1,689 light bulbs, and why you should read this on Black Friday

It's not often that I give my readers the answer to a quiz question before stating the question.

Those 1,689 light bulbs? That's how many were installed in The Church of The Saviour on Spilled Blood in St Petersburg when it was completed in 1907. The spilled blood refers to the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. On 1 March 1881, Alexander was returning to the Winter Palace after a military inspection when he was killed by the second of two bombs. His son, Alexander III, the new Tsar, decided to build a magnificent church in his memory and on the exact spot where he been mortally wounded (he was taken back to the Winter Palace but died there).

Devastated by world wars and the revolution, the church was nearly demolished but restoration began in 1980 and it is today a museum.

The quiz question?

Which was the first major church in the world to be designed to be lit by electricity?

Remember that when you're designing a Christmas quiz.

I discovered this initially from an offhand comment in the latest Reacher book: The Sentinel. Which I have just finished. Reacher is a character created by Lee Child. This is the latest in the series - Jack Reacher 25 - and the writing has now been taken over by Lee Child's brother, Andrew while Lee concentrates on Reacher movies. Reacher is an ex military policeman, 6ft 5ins tall with "hands the size of dinner plates". In Never Go Back (Jack Reacher 18), he is described as having "a six-pack like a cobbled city street, a chest like a suit of NFL armor, biceps like basketballs, and subcutaneous fat like a Kleenex tissue." So who did they cast as Reacher in the movie? Tom Cruise, who is 5ft 7ins tall. Hollywood eh? Everyone makes mistakes.

If you need escapist fiction with intricate but entertaining plots, and a good guy hero, try the Reacher books.

Myself, I've just bought Standing Our Ground: The Triumph of Faith Over Gun Violence: A Mother's Story by a US Congresswoman, Lucy McBath, whose 17 year old son was gunned down in Florida on Black Friday 2012. Since then she has campaigned for gun control.

But what struck me most when I heard her story was that every year on Black Friday (today) she writes to her deceased son, sharing her life with him.

That is what made me order the book. When it arrives and when I have finished it - and passed it on to whoever is interested - I will review it in this blog.

Eat your heart out, Columbus

"Nearly 500 years before the birth of Christopher Columbus, a band of European sailors left their homeland behind in search of a new world. Their high-prowed Viking ship sliced through the cobalt waters of the Atlantic Ocean as winds billowed the boat’s enormous single sail. After traversing unfamiliar waters, the Norsemen aboard the wooden ship spied a new land, dropped anchor and went ashore." This is what history.com tells me.

Fake news? Apparently not. Remains of Norse buildings were found in the 1960s in Newfoundland. An 11th century Norwegian coin was found in Maine in 1957.

While these are perhaps slightly speculative, there is clear archaeological evidence of a Viking settlement in Greenland. From the 10th century.

The Vikings of course were one of the greatest maritime cultures of all time, so it makes sense that they should have found their way to North America before other European cultures. From Wikipedia, this map shows areas of Scandinavian settlement in the eighth (dark red), ninth (red), tenth (orange) centuries. Yellow denotes areas conquered by the Normans in the 11th century. Green denotes areas subjected to Viking raids.

Why then do we think of Christopher Columbus as the discoverer of America? Doesn't Canada or Greenland count? Are the Viking Embassies asleep on the job?

Interestingly, 9 October is Leif Erikson Day in the USA [for balance, they also have a Columbus Day]. Eriksen was that Greenland guy and may indeed have been the Newfoundland discoverer. President (1923-1929) Calvin Coolidge apparently gave recognition to Leif Erikson as the discoverer of America.

I guess those Iberians just have better PR people.

Aliens in Georgia

Today's Times reports that "Alien worms spread terror in Georgia".

I know, you'll think I'm on one of my politician-mocking shticks. Not so. This really is about worms. Nothing to do with the fact that Georgia stole millions of Trump's votes. Nothing to do with Rudy Giuliani. Real, animal worms. To be precise, the Hammerhead Worm. Yes, even more opportunities for poor taste jokes.

The hammerhead worm, so called because of its distinctive shape,

is a member of the Bipalium genus of large predatory land planarians. What is a planarian? It's a flatworm of the class Turnbellaria. For those of you who have long forgotten your biology lessons, here are some reminders of biological classifications and rankings:

• A class contains orders
• Orders contain families
• Families contain genuses - correct plural but more usually genera
• Genera contain species
• The Bipalium genus contains approximately 50 species

I researched a number of reports of this but sadly none of them identified the species of the individual in question. Shoddy journalism; do your research, people!

Anyway, these guys are only "alien" in the sense that a gardener in Georgia said "it looked like an alien". I could find no information about what actual aliens have been seen in Georgia, to enable our gardening friend to make his judgment.

[fans of The Mandalorian will be particularly delighted to see this little guy]

The worm, however is indigenous to the USA.

Hammerhead worms are carnivorous and prey mostly on other worms, particularly earthworms. They produce tetrodotoxin, the same deadly neurotoxin produced by pufferfish, according to a study from Utah State University.

The Times reports that James Murphy from the University of Georgia "emphasised that there were only a few of the worms. As long as you are not eating numerous worms it is not something to be concerned about."

Wait, who are you talking to? There are people in Georgia who eat worms? Are you serious? Maybe he's from the University of Georgia Department of Comedy. Here we were, having serious discussions about biology, and you lower the tone? Come on! Be serious.

No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog post.

Turkey revenge

In the United States, a fluffy white turkey called Corn refused to pardon a fluffed up orange turkey called Donald, saying "No! No pardon! YOU'RE FIRED!".

What kind of a name is Corn anyway? That would be like me calling my sons Fish and Chips. There are in fact plenty of people called Chips but I couldn't find any named Fish. Although there is a character called Fishcake in Philip Reeve's Hungry City Chronicles.

In Russia, a tiger called Buffalo refused to pardon a steroid-enhanced balding tiger called Vlad, saying "No! No pardon! YOU'RE RETIRED!"

In Belarus, an ostrich called Lizard refused to pardon a marmite-enhanced red ostrich called Alex, saying "No! No pardon! YOU'RE UNHIRED!"

In Cornwall, an old man refused to pardon a pasty called Pete, saying "No! No pardon! YOU'RE TIRED!"

In better news, an old lady pardoned a flirtatious fly called Felicity, which she had swallowed. I don't know why.

The fly pardoned a gangling spider called Sid, who had been hired to eat her.

The spider pardoned a pretty little bird called Betsy, who flew threateningly close.

The bird pardoned a snooty cat called Clarence, who was jumping up trying to catch her.

The cat pardoned a menacing dog called Dennis, who growled at him.

The dog pardoned a lumbering cow called Cordelia, who was a bully.

The cow pardoned a handsome horse called Hezekiah, because he was kicking her.

And they all refused to pardon the old lady for starting the fake news story in the first place, saying "No! No pardon! YOU'RE WEIRD!"

Horses, Lego and Darwin

Horses to helicopters. That's evolution. Horses are, at least were, cavalry. Fast moving units.

⇉

Elephants not so much. They evolved to tanks.

Pterodactyls to birds to Spitfires to drones. That's evolution.

Canoes to triremes to battleships to...the Millennium Falcon.

Mules to buses to bullet trains to teleporters.

Apes to humans to...Arnold Schwarzenegger. The archetypal cyborg.

We have a great deal to thank Charles Darwin for.

Where will it all end?

Flags and anthems

I recently gave some examples of national flags and commented on their attractiveness (to me). Also I enjoy listening to, and talking about, national anthems. I grew up in a post war generation which was beginning to question issues of patriotism and reverence. I was always amazed in the cinema when people stood up for the national anthem. That seems odd nowadays but the country had recently fought and won against a terrible enemy and there was much communal pride.

I can't recall ever standing up for the national anthem. A young man has to make a stand, yes? I know, always a rebel...

Anthems have two aspects - music and words. Who can fail to be stirred by the music to the Welsh anthem (Gwlad, Gwlad)? Or La Marseillaise? In comparison, God Save the Queen is turgid. No, I'll go further. It's a dirge. Imagine trudging through mud. Thomas Arne's Rule Britannia is at least uplifting.

But here's the thing. We come to the words. "Britannia, rule the waves" is so meaningless that it can't be sung with any conviction. We don't even patrol the English Channel effectively, let alone rule any waves. So are we hooked on nostalgia? Obviously yes; but maybe all countries are.

But no, there are examples where a nation's anthem looks to the future:

Sounds the call to come together,
And united we shall stand,
Let us live and strive for freedom,
In South Africa our land.

Or elysian glories, as in this from Bangladesh:

My golden Bengal, I love you.
Forever thy skies, thy air set my heart in tune as if it were a flute,
O mother! The aroma of the mango orchard in Falgun drives me crazy,
Ah, what a thrill!
O mother! In Ogrohayon time sees sweet smiles all through mature fields of paddy.

Spare a thought for the Spanish, whose anthem has no words. Aha, no hostage to future fortune, then. Do their athletes hum their way through it? I checked on YouTube; their footballers just look embarrassed.

Which leads us back to the tunes. How many of us have fidgeted for what seems like hours hoping for the end of the Italian anthem, a symphonic movement of nearly two minutes. Nothing beats the  Uruguay anthem though (6 minutes). Thank goodness. At least God Save the Queen is over quickly.

But I digress; what about the flags? I previously lauded the flags of Kiribati

and Seychelles.

They are colourful and expressive of sunshine, expansiveness and hope.

To those I could add:

Belize

 Brazil

South Korea

Guatemala

They are at least interesting. Otherwise it's uninspiring stripes, crosses and blobs. I'll leave it to you to decide which you like best.