I is for The Incredibles

Leading highlight of our recent trips to the cinema has to be 'Incredibles 2', the sequel to the original Pixar movie that has been a long 14 years in the making (the length of time between films one and two. I'm eagerly awaiting the third film some time in the future).

Apart from showing us all what a full-length animated version of Marvel's Fantastic Four could look like as a blockbuster movie (sigh) - it also shows how each ability in the Parr family reflects their individual roles within the family - and more... According to creator Brad Bird, “Men are always expected to be strong, so I had Bob have super strength. Mothers are always pulled in a million different directions, so I had [Helen] be elastic. Teenagers are insecure and defensive, so I had Violet have force-fields and invisibility. Ten-year-old's are energy balls that can’t be stopped. And babies are unknown — maybe they have no powers, maybe they have all powers, we don’t know.”

That's awesome. So, Jack-Jack's varied abilities are a metaphor for how young children have infinite possibilities ahead of them in life. Very true.

H is for Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

It's always interesting to know how someone first came up with the concept of a long-running series. It's frequently something particularly random.

The idea for The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy first came to Douglas Adams as he was lying drunk in a field. It was 1971, and Adams was stargazing one night in a field in Innsbruck, Austria. He was strapped for cash, hitch-hiking from London to Istanbul with a stolen copy of Ken Welsh’s Hitch-hiker’s Guide to Europe. Adams later admitted to Welsh, “I got frantically depressed in Innsbruck ... When the stars came out I thought that someone ought to write a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because it looked a lot more attractive out there than it did around me." The radio series that kicked off the franchise first aired in 1978.

G is for Guitar

The evolution of the modern guitar can be traced right back to the stringed instruments played across Central Asia and India at least 5,000 years ago. The oldest picture of an instrument is a 3,300-year-old carving of a Hittite bard playing an instrument.

The name ‘guitar’ dates back to the Latin word cithara. By the year 1200 we get the Guitarra Moresca (Moorish Guitar, with a rounded back, multiple sound holes and wide fingerboard) and Guitarra Latina (Latin Guitar, with a more narrow neck, a flat back and one sound hole). Both were four-string guitars.

The earliest six-string guitar dates back to 1779, and is believed to have been made by Gaetano Vinaccia, a member of the family of Italian luthiers (stringed instrument builders). The dimensions of the modern classical guitar were first introduced in the 19th century by Antonio de Torres Jurado, a Spanish luthier.

The electric guitar was first made by George Beauchamp in 1936.

F is for Flag

It's an iconic image, isn't it? The Stars and Stripes on the moon.

Except, you won't see this if you go there now.

NASA has now confirmed any American flags that are still in situ on the moon are now totally white.

According to lunar scientist Paul Spudis:

For forty-odd years, the flags have been exposed to the full fury of the Moon's environment – alternating 14 days of searing sunlight and 100° C heat with 14 days of numbing-cold -150° C darkness. But even more damaging is the intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the pure unfiltered sunlight on the cloth (modal) from which the Apollo flags were made. Even on Earth, the colours of a cloth flag flown in bright sunlight for many years will eventually fade and need to be replaced. So it is likely that these symbols of American achievement have been rendered blank, bleached white by the UV radiation of unfiltered sunlight on the lunar surface. Some of them may even have begun to physically disintegrate under the intense flux.

The NASA website about this can be read here.

E is for the English

Here are a list of five slang terms for people from England. [however, often these terms can also be applied to people hailing from Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), the United Kingdom (Great Britain + Northern Ireland), or the British Isles (the geographical grouping for the area off the northwest coast of Europe comprising Great Britain, the whole of Ireland, and adjacent smaller islands)].

Limey
The term is thought to have originated in the 1850's as "lime-juicer", later shortened to "limey". A derogatory term for sailors in the Royal Navy, because of the Navy's practice since the beginning of the 19th century of adding lemon juice or lime juice to the sailors' daily ration of watered-down rum (known as grog), in order to prevent scurvy. The term is used mainly in North America.

Pommy
The terms Pommy, Pommie and Pom, in Australia, South Africa and New Zealand usually denote an English person (or, less commonly, people from other parts of the United Kingdom). Etymology unknown, although there are several theories.

Tommy
This term is derived from the name "Tommy Atkins", used as a generic name for a soldier for many years (and even used as an example name on British Army registration forms). It is known to have been used as early as 1743.

Sassenach
Deriving from the Scottish Gaelic, the term is still used by Scots to refer to English people, frequently negatively. Used regularly since the 18th century (as a noun), although it's probably goes back much earlier...

Rosbif
A common humorous French term for an English person, rosbif refers back to the English tradition of cooking roast beef. It's been in use since the 18th Century.

D is for Dali

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marquess of Dalí de Púbol, known professionally as Salvador Dalí,was a prominent Spanish artist.

He could be extremely surreal in his life as well as through his work. Here's one bizarre example (there are lots to choose from!):

• In 1936, he delivered a lecture titled "Fantomes paranoiaques athentiques" ("Authentic paranoid ghosts") while dressed in a deep sea diving suit, carrying a billiard cue and walking a pair of Russian wolfhounds. Apparently he nearly suffocated during the presentation, as Dalí had to be rescued by the young poet David Gascoyne, who arrived with a spanner to release him from the diving helmet.

C is for Carrots

What colour are carrots?

The clue is in the picture. These are orange. In fact, I was brought up with the idea that carrots are orange. Modern day carrots are!

However, carrots can also exist in yellow, purple and white varieties.

There are many claims that Dutch growers specifically created orange carrots in the 17th Century to honour the Dutch flag at the time. However, there is a lack of convincing evidence for this. Many scientists simply say that is the way they have been cultivated over the centuries. The Dutch were at the forefront of agricultural innovation in the 17th Century, so may have favoured this variety, which produces a nicer tasting carrot - but they didn't create the orange carrot.

When checking this fact, I discovered the wonders of the Carrot Museum!

Check this out: http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history5.html

B is for Bronze

The modern definition of the word 'bronze' is an alloy consisting primarily of copper and some other metals. There's a whole period of history named after 'bronze', designating the period when this brown alloy was most in use. We refer to people who have a deep brown tan as being 'bronzed' - and understandably so. Apparently, the first recorded use of bronze as a name of a brown colour in English was in 1753.

And yet, I have been told that the Ancient Greek scholar Homer wrote about the sky being 'bronze' in colour - meaning blue. Really? It was on a TV show, a radio show, in a reference book. So, plenty of evidence. And yes - indeed, Homer did refer to the sky as bronze. Curious...

So I did some more checking - and in addition to finding a couple of sources reporting that it was a reference to blue, there was an interesting article from a Greek scholar who insisted that Homer's writings including a poetical reference to bronze, not one related to colour. Another website insisted that Homer was in fact colour-blind. Yet another told me that Homer's colour description usage was a cultural phenomenon common among the Greeks at that time.

So can we say that Homer saw the sky as 'bronze'? Possibly... did he think it was blue? Probably not.

And I've even found an additional reference to a bronze sky in Scripture:

Deuteronomy 28:23 New International Version (NIV)
The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron.

A is for Apple Pie

I love a slice of apple pie. And, apparently, so do the people in the US State of Vermont.

Vermont went and designated apple pie as the official state pie in 1999 (and the same Act also designates apple as the official state fruit of Vermont).

The legislation also went on to specify that;

"When serving apple pie in Vermont, a "good faith" effort shall be made to meet one or more of the following conditions:

(a) with a glass of cold milk,
(b) with a slice of cheddar cheese weighing a minimum of 1/2 ounce,
(c) with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream."

The legislation can be found here.

A-Z: Fascinating Facts

It's coming up to the month of August once again, and as usual I am setting myself a challenge to blog every day for 26 days solid - right through the alphabet on one particular theme. There's been a number of changes in my life over the last eighteen months - some good, some not so good - and therefore blogging has taken a bit of a back seat for a while. However, I'm keen to 'rise to the challenge'...

This year I've come up with a list of fascinating facts, all of which have resonated with me when I read them; all have a particular meaning to me.  I hope you find this strange list of facts interesting. I've taken the time to double-check all of these, have done my best to ensure no dodgy information or 'fake news' here...

Have a good August, catch you on the other side.