CONTENTS |
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^ WORD OF THE WEEKumbraculiform |
Friday 20th June
- Day 171/365- Explorer and cartographer Willem Barentsz died, 1597. James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, declared himself King of England, 1685. Composer Jacques Offenbach born, 1819. Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the murders of her father and stepmother, 1893. Mathematician Helena Rasiowa born, 1917. Actress Estelle Winwood died, 1984. World Refugee Day. Saturday 21st June
- Day 172/365- Architect Inigo Jones died, 1652. Optician and astronomer John Dolland born, 1706. Halifax, Nova Scotia, was founded, 1749. Novelist Mary McCarthy born, 1912. The German fleet, interned at Scapa Flow, Orkney, at the end of World War I, was scuttled on the orders of Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, 1919. Tennis player Maureen Connolly died, 1969. World Humanist Day (Humanism). Summer solstice in the northern hemisphere and Winter solstice in the southern hemisphere. Sunday 22nd June
- Day 173/365- Writer Lucrezia Tornabuoni, wife and political adviser of Pietro di Cosimo de' Medici, born, 1427. Galileo was forced to recant his heliocentric view of the Universe, by the Holy Office in Rome, 1633. Howard Staunton, chess player and promoter of the now-standard eponymous chess set design, died, 1874. Filmmaker Billy Wilder born, 1906. HMT Empire Windrush brought the first group of 802 West Indian immigrants to Tilbury, London, 1948. Actress and singer Judy Garland died, 1969. Monday 23rd June
- Day 174/365- Caesarion, last Ptolomaic pharaoh of Eygpt, born, 47 BCE. Constance of Aragon, Queen of Hungary and Croatia, and later of Germany and Sicily, and Holy Roman Empress, died, 1222. The Battle of Bannockburn, in the First War of Scottish Independence, began, 1314. Joséphine de Beauharnais, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, born, 1763. Actor Peter Falk died, 2011. The United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in a referendum, 2016. International Women in Engineering Day. United Nations Public Service Day. Tuesday 24th June
- Day 175/365- An outbreak of dancing mania broke out in Aachen, Germany, 1374. Italian noblewoman Lucrezia Borgia died, 1519. Artist Ferdinand Bol born, 1616. Kenneth Arnold made the first widely reported UFO sighting, while flying near Mount Rainier, Washington, 1947. Chef, writer and broadcaster Clarissa Dickson Wright born, 1947. Archaeologist Mick Aston died, 2013. Wednesday 25th June
- Day 176/365- Æthelstan Ætheling, son and heir of Æthelred the Unready, died, 1014. The Venetian fleet defeated a larger Genoese fleet in the Battle of Acre, during the War of Saint Sabas, 1258. Architect Antoni Gaudí born, 1852. The Diary of a Young Girl, otherwise known as The Diary of Anne Frank, was published, 1947. Actress Linda Cardellini born, 1975. Computer scientist and mathematician Annie Easley died, 2011. World Vitiligo Day. Thursday 26th June
- Day 177/365- Explorer and conquistador Francisco Pizarro was assassinated, 1541. The Battle of Fleurus, in the French Revolutionary Wars, saw the first successful military use of aircraft (an observation balloon), 1794. Artist and poet Branwell Brontë born, 1817. Elvis Presley performed his final concert, at Market Square Arena, Indianapolis, 1977. Singer-songwriter and actress Ariana Grande born, 1993. Fashion designer Liz Claiborne died, 2007. World Refrigeration Day. International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.
This week, Billy Wilder:Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.
A selection of quotations from films containing the word 'lord' in the title, either as a whole word or part of a word. Answers next issue or from the regular address.Last issue's 'prince' quotations were from:
- Some of the most successful relationships are based on lies and deceit. Since that's where they usually end up anyway, it's a logical place to start.
- Listen to me John. How many other white apes have you seen? You're like me, not them. You have another family, far away, one you have never seen.
- I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
- - It must be getting near tea-time, leastways in decent places where there is still tea-time.
- We're not in decent places.- I agree with Ralph! We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English! And the English are best at everything!
- I've never been to this part of the castle. Well, not awake. I sleepwalk, you see. That's why I wear shoes to bed.
-- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince [2009]- There are families who live out their entire lives without a single thing of interest happening to them. I've always envied those families.
-- The Prince of Tides [1991]- This is grain, which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord intended a more divine means of consumption. Let us give praise to our maker and glory to his bounty by learning about... BEER.
-- Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves [1991]- You see, sir, my master is dead but instructions were left that the castle should always be ready to receive guests. I am merely carrying out his wishes.
-- Dracula, Prince of Darkness [1966]- - That's the trouble with girls. You can't carry a map in your heads.
- That's because our heads have something in them.
-- The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian [2008]
Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- A team of divers have lowered a 3.5 tonne concrete structure to the seabed off Lancing, Sussex. The tiered structure will provide shelter for crabs and other crustaceans and sea life. There are plans to later attach cameras so schools and anyone interested can keep track of how it is being colonised. ● Naturalists in the Yosemite National Park, California, are celebrating the return of northwestern pond turtles to the park, after several years' effort to cut the number of bullfrogs, an invasive species which eats the turtle hatchlings. ● Wild beavers have been seen in Portugal for the first time in 500 years. ● Humpback whales often make dense rings of bubbles about 3' (1m) wide around their prey and when competing for females, but they have also been seen creating the rings while interacting with humans on boats. Scientists are speculating that it could be an attempt at communication. ● Eleven New Forest cicadas have been reintroduced to the forest at Paultons Park in an attempt to repopulate the species, which went extinct in England in the 1990s, but survived in France. The success of the scheme will not be known in at least 2029 when the next generation of adults should emerge. ● A disc golfer in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, last month witnessed an osprey, mobbed by crows, drop a fish it was carrying on to the 11th green. On closer inspection he and his opponent discovered that the fish was a small hammerhead shark. They decided to leave it there in case the osprey felt like going back to get its meal... ● Humberside police are searching for a reticulated python after four other pythons were found in the Twigmoor and Cleatham countryside. They think the snakes were pets that had been abandoned so the missing one is unlikely to bite, besides which it is not venomous, but have warned people not to approach it, and to keep dogs on leads in the area. ● A section of Interstate 64 in New Kent County, Virginia, was briefly closed last week after a van overturned in an early morning crash, scattering its load of live blue crabs across the road. Neither the driver of the van nor, apparently, any of the crabs, were injured. ● Butch Yamali, owner of Peter's Clam Bar in Hempstead, Long Island, has returned a lobster - dubbed Lorenzo - to the sea after several years of being a celebrity in the restaurant's tank. Lorenzo is thought to be 110 years old. ● A kitten, trapped 10-15' (3-4.5m) down a drain on Long Island, New York, was lured within reach of a catch pole by a recording of other kittens. ● The New Zoo & Adventure Park in Green Bay, Wisconsin, has called off the search for an otter which escaped in March, saying that it "has made the decision to be a wild otter." ● Plans for an 80-home-development in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, might have to be put on hold after a resident set up a motion-activated wildlife camera and recorded a rare Hazel Dormouse nesting in a hedgerow which is due to be cut down if the development is approved. ● Twenty Hazel Dormice have been released at an undisclosed woodland location in Leicestershire as part of a national attempt to bring the species back from the brink of extinction.
- For a long time astronomers have known that half of the ordinary matter in the universe was undetected, but a new technique to measure how fast radio bursts (FRBs), brief but powerful pulses of radio waves, slow down and are diffracted as they pass through interstellar matter, has allowed the measurement of the 'fog' they are passing through. ● The Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) array of telescopes in North Chile's Atacama Desert has allowed astronomers to observe the state of the universe when the first stars began to shine, around 13 billion years ago, just 800 million years after the Big Bang. ● The Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, a series of antennae flying under balloons above Antarctica has detected radio signals seemingly rising at steep near-vertical angles, suggesting that they have passed through the Earth, something that should not be possible. The only particles known to be able to pass straight through matter are neutrinos, near-massless uncharged particles which do not generally interact with matter (you have billions of them passing through you at any given moment), but if they are neutrinos why would they be interacting with the antennae after passing through the planet? ● NASA and the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter has captured the first clear images of the bottom of the Sun, and recorded a truly unusual occurrence. The Sun, like the Earth has a north and a south magnetic pole, and they are capable of flipping. The Sun's poles are in the process of doing so, but it is not a matter of both poles moving opposite to each other simultaneously. At present both the north and south poles are at the bottom of the star, until the "solar maximum" period of activity ends and the magnetic field settles down with one pole moving back to the top. ● In 2007 James Wray from the Georgia Institute of Technology identified a peak on the rim of Mars' Jezero Crater, across from where the Perseverence rover landed. It was named Jezero Mons and speculated to have been a volcano, but there was no proof until Perseverence started finding volcanic rocks in the crater. Combined data from the Mars Odyssey Orbiter, Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and Perseverence has now confirmed that it was a volcano. The discovery has an interesting twist. Jezero Crater is thought to have been a lake, long ago. A lake, beside a volcano would have had warm water, possibly warm enough for life to have existed.
- Two well-preserved female ice age "puppies" found in Northern Siberia's tundra with much of their fur intact and the remains of their last meal in their stomachs were assumed to be either domesticated dogs or tamed wolves as they were found near butchered woolly mamoth bones but new DNA analysis has shown that they were 2-month-old wolf pups, with no evidence that they had interacted with people. Their last meal included meat from a woolly rhinoceros and feathers from a wagtail. They also bore no signs of having been attacked, suggesting that they died when their den collapsed on them, possibly as a result of a landslide. ● Work on an alternative route to D606, a road outside Auxerre, France, has revealed the remains of a large Roman villa complex, including a garden, a fountain and a hypocaust, or underfloor heating system, as well as agricultural land and a bathhouse. ● In 1957 archaeologists at Gordion, southwest of Ankara, Türkiye, discovered a royal tomb later found to be that of the father of the first King Midas. Now they have found another royal chamber which could well be Midas' himself. There were at least two kings called Midas who ruled in the Phyrgian kingdom during the first millenium BCE, who might have been extraordinarily wealthy, but neither of whom actually had the legendary gift of making everything they touched turn to gold. ● An interdisciplinary team of researchers are to study the Blinkerwall, the submerged ruins of a 0.6-mile- (1km)-long wall, comprising almost 1,700 stones, just off the coast of the Bay of Mechlenburg, Germany. It is thought to have been built around 11,000 years ago, at a time when the shore of what was then a lake was further out, and used to guide reindeer into a bottleneck between it and the water, where hunters could more easily kill them. ● Archaeologists in North Macedonia have rediscovered a temple dedicated to Apollo, described in 1885 as "one of the most spectacular finds of his [archaeologist Max Ohnefalsch-Richter] time" before being covered over to preserve it and forgotten. ● Earlier this year Ellinor Rosen Eriksson and Asa Nilsson found a bottle on a beach in Sweden's Vaderoarna Islands. It contained a damp and faded letter, on which they were able to discern the name Addison Runcie, the year 1978 and an address in Cullen, Bamfshire, Scotland. They posted about it to social media, where it came to the attention of BBC Scotland, who helped establish that it referred to James Addison Runcie, a fisherman aboard the trawler Loraley. Runcie died in 1995 aged 67, but his then crewmate Gavin Geddes, who wrote the letter, said that he was amazed it had been found 47 years later, and the two women who found the bottle later said that it was "fantastic" that its mystery had been solved. Runcie's sister, Sandra, added that it was "amazing" and that her brother "would have been in stitches [..] He would have poured a dram and said 'cheers'".
- Police called to an attempted burglary by a gang of around five men, all dressed in black, at a house in Lynwood, outside Los Angeles, found one of the perpetrators dead. After interviewing the occupant of the house, who had disturbed the gang and called the police, and neighbours, they concluded that he had accidentally been shot by one of his accomplices as they fled. ● A teenager who drove a Mercedes at 132mph (212kph) on an interstate road in Connecticutt, led officers on a wild chase, which they eventually called off on safety grounds, but they traced the owner of the car from the license plate and the driver was identified as their son. He later confessed and told them that he had been late for a job interview. Reports did not relate whether or not he got the job, but he did get a number of charges including reckless driving and engaging police in a pursuit. ● Customs officials at Kempegowda International Airport in Bengulara, India, have discovered 3,000 live red-eared slider turtles in two passengers' luggage. The two had flown from Malaysia, hidden the animals in chocolate and cereal boxes, and were due to hand them to someone outside the airport as part of a larger international wildlife smuggling scheme, according to reports. The turtles were returned safely to Kuala Lumpur while the two travellers will, presumably, be staying in India for some time... ● Pawtucket, Rhode Island, police are investigating after officers shot a man waving a gun amid pedestrians outside an apartment block. The gun turned out to be a toy. The man was shot in the shoulder, taken to hospital and treated for non-life-threatening injuries. ● Liam Winters has been ordered to return £78,835 ($106,000) he was paid for disposing of household, commercial and industrial waste after he illegally dumped it at locations across Hertfordshire, including Codicote Quarry, where he left "approximately 200,000m3 (about seven million cubic feet)" of rubbish, according to Environment Agency manager Barry Russell, in piles over 65' (20m) high. Winters is already facing a jail term for the illegal dumping, as is his brother who assisted him. ● A suspected burglar in North Charleston, South Carolina, tried to flee from police in an excavator leading to a 3mph (4.8km/h) pursuit until it got stuck and he ran off; he was found by officers using a drone and a dog, and arrested. ● Authorities in Verona, Italy, are looking for a tourist who visited the Palazzo Maffei art museum with a woman, posed for pictures standing beside a "Van Gogh" chair, designed by artist Nicola Bolla, and studded with Swarovski crystals, until security staff moved on, then sat on it, causing it to collapse. The couple fled. The museum were able to restore the chair after several days' work. ● The American Transport Security Administration, which has begun enforcing their requirement for travellers through airports to have "REAL ID" has had to issue an advisory that Costco retail store membership cards do not count...
- Sampling of water from 32 rivers across the four nations of the UK has found traces of "forever chemical" trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) in all but one (Scotland's River Ness). TFA breaks down extremely slowly and German scientists who have studied its impact have called for it to be classed as toxic for reproduction in animals. ● A proposed bill before the Spanish government will ban the flushing of wet wipes down toilets and fine manufacturers to cover the costs of removing them from sewer networks where they can form the basis of "fatbergs", accumulations of waste around them which block the pipes. Wet wipes can also contain microplastics. Spanish authorities are also considering banning the release of party balloons which are often mistaken for food by animals leading to intestinal blockages as well as injuries after becoming entangled in the strings. ● Russian scientists have confirmed the discovery of a new island in the northern Caspian Sea, an inland sea between Europe and Asia. The island, which has yet to be landed on, emerged as the water level of the sea dropped. ● The thunderstorms that hit the UK on Friday night saw more than 30,000 lightning strikes recorded, most over the sea. ● A 60'- (18m)-tall superconducting magnet has been built for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) experiment in France. ITER seeks to develop a workable fusion reactor, in which atoms are smashed together, creating new ones and releasing energy, without leaving radioactive waste, unlike fission reactors commonly in use around the world, in which atoms are broken apart.
IN BRIEF: Two people had to be rescued from a cliffside near San Francisco earlier this month after trying to climb down to retrieve phones that they had dropped, presumably while taking selfies. ● A second alleged sighting of the Loch Ness Monster this year has been registered. ● Plans to build a three-storey structure underneath the 1920s/30s Huayanli apartment complex in Shanghai hit a stumbling block when it was realised that the narrow alleyways and dense layout of the building meant access was impossible, so they reinforced the 13,222 sq ft (1,228m2) structure and hoisted it onto a steel frame, which was placed on top of 432 hydraulically-powered robots to move the whole thing up to 32' (10m) a day. When the below-ground structure is finished the apartment block will be moved back on top of it. ● Ahead of the Download festival this weekend Leicestershire Police have issued a warning to people planning on entering the mosh pit to turn off their phones or gadgets, or disable automatic emergency calls after a number of incidents in previous years where over-energetic dancing caused a rise of nearly 700 extra 999 calls, automatically sent by phones falsely detecting collisions. ● Scientists have begun the process of redefining the second, currently based on caesium clocks, to more accurate optical clocks in which atoms, cooled to near absolute zero, are excited by lasers and their vibrations measured. The redefinition should be complete by the end of the decade. ● Scientists using the UK's DiPOLE 100-X laser system have created liquid carbon for the first time. The material only exists for a few billionths of a second under extreme pressure and temperature, but could be an important part of fusion reactors. ● Elias Meyer, a competitive powerlifter from Switzerland, has set a Guinness World Record by spending two hours and seven seconds buried in snow while wearing only swimming trunks; he said he was more bothered by the weight of the snow than the cold. ● We have often covered the late return of books to libraries, but Sterling Heights Public Library in Michigan has returned a wedding photograph from the 1950s, found inside a donated book, to the couple's family after an appeal over social media. The bride and groom died in 2023 and 2020 respectively, after being married for 67 years; their granddaughter planned to frame the photo and hang it in her home. ● Long Island, New York, resident Kelechi Ezihie is thought to have set a new world record by playing golf for 36 consecutive hours at Huntingdon Crescent Club on Sunday through Monday. He had been planning on playing for 24 hours but halfway through he learned that a Norwegian man had just completed a 32-hour attempt, so played on for an extra twelve.
UPDATES: The two men convicted of stealing a fully-functional solid gold toilet worth £4.7m ($6.4m) from Blenheim Palace have been sentenced. James Sheen, 40, convicted of burglary, conspiracy and transferring criminal property, received a four year prison sentence while Michael Jones, 39, was sentenced to two years and three months for burglary. The toilet has not been recovered and police say they have nothing to go on... ● The California Department of Transportation and Redwood City authorities are claiming to have fixed the security issue that led to hackers putting new messages on crosswalk accessibility buttons earlier this year, including soundalikes of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Although they did not disclose details of the fix many people online have pointed out that the manufacturer of the systems, Polara, has had a publicly-accessible app on both Google Play and Apple Stores to allow city officials access; there is a four-digit security code, which some city authorities do not change from the default '1234'... The app has since been pulled from the public stores and extra security added.
Singer and songwriter John Reid ("Unbreakable", "A Moment Like This", Nightcrawlers, 61), actress Pik-Sen Lim (Doctor Who, Mind Your Language, Johnny English Reborn, 80), TV presenter Kim Woodburn (How Clean Is Your House, I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, 83), academic and human rights activist Sir Geoff Palmer (chancellor and professor emeritus at Herriot-Watt University, Scotland's first black professor, invented the barley abrasion process to speed up malting, 85), actor Harris Yulin (Scarface, Ghostbusters II, Training Day, 87), actor Roland Curram (Darling, Every Home Should Have One, Eldorado, 92).
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DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!
Dumbledore Bear, our in-house psychic predicts that the following numbers will be lucky:3, 18, 23, 36, 38, 40[UK National Lottery, number range 1-59]
You can get your very own prediction at http://www.simonlamont.co.uk/tfir/dumbledore.htm.
Little Jennifer was staying with her friend Little Mary, and Mary's big sister was getting ready to go out on a date. The young girls watched her sitting at her dressing table putting on lipstick. "Oh, Little Jennifer," she said, "Little Mary might have told you how I spend hours looking at my beauty in the mirror. Do you think that's vanity?"
Little Jennifer thought for a moment, then smiled as only she could. "No, I think it's imagination!"