Beach

A beach is the shore of an ocean, sea or of a lake especially when its sandy or pebbly. 

In Roman times, wealthy people spent their free time on the coast. They also built large villa complexes with bathing facilities (so-called maritime villas) in particularly beautiful locations.

The first beach resorts in Britain were opened in the 18th century for the aristocracy, when physicians prescribed a plunge into chilly waters for their health. The first seaside resort opened on England’s eastern shore in the tiny spa town of Scarborough in Yorkshire during the 1720s.

In 1793, Heiligendamm in Mecklenburg, Germany was founded as the first beach resort of the European continent, which successfully attracted Europe's aristocracy to the Baltic Sea.

From 1838-1902, it was illegal to go swimming during the daytime at public beaches in Australia.

A beach was stolen from Jamaica in 2008. The 500 truckloads of sand are still missing to this day.

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg first discussed the idea of Indiana Jones while building a sandcastle on the beach.

Australia has over 10,000 beaches -- You could visit a new beach everyday for over 27 years.

Praia do Cassino (Casino Beach), the southernmost beach of the Brazilian coast on the South Atlantic, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, is the longest uninterrupted sandy beach in the world. It’s either 132 miles (212 kms) or 158 miles (254 kms) long depending on how it’s measured.

Bathers on the Praia do Cassino. By Mauren da Silva Rodrigues

The next longest seashore is Victoria’s Ninety Mile Beach, the 90-mile stretch of golden sand that separates the Gippsland Lakes from Bass Strait in Australia.

New Zealand's Ninety-Mile Beach is only 55 miles (88.5 kms) long.

All beaches in Mexico are property of the federal government. There are no privately owned beaches in the whole country, all of them are open to public use.

The fresh, salty smell of beach air is actually the smell of rotting seaweed.

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is the UK state-owned broadcasting network. It was formed by a consortium of six electrical companies including Marconi on October 18, 1922 to establish a nationwide network of radio transmitters in order to provide a national broadcasting service.

The BBC began broadcasting radio programs on the 2LO radio station from Savoy Hill studios (off the Strand) in London. It first went on air on November 14, 1922 at 6 p.m., with the news read by Arthur Burrows.

The first entertainment program was broadcast two days later and lasted an hour. British baritone Leonard Hawke led off with "Drake Goes West" and "Tick."

The BBC was converted from a private company to a public corporation under royal charter in 1927.  The first director-general was John Reith 1922–38.

Under the BBC charter, news programs were required to be politically impartial.

The BBC broadcast its first experimental TV program on August 22, 1932 with television inventor John Logie Baird appearing.

The only example of pre-war BBC TV footage was recorded thanks to freak atmospheric conditions which caused the signal to be picked up in the USA. 

The BBC's World Service was launched on December 19, 1932 as BBC Empire Service. The first radio programme from the World Service transmitting station at Daventry opened with Big Ben chiming 9.30 am, the playing of the National Anthem, and the greeting: "Good evening, everybody!"  The explanation of the greeting was that BBC chairman Mr J.H. Whitley was inaugurating this great scheme for imperial outposts by addressing the Australasian Zone, where it was evening.

Upon launch, the World Service was located, along with nearly all Radio output, in Broadcasting House. However, following the explosion of a parachute mine outside the building in December 1940, the services relocated to new premises away from the likely target of Broadcasting House. The European services moved permanently into Bush House towards the end of 1940, completing the move in 1941, with the Overseas services joining them in 1958.

Bush House in London was home to the World Service between 1941 and 2012. By Nigel Cox, 

The BBC began transmitting a regular television service at 3pm on November 2, 1936 from a converted wing of the Alexandra Palace in London. It was the world's first regular, public all-electronic "high-definition" television service. The BBC originally offered three hours of programming a day.

From 1934 to 1948, the motto of the BBC was Quaecunque, Latin for ‘Whatever’.

BBC suspended their television service from 1939–46 during World War II. Two days before Britain declared war on Germany, it was taken off air for security reasons and the last thing aired was a Mickey Mouse cartoon.  It returned on June 7, 1946, with Jasmine Bligh, one of the original announcers, saying, "Good afternoon everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh?" The same Mickey Mouse cartoon was replayed 20 minutes later.

Before criticizing propaganda in his classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell worked as a propagandist for BBC.

The BBC Light Programme radio station was launched on July 29, 1945 for mainstream light entertainment and music. It took over the longwave frequency which had earlier been used – prior to the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 – by the BBC National Programme. The Light Programme is now known as BBC Radio 2.

A £2 a year television license was introduced on June 1, 1946 for households to watch BBC mono transmissions. At the time there was 20,000 TV sets in the country.

A second channel, BBC2, was launched in 1964, aimed at minority interests. It launched with a power cut because of a fire at Battersea Power Station.

The BBC announced on March 3, 1966 plans to broadcast in color from the following year, making Britain the first country in Europe to offer regular TV color programming.

On September 30, 1967, the BBC launched four new radio networks: Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, and Radio 4. These replaced the previous three networks: the Light Programme, the Third Programme, and the Home Service.

Radio 1 was a new pop music station, launched in response to the popularity of pirate radio stations. Radio 2 was a continuation of the Light Programme, playing light music and popular classics. Radio 3 was a continuation of the Third Programme, broadcasting classical music, jazz, and drama. Radio 4 was a continuation of the Home Service, broadcasting news, current affairs, and spoken-word programming.

Tony Blackburn presented the first show on Radio 1, playing the song "Flowers in the Rain" by The Move. Blackburn went on to become one of the most famous and successful radio DJs in the UK.

Nineties sitcom Keeping Up Appearances, starring Patricia Routledge as suburban snob Hyacinth Bucket, has been sold roughly 1,000 times times to overseas broadcasters— more than any other BBC series in the past 40 years. Creator Roy Clarke says its popularity is because "everyone knows a Hyacinth."

BBC's expenses are met by license fees, paid by anyone owning a radio or subsequently a television; the level of the fee is fixed annually by the government (it was ten shillings in 1927).

In the UK, the BBC is nicknamed “Auntie” for its staid and reliable reputation. The name was comedian and disc jockey Kenny Everett, who felt that the corporation was a little heavy-handed in determining what the public should listen to, adopting a matronly attitude. 

The BBC is the largest broadcaster in the world by the number of employees. It currently employs over 22,000 people, with 19,000 of them in public broadcasting. 

Source Anglotopia

Bayreuth

Bayreuth is a town in Bavaria, south Germany, on the Red Main River, 40 miles northeast of Nuremberg.

From the 13th to the late 18th century Bayreuth was a possession of the Hohenzollern family. 

In 1874 the German composer Richard Wagner moved into a house at Bayreuth that he called Wahnfried (“Peace from Illusion”).

Two years later, Wagner designed Bayreuth, an opera house made possible by the generosity of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. He wished to have a building, which would meet his extravagant musico-dramatic ideals.

The Festspielhaus, home of the Bayreuth Festival by Rico Neitzel

The theater introduced new concepts of opera house design, including provision of an enlarged orchestra pit extending below the stage and projecting the sound outwards and upwards.

In 1876 the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg went to Bayreuth to hear the first performance of Wagner’s Ring cycle. He wrote a review of the operas for a Norwegian newspaper.

Today, Wagner festivals, annual performances of Wagnerian operas, are held in Bayreuth every summer.

In 1886, the composer Franz Liszt visited his daughter Cosima Liszt, Wagner's widow. who was still living in Bayreuth. He died there as a result of pneumonia which he contracted during the Wagnerian musical festival hosted by Cosima. 

Both Liszt and Wagner are buried in Bayreuth; however, Wagner did not die there. Rather, he passed away in Venice in 1883, but his family had his body brought to Bayreuth and he was buried in the garden of Wahnfried. Liszt is buried in the Central Cemetery. 

Sources Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia, Hutchinson Encyclopedia 

Bayeux Tapestry

During the Middle Ages, tapestries were a popular art form. Many of the castles of Europe used tapestries not only as a decoration but as a practical measure to help cover the stone walls and keep out the cold.

Perhaps one of the best known is the Bayeux Tapestry, which was made about 1067–70. The linen hanging gives a vivid pictorial record of the invasion and conquering of England by William I (the Conqueror) in 1066.

Bayeux tapestry. Cavalry attack

The Bayeux Tapestry is traditionally considered the work Queen Matilda to honor the success of her husband, William the Conqueror.

It was commissioned by Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent who was the half-brother of William the Conqueror.

It is an embroidery rather than a true tapestry, sewn with woolen threads in eight visibly different colors.

The hanging is 70 m/231 ft long and 50 cm/20 in wide, and contains 72 separate scenes with descriptive wording in Latin.

The border is of foliage, fantastic animals, and hunting scenes.

Two hundred horses are embroidered into this work of art.

It is exhibited at the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux in Bayeux, Normandy, France.

The Bayeux Tapestry is most valuable for its representation of the costume, arms, and manners of the Normans before the Conquest; it gives more details of the events represented than does the contemporary literature.  

Sources Hutchinson Encyclopedia , Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia, funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia

Battleship

A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. Its mission of the battleship is to conduct sustained combat operations at sea worldwide; to operate as an element of a carrier battle group or amphibious group; and in areas of lesser threat, to be capable of surface-action group operations with appropriate antisubmarine and antiair warfare escort ships. 

The modern battleship traces its ancestry to the 74-gun ship-of-the-line of the sailing era. The British Royal Navy launched the world's first iron-hulled armored battleship, HMS Warrior in 1860, It was built to counter the French Navy's La Gloire, the world's first ironclad warship.

The American battleship is the product of a series of modifications of the heavy steel ships that formed the backbone of the so-called New Navy of the 1880s, when the steel industry was introduced into the United States.

SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm (see below) was one of the first ocean-going battleships of the Imperial German Navy. Named for Prince-elector Friedrich Wilhelm, she was completed in 1893 at a cost of 11.23 million marks. She served as the flagship of the Imperial fleet from her commissioning in 1894 until 1900. SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm was sold to the Ottoman Empire in 1910; she served the empire until the second year of World War I, when she was sunk off the Dardanelles.

USS Indiana was the lead ship of her class and the first battleship in the United States Navy comparable to foreign battleships of the time. Her launch on February 28, 1893 was attended by around 10,000 people, including President Benjamin Harrison, several members of his cabinet and the two senators from Indiana.

The first major confrontation between modern steel battleship fleets took place in the Battle of the Yellow Sea in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War.

The dreadnought was the predominant type of battleship in the early 20th century. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's HMS Dreadnought was launched by King Edward VII on February 10, 1906. It represented such a marked advance in naval technology that her name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships.

HMS Dreadnought 

The British lost their first battleship of World War I on October 27, 1914 when the dreadnought battleship HMS Audacious, was sunk off Tory Island, north-west of Ireland, by a minefield laid by the armed German merchant-cruiser Berlin. The loss was kept an official secret in Britain until November 14, 1918. The sinking was witnessed and photographed by passengers on RMS Olympic, sister ship of RMS Titanic.

The crew of Audacious take to lifeboats to be taken aboard Olympic.

SMS Nassau was the first dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial German Navy, in response to the launching of the British battleship HMS Dreadnought. Nassau was laid down at the Imperial Shipyard in Wilhelmshaven and launched on March 7, 1908. Three more battleships followed in the same class: Posen, Rheinland, and Westfalen. Assigned to the First Battle Squadron of the German High Seas Fleet, Nassau saw service in the North Sea in the beginning of World War I.

SMS Moltke (see below) was the lead ship of the Moltke-class battlecruisers of the German Imperial Navy. Commissioned on September 30. 1911, the ship participated in most of the major fleet actions conducted by the German Navy during the First World War, including the Battles of Dogger Bank and Jutland in the North Sea, and the Battle of the Gulf of Riga and Operation Albion in the Baltic.

Most of the original dreadnoughts were scrapped after the end of World War I under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty. Large dreadnought fleets only fought once, at the Battle of Jutland.

The Royal Navy’s HMS Duke of York and her escorts sank Germany’s battleship Scharnhorst off Norway's North Cape on December 26, 1943. Only 36 men were pulled from the icy seas, out of a crew of 1,968.

The Battle of the North Cape took place in the Arctic Ocean and was the last between big-gun capital ships in the war between Britain and Germany. The British victory confirmed the massive strategic advantage held by the British, at least in surface units.

Schlachtschiff "Scharnhorst"

The Japanese battleship Yamato, the largest battleship ever constructed, was sunk by American planes 200 miles north of Okinawa while en-route to a suicide mission in Operation Ten-Go in 1945.

The Japanese battleship Settsu simulated the radio traffic of all six aircraft carriers of the 1st Air Fleet at the beginning of the Pacific War in an effort to deceive the Allies as to their location.

The Italian battleship Dante Alighieri, named after the medieval Italian poet, was the only battleship ever named for a poet.

In Star Trek, Captain Kirk's phrase "You have the conn" has its origins in early battleships dating as far back as the 1860s; these ships were built with conning towers. A conning tower is a raised platform on a ship or submarine from which an officer in charge can issue commands. 

Source Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia 

The Battle Hymn of the Republic

Inspired by a visit to the union army camp, the American Unitarian and slavery reformer Julia Ward Howe wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

She scribbled the words at night, in the darkness of her tent, to the melody of "John Brown's Body."

It includes the line “As he (Christ) died to make men holy, let us die to make men free”, which is an explicit reference to the fight to end slavery.

Cover of sheet music for "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"  1862

During the American Civil War, song publishers turned out many war songs. Union soldiers sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," while the favorite Confederate song was "Dixie."

Minstrel troupes continued to perform the song long after the Civil War.

Mark Twain authored a revised version of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" in response to the US Imperialism and the Philippine-American War in 1900. Lines include "Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword" and "As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich."

The title of John Steinbeck's 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath came from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic": “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.”

Source Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc

Battle

The first recorded battle in history in reliable detail was the Battle of Megiddo on April 16, 1457 BC. It was fought between Egyptian forces under the command of Pharaoh Thutmose III and a large rebellious coalition of Canaanite vassal states led by the king of Kadesh. The result was an Egyptian victory and a rout of the Canaanite forces, which fled to safety in the city of Megiddo.

By re-establishing Egyptian dominance in the Levant, Thutmose III began a reign in which the Egyptian Empire reached its greatest expanse. The battle left such an impression on the Levantine people there that they believed the final battle of humanity would take place there as well. That's where the word Armageddon comes from.

The Persian Empire counted how many soldiers in a battle died through counting the arrows that each soldier would place in a basket before a battle. When the soldiers came back, they each picked up an arrow and the remaining arrows would be counted to calculate the total amount of deaths.

In 585 BC, the Battle of the Eclipse between the Medes and the Athenians ended when an eclipse of the sun was seen as a sign of God’s disapproval.

The Ancient Romans held mock sea battles known as naumachia for entertainment. In some cases, whole amphitheaters like the Colosseum would be flooded and the ship battles would take place within them while spectators would watch from their seats.

The 1461 Battle of Townton in Yorkshire during the War of Roses saw some 50,000 engaged in the fight. As many as 27,000 died on the battlefield making it the largest and bloodiest ever fought on English soil.

The Battle of Cerignola was fought on April 28, 1503, between Spanish and French armies near Bari in Southern Italy. It is noted as the first battle in history won by gunpowder weapons, as the assault by Swiss pikemen and French cavalry was shattered by the fire of Spanish arquebusters behind a ditch.

The painting below shows Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba finding the corpse of Louis d'Armagnac at the Battle of Cerignola.

Artist Federico de Madrazo, 1835. Museo del Prado.

The 1547 Battle of Pinkie Cleugh was the last full scale military confrontation between England and Scotland. It resulted in a decisive victory for the forces of Edward VI.

The Battle of Fukuda Bay took place on October 18, 1565, and was the first recorded naval battle between Europeans and the Japanese. A flotilla of samurai under the daimyō Matsura Takanobu attacked a Portuguese trade carrack that had shunned Matsura's port in Hirado and had gone instead to trade at Fukuda (now within Nagasaki), a port belonging to the rival Ōmura Sumitada. The battle lasted for several hours, and the Japanese were eventually defeated. The Portuguese ships suffered only minor damage, while the Japanese lost several ships and hundreds of men.  

In the early hours of July 6, 1685, King James II’s nephew, The Duke of Monmouth planned an attack on the King’s army camped at Sedgemoor, Somerset. But the weather had been very wet and local rivers and dikes were carrying away much of the excess water. Monmouth’s makeshift army spent too long trying to cross a flooded dike and was discovered. With the army raised, the well-equipped troops of the King routed the rebel in what was to be the last major battle fought on English soil.

Battle of Sedgemoor Memorial

The Battle of Almansa was fought on April 25, 1707 during the War of the Spanish Succession. At Almansa, the Franco–Spanish army under the English mercenary Duke of Berwick soundly defeated the allied forces of Portugal, England, and the Netherlands led by the Earl of Galway, reclaiming most of eastern Spain for the Bourbons. It was probably the only major battle in history in which the English forces were commanded by a Frenchman, the French by an Englishman.

King George II of Great Britain and his forces defeated the French in Dettingen, Bavaria on June 27, 1743 during the War of the Austrian Succession: It was the last time that a British monarch personally led his troops into battle.

During the American War of Independence, thousands of people watched the Battle of Bunker Hill take place. People in the Boston area sat on rooftops, in trees, on church steeples, and in the rigging of ships in the harbor to watch the American revolutionaries battle the British.

America's first naval battle took place on Lake Champlain near present-day Plattsburgh, New York, on October 11, 1776. The British and American vessels engaged in combat for much of the day, only stopping due to the impending nightfall. After a long day of combat, the American fleet was in worse shape than the experienced British Navy.  However the battle gave American forces enough time to prepare their defenses for the Saratoga campaign.

During the 1777 Battle of Germantown, a cease fire was called due to a small terrier wandering on the battlefield.

In the most severe defeat ever suffered by U.S. forces at the hands of Native Americans, the Western Confederacy of Native Americans won a major victory at the Battle of the Wabash near present-day Fort Recovery in Ohio on November 4, 1791. Over one thousand Native Americans attacked at dawn taking the opposing force of about 1,000 Americans led by General Arthur St. Clair by surprise. Of the 1,000 officers and men that St. Clair led into battle, only 24 escaped unharmed.

Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox.

More than 20,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing in action in the battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862. This was the bloodiest one-day fight during the American Civil War.

The most American casualties in a single battle was at the Battle of Gettysburg, with 51,000.

The first day of the Battle of Albert, the opening phase of the Battle of the Somme was fought on July 1, 1916. It became the bloodiest day in the British Army's history, with 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 deaths.

The World War I Battle of Verdun started on February 21, 1916 and ended on December 18, 1916. With a duration of 303 days it is the longest battle in human history. It was also one of the most costly battles in human history with an estimated total casualty figure of 1.25 million.

During the 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea, United States Navy aircraft carrier aircraft attacked and sunk the Japanese Imperial Navy light aircraft carrier, Shōhō. The battle marked the first time in the naval history that two enemy fleets fought without visual contact between warring ships.

The Second Battle of El Alamein was fought between the British Empire forces under Montgomery and Germans and Italians under Rommel between October 23 and November 11, 1942. The victory for the Allies was a turning point in World War II. Later, Winston Churchill said: "Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat."

British infantry advances through the dust and smoke of the battle of El Alamein.

The Battle of Kursk took place during World War II when German and Soviet forces confronted each other on the Eastern Front in 1943. It was the final strategic offensive the Germans were able to mount in the East. The resulting decisive Soviet victory gave the Red Army the strategic initiative for the rest of the war. It remains the largest full-scale battle in history, and included the world's largest tank battle at Prokhorovka village and the costliest ever single day of aerial warfare.

US Army General Anthony McAuliffe responded to the German ultimatum of surrender during the World War II Battle of the Bulge with a single word, "NUTS!"

The Battle of Leyte Gulf - the largest naval battle in history - took place in and around the Philippines between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the U.S. Third and U.S. Seventh Fleets between October 23-26 1944. It featured the first Kamikaze attack of the war.

The Siachen glacier is the highest battleground on the Earth, where India and Pakistan have fought intermittently since April 13, 1984. Both countries claim sovereignty over the entire Siachen region and maintain permanent military presence in the Siachen glacier locality at a height of over 20,000 feet.

Source The Daily Mail 2/7/05

Battery

A battery is made up of one or more electrical cells. Electricity is produced by a chemical reaction in the cells.

The Baghdad Battery is a 2000-year-old clay jar with a stopper made of asphalt. Sticking through the  asphalt is an iron rod surrounded by a copper cylinder. When filled with vinegar or other electrolytic solution, the jar produces about 1.1 volts.

The usage of the word  "battery" to describe a group electrical devices dates to Benjamin Franklin,
In 1749 Franklin used the term "battery" to describe a set of linked capacitors he used for his experiments with electricity by analogy to a battery of cannon. (He borrowed the term from the military, where a "battery" refers to weapons functioning together.)

In the 1780s, the Italian physicist Luigi Galvani discovered that the muscles of a dead frog's leg would twitch when he touched it with two pieces of metal. Galvani had created a crude circuit and the phenomenon was taken up by his friend, the aristocratic Professor Alessandro Volta, whose voltaic cells stacked in a Voltaic pile amazed Napoleon. Volta's investigations led shortly to the invention of an early battery. .

The Oxford Electric Bell is an experimental electric bell that was set up in 1840. It has been running off the same battery ever since and no one knows what the battery is made of.

When Alexander Graham Bell was working on the telephone in 1876 he spilt battery acid on his trousers. His assistant Thomas Watson, who was on another floor, heard the call through the instrument he was hooking up, and ran to Bell's room. So the first intelligible words transmitted over telephone was not "Hello its Bell ringing" but "Come here Watson, I want you".

It was Thomas Edison who developed the first alkaline storage battery in 1914.

Duracell, the battery-maker, built parts of its new international headquarters using materials from its own waste.

The Duracell Bunny promotes batteries everywhere in the world, except for the United States and Canada where Energizer holds the trademarks to a "battery bunny."

The two rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that have been installed on NASA’s Curiosity Rover, currently traversing the surface of Mars are intended to provide fourteen years of power.

Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story runs on Buy 'N' Large batteries—Buy 'N' Large is the evil corporation from Pixar's film Wally.

More than 100 toxic gases are released by the lithium batteries found in products like smartphones and tablets when they get too hot.

It would take 120,380 AA batteries to power a lightsaber.

Every Christmas Day, 400,000 Britons go out to a shop to buy batteries.

National Battery Day is observed each year in the USA on February 18th. The day serves to appreciate the convenience batteries provide to our everyday lives. 

To test if a battery is still good or not, drop it — the higher it bounces, the lower the charge.

Source The Independent 3/11/07

Batman

On March 30, 1939, DC Comics published its second major superhero in Detective Comics #27; he was Batman, one of the most popular comic book superheroes of all time. He made his first appearance under the name "Bat-Man."

Detective Comics #27 (May 1939). The first appearance of Batman. Art by Bob Kane. Wikipedia

US cartoonist Bob Kane (1915-98) co-created Batman after being asked by his boss to produce a rival to Superman. he said he came up with the Caped Crusader in a single weekend, inspired by Leonardo da Vinci, after coming across one of the artist’s pictures of "a flying machine with huge bat wings" when he was about 12. Kane said: "It looked like a bat man to me."

The other Batman co-creator, Bill Finger, created Batman's suit, arsenal of awesome gadgets, and secret identity. Finger died penniless while Kane did everything he could to suppress Finger’s involvement in creating the character.

Gotham City derives it's name from the village Gotham in Nottinghamshire, England, which according to local folklore is inhabited by fools.

Batman’s civilian alter ego, billionaire Bruce Wayne, was named after two historical figures — Robert the Bruce and U.S. War of Independence General ‘Mad Anthony’ Wayne. His birthday is February 19th, the date that Batman's creator Bob Kane first drew him.

Bruce Wayne's clock unlocks the secret door to the Batcave when the hands are set to the time that his parents were murdered, 10:47 P.M.

The first iteration of the Batmobile, introduced in 1941, was just a red Cord 812 convertible with a bat hood ornament.

The Joker was intended to be killed off in his second appearance after his debut in Batman #1 (1940). But the decision was hastily withdrawn and Joker went on to become one of the greatest comic book villains and a pop-culture icon.

Batman, a thirty-minute prime time, live-action television series based on the comic book character premiered on January 12, 1966. The series starred Adam West as the title character, while Burt Ward played his sidekick, Robin. 120 episodes aired on the ABC network for the three seasons it was shown until March 14, 1968.

Series stars Burt Ward (left) and Adam West

Adam West had his dentist add a little black Batman logo to one of his molars.

Alan Napier, a 6ft 5in (1.96 meters) actor from Birmingham, England, was best known for playing Bruce Wayne’s butler, Alfred, in the Batman TV series. In reality, he was very much upper-class and a cousin of prime minister Neville Chamberlain. When offered the role, he asked: "What is Batman?"

Napier as Alfred in Batman.

The Batmobile driven by Adam West was customized from a Lincoln (Ford) Futura concept car. The vehicle was built in 1954 for what was then a huge $250,000 and never intended for mass production. In spite of its impressive, ‘ futuristic’ appearance, it frequently broke down during filming.

The 17ft- long Batmobile  weighed 2½ tons — the equivalent of a female Indian elephant.

A normal person would have to train 15-18 years to be as physically skilled as Batman.

According to a 2015 estimate, it would cost about $79,237,480.98 to buy all of Batman's gear, mansion, and Batcaves.

Christian Bale, who has a British accent, did all of his promotional interviews for Batman Begins in an American accent because he felt Batman was "such an American character" and he did not want audiences asking "What the hell is going on? Why do we have an English Batman?"

George Harrison was a Batman fan, and used the theme song as the basis for "Taxman."

The University of Victoria in Canada has offered a course called "The Science of Batman."

There is a city called "Batman" in Turkey.

Source Daily Mail

Bathroom

In Roman times, a distinction was made between private and public baths, and many wealthy families had their own thermal bath and bathroom in their home.

Edward III of England (1312 – 1377) installed a bathroom in the Palace of Westminster.

The use of public baths gradually declined from the 16th century onwards, and private bathrooms were favored – this laid down the foundations for the modern bathroom, as it was to become in the 20th century.

The first bathroom with hot and cold running water was installed in 1700 at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, England, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire.

When it was announced in 1851, that a bathroom was to be installed in the White House, there was a public outcry against such unnecessary expenditure.

The most expensive bathroom in the world, located in Hong Kong, cost $29 million and is made of solid 24-carat gold and coated with gems.

66% of Americans admit to reading in the bathroom.

Close to 50% of the water used in a home originates from the bathroom.

You spend 7 years of your life in the bathroom.

An average person uses the bathroom 6 times per day.

Your bathroom is the scene of 3 percent of all accidents in the home.

The average man spends seven hours a year hiding in the bathroom for "peace and quiet," according to a 2018 survey.

The primary function of a bathroom vent fan is not for removing odors but to exhaust warm, moist air created from using the shower or bathtub which discourages mold growth.

In Baltimore, it is illegal to wash or scrub sinks no matter how dirty they get.

Elvis Presley had a reading chair in his bathroom.

Source Bigbathroomshop

Bathing Suit

Until the 18th century bathing and swimming were done privately or with other women in bathhouses so swimsuits weren’t really considered. Instead women bathed in the nude.

In 1751 Englishman Benjamin Beale invented a bathing machine - like a hut on large wheels - to be pulled in and out of the sea by horses. It enabled the fashionable to enter the water discreetly when bathing in beach resorts. He or she changed inside before opening the door at the far end to descend some steps, where someone would be standing in the sea to ensure the bather's safety. 

In the 18th century women started wearing "bathing gowns" in the water; these were long dresses made from canvas and flannel that would not become transparent when wet, with weights sewn into the hems so that they would not rise up in the water. 

These “bathing gowns” didn’t last forever. In the mid-1800s, bloomer swimsuits, with full skirts and wide legs that cinched, gained popularity.

Australian-born swimmer Annette Kellerman caused public outrage in 1909 by appearing in public on a California beach wearing the first one-piece bathing suit.

American 1920s woman's bathing suit

It was against the law in New York, until 1936, for either men or women to wear topless bathing suits.

The American actress Betty Grable, dubbed ‘the girl with the golden legs’, was America’s most famous ‘pin-up’ during World War II. Three million copies of a 1943 photo of Grable in a bathing suit (see below) were distributed in the Forties, mainly to GIs. The pose came about because the photographer was trying to hide her pregnancy bump.

The modern term "bikini" for a particular bathing suit design was first used by its creator, French automobile engineer Louis Reard. He named it "the bikini" as he predicted the garment would be as explosive as the atomic bomb that had been tested four days earlier on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

Reard hired a skywriting plane to advertise his design by skywriting "Bikini -- smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world."

As her acting career took off, Farrah Fawcett posed in her red bathing suit for a poster in 1976, and it sold a staggering 8,000,000 plus copies.

Source GoogleArts&Culture

Bathing

The ancient Egyptians customarily bathed regularly. The Ebers Papyrus describes combining animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to form a soap-like material used for treating skin diseases, as well as for washing.

It is said that Cleopatra, Queen of Ancient Egypt, took baths in asses’ milk to preserve the beauty and youth of her skin. Legend has it that no less than 700 asses were needed to provide the quantity of milk necessary for her daily bath.

In the Old Testament, washing or bathing was enjoined by the law for purification from uncleanness of any kind such as leprosy (Leviticus 22v v 6). The high priest bathed himself on the Day of Atonement before each act of expiation (Leviticus 16 v 4, 7 & 24) and also his consecration (Leviticus 8 v 6).

The ancient Greeks bathed for aesthetic reasons and believed it unmanly to have a hot bath. They did not use soap, instead, they cleaned their bodies with blocks of ashes, clay, pumice and sand, then anointed themselves with oil. They then rubbed off the oil and dirt with a skin scraping instrument known as a strigil.

The ancient Romans made soap from animal fat and wood ashes, but these early soaps were apparently used only for medical purposes. Not until the 2nd century AD were soaps recognized as cleaning agents.

Fear of impurity prevented nuns removing their clothes to wash, until a hygienic vision revealed to St Brigitte that the Lord would have no serious objection to a proper bath once a fortnight.

There were areas of the medieval world where personal cleanliness remained important. Daily bathing was a common custom in Japan during the Middle Ages. And in Iceland, pools warmed with water from hot springs were popular gathering places on Saturday evenings.

The Vikings were considered overly concerned with cleanliness for bathing once a week.

In mid 19th century America bathing was thought to be unhealthy, partly because of the poor quality of water. In Boston for instance, bathing was outlawed unless it was done under a doctor's orders.

Mid 20th century heavyweight boxer Tony Galento would avoid bathing before a fight so he could distract opponents with his body odor.

An estimated 30 and 50 million people attended the Maha Kumbh Mela in 2013 and Allahabad Ardh Kumbh Mela in 2019 respectively to bathe in the holy river Ganges in India. Kumbh Mela is a mass Hindu pilgrimage of faith in which Hindus gather to bathe in a sacred river and they were probably the largest ever human gathering on a single day in history.

Ablutophobia is the fear of bathing or cleaning yourself

Sources Inventors.com, Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc