The man who fell to the USA
QUESTION What is known of self-claimed extraterrestrial Valiant Thor?
VALIANT THOR was a purported extraterrestrial being who supposedly met President Eisenhower in the 1950s.
In his books, Stranger At The Pentagon and My Friend From Beyond Earth, Dr Frank E. Stranges, theologian and ufologist, claimed that Thor came from Venus and his mission was to prevent the human race’s destruction by nuclear war. He came to reside at the Pentagon, where he delivered a message of good will towards humanity, offering advanced technology and spiritual guidance.
Stranges claimed to have witnessed Thor’s fantastic abilities, which included being able to walk through walls.
He further claimed that Thor’s spaceship, Victory One, was hidden somewhere near Lake Mead in Nevada.
The story of Valiant Thor is considered to be part of UFO folklore rather than a verified historical account.
Sally Fisher, Brixham, Devon.
QUESTION What is the story of agricultural hiring fairs where labourers, including children, were hired?
HIRING fairs date from medieval times. King Edward III, in the Statute of Labourers (1351), ordered that hiring fairs be held across England to ensure fair wages and maintain social order. This followed the drop in population and resulting labour shortage after the Black Death, which saw surviving labourers commanding wages beyond what landowners could afford.
Hiring fairs were held at the end of November and in May. Men, women and child workers would gather to bargain with prospective employers and secure a position for the coming year. Workers dressed in their Sunday best and carried items signifying their trade.
These ‘Mop Fairs’, as they came to be known, turned into entertainment and often descended into drunkenness. A typical 19th-century fair included ballad singers, Morris dancing and confectionery stalls.
The Agricultural Children Act, passed in 1873, stopped children under the age of eight being employed as farm labourers, and later education acts reduced the hours of child labour.
The hiring aspect of the fairs had mostly died out by the middle of the 20th century but the fairs themselves live on.
Tim Eustace, York. THIS ancient type of fair was dual-purpose, with country folk having a good time or looking for a new job.
The agricultural year was divided into two ‘terms’, the May term and the November term, when the agreements between farmers and ploughmen expired.
At these fairs the ploughman would show he was seeking a new employer by placing a sprig of heather in his bonnet. In our part of the world it was called a ‘fee’, so the farmer could eye him up before offering terms. We would then see the horse-drawn carts conveying a ploughman’s few sticks of furniture to his new farm cottage, usually less than a couple of miles.
A popular fair in Fife was the Star, lying between Markinch and Kennoway. Both of these small towns tried to claim it and it gave rise to a bothy ballad, ‘When I was going to Starry Market, Starry Market for a fee’. But the biggest in the county was called the Lammas Fair, held in St Andrews.
The hiring of children had ceased by then, although a local farmer had a list of schoolchildren, including those in my family, whom he could call on for potato and grain harvest jobs. He employed a local lady called a ‘ganger’ to round us up. Thomas Proudfoot, Alresford, Hampshire.
QUESTION Why does wetting your fingers increase friction rather than acting as a lubricant?
WETTING your fingers is a useful method when separating the leaves of a book or opening a sealed bag. The molecular structure of water, with two positively charged hydrogen atoms and one negatively charged oxygen atom, creates a molecule that is polar.
As a result, the molecule is attracted to other polar molecules and may induce polarity when brought near to certain non-polar molecules.
This causes a sticky attraction between paper or fabric, water and your skin.
While water is a poor lubricant compared with petroleum oils, mainly due to its low viscosity, it can make surfaces slippery in cases where it reduces the contact area between two surfaces by separating them and acting as a barrier — for example, when it is trapped between a smooth surface such as a wet tile and the leather sole of a shoe. T. P. Shaw, Oxford.