• ... that jazz singer Ilse Huizinga (pictured, right) is known in the Netherlands as the First Lady of Jazz?
 • ... that the 1934 jazz standard "Stars Fell on Alabama" was inspired by the Leonid meteor shower that was observed in Alabama a century earlier, in 1833? (Alabama license plate pictured)
 • ... that Katie Melua (pictured, left) agreed to re-record her song "Nine Million Bicycles" (2005) in response to criticisms from physicist Simon Singh, who described its lyrics as "an insult to a century of astronomical progress"?


January - May 2006