Oh what a miserable day outside. Through sheer perversity, today's weather front created a narrow but long ribbon of rain that continued to dump its load on Milton for most of the day.
If you photograph raindrops in puddles, you can catch a glimpse of a rebounding drop leaping back out. This is dependent on the speed of the falling drop, its size and the depth of the water it is falling into. This photo is of a puddle in our street. Experiments by others with ink drops show that the rebounding drop contains some of the original falling drop.
After a phone call from Carel Sartory, outgoing chair of the QMC, wrote a quick guide for QMC members who wanted to film talks at regional meetings. Picked up Jane from Waterbeach station in the continuing deluge. This meant I didn't get back to video editing till the late afternoon and into the evening.
Brexit news limited to a local TV article on the falling pound making it more difficult to attract itinerant workers from Europe for the fields of East Anglia. UK news instead dominated by two items: The sentencing of Ian Stewart for the cold blooded murder of his author fiance Helen Bailey ; and the controversy over the million pound payout to Guantanamo Bay detainee Jamal al-Harith, to prevent him from revealing information on the British security services, who went on to blow himself up as an IS suicide bomber in Iraq.
US similarly relatively quiet, with three items of marginal note. First, Secretary of State Tillerson has not been talking to the media, when usually, the world hangs on daily briefings from the department. Second, The Washington Post has clocked President Trump at 133 false or misleading claims so far in his presidency.
The most amusing story of the day though, is that Trump has passed the landmark 31 days and can no longer be the shortest serving president. William Harry Harrison died after 31 days in post in 1847. To quote 'The Independent',
"Researchers initially thought he died as a direct consequence of getting pneumonia after delivering the longest inauguration address, 8,445 words, in US history in freezing temperatures. However, recent evidence suggests he died after contracting typhoid from the White House’s water supply."
At that time, the White House's drinking water came from a spring that was downstream from a sewage dump just seven blocks away. It has even been conjectured that two other presidents might have also been killed indirectly by the bad water, James K. Polk and Zachary Taylor — all died in office or shortly after leaving office. see http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/mysterious-deaths-3-presidents-linked-white-house-water.
Here is a fascinating article on the history of the White House plumbing from 1989, including such details as the fact that Presidents used to bathe in the Potomac River, with the risk of having their clothes stolen! https://www.plumbingsupply.com/pmwhitehouse.html.
So, the existing POTUS has been spared a similar fate by clean water - a mixed blessing for environmentalists!
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