Today Is...Leap Day

It is also the day i complete my Post Everyday For A Year Challenge so that's me making room in my cupboard for a years supplies of Beanies Coffee but it was just my luck that the year had an extra day.
Due to the World inconveniently taking 365.242 days or or 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 56 seconds to go around the Sun it makes our calendars go on the fritz so we have to add an extra day to the year every 4 years and to most people today is the extra day but it isn't as simple as just tacking a 29th Day onto February.
If we didn’t account for this extra time, the seasons would begin to drift. This would be annoying if not devastating, because over a period of about 700 years our summers, which we’ve come to expect in June in the northern hemisphere, would begin to occur in December and who wants to eat turkey in their swimming trunks.
So by adding an extra day every four years, our calendar years stay correctly adjusted but hang on, by adding a leap day every four years, we actually make the calendar longer by over 44 minutes. Over time, these extra 44 minutes would also cause the seasons to drift in our calendar and its back to wearing our Bikini's at Christmas so for this reason, not every four years is a leap year. 
Complicatedly the rule is that if the year is divisible by 100 and not divisible by 400, leap year is skipped but all you need to know is that thanks to today, our seasons will always occur when we expect them to occur, oh and today isn't that extra day, that was on the 24th.
Yep, to make things even more convoluted, the day that is added to a leap year is 24th February. The extra 24th February means that the original 24th February becomes the 25th February and all the other days get pushed down a date until 29th February.

Today Is...Rare Disease Day

According to the NHS website, rare diseases are the ones that impact very few people out of the general population and most don't even have proper treatment and they give a brief the top 10 rarest known. 
The most rarest is RPI Deficiency which is considered to be the rarest disease in the world. Ribose-5-Phosphate Isomerase (RPI), is a crucial enzyme in a metabolic process in the human body which causes muscle stiffness, seizures and a reduction of white matter in the brain. There has only ever been one case and that was in 1984 and since then there have been no cases.
Field’s disease has only ever affected two people and they were twin sisters who suffered a degeneration of their muscles and weakening of the body. Medical experts are still researching the condition.
Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS) affects 1 in 20 million people and causes premature ageing and makes even 2-year-olds look aged and weak. There is no current cure for HGPS at the moment.
Methemoglobemin is a form of haemoglobin that makes our blood, skin, lips and nails turn blue in color. It can be inherited but MetHb usually happens when people use certain medications or recreational drugs or exposure to certain chemicals.
Aquagenic Urticaria is a Water Allergy where a person’s skin turns red and itchy after overexposure to water. People suffering from this condition can also be allergic to snow, sweat, and rain.
Foreign Accent Syndrome causes a person to speak in a different accent from their natural one and the main cause of Foreign Accent Syndrome is a brain injury.
Lesch–Nyhan Syndrome is a male only neurological disability which causes people to behave aggressively and harm themselves through head hitting and hand biting due to too much Uric Acid in the body and affects 1 in 3 million men.
Kuru Disease is named as it only affects the Kuru tribe in Papua New Guinea who consume the tissues of their loved ones after their death including the Brain which causes the transmission of prion- an infectious protein.
Harlequin is a disease which makes skin looks like fish scales and makes the body incapable of maintain proper temperature. There is no known cure.
Stone Man’s Disease transforms a person’s muscle tissues into bones.

Today Is...National Pokémon Day

Pokémon is a Japanese media franchise consisting of video games, animated series and films, a trading card game and has a target audience of children aged 5 to 12.
That is, just to make sure it is understood, it is aimed at children aged 5 to 12 which could make all those adults running around my local park holding out their mobile phones and excitedly shouting 'I got a Jigglypuff' a bit strange but then they may consider me a bit strange for sitting their quietly reading my book so fairs fair.
I have to admit i don't know much about Pokémon having never seen the cartoon or film and could probably name about 15 off the top of my head but i do remember an incident where one episode of the cartoon sparked off epileptic seizures in thousands of viewers and the series was suspended until someone decided, oh well, and started showing it again.
The fad for collecting pocket monsters to fight against each other did die down until 2016 when Pokémon Go was introduced which used augmented reality so you could run around cities and capture certain Pokémon and interrupt ladies peacefully reading their books chasing Squirtles and Bulbasaurs or any of the other 1017 officially registered on the National Pokedex (who knew there was such a thing?).
According to Wikipedia the best type of Pokémon to capture are the steel types but you should avoid bothering to go after the bug types who by all accounts are a bit rubbish but what about the Jigglypuff?
Apparently it's special power is the ability to send people to sleep whenever it starts singing making it the Coldplay of the Pokémon World.

Today Is...Galileo Banned From Teaching Earth Orbit's The Sun

Galileo was the first man to use a telescope to look into space and discover the mountains and the craters on the moon and all the stars in the Milky Way and other cool stuff.
Of course the Church was not fans of Astronomy because they saw it as threat to the rubbish that they had been pushing and the people found it enormously disorientating because one moment they thought they were sitting still on a ball of rock with everything going around them but it turned out they were hurtling through space with them going around everything else.
With his telescope he discovered that Jupiter had several moons which really upset the Pope as there were only supposed to be seven heavenly bodies, the Sun, the moon and five planets so the church forced him to recant or be executed.
On this day in 1616, the Catholic Church began the inquisition and Galileo was on trial for holding the belief that the Earth revolved around the Sun, which was deemed heretical by the Church.
Galileo refused to accept Church orthodoxy that the Sun moved around the Earth and was an absolute fact of scripture that could not be disputed, arguing instead that the Earth was not the centre of the universe so rather than weigh up the evidence, the Church banned him from teaching or defending the view.
Obviously he told them where to get off because in 1633 the Church found him guilty of heresy and condemned him to house arrest for the rest of his life.
In 1992, after a 13 year investigation, the Roman Catholic Church admitted it had been wrong to condemn Galileo for promoting the Copernican astronomical theory.
It took 359 years for the Church to catch up with science which makes you wonder just where we would be if the Church was not replaced by science as the source of our knowledge and kept believing that the universe revolved around them, literally.

Today Is...Nikita Khrushchev Denounces Stalin

When they take over the seat of power all World Leader blames the previous one for anything that isn't right and that is exactly what Nikita Khrushchev did today in 1956 when he denounced Joseph Stalin and his 'cult of personality'.
As the former Soviet leader was responsible for tens of millions of deaths it would have been hard to defend him so the First Secretary of the Communist Party not only bad mouthed his predecessor for the way he had run the country, but also essentially dethroned Stalin for fostering a leadership cult around himself and knocked him from the hero's pedestal on which he had been placed by Soviet propaganda for nearly three decades.
The speech painted a grim picture of Stalin as a ruthless dictator who ruled by fear, drove countless loyal communists to their deaths and condemned his abuse of power and systemic violence under his regime policies which had deviated from the traditional socialist ideals of the Lenin era and as a result monuments to Stalin were removed, his name was removed from places, buildings and the state anthem, and his body was removed from the Lenin Mausoleum.
Initially the internal repercussions of this denunciation led to resentment from many party members who held Stalin in high regard but globally, the West welcomed the disavowal of Stalin and Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation resulted in some thawing in Cold War relations and a move towards peaceful coexistence with the West, a shift from Stalin’s aggressive foreign policies and many of the satellite countries of Eastern Europe started pushing for more autonomy and there were several uprisings in direct response to the lessening of Soviet control.
While this was swiftly crushed by Soviet troops, it set a precedent for future resistance against Soviet control and although Khrushchev enjoyed strong support during the 1950s, by the early 1960s however, his popularity was eroded and the poor handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis saw him lose power and was pensioned off with an apartment in Moscow and a dacha in the countryside.

Today Is...Fidel Castro Retires As President of Cuba

The Americans tried everything to topple Fidel Castro and the man who is loved and hated in equal measure, surviving everything the USA threw at him including the brilliant loopy plan to make Castro believe God was going to get him by projecting images of Jesus Christ onto low-lying clouds while a military plane, using powerful loudspeakers would 'speak' but disappointingly the US military decided against following up the plan and decided to carry on with the exploding cigars ploy instead but don't you wish they had given it a go.
Instead he survived a reported 600 plus attempts on his life and outlasted 10 different American Presidents only to die of old age in his own bed but it was no mean feat that in the face of the USA's crippling embargo, to achieve an enviable national health system, one of the highest rates of literacy in the Western World and one of the lowest infant mortality rates is definitely a superb legacy.
On the opposite side of the coin, the long dictatorship bought a bankrupt country, an impoverished population, a terrible oppression system, a lack of civil rights and one political party led by one man which is not such a hot legacy.
That is for Historians to argue over but the bottom line is at the end of his time did he improve things for his countrymen and in some ways he very much did but in some other ways he toppled a nasty, repressive regime only to replace it with another nasty, repressive regime.
To many on the left he is a hero purely because he continually foiled and thumbed his nose at the overbearing Americans but that is to overlook his many failings but to many of the right he was an evil villain but that overlooks the many successes and improvements he bought to his countrymen.

Today Is...Siege Of The Alamo

I have never really understood why Texans go on about the Alamo, all 200 plus Texans got slaughtered in that scrap by ticked off Mexicans so hardly a highlight in Texan history but the Alamo is being mentioned again by supporters of Texans wanting out of the USA.
There has been mention of Texan independence for decades, all remembering the Alamo probably and the movement has also got an international ally in the shape of that hotbed of Democracy, Belarus, who have accused the US Government of a humans right violation for not waving goodbye to Texas.
It's unlikely that Texas will leave the Union, they only had 200 people turn up at the last rally and we get a bigger turn out in the UK to watch people roll cheese down a hill, and besides, constantly asking people to remember a fight which they comprehensively lost isn't encouraging.
Davy Crockett is usually someone who gets a shout out whenever the Alamo is mentioned and the ballad of Davy Crokett which is apparently a true story although he wasn't actually born on a mountain top, it was a valley actually so the complete opposite to a mountain and he may have killed many bears, he just wasn't three years old at the time, but he did single handedly fight the injun war though, just him and a few hundred close friends but the rest of the tales about frontier manliness, strength and machismo are all true and he should know because he wrote it.
His glorious death came at the Alamo, that heroic last stand when a bunch of white settlers in Mexico-owned Texas wanted a taste of sweet, sweet democracy so they rebelled against Mexico.
Famous heroic figures like Crockett and his pal Jim Bowie led an army of rebels who were forced to make their last stand inside a crumbling old building called the Alamo, finally going down in a hail of gunfire and freedom tears atop a pile of dead Mexicans.
The General did tell Crockett it wasn't worth fighting over and ordered him to retreat but he refused and the General went 'Sure, whatever' and left them to it and his dying words were 'Remember the Alamo' which everybody did which is crap because they got their asses whupped that day but he's also known for making coonskin hats fashionable and those bad boys never go out of fashion.

Today Is...Dolly The Sheep Cloned

When Dolly the sheep was successfully cloned today in 1997, it was assumed that we were on the very cusp of a brave new world where sci-fi melted into real-life where humans and extinct animals could be copied with ease but it does seem to have fallen out of the public consciousness since.
Not that no science hasn't continued with it, in early 2000, a tree landed on the last living Pyrenean ibex, turning that creature into just one more statistic on an ever-growing list of extinct species but then, in 2009, a goat gave birth to a cloned Pyrenean ibex which marked the first time any species had been brought back from extinction and also the first species to become extinct twice when it died seven minutes later.
The precedent was set though and now we know that we could bring animals back to life but human cloning is still a bridge too far ethically to even seriously consider and some places have already made their decision on it, banning human cloning entirely, just in case somebody happens to figure it out, somewhere where ethics are not so near the top of the agenda.
From sheep to ibex is the start, but as soon as primates, which share almost all of our DNA, are cloned then it is only a small step to humans and the Chinese successfully created two cloned monkeys from a non-embryonic cell in 2018 making it technically possible to clone human beings.

Today Is...Communist Manifesto Published

Karl Marx is most famous for writing the books Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto which led to Communism becoming confusingly known as Marxism in his honour but i do wonder if those who adopted his reasoning, actually read the books.
How anyone can take: 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' as meaning build a 40ft high wall with razor wire and armed guards in towers is beyond me but somehow they did and Marx and his little book got the blame for it.
It is hard to consider a book that had wider implications than the Communist Manifesto. The 20th Century saw Communism and it's smaller brother Socialism sweep around half the World and then retract back again. It led to the Cold War and competition between two competing ideologies which saw two massive leaps for mankind, one great (Space Travel) and one not so much (Nuclear Weapons).
Due to the economic situation and the battering Capitalism is taking being kept on life support by the people who crashed it, there has been a substantial rise in the numbers of books advocating alternative systems but i would advise that if you are one of the recently disillusioned and have heard about this
Socialism thing and want to find out a bit more about it, i wouldn't reach for the Marx/Engels book straight away.
It can not be called, in any terms, a page turner and can be confusing for anyone dipping a toe into Socialist theory.
The Socialist audience is getting younger because the younger people weren't around when Marxism was associated with Stalin and the nasty flavour of Communism in the Soviet Union or East Germany, now it is associated with men like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela whose Socialist philosophy dragged his country out of poverty and bettered the lot of the poorest in his country.
The younger generation look at the rich men making up the Worlds Government's, and feel alienated, rightly asking how can they possible understand their plight and not do anything about the pitiful, sinister and corrupt economic shambles going on around them. Many of the new left movements are organised by the younger generation who saw at first hand the violent efforts the Governments will go to when the present system is threatened.
As tempting as it may be for the establishment to ignore or just shake their heads at this new wave of interest in Marx, large swathes of the new generation coming through, the future politicians and policy makers, are questioning the present system and are not being fooled by the Capitalist mantra that what we have is all there is because they know there is an alternative where the majority also get a bite at the cherry.
As the author of one of the most influential books ever written, Marx is buried in Highgate Cemetery in Marx Corner with other famous Communists and Socialists but as the father of Communism, the main attraction is an impressive large 10 foot headstone and the words 'Workers of All Lands Unite' in gold lettering on the plinth.
Imagine his disappointment if he ever found out that someone decided to charge £8 to go see the grave of the World's foremost anti-Capitalist.
Seriously, did nobody at all read his bloody book?

Today Is...Kurt Cobain Day

It would have been Kurt Cobain's Birthday today and the home town of the Grunge star honours their most famous son with an annual Kurt Cobain day.
The residents of Aberdeen, Washington celebrate the life of the 90's singer with concerts and a huge statue of the troubled star who ended his life aged just 27.
'Aberdeen residents may justifiably take pride in the role our community played in the life of Kurt Cobain' reads a proclamation from the cities Mayor who thanked the Grunge superstar for putting the city on the map.
So indebted are they to him that they have tagged 'Come As You Are' from one the bands biggest hits to their Welcome sign.
I'm not sure what Kurt Cobain would make of the place he once called 'Twin Peaks without the excitement' claiming him for their own, i expect he wouldn't have been very happy about it. Oh well, nevermind.
In memory i'm going to throw 'Smell's Like Teen Spirit' in the CD Player and fondly remember the man who spoke for a generation with the immortal lyrics: 'A mulatto, An albino, A mosquito, My libido,Yeah'. Indeed Kurt, indeed.

Today Is...Nicolaus Copernicus Born

If there is one thing we know about space it is that the Earth orbits the Sun and you have to thank Nicolas Copernicus for that.
It was his book 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium' (or On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) which proved not only that he was terrible at book titles but also that the Earth orbited the Sun but he was canny about it all because he knew that if i had just come out and said: 'Hey what if the Earth is not the center of the Universe and actually goes around the Sun', the Church would have replied: 'Hey, what if we set you on fire and piss on you to put it out' so he delayed the publication until he was literally on his death bed, the book was printed on the day that he died.
Although he gets all the glory, the idea was first put forward by Aristarchus in about 300BC when he said the middle contained a great fire which the planets circled around but he was up against Aristotle and Ptolemy who said we were the middle and was ignored but he did get a moon crater named after him as well as an element, Copernicium.
Such was his concern that the Religious folk would batter him that he tried to get around it by dedicating his masterpiece to Pope Paul III but it didn't stop them criticizing him, to be honest i don't think they quite got the jist of it.
The main criticism was the theory wasn't compatible with the Bible because in Genesis 1:14, 'God places lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night' and the central location of the Sun was not compatible with it being described as one of the lights placed in the firmament.
Kinda missed the whole point really but then the Bible thumpers really did think that the whole Universe revolved around them.

Today Is...Pluto Discovered

If an object was travelling at 32,400 mph in a vacuum how far would it travel in 9 and a half years may sound like one of those hypothetical maths questions that maths teachers enjoy torturing their students with but this is not a poser from a man with leather elbow patches on his jumper because the New Horizons probe did just that and the answer is to Pluto, or 3.78 billion miles.
When it blasted off in 2006 it was set on a course for the ninth Planet named after the Roman god of death but by the time it arrived Pluto had been kicked out of the Planets club and is now a Kuiper Belt Object or Dwarf Planet which must have caused much confused for horoscope writers around the World.     
As it was the first time we have had a close up look at Pluto, the first piece of information received by NASA was that it is ever so slightly bigger than we thought, having a diameter of 2,370km or just a touch over two third the size of the moon.
The first pictures show the expected pock marks of craters and as the probe got closer before flying past onto the Kuiper Belt and out of the Solar System but finally Pluto got it's moment in the Sun, or not as it is 40 times further away than the earth from our star but anyway, the lonely little ball of ice and rock, last in the queue in the far flung reaches of our Solar System abandoned by the bigger boys and relegated to a dwarf planet is taking it's turn in the spotlight.

Today Is...Random Acts of Kindness Day

Celebrities can get a bad rep for being arrogant and rich morons and mostly it seems this is well deserved but sometimes they do something surprising which warms the heart and here are my favourite acts of kindness from the big names.

In 2013, while a cinema full of people where watching Christian Bale in The Dark Knight Rises, a gunman shot 12 people dead. Christian turned up at the Colorado hospital to visit the victims.   

Diagnosed with spindel cell sarcoma, Daniel Fleetwood found out from his doctors in July 2015 that he only had about two months to live. Daniel’s dying wish was to see 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' which was scheduled to come out in December of that same year. Director J.J. Abrams invitd him to a special showing of an unfinished, unedited version of the film.

Zach Galifianakis took a 87 year old homeless woman from a launderette who would fold clothes for tips to the 'The Hangover Part III' premiere and then found her a flat and paid the rent.

Paul Walker overheard a couple in a jewellery shop debating if they could afford a $10,000 engagement ring. Walker bought the ring, handed it to the dumbstruck couple and walked out the shop.  
 
Taylor Swift Paid $50,000 of an 11 year olds fans Cancer-Stricken Fan’s Medical Bills and another $5,000 to cover the funeral costs of a fan who died in a car crash. She also donated $1m to help Flood relief efforts.

Keanu Reeves handed over 70% of his £75 million salary from the first The Matrix film in order to fund leukemia research.

Christian Bale flew a 4-year-old leukemia patient and his family to California to have a lunch date together at Disneyland.

Oxford University student Fiona Asiedu set up a crowdfunding campaign to raise £12,000 to go to Harvard, Grime artist Stormzy saw it and donated £9,000.

George Michael handed over royalties from a number of his songs to Ethiopian famine relief efforts and left a hard up student nurse working as a barmaid a £5,000 tip and anonymously gave £15,000 to a couple for IVF treatment.

Colin Farrell took a homeless man on a £2,100 shopping spree, buying him clothes and money to help rent a room.

Johnny Depp regularly hires homeless people to be extras in his films

Sia ran through the checkouts of Walmart and a TJ Maxx, tapping her card to pay for many people's shopping

JK Rowling posted a 15 year old Harry Potter fan who had survived a shooting that killed her parents and had quoted Dumbledore's speech that 'Happiness can be found even in the darkest times if one only remembers to turn on the light' at their funeral, a letter comforting her with a 'Dumbledore' letter.

When the people of Flint found themselves with no clean water due to lead poisoning, Cher donated 181,000 bottles of clean water.

Justin Timberlake saw a fundraiser to buy a wheelchair-accessible van for a 17-year-old with cerebral palsy, he bought her the van and left a note saying 'Have a great holiday'.

James McAvoy donated £275,000 to buy masks for front line NHS staff during the Covid pandemic

When Marilyn Manson heard that one of his fans dying wishes was to meet the singer, he not only went to the boys house armed with merchandise but stayed and played video games with him, played guitar and read Beano comics with him.

The wife of the guy who ran an anti-Michael Moore website wife was taken ill with a neurological disorder but with no medical insurance, he was struggling to pay for her health care. In desperation, he posted a note on his site pleading for help and stating that he would 'be in your debt for all of time' for any assistance in these troubled times. Mr Kenefick received a cheque from an anonymous individual for a lump sum of $12,000, equivalent to a year's medical fees for his wife.
After some digging to find out the identity of the altruistic donor it was revealed as the man he had dedicated years to bad mouthing. Confirmation came from Moore himself, who left a message on Mr Kenefick's answer machine confirming that he was the donor, adding: 'I wish you my best'.

Today Is...Félix Faure Becomes 7th President of France

Generally a 19th Century French President wouldn't register too highly on my radar but the story of Félix Faure's time in office is a good one.
He began as the Minister of marine in the administration of French President Casimir-Perier and somehow got himself elected as the Republican nominee because the two other Republicans were really hated by other Republicans and the party wanted someone who was plain, boring and offended nobody so they put little old innocuous Félix on the ballot and sacre bleu he unexpectedly, and against all odds, won the blooming thing.
People making the big decisions have many different ways of coping with the pressure of running their country, some took the chance to grow closer to their citizens. Some take the opportunity to put right some inequalities and make life easier for the poorest in society but he gazed out across the landscape of the Champs-Élysées that first day, wiped away a tear, and calmly promised that he would get drunk and screw to a degree hitherto unseen in French society and that takes some doing because infidelity in the workplace in France is what teapot's are to England.
His Presidential seal spent the 4 years of his presidency alongside the crumpled underwear of many mademoiselles but his final booty call was to Marguerite Steinheil who i'm not saying was a bike, but she had more riders than the Tour de France cycling race.
During a 'game' of pirates, he was all set to splice her main-brace when just as he got to the ho-ho-ho bit, something inside his head went twang and he shuffled off his mortal coil as well as his trousers.   
I know that if they could do such a thing, most men would already have made arrangements to meet their makers in the exact same way but not only did he die happy, but in the most way French way possible.

Today Is...Meteor Explodes Over Russia

While everyone was looking out of their windows towards the heavens to catch a glimpse of the approaching asteroid 2012 DA14 today in 2013, the people of Russian town of Cherbakul were looking at a huge glaziers bill because hours before the asteroid, they had a visit from another interstellar visitor but this one exploded above them and sent out a shockwave which injured 1,500 people and blew out all their windows.
It did seem strange that just when we are waiting for a 45 metre celestial cannonball to skim the Earths atmosphere, a much smaller one took everyone by surprise and sneaked in there to grab all the headlines.
Due to everyone and his dog owning a phone with a camera, the falling ball of rock was caught on film by countless Russian video camera owners as it impressively exploded in the sky.
The obvious question was to ask was this in anyway connected to the arrival of the asteroid later and the European Space agency poured water on that particular camp fire immediately by saying there was no link but others, such as the Australian Astronomical Observatory, thought it could possibly be a bit of asteroid debris preceding the much bigger object.
As it was only a few hours between the explosion and the arrival of the Asteroid, that was not enough time for a doomsday Conspiracy theory to circulate which would lead to the streets full of people giving away their possessions, telling their managers exactly what they thought of them and blocking up the church
confessional boxes.
One good thing to come out of it was an explanation of what an asteroid is (small rock orbiting a star), a meteoroid (small pieces of space debris in space), a meteor (a meteoroid that has entered the earth’s atmosphere) and a meteorite (space debris that strikes the surface of the earth) if only because the
presenters were getting angry tweets by pedantic amateur astrologers when they kept interchanging between referring to it as all four things in the coverage.
So the two events were probably not related and we were not all doomed and the asteroid harmlessly brushed past by us although the glaziers in one small Russian town are all now driving Ferrari's and their wives wearing mink coats.

Today Is...Valentine's Day

Today is Valentines Day and while some us may be sipping champagne out of our partners shoes and eating oysters by candle light, others have yet to find their true love.
Every year my husband asks me if i want some flowers for Valentines Day and i reply something along the lines of not wanting anything, it all being a commercial venture to rip off people and we don't need a special day to show how much we love one another.
Of course if i don't get a card and flowers he will be sleeping on the coach until Boxing Day and scouring the internet for a doctor that could re-attach his testicles but what if you haven't yet found your one?
The choices are either join a dating agency or hope that your soul mate swipes the same way on Tinder or you could just cheat and use a magic spell and the good people of the UK Wiccan Society have provided me with their top Love Spell so give it a go and iron your best little black dress (or suit), get a bottle of champagne and a shoe and prepare for love this Valentines Day.
To sweeten someone’s feelings for you write his or her name on a piece of paper using a red pen. Place white sugar on the piece of paper and drip the wax from a red candle onto it and as the wax drops on the sugar think about the person you want.
Obviously when dealing with emotions, there can be no guarantee that love spells will be successful and i cannot be held responsible for any results of using this spells or any resulting soggy shoes but if you don't have a red pen about your person then you could be in luck if you live close to a Catholic Church because a spokeswoman for the Catholic Enquiry Office, the official body providing information on all things Catholic, said 'There is a lot of evidence to suggest that people who have tapped into prayer groups have found partners. Those who have exhausted traditional routes like online dating should try spiritual networks. Why not come along to a prayer group, it could be your lucky night.'
Yep, obviously been sniffing the incense again but there you have it, if you want a night of passion and a cup of tea with a game of bingo afterwards try heading down to the local Catholic Church.

Today Is...Shrove Tuesday

The word 'Shrove' comes from the old English word 'Shrive' which means to confess so today is to confess your sins or pre-empt them anyway because Shrove Tuesday is the Day before Ash Wednesday and 40 days of Lent when you are supposed to give up something.   
This tradition comes from a time when items such as eggs and flour were considered luxuries and thus not to be eaten during a time of religious observance because the baby Jesus would not be happy at all about that and over time we learnt to lump these things together to make Pancakes which is why Shrove Tuesday is also called Pancake Day in some countries, reflecting the tradition of using up the food which would be stinking out the cupboard in 40 days time.
Another fact about Shrove Tuesday is that the date changes every year because it is determined by Easter, which is a movable feast based on the lunar calendar so the date can range between February 3 and March 9 each year.
However, Shrove Tuesday isn’t simply about seeing how many pancakes you can stuff in your fat face, it has deeper spiritual significance to those of a fall to your knee's bent who see it as representing the chance to be shriven, to admit their wrongdoings, seek forgiveness, and purify themselves for the season of Lent.
As i am never wrong, have done nothing to forgive and am already as pure as the Virgin Mary herself, i am free to just keep shovelling in pancakes as quick as i can tip them out of the frying pan. Enjoy!

Today Is...Sex Pistols First Official Gig

Although this wasn't their 'first' gig, it was their first official one and the line up was vocalist Johnny Rotten, guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook and bassist Glen Matlock.
The Sex Pistols evolved from the Steve Jones and Paul Cook band the Strand (aka the Swankers) and they would hang out in Malcalm McClaren and Vivienne Westwood's clothing shop and Jones asked McLaren who had been managing the New York Dolls to take over the band's management. Glen Matlock, an art student who occasionally worked at McLaren and Westwood shop, joined as bassist.
McLaren agreed and asked New York Dolls' Sylvain Sylvain to front the group but he turned him down, as did Midge Ure and Richard Hell of Television which was fortunate for a kid with green hair walking past the shop wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt with the words I Hate handwritten above the band's name and holes scratched through the Floyd members' eyes.
With his surname name changed from Lydon to Rotten and the band renamed to the Sex Pistols, they had a few gigs supporting Eddie and the Hot Rods and Joe Strummers band the 101ers, the bands notoriety spread and after sacking Matlock for liking the Beatles and replacing him with the Siouxsie and the Banshees sometimes drummer, John Richie or how he become better known, Sid Vicious.   
One of the most influential bands ever then launched on a short career but within twelve 12 months they managed to spit, shock and swear their way to an impressive legacy.
I was given the chance to see them live during their 90s 'Filty Lucre' Tour but the euphoria of seeing a band that were of such historical importance lasted as long as it took for me to clap eyes on guitarist Steve Jones carrying a pot belly crammed into tight, tiger-striped trousers.
Musically, the Pistols were as expected but I was forever left with an ugly aftertaste and the vision of the angry young men of the late 70's singing politically charged songs and spearheading probably the greatest genre music has ever known, replaced by middle aged men going through the motions and looking every inch a band out of their allotted slot in history.

Today Is...International Day of Women and Girls in Science

A panel of experts were asked to vote for the ten women in British history who have had the most influence on science and here are there conclusions.
Caroline Herschel was William Herschel's sister and assistant and discovered eight comets, fourteen nebulae and compiled a catalogue for star clusters and nebulae patches.
Mary Somerville carried out experiments on magnetism and wrote a best selling popularised rendition of Laplace's Mecanique Céleste and Newton's Principia.
Mary Anning was an early British fossil collector and paleontologist and made severaal important finds including the skeleton of the first Ichthyosaur and the first two Plesiosaur skeletons ever found.  
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first Englishwoman to qualify as a doctor when females were unable to gain such a post and in 1866 established a dispensary for women and in 1876 an act was passed permitting women to enter the medical professions.
Kathleen Lonsdale was an early pioneer of X-ray crystallography and the first woman to hold the post of president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. She spent a month in jail for refusing to register for war duties and then refusing to pay a fine of two pounds.
Dorothy Hodgkin won the Nobel Prize for Science in 1964 for her work on penicillin and vitamin B12.
Rosalind Elsie Franklin contributed to the understanding of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal and graphite and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962 Anne McLaren made fundamental advances in genetics which paved the way for the development of in vitro fertilisation which led to the birth of the first test-tube baby.

Today Is...Lunar New Year

As it's the second new moon after the winter solstice, Xinnián hao or if your Mandarin is a bit rusty, Happy New Year and welcome to the Year of the Dragon according to the Chinese zodiac.
As the animals rotate every 12 years, you are also a Dragon if you were born in 1916, 1928, 1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, 2000 or 2012 and your lucky numbers are 1, 6, 7 and any numbers containing them both (16, 61 etc) and your lucky days are the 1st and 16th of the month and lucky colours are gold, silver or greyish white.
People born in a year of the Dragon can be regarded as aggressive, angry and not open to criticism and are most compatible with Rats (born 1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996, 2008) Monkeys (born in 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004) and Roosters (born 1945, 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993, 2005) but avoid Dogs (born 1946, 1958, 1970, 1982, 1994, 2006).
According to Chinese astrology, the year of one's birth sign is the most unlucky year in the 12-year cycle but it can be offset by wearing outer clothing, bags, shoes, underwear, and even socks in red or purple which brings luck.
Dragons are thought to be best suited to be leaders of the world with their character traits of courage, intelligence and ambition and fellow Dragons include Charles Darwin, Bruce Lee, John Lennon, Vladimir Putin, Martin Luther King Jr., Che Guevera, Andy Warhol and Rihanna.
Some things that you should not do today on Chinese New Years Day is eat porridge (brings poverty), no sewing or knitting (depletes wealth) don't wash clothes (washed away good luck), no crying (brings bad luck), don't use scissors or knives (cuts wealth), don't borrow or lend money (leads to debt), don't wear plain black or white clothes (unlucky), eat pears (leaving soon) or give anybody four of anything (brings death) and don't visit a hospital (brings illness).
So, Xinnián Kuàilè or Happy New Year and spare a thought for knife salesmen as well as launderette staff.