A poisoned chalice?

Jenni Murray, the former editor of Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4, once told listeners how she was put off religion by what she was told by a vicar during Holy Communion.

As she waited her turn to be passed the chalice containing the wine, from which every communicant would take a sip, she noticed that the man in front of her in the queue was coughing and was clearly unwell. She did not fancy being passed the chalice that he had just sipped wine from, and she said so.

However, it was what the vicar said that was the real turn-off. According to him, it was impossible to catch anything from a communion chalice, not because he always wiped the rim before passing it on, but because it had been blessed by a priest and was therefore miraculously free of germs.

Christianity asks its adherents to believe all sorts of highly unlikely things – Virgins births, rising from the dead and so on – but the ability of a vicar’s prayer to sanitise silverware was clearly one belief too many for Jenni!

© John Welford

The dragon of Halong Bay

Halong Bay, in northern Vietnam, is one of the world’s most remarkable marine landscapes. It is an inlet of the Gulf of Tonkin, some 1500 sq km in size, that contains around 2000 steep-sided islands and islets, formed from karst limestone some 300 million years ago. Because of their precipitous nature and height (up to 100 metres), most of the islands are uninhabited. Some of the larger islands contain caves and lakes. 

The Bay is an important refuge for wildlife, both on the islands and in the water. More than 150 species of coral and 1000 species of fish have been identified, and the area is therefore an important resource for both seabirds and fishermen. 

Settlement on the shores of Halong Bay is forbidden apart from fishermen and their families, who live in floating villages of houseboats, but the Bay is still a threatened environment due to the huge number of tourists it attracts and the mess they leave behind them. There are also threats from industrial pollution. Halong Bay has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1994, which has been helpful in efforts to maintain its environmental integrity.

But what was that about a dragon? The name Ha Long means “descending dragon”, the legend being that in ancient times the gods sent a dragon to defend the local population from invaders. The dragon chased the invaders back through the bay, swishing its tail as it did so. Any pieces of land that got in its way were cut up into smaller and smaller islands. The grateful locals named the Bay after the dragon, which never left but lives today in a cave deep below the surface of the water, ensuring the well-being of the houseboat dwellers. 

That sounds reasonable enough, surely?

© John Welford

Zodiacal nonsense

The name Zodiac refers to the twelve constellations of stars that are of particular interest to astrologers. Everyone knows which “sign” they belong to, but what do they mean in reality?

The plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun is known as the Ecliptic. It is also the plane within which all the recognised planets orbit. Given that the passage taken by Earth round the Sun takes one year to complete, the star background on the opposite side of the Sun as seen from Earth also changes.

The ancient Greeks distinguished twelve constellations though which the Sun appeared to pass. These are the Zodiacal constellations of Capricorn, Aquarias, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio and Sagittarius. It has to be said that they are not necessarily the most recognisable constellations in the night sky!

One problem with determining these as the Zodiacal constellations is that they are not all the same size, and so it is not true that the Sun is “in Leo” (for example) for one month before moving entirely out of Leo and into Virgo.

An even greater problem is that the degree of the Earth’s tilt has changed slightly since ancient times, and this is enough to have disrupted the pattern of the Zodiac constellations in terms of their appearance in twelve equal episodes.

However, these problems do not seem to have bothered the astrologers, who stick to the original Zodiacal dates on the assumption that the mythological attributes of the creatures whose names have been given to the constellations are just as relevant to the personalities of people born at specific times of the year as they ever were.

Of course, given that the whole concept was barmy in the first place, the fact that the Zodiac constellations are in the wrong places makes not a blind bit a difference – it was nonsense in ancient times and still is today!

© John Welford

Two lighthouses - haunted or cursed

Lighthouses, especially abandoned ones, are often cited as buildings that are subject to ghostly goings-on. This is hardly surprising given that they stand as isolated towers in remote locations where they are battered by waves and winds. There are many stories of lighthouse keepers who have disappeared without trace, or been murdered by colleagues who had lost their minds as a result of having to live in a virtual prison for months on end. The Point of Ayr lighthouse, in North Wales, is reputed to be one such haunted lighthouse.

Point of Ayr

This is the most north-easterly point of Wales, on the western side of the Dee Estuary. The lighthouse was built in 1776 to warn ships approaching and leaving the port of Liverpool not to stray on to the sandbanks that stretch for miles into Liverpool Bay. It stands on the beach at Talacre and can be reached on foot at low tide. The building has not been used as a lighthouse since 1883 but the structure has been kept in good repair down to the present day.

Many people have reported odd sensations and sightings in the vicinity of the lighthouse, with some complaining of feeling unwell but recovering when they have left the area. There have also been sightings of a keeper on the walkway round the top of the tower. There is a story that a man named Raymond died there of a broken heart and that it is his sprit that troubles visitors.

There has been a “keeper” permanently on duty at the top of the lighthouse since 2010. This is a 7-foot-high metal sculpture created by Angela Smith, a local artist. She used many pieces of high-grade polished steel to build the figure, thus allowing the wind the whistle through his ribs and create all the eerie sounds one might want to hear!

Ship John Shoal

The shoal is in the upper reaches of Delaware Bay, on the New Jersey side of the border with Delaware. It is so named after the “John”, a ship that ran aground there on Christmas Eve 1797, thankfully with no loss of life or cargo. It was decided in 1850 that a lighthouse was needed on the shoal, but it was not completed until 1877.

The problem with the lighthouse was an apparent curse that affected anyone who stayed there for any length of time. The problem began in the 1880s and persisted for many years, with many keepers falling ill or even becoming paralysed. However, the “curse” turned out to have a cause that was far from supernatural – the lead-based red paint used on the structure had seeped into the rainwater tanks and poisoned the drinking water.

© John Welford

The Worm Charming World Championships

You may not think of worms as being particularly charming, but you can become a world champion worm charmer if you get your technique right!

The Worm Charming World Championships

The Worm Charming World Championships have been held at a primary school in Willaston, a village in Cheshire, England, ever since 1980. (There are two villages in Cheshire with this name – the one in question is between Nantwich and Crewe). The idea was the brainchild of the then deputy headteacher, John Bailey, but is now run under the auspices of the International Federation of Charming Worms and Allied Pastimes (which include underwater Ludo and ice tiddlywinks).

So what exactly is worm charming, I hear you cry, loudly? It is the art and science of persuading earthworms to come to the surface by just about any means short of actually digging them up. You can use a garden fork, but only as a tool for charming.

Competitors are allocated a plot of turfed land and must collect as many worms as they can in a given time. The winner is the person with most worms in their bucket at the end of that time. Needless to say, the world championships are conducted under controlled conditions to ensure that nobody takes an unfair advantage.

How to charm your worms

The method used to charm worms is vibration. If the soil is shaken in one way or another, worms will respond by heading for the surface. They do this naturally when there is heavy rain, for example, because they cannot survive in saturated conditions; so anything that feels similar to raindrops falling on the surface will elicit the same response, given that worms are incapable of telling the difference.

The method most favoured is to plunge a garden fork 15 centimetres into the ground and vibrate it by hitting the handle with a piece of wood, an activity that is known locally as “twanging”. Some people reckon that the playing of music is an effective charming method, and this is allowed under the rules. However, no substances may be placed on the ground, including water.

How to compete

For the World Championships, each competitor works a three-metre-square plot, assigned by lot, and there is room for up to 144 entrants. At a given signal the entrants must go to their plots and have half an hour to gather as many worms as they can. One problem is that “vibrated” worms will not necessarily pop up in the same plot as that of the competitor, but that is just hard luck; you can only catch worms that appear in your plot.

A competitor is allowed an assistant, called a “gillie”, whose job is to pick up the worms.

No worms are harmed during the competition, being placed in damp peat in the competitor’s container prior to counting, and released in the evening after the local birds have roosted. This is good luck for the worms, but not so hot for the birds.

The trophy, in the shape of a golden worm, goes to the collector of the most worms and there is also a silver trophy for the heaviest worm. 

The current world record was set in 2009 when the winners charmed 567 worms in their half hour, and the heaviest worm on record was found in 2011; it weighed 12.08 grams.

An interesting aspect of the Championship is that it reveals how worm numbers can vary due to weather conditions. For example, the winner in the year following the 2009 world record could only find 43 worms. Even so, worm charming, in any year, demonstrates just how many worms there are in any given area and the vital role they play in turning the soil over and distributing nutrients.

As the photo shows, the event is hugely popular with young and old and is also a great fundraiser at five pounds an entry and one pound to watch. It is an idea that could be copied just about anywhere by community groups that want to organise a fun day out and raise a bit of cash in the process.

© John Welford

The ring finger

The fourth finger (if the thumb counts as the first!) is traditionally the finger on which engagement and wedding rings are worn. But why is this?

It comes from an ancient (and entirely erroneous) belief that a nerve runs from this finger directly to the heart. Given that the heart has always been renowned as the seat of love – hence “giving your heart” and having “heart-felt emotions” – the link to the rings that signified love was appropriate enough.

This idea is also the reason why the finger has been called the “medical finger”. The Greeks and Romans reckoned that the nerve mentioned above would “warn the heart” if the finger came into contact with anything noxious, so the finger was used to stir medical concoctions. Presumably, if your heart jumped a beat during this process you would stop stirring and re-constitute your mixture so that it would be less likely to kill the patient!

Despite the complete lack of evidence for this belief, some people still maintain the superstition that it is unlucky to rub in ointment or scratch the skin with any finger other than the fourth.

© John Welford

The highest mountain is not the tallest

The highest mountain in the world? That has to be Mount Everest, surely? Well, yes … if measured from height above sea level. But if you specify tallest rather than highest, thus implying that sea level has nothing to do with it, then the winner – very easily – is Hawaii’s Mauna Kea.

Mauna Kea is a volcano that started life on the seabed of the Pacific Ocean and had already reached a height of 6,000 metres (20,000 feet) when it broke the surface. Its upward progression since then has “only” been 4,200 metres (13,800) feet, which sounds puny when set aside Mount Everest’s 8,900 metres (29,000 feet), but if both the sub-surface and above-surface heights of Mauna Lea are allowed as measurements of its height when added together, the volcano out-performs the mountain by about three-quarters of a mile!

It all depends on perspective. Many people would say that Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro (5,900 metres, 19,300 feet) is more impressive that Mount Everest because it rises above a flat surface, whereas Everest is surrounded by the many other high peaks of the Himalayas.

On the other hand, if you were to measure the heights of points on the Earth’s surface by their distance from the centre of the planet, that would throw all the records out of joint because Earth is not a perfect sphere and the Equator is about 13 miles further from the planetary centre than the Poles. By that reckoning, the coast of Ecuador is higher than the Himalayas!

© John Welford