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2/10/2003

After his short abscence TW has entered the building.

In the USA the search for a truly unique name for one's uniquely precious newborn goes on. Apparently there are now tens of thousands of first names in existence, and so people are resorting to brand names such as Nike, Timberland, Jaguar, Bentley, Canon and Xerox. The truly desperate parents who named their baby Unique are probably bitterly disappointed to find that there are now dozens of Uniques ­ perhaps they should have called her Absolutely & Definitively Unique?

3/10/2003

8 July 1958: a red-letter day for New Zealand bridge. In a world first, four players were each dealt a hand consisting of an entire suit. (I haven't got time to work out the mathematical probability, but it's probably similar to that of winning two Lotto jackpots in successive weeks.)

6/10/2003

Apparently large hurricanes weigh about the same as half a billion elephants (probably more elephants than have ever existed). Considering that parts of them move at a couple of hundred kilometres an hour, it's a wonder they don't create even more havoc than they do.

8/10/2003

According to the Ten Commandments, 'though shalt commit adultery'. At least, that's what a 17th-Century English edition of the Bible (ever since known as 'The Adulterers' Bible') said, greatly scandalising the God-fearing. In fact, so lacking in a sense of humour were the authorities that the typesetter and proofreader were hanged, drawn and quartered.

9/10/2003

On the subject of unusual first names, I hear that Océan is very popular these days as a girl's name in France. Not that naming your child after natural phenomena is such a new thing ­ after all, Sky (Rangi) and Sea (Moana) are common Maori names, and a boy born on the Mayflower's voyage to America in 1620 was baptised Oceanus Hopkins.

Q: Joseph Banks, Michel Begon, Loius de Bougainville, Anders Dahl, Friedrich Freese, Leonhard Fuchs, Georg Kamel, Pierre Magnol, Joel Poinsett, Caspar Wistar. Apart from all being dead, what do these gentlemen all have in common? Answer tomorrow.

10/10/2003

A: They all have flowering plants named after them: banksia, begonia, bougainvillea, dahlia, freesia, fuchsia, camellia, magnolia, poinsettia, wisteria.

Q: What is the connection between the English name Frank and the Thai for guava?

A: It's a long story. The Franks were one of the Germanic tribes who invaded the Roman Empire ­ France is named after them, as are people called Frank, Francesco etc. During the Crusades of the 11th-12th Centuries, most of the troops who traumatised the Muslim Middle East were Frankish and so farangi became the generic Arabic term for a Westerner. The word drifted into Persia and then north India with the Moghul conquerers. Firangi is now the standard Indian word for 'Western' as in firangi music, firangi tourist etc. The Thais picked up the word through contact with Arabic-speaking traders, and when guavas were introduced into South-East Asia from South America by Europeans (the Portuguese), the fruit came to be called farang. Thais now imagine farang is a native word, and that they call Westerners 'guavas' because they are white, like the flesh of the fruit!

Other 'Frank' words:
• Greek frangos (Westerner)
• Iranian gojeh farangi (tomato)
• Arabic Firanja (Europe)
• Tamil pirangi (Westerner)
• Malay Feringgi (Portuguese) and barang (trade goods)
• Cambodian barang (Frenchman, or any Westerner)
• Star Trek Ferenghi (race of greedy, aggressive traders)

[Incidentally, none of these words has any connection with 'foreign', which comes from a Latin word meaning 'outside'.]

13/10/2003

In May (see 01/05/03) I described the ignominious end of King Edward II of England (he got the red-hot poker). Others whose passing was less than glorious were William II (shot with an arrow in a 'hunting accident' - in all probability an assassination) and George II (died from complications after he fell off the lavatory - he was probably drunk).

15/10/2003

On April 1st 1957 a British TV current affairs programme included an item about the Swiss spaghetti harvest. Scenes of the spaghetti being harvested by hand from trees were accompanied by an explanation that there was a bumper crop because of the disappearance of the spaghetti weevil. People wrote in wanting to know how to grow their own spaghetti trees; the advice they were given was 'place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best'.

16/10/2003

In the 1st April 1977 issue of Britain’s ‘Guardian’ newspaper there appeared a feature on the Indian Ocean republic of San Seriffe. Readers were informed that this group of semi-colon-shaped islands, the principal of which are Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse, had their capital at the town of Bodoni and that the current ruler was a General Pica. The paper’s phones ran hot all day with requests for more information about this tropical paradise.

17/10/2003

Yet another April Fool's classic: in 1998 Burger King announced the launch of the Left-Handed Whopper - same ingredients as the standard Whopper but with the condiments rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of the sinistral community. Thousands came into outlets to order this long-overdue treat.

20/10/2003

More unfortunate royal deaths:
• AD1000 - King Olaf I of Norway: drowned when he leapt overboard to avoid capture in a battle
• 1086 - King Knud II: murdered in a peasants' uprising
• 1137 - Erik II of Denmark: murdered by the son of a nobleman he had killed
• 1157 - King Knud II of Denmark: murdered by his cousin
• 1190 - King Frederick 'Barbarossa' of Germany and Sicily: drowned during a river crossing on campaign in Turkey
• 1213 ­ King Pedro II of Aragon: killed in a battle with the English crusader Simon de Montfort
• 1216 ­ King John of England: dysentery
• 1217 ­ King Enrique I of Castile: killed by a loose roof tile
• 1250 - King Erik IV of Denmark: murdered by his brother
• 1256 - King Wilhelm II of Germany: drowned when his horse fell through ice during a battle
• 1286 - King Alexander III of Scotland: killed when his horse galloped over a cliff in the dark
• 1308 - King Albert I of Germany: murdered by his nephew
• 1390 ­ King Juan I of Castile: killed in a fall from his horse
• 1395 ­ King Juan I of Aragon: killed in a fall from his horse
• 1400 - King Richard II of England: supposedly starved himself to death in captivity, but probably smothered to death
• 1444 - King Ladislaus III of Poland: killed in battle against the Turks
• 1463 - King Stefan IV of Serbia: captured and executed by the Turks
• 1553 ­ King Edward IV of England: tuberculosis at age 16.
[Clearly, if you're a king, you should stay clear of relatives and horses.]

22/10/2003

Know your cars? What do the Porsche Spyder, the Rover 3500, the Buick Electra and the Mercedes S280 have in common? Answer tomorrow.

Let’s not wait until tomorrow.

A: Famous people were killed in them (actor James Dean, 1955; Princess Grace of Monaco, 1982; actress Jayne Mansfield, 1967; Diana, Princess of Wales, 1997). Others who have died in car accidents include rock singers Eddie Cockran (1960), Mark Bolan of T-Rex (1977), Steve Gilpin of Mi-Sex (1992), and Hans Holzl alias ‘Falco’ (1998).

24/10/2003

The most expensive item in your supermarket is saffron threads. If you needed a whole kilo you’d have to come up with about $10,000 - I’m surprised it’s not kept under lock and key. The threads are dried stigmas of the saffron flower (a type of crocus), and a kilo consists of about half a million of them.

28/10/2003

Most of us are familiar with the terms billion and trillion, usually taken to mean 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000. But when we want to talk about an unimaginably big number we have to invent words like 'zillion' or 'gazillion'. Do correct terms for larger numbers exist? Yes, up to a point. After a trillion, multiplying repeatedly by a factor of one thousand - three more noughts - gives quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion and decillion, the last of these having 33 noughts. With a knowledge of Latin it's possible to go all the way up to centillion (303 noughts).

29/10/2003

Q: Why do Americans say aluminum while we say aluminium?

A: Sir Humphrey Davy, who discovered the element, originally named it alumium but later changed it to aluminum, so the American spelling is actually the more original. However, later scientists felt that it was out of step with the names of other metallic elements like sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium etc. The International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry has standardised on aluminium, but the Americans (as in so many other matters) insist on being out of step with the rest of the world.

30/10/2003

Q: What is the world’s biggest lake?

A: As usual, it depends what you mean. If you mean the largest inland body of water, then the salt-water Caspian Sea in central Asia is the largest by a very large margin. However, 'lake' usually implies fresh water, so Lake Superior (Canada/USA) is usually reckoned the largest. Personally, I would give the title to Siberia's Lake Baikal. It ranks only sixth in area, but it is easily the deepest and contains by far the most water - in fact, one quarter of all the fresh water in the world. It would take all the rivers on earth one year to fill it.

31/10/2003

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