Issue ^#744 - 1^st December 2023

Edited by and copyright ©2023 Simon Lamont
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tfir@simonlamont.co.uk

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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 1st December		-		Byzantine princess, physician and scholar Anna Komnene born, 1083. King Henry V of England entered Paris, 1420. Surveyor George Everest died, 1866. Electrical engineer Jerry Lawson, the "father of the videogame cartridge", born, 1940. Writer Janet Lewis died, 1998. The Arecibo Telescope collapsed, 2020. World AIDS Day.
Saturday 2nd December		-		The University of Leipzig opened, 1409. Cartographer Gerardus Mercator died, 1594. Artist Georges Seurat born, 1859. Writer, activist and wife of Karl Marx, Jenny von Westphalen died, 1881. The first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was initiated by a team led by Enrico Fermi in Chicago, 1942. Filmmaker Penelope Spheeris born, 1945. International Day for the Abolition of Slavery (UN).
Sunday 3rd December		-		Noblewoman Maud Chaworth, Countess of Leicester, died, 1322. Mathematician and cryptographer John Wallis, credited with introducing the '∞' symbol for infinity, born, 1616. The USS Alfred became the first ship to fly the Grand Union Flag, the precursor to the Stars and Stripes, 1775. Physicist and lens maker Carl Zeiss died, 1888. Psychoanalyst and psychologist Anna Freud born, 1895. The space probe Pioneer 10 sent back the first close-up images of Jupiter, 1973. International Day of Persons with Disabilities (UN).
Monday 4th December		-		Poet and polymath Omar Khayyám died, 1131. King Henry III of England renounced his claims to French-controlled territories on continental Europe and King Louis XI of France withdrew his support for English rebels, with the Treaty of Paris, 1259. Empress Meishō of Japan died, 1696. Nurse Edith Cavell born, 1865. The abandoned brigantine Mary Celeste was discovered drifting in the Atlantic, 1872. Software developer and author Eric S. Raymond born, 1957.
Tuesday 5th December		-		Eahlswith, queen consort of King Alfred the Great, died, 902. Composer Henry Lawes born, 1596. Auctioneer James Christie held his first sale, in London, 1766. Travel writer Kate Simon born, 1912. Artist Claude Monet died, 1926. Flight 19, a training flight of five TBF Avenger torpedo bombers, disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, 1945. International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development (UN). World Soil Day (UN). Krampusnacht in Austria.
Wednesday 6th December		-		Astronomer Niccolò Zucchi born, 1586. Colonel Thomas Pride purged Parliament of MPs sympathetic to King Charles I of England ahead of the King's trial, 1648. Writer Anthony Trollope died, 1882. Actress Agnes Moorhead born, 1900. The Nefertiti bust was discovered, 1912. Mimi Smith, nurse and parental guardian of John Lennon, died, 1991.
Thursday 7th December		-		Philosopher and politician Cicero was assassinated, 43 BCE. Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, born, 1545. The Great Storm of 1703 made landfall in Southern England, 1703. Writer Willa Cather born, 1873. The Imperial Japanese Navy made a surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, 1941. Soprano Kirsten Flagstad died, 1962. International Civil Aviation Day (UN).

^{^} THE WISDOM OF...

This week, Cicero:

To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul.

^{^} FILM QUIZ

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

• God damn you. You must think I'm a stupid idiot. There's weeds growing chin high in that place. It must have been a year since that place blew.
• Hey, fellas. Either one of you know where the Smithsonian is? I'm here to pick up a fossil.
• I'm sorry, sir. We don't allow ladies in trousers in the dining area.
• - Poor John. Who says poor John? Don't everybody sob at once! My God, if I went up in flames there's not a living soul who'd pee on me to put the fire out!
  - Let's strike a flint and see.
• 'Tis a far, far better thing I do now than I did that night with the sailor and the artichoke.

Last issue's 'live' quotations were from:

• The things the love of a mad man can do.
      -- The Skin I Live In [2011]
• - Why are you chasing me?
  - Why you running?
  - 'Cause you're chasing me, man!
      -- To Live and Die in L.A. [1985]
• I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum.
      -- They Live [1988]
• I must say I am disappointed with the ease with which I could pull you in. The one thing my honourable mother taught me long ago was never to get into a car with a strange girl. But you, I'm afraid, will get into anything. With any girl.
      -- You Only Live Twice [1967]
• My regards to Baron Samedi, man, right between the eyes.
      -- Live and Let Die [1973]

^{^} WEIRD WORLD NEWS

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

• In the 1960s the Soviet whaling fleet wiped out the population of blue whales around the Seychelles. A year-long project that deployed hydrophones around the Indian Ocean island group has confirmed that they have returned to what are now 154,000 square miles (400,000 km²) of protected waters. As well as the blue whales the project recorded the sounds of sperm whales and dolphins. ● A Sumatran rhino has been born on Sumatra, the western island of Indonesia. Critically endangered, it is the second to be born there this year. ● A De Winton's golden mole has been sighted on a South African beach, 87 years since the last sighting of one in the wild. The 'shimmering' moles tunnel through the sand. ● A man on a fiftieth anniversary cruise with his wife, who discovered his big toe had gone purple, was told by the ship's doctor that it had been bitten by a wolf spider which had then laid eggs in it. The eggs were cut out and he was given antibiotics but after returning home his toe began hurting again and he discovered that one egg had been overlooked, hatched and the spiderling was eating its way out... Doctors successfully removed it.


• Astronomers have detected one of the highest-energy particles ever detected. The 'Amaterasu' particle, named after the Japanese sun goddess, has the second highest energy measured for a space particle, millions of times more than those of the Large Hadron Collider, and second only to the 'Oh-My-God' particle detected in 1991. Like that one, there is no obvious source, which seems to be in an area of empty space next to the Milky Way called the Local Void. ● Analysis of the lunar crater formed by the impact of the Chinese Chang'e 5-T1 spacecraft suggests that it was carrying considerably more weight than accounted for by the Chinese authorities. ● NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications experiment has successfully sent and received a signal transmitted by laser with the Psyche spacecraft more than 10 million miles (16m km) away. ● The James Webb Space Telescope might have recorded the first known dark star. Such stars would have formed from hydrogen and helium in the early universe but instead of being powered by nuclear fusion they are powered by dark matter and relatively cool, which would enable them to grow to massive size, perhaps a million times that of the Sun, and a billion times as bright.


• When volunteer archivist Sarah Coe was going through the contents of an old chest at Mount Kelly College in Tavistock she found a Victorian passport belonging to artist Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, the first director of the National Gallery and President of the Royal Academy. It is not known how it came to be at the school. The passport has been loaned to the National Gallery which holds another of Eastlake's passports in its collection. ● After former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy tweeted that "in every single war that America has fought, we have never asked for land afterwards except enough to bury the Americans who gave the ultimate sacrifice for that freedom we went in for" his post quickly received several community notes correcting him. Some 55% of New Mexico was ceded to the US at the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848. Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines became US territories after the Spanish-American War ended in 1898, American Samoa became American territory after the second Samoan Civil War and, of course, there was most of the land east of the Mississippi River as well as the upper Midwest that was British before the American Revolution... ● North Herefordshire Museum is regendering Roman emperor Elagabarus as a trans woman. Classical texts record Elagabarus as having said "call me not Lord, for I am a Lady" and the emperor married five times, four times to women and the last time to Hiercoles, a former slave and chariot driver, during which the contemporary senator Cassius Dio wrote that the emperor "was bestowed in marriage and was termed wife, mistress and queen". Elagabarus was emperor from 218 until being assassinated at the age of 18 in 222. ● The site of a "possible temple" some 1,400 years old has been discovered at Rendelsham near Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. In the 8^th Century historian the Venerable Bede mentioned a "king's village" at "Rendlaesham" belonging to King Raedwald, who is though to have been buried at Sutton Hoo, and that he had a temple containing altars to pre-Christian gods as well as Christ, although Bede does explicitly state the location of the temple. ● An animatronic head of E.T., the alien from the eponymous Spielberg film is to be sold at auction next month. Despite not being in the best condition it is expected to sell for up to $1m (£790,000). ● David Bowie's handwritten lyric sheets for the songs "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" and "Suffragette City" are expected to fetch up to £100,000 ($127,000) when they are auctioned.


• Taylor James Johnatakis was recently convicted of seven charges for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. He had declared that he wanted to accept full liability for his actions but said that had to plead not guilty as he was a "sovereign citizen" exempt from US law... Unsurprisingly the judge summarised his claim of immunity as "bullshit" and "gobbledegook". He will be sentenced at a later date. ● Four men have appeared at a pre-trial hearing at Oxford Crown Court charged over the theft of an 18-carat gold toilet from Bleinham Palace in Oxfordshire. The functional toilet was part of an exhibition by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and valued at £4.8m ($6m). Its removal caused flooding and damage to the stately home. ● A French pilot has been given a one-year suspended sentence for manslaughter after accidentally hitting a skydiver with the wing of his plane just after the man had jumped, as he turned the plane - so he thought - away from the man's descent path. ● Edouard Léon Cortès' painting Flower Market Madeline, stolen 60 years ago from a New York gallery, has been discovered in a Lancashire village, having passed through London and Manchester auction houses in the intervening years. It has been unconditionally returned to the Arnot Gallery. ● Tech company Nvidia is being sued after senior staffer Mohammed Maniruzzaman gave an online presentation to a team from his former employer, car tech company Valeo, as part of a joint project, during which he allegedly accidentally displayed a file proving that he had stolen tech secrets from them. ● A street sign from Penny Lane in Liverpool has been returned 47 years after it was stolen. The Beatles Story museum in Liverpool had been contacted earlier this year by a former student who admitted that he and his friends had taken it while they were "worse for wear" in 1976, but wanted to return it "in pristine condition" now. Street signs for Penny Lane are the most often stolen in the city, but this is the oldest to be returned. Councillor Dan Barrington, the city's cabinet member for transport, commented that while the removal of street signs is a criminal offence, "given the history of this case and the fact this Penny Lane has got back to where it belongs after what looks like a long and winding journey, then I think we can all agree to just let it be." The museum is displaying the sign.


• In 1986 A23a, the biggest iceberg known, broke away from the Antarctic coastline and grounded in the Weddell Sea, becoming a 1,500 square mile (4,000 km²) ice island. It has now broken free and is drifting towards the south Atlantic. ● A much-loved mature oak tree in the Cornish village of Mylor Bridge is to be felled. The tree had been healthy up to 2021 and was subject to a tree preservation order, but had failed to leaf for the last two years and has been assessed as being completely dead and in danger of falling. There is evidence that somebody has been injecting herbicide into its trunk. ● Virgin Atlantic have flown the first transatlantic flight by a large passenger plane powered only by alternative fuels, although there were no paying passengers aboard. The Boeing 787 carried two types of fuel - 88% was derived fom waste fats and 12% derived from the wastes left by corn production in the US. Carbon emissions using such fuels are typically up to 70% lower than regular fossil fuels. While it is unlikely that enough alternative fuel could be made for the entire aviation industry the flight is being seen as a stepping stone towards the eventual development of alternative power sources.

IN BRIEF: The Cambridgeshire town of March is in the news for its Christmas tree, which has a significant lean at the top and is being compared to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Meanwhile in Hattersley, Manchester, residents are furious with their council for putting up the spindliest of trees which is missing several boughs. ● The American Merriam-Webster Dictionary has named its word of the year as 'authentic', being "a desirable property" with several meanings including "true to one's own personality, spirit or character" and "not false or imitation". ● Several "witch bottles" have washed up on beaches in the Gulf of Mexico in the last few years. The sealed bottles are filled with unusual items and researchers are afraid to open them in case they contain evil spells... ● If you are of a certain age, this will make you feel old. The Now That's What I Call Music series of compilation albums of hit music has just turned 40 and released the 116^th edition. [The Editor remembers Now... #1 when he was at school. -SubEd] [You're fired! Again! -Ed] ● Security footage from an Aldi supermarket in London has been released showing two women fighting with rolls of Christmas wrapping paper. ● The finalists for the Turnip Prize, a spoof of the Turner Prize for art have been announced, and include a crown on top of a KFC carton, titled 'Coronation Chicken', a metal gate with a paper crown stuck on the top, titled "Party Gate" and a balloon pump with a balloon attached, titled 'Inflation'. The winner will be announced on December 5^th. ● Forty-one workers trapped by a landslide in a section of a mountain tunnel they were working on in India have all been been rescued after 17 days underground. A small vertical tube had been drilled to allow food and water to be lowered down, but horizontal drilling to get the men out was delayed by the presence of broken machinery that kept breaking the drill, leaving the last part having to be dug by hand. ● Darren Thomas, from Bristol, has revealed a 2.3lb (1.026kg) lump made of the wax rinds from Babybel cheeses collected over about 24 years... ● When Deliveroo driver Caio Benicio saw a knifeman attacking a woman and a girl outside a school in Dublin last week he leapt off his motorbike and starting hitting the man with his helmet. A fundraising page set up by a local because "the man's a hero and the least we can do is buy him a pint so I'm asking you to donate the price of a pint of Guinness in your local to Caio so he knows the people of Dublin appreciate him" has raised more than €156,000 (£135,000; $171,000). The knifeman had already injured two other children and one other adult before Benicio intervened, and bystanders then restrained the man until Garda officers arrived. ● A crane operator in Reading is being praised for lifting a man from a high-rise building under construction after a major fire had broken out at the site.

^{^} OBITUARIES

Guitarist Geordie Walker (co-founder of Killing Joke, 64), visual effects artist Marc Thorpe (Star Wars franchise, Raiders of the Lost Ark franchise, devised Robot Wars, 77), soccer manager Terry Venables (Tottenham, Barcelona, England, 80), novelist John Nichols (The Milagro Beanfield War, The Wizard of Loneliness, The Sterile Cuckoo, 83), actor Tony Rohr (The Long Good Friday, Harry's Game, Potatohead Blues, 84), puppeteer and entertainment executive Marty Krofft (The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, H.R. Pufnstuf, Land of the Lost, 86), actress Frances Sternhagen (Misery, Outland, Doc Hollywood, 93), cinematographer Victor J. Kemper (Dog Day Afternoon, The Last Tycoon, National Lampoon's Vacation, 96).

^{^} DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!

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

12, 25, 30, 37, 39, 56

[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 and Little Mary were whispering together while the teacher had her back turned to write on the blackboard, but she overheard them and turned round. "Little Jennifer, Little Mary, I wish you would pay a little attention in class," she said.
    Little Jennifer smiled as only she could. "I'm paying as little attention as I can, Miss!"

---

^{^} ...end of line