Issue ^#843 - 14^th November 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
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 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 14th November     - Day 318/365		-		Alexander the Great was crowned pharaoh of Egypt, 332 BCE. Nell Gwynn, mistress of King Charles II of England, died, 1687. Composer and conductor Leopold Mozart, father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born, 1719. Nellie Bly set off on her successful attempt to travel around the world in less than 80 days, 1889. Actress Louise Brooks born, 1906. Short story writer Hector Hugh Munro aka Saki died, 1916. World Diabetes Day.
Saturday 15th November     - Day 319/365		-		Conquistador Francisco Pizarro arrived in Cuzco, capital of the Inca Empire, 1533. Astronomer Johannes Kepler died, 1630. Politician William Pitt the Elder, Prime Minister of Great Britain [1766-1768], born, 1708. Paleontologist Emma Richter died, 1956. Intel released the 4004, the word's first commercial single-chip microprocessor, 1971. Actress Virginie Ledoyen born, 1976. Day of the Imprisoned Writer.
Sunday 16th November     - Day 320/365		-		Prince Edward acceded to the English throne while on the Ninth Crusade, 1272. Jeweller, explorer and writer Jean Chardin born, 1643. Notorious criminal Jack Sheppard was hanged, 1724. Fisgard Lighthouse, the first permanent lighthouse on Canada's west coast, shone its first light, 1860. Playwright Bonnie Greer born, 1948. Actress Ann Wedgeworth died, 2017. International Day for Tolerance (UN).
Monday 17th November     - Day 321/365		-		John Balliol became King of Scotland, 1292. Queen Mary I of England died, 1558. Mathematician and astronomer August Ferdinand Möbius born, 1790. The Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, was inaugurated, 1869. Actress Sophie Marceau born, 1966. Artist Frank McCarthy died, 2002. World Prematurity Day.
Tuesday 18th November     - Day 322/365		-		Albert the Bear, first margave of Brandenburg, died, 1170. The St Elizabeth's flood, caused by a breach in a dike, eradicated the Grote Hollandse Waard in Holland and killed about 10,000 people, 1421. Louis Daguerre, artist and pioneering photographer, born, 1787. Susan B. Anthony and fourteen other women were arrested for voting illegally in the US presidential election, 1872. Author Margaret Atwood born, 1939. Singer Sharon Jones died, 2016.
Wednesday 19th November     - Day 323/365		-		Christopher Columbus went ashore on an island he named San Juan Bautista, now known as Puerto Rico, 1493. King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland born, 1600. The Man in the Iron Mask died in the Bastille, 1703. Astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean became the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon, on the Apollo 12 mission, 1969. Writer Elizabeth Taylor died, 1975. Right-to-die activist Brittany Maynard born, 1984. World Toilet Day (UN).
Thursday 20th November     - Day 324/365		-		Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, conquered Palermo, 1194. Lady Frances Grey, claimant to the English throne, died, 1559. Artist Paulus Potter born, 1625. A sperm whale attacked and sank the whaling ship Essex, an incident that in part inspired Melville's Moby Dick, 1820. Classical pianist Ruth Laredo born, 1937. Filmmaker Robert Altman died, 2006. Transgender Day of Remembrance.

^{^} THE WISDOM OF...

This week, Susan B. Anthony:

I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires.

^{^} FILM QUIZ

A selection of quotations from films starring Robert De Niro. Answers next issue or from the regular address.

• You don't live with me, you live among the remains of dead people. You sift through the detritus, you read the terrain, you search for signs of passing, for the scent of your prey, and then you hunt them down. That's the only thing you're committed to. The rest is the mess you leave as you pass through.
• Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man... June 8th. My life has taken another turn again. The days can go on with regularity over and over, one day indistinguishable from the next. A long continuous chain. Then suddenly, there is a change.
• When I was a little boy and told people I was going to be a comedian, everyone laughed at me. Well, no one's laughing now.
• Lady, I never walk into a place I don't know how to walk out of.
• - You'd better be telling the truth, you two-faced dog.
  - I can get you one of them, actually. Very good guard dogs. They can watch the back and the front door at the same time.

Last issue's quotations from films starring Liv Tyler were:

• In the immortal words of The Doors, "The time to hesitate is through."
      -- Empire Records [1995]
• I was a wartime general, now I'm a wartime president.
      -- Captain America: Brave New World [2025]
• From the ashes, a fire shall be woken. A light from the shadow shall spring. Renewed shall be the blade that was broken. The crownless again shall be king.
      -- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King [2003]
• The zero G and the extended duration of the journey is affecting me both physically and mentally. I am alone. Something I always believed I preferred. I am alone. But I confess it's wearing on me. I am alone. I am alone.
      -- Ad Astra [2019]
• - Mom, that salesman's on TV.
  - That man's not a salesman. That's your daddy.
      -- Armageddon [1998]

^{^} WEIRD WORLD NEWS

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

• Diver Charles Hood has filmed a wreckfish a few miles off the coast of Cornwall. Wreckfish, a prehistoric species, normally live close to the deep sea floor, in caves or shipwrecks - from where they get their name, can live for up to a century and grow to about 7' (2.1m) long. It is thought that warming waters could be driving deep-sea species closer to the surface. ● The Garda (police) in Ireland have solved the mystery of a video that went viral on social media late last month. Taken by a trucker is was suggested to be of a lion in woodland in East Clare. a Garda officer recently posted that the 'lion' was actually a friendly Newfoundland dog called Mouse, with his hair shaved leaving a bushy tail and mane. ● Scientists in Western Australia have discovered a new species of bee while surveying an endangered wildflower. The been has tiny 'horns' on its face and has been given the scientific name Megachile Lucifer. ● A grey seal has been sighted swimming upstream on the River Conwy in Wales, near Ffos Anoddun, the Fairy Glen, some 13 miles (21km) from the coast. ● Instead of pursuing rare animals with nets and cameras to identify them many oceanographic scientists are now using eDNA, collecting water samples and analysing them for fragments of genetic material shed by skin, mucus or waste. One such scientist, Diego Cardeñosa of Florida International University, is using the technique to monitor locations inhabited by three endangered species of small hammerhead shark and identify where conservation efforts should be directed. ● The Turkestan long-eared bat (Plecotus turkmenicus) was thought to have become exinct, but an expedition last October discovered two living specimens, the first to be seen in 55 years. ● Scientists have confirmed that a pipistrelle bat found on Bioko Island in Equatorial Guinea has become the 1,500^th known species of bat. ● A Chinese student has pleaded guilty in an Australian court after 125 native spiders and insects were found in his luggage as he tried to fly out of Sydney Airport in January. He was fined A$35,000 (£17,370 ;$22,700). ● Researchers studying a cave on the Albania-Greece border have discovered what could be the world's largest spiders' web. It covers around 1,076 sq ft (100m²) and houses an estimated 69,000 domestic house spiders and 42,000 sheet weaver spiders.


• Astronauts aboard the International Space Station are to trial a new protein powder called Solein, which could be used on long-duration missions to the Moon or Mars. Developed by Solar Foods, a Finnish startup, Solein is created from just air, electricity and urea, from urine, as a source for protein synthesis. The experiment will be the first time gas fermentation technology has been used in space. ● As interstellar comet 3I/Atlas (yes, it is definitely a comet, no matter what theoretical physicist Avi Loeb says) continues its passage through the Solar System MeeKAT, a 64-antenna radio telescope operated by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory, has detected signs of hydroxyl molecules being sublimated into space as the comet passed the Sun. ● Astronomers using the European Space Agency's Euclid and Herschel space telescopes to map the cosmos have found that star formation in the universe (or at least the observable universe) has peaked, suggesting that the universe has grown to its maximum size and begun to get colder, eventually reaching "heat death". There is no need to panic - it has an estimated 33 billion to 1 quinvigintillion (1 followed by 78 zeroes) left, certainly far longer than humanity... ● Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have identified a cluster of stars known as LAP1-B as being the oldest known; as seen from Earth they are as they were around 800 million years after the Big Bang. They are so distant that they can only be seen thanks to gravitational lensing - their light is refracted by galaxies between them and us. ● Three taikonauts are stranded on the Chinese Tiangong space station after their intended return spacecraft was hit by a small piece of debris. They are not in danger, with enough food aboard the station for them and the replacement crew who arrived last weekend. Needless to say, some users of social media, especially TwitterX, more familiar with science fiction than fact, called on Elon Musk and SpaceX to rescue them. Apart from the fact that space agencies do not keep spacecraft ready to launch at a moment's notice in case of emergencies, SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft is almost certainly incompatible with the Tiangong, despite their docking systems being developed from the same published standard and the space suits aboard the Tiangong are not spacewalk-rated and would probably not fit through the Crew Dragon's hatch.


• Archaeologists at Łyse Góra in Poland have discovered a 2,300-year-old Celtic iron trepanation hammer, used to make a hole in the skull for claimed medical reasons, or to release evil spirits. They have yet to find any skulls with evidence of trepanning. ● Researchers at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in Oregon have found solidified volcanic ash bearing the tracks of a bobcat-sized feline from 29 million years ago and bird and lizard footprints from about 50 million years ago. ● Slightly more modern, the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, built to house the raised Tudor warship, has shown off contemporary tiles bearing the footprints of a dog. [We are sure it was not Hatch, the ship's ratter, whose skeleton was found on the ship and is on display -Ed]. ● Archaeologists excavating a pre-Roman hilltop fort, unearthed by a road construction project in Scotland, have discovered an underground chamber lined with stones from the nearby River Tay. The 'souterrain' is not thought to have been part of the original fort, but added at a later date, and its purpose is unknown. ● Archaeologists at Al-Ghuraifa in Egypt have discovered a 43'- (13m)-long papyrus scroll containing part of the so-called 'Book of the Dead', a collection of texts including guidance for the dead to pass through the underworld. ● South Korean archaeologists have fully excavated and raised the wreck of the Mado 4, a 600-year-old cargo ship discovered sunk off the country's west coast in 2015. ● Members of Wigan Archaeological Society have spent the last four years excavating a 4,000-year-old Bronze Age cemetary in farmland on the edge of the town, finding human bones and evidence of funeral pyres. It is likely that the site could have been in use as far back as the Stone Age. ● Archaeologists in Izernore, in eastern France, have recovered at least fifteen large fragments of Roman wood-framed wax writing tablets, still inscribed, from the bottom of a well, along with children's shoes, combs, boxes and spindle whorls. The wood survived the intervening centuries because is was waterlogged.


• A California Highway Patrol officer was amused when he pulled over a driver on suspicion of a traffic violation only to be presented with a "Get Out of Jail Free" card from the Monopoly board game. He reminded the driver that "while creativity is appreciated, it's not exactly a legal defence, and told him to save the card for a rainy day", according to a spokesman. The driver was sent on their way with a smile - and a citation. ● Ohio Police officer Ronald Hook was bemused when he was sent to a Walmart car park to investigate a report of "a male with a cowboy hat riding a whitish bull". He arrived to find that there was indeed a man riding a bull, taking a break en-route to a rodeo event, but found that no laws had been broken so issued no violations. Indeed, officer Hook posed for a photo sitting on the bull. ● It has emerged that after the daylight theft from the Louvre in Paris last month staff at Stonehenge in England were put on high alert and offered "hostile reconnaissance training", because you never know when a gang might turn up and drive off with one of the 30-tonne stones...

IN BRIEF: Breaking Rust is at the #1 spot on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales chart with "Walk My Walk", but you would be forgiven if you have never heard of them. The song (and group) is AI-generated. ● The 2,500-year-old Dun Deardail Scottish hillfort has been rebuilt - in Lego. The model, using about 35,000 bricks, was commissioned by Nevis Landscape Partnership and built by Brick to the Past, a group specialising in creating historically-themed models in Lego, over about eight months. It is on display at the Glen Nevis Visitor Centre. The real Dun Deardail was destroyed in a fire so intense that some of the rampart stones melted. ● Wisbech Town Council in Cambridgeshire has admitted that their Christmas tree is an "absolute disgrace" and ordered a replacement [It is still early November, guys... -Ed] ● The 6,000-seat Olympic Velodrome in London, built for the 2012 Games has been found to have a rather embarassing problem. Every time a firework goes off within earshot the lightweight timber ventilation system apparently reflects it as a sound like a fart... ● A volunteer at the Keelung Museum of Art in Taiwan has inadvertently damaged one of the works of art. The item was a mirror covered in 40 years' worth of dust with a smudge in the middle, symbolising the cultural consciousness of the middle class. Or at least it was, until the volunteer thought it needed cleaning and wiped it down with toilet paper... ● For decades, especially in the wake of The Matrix and its sequels, scientists and theorists have pondered the question of whether we are living in a computer simulation, but a new paper by Mir Faizal and colleagues at the University of British Columbia had argued that the Platonic realm, a conceptual ideal plane beyond the physical world that consists of pure information, cannot describe reality using just computation. ● Residents of Kirkby on Merseyside have reportedly been appalled to see new roadmarkings and signs around the town that spell it as 'Kirby'. National Highways and Sefton Council have promised to correct them. ● Kim Knor recently made her 1,000^th parachute jump, in New Wales, Florida, and been awarded the United States Parachute Association's Gold Wings Award. A member of the first US Women's Parachute Team in 1962, Kim is 86. ● In a frankly stunning example of inefficiency, even for the UK government, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), has spent £312m ($400m) to modernise its IT systems including replacing tens of thousands of laptops running Windows 7 with ones running Windows 10, which officially reached its end of standard support last month. It is not known if the laptops can be upgraded to Windows 11, which controversially has specific hardware requirements, or whether Defra is paying for extended support. ● Collins Dictionary has chosen "vibe coding" as its word of the year, referring to writing software by describing its function to an AI system rather than manually writing the software, even though the resulting apps usually contain bugs. Runners-up included 'coolcation' (a vacation in a place with a cool climate), 'taskmasking' (giving the false impression of being productive in the workplace) and 'glaze' (to praise or flatter someone excessively and usually undeservedly).

^{^} OBITUARIES

Journalist and broadcaster Quentin Wilson (Top Gear, Fifth Gear, The Car's the Star, 65), film director Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors, Along Came a Spider, Die Another Day, 75), actress Sally Kirkland (The Sting, Anna, JFK, 84), actress Pauline Collins (Shirley Valentine, The Liver Birds, Upstairs Downstairs, 85).

^{^} DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!

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

3, 7, 30, 33, 44, 50

[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 was handing back the children's homework. "OK, children," she said, "I asked you to write about a sports event you saw with your family last week. Little Mary, that is a very good report of the snooker."
    Little Mary beamed. "Thank you, Miss. My daddy likes snooker and explained it to me while we watched it on TV."
    The teacher continued. "Little Simon, that must have been an exciting horse race."
    "Thank you, Miss. My grandad took me to see it."
    Finally the teacher looked at the last piece of paper. "Little Jennifer, you handed in a blank sheet of paper."
    Little Jennifer smiled as only she could. "Yes, Miss. Mummy and Daddy were taking me to a football game but it was rained off!"

---

^{^} ...end of line