Issue ^#859 - 13^th March 2026

Edited by and copyright ©2026 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 13th March     - Day 72/365		-		Actor Richard Burbage died, 1619. William Herschel discovered Uranus, 1781. Abigail Filmore, 14th First Lady of the United States, born, 1798. Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto premiered in Leipzig, 1845. Opera singer Jenny Twitchell Kempton died, 1921. Writer David Nobbs born, 1935.
Saturday 14th March     - Day 73/365		-		Eli Whitney was granted a patent for the cotton gin, 1794. Philosopher and political theorist Karl Marx died, 1883. Actress Rita Tushingham born, 1942. Jack Ruby was convicted of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, John F. Kennedy's assassin, 1964. Rugby player and broadcaster Phil Vickery born, 1976. Activist and civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer died, 1977. Pi Day.
Sunday 15th March     - Day 74/365		-		Roman general and dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated, 44 BCE. The existence of New South Greenland, near Antarctica, was erroneously reported, 1823. Nobel laureate writer Paul Heyse born, 1830. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicated the throne, 1917. Lawyer and judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg born, 1933. Voice actress and producer Sylvia Anderson died, 2016. World Contact Day. World Consumer Rights Day.
Monday 16th March     - Day 75/365		-		Astronomer Caroline Herschel was born, 1750. Wanderers F.C. won the first F.A. Cup, 1872. Actress Kate Nelligan born, 1950. Activist Alice Herz self-immolated in protest at the Vietnam War, 1965. The oil tanker Amoco Cadiz split in two after running aground three miles off the coast of Brittany, creating the then-largest oil spill in history, 1978. Surf-rock musician and singer-songwriter Dick Dale died, 2019. Day of the Book Smugglers in Lithuania.
Tuesday 17th March     - Day 76/365		-		Harold Harefoot, king of England, died, 1040. Edward, the Black Prince, was made the first Duke of Cornwall, 1337. Musician and composer Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre born, 1665. Associated Press photographer Slava Veder took the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy, showing POW lieutenant colonel Robert L. Stirm being reunited with his family, 1973. Golfer James Heath born, 1983. Actress Mai Zetterling died, 1994. St Patrick's Day. Sláinte mhaith!
Wednesday 18th March     - Day 77/365		-		The Roman Senate proclaimed Caligula emperor, 37. Jacques de Molay, last grand master of the Knights Templar, was executed, 1314. Mathematician Christian Goldbach born, 1690. Writer and activist Matilda Joslyn Gage died, 1898. Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov made the first space walk, 1965. Rapper and actress Queen Latifah born, 1970.
Thursday 19th March     - Day 78/365		-		China's Song dynasty was ended with a Mongol victory at the Battle of Yamen, 1279. Noblewoman Elizabeth Seymour, Lady Cromwell, died, 1568. Explorer David Livingstone born, 1813. The Sydney Habour Bridge was opened, 1932. Actress Ursula Andress born, 1936. Writer Arthur C. Clarke died, 2008.

^{^} THE WISDOM OF...

This week, Rainer Maria Rilke:

It is Spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.

^{^} FILM QUIZ

A selection of quotations from films starring Neve Campbell. Answers next issue or from the regular address.

• It's the millennium. Motives are incidental.
• You've made your big gay bed and now you must slumber gaily in it!
• When I started hanging out with them I was almost relieved... I didn't have many close friends in San Francisco. It just felt really nice to belong. I disagreed with them once and they turned their backs on me. That's not friendship.
• If you can't fix it with duct tape... you ain't using enough duct tape.
• - I am The Fuhrer. I'd like you to know I have a complete set of testicles.
  - One is very pleased to hear that.

Last issue's quotations from films starring Clint Eastwood were:

• I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've gotta ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?
      -- Dirty Harry [1971]
• Girlie, tough ain't enough.
      -- Million Dollar Baby [2004]
• Any man don't wanna get killed better clear on out the back.
      -- Unforgiven [1992]
• - I normally prefer not to get to know the people I'm protecting.
  - Oh, yeah? Why's that?
  - Well, you never know. You might decide they're not worth taking a bullet for.
      -- In the Line of Fire [1993]
• Sometimes I think that's all this place is. One... long... count. The prisoners count the hours, the bulls count the prisoners and the king bulls count the counts.
      -- Escape From Alcatraz [1979]

^{^} WEIRD WORLD NEWS

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

• A turtle named Moses who is missing his back legs is on the move again after being given a 3D-printed wheelchair. The files for the design have been made public so other turtles can be helped. ● The Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport, Connecticut, has revealed the publicly-chosen name for a female Black-handed spider monkey born there in December. From three options, Esperanza, Mirabel and Reyna - Spanish for 'hope', 'wonderful' and 'queen' - the chosen name was Mirabel. [Good think they were not in Britain, there would have been an overwhelming write-in vote for Monkey McMonkeyface... -Ed]. ● Researchers at the New England Aquarium's Anderson Cabot Centre have filmed three blue whales in the seas off Cape Cod. There are thought to be only 400-600 blue whales in the North Atlantic and they rarely seen that far south; there are only two previous sightings by the centre's staff. ● Naturalists in New Guinea, north of Australia, have found live specimens of the pygmy long-fingered possum and the ring-tailed glider. Both species of marsupial were thought to have become extinct around 6,000 years ago and had only been known through fossils.


• NASA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft has returned the closest-yet images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, taken last November from a distance of about 41m miles (66m km), just after the comet passed the Sun. Like the comet, JUICE was on the far side of the Sun, en-route to Jupiter which it should reach in July 2031. Meanwhile data from the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory working at the Atacama Large Millimetre/Submillimetre Array radio telescope in Chile has shown that 3I/ATLAS was outgassing large amounts of both methanol and hydrogen cyanide as it approached the Sun last year. ● A research team led by the University of Bern has reported evidence that about half of Mars' surface was covered in an ocean about three billion years ago. ● Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have found a galaxy 300 million light years away that seems to be at least 99.9% dark matter, the hypothetical invisible matter that does not interact with light or electromagnetic radiation, and supposedly accounts for 68.2% of the universe's matter. ● NASA have changed the schedule for its return to the Moon. After Artemis II takes astronauts around the Moon - now planned for April - Artemis III has been changed to a low-Earth orbit docking practice with a lunar lander in 2027 then Artemis IV, and possibly an additional Artemis V mission, will land astronauts on the Moon in 2028. NASA has also extended the mission of the International Space Station, parts of which are approaching thirty years in orbit, until commercial space stations can take over its work. ● The European Space Agency and NASA have ruled out the chance of asteroid 2024 YR4 impacting the Moon in December 2032; it will pass by the Moon at a distance of approximately 13,200 miles (21,200km). ● The SETI Institute, searching for radio signals indicative of alien intelligence, has admitted that it has focussed too much on narrowband signals and ignored the possible effects of solar winds, coronal mass ejections and other phenomena that might have changed the bandwidth.


• Archaeologists at a site near Leipzig, Germany, have found evidence of a Neolithic 'factory', harvesting bone marrow by both breaking open bones and crushing then heating them. The discovery suggests that Neanderthals had a good grasp of the diet they needed to survive and of planning their hunting and resource-gathering. ● Archaeologist Wojciech Filipowiak, from Poland's Academy of Sciences, is claiming to have potentially discovered the lost - some would say mythical - Viking city of Jomsborg on the Polish island Wolin. If Jomsborg existed it would have been a trading post between Vikings, Germans and Slavs, all three of which have historical links to the area.


• Police in the Netherlands have come up with a novel way to persuade scammers to turn themselves in. Their "Game Over?!" campaign sees a collage of the blurred-out faces of a hundred known scammers displayed on posters and TV ads, warning them that unless they hand themselves in by March 19^th their faces in the ads will be shown unblurred. ● Two teenagers - one male, one female, have been arrested in New Zealand after they accidentaly left a backpack outside a charity shop and staff took it in thinking it was a donation, then noticed a strong smell coming from it. It contained several plastic bags containing a total of 1.5oz (43.2g) of cannabis and NZ$3,700 (£1,635; $2,200) in banknotes. They called police who arrested the two when they tried to retrieve the bag, later finding an air pistol, a police scanner and more money in their car. A referendum in 2020 saw New Zealanders narrowly vote to reject the legalisation of recreational cannabis use.


• New research by scientists in the Netherlands has suggested that sea levels are already a foot (30cm) higher than thought in many places, with East Asia the worst affected. ● Climate scientists have said that the fifth-warmest February on record, marked by extreme rainfall in Western Europe and Arctic sea ice at its third-lowest extent on record, saw global average temperatures reaching 1.49^oC above pre-industrial levels, 0.01^oC below the target limit of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which is now certain to be missed.

IN BRIEF: The UK Atomic Energy Authority and CERN have developed mouse-sized robots just 1.5" (3.7cm) wide to run through the 16.8 mile- (27km)-long narrow pipes at CERN's Large Hadron Collider to inspect them for damage. ● Ontario Provincial Police have used a helicopter to rescue twenty-three people who were fishing from an ice shelf on the shore of Lake Huron after winds and current caused it to detach and float 1.2 miles (2km) into the lake. ● Australian biotech company Cortical Labs has demonstrated a "biological computer" comprising about 200,000 living human neurons grown on a microelectrode array. What did they use to show it working? There was only one option, really, the seminal 1993 shooter game Doom, which has been run on everything from smart thermostats to electric pianos... ● A survey of people in the US and Canada has found that about a third think the world will end in their lifetime. ● Richard Osman and Jeanette Winterson are among around 10,000 authors lending their names to Don't Steal This Book, an empty book (apart from the names) being given away at the London Book Fair as this is being written, to protest the unauthorised use of their work to train AI systems. ● Texas welder Rene Vollareal-Albe is being praised as a hero after he realised that a driver whose car was careening across lanes was unconscious, drove his truck in front of them then gently braked to slow them to a safe stop. A passerby, who was a nurse, then performed CPR before an ambulance arrived to take the driver, reportedly alive but in critical condition, to hospital. ● In what is being described as "a truly extraordinary coincidence", three cousins were all born at the same hospital on the same day. Twin girls Frankie and Connie were born prematurely first, then their mother's brother welcomed the arrival of his son Maddox.

^{^} OBITUARIES

Singer Tommy DeCarlo (Boston, 60), actress Jennifer Runyon (Ghostbusters, Up the Creek, A Very Brady Christmas, 65), actor Stephen Hibbert (Pulp Fiction, The Cat in the Hat, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, 68), singer-songwriter Pete Dello (Honeybus, "I Can't Let Maggie Go", "Into Your Ears", 83), singer-songwriter and actor Country Joe McDonald (Country Joe & The Fish, "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin-to-Die Rag", Gas-s-s-s-s, 84), theoretical physicist Sir Anthony Leggett (2003 Nobel Prize co-laureate for work on superconductors and superfluidity, 2002/3 Wolf Foundation Prize, 1999 Eugene Feenberg Memorial Medal, 87), computer scientist Sir Tony Hoare (Quicksort, Quickselect, Hoare logic, 92), former White House aide Alexander Butterfield (revealed the existence of the Nixon tapes during the Watergate scandal, 99).

^{^} DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!

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

3, 5, 15, 34, 36, 53

[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 father had invited his boss and his wife to dinner. Before they started eating the wife turned to Little Jennifer and asked if she was going to say grace. Little Jennifer said, "I don't know what to say."
    The wife told her, "Just say what your Mummy says."
    Little Jennifer smiled, bowed her head and said, "Oh, Lord, why did we have to invite these idiots tonight?"

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^{^} ...end of line