Issue ^#848 - 19/26^th December 2025

Edited by and copyright ©2025 Simon Lamont
( Facebook  /  Bluesky )

tfir@simonlamont.co.uk

The latest edition is always available at http://www.simonlamont.co.uk/tfir/index.htm
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Unless otherwise indicated dollar values are in U.S. 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 19th December     - Day 353/365		-		The Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery sailed from England carrying the settlers who would found the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown, Virginia, 1606. Marie Thérèse of France born, 1778. Novelist and poet Emily Brontë died, 1848. The BBC World Service began broadcasting as the BBC Empire Service, 1932. Pop singer Limahl born, 1958. Soccer player, manager and broadaster Jimmy Hill died, 2015.
Saturday 20th December     - Day 354/365		-		King Richard I of England was captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on the way back to England after the Third Crusade, 1192. Mathematician, cartographer and illustrator Oronce Finé born, 1494. Explorer Sacagawea died, 1812. Actress Jenny Agutter born, 1952. Controversial social psychologist Stanley Milgram died, 1984. Queen Elizabeth II became the oldest monarch in British history, 2007. International Human Solidarity Day (UN).
Sunday 21st December     - Day 355/365		-		Vespasian was declared emperor of Rome by the Roman Senate, 69. Writer and poet Giovanni Boccaccio died, 1375. Priest and dog breeder Jack Russell born, 1795. James Naismith published the first rules for the game now known as basketball, 1891. Sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner born, 1959. Actress Billie Whitelaw died, 2014. Winter solstice (Northern hemisphere) and Summer solstice (Southern hemisphere).
Monday 22nd December     - Day 356/365		-		The English Anarchy began with the private coronation of Stephen of Blois as king, 1135. Publisher and promoter of children's literature John Newbery died, 1767. Stage magician and inventor John Nevil Maskelyne born, 1839. Two thirds of the holdings of the Library of Congress were lost in a fire, 1851. Writer, artist and TV producer Roberta Leigh born, 1926. Actress Butterfly McQueen died, 1995.
Tuesday 23rd December     - Day 357/365		-		Byzantine soldiers sacked Aleppo during the Arab-Byzantine wars, 962. Isabella of Castile, Duchess of York, died, 1392. Artist, sculptor and architect Giovanni Battista Crespi born, 1573. Jane Austen's novel Emma was published, 1815. Economist Gertrude Bancroft born, 1908. Jazz pianist and composer Oscar Peterson died, 2007. Festivus. HumanLight (Secular humanism). Tom Bawcock's Eve in Mousehole, Cornwall.
Wednesday 24th December     - Day 358/365		-		The Castle of St George on Cephalonia was captured by a joint Venetian-Spanish force after a seige, 1500. Explorer and politician Vasco da Gama died, 1524. Artist Sigrid Schauman born, 1877. The Christmas truce during World War I began, 1914. Heavy metal singer-songwriter and bass player Lemmy born, 1945. Nobel laureate playwright and screenwriter Harold Pinter died, 2008. Christmas Eve and related celebrations. Quviasukvik (Inuit, Yupik, Aleut, Chukchi, NunatuKavummiut and Iñupiat New Year).
Thursday 25th December     - Day 359/365		-		The coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, 800. Composer Orlando Gibbobns born, 1583. English noblewoman Lettice Knollys died, 1634. A group of Scottish nationalist students stole the Stone of Scone from Westminster Abbey, 1950. Singer-songwriter Alannah Myles born, 1958. Actor Denver Pyle died, 1997. Christmas Day and related celebrations.
Friday 26th December     - Day 360/365		-		Poet Thomas Gray born, 1716. The Continental Army under Washington defeated a garrison of Hessian troops after making a surprise attack in the Battle of Trenton during the American Revolutionary War, 1776. Argentine journalist and activist Virginia Bolten born, 1870. Archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann died, 1890. A number of sightings of unexplained lights were reported near RAF Woodbridge in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, 1980. Singer-songwriter Teena Marie died, 2010. Boxing Day and related celebrations (Britain and the Commonwealth of Nations). The first day of Kwanzaa (African Americans). Mummer's Day in Padstow, Cornwall. Wren Day (Ireland and the Isle of Man).
Saturday 27th December     - Day 361/365		-		Mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler born, 1571. Charles Darwin embarked aboard HMS Beagle for the voyage on which he would start to formulate his theory of evolution, 1831. Author Mary Howard born, 1907. Architect and engineer Gustave Eiffel died, 1923. The Cave of Swallows, the largest known cave shaft in the world, was discovered in Mexico, 1966. Actress Carrie Fisher died, 2016.
Sunday 28th December     - Day 362/365		-		Alaric II became king of the Visigoths, 484. Piero the Unfortunate, ruler of Florence, died, 1503. Novelist Catharine Maria Sedgwick born, 1789. The Lumière brothers screened their moving pictures to a paying audience for the first time, 1895. Violinist Nigel Kennedy born, 1956. Actress Debbie Reynolds died, 2016.
Monday 29th December     - Day 363/365		-		Astronomer Maria Margaretha Kirch died, 1720. Jeanne Poisson, Madame de Pompadour, mistress of King Louis XV of France, born, 1721. HMS Warrior, the first warship equipped with a screw propeller, iron hull and iron armour, was launched, 1860. The Lufwaffe fire-bombed London, killing almost 200 civilians and starting the Second Great Fire of London during WWII, 1940. Singer and broadcaster Aled Jones born, 1970. Politician and humanitarian Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States, died, 2024.
Tuesday 30th December     - Day 364/365		-		British troops burned Buffalo, New York, during the War of 1812, 1813. Nobel laureate author and poet Rudyard Kipling born, 1865. Artist Martha Darley Mutrie died, 1865. Ice hockey player Ernie McLea scored the first hat-trick in a Stanley Cup game, 1896. Singer-songwriter Patti Smith born, 1946. Cartoonist Ronald Searle died, 2011.
Wednesday 31st December     - Day 365/365		-		Ealdorman Æthelwulf of Berkshire drove Viking invaders back to Reading, in the Battle of Englefield, 870. Explorer Jacques Cartier born, 1491. Chemist and physicist Robert Boyle died, 1691. The first ball drop in Times Square, New York City, was held, 1907. Composer Jennifer Higdon born, 1962. Singer-songwriter and actress Natalie Cole died, 2015. New Year's Eve and related celebrations, including the start of Hogmanay in Scotland.
Thursday 1st January 2026     - Day 1/365		-		The Julian calendar took effect as the calendar of the Roman Republic, 45 BCE. Henry, Duke of Cornwall, first-born child of King Henry VIII of England, born, 1511. Explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier discovered Bouvet Island, the most remote island in the world, 1739. Mathematician Johann Bernoulli died, 1748. Actress Carole Landis born, 1919. Computer scientist Grace Hopper died, 1992. The last day of Kwanzaa (African Americans). New Year's Day and related celebrations. Public Domain Day.

^{^} THE WISDOM OF...

This week, Victor Borge:

Santa Claus has the right idea: visit people once a year.

And Mark Twain:

New Year's Day - Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

^{^} FILM QUIZ

A selection of quotations from films about or set at Christmas. Answers next issue or from the regular address.

• Some men are Baptists, others Catholics; my father was an Oldsmobile man.
• - Same old Claire... still trying to save the world.
  - You still trying to run it?
• Light the lamp, not the rat, light the lamp, not the rat! Put me out, put me out, put me out!
• One man's toxic sludge is another man's potpourri.
• - We came up here for the snow. Where're you keepin' it?
  - Well, we take it in during the day!
• [sung] And on a dark cold night, under full moonlight, he flies into the fog like a vulture in the sky! And they call him, Sandy... Clawssss...!
• - You throw quite a party. I didn't realize they celebrated Christmas in Japan.
  - Hey, we're flexible. Pearl Harbor didn't work out so we got you with tape decks.
• This man is an idiot. He's an actual village idiot. If this was a village he would be the idiot.
• I'm auditioning for Frozen. You know one has magical powers the other doesn't and it's on ice.
• Merry Christmas, movie house! Merry Christmas, Emporium! Merry Christmas, you wonderful old Building and Loan!

Last issue's quotations from films starring Jennifer Connelly were:

• This class will be a waste of your - and what is infinitely worse - my time.
      -- A Beautiful Mind [2001]
• Wait here. [...] Try not to kill anybody.
      -- Alita: Battle Angel [2019]
• Everything I've done, I've done for you. I move the stars for no one.
      -- Labyrinth [1986]
• - Have you done your homework?
  - School's cancelled on account of the aliens.
      -- The Day the Earth Stood Still [2008]
• - Why do you eat while you're working? Why do you eat all the time?
  - It's all psychological, Max. I eat so I don't think about food.
      -- Mulholland Falls [1996]

^{^} WEIRD WORLD NEWS

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

• Scientists at the University of East Anglia who studied blood samples taken from polar bears in northeast and southeast Greenland have found that genes relating to heat stress, ageing and metabolism are changing in the southeastern bear population, probably as a result of climate change; the southeast is warming noticably more than the northeast. ● A pair of burrowing owls who sneaked aboard a cruise ship as it sailed from Miami in February, finding a home in the ship's Central Park area which includes more than 12,000 plants, were caught in nets by crewmembers and handed over to authorities when the ship docked in Catagena, Spain, where they have spent the year at the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna) wildlife rescue centre. They will be returned to Florida, where they are an endangered species, next month. ● A researcher studying a preserved electric eel held in Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology since it was caught in Brazil in 1872 has discovered that there are two ticks embedded in its skin. It is the first time ticks have been found attached to a fish. ● A fossilised skull that has been shut away in a drawer at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh has been identified as belonging to a new species of sauropod, named Athenar bermani. ● Killer whales and dolphins have been filmed hunting together for the first time. ● Researchers in Brazil who heard an unusual sound traced it to a tiny and previously unknown species of frog. Bracycephalus lulai is bright orange and the size of a pencil tip at just 0.4" (1cm) long. ● Almost £3,500 ($4,700) has been raised to fund a statue of Nala, the ginger tabby cat who was a regular visitor to Stevenage Railway Station (viz. Obituaries in last week's TFIr).


• Interstellar comet 3I/Atlas will make its closest approach to Earth this week, passing at around 170m miles (275m km) distance before it heads back out of the Solar System. ● NASA's Perseverence rover on Mars has gone one better than recording the crackle of lightning discharges, reported a couple of weeks ago; it has now photographed the flash of discharges within a dust devil, one of the small weak tornadoes that are prevalent on the planet. ● Last weekend NASA lost contact with the MAVEN spacecraft, which has been orbiting Mars for more than ten years, studying the interaction of solar winds with the upper Martian atmosphere and, more importantly, providing a communication relay between Earth and the Curiosity and Perseverence rovers on the surface.


• In 1918 a dredger vessel broke loose while under tow and ran aground on a rock shoal 838 yards (766m) upstream from the Niagara Falls' horseshoe falls. The two men aboard were rescued with a breeches buoy. Over the last 107 years the rusting wreck, nicknamed The Iron Scow, has been slowly deteriorating, most notably in 2022 when it broke into several parts. Last month the bow section dislodged and drifted closer to the edge of the waterfall. ● Underwater archaeologists working in the harbour of ancient Alexandria, Egypt, have discovered the remains of a rare type of pleasure barge known as a thalamagos. Such boats were frequently described in classical sources but have never been found before. The wreck has well-preserved timbers about 92' (28m) in length, some bearing Greek graffiti. Originally the barge would have been 115' (35m) in length and 23' (7m) wide with a central pavilion and more than 20 oarsmen. It was designed for calm shallow waters. ● Historians studying a "staircase to nowhere" at the side of the House of Thiasus in Pompeii have used historical records coupled with a digital reconstruction to suggest that the villa was surmounted by a tower, possibly 40' (12m) high. The concept gives weight to the idea of the second "lost Pompeii", the upper stories and towers that the villas of the elite are though to have had. ● The Roman occupation of Britain in 43CE is often said to have brought "civilisation", but new research has found that the Roman infrastructure also introduced class divisions, limited access to resources, overcrowding, and, thanks to their use of lead in water pipes, new diseases. ● Archaeologists at Petra, Jordon, have discovered a tomb containing twelve skeletons and grave goods more than 2,000 years old under the Khazneh, or Treasury room. ● A hoard of 273 silver coins from the 11^th century has been discovered buried in a pot in woodland near the village of Lübs in Germany. ● Fire-cracked hand axes and scorched earth found on a dig in a Suffolk field has suggested that humans were making fire 400,000 years ago, almost 350,000 years earlier than previously thought, at a time when they were moving northwards into harsher climates. ● The discovery of a pair of Roman swords in a Gloucestershire field in 2023 has led to the discovery this year of a large settlement and possibly a grand Roman villa. ● A small Celtic gold coin discovered in a field near Gundorf, Germany, in July, has been dated to 2,220 years ago, making it the oldest-known Celtic gold coin. ● Preparatory onshore work to create a cable corridor for an offshore wind farm near Friston, Suffolk, has found evidence of Anglo Saxon wooden longhouses, 62' (19m) in length and 20' (6m) wide. The buildings border what is now a public right-of-way footpath, suggesting that it has existed as a pathway since then, if not earlier. ● Scientists have used archaeological evidence and environmental data to confirm the cause of the collapse of Mayan society in the 8^th or 9^th Centuries. The Mayans built the first cities, started the widespread growing of corn for food and other advances, spreading across most of Central America including Mexico before abandoning their cities. Theories to explain what happened have ranged from warfare or pandemics to extraterrestrials, but the evidence shows a cause of modern relevance - clearing large areas of forest for agriculture and wood fuel, reducing the land's capacity to absorb solar radiation, coupled with a soaring population led to drought, failed crops and reduced trade, in other words, an environmental disaster.


• Thai police have arrested two men seen unloading suspicious cargo in Sa Kaeo province. Their car was found to contain 81 macaque monkeys stuffed into blue duffel bags as well as a significant quantity of methamphetamine pills and crystal meth. ● A burglar who had got into a Widnes house in the early hours of September 9^th, causing the owner to hide in a cupboard to call the police, fled empty-handed after being confronted by Nexi, the owner's cat. Callum Quirk was arrested and charged after shoeprints and DNA evidence linked him to the incident. He was jailed for 35 months earlier this week. Detective Constable Stuart Beswick praised "the bravery of Nexi", who "certainly stopped the victim having a terrifying confrontation with Quirk and kept her belongings safe from him." ● A man dressed as a Christmas elf has been arrest on suspicion of assault in Liverpool city centre. ● Two men have been arrested after a village's Christmas tree was cut down. The tree has been growing in the centre of Shotton Colliery, County Durham, for the last eleven years, having been planted to commemorate locals killed in service during World War One. It was decorated for Christmas every year and the lights had been officially switched on just hours before it was cut down. ● Somebody dumped hundreds of raw sausages on a footpath in St Jude's, Bristol, last week. The sausages survived the strong wind and rain from Storm Bran, but some were eaten by wildlife. ● A man being chased by police in the southern Italian town of Galatone evaded them by stopping in a lifesized nativity scene, posing as the fourth of the three wise men... He was arrested after the town's mayor, walking by the display, saw his eyes move and called the police.


• The storms that have hit the American west coast have caused a temporary lake, Lake Manly, to form in California's Death Valley, normally one of the hottest and driest places on the planet with temperatures in recent years hitting 54.4^oC (240^oF). ● Oceanographers at Plymouth Marine Laboratory have warned that water acidification levels, especially in the upper 650' (200m) have been past danger levels for marine life since 2020. ● The first climate migrants from Tuvalu have arrived in Australia after more than a third of the island nation's population applied for a climate visa under a deal between the two countries made two years ago. Tuvalu is a group of low-lying atolls between Australia and Hawaii; the predicted 3' (1m) rise is sea levels due to climate change would submerge 90% of the country's main atoll. ● Kenyan climate activist Truphena Muthoni has hugged a tree for 72 hours, beating her own previous record of 48 hours, to raise awareness of the risks of both climate change and deforestation. She also wore a blindfold for several of the hours to highlight the effects on disabled people. ● Scientists at Imperial College London who analysed the ten deadliest weather events recorded on the International Disaster Database since 2004 have identified the "fingerprints" of climate change in their causes.

IN BRIEF: A contemporary gold wedding crown worth 2,276,130 元 (£240,765; $323,400) in the X Museum in Beijing, China, has been damaged after a child knocked over its display case. The crown's owner, a social media beauty influencer whose husband crafted it, has said that she is not seeking damages from the child's family, but looking for help to value the damage caused as the crown was insured. ● A hiker has been rescued after becoming stuck in quicksand in Utah's Arches National Park. Austin Dirks used a GPS satellite messenger device to alert rescue services, who found him two hours later using a drone. ● Dolce Vento (Sweet Wind), a £750,000 ($1m) 79' (24m) superyacht was launched from the shipyard in Turkey where it had been built when it suddenly listed to one side and sank just 15 minutes into its maiden voyage. Reports did not name its owner, but they - and the crew - managed to swim to shore without injury.

ARTIFICIAL IDIOCY: Amazon Prime has had to remove the season one recaps from the start of new episodes of post-apocalyptic thriller Fallout. The recaps had been generated by AI and viewers reported that they were full of mistakes, including getting dates and plot elements completely wrong. ● A middle school in central Florida was put into lockdown last week after the AI-powered automatic security monitoring system interpreted a student holding a clarinet as instead holding a gun... ● McDonald's Netherlands has had to take down a an AI-generated online Christmas video advert after people commented that the characters looked uncanny, the sequence of clips supposedly showing things that can go wrong over Christmas was badly edited and the whole thing was creepy. ● Dictionary producer Merriam-Webster has chosen 'slop' as its word of the year, referring to poor quality or inaccurate digital content, as video, images or text, produced in large quantities by AI systems. Other words or terms considered included '6-7', 'tariffs' and 'gerrymander'.

UPDATES: The drunk raccoon found asleep having broken into a Virginia liquor store, reported in the previous TFIr, is now also suspected of having broken into a nearby DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) building, where he ate some snacks, and a karate studio.

^{^} OBITUARIES

Comedian and voice actor Jeffrey Garcia (Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Happy Feet, Rio, 50), actor Peter Greene (Pulp Fiction, The Mask, Clean Shaven, 60), singer Carl Carlton ("Everlasting Love", "She's a Bad Mama Jama", "I can Feel It", 73), actor Anthony Geary (General Hospital, The Young and the Restless, UHF, 78), actor and director Rob Reiner (The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally..., This Is Spinal Tap, 78), actor Gil Gerard (Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century, The Doctors, Airport '77, 82), author Joanna Trollope (A Village Affair, Other People's Children, Marrying the Mistress, 82), broadcaster and executive Humphrey Burton (first BBC Head of Music and Arts [1965-67, 1975-81], Aquarius, founder member of London Weekend Television, 94), comedian Stanley Baxter (On the Bright Side, The Stanley Baxter Picture Show, Crooks Anonymous, 99).

^{^} DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!

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

30, 34, 42, 46, 50, 56

6, 10, 17, 31, 38, 54

[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's mother walked into the living room and found her daughter standing on a chair looking into the cupboard where her Christmas presents were kept on a shelf. "Little Jennifer! Don't peek at your presents, it'll spoil the surprise on Christmas Day!"
    Little Jennifer got down from the chair, closed the cupboard door and smiled as only she could. "I wasn't peeking much, Mummy. I'm only a child and I have little eyes..."

    Little Jennifer was walking past the bathroom when she saw her mother standing in front of the mirror applying a facial mask. "What are you doing, Mummy", she asked.
    "I'm making myself beautiful for a party your father and I are going to this evening. You remember? Your Auntie Emma is coming to look after you while we're out."
    Little Jennifer waited while her mother applied polish to her fingernails, then watched as she washed off the mask. "There," her mother said, "Well? Do I look good enough to go to a party?"
    Little Jennifer looked up at her mother and smiled as only she could. "Did you keep the receipt, Mummy?"

---

^{^} ...end of line