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Notes & Queries, 15th November, 2013 - Was there ever an MI1?

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  image generated by Grok On the 14 th of August, 2013, a man calling himself Peter Koller wrote cryptically in the birthdays section of The Telegraph : “Pavimenti is 125 years old and living proof that the secret of preserving mental acuity in old age lies in a handful of loosely connected words, alluded to in anger.” Pavimenti is not, as is implied by Koller, the oldest surviving person in Great Britain. They are a composite, created during the late 1880s by the seven men who compiled the midweek Highgate Tree Puzzle for the Whitehall Clarion . The newspaper, which still exists, has a solid reputation for foreign correspondence. It was distributed nationally up until 1945. The end of the Second World War marked the beginning of a gradual withdrawal from provincial newsagents. Despite its shrinking footprint, it has adhered to a publishing schedule of six daily issues (there is no Saturday edition). It is now sold exclusively for £2 from a single kiosk, located at the halfway...
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Notes & Queries 6th November, 2013 - When did James Bond stop smoking?

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image by Grok   James Bond's unsuccessful attempt at giving up cigarettes forms a minor plot point in Patrick Redinger's short story – A Matter of Proportion . As a rule the character either smokes, or does not smoke, according to the whims of his handler. At the time of writing this is the author John Evoy (a pro-smoker), thought to be a pseudonym of Douglas Maskey, who is better known for his historical epics set against a backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars. As a thought experiment, let us imagine for a moment that we have managed to drug the fictional James Bond, perhaps using a dart coated with a rare South American poison, fired from the tip of a customised umbrella; the kind that is only sold by a small family-run shop in Kiev. Let us assume that, having rendered this version of Bond unconscious, we have the power to set in motion the most extraordinary of all extraordinary renditions, removing him from the pages of the novels that bear his name and transplanting him into th...
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Notes & Queries 1st November 2013 - Will the Milky Way collide with the Andromeda galaxy?

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  image generated by Grok Naresh Pandey developed his theory of galactic migration while working a part-time job at the Transport Department in New Delhi, where he helped to gather data for a traffic mediation study. It was from the platform of a cherry picker, raised 30 feet above various busy intersections in the Indian capital city, that he looked down upon the jostling vehicles and imagined each one as a galaxy moving independently through space. At the time of his eureka moment, Pandey was a hard-up PhD student of astrophysics at the Meerut Institute of Astronomical Sciences. The university is built around the ruins of the Bhumimitra Observatory, which date to the first century AD, although an observatory is thought to have stood there for many hundreds of years before that time. His theory, which did not arrive fully-formed, was initially sketched-out and developed over a series of papers and lectures. In 1997 these articles were re-written in layman's terms by their author a...
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Notes & Queries - 29th October, 2013: Can anyone improve on Alex Ferguson's retirement plan?

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  image generated by Grok If he can overlook the implied association with one of Manchester United's north London rivals, Sir Alex would make a valuable addition to the board of The Foxes Arsenal Woodland Trust, in Bicester ('Footie Wood' as it is referred to by fans). The wood is made up entirely of Cobbs Oak. Each tree is dedicated to a former footballer, who are commemorated on plaques planted at the base of the trunks. Its origins lie in a request made in the final will and testament of the Oxford United star goalkeeper, Gerald Deller, that an oak tree be planted in his memory. His will went on to stipulate that, when the tree was fully grown, it should be chopped down and used to make goalposts. It wasn't until 1955, three years after Deller's death that the site of Foxes Arsenal was chosen as the location for his memorial. The land, which had lain derelict for many years, had been occupied by a large munitions depot during the First World War and by an aerodro...
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Notes & Queries, 23rd October 2013: How can I help the ladybirds?

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image generated by Grok If you have a large sum of money burning a hole in your pocket and are planning on spending some of your fortune redecorating your home over the coming weeks, then you could invest in some Dimelow Domina Avem wallpaper.  The paper, which is hand-woven from reed fibres on a bespoke loom at the Dimelow factory in Wrexham, comes embossed with a variety of patterns. The manufacturers are happy to incorporate your own designs upon request. After it has been hung, the paper is brushed with a special sugar solution which is absorbed into the raised parts of the pattern. These act as tiny reservoirs.  During early Autumn, ladybirds who have found their way indoors to escape the cold temperatures will gravitate to the Domina Avem where they will plug themselves into one of the pronounced areas. The sugars stored-up in the paper will sustain them during their hibernation period which lasts until early spring.  I first encountered this unusual home décor in...
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Notes and Queries, 20th October 2013: Has anyone actually paid their restaurant bill by washing up?

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  image generated by Grok One of the home economics teachers at my old secondary school was obsessed with a woman called Edith Morfett, who had paid for her daughter’s lavish wedding ceremony, at The Durrance Hotel in Teignmouth, by taking in their laundry. She did this for seven years until the debt was paid off. Ms Morfett lived in a Mornedh – a traditional style of house that is unique to the south-west coast of England. They are built over or among rock pools. The ground floor is designed to flood at high tide. Traditionally, Mornedh's were used as landlocked lobster pots and fish traps, providing their owners with a subsistence living, rather like a seaside croft. There is sketchy historical evidence to suggest that, prior to being used for human habitation, Mornedh's were shrines built to provide a home for the sea when it crawled up onto the land. (This claim, made by Professor Gerald Hillier in the 1960s, goes in and out of fashion; it has been discredited and reapprais...
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Guardian Notes & Queries 16 10 13 - Why is Humpty Dumpty an egg?

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  image generated by ChatGTP In July 1945, the chief architect of the atomic bomb, J Robert Oppenheimer, pondering on the success of the recent nuclear test at White Sands, recalled a line from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” One hundred-and-forty-three years earlier, and approximately five-thousand miles to the east, another man of science, this one a “rattle-brained” naturalist by the name of Edward Caton, had also earned himself the moniker 'destroyer of worlds.' On this occasion the title was not self-appointed, but was bestowed upon him by his peers at The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Knowledge of the Natural Sciences (later it was renamed The Royal Society of the Natural Sciences by men with more common sense than its founders). Caton's grand folly, which was to earn himself a toehold in the footnotes of history, was the careless placement of a perfectly spherical gharial egg (a gharial is a narrow-jawed, fish-eat...
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