Edward Elgar

Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934) was born on June 2, 1857 in Broadheath, Worcestershire to the owner of a music shop, William and Ann, the daughter of a farm worker.

Elgar's birthplace, Lower Broadheath

Apart from having violin lessons Elgar was self-taught.. He studied the printed music in his father’s shop and often travelled with him when he went on his rounds to tune pianos in the Worcestershire grand houses.

In his youth Elgar worked as a violinist before becoming conductor of the Worcester Glee Club and the County Asylum Band, and organist of St George's Roman Catholic Church.

In 1889 Elgar wed a pupil of his, Caroline Alice Roberts, who was 8 years older than he him. They married at Brompton Oratory. Her family did not approve of their match, and disinherited her,

Alice was a good wife to him and encouraged him in his efforts to be a successful composer. She acted as Elgar's business manager and helped him by ruling neat manuscript lines on plain paper so that he could write his music.

In 1899 Elgar wrote an orchestral piece, the Enigma Variations. Its variations are based on the countermelody to an unheard theme, a supposedly well-known tune that Elgar never identified. Each variation describes one of his friends, but he did not say which friends they were: he only put their initials or nickname at the top of each variation.

Elgar’s most popular piece is the first of his five Pomp and Circumstance Marches. It has the tune which is sung to the words “Land of Hope and Glory” and the audience always join in singing it at the Last Night of the Proms. Also American high school, college, and university graduates often march down the aisles of auditoriums to the work.

The poet and essayist Arthur Benson, wrote the words to "Land Of Hope And Glory." He was the older brother of the Mapp and Lucia author EF Benson.

Elgar was the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of acoustic recordings of his works.

Edward Elgar, c. 1900

Elgar used to take his three dogs for long drives in his open-topped car…all wearing goggles.

He spent many happy hours bowling along country lanes on his fixed-wheel Royal Sunbeam bicycle. Elgar loved cycling and claimed it inspired his music.

Statue of Elgar with bicycle in Hereford. By Oliver Dixon, Wikipedia Commons

Elgar tried to invent a self-adjusting kite, but this merely resulted in bringing down his neighbor's chimneys.

The composer enjoyed a wide range of interests away from music including chemistry and microscope work. In the 1900s Elgar spent much time in his laboratory, which he dubbed ‘The Ark’, where he conducted experiments and even made some soap.

Elgar was a keen Wolverhampton Wanderers fan, one of a founder members of the Football League in 1888, and often cycled over 40 miles from his home in Malvern, Worcestershire, to watch his team play. Elgar wrote the song "He Banged The Leather For Goal"  in honor of an 1890s striker, Billy Malpass.

His greatest love was horse racing. Famously, Elgar dashed off to the races after a first meeting with the 15-year-old Yehudi Menuhin.

All his life Elgar was a keen race-goer, disguising his identity with bookmakers by using false names. One of these, ‘Siromoris’, is a palindrome based on two of his honours, the knighthood (‘Sir’) and the Order of Merit (‘OM’)

After the death of Alice in 1920 Elgar was so heartbroken that he stopped composing.

Edward Elgar died on February 23, 1934. Inoperable colorectal cancer had been discovered during an operation four and a half months earlier, He was buried next to his wife at St. Wulstan's Church in Little Malvern.

Elgar family grave at St Wulstan's Church, Little Malvern. By Bob Embleton, Wikipedia Commons

Source Classic FM Magazine

Elevator

The earliest known reference to an elevator is in the works of the Roman architect Vitruvius, who reported that Archimedes built his first elevator probably in 236 BC

The Colosseum in ancient Rome had 24 elevators manually operated by more than 200 slaves.

Henry Waterman invented the modern elevator in 1850. He intended it to transport barrels of flour.

In 1852, Elisha Otis introduced the safety elevator, which prevented the fall of the cab if the cable broke.  After having made several sales, Otis took the opportunity to make an elevator company out of it, initially called Union Elevator Works and later Otis Brothers & Co..

Otis demonstrated his invention at the 1853 World Fair in New York by standing in an elevator and having its cable cut with an axe. It jerked slightly but didn't fall, demonstrating to a shocked crowd that his safety device worked.

Elisha Otis demonstrating his safety system, Crystal Palace, 1853 Wikipedia Commons

The first passenger elevator was installed at E V Haughwout’s department store at 488 Broadway, New York City, on March 23, 1857. It was rather slow travelling at 40 feet per minute. The elevator, which cost $300, was powered by a steam-engine installed in the basement.

The invention of the elevator fostered the development of the skyscraper in modern cities. Before the widespread use of elevators, most residential buildings were limited to about seven stories.

The Equitable Life Building completed in 1870 in New York City was the first office building to have passenger elevators.

The Hammetschwand Lift, built in 1905, is the highest exterior elevator of Europe and is located in Switzerland. The lift whisks passengers up the face of the rocky cliff, making the 153 meters journey in just under a minute.

On July 28, 1945 a plane crashed into the Empire State Building, injuring elevator operator Betty Oliver. When rescuers attempted to lower her on an elevator, the cable snapped, plunging her 75 stories down. She survived the fall and was later found by rescue workers among the rubble. To this day Betty Oliver holds the record for longest survived elevator fall.

There was an elevator driver strike in New York City in 1945. Up until then people were afraid to use automatic elevators but the strike drove their mass adoption. The elevator driver job driver demand started to decline which ultimately meant their job is lost forever.

Daryl Hall and John Oates (Hall and Oates) first met in in 1967 in a service elevator. They were, escaping gunfire between two rival gangs, at Philadelphia's Adelphi Ballroom where they were both competing in a music competition.

76-year-old Kively Papajohn of Limassol, Cyprus, was found trapped in her apartment block elevator after six days on January 2, 1987. She survived the cold and beat dehydration by rationing fruit, vegetables and bread that she had in her shopping bag. It is the Guinness World Record for longest time trapped in a lift.

The world's first bicycle escalator was installed in Trondheim, Norway, in 1993. It was built on a long, uphill road to help tired cyclists (or parents with baby strollers), and encourage cycling in the city.

Elevator 'close door' buttons in the U.S. were made to have a delayed response because of a section in the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act that mandates the doors stay open a minimum of three seconds to allow those with disabilities to enter/exit.

There is an elevator company named Schindler’s, meaning that there are Schindler’s lifts!

It takes one minute for the lifts in the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest building, to reach the observation deck on the 124th floor, travelling at ten meters a second.

When elevators fail, they typically don't plummet to the ground like in movies, they go up instead due to the counterweights.

Unlike in the movie Die Hard, the escape hatch on an elevator can't be opened from the inside; by law, it's bolted shut from the outside. It’s there so that emergency personnel can get in, not so passengers can get out. If an elevator is in trouble, the safest place to be is inside the elevator.

Due to ADA requirements, elevator chimes must sound once when it's going up, or twice if it's going down. This is to assist those who are unable to see.

Elevators contain mirrors in order to make the elevator seem larger to help people who are claustrophobic and suffer anxiety.

Some elevators in Singapore are equipped with Urine Detection Devices that detect the scent of urine, setting off an alarm and closing the doors until the police arrive to arrest the offender.

There are 12 million elevators in the world today.

As of 2014, Spain was the country with most elevators per 1,000 inhabitants. Exactly 19.8 per 1,000 people. That is roughly one for every 50 people.

Elevators make 18 billion passenger trips each year in the United States, according to ConsumerWatch.com.

In New York, the home of skyscrapers, the average elevator journey takes 118 seconds.

The Shanghai Tower is home to the world's fastest elevator traveling at nearly 46 miles per hour. The elevator can zoom from the second-level basement to the 119th floor in just 53 seconds.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that all those ups and downs result in a yearly average of 27 deaths.

Sources Daily Express,  Wikipedia

Elephant

ELEPHANTS IN HISTORY

Aristotle described elephants as “the animal that surpasses all others in wit and mind” but he believed, wrongly, that they live for 200 years.

Four captured elephants were paraded through the streets of Rome to the delight of the citizens in 275BC. It was the first time such rare and exotic animals had been displayed in the city.

When Hannibal crossed the Alps with 57 Elephants in 216BC, it was not unusual to use the animals in such a way. The big charging jumbos frightened the enemy and their height allowed the archers to survey the whole battlefield. In addition they were quite speedy with a maximum speed of 18mph and quite economic as well needing only five gallons of water per mile.

In 1255, Louis IX of France gave England's King Henry III  an African elephant, which arrived at the Tower by boat, the first of its kind in the UK.

We have called elephants by that name since the 14th century. Before that, the word was oliphant.

In 1668, Louis XIV of France received a gift from the King of Portugal, Afonso VI, which was a female elephant named "La Génie." The elephant was intended as a diplomatic gift to strengthen the ties between France and Portugal.

La Génie became quite the sensation at Versailles. She was paraded through the gardens and even participated in elaborate festivities and processions. The animal became part of the Ménagerie, the palace's zoo, and was fed 80 pounds of bread, 12 pints of wine, and two buckets of soup daily.

However, due to the challenges of caring for such an exotic animal in the French climate and environment, as well as the expense involved, La Génie was eventually transferred to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where she lived out the rest of her days.

In 1962, elephant bones were discovered under the Vatican. Decades later, it was discovered that they were the bones of Pope Leo X's pet elephant Hanno. In 1516, Hanno fell ill and was clearly in pain. Doctors were called in, and they determined that the elephant was constipated. They put together a plan of treatment, a gold enema inserted up its rectum. - a common treatment at the time. Sadly it killed him.

The first documented instance of an elephant's snout being called a trunk appeared in the 1589 work by Richard Hakluyt, Principal Navigations: “The Elephant . . . With water fils his troonke right hie and blowes it on the rest.”

King James I of England kept a menagerie in St James's Park, including an elephant, which was given a gallon of wine every day.

"Old Bet," the first elephant ever seen in America, arrived from a zoo in Bengal on April 13, 1796 and was exhibited in New York. She quickly became a popular attraction due to her size and novelty, and she was known for her ability to draw corks from bottles using only her trunk. Her popularity led to the importation of more elephants to America for public display, and she is considered to be the first of many exotic animals to be exhibited in American zoos and circuses.

The King of Siam (Thailand) offered the Union army a battalion of war elephants. President Lincoln politely declined in his reply dated February 3, 1862, pointing out that steam power had overtaken the need for heavy animal power of this kind.

The phrase 'White elephant' refers to the legend of a king of Siam, who gave a rare albino elephant to any courtier who irritated them. The animals were sacred but their maintenance was so expensive that anyone given one was inevitably ruined.

A 4-year-old 6 1/2-ton African bull elephant called Jumbo who was born in Sudan was transferred to the London Zoo in 1865.  He became the most famous elephant in the world.

He was given his name by the London zoo-keepers. Since the 1820s “jumbo” had been a slang term for someone heavy and clumsy and the elephant at 10 ft 6 inches was the largest animal many people had seen.

American showman P. T. Barnum simply had to have this huge elephant in his circus. He bought Jumbo on February 3, 1882, for $10,000, advertising him as the "only mastodon on Earth."  Jumbo's sale initiated public outrage in Britain.

Jumbo was killed in 1885 in a railway accident in Ontario. It took 160 men to remove his body from the tracks.

Topsy, a domesticated elephant with the Forepaugh Circus at Luna Park, Coney Island, was executed by electrocution in 1903, after it was deemed a threat to people, an event captured on film by inventor Thomas Edison.

During the Lord Mayor’s procession in London on November 10, 1930, four elephants stampeded through a crowd of spectators on Victoria Embankment in their efforts to reach a red painted mascot lion held aloft by students. Nearly 50 people were injured and 20 received hospital treatment.

Ahmed of Marsabit was a legendary elephant with giant tusks who lived during the 1970s. He was first discovered in the Marsabit National Reserve in Kenya, and he gained international fame as a symbol of the fight against ivory poaching and the importance of elephant conservation. Ahmed became a symbol for wildlife conservation, and he was even visited by various dignitaries and conservationists, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

Tragically, Ahmed was eventually killed by poachers in 1974, highlighting the ongoing challenges and threats that elephants face due to illegal ivory trade. Ahmed's death further fueled international efforts to combat poaching and preserve the African elephant population.

The last time elephants were used in battle was during the Iran–Iraq war, in 1987 

For many years the oldest ever elephant was Lin Wang, an Asian elephant who died on February 26, 2003 aged 86, at Taipei Zoo, Taiwan. Lin Wang carried supplies through the jungles of Myanmar (formerly Burma) for the Japanese army, during World War II. He was even taken prisoner by the Chinese in 1943. Lin Wang retired to the Zoo in 1954.

The record of oldest ever elephant was broken by Chengalloor Dakshayani, a female Asian elephant. 

Born around 1930 (estimated), The Travancore royal family purchased her as a calf in Kodanad elephant camp and donated her to a temple in 1949. Later, in the late 1960s, she was transferred to the Chenkalloor Mahadeva Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India, where she remained for decades.

When she died on February 5, 2019, Chengalloor Dakshayani was believed to be around 89 years old according to the State Forest Department of Kerala, India, the oldest verified age for a captive elephant.

When Lawrence Anthony, known as "The Elephant Whisperer", died on March 2, 2012, a herd of elephants arrived at his house in South Africa to mourn him. Although the elephants were not alerted to the event, they travelled to his house and stood around for two days, and then dispersed.

ELEPHANTS IN LITERATURE

Shakespeare mentions elephants in Julius Caesar, Troilus And Cressida and Twelfth Night.

Jane Austen’s only mention of an elephant in her works was in Mansfield Park and referred to the Royal Navy ship HMS Elephant. The commander of HMS Elephant at the Battle of San Domingo in 1806 was Admiral Sir Francis Austen, who was Jane Austen’s brother.

The variant heffalump was introduced in 1926 by AA Milne in Winnie-the-Pooh.

CONSERVATION AND POPULATION

Between 1980 and 1990 poachers and other illegal hunters reduced Africa's elephant population from about 1.2 million to about 625,000 individuals.

In late 1989, after the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species placed the elephant on its most-endangered species list, a worldwide ban on the ivory trade was triggered.

The number of African elephants in the wild is estimated at between 410,000 and 625,000.

A female African Bush Elephant in Mikumi National Park, Tanzania. By Muhammad Mahdi Karim Facebook

According to a report in 2007 there are more African elephants in Botswana than anywhere else. The number of elephants in Botswana was given as 133,829, with Tanzania in second place on 108,816 elephants.

Between 2010 and 2012, 100,000 elephants were poached for ivory.

World Elephant Day is an international annual event dedicated to the preservation and protection of the world's elephants. Conceived in 2011 by Canadian filmmakers Patricia Sims and Michael Clark and Sivaporn Dardarananda, Secretary-General of the Elephant Reintroduction Foundation in Thailand, it is held each year on August 12.  The first International Elephant Day was held on August 12, 2012.

ANATOMY

African elephants are pregnant for 22 months, the longest pregnancy in the animal kingdom,

A newborn elephant weighs about 120kg (260lb).

The largest elephant on record was an adult male weighing 11 tons and 13ft tall at the shoulder.

Only male Asian elephants have tusks but both male and female African elephants have them.

Elephant brains can weigh as much as 11 lb, more than the brain of any other land animal.

Technically, elephants cannot run as they can't lift all four legs off the ground at the same time but they move at up to 25 mph by using the ‘Groucho walk’ with knees bent and body lowered.

Elephants are the only mammals that can't jump.

The African Elephant has only four teeth, 5 kg each.

An elephant's molars, necessary for grinding up plant material, are replaced six times during its lifetime. When they get old this process stops, the last teeth get worn down and they starve. This is the main cause of death for mature elephants.

An elephant trunk has no bones but around 100,000 muscles and tendons.

Just like humans have a dominant hand that they use more than the other, elephants have dominant tusks. Research shows that the majority of elephants are righties.

An elephant's skin can be up to 1 inch (2.5 cm) thick but is so sensitive it can feel a fly landing on it.

Elephants have an extremely good sense of smell and can detect a water source 12 miles away.

The pulse rate of a healthy elephant is only 25 beats a minute.

The small and furry rock hyrax is the elephant's closest living relative.

BEHAVIOR

Elephants are so afraid of bees that the mere sound of buzzing is enough to make an entire herd flee.

Elephants even have a particular call to use to warn others of bees.

Elephants communicate over distances of more than a mile using low-frequency bellows that are at the same decibel level as a subway train.

Elephants learn some of their calls through imitation. They are the only land mammal, other than primates, that can undeniably copy sound.

Elephants can tell the difference between human languages and know which languages belong to people with a history of hurting elephants.

An Asian elephant named Koshik can communicate by imitating human speech by inserting his trunk into his mouth. He can speak five words in Korean (the corresponding words for "hello," "no", "sit down," "lie down" and "good") and is believed to have developed speech in order cement social bonds with humans,

Elephants are capable swimmers. They have been recorded swimming for up to six hours without touching the bottom, and have traveled as far as 48 km (30 mi) at a stretch and at speeds of up to 2.1 km/h (1 mph). 

Elephants are so buoyant that if they tire in the water, they can just rest by floating and will not sink. 

When underwater, the elephant uses its trunk as a snorkel.

An elephant eats 250kg (551lbs) of grass and drinks 200 litres (55 gallons) of water per day

A thirsty elephant can drink 26 gallons of water in one helping.

An elephant can smell water from 12 miles away.

Elephants can detect rain 150 miles away.

Elephants purr like cats do, as a means of communication.

Seventeen people were killed by captive elephants in the US from 1983 to 2000.

Wild African elephants only sleep around two hours a day—the shortest known sleep time of any land mammal.

Elephants can nap standing up but usually sleep lying down.

Baby elephants usually suck their own trunks to calm themselves. That is almost similar to human babies who also tend to suck their own thumbs.

The daily methane output of an elephant can propel a car 20mph.

Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants.

Dogs and elephants are the only animals that seem to instinctively understand pointing.

Elephants cover their dead with branches.

Sources Daily Express, Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia, 1,342 QI Facts To Leave You Flabbergasted (Quite Interesting) 

Element

A chemical element is a substance that contains only one type of atom.

118 different chemical elements are known to modern chemistry. 92 of these elements can be found in nature, and the others can only be made in laboratories.

English scientist John Dalton begun using symbols to represent the atoms of different elements on September 6, 1803.

The Periodic Table of the elements was invented and arranged by the Russian chemist Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev (1834-1907).

Scottish chemist William Ramsay (1852-1916) discovered four elements, argon, neon, krypton, and xenon, and showed that they belong to a family of elements now called the noble gases.

The first man-made element was Technetium, in 1937.

The last element first discovered in nature, rather than by synthesis, was francium. The French physicist Marguerite Perey discovered it on January 7, 1939 in France (hence the name).

The element Einsteinium-253 was discovered in 1952 and named after Albert Einstein. Einsteinium-253 does not occur in nature, but was first found in the nuclear fallout from an early hydrogen bomb test explosion in the South Pacific. It was found later in coral gathered in the area.

The extremely radioactive synthetic chemical element Nihonium was first created in 2004 by a team of Japanese scientists at Riken in Wakō, Japan. The name nihonium was suggested and approved in 2016. The discoverers expressed hope that this honour would help the country's trust in science recover after the meltdown of the reactor at Fukushima, which uses uranium as fuel.

California is the only U.S. state to have a chemical element named after it. "Californium" is a radioactive rare earth metal and a biological hazard.

While there are multiple elements named after countries (Americium, Francium, Germanium, Polonium.. ) there is only one country named after an element. 'Argentina' is derived from 'Argentum' the Latin name for Silver. The symbol for Silver is Ag.

The chemical element Berkelium is named after the University of California, Berkeley, which is named after the city of Berkeley, which is named after the philosopher George Berkeley, who, ironically, believed that the physical world does not actually exist.

Astatine is the rarest naturally-occurring element on Earth - it's so rare there's only one ounce of it in the world and it's radioactive.  In its most stable form - astatine-210 - it's got a half-life of just 8.1 hours,

A sample of the pure element can't be assembled as it would be instantly vaporized by the heat of its own radioactivity! ( Astatos is Greek word for 'unstable' ).

Eight elements were first isolated from rocks quarried in a the small village of Ytterby in Sweden. Four of those elements are named in tribute to the village (ytterbium, erbium, terbium, yttrium). In addition, scandium (Sc) and three other lanthanides—holmium, thulium and gadolinium —can trace their discovery to the quarry.

Ytterby Quarry By Svens Welt

The letter J does not appear anywhere on the Periodic Table.

The human body is made up of 26 elements.

A metalloid is a chemical element that has properties in between those of metals and nonmetals. The six commonly recognised metalloids are boron, silicon, germanium, arsenic, antimony and tellurium . Elements less commonly recognized as metalloids include carbon, aluminium, selenium, polonium and astatine. 

Electronic Music

Thaddeus Cahill (1867 – 1934) is widely credited with the invention of the first electromechanical musical instrument in 1902, which he dubbed the telharmonium.

Telharmonium console by Thaddeus Cahill 1897.

At a starting weight of 7 tons and a price tag of $200,000 (approx. $5,514,000 today), only three telharmoniums were ever built.

Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni's 1907 essay Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music was perhaps the earliest prediction of the development of electronic music. In it he asserted that music should distill the essence of music of the past to make something new.

An early electronic instrument was the Etherophone, created by Léon Theremin between 1919 and 1920 in Leningrad. It was eventually renamed the theremin.

In 1954, Karlheinz Stockhausen composed his Elektronische Studie II—the first electronic piece to be published as a score.

The Moog synthesizer was demonstrated at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967. The commercial breakthrough of a Moog recording was made by Wendy Carlos in the 1968 record Switched-On Bach, which became one of the highest-selling classical music recordings of its era.

Source Wikipedia

Electron

The electron is a subatomic particle. It is believed to be an elementary particle because it cannot be broken down into anything smaller.

English physicist J.J. Thomson  of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge was the first to suggest that one of the fundamental units was much much smaller than an atom, suggesting the subatomic particle now known as the electron. Thomson discovered this through his explorations on the properties of cathode rays, showing they were composed of previously unknown negatively charged particles. He announced his discovery of the electron as a subatomic particle, over 1,800 times smaller than a proton (in the atomic nucleus), at a lecture at the Royal Institution in London on April 30, 1897.

J.J. Thomson won the Nobel in Physics in 1906 when he showed electrons were particles. His son G. P. Thomson won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1937 for showing that electrons are waves.

A beam of electrons deflected in a circle by a magnetic field. By Marcin Białek - Wikipedia

The one-electron universe postulate was proposed by theoretical physicist John Wheeler in a telephone call to Richard Feynman in the spring of 1940. Its hypothesis is that there is only one electron in existence that is constantly moving throughout time.

The ratio of electrons to protons in the universe is one to the power of 37 (1 with 37 zeros after it). If it varied from this incredibly sensitive balance, no galaxies, stars or planets would be able to form.

Electricity consists of many electrons moving through wires or other conductors.

Electrons flow through a typical copper wire much slower than a turtle walks.

The Bureau of Standards says that the electron is the fastest thing in the world.

The development of the light bulb introduced the "Edison Effect", a metal heated until red hot emits an electron cloud. Later on radio tubes would make use of this effect.

That hiss you hear when you turn your headphone volume all the way up is the sound of electrons traveling along copper wires.

A full 4GB Kindle, stocked with 3,500 books, weighs 0.00000000000000001g more than empty one - because of the energy created in storing data in electrons within the device as content is added.

Electricity

HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY

Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus became in around 600BC the first person to experiment on electricity, which he obtained by rubbing pieces of amber.

When amber is rubbed with cloth, it attracts light objects, such as feathers. The effect first noticed by the Ancient Greeks, is due to acquisition of negative electric charge, hence the adaptation of the Greek word for amber, elektron, for electricity.

Ancient Romans recommended touching electric fish to cure headache or gout.

The first street in the world to be lit by electric light bulbs was Mosley Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, in 1879.

Godalming in southeastern England came to world attention when it became the first town in the world to have a public electricity supply installed, which made electricity available to consumers. It was powered by a waterwheel, located at Westbrook Mill, on the river Wey. The Godmaling streets were first illuminated on October 1, 1881.

Source http://www.godalmingmuseum.org.uk

In an effort to produce electric light, Thomas Edison studied the entire history of lighting. He filled 200 notebooks containing more than 40,000 pages with his notes on gas illumination alone.

Thomas Edison designed the first hydroelectric plant, which supplied electricity to 59 customers in a square-mile area in lower Manhattan, New York City. America used a 110-volt electricity supply so when Edison wanted to supply electricity to subscribers, the gas suppliers, in fear for their domestic lighting business took him to court. They argued that electricity was too dangerous to be supplied to households. The courts’ ruling was that a maximum 100-volt was safe to supply.

AT 3pm on September 4, 1882, Thomas Edison flicked a switch to turn on the world’s first electricity power station in Pearl Street, Manhattan. This is considered by many as the day that began the electrical age.

A sketch of an early power plant on Pearl Street

The Vulcan Street Plant, the first hydroelectric central station to serve a system of private and commercial customers in North America, was put into operation on September 30, 1882 in Appleton, Wisconsin, US. The first buildings to be lit by the Vulcan Street Plant were the Appleton Paper and Pulp Company building, the Vulcan Paper Mill  and the home of H.J. Rogers, who was the president of the Appleton Paper and Pulp Co at the time.

The w:Paper Discovery Center in w:Appleton, The parking lot and building were the location for the Vulcan Street Plant

The first long distance (21 mile (84 km)) AC line was built for the 1884 International Exhibition of Turin, Italy. It was powered by a 2000-V, 130Hz Siemens & Halske alternator  The system proved the feasibility of AC electric power transmission on long distances.

The first house in the world to have its electricity supplied by wind power was in Kincardineshire, Scotland in 1887.

Electric-powered trams were introduced following the improvement of an overhead trolley system on trams for collecting electricity from overhead wires by Frank J. Sprague. The first successful US electric street railway system, the Richmond Union Passenger Railway, began operations on February 2, 1888.

The first long-distance electric power transmission line in the United States was completed on June 3, 1889. It run 14 miles between a generator at Willamette Falls and downtown Portland, Oregon.

New York City streets in 1890. Besides telegraph lines, multiple electric lines were required for each class of device requiring different voltages

The 1891 International Electro-Technical Exhibition in Frankfurt, Germany, featured the world's first long distance transmission of high-power, three-phase electrical current (the most common form today).

The General Electric Company was formed in 1892.

The first steam turbine used in a public utility to generate electricity in America was nicknamed 'Mary-Ann.' Hartford Electric Light Company of Hartford, Connecticut, realized an extra demand for electricity in 1900 and decided in 1901 to purchase this steam turbine generator. The turbine, built by Westinghouse and rated at 1.5 megawatts, ran at Hartford Electric's Pearl Street plant from 1901 to 1905.

Benjamin Harrison was the first president to use electricity in the White House. After he got a nasty shock, however, his family refused to touch any of the switches and would sometimes go to bed with the lights on.

The first appliances had to be plugged into the light sockets in the ceiling because houses were wired for illumination, not general electricity use.

Nikola Tesla crafted a plan in 1912 to make school children smarter and healthier by saturating them unconsciously with electricity, wiring the walls of a schoolroom with high-voltage lines. The plan was provisionally approved by the then superintendent of New York City schools, William H. Maxwell.

Up to the 1930s, people still thought of electricity mainly as a way of lighting their houses. Usually, there would be just one light sockets, and maybe a power point for a "wireless" (as radios were called then.

During World War II, Oak Ridge Tennessee, population 75,000, used 1/7 of all US electricity to process uranium for the atomic bomb.

The Experimental Breeder Reactor I (EBR-I), which is located in the desert about 18 miles (29 km) southeast of Arco, Idaho was the world's first electricity-generating nuclear power plant. At 1:50 pm on December 20, 1951, it produced sufficient electricity to illuminate four 200-watt light bulbs.

A power grid failure in northern and eastern India on July 31, 2012 left twenty states in the country without electricity. The blackout was the largest power outage in history, affecting over 620 million people, about 9% of the world population or half of India's population.

FUN ELECTRICAL FACTS

The word ‘electric’ comes from the Latin word for amber, electricus, referring to the static electricity that had been observed in amber.

Water itself does not conduct electricity, but the impurities found in water do.

1.6 billion people — one fifth of humanity — live without electricity.

Iceland is the only country whose electricity supply comes almost entirely from renewable sources. It uses hydropower and geothermal heat to pull nearly 100% of its electric power.

It is estimated that the entire power supply of Nigeria generates only enough electricity to power a single toaster for every 44 people.

Britain's power stations have to learn television schedules to anticipate when there will be a huge power draw as everyone turns on their electric kettles during a break in a soap opera or sporting event.

The Dallas Cowboys stadium uses more electricity than all of Liberia.

40% of the electricity in Pakistan goes missing, half of it stolen: when there’s one of the frequent power cuts, they just steal the wires.

The United States consumes an extra 64 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year from leaving idle devices plugged in.

About 10 percent of electricity in the United States is fuel from dismantled nuclear bombs, including Russian ones.

As of 2016, only one cyberterrorist had successfully paralyzed a U.S. power grid, while at least 623 squirrels had done the same thing.

The electricity produced by your brain could power a 25 watt light bulb.

Just a little static shock, like rubbing your socks on a carpet, can generate an electrical discharge of 25,000 volts.

Scientists say that animals avoid high voltage power lines because of flashing UV light that is undetectable to humans.

Sources Daily Express, Europress Encyclopedia, Pennlive.com

Electric Mixer

The first patent for an electric mixer was awarded in 1885 to an American named Rufus M. Eastman and was designed to run on any of mechanical power, waterpower, or electrical power.

The Kenwood Chef food mixer was launched in Britain in 1950. The inventor was RAF engineer Kenneth Wood, who got the idea for it during his travels round the world.

Electric Lighting

John Browning installed the first electric light in the Guildhall London in 1873, the occasion being a banquet to honor the Shah of Persia during his visit to Queen Victoria. One light, run with Bunsen cells, was positioned outside each window, due to the fumes. The operating cost of each light was £3 per hour.

Joseph Swan, an English chemist developed a filament lamp in 1880. Swan's first commercial customers were his friends, Sir William and Lady Armstrong of Cragside near Newcastle Upon Tyne in the north of England.

The James Coxon & Co drapery of Newcastle became the first shop to be lit by electric light on January 21, 1882.

Thomas Edison wanted to produce a long lasting electric bulb and he started off by studying the entire history of lighting. Edison filled 200 notebooks containing more than 40,000 pages with his notes on gas illumination alone.

Edison worked thousands of hours, experimenting with 1,200 different varieties of bamboo before finding the ideal one for the filament in 1879. The following year on October 1, 1880 Edison opened the first electric lamp factory.  It was situated along the line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, at Menlo Park, New Jersey, a short distance from the American inventor's house.

Original carbon-filament bulb from Thomas Edison's shop in Menlo Park. Author Terren. Wikipedia Commons

The first Edison incandescent lamp-illuminated home was business magnate James Hood Wright's residence in New York City in 1881.

Edison bought electricity to the masses by digging up roads and installing cables. He designed the first hydroelectric plant which put electric light in the streets and houses in one square of New York on September 4, 1882.

The Vulcan Street Plant was the first Edison hydroelectric central station. The plant was built on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin and put into operation on September 30, 1882.

Initially, the buildings' direct connection to the generator caused many problems because the generator was directly connected to the waterwheel. The water from the Fox River did not flow at a constant rate, so the lights did not keep a constant brightness and often burnt out. This problem was resolved by moving the generator to a lean-to off the main building, where it was attached to a separate water wheel that allowed for a more even load distribution.

The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires, built by Thomas Edison, begun service at Roselle, New Jersey on January 19, 1883. Edison's desire was to demonstrate that an entire community could be lit by electricity.

The First Presbyterian Church, located on the corner of West 5th Avenue and Chestnut Street in Roselle, was the first church in the world to be lit by electricity.

Electric light bulbs were safer and more efficient than the gas lamps they replaced. Yet it took decades for the technology to catch on, as municipal authorities had invested heavily in gas lighting.

When Edison declared an interest in supplying electricity to subscribers, the gas suppliers, in fear for their domestic lighting business took him to court. They argued that electricity was too dangerous to be supplied to households. The courts’ ruling was that a maximum 100-volt was safe to supply.

A British parliamentary committee said of the bulb, "It is good enough for our transatlantic friends but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific man."

The first town in the world to have electric street lights was Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1886.

Harvey Hubbell received a patent for the electric light bulb socket with a pull-chain in 1896.

Electric Eel

Electric eels are neotropical freshwater fish from South America. Despite their name, they are not closely related to the true eels but are electroreceptive knifefish,  more closely related to catfish.

Reports of people receiving shocks from electric fish date back to ancient Egyptian texts of 2750 BC.

Ancient Romans recommended touching electric fish to cure headache or gout.

Their electrical capabilities were first studied in 1775, contributing to the invention in 1800 of the electric battery. 

When wounded, an electric eel can accidentally shock itself—an eel's thick skin is what normally insulates it from its own attacks.

By No machine-readable author provided. Stevenj assumed (based on copyright claims)

An electric eel will short-circuit itself if put into salt water.

An electric eel can produce a shock of up to 650 volts for hunting or self-defense.

The eels can at least double the power of their electrical discharge by forming a circle with their bodies.

They are nocturnal, air-breathing animals, with poor vision complemented by electrolocation

Electric eels mainly eat fish, in particular the armoured catfish.

Electric eels grow for as long as they live, adding more vertebrae to their spinal column. 

Captive specimens have sometimes lived for over 20 years. 

Source Wikipedia

Electric Chair

Thomas Edison invented the electric chair not as a means of execution but to demonstrate the dangers of alternating current.

Dr. George Fell, a pioneer of life-saving mechanical respiration techniques in the 1880s, also had a role in designing the first electric chair used for an execution.

Convicted axe murderer William Kemmler was the first person executed in US to be executed by electrocution in the electric chair. The procedure was undertaken at Auburn State Prison in New York on August 6, 1890 and took eight minutes.

The execution of William Kemmler, August 6, 1890. Illustration from the French newspaper, Le Petit Parisien

Kemmler's executioner was Edwin Davis, who had been given the official title of “State Electrician” for performing the job.  Davis went on to perform 240 executions, including that of the first woman victim Martha M Place in 1899.

Martha Place was the first woman to be executed in the electric chair. The procedure took place at Sing Sing Prison, New York on March 20, 1899. She had murdered her stepdaughter, Ida Place.

Martha Place

Harry Houdini purchased the Auburn prison electric chair from Huber's Dime Museum in 1910 and kept in his New York home.

Italian immigrant Giuseppe Zangara was executed in Florida's electric chair on March 20, 1933 for fatally shooting Anton Cermak in an assassination attempt against President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. Zangara became enraged when he learned no newsreel cameras would be filming his final moments.

Mug shot of Giuseppe Zangara

Donald Synder was a convicted murderer who was sent to Sing Sing to await execution in the 1950s. Snyder knew he wouldn’t be able to escape from Sing Sing’s death row, so he ballooned from 150 pounds to more than 300 in an unsuccessful attempt to become too fat for the electric chair.

Source Daily Express

Election

The word 'Ballot’ is derived from the Greek word for ‘balls’. The Greeks dropped a white ball when they favoured a candidate, and a black when they were against. The term ‘blackballed’ comes from this too.

The word candidate comes from the Latin ‘candidatus’ meaning ‘one clad in white.’

Ancient Athenians had ‘ostracism’ elections in which everyone voted for the most hated citizen. That citizen would then be banished for 10 years.

America's first presidential election took place over a period spanning two calendar years: December 15, 1788, to January 7, 1789. This was due to the newly ratified Constitution setting the date for electors to be chosen on the first Wednesday in January (January 7th) and for them to then convene and cast their votes for president and vice president on the first Wednesday in February (February 4th). While the voting process occurred across this timeframe, most historical references consider the official date of the election to be January 7, 1789, when electors were chosen in each state.

George Washington's campaign distributed 160 US gallons (610 l) of alcoholic drink which were distributed gratis to 391 voters in the county on polling day at the 1758 Virginia House of Burgesses election. Washington won the election with more than 39-percent of the vote.

The electoral term “gerrymandering” stems from Elbridge Gerry, who as governor of Massachusetts in 1812, drew up irregular lines to favor the Jeffersonian Democrats. The word was used for the first time in the Boston Gazette as part of a political cartoon.on March 26, 1812. It depicted a strange animal with claws, wings and a dragon-like head satirizing the map of the oddly shaped district.

The first opinion poll was held in 1824 to predict a US presidential election. It said Andrew Jackson would beat John Quincy Adams. It was wrong.

Since 1845 US elections have been held every four years on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

The reason why voting takes place on a Tuesday in the United States is that in 1845 it could take rural farmers up to a day of travelling by horse and cart to get to a voting station. Wednesday was typically market day.

Until 1856, only people owning property were allowed to vote in the US elections.

The landmark Ballot Act was passed on July 18, 1872, which introduced a secret ballot in British elections.

The secret ballot mandated by the Ballot Act was first used on August 15, 1872 to re-elect Hugh Childers as MP for Pontefract in a ministerial by-election. Of those who voted, 16%, were illiterate, and special arrangements had to be made to record their previously-open oral votes.

In the UK General Election of 1886, the vote at Ashton-under-Lyne was tied. It was resolved by the Returning Officer’s casting vote. This has not happened since then.

In the Southern states of America, during the first presidential campaign of William Jennings Bryan in 1892, candidates for elections would parade through the streets led by a band of musicians performing on a horse-drawn wagon. As a publicity stunt, a candidate would mount the wagon as it passed through his own constituency in an effort to woo voters. From this comes the phrase climbing the bandwagon.

The New Zealand General Election of November 28, 1893 marked the first time women were allowed to vote in a national election. This milestone achievement was the culmination of decades of activism by suffragettes in New Zealand, who tirelessly campaigned for women's right to vote. Their efforts were ultimately rewarded when the Electoral Act of 1893 was passed, granting women the right to participate in the democratic process.

Women in Britain aged over 30 voted for the first time in a general election on December 14, 1918. The UK general election of 1918 was called immediately after the Armistice with Germany which ended World War I, and  was the first general election to be held on a single day. The count did not take place until December 28th due to the time taken to transport votes from soldiers serving overseas.

The record for the longest count in an UK general election is held by Derbyshire North East - at the 1922 election the count took 18 and a quarter hours.

Former Liberian president Charles King won the 1927 election with 234,000 votes. At the time Liberia had the sum total of 15,000 registered voters. It is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most fraudulent election ever.

No one has stood for US President more often than Norman Mattoon Thomas (1884-1968) who stood six times for the Socialist Party of America. The 1928 campaign was the first of Thomas's six consecutive campaigns as the presidential nominee of the Socialist Party.

The last UK general election where any one party received an absolute majority of the votes cast was on October 27, 1931 when Stanley Baldwin's Conservatives polled 55.0 of the vote. The 1931 election was held in the midst of the Great Depression, and the Conservatives campaigned on a promise of national unity and economic recovery. The Conservatives remained in power until 1945, when they were defeated by Labour in the general election that followed the end of World War II.

Stanley Baldwin

The smallest UK General Election majority ever was two votes, achieved by A. J. Flint in Ilkeston North in 1931.

The 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution states that, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”  This was passed in 1947 after Franklin D Roosevelt had served four terms.

In the 1979 British Columbia provincial election, MLA Frank Calder was defeated by one vote. He later admitted that he and his wife had neglected to vote.

The Modaurichi assembly constituency in Tamil Nadu in 1996 had 1033 candidates. The ballot paper was in the form of a booklet.

At an election in the North Dakota town of Pillsbury in 2008, nobody turned out to vote.

The record for the most candidates standing in a UK parliamentary election was when 26 stood at the Haltemprice and Howden by-election in 2008.

The Bridgwater by-election of March 12, 1970 was the first election in the United Kingdom to be held after the voting age had been reduced from 21 to 18. The first under-21 year old to cast a vote was Susan Wallace.

The lowest ever turnout at a UK election was in 2012 when only 15 per cent of the population voted for their Police and Crime Commissioners.

American astronauts on the International Space Station can vote in their elections from orbit by secure email. American astronauts have been able to vote from space since 1997.

Voting in European elections is compulsory in Belgium, Cyprus, Greece and Luxembourg.

Australian federal elections have mandatory voting. Anyone who doesn’t faces a AU$20 fine.

Vatican City is the only country in the world in which women cannot vote.

It has been calculated that the cost of holding local elections in the UK means that each vote cast costs the state about £4.34.

Liquor sales in Alaska aren't allowed on Election Day until the polls close

In Kentucky, a tied election may be decided “by lot”, with coin, cards or straws but not by a duel.

North Korea holds an election every five years, but there's only one candidate listed on the ballot.

Voters in the Gambia vote by dropping marbles into bins with the candidates pictures on them.

In Indian elections no voter is expected to travel more than two kilometers to a polling station. This sees an entire team setting up a full station for a single voter in the Gir forest.

Sources Indian-elections.com, Daily Express, Daily Mail

Eleanor of Aquitaine

Eleanor of Aquitaine (1121-1204)  was the oldest of three children of William X, Duke of Aquitaine, and his wife, Aenor de Châtellerault, the daughter of Aimery I, Viscount of Châtellerault, and Dangerose de l' Isle Bouchard.

Eleanor's father ensured that she had the best possible education She came to learn arithmetic, the constellations, and history as well as domestic skills such as household management and the needle arts of embroidery, needlepoint, sewing, spinning, and weaving.

Beautiful, graceful, dark eyed and colourful, Eleanor's succession to the duchy of Aquitaine in 1137 made her the most eligible bride in Europe. Three months after she became duchess, she married King Louis VII of France, son of her guardian, King Louis VI.

Louis and Eleanor were married on July 25, 1137 in the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux by the Archbishop of Bordeaux.

At left, a 14th-century representation of the wedding of Louis and Eleanor; at right, Louis leaving on Crusade.

Eleanor gave Louis as a wedding present a rock crystal vase currently on display at the Louvre. This vase is the only object connected with Eleanor of Aquitaine that still survives.

Eleanor was, according to the London Sunday Times index linked survey,the richest woman of the Millennium

At Poitiers, Eleanor presided over a court of love, whose members ruled on matters of courtship, and drew up a code for lovers.

Eleanor complained about the pious Louis’s lack of interest in lovemaking saying that he was “more of a monk than a man."

Eleanor did produce Louis two daughters, but the marriage was later annulled, as there were no male children.

Louis and Eleanor met on March 11, 1152 at the royal castle of Beaugency to dissolve the marriage.

Eleanor quickly sent envoys to Henry, Duke of Normandy and future king of England, asking him to come at once to marry her. On May 18, eight weeks after her annulment, Eleanor married Henry at Bordeaux Cathedral, shortly before his accession to the throne.

Eleanor brought the province of Aquitaine to England when she married Henry II. It stayed under English control for 300 years.

Having patronized the development of courtly poetry in Poitiers, Eleanor continued her love for love songs in England.

The obverse of Eleanor's seal.

Henry and Eleanor had five sons and three daughters: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joan. William died in 1156,  Henry in 1183, Geoffrey in 1186, Richard became Richard I and John, King John.

From 1167, Henry and Eleanor drifted apart mainly due to this time Henry's unfaithfulness with a series of mistresses  and the queen's influence began to create much family strife.

Henry's attempts to wrest control of her lands from Eleanor (and from her heir Richard) led to confrontations between the king on the one side and his wife and legitimate sons on the other.

Eleanor supported a revolt by her children against their father's rule in 1173. This revolt was unsuccessful, and King Henry II was so furious that he confined her to Winchester, whilst the king spent time with his mistresses.

An avid equestrian; as a septuagenarian, Eleanor rode across the Pyrenees to fetch a wife for her son John.

A contemporary German Poet wrote the following about Eleanor:
Were all the world all mine
From the sea to the Rhine
I'd give all away
If the English Queen
Would be mine for a day.

Eleanor of Aquitaine died on April 1, 1204 and was entombed in Fontevraud Abbey next to her husband Henry and her son Richard.

Tomb effigies of Eleanor and Henry II at Fontevraud Abbey. By ElanorGamgee - Fontevraud, Wikipedia Commons

By the time of Eleanor's death she had outlived all of her children except for King John of England and Queen Eleanor of Castile.