At eleven o’clock on this day in 1918, the guns along the Western Front fell silent when both sides declared the Great War to be over. At the same time on this day each year the people of Britain and the Commonwealth stand silent for two minutes to remember those who have fallen, not just in the First World War, but in all conflicts since then.

Poppies are also worn at this time and the money that is raised from selling them support the Royal British Legion, who help soldiers injured while on duty and the families of those who are killed in action:

http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/

Here is a site suggested to us from the University’s Counselling Service, which will help students from any University. There are many resources and a forum where members can exchange stories and help one another:

http://www.studentdepression.org/

Thanks to DM for suggesting.

Guten tag alle und herzlich willkommen auf Was der Tag! Yes, hello and welcome to Thing of the Day!

Now you may be wondering why we’re writing in German (or at least attempting to). Well today marks the twentieth anniversary of when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, one of the major events of the Twentieth Century and one that signalled the end of the Cold War.

If you want to know what will be happening in Berlin  to commemorate this, have a look at the website:

http://www.visitberlin.de/index.en.php

If you can’t get there, however, here’s some information from the BBC with links to other sites:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/europe/2009/1989_europes_revolution/default.stm

Lest we forget… http://tinyurl.com/ylklc9w

Full details of the Royal British Legion’s Remembrance Sunday Service can be found here:  http://tinyurl.com/yl7lbvo   

At TOTD we thought it would  be nice to give a special mention to Harry Patch, the last soldier of the First World War http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/Harry.Patch.html

and if you would like to read some of the poignant poetry that arose from the First and Second World Wars, and from the war in Afghanistan, please see the links below.

http://www.sonnets.org/wwi.htm#004

http://kiwisoldier.150m.com/poems.htm

http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/Afghanistan%20War%20Poetry.html

Hallowe’en might’ve been last week, but it’s never too late to make your very own monster – and what’s more,  it’s fun!

Go on, get your hands dirty. Click on the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhPs2m9zny4

and you’ll be churning out monsters and dragons faster than you can say “Trick or Treat!”

And if dragons are too scary, you can always make a fish:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9Bh7eY5noc&feature=related

Whether a native English speaker or not, university can involve a lot of writing of one sort or another.  Get ahead of the game with this rather useful site:

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/

Although it’s a US site – where UK/US English differs, then they point it out.

(Thanks to EDW for this).

Using a diverse range of sources including Amazon, Twitter, Flickr and eBay, Spezify is a visual search engine that displays results as a mosaic of images and text boxes. The results seem a bit of a hotchpotch, but it’s fun.

http://www.spezify.com/

Look at the 1867 1:500 County Series map* of The Point and the area around St Thomas’s Church in Old Portsmouth and you can count at least 30 public houses and taverns. These are all on a sheet covering a little over 38 acres, and much of that is water! Portsmouth has a long history of pub building and this excellent site provides a great guide to both exisiting and closed pubs. The inclusion of many archive photographs makes it particulalry interesting.

 http://www.portsmouthpubs.org.uk/index.html

[Thanks to BJ for this suggestion]

* The complete set of 1:500 County Series maps of Portsmouth can be viewed in our Map Library.

This is much more exciting than the dull poster that TOTD used to stare at during double chemistry each Saturday morning. The site is richly illustrated and the facts accompanying each element are facinating. Did you know that liquid oxgen at -183 degree C is a beautiful pale blue? Many elements are difficult, or impossible, to display. Just read what it takes to make a transparent container to display highly reactive fluorine.

http://www.periodictable.com/

Following the successful test flight of NASA’s Ares I-X rocket on 28th October, it’s interesting to see this diagram that depicts the nearly 200 lunar, solar and interplanetary space missions that have been undertaken in the last 50 years.

http://books.nationalgeographic.com/map/map-day/

There’s a better image here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamcrowe/4002050596/sizes/o/ 

[Thanks to CL for this suggestion]