On this day in history - September 16th

Pre-1600

4000BCE – The Chinese invent inscrutability.

681 – Pope Honorius I is posthumously excommunicated by the Sixth Ecumenical Council, gaining 9.6 points for artistic interpretation, 9.8 points for technical merit and a lifetime ban from the Dog & Duck in St Peter’s Square.

1400 – Owain Glyndŵr is declared Prince of Wales by his followers. His first act as Prince is to change all road signs to Welsh first.

1601–1900

1620 – A determined band of 35 religious dissenters, the Pilgrim Fathers, set sail for Virginia from Plymouth, England in the Mayflower, jubilant at the prospect of practicing their unorthodox brand of worship in the New World, only to discover that the Americas are a bit of a blind spot where God is concerned.

1701 – James Francis Edward Stuart, sometimes called the "Old Pretender", becomes the Jacobite claimant to the thrones of England and Scotland on the basis that it worked for Owain Glyndŵr in Wales.

1732 – In Campo Maior, Portugal, a storm hits the Armory and a violent explosion ensues, killing two-thirds of its inhabitants. The Vatican responds by immediately issuing the Papal Bull Cave Caeli Mutatione.

1776 – American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Harlem Heights is fought, after 5 white militia are witnessed beating up a black man who was “chewing tobacco in a funny way”.

1810 – With the Grito de Dolores, Father Miguel Hidalgo begins Mexico's fight for independence from Spain by flooding the vast Atlantic basin and forming an ocean.

1822 – French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, in a "note" read to the Academy of Sciences, reports a direct refraction experiment verifying David Brewster's hypothesis that photoelasticity (as it is now known) is stress-induced birefringence. The Academy of Sciences write back to Fresnel the now famous ‘Look who’s swallowed a dictionary’ note.

1880 – The Cornell Daily Sun prints its first issue in Ithaca, New York, with Mary-Belle Lannister showing her ankles on page 3.

1893 – Settlers make a land run for prime land in the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma. The Williams family stake their claim in a plot of land where the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye.

1901–present

1908 – The General Motors Corporation is founded. Three days later it buys its first rival.

1920 – The Wall Street bombing: A bomb in a horse wagon explodes in front of the J. P. Morgan building in New York City killing 38 and injuring 400. Wall Street finally crashes 9 years later.

1940 – World War II: Italian troops conquer Sidi Barrani. Confidence raised, they move on to do battle against more than one man.

1943 – World War II: The German Tenth Army reports that it can no longer contain the Allied bridgehead around Salerno and call for the water cannons to be brought in.

1955 – The military coup to unseat President Juan Perón of Argentina is launched at midnight. His wife, Eva, holds the forces back by singing Lloyd-Webber songs at them.

1956 – TCN-9 Sydney is the first Australian television station to commence regular broadcasts. The first advertisement is a sweet sherry commercial for the ladies.

1959 – The first successful photocopier, the Xerox 914, is introduced in a demonstration on live television from New York City, producing a faithful reproduction of Miss Felicity Montaine’s posterior.

1961 – Typhoon Nancy, makes landfall in Osaka, Japan, reconceptualising 9,000 homes and converting the city’s parks to salmon pink pea shingle feng shui gardens.

1963 – Malaysia is formed from the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo (Sabah) and Sarawak. However, Singapore is soon expelled from this new country for smugness.

1966 – The Metropolitan Opera House opens at Lincoln Center in New York City with the world premiere of Samuel Barber's opera Antony and Cleopatra. Observations regarding the spelling of ‘center’ are met with the request to “kiss my asp”.

1975 – Cape Verde, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe join the United Nations to give delegates better venues for their conferences.

1979 – Eight people escape from East Germany to the west in a homemade hot air balloon. The Stasi began to wonder if their wall is high enough.

1987 – The Montreal Protocol is signed to protect the ozone layer from depletion. This is the last time the Montreal Protocol is ever seen in public.

1992 – The trial of the deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega ends in the United States with a 40-year sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering, and 3 months community service for jaywalking.

1992 – Black Wednesday: The British pound is forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism by currency speculators and is forced to devalue against the German mark. Norman Lamont has the first inklings that he might be a twat.

2004 – Hurricane Ivan makes landfall in Gulf Shores, Alabama as a Category 3 hurricane. It is met by a large group of shotgun toting rednecks shouting, “You’re not from round here, are you boy?”

2007 – One-Two-GO Airlines Flight 269 carrying 130 crew and passengers crashes in Thailand, killing 90 people, and projecting 40 others through the terminal in the world’s fastest passage through customs and passport control.

2014 – The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant launches its Kobani offensive against historical religious sites in Syrian–Kurdish territory, pausing only to have a cream tea in the gift shop café.

2019 – Five months before the COVID-19 stock market crash, an overnight spike in lending rates in the United States prompts the Federal Reserve to conduct operations in the repo market, confirming reports that they would use any old excuse.

Holidays and observances

Christian feast day:

• Curcodomus (Roman emperor whose martyrdom by sea cucumber lasted longer than his reign)

• Edith of Wilton (patron saint of Victoria sponges)

• Vitalis of Savigny (the Catholic Chruch’s only beatified eau de cologne)

• Euphemia (patron saint of smoking)

• Ludmila (patron saint of windmill saboteurs)

• Ninian (Rome’s stupidest emperor)

• Pope Cornelius (the only pope to have beatified himself)

International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer (including the annual Wickerslowe coffee morning and the polishing of the Ozone Plaque by the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes on Ascension Island).

Malaysia Day (Malaysia, Singapore)

Malaysian Armed Forces Day (Malaysia)

Malaysian Curfew Day (People Democratic Republic of Malaysia)

Igor and the Twisted Tales of Castlemaine

NewsBiscuit would like to welcome a comedy-horror tale written by photographer, writer and ex-biscuiteer, Ian J Walls (AKA Wallster) and writer, actor and film-maker Richard L Markworth.

Igor and the Twisted Tales of Castlemaine follows the adventures of Igor in a twisted tale in a modern homage to the classic horror novel.

We all know Igor. You know, Victor Frankenstein’s lickspittle assistant from the ye olde horror B-movies of yore.

One of popular culture’s most forgotten, and yet oddly loveable horror characters, finally Igor arrives with his own hilarious backstory in Igor & The Twisted Tales of Castlemaine, an episodic comedy-horror tale that sees Igor pluck up the courage to leave Frankenstein’s castle and set up on his own in the village of Castlemaine – a place even stranger than fiction.

In this fully realised universe, and with an ensemble of many deliciously despicable characters all desperate to steal the storytelling glory, Igor’s fresh take on an old legend is a witty, silly and loving modern homage to the classic horror genre.

Following decades of torture at the hands of his cruel master Victor Frankenstein, the once-downtrodden and pathetic Igor finally rises up and walks out on Victor, in the hope of finding a fulfilling life-less-ordinary elsewhere. Instead, something wicked his way comes, and Igor finds his way to Castlemaine, an accursed village nestled deep in the Carpathian Mountains, where terrors stalk the waking world and ale is more expensive than in London.

Among the perverted inhabitants and spooky-goings-on Igor meets Esmerelda, the beautiful but occasionally violent daughter of Castlemaine’s homicidal innkeeper. Together, they find themselves in a whole heap of eerie trouble, fighting dark forces and demons, murderers, mediums and monsters, spirits and zombies, and, naturally, a very disturbing nun, all in the form of five neatly packaged adventures.

The authors say: “We’ve known each other for over 40 years and even as kids in the late 70s we loved all things horror and sci fi, from Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the Hammer movies, to Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in the vintage Universal classics, combining all these threads into a raft of imaginative short stories (many bloodthirsty!) It seems all those dark monsters that were lurking in our heads back in the far off days of our childhood are finally surfacing. We’re hoping a literary future awaits - it’s either that, or an institution somewhere!”

Read Ian J Wall's interview on Profile Critics

Read Richard L Marksworth's interview on Profile Critics

Read an extract from Igor and the Twisted Tales of Castlemaine here:

Igor and the Twisted Tales of Castlemaine – extract

Copyright - Richard L Markworth & Ian J Walls

*

‘Igor! I remember that name,’ said a rough voice from across the bar. ‘A name of ill omen in these parts, so they say.’

The rough voice belonged to a weathered traveller with a long, tousled beard, worn leather boots, an ancient tricorn hat that sat low across his brow and a battered and stained travelling cloak which he had cast onto the bench beside him. Until this moment, he had been sitting alone and unnoticed under the large bay window, silently watching the lightning tear up the night sky.

‘Well, they say wrong,’ replied Esmerelda fiercely.

‘Do they indeed?’ said the traveller, warming to his subject. ‘I’ve been wandering these dark roads and forests for nigh on thirty years and I’ve heard a thing or two about old Igor in my time. Even now men fear to speak his name too loudly within earshot of the boneyard after darkness. ’Tis said that he was dragged down into the fearsome sweaty pits of hell by the Devil hisself.’

‘Cobblers!’ shouted Esmerelda.

Another voice joined the conversation. ‘I heard he ran off with a pack of rampant nuns on all hallows eve, taking the gold cross from the altar and wearing a crown made from the holy relics of Saint Augustine,’ suggested a small, barrel-shaped woman with an intense stare and a long bone pipe clenched between her uneven yellowed teeth.

'Absolute rubbish…he wasn’t like that.’

‘Came back from the dead and brought pestilence to the village, and a plague of ducks…’ added another voice. ‘Least, that’s what I was told.’

Suddenly a cacophony of voices started shouting out snippets of half-heard legends and rumour that they’d picked up from very reliable and expert sources on the subject, usually in the alehouse after a long night imbibing copious flagons of Brother Percy’s Rampant Smock Lifter.

‘He turned the Burgermeister into a pig and spit roasted him,’ called a voice.

‘Cut off his own head and played skittles with it,’ suggested another.

‘He lay with a cat.’

‘Ate people’s livers while they were asleep.’

‘Drank the blood of virgins…well, not in Castlemaine, obviously.’

‘Cavorted with witches and warlocks.’

‘Taught Morris dancing.’

‘NOW THAT’S ENOUGH!’ shouted Esmerelda. ‘I won’t hear any more of these lies about…’ she paused, trying desperately to hold her emotions together. She failed.

‘About the man…I loved,’ she ended, slumping down into her chair, and burying her face into her hands, tears leaking through old bony fingers.

The crowd, mumbling and abashed, settled back to their tables. Father Price put a caring arm across Esmerelda’s shoulders.

The rough traveller threw back his head and laughed hard. As he did so a shower of food morsels dropped from their hiding places within his grizzled and twisted beard. He cared not a jot. His beard contained more decaying crumbs of bread and flakes of meat than the grocer’s barrow and village midden pit combined. With a beard such as his, no man needs go hungry for long. It was said that travellers’ beards were highly prized among the starving poor, who could sustain their families for many weeks on the edible remains contained within the longest and most tangled examples.

It was mainly for this reason that the bearded traveller was becoming so rare a sight these days, and was believed by many to have been pushed to the brink of extinction by hungry beard hunters. The traveller by the window was long in both tooth and beard and gave not a fig for such trivial dangers.

‘She loved him!’ he taunted quietly from his window seat. ‘It’s all lies, she says.’ He spat onto the beer-soaked floor, improving it slightly.

‘Good riddance to bad company I say,’ cursed the traveller, rising to his feet. ‘And this Igor, so the old folk tell it, was the darkest company you could ever fear to find yourself troubled with in those days. Brought evil and damnation to the land hereabouts, so he did. Are you all fools? Do you all not remember the dark tales of Igor?’

He sat down with a thump, scattering bits of cheese and cake across the table from deep within his bushy follicles.

Slowly, the pike sharpening former priest stood up and cast a withering look around the hushed and sceptical gathering.

‘I remember!’ he proclaimed. ‘I remember what Igor did for the people of this town all those years ago. He was no villain. He was no Devil. He was no saint, I’ll grant you. He was no murderer. Well, OK, maybe he was a bit of a murderer, but only when absolutely essential, and only ever for the greater good of the community. But those were indeed dark times, and Igor was a beacon of hope when all forms of law, order and authority had sought to beat us down. It was a time of vampires, of werewolves and lunatics. Of dangerous, mad scientists, necromancers, and ghastly demons. And worst of all,’ the old man’s voice fell to a whisper, ‘Nuns!’

An awed silence fell upon all those present as the former priest’s sermon continued.

‘When we’d all but given up the dream of ever finding peace in our tormented lives it was Igor who came to Castlemaine and brought with him hope, and a means to fight back. Do you not remember that?’ The old priest resumed his seat, wearied by the exertion and emotion.

‘Thank you,’ said Esmerelda placing her gnarled old hand gently on his.

‘Pisspots!’ said the traveller.

‘

You knew him so well,’ put in the pipe smoking, swivel eyed, barrel woman. ‘Tell us then. Tell us the truth about this ‘holier than thou’ Igor of yours.’

Esmerelda felt her face getting hot and her eyes dampen as she fought back the tears of memory and loss.

‘I can’t,’ she whispered weakly.

‘Pfft! What did I tell you?’ crowed the weathered traveller. ‘’Tis nothing but lies and mummery from those who would hide their own past crimes. There is nothing good to hear about that devil, Igor. Why, if she could tell us but one single piece of good that that man had done, then I’d happily shave off my beard, strap a full-grown badger to my naked buttocks and run from this place to spend the rest of my days in service to the sea dwelling monks of St Olaf the Salty.’

Esmerelda slowly lifted herself upright, a steely look of resolution in her keen, greeneyes as she stared down the traveller.

‘Alright then,’ she said firmly, ‘You’re on.’

Your September Horoscope, by Toxic Meg

Aries: This month you will become confused when the voices in your head start speaking to you in French, with a Scottish accent.

Taurus: As a result of a long overdue rationalisation of the stellar houses, yours is one of two zodiac signs that will be phased out by the end of the year. Unless you suggest an alternate sign, you will be provided with a new stellar profile in the next six weeks by email or SMS. Ensure that you comply with your new sign characteristics: fines will be incurred for repeated infringements.

Gemini: When someone gives you advice telling you to ‘just be yourself’, ignore them. Try being someone more interesting, with better personal hygiene.

Cancer: As Venus enters your sign without knocking, you will be inspired to take a bakery course at your local college. You will develop a crush on the handsome tutor, but don’t get too carried away – he may compliment you on the firmness of your baps, but he won’t be impressed by your crusty bloomers.

Leo: This month, you can tell me my fortune for a change. Everything doesn’t always have to be about you, you know!

Virgo: As the moon comes full circle in your sign, something from your recent past will resurface which will have a significant effect on your future. You should have deleted your internet search history, you pillock!

Libra: Go on. You know you want to. What harm can it do?

Scorpio: A plan to seduce your attractive next-door neighbour by regularly hanging your sexiest underwear on your washing line where he can see it is doomed to failure. You will realise this when you receive a letter from the local council informing you that he has made an official complaint about your plus-sized pants blocking all the sunlight from his garden.

Sagittarius: You'll never walk alone. Hang on, there’s a smudge in Uranus. That changes everything - you'll never w@nk alone.

Capricorn: You'll find yourself giving heartfelt thanks to South West Trains and the RMT around the middle of the month, when a mysterious villain ties you to railway tracks outside Goring-on-Sea, but thanks to industrial action and industrial incompetence you find you have 17 hours to wriggle free before the first train arrives.

Aquarius: You will become a social media sensation with 55m followers after you invent the controversial TikTok challenge known as ‘pancaking’, where you video yourself balancing on the tip of the Shard. However, once your remains are peeled off the pavement (hence the name), you will promptly be forgotten.

Pisces: The planets have an important message for you: ‘Take the antibiotics 4 times a day, for 2 weeks. Return to the STI clinic if symptoms persist.’

Hat tips go to:

FlashArry – Taurus

Sinnick – Leo

lockjaw – Libra

SteveB – Sagittarius

sirlupus - Capricorn

sydalg – Aquarius

Image: GDJ - Pixabay

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