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Welcome back to the second edition of Fifteen Minute Facts where you can pick up all sorts of general knowledge and fun facts to dazzle your family and friends with. This month we take a look at the King of Rock and Roll, The King of the football pitch and the king (for some) of the London sky, The Shard. I have included some poems to make you smile and some wacky art that does odd tricks to your brain. Enjoy!
1898 words which should take the average reader about 14.7 minutes to read.
đĄ Words
Dismal days
Photo by Elyse Chia on Unsplash
There is no escaping the doom and gloom in the early months of the year. Grey, short days noted for the rainy, cold weather which adds to the glum of the bleakest time of year.
The word dismal has ancient roots, its history stretches back to ancient Egypt when Egyptian astrologers marked and identified 24 days throughout the year as dies Aegyptiaci (Egyptian days).
Medieval calendars marked these days as unlucky with the letter D (dies Aegyptiaci) as a reminder that no important event should be scheduled on these dates. No doctorâs appointments, no trips to the barbers and definitely no travelling. They became known as âdies maliâ âevil daysâ in Latin which further down the line became dismal in English.
Source: Word Perfect by Susie Dent
đ Poem
Brian Bilston is our poet for February and thereâs not a lot of information about him. No photos, no back story, no tea! But, he does spend a lot of time on Twitter sharing his Twittle poems which are a lovely comma in the endless chat of Twitterdom. Well worth a follow for the âsmile as you scrollâ.
What Brian Bilston says about himselfâŠ
Frequently described as the âPoet Laureate of Twitterâ, Brian Bilston is a poet clouded in the pipe smoke of mystery. Very little is known about him other than the fragments of information revealed on social media: his penchant for tank tops, his enjoyment of Vimto, his dislike of Jeremy Clarkson.
In 2014 he became the first person to retain the title of Pipe Smoker of the Year [Poetry section] and, over the years, he has won numerous awards for cycling proficiency, first aid, and general tidiness. He won the 2015 Great British Write Off poetry prize for a poem disguised in a Venn diagram.
Source: Brian Bilston
Check out his Ideation to Poemification website for some great amusement.
đ§ Music
Elvis Presley (1935 - 1977)
Elvis was an American singer and actor known as the "King of Rock and Roll". He is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. His songs and his provocative performance led him to both great success and initial controversy. American parents werenât impressed with his sexy hip-swaying and, worried for their children, they burned and hanged his effigy after one of his performances. đ±
His music career began in 1954 recording at Sun Records and he was a pioneer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues.
Presley's first RCA Victor single, "Heartbreak Hotel", was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States. Within a year, RCA would sell ten million Presley singles. With a series of successful network television appearances and chart-topping records, Presley became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll;
In November 1956, Presley made his film debut in Love Me Tender.
He was drafted into military service in 1958 and relaunched his recording career two years later with some of his most commercially successful work. He devoted much of the 1960s to making Hollywood films and soundtrack albums, most of them critically derided. Some of his most famous films included Jailhouse Rock (1957), Blue Hawaii (1961), and Viva Las Vegas (1964).
He died suddenly in 1977 at his Graceland estate at the age of 42.
Having sold over 400 million records worldwide, Presley is recognized as the best-selling solo music artist of all time by Guinness World Records. He won three Grammy Awards and he holds several records, including the most RIAA-certified gold and platinum albums, the most albums charted on the Billboard 200, the most number-one albums by a solo artist on the UK Albums Chart, and the most number-one singles by any act on the UK Singles Chart.
He is placed at #3 of The Rolling Stoneâs 100 Greatest Artists
đ Inspirational people
Pele
Photo credit: Creative Commons
Pele, regarded as one of the greatest football players of all time, is a classic rags-to-riches story. The Brazilian footballer, the only player to win three World Cup titles, scored a total of 1,281 goals during his career. He was dazzling on the pitch and just as inspirational off-pitch.
Edson Arantes do nascimento was born in TrĂȘs CoraçÔes, Minas Gerais, Brazil. On mispronouncing the name of a goalkeeper âBileâ by calling him Pele, he was ridiculed and nicknamed pele which he wasnât happy about but, the more he complained, the more it stuck. Years later he discovered that the word BilĂ© is Hebrew for âmiracle.â
He grew up in poverty in SĂŁo Paulo and his father taught him to play football. He would practise with a sock stuffed with newspapers as there was no money for a football.
Playing indoor league as a teenager helped increase his speed of reactions and at 15 he was signed by Santos FC. It wasnât long before he became marked as a future star and at 16 he was the top scorer in the Brazilian league. He was already so good that the Brazilian president declared him a national treasure to prevent foreign clubs buying him.
In 1958, still a teenager, he helped Brazil to the 1958 World Cup victory beating Sweden 5-2. He finished the competition with six goals to his name and a reputation for the brightest prospect in football.
In 1966, Brazil were hot favourites but Pele was world famous and he suffered some vicious tackles from the Bulgarian and Hungarian players. Rules were different back then, there were no substitutions and players were not sent off for committing fouls. Brazil was knocked out at the group stage and a very disappointed Pele vowed to never play a World Cup again.
In 1970, Pele was delivering his best game and this tournament included some of the greatest and most iconic moments of any world cup including Peleâs header saved by Englandâs Gordon Banks. Brazil reached the final and beat Italy 4-1. It is widely regarded as the most memorable world cup final and a fitting tribute to Peleâs international career. The âbeautiful gameâ as Pele was known to call it.
Pele wasn't the tallest player at 5â 8â but he was fast. He was agile, powerful and strong. He played with both feet, was great in the air and had great timing and accuracy. He would mesmerise defenders with his eyes and send them the wrong way.
Although a very competitive player he was considered a fair player with a good sense of sportsmanship.
Pele is one of the few sportsmen who transcend their sport to become global icons.
VIDEO
đš Art
Op Art
Op art was a major development of painting in the 1960s that used geometric forms to create optical effects
Riley, Bridget; Movement in Squares; Arts Council Collection; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/movement-in-squares-64038
Riley began painting figure subjects in a semi-impressionist manner, then changed to pointillism around 1958, mainly producing landscapes. In 1960 she evolved a style in which she explored the dynamic potentialities of optical phenomena. These so-called 'Op-art' pieces, such as Fall, 1963 (Tate Gallery T00616), produce a disorienting physical effect on the eye.
Fete 1989 Bridget Riley born 1931 Purchased 1999 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P78333
The effects created by op art ranged from the subtle, to the disturbing and disorienting.
Op painting used a framework of purely geometric forms as the basis for its effects and also drew on colour theory and the physiology and psychology of perception.
Source: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/bridget-riley-1845
đïž Architecture
The Shard
Modern architecture - Neo futurism - Renzo Piano
Photo credit: The Shard
The Shard, also known as the Shard of Glass, was designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, in Southwark, London. It is 309.6 metres high and is the tallest building in the United Kingdom.
Construction began in March 2009 and was completed in November 2012. The glass-clad pyramidal tower has 72 habitable floors, with a viewing gallery and open-air observation deck on the 72nd floor. The Shard was developed by Sellar Property Group and is jointly owned by Sellar Property (5%) and the State of Qatar (95%).
âOne of the great beauties of architecture is that each time it is like life starting all over again.â
RENZO PIANO
Sellar flew to Berlin in 2000 to meet the Italian architect Renzo Piano for lunch. He said that Piano sketched a spire-like sculpture on the back of the restaurantâs menu and thatâs where the story began.
The Shard was conceived as a vertical city where people could live, work and relax. It is home to offices, restaurants, the 5-star Shangri-La Hotel, exclusive residences and the UKâs highest viewing gallery, The View from The Shard, which offers a 360-degree view.
The Shard is a timeless reminder of the power of imagination to inspire change. https://www.the-shard.com/about
Fun facts
The Shard is 309.6 metres, or 1,016 feet, high
It is 95 storeys tall, with level 72 the highest habitable floor.
A fox was found on the 72nd floor towards the end of construction. The fox, nicknamed Romeo by staff, is believed to have survived on food left by construction workers.
Its exterior is covered by 11,000 glass panels - equivalent in area to eight football pitches or two and a half Trafalgar Squares.
The building is served by 36 lifts, some of which are double-decker. Lifts in The Shard travel at speeds of up to 6 metres a second.
On a clear day you can see for 40 miles or 64 kilometers.
Sources: Wikipedia, RPBW, the Shard
đ Book Talk
I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys
This is a brilliant YA novel that I couldnât put down. Ruta Sepetys transports you to Romania 1989.
Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu wants to be a writer, only he lives under the tyrannical dictatorship of Nicolae CeauÈescu and Romanians arenât allowed to dream. They live a life bound by rules and force in a country governed by isolation and fear.
Cristian is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer and he has two choices: betray everyone and everything he loves or use his position to undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe.
He risks everything to unmask the truth behind the regime and joins a revolution to fight for change, but what is the cost of freedom?
A gut-wrenching, startling window into communist Romania and the citizen spy network that devastated a nation.
đ„ Fun Fact of the Month
The Human Body
Photo by Jannes Glas on Unsplash
In their lifetime the average human will
grow 28m of fingernails - just a bit longer than a standard sized swimming pool.
Spend a total of 3 years on the toilet.
Produce 40,000 litres of urine.
Shed around 250 kg of dead skin.
Talk for 12 years
Grow 950 km of hair on their head - thatâs around the length of the UK.
An adult human body contains 206 bones.
The longest is the femur in the upper leg.
The shortests are three tiny bones called ossicles in the ear.
