Interesting Facts

28th May 1503 – James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor were married according to a Papal Bull by Pope Alexander VI. A Treaty of Everlasting Peace between Scotland and England signed on that occasion resulted in a peace that lasted ten years. 1533 – The Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declares the marriage of King Henry VIII of England to Anne Boleyn valid. 1859 – Big Ben was drawn on a carriage pulled by 16 horses from Whitechapel Bell Foundry to the Palace of Westminster. 1934 – The Glyndebourne festival in England was inaugurated. 1937 – Neville Chamberlain became British Prime Minister. 1942 – In retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Nazis in Czechoslovakia killed over 1800 people. 1952 – Women in Greece were given the right to vote. 1959: Two monkeys, Abe and Baker, became the first living creatures to survive a space mission. (Able died from the effects of anesthesia given for removal of implanted electrodes.) 1964 – The Palestine Libe...

15th May 1567 – Mary Queen of Scots married James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, her third husband. 1718 – James Puckle, a London lawyer, patented the world's first machine gun. 1756 – The Seven Years' War began when England declared war on France. 1800 – George III survived two assassination attempts in one day. 1905 – Las Vegas, Nevada, was founded when 110 acres (0.4 km²), in what later would become downtown, were auctioned off. 1928 - Mickey Mouse appeared in his first animated cartoon "Plane Crazy". 1935 – The Moscow Metro was opened to the public. 1936 – Amy Johnson arrived back in England after a record-breaking return flight to Cape Town. 1940 – McDonald's opened its first restaurant in San Bernardino, California. 1957 - Britain dropped its first H-bomb. 1974 – Terrorists attacked an Israeli school, killing a total of 31 people, including 22 schoolchidren. 1988 – The Red Army began its withdrawal from Afghanistan.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary the use of "la la" as an adjective (as in La La Land), dates back to 1800s, and means so so. (Los Angeles (LA) was given the nickname La La Land around 1979, to express how out of touch with reality the whole Hollywood scene was (is).  I think the latest Oscar winner is a great example of this, but that's just me. "La la" is also the sound you can make when you don't know the words in a song, and the Online Etymology Dictionary says la-la is imitative of babbling speech in many languages: Greek lalage "babble, prattle," Sanskrit lalalla as an imitation of stammering, Latin lallare "to sing to sleep, lull," German lallen "to stammer," Lithuanian laluoti "to stammer.") Have you ever sung along to a song with la la la la? This is the ultimate la la la la la song:-

On the island of Foula, in the Shetlands, it is Christmas Day today. (Foula, located about sixteen miles from the west mainland of Shetland, is one of Great Britain’s most remote permanently inhabited islands. Way back, in 1752, they remained on the Julian calendar when the rest of the Kingdom of Great Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar. They even adhered to the Julian calendar by keeping 1800 as a leap year, but when they didn't observe a leap year in 1900, they ended up one day ahead of the Julian calendar and 12 days behind the Gregorian calendar. Confused?  You will be. This all means that they observe Christmas Day on 6th January, the day we all take down our decorations for 12th night (epiphany), and they celebrate New Year's Day on 13th January. Well, I guess it keeps Father Christmas busy.  Happy Christmas to the people of Foula. I will join in this evening with a glass of sherry, just to be polite.)