Democratic Party (United States)

The modern Democratic Party was founded around 1828. It evolved from the Jeffersonian Republican or Democratic-Republican Party organized by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in opposition to the Federalist party of Alexander Hamilton and John Adams.

The donkey came to represent the Democratic Party in 1828, when opponents of Andrew Jackson nicknamed him Andrew Jack-ass during the 1828 presidential campaign. Rather than reject this image, Jackson incorporated the donkey into his campaign posters.

On January 15, 1870 a cartoon by Thomas Nast, titled, A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion, appeared in Harper’s Weekly (see below). The cartoon used the donkey to symbolize the Democratic Party. The symbol gave everyone such a ‘kick’ that it has stuck to the Democrats to this day.

When Barack Obama, a Democrat, handed over the presidency to his fellow Democrat, Joe Biden, on January 20, 2021, it was the first time a living Democratic president transferred the presidency to another Democrat since Franklin Pierce passed the mantle to James Buchanan on March 4, 1857.

Democracy

Democracy is a word from the Greek language - demokratia meaning rule by the people.

A sort of democracy was practiced by the ancient Greeks in the city of Athens. Everyone who was a citizen (slaves, women, foreigners, and children could not vote) would pick a leader by writing the name of their favorite candidate on a piece of stone or wood. The person with the most votes became the leader. In effect only 10% of the population had the vote.

In ancient Athens, the citizens could vote each year to banish any person who was growing too powerful, as a threat to democracy. This process was called Ostracism.

In 351 BC, the plebeians or ‘plebs’ of Ancient Rome were given their first taste of democracy — the right to stand for election as Censor, the officer responsible for maintaining public morality.

The pastor and founder of Hartford, Connecticut, Thomas Hooker, argued in the State court in 1638 that the colony’s citizens should have the right to appoint their own magistrates. For this reason he is sometimes known as the father of American democracy.

The Dutch-Jewish philosopher Spinoza published his Tractaus anonymously in 1670. As the work promoted democracy as the most natural form of government he feared it was unlikely to be welcomed by the authorities.

The term 'democracy' is not mentioned once in the US Constitution.

The first democracies in Asia were the 18th century Borneo "Kongsi Republics." Founded by Chinese merchants, these privately-owned states implemented a statewide-version of a Chinese Village Council (where menfolk voted on decisions), which made them Merchant Republics and Asia's first democratic states.

1797 saw the first ever peaceful transfer of power between elected leaders in modern times, when John Adams was sworn in as President of the United States, succeeding George Washington.

In 1941, there were only eleven democracies in the world.

The smallest acting democracy in the world is that of the Pitcairn Islands, currently at a population count of 50 residents, who are descendants of a small collection of mutinous British sailors and Tahitian guests.

Source Chronicle of The World

Frederick Delius

Frederick Delius was born on January 29, 1862 in Bradford, West Yorkshire of German-Scandinavian descent.

He was baptized as "Fritz Theodore Albert Delius," and used the forename Fritz until he was about 40.

Delius was the second of four sons (there were also ten daughters) born to Julius Delius and his wife Elise Pauline, née Krönig.

He followed a commercial career until he was 20, when he went to Florida as an orange planter, studying music in his spare time.

Delius entered Leipzig Conservatory in 1886, and became a friend of Grieg.

"Fritz Delius (1907)" by Unidentified - "Fritz Delius". Monographien Moderner Musiker [Monographs of Contemporary Musicians] (in German) 2. Leipzig, Germany: C. F. Kahnt Nachfolger. 1907. Licensed under PD-US via Wikipedia - 

After 1890 he composed prolifically. He wrote six operas, including A Village Romeo and Juliet (1901), and a variety of choral and orchestral works, such as Appalachia (1902) and On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring (1912).

In 1897 Delius moved into the house of German painter Jelka Rosen in Grez-sur-Loing, France. They married six years later. She was heiress to a modest fortune from her distinguished Schleswig-Holstein family and her wealth gave Delius financial security.

In 1924 Delius became paralyzed and blind, but with the assistance of a young English admirer Eric Fenby, he continued to compose.

Frederick Delius with his wife Jelka Rosen in 1929

Delius died at Grez-sur-Loing on June 10, 1934, aged 72. He had wished to be buried in his own garden, but the French authorities forbade it. His alternative wish, despite his atheism, was to be buried in an English country churchyard. Jelka chose St Peter's Church, Limpsfield, Surrey as the site for the grave.

Source Europress Family Encyclopedia 1999. 

Delaware

Delaware is named after the Delaware River and Delaware Bay. These, in turn, were named for Sir Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, the first colonial governor of Virginia, who traveled the river in 1610.

As governor-for-life of the Virginia Colony, De La Warr died at sea on his way to investigate claims of abuse in the colony and it is believed that he was poisoned.

The first Swedish colonists arrived in America in the Colony of Delaware in 1638. They established a Lutheran settlement at Fort Christina, named after Sweden’s Queen Christina.

In 1682 William Penn received the area that is now the state of Delaware, and added it to his colony of Pennsylvania.

Delaware is sometimes called the First State because it was the first colony to accept the new constitution in 1787.

Fort Delaware, circa 1870 by Seth Eastman (1808 - 1875).

In 1929 JC Penney opened store #1252 in Milford, Delaware, making it a nationwide company with stores in all 48 US States.

Convicted murderer Billy Bailey was the last person to be hanged in the USA. He was executed by the state of Delaware on January 25, 1996.

In Delaware, it is illegal to sell dead people for money without a license.

Chickens outnumber people in the US state of Delaware by more than 200-1.

Delaware is the only state with no scheduled air service. There are zero scheduled passenger flights to anywhere in the state, with the last one landing in 2015.

Delaware is the only original U.S. colony to never lead any branch of government in the history of America - No President, No Supreme Court Justice, No Speaker of the House, and No Senate Majority or Minority Leader has ever served from the state.

Source Mentalfloss.com/article/31100/how-all-50-states-got-their-names

Deism

John Toland (1670-1722) was one of the pioneers of the deist movement, the predominate philosophy of the Anglican Church in the late 17th and pre Wesley 18th century.

Many of the American founding fathers including George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. adhered to this philosophy, which replaced revelation and tradition with reason.

Deism can be summed up thus: God has created everything and he has set all the laws in motion in a perfect way and no intervention can improve things. Instead God is removed from human affairs and therefore it is not rational to believe in any supernatural aspects of Christianity such as miracles. As this meant they rejected much of the miraculous and prophetic aspects of Scripture and ecclesiastical tradition, the believer was expected to use reason and their own conscience to arrive at their own moral tenets.

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) was born in Fore Street, Applegate, London. His father was James Foe, a dissenting butcher and candle merchant. His mother was Alice Foe who died before Defoe was ten.

As a boy John Milton was one of Defoe's neighbors.

The 1666 Great Fire of London left standing only Defoe's and two other houses in his neighborhood.

Defoe was educated for the Presbyterian ministry. a good but not an ordered or aristocratic education. From the age of 14 he attended Morton’s Academy for Dissenters at Newington Green.

In addition to traditional Latin and Greek Defoe studied French, Italian, Spanish, Elementary Science, History and Geography. He was especially good at Geography.

Despite being educated for the non-conformist ministry, Defoe followed his father into trade eventually setting up as a merchant selling everything from fine stockings to the glands of civet cards.

He married Mary Tuffley who had a handsome dowry of £3700 in 1684. Her independent spirit attracted him and they had a happy marriage. They had eight children including six girls.

Defoe took part in Monmouth's doomed rebellion and was one of the first who got away scot free from the Battle of Sedgemoor.

Defoe's breeding of civit cats for the perfume industry was a disaster and he ended up in Newgate prison a bankrupt.

In 1694 with money given to him by his patron King William III, Defoe set up a brick and pantile works in Tilbury, Essex, and began to pay back his creditors.

The business was very successful, supplying the building boom in London with high quality material, but the sudden death of King William in 1702 left Defoe resented by the new administration under Queen Anne.

In 1702 Daniel Defoe anonymously published a tract entitled The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, which satirised religious intolerance by pretending to share the prejudices of the Anglican Church against Nonconformists.

When it was found the following year that Defoe had written the tract, he was arrested and sentenced him to a punitive fine, to public humiliation in a pillory and to an indeterminate length of imprisonment which would only end upon the discharge of the punitive fine. When Defoe was placed in the pillory on July 31, 1703, he was pelted with flowers.

With his imprisonment, Defoe's thriving business collapsed. The timing of the great storm, which raged across southern England in 1703 killing 8,000 people, added insult to injury. Had it occurred earlier in the year, Defoe might have expected a windfall from the highly inflated price of tiles and labor.

Robert Harley, the speaker of the House of Commons, secured Defoe's release in November 1703, probably on the condition that he agree to become a secret agent and public propagandist for the government.

In 1707 Defoe was employed by the government as a propagandist and opinion former in Scotland during the manoeuvres for the 1707 union with England.

Between 1703-13 Defoe ran his own newspaper The Review. News was scarce sometimes so he made up reports to print in it. It appeared three times a week even when he was in prison for libel.

Daniel Defoe was one of the first agony uncles or aunts. In The Review, he gave advice on reader's queries.

At one time he wrote the newspaper with his own hand three times a week for six months. The often outspoken and controversial Defoe never rested working seven days a week.

The virtual founder of the novel and father of modern journalism. His The Review was a great influence on later English newspapers.

Defoe had a gift for observing human nature. He wrote 250 books and over 500 written works including history, biography, sociology, travel, manuals of conduct for parents and lovers, economics and political pamphlets.

Defoe shot to fame with his poem The True Born Englishman.

Once Defoe was pilloried for three days for publishing non conformist tracts during which there was a torrential thunderstorm. Normally fruit and vegetables were thrown at the offender. The sympathetic crowd threw flowers rather than fruit. He spent his time there selling copies of the pamphlet which got him in trouble. Defoe wrote of this experience in verses called Hymn to the Pillory.

In 1719 Defoe decided to write a piece of fictitious journalism based on the true life castaway Andrew Selkirk at the time when his political reputation was sinking. Selkirk was 28 when his ship wrecked on one of the Juan Fernandez islands in the South Pacific in 1704 . He was stranded there for four years and was rescued from the island on February 2, 1709 by English captain Woodes Rogers and the crew of the privateering ship Duke.

The book was titled Robinson Crusoe and Defoe wrote it at 95 Stoke Newington Street. London. The work was published on April 25, 1719. Before the end of the year, this first volume had run through four editions.

Defoe was a zealous, evangelical Puritan. The book revealed Robinson Crusoe, even when marooned on a desert island, behaving in a prudent, hard-working Protestant manner, secure that despite the circumstances God was on his side.

Defoe met Alexander Selkirk, the real life castaway, in the Llandoger Trow pub in Bristol.

Its full title was The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York Mariner.

Defoe made his publishers a profit of over £1000 with the immediately successful Robinson Crusoe.

He wrote his follow up The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, the month following the publication of the first volume. It was the first ever sequel to a novel. In 1720 Defoe wrote his second follow up Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe.

The Apparition of Mrs. Veal, a pamphlet attributed to Daniel Defoe, has been called the first modern ghost story. Defoe had a long-standing interest what would now be termed the supernatural and addressed the topic several times in his works. His Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe described "A vision of the Angelick World."

In 1722 Defoe wrote the smutty Moll Flanders to castigate immoral behaviour. It drew on the popularity of the lund criminal biographies which were in vogue at the time.

His A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain published in three volumes between 1724-26 was one of the first travel books.

Defoe exhorted the virtues of the textile factories of Halifax in his book calling them, "The most agreeable sight I ever saw". However the unspoilt countryside around Lancaster he described as, "A kind of unhospitable terror. No lead mines-no coal pits...no use or advantage to either man or beast."

Daniel Defoe’s numerous pen names included Jeffrey Sing-Song, Obadiah Blue Hat, Betty Blueskin, Penelope Firebrand, and the Man in the Moon.

Daniel Defoe died on April 24, 1731, probably while in hiding from his creditors. He was interred in Bunhill Fields, London, where a monument was erected to his memory in 1870.

Source The Independent

Deer

Very protective towards his royal deer, the punishment for merely disturbing King William the Conqueror's stags was blinding. "Anyone who killed a hart or a hind was to be blinded... He loved the stags as clearly as though he had been their father ." said  The Peterborough Chronicler, regarding the death of the monarch.

Deer in the Czech Republic don’t cross into Germany, following the example of parents who learned to avoid the electrified fence there during the Cold War.

Deer can abort a pregnancy if there is not enough food to support the deer population. She absorbs the fetus back into her system, or she can hold off giving birth until there are the right conditions.

Only male deer have antlers.The antlers are deciduous, and drop off after the mating season. Their main use is for males to fight for groups of females during the rutting season.

While an antler is growing, it is covered with highly vascular skin called velvet, which supplies oxygen and nutrients to the growing bone. The antler grows faster than any other mammal bone.

Deer have four-chambered stomachs, which help them digest their plant-based food.

A deer's eyes are more sensitive to light than a human's. So when a deer is suddenly struck by the beam of a car’s headlights, its fully dilated pupils become blinded by the abundance of light, so it cannot see at all. This is why the deer just stands still in front of the vehicle.

When a baby deer, known as a fawn, is born, they are on their feet in 20 minutes.

Fawns are often left alone for hours while their mothers forage for food. Sometimes well meaning people ‘kidnap’ the fawn thinking it’s abandoned when it’s really just waiting for its mom.

Deer mothers will instinctively come to the rescue of a crying human baby.  She will bound at top speed toward the distress call as though to her own fawn in distress.

When deer become startled and flee in a group, they don't collide because an inner compass points them all in a certain direction.

The Declaration of Independence

Although the Declaration of Independence was dated July 4th, the true US Independence Day was on July 2nd when the Continental Congress approved the legal separation of the 13 colonies from Great Britain  and didn’t sign it until August 2, 1776.

On July 8, 1776,  the Liberty Bell pealed from the tower of Independence Hall summoning the citizens of Philadelphia to hear the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence. The Liberty Bell was not actually rung on July 4, 1776, when the Continental Congress voted to declare independence. This is because the bell was being repaired at the time. However, it is believed that the bell was rung four days later, when the Declaration of Independence was first read aloud to the public.

The Liberty Bell has been rung on many other occasions throughout its history, including to mark the end of the American Civil War, the centennial of the Declaration of Independence, and the inauguration of every U.S. president since George Washington. Today, the Liberty Bell is a popular tourist destination and a symbol of American democracy.

In July 1776, George Washington was in New York with his troops. On July 9, he received his copy of the Declaration of Independence with a note from John Hancock telling Washington to share the news with the troops. After Washington read the Declaration the citizens who had heard the declaration raced down Broadway toward a large statue of George III, toppled it, decapitated it, and then melted it to make bullets.

The Virginia Gazette was the first American newspaper to publish the complete full text of the United States Declaration of Independence. It was published on July 26, 1776, in Williamsburg, Virginia. The newspaper was owned by John Dixon and William Hunter.

The publication of the Declaration of Independence in the Virginia Gazette was a major turning point in the American Revolution. It announced to the world that the American colonies were no longer subjects of the British Crown. It also galvanized support for the Revolution among the American people.

Thomas Jefferson, regarded as the strongest and most eloquent writer, wrote most of the document.

The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.

A parchment paper copy of the Declaration was signed by 56 persons on August 2, 1776; two future U.S. presidents, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, were among the signatories.

Thomas Jefferson purchased a thermometer a few days before signing The Declaration of Independence. He noted that it was 76 degrees on Signing Day in Philadelphia.

John Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress, was the first signer, and his signature is the largest —  it is almost 5 inches long. It is said that he said he signed his name large so King George III could read his signature without his glasses. The term John Hancock is still used today as a synonym for signature.

Benjamin Franklin, who represented Pennsylvania, was 70 when he signed the document. He was the oldest of the signers. Edward Rutledge, 26, of South Carolina, was the youngest.

The only brothers to sign the Declaration of Independence were Francis Lightfoot Lee and Richard Henry Lee.

William Whipple, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, freed his slave after signing it because he believed one cannot simultaneously fight for freedom and hold another person in bondage.

John Trumbull's famous painting is often identified as a depiction of the signing of the Declaration, but it actually shows the drafting committee presenting its work to the Congress

The Declaration of Independence refers to Native Americans as "the merciless Indian Savages".

One of the 26 known copies of the United States’ Declaration of Independence was purchased for $2.48. The man purchased an ugly painting for the frame at an Adamstown, Pennsylvania flea market in 1989 and found the declaration behind the painting. He sold it at auction for $2.42 million on June 4, 1991. It was later sold in 2000 for $8.14 million.

The British Parliament still has a copy of the original American Declaration of Independence in its archives.

The house where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence was replaced with a hamburger stand.

Deckchair

The requirement for comfortable, but easily stowable, outside seats for use in the brisk ocean liner trade saw the introduction of the foldable “deckchair,” made by Edward Atkins of Bethnal Green, London in 1884.

A consumers Association report in 1987 claimed over 2500 people a year needed medical help for injuries caused by deckchairs.

Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy was born at St Germain-en-Laye on August 22, 1862. His father was a travelling salesman and his mother worked as a seamstress.

The family moved to Paris in 1867, but three years later Claude's mother fled the French capital with young Claude in 1870, when the city was under siege during the Franco Prussian War. They settled in Cannes, where Claude's paternal aunt lived.

He had his first piano lesson aged 10 and entered the Paris Conservatoire at the same age. Within three years Debussy was playing Chopin piano concertos.

As a schoolboy Claude Debussy was teased by his fellow pupils as he would only eat the daintiest and most expensive chocolates.

He became a brilliant pianist and sight reader, but Claude Debussy's real interest lay in composition.

"A pupil with a considerable gift for harmony but desperately careless" (From Debussy's Conservatoire report 1879)

Debussy had a pale complexion, flabby body, vivacious black eyes under heavy drooping lips. He had an enormous forehead and long locks of dark curly hair.

Debussy, by Marcel Baschet, 1884

He was nervous by temperament and fanatical about his music. He loved order and clarity.

Debussy spoke in a soft voice, slowly as if seeking the right word.

He travelled to Florence, Venice, Vienna, and Moscow in 1879 as private musician to Nadejda von Meck, the patron of Russian composer Tchaikovsky.

Debussy won the much coveted Grand Prix de Rome in 1884 for his cantata L'enfant prodigue (The Prodigal Son).

At the age of 18 Debussy began an eight-year affair with Marie-Blanche Vasnier, wife of a Parisian civil servant. The relationship eventually faltered following his winning of the Prix de Rome in 1884 and obligatory residence in Rome.

In 1899 he married fashion model Rosalie ('Lilly') Texier, after threatening suicide if she refused him. He got a job as music critic of a journal called La revue blanche.

Although Texier was affectionate, practical, straightforward, and well liked by Debussy's friends and associates, he became increasingly irritated by her intellectual limitations and lack of musical sensitivity. Moreover, her looks had prematurely aged, and she was unable to bear children.

In 1904, Debussy started an affair with Emma Bardac, wife of Parisian banker Sigismond Bardac. Debussy wrote to Texier informing her their marriage was over.

A couple of months later Texier attempted suicide, shooting herself in the chest with a revolver; she survived, although the bullet remained lodged in her vertebrae for the rest of her life. The ensuing scandal was to alienate Debussy from many of his friends, whilst Bardac was disowned by her family.

In the spring of 1905, finding the hostility towards them intolerable, Debussy and the now pregnant Bardac fled to England, via Jersey. The couple settled at the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne from July 24 to August 30, 1905.

The couple returned to Paris in September and their daughter (the composer's only child), Claude-Emma (known as "Chou-Chou"), was born there on October 30th.

Debussy and Bardiac were eventually married in 1908, their troubled union enduring until Debussy's death in 1918.

Photograph of Claude Debussy circa 1908

A slow composer, it would often take Debussy weeks to choose one chord in preference to another.

The symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (English Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) was first performed in Paris on December 22, 1894, conducted by Gustave Doret. The work was based on a poem about a faun playing panpipes and falling into a languorous sleep after an exhausting session chasing nymphs around the woods.  The tone poem was intended by Debussy to be the first of three pieces, but the planned Interlude and Paraphrase Finale were never written.

In 1912 a ballet choreographed by the Russian ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky (1850-1950) using the music of Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune was premiered in Paris by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The production caused quite a scandal when Nijinsky - dressed up as a faun - performed an erotic dance to the piece on the stage.

Debussy's 1902 opera Pelléas et Mélisande, based on the play of the same name by the Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck, earned him widespread fame as a musician of outstanding significance.

Pelléas et Mélisande is unique within the standard repertoire for its avoidance of anything approaching an aria or set-piece ensemble Considering how selflessly Debussy had abandoned operatic convention in order to project every word of Maurice Maeterlinck's mysterious symbolist drama. it seems churlish of the famous Belgian author to have then tried to sabotage the 1902 premiere - because his mistress hasn't been cast n the title role. 

Pelléas et Mélisande was at first thought utterly tuneless. At the public dress rehearsal hecklers shouted "When will the orchestra stop tuning up? and "Now give us some music". The hostility at its premiere was additionally fuelled by the choice of the young Scottish soprano Mary Garden to play Mélisande, whose imperfect French accent was not to the Parisian public's liking.

Debussy rarely visited the sea, spending most of his time far away from large bodies of water. He drew inspiration for “La Mer” from art, preferring the seascapes available in painting and literature.
Part of it was written in Jersey in the Channel Islands.

The Suite bergamasque, which consists of four movements, is one of the most famous piano suites of Claude Debussy. The best known part is the third movement, titled "Clair de lune," meaning moonlight. It was named after Paul Verlaine's 1869 poem of the same name,

Children's Corner was a piano suite composed for his daughter Chou Chou in 1908. Three of the pieces were musical pictures of her favorite toys, her elephant, Jimbo, her doll and her gollywog.

Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune is based on a poem about a faun playing panpipes and falling into a languorous sleep after an exhausting session chasing nymphs around the woods. It caused quite a scandal when in 1912, Nijinsky - dressed up as a faun - performed an erotic dance to the piece on the Paris stage.

Debussy had a number of Persian cats. Three of them died by falling from his window.

One of Debussy’s last works was written as a trade for some coal. As supplies were scarce and therefore expensive in France during World War I, the composer offered to write his coal merchant an original composition, "Les Soirs illumines par l'ardeur du charbon" (Evenings Lighted By Burning Coals.) In return, he got his fuel.

Just before Debussy died, he attempted to write an opera based on Edgar Allan Poe's House of Usher.

In 1909 Debussy learned that he was afflicted with rectal cancer, from which he painfully died on March 25, 1918. He was interred at Paris Cimetière de Passy.

Debussy passed away during the bombardment of Paris by airships and long-distance guns in the last German offensive of World War I. This was a time when the military situation of France was considered desperate by many, and these circumstances did not permit his being paid the honor of a public funeral, or ceremonious graveside orations, or festivals of his works. The funeral procession made its way through deserted streets as shells from the German guns ripped into his beloved city.

Sources Encarta Encyclopedia, Wikipedia

Food Related Deaths

From the dawn of man there have been many food-related deaths. The early Palaeolithic peoples had to quickly learn to be excellent botanists lest they mistook a poisonous root for a nutritious one. Their botanical knowledge was handed down from one generation to the next:

54 The Roman emperor Claudius was poisoned with amanita mushrooms by his wife Agrippina, after her son, Nero, was name as his heir.

1135 King Henry I of England died from indigestion caused by eating moray eel.

1159 Pope Adrian IV the only English pope, choked to death when he accidentally swallowed a fly.

1216.In England, King John died of an intestinal illness at an East Anglian abbey having hastened his death by eating an excess of peaches and drinking too much cider.

Russian Czar Alexander I, Roman Emperor Claudius, French King Charles V and Pope Clement VII are just four of several historical figures who died after eating the wrong type of mushroom fungus.

Source Food For Thought by Ed Pearce

Drink Related Deaths

From the dawn of man drinking has been the cause of death for many, especially through over indulgence of alcoholic beverages. Here are a few of the best-known instances.

762 Libai one of the greatest Chinese poets died whilst drunk when he tried to in his rather unsteady state to capture the reflection of the waters of the Yangtze.

1042 Edward the Confessor, the eldest son of Ethelred II, became the King of England after his predecessor Hardicanute died of convulsions whilst drinking at a wedding party. There were suspicions that he was poisoned.

1574 Selem the drunkard emperor of the Ottoman emperor for eight years was not interested in ruling his country, a job which he tended to delegate. Instead he spent his time drinking wine surrounded by various friends and flatterers in his harem. He met a fitting end dying as a result of cracking his skull in a Turkish bath when dead drunk.

1593 The playwright Christopher Marlowe met a violent death whilst drinking in a Deptford, London tavern. It was suspected he was murdered because of his activities as a spy.

1918 John L Sullivan was the last bare-knuckle boxing champion, and the first one to use gloves. The American was an alcoholic, who for four years was not fit enough to defend his title. In his later years Sullivan became teetotal and a supporter of the temperance movement He died in 1918 of health problems caused by his earlier alcoholism.

1931 The English novelist Arnold Bennett drank a glass of water to prove it was safe. It wasn't and he died of typhoid.

1953 The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas who was renowned for his alcohol consumption collapsed in his hotel. He was in New York on a promotional tour and had been drinking heavily. He died later in hospital and his last words were “I've had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that’s a record”.

Source Food For Thought by Ed Pearce

Death

HISTORY

During the Middle Ages, corpses were often boiled to remove the flesh so that the bones could be transported more easily. Prepared for every eventuality, the Crusaders took their own cauldrons with them.

Medieval art depicted characters dying or being killed with unusually calm expressions because it was a common belief that that such a response to death was Christlike, as Jesus did not panic on the cross.

Charles VIII  of France died after an accident in 1498. After striking himself on the head while passing through a doorway, he succumbed to a sudden coma several hours later.

Tycho Brahe died in 1601, several days after his bladder burst during a banquet. It had been said that to leave the banquet before it concluded, would be "the height" of bad manners, and so he remained until his bladder exploded.

After about 1660, the religious emphasis on dying a good death gradually declined as did the belief that sickness and death were punishments sent by God. The new age of reason called the Enlightenment encouraged the belief that God, having created the world, was allowing it to work without divine interference. This allowed for a more naturalistic approach to illness.

The fear of being buried alive largely originated after Jacques-Bénigne Winslow, professor of Anatomy at the Jardin du Roi in Paris, published a paper in Latin in 1740 on the uncertainty of the signs of death. It was translated into French by a Paris physician, Jean-Jacques Bruhier d'Ablaincourt, who sensationalized it by adding 'amusing and well-attested' stories of people who had not only returned to life in their coffins and graves but also under the hands of surgeons.

The Queen of Thailand drowned in 1880 as her subjects looked on because they were forbidden to touch her.

No American has died of old age since 1951 - that was the year the government removed that classification from death certificates.

In 1967 Dr. James Bedford became the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation.

Lal Bihari (1955-1975, 1994- ) is an Indian farmer and activist. In 1975, Bihari tried to apply for a bank loan, but it was denied because, according to the government, he was legally dead. He fought with Indian bureaucracy for 19 years to prove that he is alive. Bihari founded Mritak Sangh, the Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People, to highlight other cases like his.

During the 2009 Iranian election protests, the death of Neda Agha-Soltan was captured on video and widely distributed on the Internet, making it "probably the most widely witnessed death in human history".

The government of Detroit, with an estimated at $19 billion in debt, filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history in 2013. Detroit was so broke that they were unable to print out death certificates because they had not been able to pay the company that provided the special embossed paper on which they were printed, and subsequently ran out.

DEATH FACTS

We die because our cells die. Though they replace themselves over and over again for some 70-odd years, they can't do so forever.

When a person dies, the first sense lost is sight, and the last is hearing.

If a dead body is left at 50°F, it will take about four months for its soft tissue to decompose until just the skeleton is left.

The US National Institute of Medicine estimated in 2004 that three quarters of Americans die as a result of their lifestyle, factors ranging from drinking, drugs, smoking and violence to stress.

Statisticians have calculated that about 1 in every 113 people die every year.

About 159,635 people will die on the same day as you.

World-wide, one in every eight deaths is due to cancer.

Traffic accidents are the primary cause of death worldwide for people aged 15-24.

Under one-year-old, you are most likely to die from a birth defect. From the ages of 1 to 44 you are most likely to die from an accident. From the age of 45 on, you are most likely to die from cancer or heart disease.

You are less likely to die during an economic depression. This is mostly attributed to cleaner air, reduced traffic, and fewer dollars spent on vices like tobacco and alcohol.

The animal that kills the most humans each year is the Mosquito at 725,000 deaths, followed by Humans at 475,000, and then Snakes causing 50,000 deaths per year.

You're 14% more likely to die on your birthday than any other day.

An analysis based on insurance industry data concluded that without aging or disease, people would live an average of nearly 9,000 years before accident, disaster or murder got them.

In Britain around 580,000 will die of which just over 70% will be cremated and just under 30% will be buried.

The most common time for deaths in a hospital is between the times of 4pm and 6pm, the time when the human body is at its weakest.

Psychogenic death is the act of giving up on life and dying usually within days. It is a very real condition often linked to severe trauma. People die because they have given up and feel life has beaten them and defeat is inescapable.

Working too much is an official cause of death in Japan. Called 'Karoshi' which literally means 'overwork death' it became a hot issue in the mid to late 1980s, when several high-ranking businessmen who were still in their prime years suddenly died without any previous sign of illness.

It's impossible to 'die' on an airplane when it's in the air. Most flights don't have staff who are qualified to pronounce someone dead. So, the body in question will be left in its seat or moved to an empty row, then be declared dead upon landing.

Cholesterol and saturated fats (from pork, beef, eggs and other dairy products) have killed more people around the world than all the battles and wars combined.

The dead outnumber the living by more than 30 to one.

Some scientists believe that one out of every two people who have ever lived have died of malaria.

The US state with the highest death rate is Mississippi; Hawaii has the lowest.

Every day since 1840, life expectancy has increased by about six hours.

In English and German culture, Death is typically portrayed as male, but in French, Italian and Spanish, culture, it is not uncommon for Death to be female. In the Netherlands, Death is sometimes referred to as 'Uncle Hendrik'.

A sad song, hymn, or poem mourning the death of someone is called a Threnody. Here is a list of songs about death.

Would You Believe This Too, History World

James Dean

James Dean was born in Marion, Indiana, United States on February 8, 1931 to Winton Dean and Mildred Wilson.

When Dean was six his family moved to California, and James went to school in Los Angeles.

James' mother died of cancer when he was nine, and he went to live with his aunt and uncle in Fairmount, Indiana.

When he was 11 years-old, Dean was sexually harassed by a Protestant minister. This experience tortured him during all his whole childhood.

In high school, he became interested in drama and car racing. After he graduated, he moved back to California to live with his father and stepmother.

He had two front teeth knocked out while he was swinging around on a homemade trapeze. Dean said he lost them in a motorbike accident and would shock people by taking out his false teeth during conversations.

James Dean made his television debut with an appearance in a Pepsi commercial on December 13, 1950. He was the guy who put the money in the jukebox. He was asked to film a second Pepsi ad the very next day.

Dean attended Santa Monica College and UCLA, but left college in 1951 to become a professional actor.

He starred in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) as troubled teenager Jim Stark and loner Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955).

Dean in Rebel Without a Cause

Dean had a fondness for auto racing and had purchased the 1955 Porsche Spyder sports car, one of only 90 made of that year model, planning to participate in the upcoming races in Salinas, California on Oct 1, 1955.

Exactly one week before he died, James Dean was warned by Sir Alec Guinness not to get into his new Porsche 550 Spyder, or “You’ll be found dead in it by this time next week."

On September 30, 1955 the 24-year-old James Dean, driving his Porsche Spyder, collided with another car in Cholame, California and was killed. He had received a speeding ticket just two hours and fifteen minutes before.

Ironically, he had filmed a highway safety commercial with actor Gig Young on the set of Giant in July 1955. Dean told Young, "I used to fly around quite a bit, took a lot of unnecessary chances on the highway.... Now when I drive on the highway, I'm extra cautious."

Source Wikipedia

Deafness

In 1755, Abbe Charles Michel de L’Epee of Paris founded the first free school for deaf people. He used a system of gestures, hand signs, and finger spelling.

Beethoven was completely deaf when he composed his Ninth symphony in 1824.

The National Deaf Mute College, later named Gallaudent College was incorporated in Washington DC in 1857. It was the first school in the world for advanced education of the deaf.

Alexander Graham Bell's mother was deaf. His father, Alexander Melville Bell, was a specialist in deaf children's education. He invented "visible speech", a method of phonetic notation for deaf mutes.

Alexander Graham Bell assisted his father in teaching deaf and dumb children in London. When Bell and his family moved to America,  he opened a private school in Boston to train teachers of the deaf and the methods of visible speech he'd learnt from his father.

Paul D. Hubbard was a deaf American football player who played quarterback at Gallaudet University from 1892 to 1895, during which he invented the modern huddle. Hubbard was concerned the other team could interpret his hand signals, so he brought his teammates into a round formation to call plays.

In 2003 British Sign Language was recognized as an official British language.

Deaf babies, and those born to deaf parents, "babble" using their hands during the language-acquisition period.

In the dreams of deaf people, they still don't hear but either the people in their dreams know sign language or all communication is essentially telepathic.

Honeybees and turtles are deaf.

Dead Sea Scrolls

 In 1947 the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by an Arab shepherd boy in a cave on the shore of the Dead Sea where they had been hidden in around 68 AD by a Jewish monastic community.

Over the following nine years a search of the surrounding caves led to a total of around 850 documents being found.

There was a copper scroll found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1952 that is not a literary work like the others. Instead it lists the locations of valuable treasures such as silver and gold that have been buried or hidden.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a group of ancient scrolls and fragments of all of the Old Testament books except the Books of Esther and Nehemiah plus other historical texts and they date from around 150 BC to 68 AD, a thousand years older than the earliest Hebrew manuscript of the Old Testament (AD 895).

A portion of the second discovered copy of the Isaiah scroll, 1QIsab.

Four of the Dead Sea Scrolls were offered up for sale in an advertisement in the 1 June 1954, Wall Street Journal. They were purchased by Israelis Professor Mazar and the son of Professor Sukenik, Yigael Yadin, for $250,000 on February 13, 1955 and brought to Jerusalem.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were made available to the public for the first time on September 22, 1991 by the Huntington Library.

The scrolls reveal how accurately the scribes carried out the copying of earlier Hebrew texts. It is interesting to note, for instance, that the 14 copies of the Book of Isaiah have produced only six minor changes to the text as previously known. 

Dead Sea

The Dead Sea is a lake between the countries of Israel, Jordan and Palestine.

At 1,371 feet below sea level, the Dead Sea is the lowest point on the surface of the Earth.

Legend has it that the prophet Abraham's aged wife Sarah bathed in the Dead Sea before conceiving Isaac.

The Dead sea is almost nine times as salty as the ocean. That makes it impossible for most life to exist in it. - hence its name.

The sea is not completely dead. In 1998, three species of fungi were discovered to be living in the Dead Sea. One of the species is new to science and cannot survive without salt.

Because the water is so salty, it weighs more than fresh water. This is enables people to float in the Dead Sea without any effort.

Many doctors prescribe a visit to the Dead Sea for their patients as a source of healing. Thanks to its extremely high salt and mineral content, the water is said to help people with respiratory issues, joint problems like arthritis, and many chronic skin conditions.

Scientists believe that by 2050 the Dead Sea will be so salty that the salt will block water from evaporating, leaving a small pool of slimy sludge. Sinkholes that keep appearing around it, may prevent any permanent solution to its replenishment.

Source Wikipedia

Madame de Pompadour

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (1721-1764), was a member of the French court and  the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death.

She was presented to the royal court by a cousin of the King, the Princess of Conti.

A fully rounded hair style, the Pompadour, in which the hair is swept straight up from the forehead to a high, turned-back roll, for women, or simply brushed up from the forehead, for men is named after her.

Versailles sent out fashion dolls ever five years or so to other European courts with miniature versions of Madame Pompadour's latest wardrobe so that women such as the Russian Czar Catherine the Great could get their dressmakers to copy them

Although they had ceased being lovers after 1750, they remained friends, and Louis XV was devoted to her until her death from tuberculosis in 1764 at the age of forty-two.

Her importance was such that she was approached in 1755 by Wenzel Anton Graf Kaunitz, a prominent Austrian diplomat, asking her to intervene in the negotiations which led to the Treaty of Versailles. This was the beginning of the Diplomatic Revolution, which saw France allied to her former enemy Austria.

Source Wikipedia

Robert De Niro

Robert Anthony De Niro was born in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan, New York on August 17, 1943.

His father, Robert De Niro Sr. was a noted abstract Expressionist artist, and his mother was a painter. Later, his father came out as gay.

At the age of 10, Robert De Niro played the Lion in a local production of the Wizard of Oz.

As a boy his nickname was 'Bobby Milk', after his pale skinny frame.

He dropped out of high school to pursue acting. He studied with legendary teachers Stella and Lee Strasberg.

Robert De Niro is known for his dedication to his craft and for going to great lengths to prepare for his roles. He spent $20,000 for a dentist to mess up his teeth for his role as a villain in the film, Cape Fear. He then paid even more to have them fixed after the movie was finished.

Robert De Niro gained 60lb (27kg) and trained as a boxer for a year to play Jake LaMotto in Raging Bull.

He prepared for his role in Taxi Driver by obtaining a New York taxi license and spending a month working up to 14 hour shifts picking people up all over New York.

De Niro ate pancakes every morning and went to Italy on an eating tour to gain weight to play Al Capone in The Untouchables.

Robert De Niro learned to play the saxophone for his role in New York, New York.

Bananarama, who had a hit in 1984 with "Robert De Niro is Waiting," had themselves to wait when De Niro, a fan of the song, set up a meeting. They were so nervous they got steaming drunk before he turned up.

De Niro at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. By Georges Biard Wikipedia

Among the many film scripts the famously picky actor turned down was The Last Temptation of Christ, in which he was offered the role of Jesus. But he was happy to appear on Ricky Gervais' comedy show, Extras, during a break in the filming of the 2007 movie Stardust.

In 2004, Robert De Niro was set to receive Italian citizenship from the Italian government. However, the Order Sons of Italy in America (OSIA), a large Italian-American organization, objected to the plan, claiming that De Niro had damaged the public image of Italians by portraying criminals in his movies.

The OSIA specifically cited De Niro's roles in films such as The Godfather and Goodfellas as evidence of his negative portrayal of Italians. The group argued that De Niro's films had contributed to the stereotype of Italians as being criminals and mobsters. In the end, De Niro was granted Italian citizenship. 

Source Mail on Sunday

Catherine de' Medici

Catherine de' Medici was born in Florence, Republic of Florence, as Caterina Maria Romula di Lorenzo de' Medici on April 13, 1519. Catherine's father, Lorenzo II de' Medici, was made Duke of Urbino by his uncle Pope Leo X, and her mother, Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, the Countess of Boulogne, was from one of the most prominent and ancient French noble families.

Madeleine died 15 days after her daughter's birth of puerperal fever or plague and Lorenzo died from syphilis just 6 days later. Catherine was raised by her aunt, Clarice Strozzi.

At the age of 14, Catherine de' Medici married Henry duc d'Orléans, the son of the French King Francis I. The wedding took place in the Église Saint-Ferréol les Augustins in Marseille on October 28, 1533

Catherine and Henry's marriage, painted seventeen years after the event

When Catherine de' Medici married the future Henry II of France she brought with her a group of Florentine cooks from her native Italy. With their help, she introduced many new Italian dishes never seen before in France such as artichoke hearts, asparagus, macaroons, pasta, raspberry, lemon and orange sorbets, sweetbreads and truffles.

Catherine de' Medici brought forks with her to France, so these new foods were served using utensils instead of fingers or daggers. She introduced a new elegance and refinement to the French table.

As a wedding present, her uncle, Pope Clement VII presented to Catherine de' Medici a new bean, the haricot bean, which had been imported from the New World.

Catherine de' Medici introduced the art of lacemaking at the French court. In an inventory of her household goods were 381 squares of unmounted lace in one chest and 538 in another. She kept her waiting women constantly at work making lace to decorate her bedchamber.

Catherine de Medici declared 13-inch waists to be the height of fashion and banned women with thick waists from the French court.

On her visit to Rome, the Venetian envoy described Catherine as "small of stature, and thin, and without delicate features, but having the protruding eyes peculiar to the Medici family.”

Prince Henry showed no interest in Catherine as a wife; instead, he openly took mistresses.

For the first ten years of the marriage, Catherine failed to produce any children. Eventually she bore him five children, Francis II of France, Elizabeth of Valois, Charles IX of France, Henry III of France and Margaret of Valois.

When Catherine de' Medici was Queen of France she maintained about eighty alluring ladies-in-waiting at court, whom she used as tools to seduce courtiers for political ends. These women became known as her "flying squadron."

Beauty and the Beast was inspired by Petrus Gonsalvus, who was part of King Henry II's court and suffered from congenital hypertrichosis. After the King's death, Catherine Medici, arranged a marriage for Gonsalvus but hid his condition from the bride until the wedding.

At the 1576 wedding of Marquis de Lomenie and Mlle de Martigues, Catherine de' Medici ate too many of her favorite cockerel kidneys and artichoke bottoms and for a time became so ill with diarrhea she thought she would die.

Queen Catherine de Medici lived in the Louvre. Certain rooms were said to be constructed with a network of listening tunnels, so that anything spoken in one room could be heard in another. That way the paranoid Queen could scupper any plots against her.

Catherine died at the age of sixty-nine on January 5, 1589 at her Château de Blois home, probably from pleurisy.

Effigies of Catherine de' Medici and Henry II by Germain Pilon (1583), Basilica of St Denis

Sources Daily Mail, Wikipedia,  Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc, Food For Thought by Ed Pearce, Tresashley.blogspot.com

Day

A day is a unit of time defined as the length of time it takes for one complete rotation of the Earth on its axis. This period of time is approximately 24 hours. The concept of a day is used as a standard unit of time measurement in various contexts, such as in calendars, astronomy, and daily life. In most cultures, a day is typically divided into 24 equal parts called hours, and each hour is further divided into 60 minutes and each minute is divided into 60 seconds.

Earth's rotation imaged by Deep Space Climate Observatory, showing axis tilt

Our weeks have seven days because the ancient Babylonians had one day for each known celestial body: the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn.

Ancient Egyptians had 12 months of exactly 30 days each, with five epagomenal days to bring the total to 365. Each month was divided into three 10-day periods known as decans or decades.

Monday is the only day of the week that is an anagram of a single word: ‘dynamo’.

The day of the week Tuesday is named after Tiw, the Norse god of single combat, victory and glory. Tiw is associated with Mars, the Roman god of war, which is why the day is Mardi in French, Martes in Spanish and Martedi in Italian.

The actress Tuesday Weld was born on a Friday.

According to a survey in 2002, Tuesday is the most productive day of the week in the workplace.

Wednesday is named after Woden, the most important God in the German pantheon, often identified with the Norse God Odin.  Woden and Odin are also associated with the Roman god Mercury, which is why the French call Wednesday Mercredi and the Spanish Miercoles.

The Japanese for Wednesday translates as ‘Water day’ as the planet Mercury was known as the ‘water star’.

In German, Wednesday (Mittwoch) is the only day of the week not ending in ‘tag’ (day).

The Wednesday before Easter is known as ‘Spy Wednesday’ referring to Judas’s betrayal of Jesus.

According to an extensive study of over 300 million events, April 11, 1954 was the most boring and uneventful day of the 20th century. The study, conducted by William Tunstall-Pedoe, a Cambridge computer scientist, found that no major events occurred on that day, and that no notable people were born or died. The only significant event that took place was a general election in Belgium.

Tunstall-Pedoe created a search engine called True Knowledge, which contains over 300 million individual facts. He used this search engine to scan through each day in the 20th century, looking for days with no major events. He found that April 11, 1954 was the day with the fewest major events.

In the Ancient Roman Empire, there were 24 hours in the day. The 24 hours were divided into equal parts 12-Light hours and 12-Dark hours. Therefore the length of an hour would change based on the seasons.

February 6, AD 60 is the earliest date for which the day of the week is known. A graffito in Pompeii identifies this day as a dies Solis (Sunday). In modern reckoning, this date would have been a Wednesday.

46 BC was 445 days long and is the longest year in human history. The year marked the change from the pre-Julian Roman calendar to the Julian calendar. 

Submarine crews do not use a typical 24 hour day, one day lasts 18 hours.

A day on the Moon is so slow that you could outrun the sun in a car and stay in perpetual sunlight.

Here is a list of songs with days of the week in the title

Source Daily Express

Charles G. Dawes

Charles Gates Dawes (1865 – 1951) was an American banker and politician who was the thirtieth Vice President of the United States between 1925 and 1929.

Dawes won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1925 for his work on the Dawes Plan for World War I reparations.

Dawes was a self-taught pianist and composer who composed a classical violin and orchestra piece in 1911, “Melody in A Major.” It was eventually used in Tommy Edwards’ 1958 #1 hit (for a then record six weeks) “It’s All in the Game.”

Dawes composed the piece in a single piano sitting. "It's just a tune that I got in my head, so I set it down," he told an interviewer. Dawes played it for a friend, the violinist Francis MacMillan, who liked it enough to show it to a publisher.

Source Songfacts.com

Sir Humphry Davy

Humphry Davy was born in Penzance, Cornwall on December 17, 1778, the eldest of five children. His Cornish father was a comfortably well off wood carver and small farmer who died when Humphry was 16.

A keen naturalist as a boy he was encouraged to take up science by Davies Goddy, a figure of local importance who gave the boy the run of his lab.

Due to his father's early death, Davy was entered into an apprenticeship with John Bingham Borlase, a surgeon with a large practice at Penzance in order to support his family.

A talented poet as a young man according to Coleridge, Southey and Wordsworth. They thought better of  Davy's  poetry than do some modern critics.

Wordsworth gave Davy the task of assisting his friend Cottle, the poet's publisher in correcting the second edition of his Lyrical Ballads.

In 1798 Davy was employed by the physician Thomas Beddoes as laboratory head in his fashionable medical pneumatic institution in Bristol.

Davy investigated then demonstrated whilst working for Thomas Beddoes the use of laughing gas (nitrous oxide) by inhaling it himself to ease the pain from a tooth abscess.  He nearly died from the effects. Davy never followed up his findings, as he saw the hilarity it caused a useful way of relieving the pain of surgery. He never saw it as an anesthetic.

In 1800 he wrote Researches, Chemical and Philosophical Chiefly Concerning Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration.

Sir Humphry Davy, Bt, by Thomas Phillips (died 1845). 

The first tooth extracted using laughing gas was on a New England dentist, Horace Wells in 1844.

Between 1801 and 1802 Davy tried to fix an image on light sensitive paper but was unsuccessful in producing the first photo.

In 1802 Davy was appointed Professor of Chemistry at The Royal Institution in London. He was such a handsome scientist that women would flock to his discourses on chemistry to see him. The brilliant lectures he delivered as professor of chemistry were major social occasions.

Cleanliness was not a priority for Davy. J Cordy Jeaffreson wrote in A Book About Doctors (1860):  "He was said to be affected...not to have enough time for the ordinary decencies of the toilet. Cold abulations, neither his constitution nor philosophic temperament required so he rarely washed himself. And on the plea of saving time, he used to put on his clean linen over his dirty...so that he has been known to wear at the same time five shirts and five pairs of stockings."

In 1809, it is said that Davy invented the first electric light. He connected two wires to a battery and attached a charcoal strip between the other ends of the wires His lights only lasted a few minutes.

A friend of Sir Walter Scott, Darwin regularly visited the Scottish novelist at  his Abbotsford home.

Davy damaged his eyesight in a laboratory accident with nitrogen trichloride in 1812. His accident induced him to hire Michael Faraday as a coworker.

Faraday became a greater scientist than Davy. His last years were embittered by jealousy .

In 1812  Davy married a wealthy Scottish widow, Jane Apreece (1780-1855), three days after being knighted. She disapproved of science especially after her husband took a chemical chest on their honeymoon. The marriage was ultimately unhappy and childless.

After marrying Jane Apreece Davy went on a tour of Europe with a young Michael Faraday in 1813-14 and met many European scientists. They hobnobbed with leading French scientists despite the country being at war with France.

His results were so highly esteemed that Davy was awarded a prize established by Napoleon even though Britain and France were at war.

While in France Davy was asked by Gay-Lussac to investigate a mysterious substance isolated by Bernard Courtois. Davy showed it to be an element, which is now called iodine

Davy discovered seven new elements in total including sodium potassium, calcium and magnesium.

A letter from Italy safely reached Davy despite being addressed to "SIRO MFREDEVI/LONDRA"

Davy was an expert angler with an intense interest in it. His younger brother John said he was "a little mad about it"

He wrote a book on fly fishing titled Salmonia or Days of Fly Fishing by an Angler.

Davy started experimented with lamps for use in coal mines in 1815. At that time before gas lightening had been invented, the only way a bright light could be obtained was a candle without protection. The first trial of a Davy lamp with a wire sieve was at Hebburn Colliery on January 9, 1816.

Diagram of a Davy Lamp

The first Davy lamp to be taken down the mine shaft of the Penzance Ding Dong mine was carried by the Reverend John Hodgson. The first miner he approached with this new apparatus freaked out.

Davy refused to take out a patent for his lamp as he didn't want to make money out of saving the lives of miners.

The introduction of the Davy lamp was actually followed by an increase in mine accidents, as it emboldened companies to mine in areas that had previously been regarded as being too unsafe.

Chemical poisoning from his frequent experiments left Davy an invalid the last two decades of his life.

Davy spent the last months of his life writing Consolations in Travel, an immensely popular, somewhat freeform compendium of poetry, thoughts on science and philosophy. Published posthumously, the work became a staple of both scientific and family libraries for several decades afterward.

Humphry Davy died in a hotel room in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 29, 1829 after suffering a stroke several months previously.

Source The Faber Book of Anecdotes