It is a changing world.

 

A girls’ best friend – there is a planet, 55 Cancrie, which is about twice the size of Earth which is mostly made from diamond – it is, however, some 540 light years away.

You spin me round [ the Earth’s rotation is actually slowing down, meaning that the length of the day is increasing by around 1.8 seconds per century. 600 million years ago a day was only 21 hours long.

 

Over the moon – The distance between the Earth and the moon  is increasing by about 3cm a year.

 

 

Christpher Lee – when fact outweighs fiction

 

A talented actor and a real screen presence, Lee, was perhaps the ultimate screen bad guy. Just one look at his credits show this but there was so much more to this truly remarkable man, a life worthy of one of his films.

 

Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, later Sir Christopher,  was born on 27 May 1922 in Belgravia, London, the son of Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Trollope Lee and his wife, Countess Estelle Marie (née Carandini di Sarzano)

After his parents separation, when he was four, he lived with his mother in Switzerland where he got his first taste of acting.  They later moved to London where his mother married Ian Flemmigs uncle, the banker Harcourt George St-Croix Rose.  While here he was introduced to  Grigori Rasputin’s assassins Prince Yusupav and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. He would later play Rasputin in a film.

 

Another point of interest is while on his way to visit his sister, Lee was in Paris and witnessed there last public execution by guillotine.

 

In 1939, when the war broke out, he volunteered to fight for the Finnish army in their winter war against the Soviet Union, he later joined the Home Guard before transferring to the RAF – it was here that he worked as an intelligence officer and later hunted down Nazis.

 

After the war his acting carer blossomed and he went on to play many roles in TV, film and radio achieving some amazing milestones:

 

Only Lord of the Rings actor to have met Tolkien

He played a Bond villain – and was related by marriage to the author Ian Flemming.

He met Rasputin’s killers and played the mad monk.

He had many famous on screen duals with light sabres, swords, wizards staffs and much more. A real life fencer he is believed to have had the most on screen sword fights and only in his 70’s did he stop doing his own fight scenes.

 

He holds the Guinness World Record for most Screen credits.

In his eighties he recorded what else but a Heavy Metal album.

 

Quite a life, quite a real life bad ass.

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Amazing Coincidences      Robert Todd Lincoln.

 

The oldest son of President Abraham Lincoln, Robert ( 1 August 1843 – 26 July 1926) and in fact the only child to survive to adulthood. He was in his own way a remarkable man himself.

 

A successful lawyer, businessman and politician he also served on the side e of the Union during the American Civil War. Rising to the rank of Captain he fought at the Battle of Appomattox Court House.  As a businessman her was chairman of the Pullman Company and as a politician he was Secretary of State for War and Minister to the United Kingdom.

 

It is, however, other events that really make him stand out.

 

In Jersy City, New Jersey, in 1863 /64 exact date not known, Robert was on a crowded platform and slipped into the gap between the platform and the moving train. He was pulled to safety, and from likely injury and possible death, just in time. He recognised his saviour immediately as the famous actor Edwin Booth. 

On the 14 April 1865 Edwin’s brother, John Wilkes Booth, would assassinate Robert’s father Abraham.

This only is enough to dine out on but there is more.

 

Following the shooting, Robert who was at the White House at the time, rushed to his fathers side upon hearing the news.

On the 2 July 1881 at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station he was with,  as Secretary of State for War, President James Garfield when Charles J. Guiteau shot and ultimately killed him

 

Following on from these two unfortunate events on the 6 September 1901 Robert was in Buffalo,  New York . And was by the Temple of Music at the  Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, when President McKinley, who was at the same location, was shot by Leon Czolgosz.

 

This makes him the only known person to have been there or nearby when three US presidents were assassinated.

 

No wonder after McKinley’s shotting he refused to attend Presidential functions and stated "There is a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present". 

 

Thought I would start the ball rolling with just a few unusual facts or perhaps a myth or two dispelled.

At over 30cm long and over to litres in volume the largest fossilised dung (also called coprolite) ever found is believed to have belonged to T Rex.

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobi is the fear of long words. At 36 letters long this does not seem very fair to me but this actually dates back to 1^st centuary BCE and e=was used by the Roman poet Horace

 

Did T Rex have feathers? In China, scientists have discovered that the ancestors of  T Rex (Cretaceous period) were covered in feathers leading to the possibility that old fearsome was chicken like.

One for the Darwin awards perhaps. In 1912 Franz Reichelt, a tailor by trade, wanted to invent an early parachute.  He tested his design on a number of dummies and was so confident that he tried it himself from the lower level of the Eiffel Tower – unfortunately, it was not successful and he died.

 

Despite it’s fame for mysterious disappearances, The Bermuda Triangle is in fact no more dangerous than any other busy shipping area.