William Penn

William Penn was born on October 14, 1644 at at Tower Hill, London. He was the son of English Admiral Sir William Penn (1621-1670).

William Penn, Sr. served in the Commonwealth Navy during the English Civil War and was rewarded by Oliver Cromwell with estates in Ireland. The lands were seized from Irish Catholics in retaliation for the failed Irish Rebellion of 1641.

When Penn was in his early teens, he met Thomas Loe, a Quaker missionary, who was maligned by both Catholics and Protestants. Penn started attending Quaker meetings in Cork, Ireland to his aristocratic father's dismay.

By the late 1650s, Admiral William Penn had lost faith in the republican experiment and helped restore the dead king’s exiled son, Charles II, to the throne in 1660. The admiral became a trusted adviser of Charles’s brother, James, who served as the Duke of York and ran the English navy. He was knighted for his services and gained a powerful position as Commissioner of the Navy.

Penn enrolled at Oxford’s Christ Church College in 1660. However he continued to follow the Quaker leader George Fox's teachings there, and refused to attend the university's mandatory Sunday Anglican service. He also rebelled against Oxford’s dress code, which required pupils to wear surplices, a type of religious garment. Instead, Penn wore simple clothes, drawing the ire of school officials.

William Penn at 22

Fed up with his rebellious behavior, Oxford expelled Penn in 1662. His father, in a rage, attacked his rebellious son with a cane and forced him from their home. Penn's mother made peace in the family, which allowed him to return home.

Penn wrote and distributed a revolutionary pamphlet titled The Sandy Foundation Shaken in 1668, which attacked the doctrine of the Trinity. Since this was a crime at the time, Penn was jailed inside the Tower of London, where he remained for eight months.

In 1670, Penn conducted a Quaker meeting in London and was charged with violating the Conventicle Act. He and one of his associates were jailed for two weeks before a jury acquitted them. However, the jurors refused to convict him of preaching an illegal religion (Quakerism) to an unlawful assembly, his congregation. The case is credited with the modern concept of an independent jury. It also provided the bases for the U.S. Constitution's first amendment rights of freedom of speech, religion, and peaceable assembly.

Frederick S. Lamb's painting of William Penn at the Brooklyn Museum

Throughout his life, Admiral Penn loaned a large sum of money to the crown. Though he'd passed away in 1670, the interest on this small fortune had accumulated. By 1680 King Charles II found himself £16,000 in debt to the Penn family. In May 1680, William Penn petitioned the King for a grant of land in the New World in settlement of the monarch’s debts.

Charles II took up the offer and on March 4, 1681 he granted William Penn a large area between Maryland and present-day western New York together with the right to govern it. The new colony where he carried out his "Holy Experiment in Religious Toleration" was named Pennsylvania and Penn supervised the building of Philadelphia, which means "brotherly love" as its capital.

The Birth of Pennsylvania, 1680, by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris. William Penn, holding paper, standing and facing King Charles II, in the King's breakfast chamber at Whitehall.

Penn first married Gulielma Maria Posthuma Springett (1644–1696), daughter of William S. Springett. They had three sons and five daughters. Two years after Gulielma's death he married Hannah Margaret Callowhill (1671–1726), daughter of Thomas Callowhill and Anna (Hannah) Hollister. William Penn married Hannah when she was 25 and he was 52. They had another eight children.

Penn returned to England in 1701 and immediately became embroiled in financial and family troubles. His eldest son William, Jr. was leading a dissolute life, and running up gambling debts. Penn's own finances were also in turmoil. He had sunk over £30,000 in America and received little back except some bartered goods. the Pennsylvania founder had made many generous loans which he failed to press. In addition,  Philip Ford, his financial adviser, had cheated Penn out of thousands of pounds by concealing and diverting rents from Penn's Irish lands.

Lely William Penn

Penn’s ability to govern his colony from abroad was compromised by three paralytic strokes he suffered in 1712. As her husband’s health deteriorated, his second wife Hannah stepped up. Over the next six years, she oversaw Pennsylvania’s affairs from an ocean away, mailing instructions off to governor Charles Gookin and collaborating extensively with her husband's secretary James Logan.

William Penn died penniless in 1718, at his home in Ruscombe, near Twyford in Berkshire, and is buried in a grave next to his first wife in the cemetery of the Jordans Quaker meeting house near Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire in England. His wife as sole executor continued to run Pennsylvania for another eight years after his passing until her death in 1726.

Friends' Meeting House at Jordans where Penn is buried

Penn and his second wife Hannah were made honorary United States citizens in 1984 by US President Ronald Reagan.

Source Mentalfloss.com

Penicillin

While working on the influenza virus at St Mary's Hospital in London on September 28, 1928, Alexander Fleming observed that mold, which had developed accidentally on a germ-colored glass plate that he had left in the sink, had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. After further experiments the Scottish biologist and pharmacologist  found that a mold culture, Penicillium notatum, was releasing a substance that inhibited bacterial growth, even when diluted 800 times. He named the active substance penicillin.

Fleming's paper describing this phenomenon mentioned the possibility of this substance being a treatment for eye infections. However he was unable to obtain penicillin in a sufficiently pure form to produce reliable results in infected patients, and he became convinced that it could not last long enough in the human body to kill disease producing bacteria. Fleming abandoned this particular research in 1931.

Penicillin was originally called ‘mold juice’.

Sample of penicillin mould presented by Alexander Fleming to Douglas Macleod, 1935. Science Museum London / Science and Society Picture Library

In 1939 René Dubos, a French-American bacteriologist isolated tyrothricin, the first commercially produced antibiotic. His pioneering work stimulated others to look at Fleming’s work on penicillin, including in 1940 a team of Oxford research scientists led by an Australian pathologist Howard Florey and including the German-British biochemist Ernst Chain. They proved that penicillin could fight infections in people, after treating PC Albert Alexander on February 12, 1941 for a dangerous infection caused by a scratch from a thorn. The results were excellent but the team ran out of penicillin and he died.

During World War II, when penicillin production was insufficient to meet demand, medical personnel would collect the urine of patients who had received penicillin treatment. They would then extract the unused penicillin from the urine and administer it to other patients.

Aware of the need of a fungus that could yield sufficient penicillin reliably, Florey and Chain  searched for a more productive species. Mary Hunt, a lab assistant, came across a cantaloupe with a golden mold, P. chrysogenum. All penicillin is effectively descended from Mary Hunt’s cantaloupe.

Florey and Chain's work resulted in the mass producing of the drug. Penicillin saved the lives of countless soldiers during World War II, who would have died from their wounds in previous wars.

Florey and Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in medicine with Fleming for their work. Fleming humbly responded to receiving the award  “Nature makes penicillin; I just found it."

Fleming ever made any money from his discovery. He had no wish to do so.

Florey and Chain's work is estimated to have saved up to 200,000,000 lives.

Almost a century after the discovery of penicillin, bacterial infections continue to kill about 700,000 people each year.

Penguin

PENGUINS IN HISTORY

The men among Magellan's 1519-1522 expedition across the world were the first Europeans to discover the black 'goose' which had to be skinned instead of plucked — the penguin.

The earliest known use of the word "penguin" in English was in 1577. It was used in the "Log of the Golden Hinde" by Francis Fletcher, who was a clergyman who sailed with Francis Drake.

In 1840, French explorer Jules Dumont d’Urville discovered Adélie penguins and named them after his wife, Adèle. His reasons for this are unknown.

Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) feeding young. By Jerzy Strzelecki 

The live penguins that starred in Batman Returns (1992) had their own refrigerated dressing rooms and a swimming pool. The set was kept cold for them. Danny DeVito was the only actor who was comfortable, because of the extensive face prosthetics, heavy padding, and heavy coat he wore for his own role.

ETYMOLOGY 

It is unclear whether the word 'penguin' comes from the Latin 'pinguis' meaning 'fat' or the Welsh 'pen gwyn', which means 'white head' (though penguins do not have white heads).

Originally the word ‘penguin’ referred to the Newfoundland albatross or the great auk.

‘Spheniscine’ means ‘pertaining to penguins’.

FAMOUS PENGUINS 

On August 24, 1967, two penguins from Chessington Zoo, a Rockhopper penguin named Rocky and his female companion called Clementine, were taken to London’s Streatham ice-rink to cool off during a heat wave. The temperature in London reached nearly 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius), and the penguins, who are more used to the cooler temperatures of the Antarctic, were feeling the heat.

The penguins were taken to the ice-rink in a van and released into the middle of the rink. They waddled around for a bit, looking confused and a little bit scared. But then they started to get used to the cold and began to enjoy themselves. They slid around on the ice, flapped their flippers, and even took a few dives.

In 2011, Joao Pereira de Souza, found a South American Magellanic penguin covered in oil and starving on a beach on an island off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. He nursed him back to health and named him Dindim. Since then the penguin, which normally breeds on the Patagonia coasts of Argentina and Chile, has swum 3 to 5 thousand miles every year to spend time with his human soulmate.

A young Humboldt penguin named Penguin 337 spent two months at large in Tokyo in March 2012 after scaling a wall and slipping through a fence at the Sea Life Park. 337 was eventually spotted in Tokyo Bay and caught on the banks of one of the city’s rivers.

Humboldt Penguin

Britain's oldest penguin, Pat, (and the second oldest in Europe) died in Torquay, Devon on December 8, 2015 at the age of 37. She was an African penguin, whose average lifespan is 15 to 20 years in the wild or 30 years in captivity.

Grape-kun was a Humboldt penguin who lived at the Tobu Zoo in Miyashiro, Saitama Prefecture, Japan. In 2017, the zoo placed a cardboard cutout of Hululu, an anthropomorphic Humboldt penguin character from the anime series Kemono Friends, in the penguin enclosure. Grape-kun quickly became attached to the cutout, spending hours each day gazing at it and grooming it.

Grape-kun's story became an internet sensation, and he soon had a large following of fans around the world. People were drawn to his sweet and innocent nature, and his devotion to Hululu. Grape-kun's story also sparked a conversation about the emotional needs of animals and the importance of providing them with enrichment.

Sadly, Grape-kun passed away on October 12, 2017, from a brief illness. He was 21 years old. His fans were heartbroken, but they were also grateful for the joy that he had brought to their lives.

Humboldt penguin Grape-kun and his Hululu cutout. By Seibi hancho (aka. diagraph01)

A king penguin named Nils Olav III is a high-ranking officer in the Norwegian King’s Guard. He is the third generation of penguins with such a position. All have lived at Edinburgh zoo. Nils Olav III was promoted from the rank of colonel-in-chief to brigadier in 2016.

ANATOMY

Penguins have the highest feather density of any bird, at about 100 feathers per square inch.

The tuxedo pattern of a penguin's feathers is a form of camouflage. From above, their dark body blends into the ocean water, from below their white stomachs match the bright, sun-lit surface.

Newborn penguins do not have waterproof feathers so must wait before going in the water.

Penguins can swim underwater at speeds of up to 25mph.

Adélie penguins have pink feet; Gentoo penguins' feet are orange.

Since penguins don't need hollow, light bones to fly, the bones in their flippers are solid and can be used to fight off rivals.

Emperor penguins have a gland behind their ears that filters salt from the water out of their system.

Emperor Penguin

Penguins are generally extremely short-sighted on land, though they can see very well under water.

The emperor penguin has the largest body mass of all penguins.

The fairy penguin is the smallest species of penguin, growing to an average 33 cm (13 in).

BREEDING

The number of breeding pairs of penguins in Antarctica is estimated to be 20 million.

Penguin pair

Penguins typically mate only once a year and "propose" by giving their mate a pebble. King and emperor penguins lay one egg. All other species of penguin lay two eggs.

Until it is old enough to find its own food, an emperor penguin chick is fed about 185 pounds of regurgitated seafood.

DISTRIBUTION AND HABITAT

There are 17 species of penguin of which all but four are threatened, endangered or nearly extinct. .

The 17 species of penguin range from the 4ft tall emperor penguin to the 16-inch little blue.

Only one bird—the emperor penguin—will winter on Antarctica and use the frozen continent as a nursery.

In 2012, satellite mapping technology was used to count Emperor penguins from space. It found there were twice as many as had been thought.

Emperor Penguins

The emperor penguin was officially declared Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on April 9, 2026.The reclassification from "Near Threatened" to "Endangered" was driven by the accelerating loss of Antarctic sea ice caused by climate change.

BEHAVIOR

Penguins spend as much as 75 percent of their lives at sea, coming ashore for molting or breeding.

Penguins have been known to push a fellow penguin into the water to check if the area is safe and free of predators.

At the temperature -20°C or below Emperor Penguins form a huddle to stay warm. The temperature inside the huddle sometimes gets so hot (37°C) that some penguins come out and eat ice to cool off a bit.

In 2000 scientists proved that waddling is the most efficient way for Emperor penguins to walk, as they burn less fat.

Penguins drink saltwater, but their supraorbital gland filters salt from their bloodstream. The salt gets excreted when penguins sneeze.

Penguins can't taste sweet or savory flavors — in fact, the only flavors they can taste are sour and salty ones, which means they cannot taste fish. Taste is critical for survival in most animals, but may not matter in the penguin, which swallows fish whole,

When a male penguin falls in love with a female penguin, he searches the entire beach to find the perfect pebble to present to her.

FUN PENGUIN FACTS

World Penguin Day, celebrated annually on April 25,  is a celebratory and educative initiative that encourages people to learn more about penguins and their environment. It takes place during the annual northern migration of Adélie penguins, a species of penguin that is native to Antarctica. 

Each year, a South American Magellanic penguin swims 5,000 miles to be reunited with the Brazilian fisherman who saved his life.

Oamaru, New Zealand has built a tunnel underneath a road for blue penguins, who march from a harbor to their nesting site every night.

In Japan, there's a penguin named La La who's been trained to wear a backpack. Every day he walks into town by himself with his backpack to collect fish from the local market.

Sources Daily Express, Natureworldnews.com

Pencil

HISTORY

Pencil, a derivative of the Latin word pencillus for "little tail," originally described a small, fine, pointed brush.

In prehistoric times, lumps of colored earth or chalk were used as markers.

The pencil arrived with the discovery in 1564 in Borrowdale, Cumbria, England of a pure deposit of graphite.

A year later, the German naturalist Conrad Gesner described a wooden writing tool that were made of graphite held in sticks of wood.

Pencils never actually contained lead, people just called it that cause they thought graphite was a type of lead. The reason the graphite core in pencils is called "pencil lead" traces back to the discovery of the graphite deposit in Cumbria, being misidentified as a form of lead. That deposit gave England a monopoly on the production of pencils until the late 1600s.

Nicolas Conté perfected the pencil in the late 18th century by mixing graphite with clay and gluing it between two strips of wood and finishing them in a kiln.

American colonists imported pencils from Europe until after the American Revolution. William Munroe, a cabinetmaker in Concord, Massachusetts, produced the first American wood pencils in 1812.

Pencils are yellow because in the 19th century, the best graphite came from China. Because yellow was a royal color in China, pencil companies began to colour their pencils yellow to show both high quality and an association with China.

Writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, the author of Walden was also a pencil-maker.

Bread was used to rub out pencil before erasers were invented in 1839 by the tyre tycoon Charles Goodyear.

Twenty years later, Hymen Lipman conceived the all-in-one pencil eraser. A feature of Lipman's design was that the eraser was installed within the wood of the pencil, opposite to the writing end. In this manner, the pencil could be sharpened at both ends to refresh its graphite or eraser core.

Electric powered pencil sharpeners were used as early as 1910, and were more commonly available from the 1940s.

FUN PENCIL FACTS

A typical lead pencil can draw a line that is 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words.

The German word for "pencil" is actually "bleistifit", which literally means "lead stick".

The hole in a pencil sharpener that you stick a pencil into is called a "chuck."

You use a #2 pencil when taking a test because graphite is electrically conductive—a machine uses electrical currents to grade your answers.

Pablo Picasso's first word was "pencil".

Source The Independent

Pen

The word ‘pen’ comes from an old French word for the long wing or tail feather of a bird.

The first pens were used by the ancient Egyptians around 3500BC for writing on papyrus. They used hollow bamboo stems sharpened at one end filled with writing fluid, which was a mixture of soot and water.

Egyptian reed pens inside ivory and wooden palettes. By Rama 

Another early ancestor of the pen was the reed brush used for writing by the Chinese in the first millennium BC.

The quill pen surfaced when papyrus was replaced by animal skins, vellum and parchment, as a writing surface. The smoother surface of skin allowed finer, smaller writing by the quill pen, derived from the flight feather.

The quill pen was used in Qumran, Judea to write some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date back to around 100 BC

Quill pen By Kinjal bose 78 - Wikipedia

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europeans had difficulty in obtaining reeds and began to use quills more widely. There is a specific reference to quills in the writings of St. Isidore of Seville in the 7th century.

The earliest historical record of a fountain pen, a type of pen in which ink is held in a reservoir and passes to the writing point through capillary channels dates back to 953. In that year Ma'ād al-Mu'izz, the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt, demanded a writing instrument which would not stain his hands or clothes. He was provided with a pen which held ink in a reservoir and delivered it to the nib.

The next mention of a pen with ink reservoir came in the 17th century by a German inventor, Daniel Schwenter.

The fountain pen was made available in Europe in the 17th century with diarist Samuel Pepys being the first recorded user. He recorded in his diary on August 5, 1663: "This evening came a letter about business from Mr Coventry, and with it a Silver pen he promised me, to carry inke in(sic); which is very necessary."

Quill pens continued to be used right up until the early 19th century when they were finally replaced by the metal dip pen.

While a student in Paris, Romanian Petrache Poenaru received the world's first fountain pen patent on May 25, 1827. It was for his invention of a fountain pen with a barrel made from a large swan quill.

The inconvenience of having to continually dip a pen to replenish its ink supply stimulated the development of the fountain pen. The American inventor L.E. Waterman produced the first practical version of the fountain pen in 1884.

The first patent for a ballpoint pen was issued on October 30, 1888, to American inventor John J. Loud, who was attempting to make a writing instrument that would be able to write "on rough surfaces-such as wood, coarse wrapping-paper, and other articles." His invention was not commercialized and the patent eventually lapsed.

The modern ballpoint pen was patented in 1938 by Hungarian journalist László Bíró. The inexpensive, disposable Bic Cristal, the Bic Company's first product, is reportedly the most widely sold pen in the world.

The modern felt tip pen was invented by a man named Sidney Rosenthal in New York in 1953. His Magic Marker consisted of a glass tube of ink with a felt wick. By 1958 use of felt-tipped markers was commonplace for a variety of applications such as lettering, labeling, and creating posters.

The reason why NASA and the Russian cosmonauts use a specialized space pen instead of pencil in space is because the graphite of pencils is conductive and can cause short circuits and even fires. The pens have been used since the Apollo era and are still being used right now on the International Space Station.

A secret to Taylor Swift’s success in songwriting is her choice of pens. The singer-songwriter divulged  during her acceptance speech for the Songwriter-Artist of the Decade award,  she has a quill for "antiquated" phrasings inspired by Charlotte Brontë, a fountain pen for tracks with a "poetic twist" and a glitter gel pen for "frivolous, carefree, bouncy" lines that "don’t take themselves too seriously".

Despite producing about 38 billion ballpoint pens each year, China didn't acquire the technology to produce their own pen tips domestically until 2017.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica, The Mail On Sunday

Pelican

ANATOMY

Pelicans are a genus of large water birds comprising the family Pelecanidae.

They are characterized by a long beak and large throat pouch used for catching prey and draining water from the scooped up contents before swallowing.

The American white pelican can hold up to three gallons of water in its bill.

They have predominantly pale plumage, the exceptions being the brown and Peruvian pelicans.

The bills, pouches and bare facial skin of all species become brightly colored before the breeding season.

The wing span of a pelican may be 12 feet or more.

DISTRIBUTION AND HABITAT

Pelicans may be found in every continent except Antarctica..

The eight pelican species have a patchy global distribution, ranging latitudinally from the tropics to the temperate zone.

Pelicans frequent inland and coastal waters where they feed principally on fish, catching them at or near the water surface.

Four white-plumaged species tend to nest on the ground, and four brown or grey-plumaged species nest mainly in trees.

BEHAVIOR

Gregarious birds, pelicans often hunt cooperatively and breed colonially.

The brown pelican can dive into the ocean from about 60 feet up in the air to catch its lunch.

A pelican catches fish in its bill, flips it back to drain out water then swallows its prey at once.

RELATIONSHIP WITH HUMANS

The pelican has a long history of cultural significance in mythology, and in Christian and heraldic iconography.

The birds have long been persecuted because of their perceived competition with fishermen, and have suffered from habitat destruction, disturbance and environmental pollution.

In the 16th century a pelican was the name for a pronged instrument for extracting teeth.

Under London's 1977 Royal and Other Parks and Gardens Regulations, "touching a pelican" is forbidden without written permission.

FUN PELICAN FACTS

When the island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay was first explored by the Spanish in 1775, it was named "Isla de los Alcatraces" or "Island of the Pelicans."

The famous medical missionary Dr. Albert Schweitzer had a pet pelican named Parsifal.

Source Daily Express

Pelé

Edson Arantes do Nascimento was born to a poor family on October 23, 1940, in Tres Coracoes, Brazil. He was named after the inventor Thomas Edison.

Edson's nickname Pelé arose when he mispronounced the name of a local goalkeeper called Bile. It does not mean anything. He was also known as "Perola Negra" (Black Pearl).

Pelé began playing for a local minor-league clubs when he was a young teenager. He led Bauru Athletic to three consecutive São Paulo state youth championships between 1954 and 1956

He made his debut with the Santos Football Club in 1956. With Pelé at inside left forward, the team won several South American clubs' cups and the 1962 world club championship. His best season was 1958, when he scored 139 times.

Pelé is the all-time leading scorer with Santos.

Pelé holds the world record for being the youngest scorer in the FIFA World Cup: He was 17 years and 239 days when scored a goal for Brazil v Wales in 1958.

He led the Brazilian national soccer team to three World Cup victories in 1958, 1962, and 1970 and to permanent possession of the Jules Rimet Trophy. He is the only footballer to win the World Cup three times.

Pelé dribbling past a defender during Malmö FF–Brazil 1–7 in May 1960. 

Pele scored his 1,000th goal on November 19, 1969 playing for Santos against Vasco da Gama in Rio de Janeiro.

The legendary footballer retired in 1974 but made a comeback in 1975 after accepting a reported $7 million contract for three years with the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League, making him the world's highest-paid sportsman. He said he came out of retirement, not for the money, but to "make soccer truly popular in the United States."

Pelé played the final game of his storied career at the Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey in 1977. He played the first half for his current club, the New York Cosmos, and the second half for his old Brazilian club Santos.

In his career he played in 1,363 matches and scored 1,281 goals, the most ever football career goals.

In addition to his many accomplishments in football, Pelé published several best-selling autobiographies, starred in several documentary and semi-documentary films, and composed numerous musical pieces, including the entire sound track for the 1977 movie Pele.

In 1969, Pelé’s visit to Nigeria caused a 48-hour ceasefire in their civil war. Nine years later, he was the 1978 recipient of the International Peace Award.

Pele was a devout Catholic who believed his football ability was God's gift. 

Pelé was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his work as a Unicef goodwill ambassador in 1997.

Pelé by Fábio Rodrigues Pozzebom/Agência Brasil Wikipedia Commons

In 1999, Pelé was voted World Player of the Century by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS). That same year, he was elected Athlete of the Century by the IOC.

Pele died  from multiple organ failure, a complication of colon cancer, on December 29, 2022, at the age of 82.

Source Comptons Encyclopedia