The Friday Irregular

Issue #823 - 20th June 2025


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

tfir@simonlamont.co.uk

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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.

CONTENTS



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^ WORD OF THE WEEK

umbraculiform
  adj. shaped like an umbrella

^ ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

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.


^ THE WISDOM OF...

This week, Billy Wilder:
Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.


^ FILM QUIZ

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:


^ WEIRD WORLD NEWS

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

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.


^ OBITUARIES

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).


^ 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.


^ AND FINALLY...

    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!"


^ ...end of line