Waltz

The Waltz is a dance in 3/4 time (3 beats for every bar of music). It was derived from an old Austrian-German peasant dance, the Landler, which was popular in Bohemia, Austria, and Bavaria, and spread from the countryside to the suburbs of Vienna.

The peasants of Bavaria, Tyrol, and Styria began dancing a dance called Walzer, a dance for couples, around 1750. Some people, however, found the dance undignified, and in 1760 the performance of the Walzer was banned by the church in parts of Germany.

The waltz became fashionable in Vienna around the 1780s and its gliding, whirling movements immediately became the rage throughout the entire population.

The waltz spread to many other countries in the years to follow. By the late 18th century waltzing was common in Paris and other European cosmopolitan cities. People felt the same spirit in the dance that they had perceived in the great political events of the day - the French and the American revolutions.

It's not hard to see to work out why the Viennese waltz set Europe alight. In early 19th-century society public displays of affection were limited to firm handshakes and the occasional blush. The dances of choice were all French, like the gavotte, cotillion and minuet. All of them were formal and distant-the closest they got to intimacy was, was the odd flick of the fingertips. The waltz stood for freedom of expression and freedom of movement. Unlike more courtly dances, with their restricted steps and predetermined poses, the waltz allowed the performers to sweep around the dance floor, setting their own boundaries and responsible to nobody but their partners.

For the first time a woman could dance with any man who asked you to-and not just dance, but be held by him. It was the first time ever that a man's body could legitimately be pressed against a woman's outside marriage.

What looked suspiciously like licensed canoodling suddenly found itself a staple of the grand ballrooms of Vienna then Europe and then the globe.

The waltz was brought to England from Europe by Napoleonic Wars soldiers. When the waltz was first introduced to English ballrooms, it was considered shocking due to the physical contact involved. Its entry in the Oxford English Dictionary shows that the waltz was considered "riotous and indecent" as late as 1825. The Victorian Ladies' Pocket Book of Etiquette devoted ten pages into denouncing the dance.

Nowadays, of course, the waltz is a perfectly respectable dance and we are used to seeing much closer intimacy between dancing couples. Something that shocks one generation becomes normal and acceptable in the next.

In 1831 Frédéric Chopin left Poland for Vienna, where he found the Viennese just wanted to waltz. They weren't interested in his sort of piano music so he composed some Viennese Whirls (waltzes) himself.

Chopin's Waltz in D Flat Opus 64 no 1 (the theme to the BBC Just a Minute radio programme) actually lasts two minutes unless it's played at 78. Chopin originally named the piece "Petit chien" (Little Dog).

Johann Strauss II wrote over 400 waltzes, most notably "An der schönen blauen Donau" (better known to the English-speaking world as "The Blue Danube") In his lifetime, he was known as "The Waltz King", and was largely responsible for the ongoing popularity of the waltz in Vienna during the 19th century.

Antony Hopkins composed a waltz in 1964 that was only released years later. The famous actor was afraid that nobody would like it and therefore never got to hear it being played up until 2011 thanks to André Rieu - a Dutch violinist who got sent the music sheets by Hopkins' wife.

815 Radio Times

Walrus

HABITATION

The walrus is subdivided into three subspecies; the Pacific walrus which lives in the Pacific Ocean, and the much smaller populations of: the Atlantic walrus which lives in the Atlantic Ocean and O. r. laptevi, which lives in the Laptev Sea of the Arctic Ocean.

Pacific Walrus

Walruses live to about 20–30 years old in the wild in the arctic regions.

The majority of the population of the Pacific walrus spends its summers north of the Bering Strait along the northern coast of eastern Siberia, along the north shore of Alaska south to Unimak Island, and in the waters between those locations. They winter over in the Bering Sea along the eastern coast of Siberia south to the northern part of the Kamchatka Peninsula, and along the southern coast of Alaska.

The population of Atlantic walruses ranges from the Canadian Arctic, across Greenland, Svalbard, and the western part of Arctic Russia.

ANATOMY

Walruses are very big, even compared to big male sea lions, especially the Pacific Walrus. While some outsized Pacific males can weigh as much as 2,000 kg (4,400 lb), most weigh between 800 and 1,700 kg (1,800 and 3,700 lb).

With all their blubber, which can be as much as six inches thick, walruses are very comfortable in icy water. A bonus is that the blubber makes their hide much tougher for predators to penetrate.

Walruses are actually 18% blubber and 44% muscle.

Walruses just have a hole for an ear - not ear flaps.

They can rotate their back flippers forward to walk on land.

The walrus' tusks are actually teeth growing out of their mouth, a bit like the narwhal. The tusks grow for about 15 years before they reach their full length, which is about 40 in (102 cm) for males and 30 in (76 cm) for females.

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A walrus's whiskers are 40 times thicker than human hair.

The walrus has an air sac called a pharyngeal pouch under its throat which acts like a flotation bubble and allows it to bob vertically in the water while sleeping.

REPRODUCTION

During breeding season walruses woo potential mates with a chorus of high-pitched whistles and deep, bell-like moans with the help of their inflatable sacs.

The males reach sexual maturity as early as seven years, but do not typically mate until fully developed at around 15 years of age.

A Walrus’ pregnancy lasts 15 -16 months.

BEHAVIOR

They are very good swimmers and divers. While feeding, a walrus may plunge to depths of well over 300 feet.

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Walruses sometimes stay awake for roughly three and a half straight days while at sea though they can sleep and swim at the same time.

When walruses eat bigger prey such as seals and small whales, they first tear them apart with their tusks to make them easier to eat.

The walrus uses its tusks like grappling hooks to pull itself out onto the ice. Pushing its tusks into the ice, the walrus gets extra help hauling its huge body out of the sea. This is probably how walruses got their family name Odobenidae, which comes from Greek words meaning "Tooth-Walking Sea Horse."

The male walrus tusk are slightly longer and thicker than female ones. The males use them for fighting, dominance and display; Tusk size helps determine a given walrus’ social status; the individuals with the largest tusks generally command the most respect.

FUN WALRUS FACTS

In 1281, the Catholic Bishop of Greenland contributed walrus tusks to help fund the Crusades.

In the 19th century, currency had to be printed on walrus skin in Alaska to survive the harsh climate.

European hunters and Arctic explorers found walrus meat not particularly tasty, and only ate it in case of necessity; however walrus tongue was a delicacy.

JRR Tolkien's first job after the First World War was for the Oxford English Dictionary, working on the history of the letter W. Among the words starting with the letter W he worked on was 'walrus.' Tolkien thought the origin of the word was derived from a Germanic language.

Perhaps the best-known appearance of a walrus is in Lewis Carroll's whimsical poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter" which appears in his 1871 book Through the Looking-Glass. "The Walrus and the Carpenter" was written by Carroll on Whitburn Sands, Sunderland in North East England.

The "walrus" in the cryptic Beatles song "I Am the Walrus" is a reference to the Lewis Carroll poem. In an interview, John Lennon said: "It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist and social system. I never went into that bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles' work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, oh no I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, 'I am the carpenter.' But that wouldn't have been the same, would it?"

Source MentalFloss

Robert Walpole

EARLY LIFE  

Robert Walpole was born in Houghton, Norfolk on August 26, 1676. One of 19 children, he was the third son and fifth child of Robert Walpole, a member of the local gentry.

Robert Walpole senior was the most influential Whig leader in Norfolk and he represented the borough of Castle Rising in the House of Commons.

His mother was Mary Walpole (née Mary Burwell).

Robert Walpole would later prove to hold the record amongst UK Prime Ministers for the greatest number of siblings.

Portrait of Robert Walpole (1676–1745)

Robert studied at Eton College from 1690 to 1696, and was admitted to King's College, Cambridge immediately after leaving Eton. In 1698, he left the University of Cambridge after the death of his only remaining elder brother, Edward, so that he could help his father administer the family estate.

EARLY CAREER 

Robert Walpole had planned to become a clergyman, but abandoned the idea when, as the eldest surviving son in the family, he became the heir to his father's estate.

His political career as a Whig began in January 1701 when Walpole succeeded his father as MP for the borough of Castle Rising. He left Castle Rising in 1702 so that he could represent the neighbouring borough of King's Lynn, a pocket borough that would re-elect him for the remainder of his political career.

His abilities were recognised by the leader of the Cabinet Lord Godolphin who appointed Walpole to the position of Secretary at War in 1708. He also simultaneously held the post of Treasurer of the Navy in 1710.

A Tory attempt to ruin Walpole resulted in his impeachment in 1712. As a result he spent time in prison for embezzlement and was expelled from Parliament making him a martyr for the Whig cause.

Walpole gained his revenge when George I came to the throne. The newly crowned king distrusted the Tories, whom he believed opposed his right to succeed to the throne and Walpole  saw to the impeachment of his opponents.

Walpole was First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1715 and 1717 but resigned from office in sympathy with his brother in law Lord Townshend's dismissal from the position of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

In the early 1720s an economic crisis, known as the South Sea Bubble, made George I and his ministers extremely unpopular.  Walpole had continued to be an influential figure in the House of Commons and the economic disaster of the South Sea Bubble allowed him to rise to the pinnacle of government. Walpole and his Whig Party were dominant in politics, for George I feared that the Tories did not support the succession laid down in the Act of Settlement. The power of the Whigs was so great that the Tories would not come to hold power for another half-century.

The main character Macheath in John Gay's The Beggars Opera, an operetta condemning the South Sea Bubble farce, was based on Walpole.

PRIME MINISTER

Sir Robert Walpole entered office on April 1, 1721 as the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom under King George I.

He pursued a policy of peace abroad and efficient financial management at home. Under Walpole's  leadership the British economy boomed as never before.

1740 political cartoon depicting Walpole as the Colossus of Rhodes, 

King George I was the last king of England who could not speak English. He spoke to his Prime Minister Robert Walpole in Latin.

When in 1733 Walpole tried to impose an excise tax on wine and tobacco he aroused the opposition of the nation's merchants. Walpole agreed to withdraw the bill before Parliament voted on it, but his power had been shaken.

Walpole was satirised and parodied extensively. Henry Fielding's 1737 The Historical Register contained a villainous, bribing politician by the name of ‘Quidam’, who was instantly recognizable to the audience as their Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole.

The Historical Register was said to be the cause for Walpole’s stringent Licensing Act of 1737.  The law required all plays to be submitted for censorship by the Lord Chamberlain.

Sir Robert Walpole resigned on February 11, 1742 over the alleged rigging of the Chippenham by-election. He had served 20 years and 314 days as prime minister, the longest single term and longer even than the accumulated terms of other British PMs who held the office more than once.

As part of his resignation King George II agreed to elevate Walpole to the House of Lords as the Earl of Orford.

HOMES 

Houghton Hall a country house surrounded by 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) of parkland a few miles from Sandringham House in Norfolk was first commissioned by Walpole in 1722.

A grand Palladian pile, it is a key building in the history of Palladian architecture. Houghton was intended to be the permanent home for more than 400 of his Old Master paintings, including works by Van Dyck, Poussin, Rubens, Rembrandt and Velázquez.

The facade of Houghton Hall by Dennis Smith8

In 1730 Walpole had Houghton village demolished and rebuilt elsewhere as "New Houghton" to improve the view from the magnificent Houghton Hall- the last word in opulence.

In 1732 King George II offered Robert Walpole 10 Downing Street as a personal gift, but Walpole accepted it only as the official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury (later called Prime Minister).

On September 22, 1735, Sir Robert Walpole moved in to 10 Downing Street, becoming the first Prime Minister to use the house as an official residence.

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Robert Walpole was a short, thickset man, who weighed in middle life more than 20 stone (280 lbs).

Portrait of Walpole (1740)

Walpole talked in a bawdy fashion and had a rustic image, rough and coarse. He was nicknamed by voters and politicians "Cock Robin".

The ancient rhyme "Who killed Cock Robin?" is thought to have been devised to reflect the intrigues surrounding the downfall of Walpole's ministry in 1742.

The Norfolk squire was shrewd, and determined with a friendly open manner.

MARRIAGE 

Walpole married Catherine Shorter at Knightsbridge chapel on July 30, 1700. She was the daughter of John Shorter a Baltic timber merchant of Bybrook in Ashford, Kent. Catherine was described in Coxe's Memoirs as "a woman of exquisite beauty and accomplished manners".

Catherine Shorter

Together they had two daughters and three sons including the novelist and art historian Horace Walpole.

Walpole's marriage to Catherine Shorter was a sham and he took a number of mistresses. After Catherine died in 1737, Walpole married his favorite mistress, Maria Skerritt, who died shortly thereafter during childbirth.

PERSONAL LIFE

Robert Walpole often sat munching Norfolk apples in the House of Commons.

Walpole had to live with two harassing diseases, gout and a stone in his bladder, which left him but intermittent vigour and disturbed the balance of his naturally placid temper. He even ate soap in an attempt to get rid of the stone in his bladder.

Walpole assembled a famous collection of art during his career. This collection was sold by his grandson, the 3rd Earl of Orford, to the Russian Empress Catherine II in 1779. This collection—which was regarded as one of the finest in Europe—now lies in the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

DEATH 

Walpole's health, never good, deteriorated rapidly toward the end of 1744.

By 1745 the pain caused by a laceration of his bladder was so acute that Walpole was drenched with opium and for six weeks was in a state of stupefaction.

Walpole died of exhaustion on March 18, 1745 at the age of 68.

He was buried March 25, 1745 in the parish church of St Martin in Houghton, Norfolk. Walpole's earldom passed to his eldest son Robert.

Horace Walpole

Horace Walpole was born in London on September 24, 1717. He was the youngest son of British Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole and his wife Catherine.

Walpole by Sir Joshua Reynolds 1756

He was educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge.

Walpole went on the Grand Tour of Europe with his old Eton school-friend Thomas Gray between 1739-1741. The pair fell out and parted in Tuscany because Walpole wanted to attend fashionable parties and Gray wanted to visit all the antiquities.

They were reconciled a few years later. It was Walpole who later helped publish Gray's poetry.

Walpole by Rosalba Carriera, circa 1741.

Horace Walpole owned cats called Fátima, Harold, Patapan & Selima. Selima was a tortoiseshell tabby who drowned in a goldfish bowl inspiring Thomas Gray's 1748 poem "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a tub Of Gold Fishes."

Walpole was a Whig Member of Parliament between 1741-67.

He settled in Twickenham in 1747 at Strawberry Hill, the house he made into a pseudo-Gothic showplace. Walpole built his "Gothick" castle in reaction to the prevailing Classical style of country houses and it started a trend of the Gothic architectural style.

Strawberry Hill House in 2012 after restoration By Chiswick Chap

Strawberry Hill had its own printing press, the Strawberry Hill Press, which supported Horace Walpole's huge literary activity.

Walpole was the author of The Castle of Otranto, published in 1764, during his tenure as MP for King's Lynn. It is considered to be the first Gothic novel a genre of literature which combines parts of both horror and romance. The literary genre would become increasingly popular in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth centuries.

Walpole is remembered today as perhaps the most prolific letter writer in the English language. He coined the word "serendipity" in a letter dated January 28, 1754 to his friend Horace Mann. He said it was derived from a "silly fairy tale" he had read, The Three Princes of Serendip.

Horace Walpole was a martyr and recommended sitting it out stoically. "It prevents other illnesses and prolongs life." he wrote to Horace Mann, "Could I cure the gout, should not I have a fever, a palsy or an apoplexy."

Walpole,often mentioned his "gouty Bootikins" slippers, boasting of their efficacy, which he would demonstrate by stamping his gouty foot on the marble hearth to impress his friends who were similarly afflicted.

His father was created Earl of Orford in 1742. Horace's elder brother, the 2nd Earl of Orford (c.1701–1751), passed the title on to his son, the 3rd Earl of Orford (1730–1791). When the 3rd Earl died unmarried, Horace Walpole became the 4th Earl of Orford.

Horace Walpole never married and his sexual orientation has been a matter of conjecture. He had a close coterie of male friends with whom he formed a “Committee of Taste”and engaged in a succession of unconsummated flirtations with unmarriageable women. Many contemporaries described Walpole as effeminate.

He died aged March 2, 1797 (aged 79) at Berkeley Square, London. As Horace Walpole was childless, on his death his barony of Walpole descended to his cousin of the same surname, who was created the new Earl of Orford.

Walnut

The walnut nut is originally from Persia and Turkey. The ancient Greeks learnt how to cultivate walnut trees, and the Romans adopted this skill in around 100 BC, bringing it to Britain with their legions.

Archaeological digs reveal walnuts were eaten by humans in France possibly as many as 17,000 years ago.

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The Romans thought that walnuts enhanced both desire and fertility, and scattered them over wedding couples like confetti.

Roman women used ground-up walnut shells to burn off body hair.

In Ancient Greece and medieval Britain, physicians used walnuts to treat mental illness and headaches, believing that the nut's skull-like shell and brain-shaped kernel symbolised its magical curative powers.

English merchants traded the walnut tree around the world, so that it became known as the 'English walnut'.

In California, walnuts have been grown since the 1700s, brought to the state by Franciscan missionaries. Now, the Central Valley of California produces 99 percent of total United States commerce in English walnuts.

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American President George Washington blamed his poor dental health on breaking open walnut shells with his teeth.

In 2016, worldwide production of walnuts (in shell) was 3.7 million tonnes, with China contributing 48% of the world total.

A villager in China unknowingly used a hand grenade to crack walnuts for over 20 years, until he saw the grenade in a government flyer.

The walnut tree may reach 30 metres (100 ft) and produces a full crop of nuts about a dozen years after planting.

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Walnut tree timber is very hard and dark in color. It is a favorite in furniture making.

The world's largest walnut tree forest is in Kyrgyzstan. Hugging the 6,500-foot-high slopes in the shadow of the Babash-Ata mountains it covers At 11,000 hectares (27,000 acres),

Walnut husks can be used to make a durable ink for writing and drawing. The ink's good archival properties is thought to have been used by several great artists including Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt.

Walnut ink was once used to stain the hands of criminals in Romani communities. Once stained, it is impossible to wash off and remains in the skin for a long period of time.

Today, the walnut is immensely popular in France's Dordogne region, where, despite a diet high in foie gras and other animal fats, the residents enjoy the second-lowest rate of heart disease in the world.

Walnuts are rich in polyphenols, chemicals that help the body ward off cancer, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's disease.

Most off-putting is the walnut's calorie count: two handfuls contain 650 calories.

Walmart

Walmart is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores.

By Mike Kalasnik from Fort Mill, USA - Wal-Mart Albemarle Rd Charlotte

HISTORY

The history of Walmart began in 1945 when 26-year-old businessman Sam Walton  (March 29, 1918 – April 5, 1992) purchased a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas with the help of a $20,000 loan from his father-in-law, plus $5,000 he had saved while serving in the Army during World War II.  His primary focus was selling products at low prices to get higher-volume sales at a lower profit margin.

Five years later, Walton purchased a store from Luther E. Harrison in Bentonville, Arkansas, and opened a five and dime store Walton's 5 & 10.

The original Walton's Five and Dime store in Bentonville, By User Bobak 

The first true Walmart opened on July 2, 1962, in Rogers, Arkansas. Called the Wal-Mart Discount City store, it was located at 719 West Walnut Street. It was Walton's assistant, Bob Bogle, who came up with the name "Wal-Mart" for the new chain.

Within five years the Wal-Mart company had grown to 24 stores across the state of Arkansas, and had reached $12.6 million in sales.

In 1968, the Wal-Mart company opened its first stores outside of Arkansas in Sikeston, Missouri and Claremore, Oklahoma.

The company was incorporated as Wal-Mart, Inc. on October 31, 1969

By 1988, Walmart was the most profitable retailer in the United States, and by October 1989, it had become the largest in terms of revenue, though it did not outsell K-Mart and Sears in terms of value of items purchased until late 1990 or early 1991.

Sam Walton was an avid pilot and used his small aluminium plane to scout new store locations and keep tabs on his stores.

Sam Walton was worth around $8.6 billion when he died on April 5, 1992, but still insisted on having $5 haircuts (leaving no tip).

Vermont was the last U.S. state to get a Walmart, holding out until 1996.

FUN WALMART FACTS

There are more than 8,000 Walmart stores around the world, and over 2 million people work for Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart was the largest U.S. grocery retailer in 2019, and 65 percent of Wal-Mart's US$510.329 billion sales came from U.S. operations. The company's revenue today is higher than the GDP of Denmark.

The Walton family of Wal-Mart own more wealth than the combined bottom 40 percent of America.

Wal-Mart makes $500 every second.

For every dollar spent in the U.S., 8 cents are spent at Walmart stores.

90% of Americans live within 15 minutes of a Walmart store.

1 in 100 employed Americans is currently working at Walmart.

Walmart employs more people worldwide than there are people living in New Mexico.

There are no Walmarts in New York City.

In 2012, Walmart held a contest, in which the rapper Pitbull would perform in a Walmart with the most likes on its Facebook page. After the #ExilePitbull Twitter campaign, the shop in the remote island town of Kodiak, Alaska, ended up winning.

One of the reasons Walmart failed to establish itself in Germany is that it required its checkout employees to smile at customers. This was however perceived by most Germans as unnerving, as Germans usually don't smile at strangers.

Wal-Mart has its own ‘radio station’ that plays the same music across every store in the United States, complete with DJs, shoutouts, and the like.

In 2005, movie director Robert Greenwald made a documentary movie called Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. The film presented a negative picture of Wal-Mart's business practices through interviews with former employees, small business owners, and footage of Wal-Mart executives. After this movie was announced, director Ron Galloway made a film that ended up being released at the same time called Why Wal-Mart Works; and Why That Drives Some People C-R-A-Z-Y. This movie had a positive view of Wal-Mart.

Film poster

Shaquille O'Neal holds Walmart's record for the biggest purchase sale in one stop. Shaq spent just over $70,000 on one occasion in 2008.

Police are called to Walmart stores three to four times as often as they are to other big-box retailers like Target. 25% of all arrests in St. Petersburg, Florida and 92% of larceny calls in Granite Falls, North Carolina are attributed to single Walmart locations in each city. 

Wallpaper

Wallpaper is a kind of paper used to decorate the interior walls of domestic and public buildings instead of paint.

The term wallpaper sometimes includes wall coverings made of cloth, spun glass, metal foil, or plastic as well as of paper.

HISTORY

Wallpaper seems to have developed in the late 15th century in Europe with the introduction of papermaking as a cheaper substitute for other wall coverings such as tapestry or painted cloth or silk hangings.

Very few examples from the earliest days survive, but the first wallpaper was probably hand painted or stenciled. Stenciling is a means for producing a design on paper, cloth, or other surface by passing ink or paint over holes cut in cardboard or metal onto a surface to be decorated.

Although wallpaper is sometimes said to be a Chinese invention, there is no firm evidence that wallpaper was in use in the Far East earlier than the late 15th century.

Fragment (China), 16th century 

Wallpaper was only used in the 16th century by the emerging gentry. The social elite hang large tapestries on the walls of their homes, which added color to the room as well as providing an insulating layer thus retaining heat. However, tapestries were extremely expensive and so the less well-off members of the emerging gentry, turned to wallpaper to brighten up their rooms.

Early wallpaper featured scenes similar to those depicted on tapestries, and large sheets of the paper were sometimes hung loosely on the walls.

In the United Kingdom during the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, the manufacture of wallpaper, seen as a frivolous item by the Puritan government, was halted.

A popular type of wallpaper in the late 17th and 18th centuries was flock paper, in which the design was stencilled in adhesive and then scattered with powdered wool to create a velvety effect.

Flocked papers formed a prominent part of the stock-in-trade of the earliest wallpaper makers in London, who seem to have pioneered their manufacture. In France they were called papiers d'Angleterre (English papers) for a time, but by the late 18th century the French had surpassed the English in quality and design.

In the 17th century, at the same time flocked papers were so popular, Chinese wallpapers began to appear in Europe. These were painted papers, the finest of which were produced by etched plates or woodblocks. The color was applied either by hand or with a stencil. Most of these papers were produced especially for the European market, and they were often made in sets of 25 rolls, each 4 by 12 feet (1.2 by 3.65 meters). The appeal of Chinese wallpapers was their lack of repeated design and their intentional dissimilarity of detail.

Because of their beauty and costliness several country houses in Britain still have a 'Chinese room' decorated with these panels.

Below is a hand-painted Chinese wallpaper showing a funeral procession, made for the European market, c. 1780.

Wikipedia

In 1712 a tax was imposed in England on printed wallpaper – builders avoided paying by hanging plain wallpaper and painting patterns on it themselves. It wasn't abolished until 1836.

In 1785 Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf devised the first machine for printing wallpaper. Inventive progress was hampered, however, by the lack of a means to produce long, continuous sheets. This was not achieved until the first decade of the 19th century, when Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier perfected a new papermaking machine in Hertfordshire, England.

It was not until 1840 that a printing firm in Lancashire started producing machine-printed wallpaper sheets with an 'endless' design that is standard today, making wallpaper much cheaper and increasing its use enormously.

In 1806, in collaboration with the artist Jean-Gabriel Charvet, the French company Joseph Dufour et Cie produced a twenty-panel set of woodblock printed scenic wallpaper entitled Sauvages de la Mer du Pacifique (Savages of the Pacific). The largest panoramic wallpaper of its time, and marked the burgeoning of a French industry in panoramic wallpapers.

'Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique', panels 1-10

In America by 1820 the walls of an average-size room could be papered for about a dollar, then equal to an average day's wage. This was less than the cost of oils and pigments to make paint enough to cover the same walls. Inexpensive wallpapers therefore, began to be made and used in large quantities.

Excess of decoration was a fault of many early 19th-century wallpapers. One of the English interior decorator William Morris' aims was to reinstate a sense of beauty into everyday life and forge close links between art and craft. Morris was dedicated to the principles of medieval craftsmanship and he revolutionized the art of house decoration in England in the second half of the 19th century.

Acanthus wallpaper, designed by Morris 1875

The great wars and economic crises of much of the 20th century forced a cutback in wallpaper production. The walls of homes and public buildings during this period were more often painted than papered.

The do-it-yourself movement of the late 20th century stimulated sales of wallpaper. Manufacturers cooperated by offering detailed instructions, demonstrations, and films to alleviate the drudgery of home decoration. Prepasted papers were also made available.

FUN WALLPAPER FACTS

Play-Doh was originally invented as a wallpaper cleaner.

Bubble Wrap was originally invented in 1957, but not to be used as a packaging material, but rather for use as wallpaper.

24,000 rolls of Beatles wallpaper was flown to the US on February 21, 1964 as Beatlemania took off.

There was a pigment used in early days of wall paper called Sheele's Green. If it got moldy or damp it would release the arsenic in the air. It is speculated that this was the cause of Napoleon's death as green was his favorite color and his walls were painted bright green.

Compton's Enyclopedia

Wall

We began building stone walls about 10,000 years ago when farming began and ways were needed to divide farms and keep sheep in.

The phase "The writing's on the wall" is biblical—in the book of Daniel, a hand appears at a king's feast and writes a message on a wall.

The Great Wall of China is more than 2,300 years old and more than 13,170 miles long. It was built over several thousands of years with several sections being built as early as the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) and the Warring States Period (475-221 BC). After the Qin Dynasty (221BC - 206BC), the construction of the Great Wall became a huge project. The building of  the wall of Northern Qi (550-557), starting from Xiakou to Hengzhou, used 1,800,000 laborers. A section of Sui's (581 - 618) wall in Inner Mongolia required more than 1,000,000 men to build.

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When the Romans built a 21ft-(6.5 metes) high wall around Londinium (London), the capital of Roman Britain, they used 86,000 tonnes of stone in the construction.

The Roman emperor Hadrian initiated the construction of Hadrian's Wall, which marked the northern limit of Britannia to keep out the Picts and the Scots. Hadrian's Wall was 72 miles (116 kms) long and up to 20ft (6 metres) high. It took six years to build, starting in AD122.

The Chester city walls form the most complete circuit of Roman and medieval defensive town walls in Britain.

New York City's Wall Street got its name in because in 1653, Dutch settlers built an earthen wall on the land where Wall Street would eventually be formed in order to repel potential English invaders.

In 1961 the Soviet zone of Berlin was sealed off by the Russians, and a wall was built along the zonal boundary. The Berlin Wall divided the city until it was opened in November 1989. The concrete segment of the Berlin Wall was 66 miles (106 kms) long and nearly 12 feet (3.5 metres) high.

This image was taken in 1986 by Thierry Noir at Bethaniendamm in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

The world's tallest climbing wall is the 121ft (37 metres) Excalibur in Groningen, the Netherlands.

The longest wall in history is not the Chinese one, but the wall in Benin. The Walls of Benin had a length of over 9,900 miles (16,000 km) (four times longer than the Wall of China), until their destruction by the British in 1897. Building it consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops.

The Walls of Ston in Croatia are the longest preserved fortification system in the world after the Great Wall of China.

A nook is a small corner formed by two walls; an alcove or recess, forming a hidden or secluded spot. A cranny, by comparison, is small, narrow opening, fissure, or crevice in a wall, or other substance.

Source Daily Express

Walkman

Sony introduced the Walkman, the first portable audio cassette player on July 1, 1979. They called them "Walkman boogie-paks".

The first Walkmans went on sale for $150.

The corporation's chairman, co-founder, and chief executive officer, Akio Morita, otherwise known as Mr. Sony, had come up with the idea in response to the loud rock music his son and daughter played at home. The opera-loving chief asked his company's engineers to come up with a portable tape player that would be compact, lightweight, and capable of producing private but full stereo sound for one or two listeners through headphones which would give him access to all arias on plane flights.

The device that Sony's engineers came up with was a modification of a type of cassette recorder that journalists used. The story goes that Sony stuck a pair of headphones on to a cassette player for a test run on a golf course. Once it had realised how to make the headphones small and light enough (they used rare earth magnets) the Walkman was born.

Although Sony came up with the first popular personal stereo cassette player, the German-Brazilian Andreas Pavel had patented a similar device called the Stereobelt in 1977. Sony agreed to pay Pavel royalties, but refused to recognize him as the inventor of the personal stereo until a legal settlement in 2003.

When Sony first announced the Walkman they held an unusual press conference where different journalists were invited to Yoyogi, which is Tokyo's major park. They were each given a Walkman to prove that the portable player is fun and easy to use.

The original metal-cased blue-and-silver Walkman TPS-L2 was as big as a paperback book, and weighed 390 grams (14 ounces). It wasn't cheap, especially for those days, costing around ¥39,433.58 (or $150.00), or ¥57,109.02 (or $498.66) adjusted for inflation.

Original Sony Walkman TPS-L2 from 1979. By Binarysequence

Though Sony predicted the Walkman would sell about 5,000 units a month, people snatched it up and it sold more than 50,000 in the first two months.

Other names were initially tried for international markets like "soundabout" and "stowaway." Sony soon settled on Walkman. The original logo had little feet on the A's in "WALKMAN."

The Sony Walkman changed the way people listen to music and resulted in a boom in cassette sales. Despite a rash of imitations, the Walkman became the generic term.

In 1984, Sony launched the Discman series which extended their Walkman brand to portable CD products.

Sony sold its waterproof Walkman in a bottle of water to prove it was really waterproof.

Over the next 30 years they sold over 385 million Walkmans in cassette, CD, mini-disc and digital file versions, and were the market leaders until the arrival of Apple's iPod.

The word "Walkman" became so popular in the German language as a generic term for a personal stereo that in 2002 the Austrian Supreme Court ruled that any brand, not just Sony, could use that word to describe such a device.

Sony still continues to make cassette-based Walkman devices in China for the US and other overseas markets; however, they were discontinued in Japan on October 23, 2010.

Sources The Daily Mail, The Independent, Associated Press, The New Yorker

Walking

The term "walk" is from the Old English wealcan, or "to roll."

The difference between walking and running is that at least one foot is always on the ground when you walk.

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FAMOUS WALKERS

As a youngster, Johann Sebastian Bach would walk 50 kilometres (31 miles) from his Lüneburg school to Hamburg to see J A Reincken, the organist perform. On another occasion he walked a mere 40 kilometers (25 miles) to Halle in the hope of meeting George Frideric Handel but arrived just after the composer had left the town by coach.

Scottish soldier Captain Robert Barclay-Allardice, (1779-1854) once walked 1000 miles in 1000 consecutive hours.. His remarkable walking feat was performed at Newmarket between June 1 and July 12, 1809, during which he walked 1 mile (1.6 km) in each of 1000 successive hours, to win an initial wager of 1000 guineas.

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was very fond of hill walking. On one occasion he walked 263 miles (423 kms) through the Scottish highlands in 8 days.

During a walking tour of Scotland, John Keats managed 600 miles in a month, always rising before dawn in order to complete 26 miles before noon.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography includes five people in the 18th and 19th century whose professions are given as "pedestrian". These include Mary McMullen "called the Female Pedestrian" whose "most common event" is said to be 92 miles (148 kms)  in 24 hours.

On October 24, 1932 Plennie L. Wingo of Texas finished an 8,000 mile (13,000 km) backward walk from Santa Monica to Istanbul, Turkey.  He remains the Guinness record holder for "greatest extent of reverse pedestrianism".

Earl Schaffer became in 1948 the first person to walk the entire Appalachian Trail from end to end in one continuous hike. He avoided blisters by putting sand in his boots and wearing no socks until his feet toughened.

In 1987 Steven M Newman became the first man to walk solo around the world. The 15,000-mile trek took him four years and untold pairs of shoes to complete.

Steven Newman By Sherab - Own work, Wikipedia Commons

MJ Eberhart – AKA Nimblewill Nomad retired at 61 in 1993 and became a perpetual hiker. Over 15 years he walked over 34,000 miles (55,000 kilometres). He became the first known person to hike the entire Appalachian Range in North America, from Newfoundland to the Keys and more and more.

Canadian Jean Beliveau completed a 46,600-mile walk around the world in 2011 covering 47,000 miles and passing through 64 countries. It took the former neon-sign salesman 11 years and two months. Beliveau used up 54 pairs of shoes on the walk which was to promote peace and non-violence.

HEALTH

The general advice is to walk 6,000 steps a day to improve your health and 10,000 to lose weight.

A person would need to walk for seven hours to burn off a super-sized Coca Cola, chips, and a Big Mac.

ETYMOLOGY

The verb 'to walk' dates back to Old English and originally meant 'to roll' or 'go back and forth'. It could also mean 'to curl one's hair'. It came to be used mainly for moving around on foot from the 15th century onwards.

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The word 'perambulator' first meant a person who walks, then a device for measuring distances, finally a baby carrier pushed by someone walking.

The term "Jaywalking" was invented by car companies in the early 1900’s to shift blame for accidents from motorists to pedestrians.

A walkabout is Australian Aboriginal English for a nomadic ritual excursion into the bush. The term was adopted in 1970, during tours by Queen Elizabeth II of Australia and New Zealand for informal public-relations walks by politicians and royalty.

HUMAN WALKING

Human babies are helpless because we walk upright. Walking upright requires a narrow pelvis, in which our large head/brain would get stuck during birth, so babies are born with a smaller head/brain that develops more after birth, compared to other mammals.

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We swing our arms when we walk because it is the most efficient way to walk. By swinging our right arm with our left leg and our left arm with our right leg we conserve 26% more energy than by other methods such as hands at our side or left arm with left leg/right arm with right leg.

Men walk significantly slower when walking with a woman, but only when that woman is their romantic partner. If she's a friend or acquaintance they go at almost full speed.

On average we make 243 walking trips covering 198 miles in a year.

An average person takes 18,000 steps per day.

In an average lifetime, a person will walk a distance equal to three times round the equator.

The 10,000 steps a day rule, about five miles of walking, didn’t come from scientific research or cardiologists or a medical study of any kind, Rather it is marketing from a pedometer company in Japan - the Japanese character for 10,000 looks like a man walking and the number stuck.

The average human walking speed is about 3.1 miles per hour, or 5.0 kilometers per hour.

ANIMAL WALKING

Most animals are digitigrade, i.e., they walk on their digits or toes. Birds, cats, dogs, turtles etc are examples. Humans are plantigrades i.e., they walk on the flats of their feet. Bears and frogs are some of the other plantigrade animals that walk on the entire sole of their feet.

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All felines directly register- this means that when they walk, their back paw walks into the exact area where the front paw stepped, to minimize sound and to ensure stable footing.

Emus and kangaroos can't walk backwards.

FUN WALKING FACTS

The average housewife has been calculated to walk 594 miles (956 kilometers) a year in the course of her daily housewifely duties.

Research suggests that the average British child walks 12,000 to 16,000 steps a day. The average American adult walks 5,117.

Even though over 40% of the trips taken in the U.S. are less than one mile, less than 10% of all trips are made by walking or cycling.

At an average walking speed of 3.1mph, it would take just less than a year to walk around the world or just over nine years to walk to the Moon.

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People can recognise each other 90 percent of the time just from the way they walk.

It takes 200 muscles to take one step.

In 1996, the President of Colombia introduced a Bill to make drunken walking illegal.

Source Daily Express