completing more than 3,200 in an hour. ● Netflix is shutting down its DVD rental service [Did anyone know they still did that? -Ed] ● An extremely rare "diamond within a diamond" - a diamond containing a cavity within which is another, loose diamond - confirmed using optical and electron microscopy, has been found in India. ● Beatriz Flamini, a 50-year-old Spanish climber and extreme athlete, has emerged after spending 500 days in a cave 230' (70m) undergound as part of a research study into the human mind and circadian rhythms. ● Flat Earther Bob Knodel spent $20,000 (£16,000) on a laser gyroscope to film himself proving that the Earth is flat and does not rotate like a ball. The film, shown in a Netflix documentary, instead proved that the Earth is round and does, indeed, rotate...

^{^} OBITUARIES

Mountaineer Noel Hanna (10 summits of Everest, the first Northern Irelander to summit K2, died descending Annapurna, 56), author and antiques expert Judith Miller (Antiques Roadshow, co-founder of Miller's Antiques Price Guide, 71), bassist Cliff Fish (Paper Lace, "Billy, Don't Be a Hero", "The Night Chicago Died", 73), crime author Anne Perry (Thomas Pitt and William Monk book series, convicted at the age of 15, as Juliet Hulme, for the murder of her best friend Pauline Parker's mother, dramatised in Peter Jackson's 1994 film Heavenly Creatures, 84), actor, director and theatre archivist Murray Melvin (A Taste of Honey, Alfie [1966], Torchwood, 90), fashion designer Dame Mary Quant (popularised miniskirts and helped shape the Swinging 60s London fashion era through her Bazaar shop, 93), aerospace engineer and inventor Virginia Norwood (created the Multispectral Scanner for the Landsat Earth monitoring satellite system, designed the ground-control communications system for NASA's Surveyor lunar lander, 96), veteran Joe Cattini (one of the last remaining British D-Day veterans, 100).

^{^} DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!

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

4, 6, 25, 26, 33, 55

[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...

    Little Jennifer came home from school. "Mummy," she said, "you're looking very beautiful today."
    Somewhat surprised, her mother said "Why, thank you, Little Jennifer. What did you do do in school today?"
    Little Jennifer smiled as only she could. "We had an English lesson, Mummy, and Miss taught us about reading between the lines..."

---

^{^} ...end of line