This is the May 2024 edition of my fascinating facts newsletter, which includes a range of interesting topics. This includes writeups about volcanic islands, Nostradamus, experimental aircraft, deadly events and much more.
Fascinating Facts May 2024 Contents
You can download the full newsletter to read HERE, however some snippets are listed below.
Flower of the month The Lily of the Valley
The May birth flower is lily of the valley. For all its delicate flowers and sweet scent, the lily of the valley, due to the concentration of cardiac glycosides, is highly poisonous if consumed by humans or other animals. Read More…
THE DREAM OF A WATER POWERED ENGINE
An ever present dream which many inventors have chased is the water powered vehicle engine. They have been the subject of innumerable patents, newspaper and popular science magazine articles, local television news coverage, and websites. Some were found to be pseudoscience and others tied to investment fraud. A pure water engine produces power from only water. Many engines have been claimed to produce fuel from water on board with no other energy input but when investigated are, or may be, a hybrid claiming to derive some of its energy from water in addition to a conventional source. Read More…
VOLCANIC ISLANDS
Luckily, in the UK, we only experience tremors, not volcanic eruptions. They show the devastating side of the natural world. We do not live where tectonic plates diverge or converge. A consolation is most of Earth’s plate boundaries are underwater, therefore most volcanoes are underwater. There are more than 1,500 potentially active volcanoes and are the world’s most dynamic landforms. They have the ability to grow by accretion or shatter. Read More…
WHO WAS NOSTRADAMUS?
His prophecies, published in 1555, are a collection of 942 poetic quatrains that allegedly predict future events. Concerned about being attacked by the church for his astrological predictions, his prophecies were written in Greek, Italian, Latin, and Provençal, in a mixed word order to obscure their meaning. People have decoded his prophecies and suggest he has correctly predicted natural disasters, man-made calamities, and the deaths of notable people. Read More…
EXPERIMENTAL CONCEPT AIRCRAFT
The history of aviation extends for more than two thousand years, from the earliest forms of aviation such as kites and attempts at tower jumping to supersonic and hypersonic flight by powered, heavier-than-air jets. At the end of the 20th century, digital electronics produced advances in flight instrumentation and “fly-by-wire” systems. The 21st century saw the large-scale use of pilotless drones for military, civilian, and leisure use. With digital controls, inherently unstable aircraft such as flying wings became possible. Read More…
WHY NO ENGLISH NATIONAL DRESS
National costume expresses an identity through garments which usually relate to a geographic area/country or a period of time in history, but can also indicate legal, social, marital and/or religious status. Many countries have one. The most obvious being the Japanese kimono, the Indian sari, and the German lederhosen. all dating back to traditional customs. Although England has seen many fashions through the ages and never had a continuous English, one has only to look at historic paintings where the style of dress was never consistent over the years. Read More…
THE PHANTOM ISLAND
Sandy Island has long appeared on maps dating back to the early 19th and 20th centuries. This island was supposedly located in the Pacific Ocean, northwest of Australia in the Coral Sea. Its first reference is in Cook’s “Chart of Discoveries made in the South Pacific Ocean” in 1776. It was recorded as being 14.9 miles long and 3.1 miles wide –not something one would miss!! One hundred years later, a whaling ship called Velocity also reported Sandy Island. However, there is only one problem, it does not actually exist. Read More…
