10 Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Week

[Scheherazade]

BBC News Magazine has a section called '10 THINGS WE DIDN'T KNOW THIS TIME LAST WEEK' which is posted every Saturday. I really enjoy reading that. Here is this week's list:

1. Giant squid eat each other - especially during sex.

2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar has sold one copy every minute since its 1969 publication.

3. Giant mice eating rare chicks on the South Atlantic's Gough Island are descended from the British house mouse, but since arriving on ships in the 19th Century, have doubled in size and become carnivorous.

4. Birmingham was hit by a tornado in 1931, in the same area of the city damaged in the latest twister.

5. First-born children are less creative but more stable, while last-born are more promiscuous, says US research.

6. Cats are genetically unable to taste sweet things. While dogs adore chocolate, cats remain indifferent.

7. Marilyn Manson's gift to his fiancée - a taxidermy fan - is two stuffed swans posed as if about to copulate.

8. On average you would have to cycle non-stop for 96 years before being killed in a road accident.

9. By law, rescued grey squirrels cannot be released into the wild.

10. Racial prejudice is learnt; and everyone has an in-built inclination towards learning to fear people who appear different, says US research.


If you would like to read more about these news items, please click on the link below.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4713947.stm#10things

[mono]

How interesting! Thanks for sharing the link and information, Scher. ;)

2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar has sold one copy every minute since its 1969 publication.
Ah, one of my favorite children's books of all time! :D

5. First-born children are less creative but more stable, while last-born are more promiscuous, says US research.
I think psychology has known this trend for much longer than the past weeks. Alfred Adler, a neo-Freudian, first did research concerning, what he later called, the birth-order theory. Adler's research has gained both praise and much criticism, but seems to contain more truth than theory, in my opinion. How the research states basis in the U.S., I have no idea, since, I think, Adler came from Austria originally.
Keep in mind, I do not blame you, Scher, for this statement - just improper citing on the website's contribution. Very fascinating, nonetheless. :)

[Bongitybongbong]

5. First-born children are less creative but more stable, while last-born are more promiscuous, says US research.
Ha I guess that makes me the one that would be reburied when found (got that from a science mag that said the American govt. found an Anglo-Saxton that dated before any other human life and that screws over their theory on the original people on the continent).

[imthefoolonthehill]

he dated before any other human life... man, i thought MY dates were ugly...

ahem... well actually i didn't, but the thought was funny.

[Helga]

so that is how they describe me....promiscuous, well at least they say I'm creative :)

[papayahed]

On average you would have to cycle non-stop for 96 years before being killed in a road accident.

A guy I know told me the story of his grandfathers death at 80 something: He got hit by a car while riding his bike. Later it was determined that the grandfather was legally drunk when he died.

I think I may have changed my mind on how I would like to go....

[Molko]

Very interesting :) you really do learn something new every day :p

[JaynaLove]

1. Giant squid eat each other - especially during sex.


Ok. Thanks a lot you made me spit out my water! *Giggles* You really do learn something new everyday.

[baddad]

....Wow!!!! Sex and eating all at the same time........now if one could only read while all this was going on......

[Jay]

1. Smalls Lighthouse has but a 35-watt bulb powered by solar power - yet its beams can be seen from 21 miles away thanks to powerful lenses.

2. Scientists who cloned an Afghan hound had a 0.09% success rate.

3. The three Space Shuttle Main Engines use a lot of fuel. In approximately 8 minutes, 40 seconds, the three SSMEs burn over 1.6 million pounds of propellant (approximately - 528,000 gallons).

4. Temperatures inside the main combustion chamber reach 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt steel. Meanwhile, liquid hydrogen circulates through miles of tubing at minus 423F to cool the engines.

5. Reebok, which is being bought by Adidas, can trace its history more than 100 years back, to Bolton.

6. Jimi Hendrix pretended to be gay to be discharged from the US Army.

7. Giant leatherback turtles travel each year from the Caribbean to Cardigan Bay in Wales in order to eat jellyfish found here.

8. Researchers expect smoking to be virtually extinct in Australia by 2030.

9. Among UK cities, Birmingham had the most industrial accidents in the 12 months to April 2005, followed by Leeds and Glasgow.

10. Joss Stone's mother told her off when she addressed President Bush "George".

source (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4734421.stm)

[Scheherazade]

1. Trigamy is being married to three people.

2. Alexander the Great was killed by a mosquito, says new research.

3. A towel doesn't legally reserve a sun lounger - and there is nothing in German or Spanish law to stop other holidaymakers removing those left on vacant seats.


4. One in six children think that broccoli is a baby tree.

5. Robin Cook grew his beard in tribute to his hero, George Bernard Shaw.

6. Ann Widdecombe last watched Top of the Pops in 1966.

7. Vinegar on chips may help burn the fat off the deep-fried spud.

8. We are more likely to die in our sleep because our brains can forget to tell our bodies to breathe.

9. Home Office minister Hazel Blears is 4ft 11ins.

10. Drivers are most likely to be in an accident between 4pm and 7pm on a Friday - and even more so in August.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4131118.stm#10things

[Jay]

I like no. 8 :D

[papayahed]

I like no. 8 :D

Oh great something else to worry about...

[faith]

8. On average you would have to cycle non-stop for 96 years before being killed in a road accident.



This is good! ;)

[Taliesin]

1. Trigamy is being married to three people.
Why do they think that we didn't know it last week? It is only logical (monogamy - 1, bigamy- 2, trigamy- 3, tetragamy- 4 et cetera)


5. Robin Cook grew his beard in tribute to his hero, George Bernard Shaw.
We read it as: Robin Hood grew a beard...


6. Ann Widdecombe last watched Top of the Pops in 1966.

Who is this Ann Widdecombe and what is Top of the Pops? Is it the electing of the new pope? It is true, we didn't know it the last week, but well, why must one put the religious ideas of some elderly lady in a paper?

[Scheherazade]

Why do they think that we didn't know it last week? It is only logical (monogamy - 1, bigamy- 2, trigamy- 3, tetragamy- 4 et cetera)I agree with you, Tal. I was a little surprised too... but then again maybe because all these -gamies sound like a little likeOrigami (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origami), which might confuse some!
We read it as: Robin Hood grew a beard...Robin Cook (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4127654.stm)

Who is this Ann Widdecombe and what is Top of the Pops? Is it the electing of the new pope? It is true, we didn't know it the last week, but well, why must one put the religious ideas of some elderly lady in a paper?Ann Widdecombe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Widdecombe)

Top of the Pops (http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp/) is the weekly music chart show on BBC.

[Scheherazade]

1. A US Patent has been granted for a "toy gas-fired missile and launcher assembly" (US patent 6,055,910). The gas in question? Colonic gas generated by the user.

2. The Duchess of Kent teaches children to rap.

3. The bikini-clad woman in the iPod adverts does not own one - she hasn't the money.

4. Urine was once made into ammonia to remove stains from laundry.

5. In the 1930s, a German inventor tried to deliver mail by rocket to one of the most remote parts of the UK, the tiny island of Scarp in the Outer Hebrides. Commemorative stamps were issued. But it ended in failure when the rocket exploded.

6. It takes a gallon of oil to make three fake fur coats.

7. Media studies is more popular than physics among A-level students.

8. Each successive monarch faces in a different direction on British coins.

9. White was the colour chosen for the Queen Mother's White Wardrobe - currently on show at Buckingham Palace - because she was in mourning for her mother at the time.

10. There's a sin of simony - to conduct financial transactions involving spiritual goods which Lincoln Cathedral had been accused of over the making of the Da Vinci Code movie.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4152338.stm#10things

[Nightshade]

6. It takes a gallon of oil to make three fake fur coats.


Ive always said fake fur is worse than real fur!!!

[Scheherazade]

1. The average computer keyboard is reportedly infected with 3,295 germs.

2. 70% of internet porn traffic occurs during work hours.

3. Brad Pitt's full name is William Bradley Pitt.

4. Meanwhile, the biography of William Pitt the younger is the second most popular book for MPs to take on holiday, after the Da Vinci Code.

5. According to Amnesty International, 1,195 people were killed by police in Rio de Janeiro in 2003.

6. England batsman Marcus Trescothick ate steak for the first time when he was 27.

7. The day when most suicides occurred in the UK between 1993 and 2002 was 1 January, 2000.

8. The only day in that time when no-one killed themselves was 16 March, 2001, the day Comic Relief viewers saw Jack Dee win Celebrity Big Brother.

9. So-called "Lotto lout" Michael Carroll gets gay fan mail.

10. One of the eight ravens at the Tower of London, Thor, can say "Good morning".


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4172642.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. One in 18 people has a third nipple.

2. More than 100 tons of ripe tomatoes are splattered about in Spain's Tomatina Festival.

3. The crumbed batter around fish fingers is cooked so quickly the fish inside stays frozen. In all, preparation and packaging takes just 35 minutes.

4. The Spanish smoke more Gauloise cigarettes than the French.

5. Michael Sheard, who played Grange Hill's terrifying deputy head Mr Bronson and who died this week, also appeared in the Empire Strikes Back (he played Admiral Ozzel) and in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (he played Hitler).

6. The section of coast around Cleethorpes has the highest concentration of caravans in Europe.

7. George Clooney's father was a television news anchor.

8. China makes about 40% of the world's socks.

9. And it has around 24,000 coal mines - more than 3,000 miners have been killed this year alone, in fires, floods and other work-related accidents.

10. Road signs in an Austrian village - whose seven-letter name begins with "F" and ends in "ing" - are now encased in theft-proof concrete to stop tourists stealing them.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4189164.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. Fifty-seven Bic Biros are sold every second - amounting to 100 billion since 1950.

2. Not only do the Spanish smoke more Gauloise cigarettes than the French (see last week's 10 things) they are the biggest cocaine users in the world, according to the UN.

3. See You Jimmy - Russ Abbot's incomprehensible 80s comedy creation - was inspired by a David Bowie-style wig discarded when Bowie changed his image.

4. Norway is the world's third largest oil exporter.

5. George Bernard Shaw named his shed after the UK capital so that when visitors called they could be told he was away in London.

6. Twenty-one stray animals are put down in the UK each day.

7. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire, this week voted the UK's favourite painting, shows the sun setting in the east.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40763000/jpg/_40763768_turner_203bbc.jpg

8. Paul McCartney's Beatles' classic Blackbird is a homage to the black civil rights movement - "bird", in this case, being a colloquial term for "woman".

9. Saturn's rings are fluffy.

10. Ninety-five percent of today's 500,000 racehorses descend from a single stallion - the Darley Arabian, born in 1700.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4215388.stm#10things

[Nocturnal]

2. More than 100 tons of ripe tomatoes are splattered about in Spain's Tomatina Festival.

heh, I knew that! :banana: and now I have an excuse for posting the dancing banana

[brshfr]

8. We are more likely to die in our sleep because our brains can forget to tell our bodies to breathe.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4131118.stm#10things

I always wondered how smart we really are if we forget to breathe. Interesting...

[Scheherazade]

1. The herb rocket (aka roquette, arugula and rucola) was widely grown in English kitchen gardens in the 1600s.

2. Former Labour MP Oona King's aunt is agony aunt Miriam Stoppard.

3. Britain produces 700 regional cheeses, more even than France.

4. More slave-labourers died working on the Nazi's V2 rockets than were killed by them in attacks.

5. Camberwick Green's creator Gordon Murray destroyed the original models in a bonfire after the last transmission.

6. Dame Helen Mirren loves snorkelling.

7. Bob Dylan first visited Britain - in 1962 - to take part in a BBC play.

8. Inmates at the Buchenwald concentration camp staged a version of the Agatha Christie play now known as And Then There Were None.

9. Since the 1970s, the number of strong hurricanes around the world has doubled.

10. Sensitive hacking equipment could tell what words are being typed on a keyboard by analysing the unique sounds made by each key.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4236934.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. The Church of Sweden is a major shareholder in H&M.

2. A hurricane name is retired from the rotating alphabetical list if the storm has been particularly destructive. Hence there will not be another Katrina.

3. Although the US National Weather Service did not start using names until 1953, for hundreds of years hurricanes in the West Indies were named after the saint's day on which they occurred.

4. Tim Farron, the new LibDem MP for Cumberland and Westmorland - famed for its sausages - is a strict vegetarian.

5. America's first regular TV news show was the Camel News Caravan - named for its sponsor, Camel Cigarettes. It was launched by NBC in 1949.

6. Andrew Motion listens to Bob Dylan every day.

7. Selina Scott runs her own business making mohair footwear.

8. Until 15 years ago, Japan had almost no foreign wrestlers. Today, they make up over a quarter of the wrestlers in its higher divisions.

9. The actor who plays Mike Tucker in BBC Radio 4's The Archers is the father of the actor who plays Will Grundy.

10. Japanese knotweed can grow from a piece of root the size of pea. And it can flourish anew if disturbed after lying dormant for more than 20 years


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4259624.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. The Road Less Travelled has spent more than eight years on the New York Times best seller list, a record for a non-fiction book.

2. Some 40,000 UK children are on prescription drugs for depression.

3. Andrew Marr, former political editor of the BBC, has read Tolstoy's epic War and Peace 15 times.

4. The name for a gap between the teeth is a diastema.

5. About 800,000 Brits go to Australia each year, either for holiday, to work, or to emigrate.

6. Identical twins have never held the two top positions of power in a modern country. But it could happen soon in Poland.

7. You can be sent to jail for showing someone an inappropriate film on a mobile phone.

8. At its current rate of shrinkage, the Arctic ice cap might disappear altogether during the summer of 2060.

9. Hecklers are so-called because of militant textile workers in Dundee.

10. Pulling your foot out of quicksand takes a force equivalent to that needed to lift a medium-sized car.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4282040.stm

[yellowfeverlime]

Only one....

1) I'm failing world History

[Nightshade]

I have one you can walk on custard!!!!

[Scheherazade]

1. Ruby Wax is studying for a degree in psychology and philosophy.

2. A single "mother" spud from southern Peru gave rise to all the varieties of potato eaten today, scientists have learned.

3. Spanish Flu, the epidemic that killed 50 million people in 1918/9, was known as French Flu in Spain

4. Beryl Bainbridge was expelled from school aged 14 for writing a racy limerick.

5. Belarus has the highest ratio of police to people, of any country in the world.

6. Before Ronnie Barker revealed himself to be the Two Ronnies' mystery sketchwriter Gerald Wiley, some people thought the man behind the mask was Tom Stoppard.

7. It's not impossible to drink 40 shots of vodka and still want more.

8. The gender of unborn turtles is affected by sea temperature. As seas warm up, there are more female turtles being born.

9. Britons take home 430,000 gallons (1.95m litres) of shampoo from hotels every year, a survey has found.

10. Author Andrea Levy, winner of the "Orange of Oranges" book prize for her novel Small Island, says she "didn't actually read a book" until she was 23.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4303994.stm

[Jay]

*blinks at #10* :eek:

[querida]

hahahahahahahahahahaha... wow... top of the pops... new pope... oh my.

[Scheherazade]

1. The UK and Spain have the highest number of cocaine users in Europe.

2. Croydon has more CCTV cameras than New York.

3. A giveaway DVD in a newspaper costs as little as 16p to produce, including rights, materials and manufacture.

4. The price of every DVD disc includes a small royalty to Philips, which developed the format.

5. Wallace and Gromit live in Wigan. Until now, creator Nick Park has been cagey about where 62 West Wallaby Street is, but in their latest film an A-Z of Wigan can be glimpsed on the dashboard of Wallace's car.

6. Three-quarters of the salt in our diets comes from processed foods.

7. Noodles have been around for at least 4,000 years, following a find in China.

8. Smokers spend on average £91,832 on cigarettes during their lifetime.

9. Madonna doesn't let her children watch television, only movies.

10. Thirsty whalers in the 19th Century used to kill tortoises for their urine.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4325890.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. Ordinary - not avian - flu kills about 12,000 people in the UK every winter.

2. You are 176 times more likely to be murdered than to win the National Lottery.

3. Koalas have fingerprints exactly like humans (although obviously smaller).

4. And human fingerprints can be worn down, particularly among manual labourers, typists and musicians.

5. Species of the week: the Osedax mucofloris, or "bone-eating snot-flower", a marine worm so-called because it lives off whale bones, looks like a flower, and is covered in mucus.

6. Half of all violent crime involves no injury to the victim.

7. Rats are good swimmers. One this week was caught after it staged an escape across 400m of open ocean.

8. The government chief vet's family keeps chickens; Dr Debby Reynolds is charged with keeping a check on bird flu.

9. The hoax Yorkshire Ripper letters sent to police were destroyed more than 20 years ago by chemicals in fingerprint tests.

10. EBay can become an addiction - the Priory clinic is now admitting people with an online auction habit.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4348766.stm

[Bongitybongbong]

1. ESP is fake.
2. You can make a hover craft.
3. A water jug can bceome a rocket or miniautomobile.
4. There are many things that should not be put in microwaves.
5. Some safes can only be cracked (outside of the combo) by using a tank.
6. Parcel tape is the stickiest tape among that, clear tape, and masking tape.
7. Milk is the best drink for spicy foods.
8. A stick of tnt can spread mulch quickly.
9. You can she about 2 kg. in four hours.
10. Greed makes you run faster than fear.
11. You can never get enough exploding caravans.

[Scheherazade]

1. In colonial America, servants negotiated agreements that they would not be forced to eat lobster more than twice a week.

2. The daily cost of water for the average household is 68p - what it would cost to buy a 2-litre bottle of Evian in a supermarket.

3. Bill Gates does not have an iPod.

4. The majority of those living alone are aged over 65, particularly widowed women.

5. There used to be signs on buses in the UK warning against spitting to guard against the spread of TB.

6. Carousel fraud, a VAT scam in which products are circulated around fake companies, is so widespread that it costs EU countries the equivalent of the VAT take of France.

7. Des Lynam saw Laurel and Hardy on stage at the Brighton Hippodrome in 1951 aged eight.

8. Rather than abstaining, an MP can vote both for and against a motion at the same time.

9. Prince Charles may not live the most carbon-neutral of lifestyles, but he does drive a hybrid car.

10. And he wrote a fan letter to Jamie Oliver after the TV chef's School Dinners series.

[rachel]

no you can never get enough exploding caravans,sigh.Scher after reading one of your posts i picked out one interesting item from your list and told some people at a dinner party. i thought they would be interested. Instead a number of them fixed their glare upon my surprised face and told me it was a silly lie and to not believe all of what i heard. I quietly with all the dignity i could muster fixed my gaze upon the spinach dip on my plate and said not a word for quite a while.

[Scheherazade]

1. In Guy Fawkes's day, those who persistently refused to attend Protestant services were fined £20 a month - the annual salary of a school teacher.

2. Margaret Thatcher "stamped her feet" in anger at the prospect of German reunification, according to Helmut Kohl's memoirs.

3. The first traffic cones were used in building Preston bypass in the late 1950s, replacing red lantern paraffin burners.

4. Britons buy about one million pumpkins for Halloween, 99% of which are used for lanterns rather than for eating.

5. Albania is retiring its Soviet MiG aircraft, which have killed 35 Albanians, but not a single enemy.

6. The French translation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has an extra 120 pages as it is a less concise language than English.

7. Bailiffs cannot evict on Sundays, bank holidays, Christmas Day or Good Friday.

8. Strictly Come Dancing judge Bruno Tonioli was once a backing dancer for Bananarama in the band's heyday.

9. You can dial the emergency services with 112 as well as 999.

10. Cabinet ministers who have been sacked, resigned or lost their seats collect an £18,000 golden goodbye (and those who leave twice get the payment again).


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4392080.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. During WWI, drinking water was often delivered to the front in old petrol canisters. "If you'd been there long enough you could tell the difference between water that had come in a BP can and one that had come from a Shell can," one veteran recalled in BBC One's The Last Tommy.

2. The mother of stocky cricketer - and surprise Strictly Come Dancing front-runner - Darren Gough was a ballet dancer. She has been helping him with his pivots.

3. Nettles growing on land where bodies are buried will reach a foot higher than those growing elsewhere.

4. Brian Cobby, the voice of the speaking clock, was also the man behind Thunderbirds' "5,4,3,2,1 Thunderbirds are Go".

5. It was partly thanks to the pioneering use of LPs by the Royal National Institute for the Blind that they were eventually adopted by the music industry.

6. The late Lord Lichfield used a whistle to keep the Royal Family in order when taking the photographs at Charles and Diana's wedding.

7. The concept of ransom comes from the medieval code of chivalry, which decreed that defeated knights be unharmed and exchanged for a sum of money.

8. A 19th Century covenant forbids the building of sports facilities on a plot of land earmarked for the 2012 Olympic development in east London. The government is planning to pass a law overturning the rule.

9. Armistice Day is one of the four peak times fo the year for the speaking clock, the others being News Year's Eve and when the clocks change.

10. The French equivalent of the Remembrance Day poppy is the blue cornflower.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4413636.stm#10things

[Scheherazade]

1. Wrapping up warm really CAN help stop you catching a cold.

2. CS Lewis wrote the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in three months. (CS, by the way, stands for Clive Staples.)

3. London's Waterloo station carries four times as many passengers as Heathrow each day.

4. Prisoners wear lurid green and yellow jumpsuits when appearing in court so they can be easily spotted if they try to escape.

5. Every two minutes someone is told they have cancer.

6. The actress who played Connie, the woman with a smart red bob haircut who advertised AOL for five years in the late 90s/early 00s, now works in an estate agent's in London.

7. The Japanese word "chokuegambo" describes the wish that there were more designer-brand shops on a given street.

8. More Coca-Cola products are consumed per person in Mexico than any other country, and the company has 70% of the nation's soft drinks market.

9. Fountain pens are unsuitable for children under 14, because they don't have holes in the pen caps.

10. The tartufo bianchi - a fungus which smells of decaying leaves and is better known as a white truffle - is worth more per gram than gold.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4434926.stm#10things

[Scheherazade]

1. Tony Blair is a big fan of kung-fu film star Jackie Chan. His favourite movie is Rush Hour.

2. The Royal Mail uses 342 million rubber bands a year to bundle up letters. It has switched to using red bands so that they can be more easily seen when dropped.

3. Loo roll is the third biggest selling household commodity, with sales exceeding £11bn a year.

4. The average price of a Christmas card is 71p.

5. BBC props managers inject Germolene into Mars Bars in the EastEnders shop to stop them being eaten, says former star Sid Owen.

6. Guy Ritchie hates his wife's new album and prefers Irish folk music.

7. Binge drinking dates back at least to the 12th Century.

8. Actor Brian Forster (who played the second Chris Partridge in The Partridge Family), is the great-great-great grandson of Charles Dickens. He was born on 14 April 1960, 101 years to the day that A Tale of Two Cities was published

9. Former Nazi scientists helped put the first man on the Moon and their legacy helped the development of the B-2 Stealth bomber and Cruise missiles.

10. The ability to ignore information makes for a better memory.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4455948.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. The smiley sun anti-nuclear badge was designed by a Danish pupil in a schools competition in the mid-1970s.

2. David Blunkett co-ordinates his clothes by asking the helper who does his laundry to hang his clothes in blocks of colour.

3. Road Safety Minister Stephen Ladyman has nine points on his driver's licence, as he told Top Gear.

4. Quicksand and custard share the same physical properties - both are non-Newtonian fluids that flow when treated gently but thicken when hit hard.

5. The Queen and Prince Philip send 850 Christmas cards a year.

6. The longest speech to the House of Commons lasted six hours, a record set in 1828.

7. The concept of Limbo dates from the 13th Century to explain what happened to children who died before being christened. The Vatican is preparing to abolish it from the church's teachings.

8. Residents of the remote Nedd Valley in the Brecon Beacons had no mains electricity until this week - the last community in England and Wales without it.

9. Fourteen percent of seven- and eight-year-olds have mobile phones.

10. Cicadas spend up to 17 years underground before emerging in their adult form.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4477512.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. The UK's mistletoe capital is Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire, where nearly all wholesale supplies of the plant are sold.

2. The familiar London double-decker bus, the Routemaster, might have disappeared from the capital's streets, but it's still used in Guernsey.

3. It is illegal to buy cigarettes under the age of 20 in Japan.

4. A knowledge of just 100 words would allow you to understand half of any book, even adult fiction, researchers at Warwick University say.

5. Sleep deprivation can make you hear police cars. Ben Fogle, currently rowing across the Atlantic with James Cracknell, reports experiencing just such a phenomenon.

6. You can buy poker chips with verses of scripture on them.

7. In theory, just 10 human embryos could be enough to stock a viable UK stem cell bank.

8. A collective noun for a group of jellyfish is a "smack".

9. You can now be prosecuted for taking part in an unauthorised protest near Parliament.

10. The word "twerp" has been classed as both parliamentary and unparliamentary language. In 1956, the Speaker ruled it in order because he assumed "it was a sort of technical term of the aviation industry". It was later classed as unacceptable.

[Virgil]

Scher

From your very first post on this thread:

6. Cats are genetically unable to taste sweet things. While dogs adore chocolate, cats remain indifferent.

Chocolate is poisonous to both cats and dogs. Neither should have any. Enough and it could kill them.

Just wanted to let people know.

[Mace Sin]

Only one....

1) I'm failing world History

I'm making around a 93% there...

...but making a 78% in Geometry. :rage:


Fourteen percent of seven- and eight-year-olds have mobile phones.

That doesn't surprise me.


Bill Gates does not have an iPod.

No, but he could easily buy me one. :goof:

[Scheherazade]

1. Magnetic North is not fixed, but in fact is drifting at such a speed away from northern Canada it could be in Siberia in 50 years.

2. The Body Shop is banned from China where cosmetics have to be tested on animals, says Dame Anita Roddick.

3. Paul McCartney's animal rights activism was inspired by his watching Bambi.

4. Musical instrument shops must pay an annual royalty to cover shoppers who perform a recognisable riff before they buy, thereby making a "public performance".

5. A sound can travel for 200 miles if it is loud enough.

6. Aslan is the Turkish for lion. (apt, given that the White Witch in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe tempts Edmund to dark side with the offer of Turkish delight).

7. One in 16.66 Britons (6% of the population) is homosexual according to new government figures.

8. Each tank at the Buncefield oil depot housed 700,000 gallons of fuel, enough to take a bus to the Moon and back 12 times.

9. People can train their bodies to heat up, helping them survive longer in icy water.

10. Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia that is compiled and updated by volunteers and has frequently had its accuracy called into question, is about as reliable as the Encyclopedia Britannica, according to a study by Nature.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4520854.stm

[Virgil]

3. Paul McCartney's animal rights activism was inspired by his watching Bambi.

I love animals, so I'm not really criticizing the activism. But isn't it funny trivial celebrities can be?

[Scheherazade]

I love animals, so I'm not really criticizing the activism. But isn't it funny trivial celebrities can be?I think he had watched the movie as a child and affected by it deeply.
The former Beatle, 63, said the animated Disney film where the young deer's mother is shot by hunters, had an impact on him as a child. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4520658.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. The UK's first mobile phone call was made 20 years ago this year, when Ernie Wise rang the Vodafone head office, which was then above a curry shop in Newbury.

2. Mohammed is now one of the 20 most popular names for boys born in England and Wales.

3. While it's an offence to drop litter on the pavement, it's not an offence to throw it over someone's garden wall.

4. An average record shop needs to sell at least two copies of a CD per year to make it worth stocking, according to Wired magazine.

5. Nicole Kidman is scared of butterflies. "I jump out of planes, I could be covered in cockroaches, I do all sorts of things, but I just don't like the feel of butterflies' bodies," she says.

6. WD-40 dissolves cocaine - it has been used by a pub landlord to prevent drug-taking in his pub's toilets.

7. Baboons can tell the difference between English and French. Zoo keepers at Port Lympne wild animal park in Kent are having to learn French to communicate with the baboons which had been transferred from Paris zoo.

8. Devout Orthodox Jews are three times as likely to jaywalk as other people, according to an Israeli survey reported in the New Scientist. The researchers say it's possibly because religious people have less fear of death.

9. The energy used to build an average Victorian terrace house would be enough to send a car round the Earth five times, says English Heritage.

10. Humans can be born suffering from a rare condition known as "sirenomelia" or "mermaid syndrome", in which the legs are fused together to resemble the tail of a fish.

11. One in 10 Europeans is allegedly conceived in an Ikea bed.

12. Until the 1940s rhubarb was considered a vegetable. It became a fruit when US customs officials, baffled by the foreign food, decided it should be classified according to the way it was eaten.

13. Prince Charles broke with an 80-year tradition by giving Camilla Parker Bowles a wedding ring fashioned from Cornish gold, instead of the nugget of Welsh gold that has provided rings for all royal brides and grooms since 1923.

14. It's possible for a human to blow up balloons via the ear. A 55-year-old factory worker from China reportedly discovered 20 years ago that air leaked from his ears, and he can now inflate balloons and blow out candles.

15. Lionesses like their males to be deep brunettes.

16. The London borough of Westminster has an average of 20 pieces of chewing gum for every square metre of pavement.

17. Bosses at Madame Tussauds spent £10,000 separating the models of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston when they separated. It was the first time the museum had two people's waxworks joined together.

18. If all the Smarties eaten in one year were laid end to end it would equal almost 63,380 miles, more than two-and-a-half times around the Earth's equator.

19. The = sign was invented by 16th Century Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde, who was fed up with writing "is equal to" in his equations. He chose the two lines because "noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle".

20. The Queen has never been on a computer, she told Bill Gates as she awarded him an honorary knighthood.

21. One person in four has had their identity stolen or knows someone who has.

22. The length of a man's fingers can reveal how physically aggressive he is, scientists say.

23. In America it's possible to subpoena a dog.

24. The 71m packets of biscuits sold annually by United Biscuits, owner of McVitie's, generate 127.8 tonnes of crumbs.

25. Nelson probably had a broad Norfolk accent.

26. One in four people does not know 192, the old number for directory inquiries in the UK, has been abolished.

27. Only in France and California are under 18s banned from using sunbeds.

28. The British buy the most compact discs in the world - an average of 3.2 per year, compared to 2.8 in the US and 2.1 in France.

29. When faced with danger, the octopus can wrap six of its legs around its head to disguise itself as a fallen coconut shell and escape by walking backwards on the other two legs, scientists discovered.

30. There are an estimated 1,000 people in the UK in a persistent vegetative state.

31. Train passengers in the UK waited a total of 11.5m minutes in 2004 for delayed services.

32. "Restaurant" is the most mis-spelled word in search engines.

33. Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho has only been in an English pub once, to buy his wife cigarettes.

34. The Little Britain wheelchair sketch with Lou and Andy was inspired by Lou Reed and Andy Warhol.

35. The name Lego came from two Danish words "leg godt", meaning "play well". It also means "I put together" in Latin.

36. The average employee spends 14 working days a year on personal e-mails, phone calls and web browsing, outside official breaks, according to employment analysts Captor.

37. Cyclist Lance Armstrong's heart is almost a third larger than the average man's.

38. Nasa boss Michael Griffin has seven university degrees: a bachelor's degree, a PhD, and five masters degrees.

39. Australians host barbecues at polling stations on general election days.

40. An average Briton will spend £1,537,380 during his or her lifetime, a survey from insurer Prudential suggests.

41. Tactically, the best Monopoly properties to buy are the orange ones: Vine Street, Marlborough Street and Bow Street.

42. Britain's smallest church, near Malmesbury, Wiltshire, opens just once a year. It measures 4m by 3.6m and has one pew.

43. The spiciness of sauces is measured in Scoville Units.

44. Rubber gloves could save you from lightning.

45. C3PO and R2D2 do not speak to each other off-camera because the actors don't get on.

46. Driving at 159mph - reached by the police driver cleared of speeding - it would take nearly a third of a mile to stop.

47. Liverpool has 42 cranes redeveloping the city centre.

48. A quarter of the world's clematis come from one Guernsey nursery, where production will top 4.5m plants this year alone.

49. Tim Henman has a tennis court at his new home in Oxfordshire which he has never used.

50. Only 36% of the world's newspapers are tabloid.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4566526.stm

[Scheherazade]

51. Parking wardens walk about 15 miles a day.

52. You're 10 times more likely to be bitten by a human than a rat.

53. It takes 75kg of raw materials to make a mobile phone.

54. Deep Throat is reportedly the most profitable film ever. It was made for $25,000 (£13,700) and has grossed more than $600m.

55. Antony Worrall-Thompson swam the English Channel in his youth.

56. The Pyruvate Scale measures pungency in onions and garlic. It's named after the acid in onions which makes cooks cry when cutting them.

57. The man who was the voice of one of the original Daleks, Roy Skelton, also did the voices for George and Zippy in Rainbow.

58. The average guest at a Buckingham Palace garden party scoffs 14 cakes, sandwiches, scones and ice-cream, according to royal accounts.

59. Oliver Twist is very popular in China, where its title is translated as Foggy City Orphan.

60. Newborn dolphins and killer whales don't sleep for a month, according to research carried out by University of California.

61. You can bet on your own death.

62. MPs use communal hairbrushes in the washrooms of the Houses of Parliament.

63. It takes less energy to import a tomato from Spain than to grow them in this country because of the artificial heat needed, according to Defra.

64. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg's home number is listed by directory inquiries.

65. Actor James Doohan, who played Scotty, had a hand in creating the Klingon language that was used in the movies, and which Shakespeare plays were subsequently translated into.

66. The hotter it is, the more difficult it is for aeroplanes to take off. Air passengers in Nevada, where temperatures have reached 120F, have been told they can't fly.

67. Giant squid eat each other - especially during sex.

68. The Very Hungry Caterpillar has sold one copy every minute since its 1969 publication.

69. First-born children are less creative but more stable, while last-born are more promiscuous, says US research.

70. Reebok, which is being bought by Adidas, traces its history back more than 100 years to Bolton.

71. Jimi Hendrix pretended to be gay to be discharged from the US Army.

72. A towel doesn't legally reserve a sun lounger - and there is nothing in German or Spanish law to stop other holidaymakers removing those left on vacant seats.

73. One in six children think that broccoli is a baby tree.

74. It takes a gallon of oil to make three fake fur coats.

75. Each successive monarch faces in a different direction on British coins.

76. The day when most suicides occurred in the UK between 1993 and 2002 was 1 January, 2000.

77. The only day in that time when no-one killed themselves was 16 March, 2001, the day Comic Relief viewers saw Jack Dee win Celebrity Big Brother.

78. One in 18 people has a third nipple.

79. The section of coast around Cleethorpes has the highest concentration of caravans in Europe.

80. Fifty-seven Bic Biros are sold every second - amounting to 100bn since 1950.

81. George Bernard Shaw named his shed after the UK capital so that when visitors called they could be told he was away in London.

82. Former Labour MP Oona King's aunt is agony aunt Miriam Stoppard.

83. Britain produces 700 regional cheeses, more even than France.

84. The actor who plays Mike Tucker in BBC Radio 4's The Archers is the father of the actor who plays Will Grundy.

85. Japanese knotweed can grow from a piece of root the size of pea. And it can flourish anew if disturbed after lying dormant for more than 20 years.

86. Hecklers are so-called because of militant textile workers in Dundee.

87. Pulling your foot out of quicksand takes a force equivalent to that needed to lift a medium-sized car.

88. A single "mother" spud from southern Peru gave rise to all the varieties of potato eaten today, scientists have learned.

89. Spanish Flu, the epidemic that killed 50 million people in 1918/9, was known as French Flu in Spain.

90. Ordinary - not avian - flu kills about 12,000 people in the UK every winter.

91. Croydon has more CCTV cameras than New York.

92. You are 176 times more likely to be murdered than to win the National Lottery.

93. Koalas have fingerprints exactly like humans (although obviously smaller).

94. Bill Gates does not have an iPod.

95. The first traffic cones were used in building Preston bypass in the late 1950s, replacing red lantern paraffin burners.

96. Britons buy about one million pumpkins for Halloween, 99% of which are used for lanterns rather than for eating.

97. The mother of stocky cricketer - and this year's Strictly Come Dancing champion - Darren Gough was a ballet dancer. She helped him with his pivots.

98. Nettles growing on land where bodies are buried will reach a foot higher than those growing elsewhere.

99. The Japanese word "chokuegambo" describes the wish that there were more designer-brand shops on a given street.

100. Musical instrument shops must pay an annual royalty to cover shoppers who perform a recognisable riff before they buy, thereby making a "public performance".



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4566526.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. David Cameron has 10 sugars in his tea before Prime Minister's Questions, on the advice of William Hague. The sugar he says, coats the larynx, stopping his voice from drying up.

2. Black Gold caviar costs £20,000 per kilo.

3. The elected president of a Liberal Democrat constituency party can be as young as 12 - watch out Charles Kennedy.

4. Cattle are capable of producing 500 litres of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, every day mostly through belching.

5. The number of crimes solved through DNA technology has quadrupled over the past five years.

6. A third of orchestral musicians suffer noise-induced hearing loss.

7. Sea lions may be cute but they are also "very smelly".

8. A laser beam can travel 15 million miles (25 million km).

9. Pele has always hated his nickname, which he says sounds like "baby-talk in Portuguese".

10. 4x4s are no safer for transporting children than ordinary cars, because of their greater risk of rolling over, according to a study published in the US journal Paediatrics.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4577242.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. Alanis Morisette cuts her own hair. "It's easier," she says.

2. Newsagent John Menzies is more properly pronounced John Ming-iss.

3. Box-office revenues for Phantom of the Opera worldwide - more than £1.7bn - exceed those of any film or show in history, including Titanic and Star Wars.

4. Looking away from a human face helps concentration.

5. Jeffrey Archer and Menzies Campbell were in the same British athletics team.

6. Jeremy Paxman's surname was made up by a 14th Century Suffolk ancestor who devised it as a pun on "peace man" when he entered politics.

7. Tony Blair doesn't slap Leo but did used to slap his other children.

8. Google employs 40 new staff a week.

9. Less than 10% of the land in the UK is owned by homeowners.

10. Bono wears sunglasses because he has sensitive eyes.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4594472.stm

[emily655321]

4. Looking away from a human face helps concentration.I knew it! That's why I can't look someone in the eye when I'm talking. It's distracting. I've been trying to seem more confident by maintaining eye contact during a conversation, but then I forget what I'm saying, or what they said, and it's a mess. Much easier just to look at their mouth or their ear.

[Scheherazade]

1. Tony Blair's gran was a graffiti vandal.

2. Emperor penguins can hold their breath for 20 minutes underwater.

3. Web users make their judgements about websites within a twentieth of a second of first seeing it.

4. There are more pupils on the sex offenders' register than teachers.

5. The northern bottle-nosed whale in the Thames is the first sighting of the species in the river since records began in 1913.

6. Members of an isolated tribe in the Amazonian rainforest can understand geometry as well as American schoolchildren

7. Researchers studying shoppers' baskets found people who bought wine also tended to buy poultry, cooking oil and low-fat cheese. Beer buyers, on the other hand, tended to buy chips, pork, butter, margarine, and sausages.

8. The late former prime minister, Sir Edward Heath, had a personal fortune of £5.4m. He left most of the money to a charity which will conserve his 18th Century home, Arundells, next to Salisbury Cathedral.

9. There are more than 150,000 computer viruses in the world.

10. Seventy percent of 11-15-year-olds do not picture scientists as "normal young and attractive men and women", a poll has suggested.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4616316.stm

[emily655321]

6. Members of an isolated tribe in the Amazonian rainforest can understand geometry as well as American schoolchildrenWell, to be fair, that isn't a very high standard to meet. :p

[Scheherazade]

1. Whale vomit is used by perfumers, to whom it is known as ambergris, and costs £11-a-gram.

2. Whales don't drink - they get their water intake from their food.

3. Aged 13, John Prescott travelled to Brighton with his family to compete for a £1,000 prize in the Most Typical Family competition.

4. Twenty-eight percent of retail sales in Britain, by value, are shops' "own brand" goods.

5. Stephen Fry drives a black cab while in London. (Simon Hughes, however, drives a yellow one.)

6. The composer behind the UK Theme, the medley of English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish tunes which is soon to be axed from Radio 4's early morning routine, was Fritz Spiegl, the man who also wrote the tune to Z-Cars.

7. Chris Martin wanted to hyphenate daughter Apple's surname, but his wife Gwyneth vetoed the name Paltrow-Martin because "Apple Blythe Alison Martin is just so lovely".

8. Heather Mills McCartney told her husband Paul that she would only marry him if he gave up smoking cannabis.

9. One percent of heroin addicts in the UK are treated with state-prescribed heroin.

10. In the 1960s, the CIA used to watch Mission Impossible to get ideas about spying.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4638900.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. Shoppers spend £46m a year on "distraction buys" - items bought to mask embarrassing purchases, such as condoms and treatments for piles, in the same shopping basket.

2. The term "misfeasance" means to carry out a legal act illegally.

3. Rats smell in "stereo" - the rodents' brain responding differently to smells from the left and right.

4. The telegram which informed the world that Orville Wright had successfully flown misspelled his name as "Orevelle".

5. The communications director of the London Planetarium is called Diane Moon.

6. Louisiana has the highest rate of coastal land loss in North America - an area the size of Wembley stadium is lost to the sea every 20 minutes.

7. More households have two or more cars than have none.

8. Half of all cars sold in the United States are four-wheel drives.

9. Bill Gates is so rich the US tax department has a special computer devoted solely to his finances.

10. Metropolitan Police chief Sir Ian Blair has a glass cabinet in his office containing a Sikh sword, a Jewish prayer book and a book entitled A Portrait of New Zealand.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4661558.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. The Queen is the only over-75 not legally required to have a driver's licence. But, like others, she does have to fill out a form every three years declaring any medical conditions.

2. Architect Sir Christopher Wren was keen to test Newton's theory of gravity by "shooting of a bullet upwards at a certaine angle from the perpendicular round every way - thereby to see whether the bullets soe shot would all fall in a perfect circle".

3. Between 19,500 and 35,100 children are taking heroin, according to a government survey.

4. The mitten crab, imported in ships' holds from China, is on the verge of taking over some of the UK's major waterways.

5. Taxpayers have spent £78m on the Northern Ireland assembly since its suspension, according to Secretary of State Peter Hain.

6. A "lost world" exists in the Indonesian jungle that is home to dozens of hitherto unknown animal and plant species.

7. James Dean worked as a stunt tester on the game show Beat the Clock, testing the safety of the stunts that studio audience members would later perform.

8. Ronald Reagan was born the same day that Rolls Royce started using its famous "Spirit of Ecstasy" on car bonnets - 6 February 1911.

9. Keira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson hadn't met before posing nude together for the Vanity Fair cover, despite being close in age and in the same profession.

10. Whale meat caught under Japan's research programme ends up not only in high-end sushi but in dog food, school meals and as fast-food "whale bacon".


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4685028.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. George Formby's When I'm Cleaning Windows was temporarily banned by the BBC for its suggestive lyrics.

2. The late Dame Barbara Cartland founded a gypsy site called Barbaraville in Herefordshire in 1963, and it still exists.

3. Tufty the road safety squirrel had a surname. It was Fluffytail.

4. Children and teenagers' more acute hearing means they can detect some high-pitched sounds inaudible to adults - and these sounds have been used in a device to ward off gangs from trouble-spots.

5. Someone with a 20-a-day habit will spend £31,025 on cigarettes over the next 20 years, according to the NHS's stop smoking website.

6. Male robins are the only birds to sing at night.

7. And the intensity of a bird's song is related to its testosterone levels - it's the fittest birds that sing the loudest.

8. Barry Cryer's mentor was the magician David Nixon.

9. New York is to launch what is thought to be the world's first municipally branded condom to encourage its citizens to have safe sex.

10. David Cameron's supporters are said to play a game in which they imagine themselves in a political version of Middle Earth, with their leader cast as a Tory Frodo.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4708218.stm

[sdr4jc]

1. The Pope owned a pair of Prada shoes.

2. If a cat likes milk, it's because of the fat content, not the sugar. Cats lost one of the two genes required to taste sweets more than a thousand years ago.

3. Baker's chocolate will kill a dog.

4. So will Tylenol.

5. The only animal that scientists have found no benefitial purpose for is the common housefly.

6. Elephants are the only mammals that cant jump.

7. The Guinness Book of Records states that the worlds oldest woman lived to be 126.

8. Scientists still don't know exactly where a cat's purr is made...they can't find the organ...

9. However, they do know that a cat has over 100 documented vocal sounds, where a dog only has about 8.

10. Cats can distinguish the difference between blue and green, but cannot see red. Dogs are entirely colorblind.


**Can you guys tell I'm an animal lover??**

[Scheherazade]

1. In an effort to weigh as little as possible, ski jumpers are susceptible to anorexia.

2. Big Brother's Preston is the great-great-great-great grandson of 19th Century prime minister, Earl Grey - he of the fragrant tea.

3. Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, who is portrayed in the Bafta-winning film Capote, lives a reclusive life in Alabama and has written nothing but four articles since the book's release in 1960.

4. Ian Gardiner, who played Reginald Molehusband in the classic Public Information Film, was paid £10 for the job.

5. Kenny Everett did the strangulated cat voice in the Charley Says Public Information Films.

6. John Irving, the brother of Holocaust-denier historian David Irving, is chairman of the Wiltshire Racial Equality Council.

7. The political cartoonist Gillray's real name was Carlo Khan.

8. Daniel Craig, the latest incarnation of 007, cannot drive manual cars - meaning Bond's classic Aston Martin DB5 has had to be converted to automatic.

9. Christopher Lee, a former Bond villain, is a distant cousin of 007 creator Ian Fleming.

10. Gwyneth Paltrow is a Two Ronnies fan.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4731516.stm

[steve12553]

I'm thoroughly suprised. As completely as my experience is limited to the west side of the Atlantic, I understood eight of those references (counting the Two Ronnies and Gwyneth as one reference.)

[Scheherazade]

1. Cats can catch bird flu.

2. There is a road called Psycho Path in Traverse City, Michigan, US.

3. Elspeth Campbell, wife of new Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies, wrote her thesis on Coronation Street.

4. And her father (Major General Roy Urquhart) was portrayed by Sean Connery in the film a Bridge Too Far.

5. Stephen King doesn't own a mobile phone.

6. US Secret Service sniffer dogs are put up in five-star hotels during overseas presidential visits.

7. Alexei Sayle won an International Emmy for comedy, but no one told him. The first he knew was when he saw Channel 4 News, which showed Benny Hill collecting Alexei's award on his behalf.

8. Flushing a toilet costs, on average, 1.5p.

9. The name Swarfega, the hand-cleaning product, is derived from "swarf" which is the name for greasy grit in a wheel axle and "ega", which suggested it would work quickly.

10. Anna Nicole Smith's real name is Vickie Lynn Marshall.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4754608.stm

[chmpman]

2. There is a road called Psycho Path in Traverse City, Michigan, US.


I heard about this, it won a contest for the oddest street name, I think in the US.

[Scheherazade]

1. A new product is launched every three-and-a-half minutes.

2. The Palestinians have a supreme court.

3. Syriana - the title of George Clooney's latest film - is a term used by Washington think-tanks to describe hypothetical realignment of the Middle East.

4. Rhubarb, that classic English fruit, was introduced to Britain from Siberia.

5. The "Rhubarb triangle" is an area of West Yorkshire farms bordered by Leeds, Wakefield and Bradford, where rhubarb is grown.

6. Pooh Bear illustrator EH Shepard hated Pooh bear.

7. Chimpanzees ruin their fingers by walking on their knuckles.

8. It's possible to generate a temperature 133 times greater than the interior of the sun - scientists have produced a gas exceeding 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit, although they don't know how they did it.

9. Hummingbirds are the only creatures, apart from humans, known to have an episodic memory - enabling them to remember where and when they last fed.

10. HSBC, which has announced record UK banking profits of £11.9bn, makes a profit of just £1.05 per week from each of its UK personal customers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4781320.stm#10things

[Scheherazade]

1. The Himalayas cover one-tenth of the Earth's surface.

2. Pandas are the only bears not to hibernate - their bamboo diet isn't sufficiently fattening.

3. Lord Levy, recruited by Tony Blair to raise money for the Labour party, made his own fortune managing Alvin Stardust, among others.

4. In a fight between a polar bear and a lion, the polar bear would win.

5. Aston Barrett, the bassist in Bob Marley's band, has 52 children.

6. Tests conducted on a rare Chinese frog with no external eardrums have shown it uses ultrasound to communicate.

7. The 18th Century horse Eclipse, the ancestor of an estimated 80% of modern thoroughbreds, had only averagely long legs.

8. Nearly a third of people aged 25 to 34 in the UK have a tattoo, a survey has found.

9. More of those with tattoos (17%) work in media and marketing than do in the Armed forces (9%).

10. Shortly after the InterCity 125 was introduced, the UK had the highest proportion of trains running at more than 100mph of any country.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4800864.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. Goths, those pasty-faced teenagers who revel in black clothing, are likely to become doctors, lawyers and architects, according to a study by Sussex University.

2. Nelson Mandela used to steal pigs as a child.

3. In the UK there are: 275,000km of gas pipes; 353,000km of sewer pipes; 396,000km of water pipes, and 482,000km of electricity cables.

4. Jacques Chirac spent time in his youth as a forklift driver at a US brewery.

5. More than 3,000 BT internet customers download up to 200 gigabytes each month.

6. There are an average of 4.4 sparrows in each British garden, a study has found. In 1979, there were 10 per garden.

7. No chancellor of the exchequer in more than 150 years has delivered 10 Budgets in a row. Gordon Brown achieved that feat this week.

8. Electricity for Number 10 Downing Street is supplied by a French company.

9. Boris Johnson calls Harriet Harman "Hattie".

10. Under the Estate Agents Act 1979, anyone can set up in business as one unless they have been banned by the Office of Fair Trading or are bankrupt.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4824504.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. The average British woman worries about the size and shape of her body every 15 minutes.

2. This Easter weekend will see 2.3 million people travelling through the UK's airports.

3. Six seats in the Italian Senate depend on the votes of Italians living abroad.

4. A flag expert is a vexillologist.

5. Coins which are called "coppers", such as the penny, have been made from steel since 1992.

6. Compensation payments to teachers following personal injuries, such as assaults by pupils, amounted to £7.6m last year.

7. Berlin's tallest building, a television tower, will have a giant 32 metre football placed on top for the World Cup.

8. Iceland has the highest concentration of broadband users in the world.

9. The suicide rate in the UK is at its lowest rate since records began in 1910.

10. Tony Blair is the first prime minister in recent times not to use RAF aircraft for family holidays.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4895278.stm

[Virgil]

1. The average British woman worries about the size and shape of her body every 15 minutes.

If the average British man is like the average American man, he's probably worriying about the size and shape of her body every 5 minutes. :D

Nice to see you back, Scher.

[Scheherazade]

Nice to see you back, Scher.Thank you, Virgil! :)

1. Charles Webb, who wrote The Graduate about himself and his female partner Fred, is still with her. The pair live in Hove, East Sussex, but are flat broke and facing eviction from their flat.

2. A hen can take on the characteristics of a cockerel - comb and wattle, crowing, trying to mate with hens - if the cockerel in their brood is removed. But they do not develop male sex organs.

3. British diplomats have a call-out rate of £84.50 an hour.

4. Paint is classed as a "hazardous article" under new health and safety rules governing public transport, and can only be taken on a bus if "carried in two containers".

5. Vanessa Mae is worth more than Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin, according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2006, which estimates Ms Mae's wealth at £32m compared to Mr Martin's £25m fortune.

6. Yellow, the Coldplay hit that ranked fifth in a recent roundup of Britain's favourite lyric, was inspired, in part by a copy of the Yellow Pages.

7. The Queen has visited every country in the Commonwealth except Cameroon.

8. Homer Simpson's hair is drawn as an "M" and his ear as a "G", representing the initials of Simpson's animator Matt Groening.

9. Suri - the name of Tom Cruise's new daughter - means "pickpocket" in Japanese.

10. Camel's milk, which is widely drunk in Arab countries, has 10 times more iron than cow's milk.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4915410.stm#10things

[Scheherazade]

1. Domestic chores take up an average nine years, two months and 25 days over a lifetime.

2. The Labour Party spent £299.63 on Star Trek outfits for the last election, while the Tories shelled out £1,269 to import groundhog costumes.

3. Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown says that when he needs inspiration he hangs upside-down in gravity boots.

4. John Prescott's middle name is Leslie.

5. The best-value consumer purchase in terms of the price and usage is an electric kettle.

6. An artificial insect eye, the size of a pin head and containing over 8,500 hexagonal lenses, is being developed for use as an ultra-thin camera.

7. Londoners spend four more hours per week using the internet than the national average.

8. The most popular employment destination for graduates is the media, followed by teaching, investment banking, marketing and accountancy.

9. Retirement is viewed as a "time of happiness" by 82% of people in Britain - much higher than the global average.

10. Singer Tony Christie is to release a World Cup version of his song, (Is This the Way to) Amarillo? It is to be called (Is This the Way to) the World Cup?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4938004.stm#10things

[Scheherazade]

1. Each year 300 men are diagnosed with breast cancer.

2. There's a scientific scientific term for holding your breath - it's apnoea.

3. In Bhutan government policy is based on Gross National Happiness; thus most street advertising is banned, as are tobacco and plastic bags.

4. Every 10 minutes of commuting cuts your social involvement by a 10th - so 10 percent fewer family dinners, club meetings and other forms of interaction.

5. In 20 minutes - the time it takes to vote - local councils issue £4,269 worth of speed camera fines.

6. And collect £38,052 in parking ticket fines.

7. Metal detector enthusiasts are referred to as "detectorists"; there are about 30,000 hobbyists in the UK.

8. "Teen chick lit" - a genre which includes the plagiarised novel by the Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan - boosted sales of juvenile fiction books in the United States by 20 percent from 2004 to 2005.

9. Seven in 10 UK households have digital service to at least one TV set; yet there are still 40m sets still to be converted before the analogue signal is switched off.

10. Thirty-six percent of builders regard themselves as middle-class and 30 percent of bank managers say they are working-class.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4961874.stm

[AimusSage]

Hey, Guess what I'm doing! I'm apnoea-ing. Hey, I have to do something, I commute 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, my social life must be nearly non-existant.

[Virgil]

Hey, Guess what I'm doing! I'm apnoea-ing. Hey, I have to do something, I commute 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, my social life must be nearly non-existant.
Wow. That's horrible. My commute is an hour each way, and I thought that was bad. Commuting stinks.

[AimusSage]

I just sleep 3 hours less each day, and catch up in the commute, either that or I study. It's a bus, so I don't have to concentrate on the road. It's the apnoea-ing that's difficult. I can only manage to do that a minute or so.

[Virgil]

I car pool. I drive once or twice a week. Otherwise I try to sleep.

[AimusSage]

I once tried to Apnoea during the whole commute, but it didn't work, sleeping truly is the best way to deal with it.

[Scheherazade]

1. Dolphins communicate like humans by calling - more accurately, whistling - each other by "name".

2. Fidel Castro is worth $900m according to Forbes although he insists his net worth is zero.

3. The short xylophone ditty that Apple Mac computers play is called Sosumi - a contraction of So Sue Me - Apple's cheeky riposte to the Beatles' Apple Corps.

4. George Bush's personal highlight of his presidency so far is catching a 7.5lb (3.4kg) perch.

5. The architect of Centrepoint - London's most obvious modernist landmark - built more buildings in the capital than Sir Christopher Wren. His name was Richard Seifert.

6. Britain is still paying off debts that predate the Napoleonic wars because it's cheaper to do so than buy back the bonds on which they are based.

7. In Japan, boys in secondary school wear an outfit modelled on 19th Century Prussian army uniforms.

8. Despite the abundance of aerial shots of tall gleaming City of London buildings, Sir Alan Sugar's company Amstrad is based in a low-rise block in Brentwood, Essex.

9. Employees of the British Nuclear Group are entitled to an annual underwear allowance of £70.

10. Five billion apples eaten a year in the UK.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4984022.stm#10things

[Scheherazade]

1. More women read the heavy metal bible Kerrang! than men.

2. The Japanese get through 25 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks a year.

3. Sir Paul McCartney is only the second richest music millionaire in the UK - Clive Calder, is top.

4. Publishers have coined the term "Brownsploitation" for the rash of books that have sprung up in the wake of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code blockbuster.

5. NBC has acquired the rights to develop and screen a US version of the Eurovision Song Contest in which the 50 US states will compete against each other.

6. Noel Edmonds dyes his goatee.

7. Cloud seeding - putting chemicals into clouds - was reportedly used during the 1976 drought in an effort to make it rain.

8. Modern teenagers are better behaved than their counterparts of 20 years ago, showing "less problematic behaviour" involving sex, drugs and drink.

9. You can be prosecuted for putting non-recyclable rubbish into your household recycling bin.

10. Children are smuggling junk food such as crisps and sweets into schools which have banned unhealthy food.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4772129.stm#10things

[jackyyyy]

7. Cloud seeding - putting chemicals into clouds - was reportedly used during the 1976 drought in an effort to make it rain. Chemicals! Explains why rain dancing made a comeback.

8. Modern teenagers are better behaved than their counterparts of 20 years ago, showing "less problematic behaviour" involving sex, drugs and drink.Sure, I can see how their parents would conclude that.

9. You can be prosecuted for putting non-recyclable rubbish into your household recycling bin. I have no problem putting it on the street.

[Scheherazade]

1. Rule 2.25 of the Chelsea Flower Show regulations bans entrants from including garden gnomes in their displays. Bunting, balloons and flags are also banned.

2. Wayne Rooney is able to fill his computer-controlled bath by text message.

3. A dinosaur is named after Mark Knopfler because the team of palaeontologists that found it were listening to his music at the time. It's the Masiakasaurus knopfleri.

4. The egg came first.

5. Erotomania is the name of the condition in which a person holds a delusional belief that someone is in love with them.

6. Humans were first infected with the HIV virus in the 1930s.

7. There are 220 million vegetarians in India.

8. Special branch officers guarding former Prime Minister Lord Callaghan were frustrated at an unreliable security system on his Sussex farm that was confused by cattle, pigs and dung heaps and allowed a Jehovah's Witness to get all the way to the house and speak to Callaghan undetected.

9. Dry weather makes for less polluted beaches.

10.There are 64,726 electronically tagged offenders in the UK.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5003942.stm#10things

[Weeping Willow]

Hmmm..
Ok.. dunno if it's ok but this is my own 10 things.. ..

1. People at my workplace are totaly Crazy and wierd.. and i love almost each and everyone of the for that!

2. A Digital Camera that with videos can become a really useful and amusing thing..

3. The First person recording The Song "the lion sleeps tonight", "Mbube" or "Wimoweh" was a man.

4. The song was Recorded in 1941 but was Writen in 1939 by the same man.

5. Solomon Linda was his name..

6. Someone created a Flash movie against mass meat factory market named the Meatrix.

7. they even have a sequel and a whole site around the subject..

8. Aimus looks like the actor Roy Dupuis.

9. Smoke when you are sick is very bad for your throat..

10. Translating Hebrew thoughts to English is really not Easy!

[poetru_fanatic]

(1) Katie wanted to kiss me
(2) My bf wants to be with me for the rest of my life
(3) My friends are really wiered....
(4) Not all men are annoying.. Some are dead
(5) My dad will randomly show up just because he wants a hug (I feel sorry for him when I do decide to move out of the house)
(6) When I truly am board and have nothing (and I mean nothing) to do, I WILL resort to cleaning
(7) I need to be pushed to a huge extreem in order for me to pass these exams with flying colors.
(8) My whole summer revolves around books and my bf.... *Wow Im actually going to take some reading time out of my summer to see people?* LMFAO
(9) Theres people talking behind me about waxing body parts but Im not too sure I wanna know exactly where anymore.
(10) I have an awkward life, lifestyle, and.... what was I saying???

There we go...
Oh crap I know where their talking about now.... Im too young (15 =p) to be in this conversation with them....

(11) I act so bloody childish sometimes.

[Scheherazade]

1. One in four smokers use roll-ups.

2. About 7% of England's land - equivalent to 1.6 million football pitches - is open for the public.

3. Files on nuclear waste from the recently-closed Windscale reactor at Sellafield are kept on acid-free paper, stored in copper bags, with no plastic binders or staples to contaminate the pages.

4. Professional football referees can run 13km in a match.

5. The croquet set John Prescott so memorably used at Dorneywood was presented to the grace-and-favour house by previous resident Kenneth Clarke.

6. There are about two million cohabiting couples in the UK .

7. The writer/director of Withnail and I had his £70,000 pay packet cut to £40,000 to pay for the elaborate scene in which Withnail and his mate drove back to London and were stopped by coppers for drink driving.

8. It takes 354,000 scrap tyres to make a mile of re-cycled rubber road.

9. Music can help reduce chronic pain by more than 20% and can alleviate depression by up to 25%.

10. The vaults beneath the Bank of England, which include three disused wells, have more floorspace than the City of London's tallest building, Tower 42 (formerly the NatWest Tower).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5021232.stm#10things

[Scheherazade]

1. Dogs with harelips can end up with two noses.

2. Gabardine is a rival to modern, synthetic mountaineering clothes - being lighter, hardwearing and water-resistant.

3. Nearly five times as many people commit suicide in Japan as die in traffic accidents. In the UK, adult deaths by suicide outstrip all road traffic deaths by about 60%.

4. Children inherit a taste for meat and fish but acquire a liking, or loathing, for vegetables.

5. Private individuals can buy up parts of the Moon thanks to a loophole in the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty that simply forbade any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon.

6. Parents of toddlers spend an average of £406 a year on their child's clothing.

7. John Cleese flies from his home in Los Angeles to London to visit his dentist.

8. Clitoris derives its name from the ancient Greek word kleitoris, meaning "little hill".

9. A domestic cat can frighten a black bear to climb a tree.

10. Wrinkles can determine whether a smoker is more likely to develop lung disease - those with wrinkles have a five times higher risk of disease than those with smooth skin.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5070986.stm#10things

[Scheherazade]

1. So much wine is produced in Europe that hundreds of millions of bottles are distilled into industrial alcohol each year to help drain the "wine lake".

2. Multiple births increased by about a third in the UK between 1984 and 2004 - thanks to IVF treatment and better diets.

3. More than 10% of new cars sold in Sweden run on alternative fuel.

4. Confucius's proper name was Kong Zi, and all the world's three million Kongs are popularly supposed to be his descendants.

5. The word "time" is the most common noun in the English language, according to the latest Oxford dictionary.

6. 41% of English women have punched or kicked their partners, according to a study.

7. Frank Lampard, Jodie Marsh, Jack Straw and Noel Edmonds all went to the same school - posh fee-paying Brentwood School in Essex.

8. The VC10 plane in the Queen's Flight fleet - used by Cabinet ministers and the Royals - has backward-facing seats, which exacerbate travel sickness.

9. John Prescott has never sent an e-mail.

10. Keanu Reeves doesn't own a computer and instead corresponds with friends by hand-written letters.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5094168.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. Archaelogists who have found evidence of hunting and butchering of elephants in Kent, 400,000 years ago, believe that the elephant meat was eaten raw.

2. While 53% of households have access to a garage, only 24% use them for parking cars.

3. Siestas are not a southern European invention. An afternoon sleep was common in northern Europe before the industrial revolution.

4. Ants judge distance by counting their steps, suggest researchers from Switzerland and Germany.

5. The Facebook social networking website is so popular among students that there is now a verb "to facebook" someone.

6. Alcohol-related mental health cases, among in-patients, increased by 75 per cent in the past decade.

7. Harry Potter author JK Rowling says that "in something like 1990" she had already decided upon the final chapter of the concluding seventh book in the series.

8. Givenchy perfume's new model for its Angel or Demon range is Marie de Villepin, the daughter of France's prime minister.

9. John Vassall, who spied for the Soviet Union, was given an emergency number to contact: Kensington 8955 and he was instructed to ask for "Miss Mary".

10. Mortgage borrowing now accounts for 42% of take-home salary. The total mortgage debt has passed £1 trillion for the first time.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5116502.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. Pirates holding a ship's crew hostage can expect a $200,000 ransom.

2. Speed-eating contests date from 1916 among US immigrants downing hot-dogs to prove their patriotism.

3. Mammoths, previously thought to be dark-haired, were also blond and possibly ginger, suggest researchers analysing 43,000-year-old bones.

4. In the 1970s a typical home would only have had 17 objects requiring power such as electricity.

5. Poor people are 10 times more likely to die younger than rich people, says the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

6. Half of lightning deaths occur after the thunderstorm has passed.

7. A space shuttle suit includes special underwear.

8. The CND symbol incorporates the semaphore letters for N and D for nuclear and disarmament.

9. The grunts made by tennis player Maria Sharapova at Wimbledon were louder than a pneumatic drill.

10. Albino horses have to use sun lotion to prevent their skin blistering in hot weather.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5140306.stm

[thevintagepiper]

1. Things are going to be alright

2. Where my new house will be

3. That when I move I will still have my own room

4. That I'm allowed to see teh new POTC movie

5. That my dad is supportive of me and my feelings even more than I knew

6. This can still be hard

7. Webcams are a pain but a blessing

8. The script for The Princess Bride was written by William Goldman at least 2o years before the movie was made

9. Eisley's "Memories" music video should be out next week

10. In the Lord of the Rings films they used giant robot people things...

[Scheherazade]

1. People added uranium ore to their water jugs in the 1920s as it was thought to improve health.

2. And Radium-brand toothpaste, condoms and shoe polish were sold as the word was indicative of quality, much as "platinum" is today.

3. Forty-eight percent of the population is ex-directory.

4. Nasa worked on inflatable spacecraft in the 1960s.

5. An SAS dog made more than 20 parachute drops in World War II.

6. Red Buttons - real name Aaron Chwatt - took his surname from the nickname for hotel porters, a job he did in his teens.

7. Nerve cells grow along bundles of a special fibre similar to spider silk.

8. About 750 copies of Shakespeare's First Folio, which set down 18 plays for the first time, were printed 1623 - some 230 survive.

9. The Severn Estuary has the second highest tides in the world.

10. The postcode with the highest income in the country is KT19 7, for West Ewell, near Epsom in Surrey.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5164320.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. British bathrooms usually have two taps instead of one because, historically, British plumbing provides hot and cold water at different pressures, meaning mixer taps are more difficult to fit.

2. A professional pronouncer is called an "orthoepist" - and it can be pronounced three different ways.

3. There are 60 Acacia Avenues in the UK.

4. If left alone, 70% of birthmarks marks gradually fade away.

5. Kenneth Clarke invented road humps.

6. We sleep more deeply when we sleep alone - but when sharing, women sleep more soundly than men.

7. Gritters come out in hot weather too - to spread rock dust, which stops roads melting.

8. The exploits of the SAS parachuting dog mentioned in last week's 10 things were, in fact, a ruse. Rob the collie did little more than cheer up ground staff, according to one of the last surviving officers from his regiment.

9. A morris dancing group is called a side.

10. Jarvis Cocker watches CBeebies and rates Barnaby Bear but not the Fimbles.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5186642.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. It's illegal to fly a national flag without permission from a local council - unless it is flown from a vertical flagpole - meaning thousands of football fans were technically breaking the law during the World Cup by displaying the Cross of St George.

2. When filming summer scenes in winter, actors suck on ice cubes just before the camera rolls - it cools their mouths so their breath doesn't condense in the cold air.

3. 99 ice creams have been so-called since the 1930s, when they were more of an ice cream sandwich than a cone.

4. The Nazis went out of their way to condemn Superman, with Goebbels writing a polemic in April 1940 in Das Schwarze Korps, the SS newspaper.

5. Boutros Boutros Ghali's mobile phone ringtone is Oh My Darling and When the Saints (as listeners to Radio 4's Today programme unexpectedly heard on Wednesday morning).

6. Gordon Brown was presented with a Ferrari pedal car by the Italian finance minister, revealed the register of ministerial gifts. He paid £190 to keep it.

7. Once body temperature reaches 42C, it starts to cook. The heat causes the proteins in each cell to irreversibly change.

8. The average film running time is now two hours.

9. DR Congo boasts not only copper and gold and diamonds but also most of the world's deposits of a mineral called coltan, which is used in mobile phones.

10. Tokyo's subway has women-only carriages to protect female commuters from groping.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5209286.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. Thirty percent of people with digital cameras never print their pictures.

2. Shoe injuries are on the rise - half a dozen women are admitted to University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff during weekend evenings suffering from them.

3. There are only four members of the Shaker religious sect left in the world.

4. The new chief executive of Ben and Jerry's is called Walt Freese.

5. California was the 12th largest source of greenhouse gasses last year - 41% of which is down to transport (as opposed to 28% in the UK).

6. British motorists are the most uptight in Europe, with 87% sometimes very annoyed by other drivers.

7. Almost all the leatherback turtles found dead in UK waters have died from ingesting discarded plastic bags, which they mistake for jellyfish, one of their main food sources.

8. Lord Tebbit is a "huge fan" of Deal or No Deal.

9. It's illegal to make confetti out of euro bank notes.

10. The oleander (Nerium oleander) plant is perhaps the most lethal plant in the British Isles today - one small portion of leaf could knock you out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5230698.stm#10things

[Scheherazade]

1. Only children are the least likely to be able to make other people laugh, say psychologists. Only 11% of children without siblings have this talent.

2. Newspapers in the UK have given away 54 million DVDs this year, about the same number as have been sold by retailers.

3. The original film footage of the first Apollo XI moon landing has been lost.

4. There are 32,000 workers living on-site at the production centre in China where iPods are manufactured.

5. Televisions with plasma screens can consume four times as much electricity as cathode ray tube televisions.

6. Involuntary bad language, a symptom affecting about one in 10 people with Tourette's syndrome, is called "coprolalia".

7. There's an A-level in critical thinking - Theo Walcott's girlfriend, Melanie Slade, passed it.

8. The town of Barga in Tuscany claims to be "the most Scottish in Italy" - and this week held its annual Scottish festival.

9. There are two million cars and trucks in Brazil which run on alcohol.

10. Watching television can act as a natural painkiller for children, say researchers from the University of Siena.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4790045.stm

[Scheherazade]

1. Trap-jaw ants have been recorded closing their jaws at 66 mph, the fastest known speed for an animal moving its body parts.

2. Caprice's surname is Bourret.

3. There is only one cheddar cheese maker in Cheddar, even though cheddar is the most popular hard cheese in the English-speaking world.

4. Cartoon cat Tom smoked roll-ups. But a scene showing him rolling his own cigarette, only using one hand, is to be cut from screenings on children's television.

5. For every 10 successful attempts to climb Mount Everest there is one fatality, says a report from a medical journal.

6. Cows can have regional accents, says a professor of phonetics, after studying cattle in Somerset

7. Cups of tea can be healthier than water, according to some nutritionists.

8. Despite the iPod's success, Apple has had to pay Creative for use of its patented technology.

9. There are 300,000 people aged 90 or over in the UK.

10. A million guitars were sold in the UK last year, more than double the number sold five years ago.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5270228.stm

[Shannanigan]

1. Thirty percent of people with digital cameras never print their pictures.


Oh I bet it is soooooooooo much more than that with all the people who just keep photos on their computer and send them through the internet!

Honestly, why print when everybody has a computer and instead of lugging albums around you can just have photos on a disk or flash drive?

[Scheherazade]

1. Everyday school expenses - such as uniforms - cost families an average £1,300 a year.

2. Some Royal Mail stamps, which of course carry the Queen's image, are printed in Holland.

3. 88% of couples in long and happy relationships have lips of similar size, according to research by the University of Leicester.

4. London has the best public transport system in the world (well, according to readers of TripAdvisor.com).

5. Helen Mirren was born Ilyena Lydia Moronoff, the daughter of a Russian-born violinist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

6. The Airfix swastika decals are banned from kits for sale in Germany.

7. Toytown, the horse which carried Zara Phillips to equestrian gold, cost just £400.

8. Chinese Girl, a painting by Vladimir Tretchikoff, who died last week, is believed to have sold more in print form than the Mona Lisa or Van Gogh's Sunflowers.

9. Some sharks can't reproduce until the age of 20 or above.

10. Dipping seagull eggs in oil, so they do not hatch, is seen as the best way to limit the seagull population. Shooting the birds is too dangerous, while smashing eggs just leads to gulls laying more.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5292374.stm#10things

[kathycf]

Well, I don't know if anybody posted these before (too lazy to search through the whole thread :blush: ) but here are a few fun facts about my native land.

1. Only in America......can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.

2. Only in America......are there handicap parking places in front of a skating rink.

3. Only in America......do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while
healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.

4. Only in America......do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke.

5. Only in America......do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.

6. Only in America......do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.

7. Only in America......do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place.

8. Only in America......do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.

9. Only in America......do we use the word 'politics' to describe the process so well: 'Poli' in Latin meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning 'bloodsucking creatures'.

10. Only in America......do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.


Many thanks to my friend Sara who passed this information on to me. :D

[kathycf]

5. Helen Mirren was born Ilyena Lydia Moronoff, the daughter of a Russian-born violinist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

and she shares a birthday with me...July 26th. :)

[AimusSage]

3. 88% of couples in long and happy relationships have lips of similar size, according to research by the University of Leicester.
3. Now that is interesting, what with many women nowadays filling up their lips with collagen, could this be why so many divorce? :goof:


6. The Airfix swastika decals are banned from kits for sale in Germany.

6. Airfix is out of business anyway, so I don't really so how that is a problem anymore. Airfix crashes and burns (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/31/rip_airfix/) It's sad really, I like to build models, if not plastic ones.

[Virgil]

1. Everyday school expenses - such as uniforms - cost families an average £1,300 a year.


Do kids in England have to wear uniforms to school? I think that's a great idea. They are trying it in the Detroit school system and residents are rebelling. I think it makes the kids better.

[Nightshade]

I think it makes the kids better.

HaHa and sorry HA!

I dont see as it makes a differance myself. The things people do to their uniforms :cold:
Mind you thats high school I think it may work quite well for the primaries except you can see the fashion. that is tyhe uniforms are made buy shops and not buy schools.
Last years bhs Summer dresses were gorgeous but obviously more exspensive.

[Scheherazade]

Yes, kids do wear uniforms in the UK (at least till they are 16) and I think they are great. Parents don't worry about children's outfits day in, day out. Also, they provide some kind of equality between children. Even if they come from poorer backgrounds, they don't have to worry about not having designer label clothes or as many different outfits as their friends etc when they are at school at least.

And truants can be spotted very easily too if they are wearing uniforms! ;)

[Nightshade]

ok thats true. I ve seen boys on the train leaving the town in school uniform and gone :confused: oi what are you doing out of school. ( of course I never actually said that as Im not fond of being told to well you can guess.

I may not think it makes the behave but I do think its better than nonuniform itseasier on the kids too You can et up i the morning and you KNOW what you will wear instead of going I know its been cleaned but I wore that on monday.

[Madhuri]

1. India is the world's largest, oldest, continuous civilization

2. Varanasi, also known as Benares, was called "the ancient city" when Lord Buddha visited it in 500 B.C.E, and is the oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world today?

3. India never invaded any country in her last 10000 years of history.

4. India is the world's largest democracy.

5. India invented the Number System. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.

6. The World's first university was established in Takshashila in 700BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century BC was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.

7. Chess (Shataranja or AshtaPada) was invented in India.

8. Sanskrit is also known as "The Mother of all Languages", although it, like Latin, Greek and Persian, actually descends from Proto-Indo-European (PIE).

9. Although modern images of India often show poverty and lack of development, India was the richest country on earth until the time of British invasion in the early 17th Century. Christopher Columbus was attracted by India's wealth.

10. Temple of Lord Venketeshwara is the second busiest and richest religious centre in the world after the Vatican. Every year above 12 million people visit this temple from within India and the world but mostly from South India. The current receipts of the shrine are estimated at Rs 10 Billion p.a.

[Scheherazade]

1. There were seven unsuccessful attempts by early humans to settle in Britain, before the first successful attempt, 12,000 years ago.

2. Chimpanzees are learning how to cross roads safely, researchers in West Africa have discovered.

3. Estate agent signs from Northern Ireland are being re-used as roofing tiles in South Africa.

4. The model railway market in Germany is the biggest in Europe and is estimated to be six times larger than in the UK.

5. Bob Dylan inspired Pam Ayres to write poetry.

6. The world's fastest supercomputer will have its speed measured in "petaflops", which represent 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

7. Migrant workers send back £149bn to their families in developing countries, says the United Nations.

8. Stingray barbs are up to six inches long and before Steve Irwin's death, they had caused only two other fatalities in Australia.

9. The term Eastenders was coined by the media in the 1880s, with these Victorian Londoners being associated with crime and ill-health.

10. The medical name for the part of the brain associated with teenage sulking is "superior temporal sulcus".


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5311602.stm#10things

[Scheherazade]

1. Half of 15 year olds drink alcohol every week.

2. George Alagiah's surname is actually pronounced "ullerhiya".

3. The InterCity 125 train was designed by the same man who came up with the angle-poise lamp and Kenwood Chef mixer.

4. Pavements are tested using an 80 square metre artificial pavement at a research centre called Pamela (the Pedestrian Accessibility and Movement Environment Laboratory).

5. Acorns are toxic to ponies and cattle (but not to the pigs brought into the New Forest to feast on the fruits).

6. Cyclists in the UK can be prosecuted for "furious cycling".

7. Russian premier Khrushchev's favourite dish was stinging nettle soup.

8. Areas of ice the size of Turkey have disappeared from the Arctic in a single year.

9. Overseas student numbers around the world have doubled in a decade to 2.7 million students.

10. A common American poplar has twice as many genes as a human being.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2006/09/10_things_we_didnt_know_last_w.shtml

[Scheherazade]

1) Women who attended single-sex schools earn more than those who were taught in mixed schools.

2) Barbie's full name is Barbie Millicent Roberts.

3) A Smurf is three apples tall.

4) Mosquitoes have a sweet tooth, a weakness to be exploited by an anti-malaria project.

5) Four of the top 10 people on the Forbes rich list derive their wealth from the Wal-Mart chain.

6) Eating a packet of crisps a day is equivalent to drinking five litres of cooking oil a year.

7) More than one in four pupils have played truant from school in the past year.

8) Pearl and Dean's a-pa-pa pa-pa theme tune, played in cinemas before the ads, is called Asteroid.

9) Plant seeds that have been stored for more than 200 years can be coaxed into new life.

10) There were no numbers in the very first UK phone directory, only names and addresses. Operators would connect callers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2006/09/10_things_we_didnt_know_this_w_1.shtml

[Scheherazade]

1. There are more than 600 full-time creative writing degree courses at UK universities.

2. Lionesses favour balder lions, with less of a hairy mane. (Do not despair if you are losing hair fast, guys! :D)

3. Ubuntu, espoused by Bill Clinton, is the African philosophy which means "I am because you are”.

4. Menthol cigarettes are harder to give up than normal cigarettes.

5. The brain is soft and gelatinous - its consistency is something between jelly and cooked pasta.

6. People suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome can be helped by talking about it, say researchers.

7. China executes more prisoners than the rest of the world put together.

8. One in eight children in primary schools in England have English as a second language.

9. Europe has a Buddhist state - the Russian republic of Kalmykia.

10. The Mona Lisa used to hang on the wall of Napoleon’s bedroom.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a004979

[Scheherazade]

1. Some Amish people have phones in trees near their houses to get round the ban on them at home.

2. More than 90% of plane crashes have survivors.

3. Pollen can cause havoc on the railways, by blocking train radiators.

4. Duck a l'orange is not from France, but Renaissance Italy.

5. Peter Kay and Ronnie Barker used to write to each other in character - Barker as Fletch from Porridge and Kay as Brian Potter from Phoenix Nights.

6. Dung beetles prefer horse and dog faeces to those of camels and foxes.

7. Parents spend four times as much time with their children now as in the 1970s.

8. Computer games are a powerful learning tool according to government-funded research.

9. Bullets can’t penetrate more than two metres of water.

10. Tony Blair’s favourite meal to cook is spaghetti bolognaise.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a005231

[Serenata]

1. Man Candy, though a good dancer solo, is an awkward couple dancer.

2. Hypoglycemia and a junk fest don't mix well.

3. Six teenage girls can sleep comfortably on a king-size bed.

4. How to curse in other languages.

5. Yell leaders are awesome.

6. Man Candy is a good yell-leader.

7. Parents don't truly appreciate you until the dishes pile up.

8. People I don't like have more talent than they should.

9. School shootings are becoming a popular use of time.

10. English is a crazy language.

[ShoutGrace]

3. Six teenage girls can sleep comfortably on a king-size bed.

Oh woe! And I try so hard to keep away from lewd content on the Internet.



3) A Smurf is three apples tall.

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

[Virgil]

3. Ubuntu, espoused by Bill Clinton, is the African philosophy which means "I am because you are”.


I wonder how Monica fits into that. ;)

[Serenata]

Oh woe! And I try so hard to keep away from lewd content on the Internet.




:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

There was nothing lewd about that. I did say sleeping. Ahh. Fun sleepovers at Chrys's.

[Scheherazade]

1. In Kingston upon Thames, men on average live to be 78. In Kingston-upon-Hull it is 73.

2. The Queen's got great legs (according to Helen Mirren).

3. Seventy percent of victims of police shootings are shot in the back or the side.

4. Each person sends an average of 55 greetings cards per year.

5. Cats and some other mammals are thought to navigate using magnetised cells in their brains.

6. Chris De Burgh has healing hands.

7. Kim Jong-il is an obsessive James Bond fan.

8. Joggers who run with their backs to the traffic are twice as likely to die as those who face oncoming cars.

9. Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 litre bottles.

10. Eighty-five percent of women working in brothels in the UK are from overseas, where 10 years ago 85% were from Britain.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a005452

[Nightshade]

9. Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 litre bottles.


Is methane natural gas? As in a fuel? cant people bottle it?


10. Eighty-five percent of women working in brothels in the UK are from overseas, where 10 years ago 85% were from Britain.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a005452

white slavery???

[Scheherazade]

1. The Australian investment group which is buying Thames Water also owns the transmitters on which the BBC is broadcast.

2. Twice as many people turn their heads to the right to kiss as to the left, say researchers.

3. Nearly one internet user in 10 has started a blog, according to Harris Research.

4. A dwarf species of hippopotamus once lived on Cyprus.

5. There are 375 people reported missing each day, on average, according to the National Missing Persons Helpline.

6. More than one in eight people in the United States show signs of addiction to the internet, says a study.

7. The warm autumn has seen North African butterflies appearing in Scotland.

8. One third of all the cod fished in the world is consumed in the UK.

9. UK customs officials intercept attempts to smuggle in 150 live birds and animals, and 6,400 animal parts, each week.

10. Boys’ GCSE results have improved to the level that girls had reached seven years ago.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/

[Scheherazade]

1. Pelicans can swallow pigeons whole.

2. Pelicans were first introduced into London's St James's Park as a gift from the Russian ambassador.

3. Sex workers in Roman times charged the equivalent price of eight glasses of red wine.

4. Only 12% of the adult male population had more than one sexual partner in the past year, says the Office for National Statistics.

5. Finland is the only country in the world which broadcasts the news in Latin.

6. The 100-million-year-old bee fossil found in Burma is so well preserved scientists can see individual hairs.

7. English is now the only "traditional" academic subject in the top 10 most popular university courses.

8. The number of people committing suicide in the UK has fallen to its lowest recorded level.

9. A very small front garden can hold up to 700 different species of insect.

10. Kellogg's Special K in the UK has 31% more sugar than Special K in the US.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a005930

[Virgil]

3. Sex workers in Roman times charged the equivalent price of eight glasses of red wine.


Hey that's about two bottles of wine, or about 30-40 dollars. Which, depending on the quality of the hooker, is about what it costs these days too. Some things never change.:D

[Scheherazade]

Hey that's about two bottles of wine, or about 30-40 dollars. Which, depending on the quality of the hooker, is about what it costs these days too. Some things never change.:DThanks for that info, Virgil. Some of us were wondering what the going rate these days were.

:D

[cuppajoe_9]

Oh woe! And I try so hard to keep away from lewd content on the Internet.Not that comfortably.

[kilted exile]

Is methane natural gas? As in a fuel? cant people bottle it?


Yep, Methane is natural gas (along with Propane). The main problem is how to bottle it, I aint tried but I would imagine the cow would be upset if you tried to shove a collection tube up it :lol: On a serious note a more viable way to collect methane would be from landfill sites (at the majority it is flared) the problem is you have the issue of seperating out the methane from other gases (such as H2S etc)


Hey that's about two bottles of wine, or about 30-40 dollars. Which, depending on the quality of the hooker, is about what it costs these days too. Some things never change.:D

I dont think I wanna know how you know that.

[Scheherazade]

I dont think I wanna know how you know that.:D



__________________

[Scheherazade]

1. John Prescott's now defunct Office of the Deputy Prime Minister spent £5,095 over the past four years on branded pens, carrier bags and note pads for exhibitions and events.

2. Spending on Halloween has risen ten-fold - from £12m to £120m in the UK, in five years.

3. Elephants can recognise their own reflection, something only before seen in humans, great apes and bottlenose dolphins.

4. Ten-pence is the going rate for clearing up a piece of chewing gum.

5. Coco Chanel started the trend for sun tans in 1923 when she got accidentally burnt on a cruise.

6. Twenty percent of the world's CCTV cameras are in the UK.

7. Up to 25% of hospital keyboards carry the MRSA infection.

8. Eighty-seven public servants earn more than Tony Blair's £183,932 salary.

9. The UK population grew at a rate of 500 per day last year as immigration out-stripped emigration.

10. During World War II, MI5 invited Daily Telegraph crossword winners to work as code-breakers at Bletchley Park.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a006089

[Virgil]

I dont think I wanna know how you know that.

:lol: Not from personal experience.

[Virgil]

2. Spending on Halloween has risen ten-fold - from £12m to £120m in the UK, in five years.


Probably similar in US too. I find this silly and an event meant for children taken over by adults. Another sign that adults refuse to grow up.

[Scheherazade]

1. An infestation of head lice is called pediculosis.

2. The Pope's been known to wear red Prada shoes.

3. Sea urchins see with their feet.

4. The fastest supercomputer in the UK can make 15.4 trillion calculations per second.

5. Airships use as much fuel in a week as a 767 uses to get from its gate to the runway. But are, obviously, much slower.

6. Four million people in the UK have phobias about toilets, says the National Phobics Society.

7. Online shoppers will only wait an average of four seconds for an internet page to load before giving up.

8. Salt makes bitter food taste sweeter.

9. Donald Rumsfeld was both the youngest and the oldest defence secretary in US history.

10. White poppies are also sold to mark Remembrance day - the first produced in 1933 as a symbol for peace.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2006/11/10_things_we_didnt_know_last_w_6.shtml

[Nightshade]

10. White poppies are also sold to mark Remembrance day - the first produced in 1933 as a symbol for peace.


I know that one but can you find one for love or money....NO!:(

[kilted exile]

A rant....promise I'll keep it short.

This white poppy nonsense annoys the hell out of me. I wear a red poppy. The poppies growing in Flanders field were red. The money from buying my red poppy goes to the veterans, unlike the money from buying a white poppy.

Wearing a red poppy does not mean I support the reasons for the wars, it means I am deeply grateful to the people who sacrificed their lives.

[Nightshade]

hey I buy at least 2 red poppies and I would still buy them if I got a white poppy. I just want to wear a white one too. Im all for the red poppies ( although someone brught somthing up that Ive never thought of before that rather shocked me when I started thinking but I also belive in what the white poppies stand for.

[Scheherazade]

1. The age of consent in Northern Ireland is 17, as opposed to 16 in the rest of the UK.

2. A digital radio uses between 12 and 20 times the energy that an analogue radio does.

3. The phrase "dead reckoning" means navigating traditionally, by charts and compass.

4. George Bush is the first president since Jimmy Carter not to subscribe to the Guardian Weekly.

5. Male African golden web orb spiders have two penises, both of which drop off during sex.

6. There are 6.5m sets of fingerprints on file in the UK.

7. About 60% of drivers stopped by police do not give their true identity.

8. Heroin addicts commit on average 432 offences a year, according to Chief Constable Howard Roberts.

9. Michael Jackson watches I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here.

10. Iceland's population is about the same as that of Doncaster.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a006854

[Virgil]

5. Male African golden web orb spiders have two penises, both of which drop off during sex.


At first, before I read the whole sentence, I thought wow, two penises, that sounds great. But then I finished the sentence and said, woe, I think I rather keep my one. :lol:

[Scheherazade]

1. The late Alan "Fluff" Freeman, famous as a DJ, had trained as an opera singer.

2. Jan Leeming married five times but took the surname of a former partner she did not wed.

3. £6.5bn is spent each year in the UK on shoes.

4. Baby Spice Emma Bunton has a karate brown belt - that's just one below a black belt.

5. A geiger counter will not pick up traces of Polonium 210 as it emits alpha radiation, not gamma.

6. A sea creature from 400 million years ago, discovered by archaeologists, had the most powerful bite of any fish in history.

7. For red wine drinkers, grapes grown in Sardinia and the French Pyrenees are associated with longevity.

8. The lion costume in the film Wizard of Oz was made from real lions.

9. Fridge magnets could be fatal for people with heart devices such as pacemakers, say medical researchers.

10. A healthy eating campaign by Icelandic children's TV star Sportacus - whose TV show lazy Town is broadcast worldwide - was responsible for a 22% increase in the sale of vegetables in his home country.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a007134

[Nightshade]

Computer viruses attack your anti virus first:nod:

[certiorari]

1. Luddites are people who are oppossed to technology because of the loss of jobs. I don't see how people could oppose technology.
2. The nicest people have the worst tempers.
3. Don't trust your memory. Write down things you have to do.
4. It is best to apply to college in the summer because then you will get accepted earlier.
5. I'm very random. I wrote down my thoughts throughout two class periods and nothing I wrote collaborates with anything else.
6. Indiana Jones was Steven Spielburg’s first sequel.
7. Waiter/waitress’s in Germany say “Bitte Schön?” a lot, apparently.
8. Johnny Depp’s denist has a credit at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
9. I can’t hink of anymore.

[Serenata]

1. People can smile at you and secretly be wishing you dead.

2. That Onex is planning to buy Raytheon Aircraft.

3. My music director would rather cancel a concert than give a bad performance.

4. New furniture is expensive.

5. "Zanahoria" is Spanish for carrot.

6. Rabbit hair is really soft.

7. How to properly use the photocopier.

8. Feelings about people you don't like are often temporary.

9. Most people have no clue what I mean when I refer to "Forensics."

10. Accounting is not a fun class to take.

[Nightshade]

The uk experiances about 50 tornadoes a year.

[Serenata]

That's interesting.

[Scheherazade]

1. There are 32 billionaires based in the UK who pay no personal tax here.

2. The space programme in the UK relies upon Indian and Chinese graduates to provide 80% of the scientific staff, MPs were told.

3. Stripping is, officially, an art form (in Norway at least).

4. Urban birds have developed a short, fast "rap style" of singing, different from their rural counterparts.

5. Left-handed people are better at computer games.

6. Bristol is the least anti-social place in England, says the National Audit Office.

7. It's only 62 years since the last person was prosecuted for witchcraft in the UK.

8. Standard-sized condoms are too big for most Indian men.

9. King Tutankhamun probably died from a broken leg, rather than being murdered with a blow to the head, say scientists.

10. The London tornado was one of 40 to hit the UK this year. More details

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a007376

[SleepyWitch]

7. It's only 62 years since the last person was prosecuted for witchcraft in the UK.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a007376

what? :eek2: you mean you haven't had a proper witchcraft trial in 62 years? No wonder English kids have to get drunk and do drugs, seeing as there's no other entertainment.
I'll be in England in January in case you want to arrest me :)

[Nightshade]

no laughing matter really she was found guilty and hung....over witch craft, welll actually it was an excuse because she somehow found out about the D-day bombing plans and they were afraid she'd leak them...according to the article I read anyway.

[SleepyWitch]

wow, I didn't know spiritualism was illegal till 1952.
er? how can she be a traitor? I mean she only told her friends about the sunken war ship, right? don't you have to spill secrets to the enemy/someone from another country to be a traitor? weird

[Nightshade]

It was the middle of WWII and they actualy had a gvertment department of censorship, they thought she was a spy.

[Virgil]

what? :eek2: you mean you haven't had a proper witchcraft trial in 62 years? No wonder English kids have to get drunk and do daisy chains, seeing as there's no other entertainment.
I'll be in England in January in case you want to arrest me :)

At the risk of sounding old, what's a daisy chain?

[alhara]

daisy chain
The elementary meaning of daisy chain is a garland created from the daisy flower, generally as a children's game

A daisy chain refers to sexual relations between three or more people, with each person both performing and receiving oral sex simultaneously.

This is directly out of wikipedia I had to look it up I didn´t know.

Some interesting trivia, I have never successfuly made a daisy chain accorrding to the first defintion. Daisys are tricky.

"So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, whe
n suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her."

then again she might have been refering to chain smokeing of some kind i don´t know. Maybe it was literally makeing daisy chains it´s terrible time consuming adn with just daisys no wire or any darn near imposible.

[mockingbird]

At the risk of sounding old, what's a daisy chain?

Wow, I didn't know people didn't know that! hehe it's been around in England for hundreds of years. In the summer when little daisies grow all over the grass, kids at school (and others *points at self*) make slits in the daisy stalks with their fingernails and tie daisies together to form bracelets, anklets, and other things :D

Good eh? Ahaha.

[Nightshade]

and its not so obvious as all that it took me years to figger out you had to slit the stalks Id just tie grest knots in them and then wonder why mine always looked wrong. But yeah Daisy chains are cool. My sister makes great daisy chain jewlery, she seems to be constatly covered in flowers in the spring and let me tell you carrying off daisy when your all in gothblack is no mean feat:nod: :lol:

[Virgil]

Wow, I didn't know people didn't know that! hehe it's been around in England for hundreds of years. In the summer when little daisies grow all over the grass, kids at school (and others *points at self*) make slits in the daisy stalks with their fingernails and tie daisies together to form bracelets, anklets, and other things :D

Good eh? Ahaha.

Oh, OK. The obvious. I thought it was some crazy drinking/drug/ thing. It was originally mentioned along with getting drunk.

edit: Just saw Alhara's post and it does refer to some kinky behavior.

[Nightshade]

ahh nooo but thats not the kind she meant as far as I know the teens go out get smashed/hammered/legless and decide it will be fun to uproot all the daisys( very annoying acctually to everyone else who wants to make daisy chains.

Hummm but yeah they just go sit in the park and do nothing somtimes ( even without alchol) but make daisy chains, then occaionally We can see the park from the library ) Ive seen girls sit on a boy while the rest plat daisy chains into his hair....:brow:

[Scheherazade]

1. Just 20 words make up a third of teenagers' everyday speech.

2. Children whose parents have an OBE can marry at St Paul's cathedral.

3. Murders of prostitutes have the lowest clear-up rates of all killings.

4. The world's tallest man has arms that are 1.06m long.

5. The top six high street banks in the UK made an estimated £4.5bn from penalty charges in 2005 .

6. About 40% of the mango trees planted to offset the carbon emissions from Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head album have died - which releases carbon into the atmosphere.

7. About 85% of Sandhurst's cadets are university graduates.

8. Half a million passengers will pass through Heathrow alone this weekend as the Christmas getaway begins.

9. There are 200 million blogs which are no longer being updated, say technology analysts.

10. Half of prison inmates do not have the reading skills expected of an 11 year old child.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a007616

[papayahed]

What's "OBE"?


9. There are 200 million blogs which are no longer being updated, say technology analysts.

Boy - good thing I didn't start mine!

[Pensive]

1. Just 20 words make up a third of teenagers' everyday speech.

No! Not with Loquacious Pensive, you bet! :p

[Taliesin]

2. Children whose parents have an OBE can marry at St Paul's cathedral.
OBE?

Ottawa Board of Education? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Board_of_Education)
Overcome By Events? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overcome_By_Events)
Operating Base Earthquake? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_Base_Earthquake) (Is that one some kind of euphemism for hyperactive children?)

[AimusSage]

Order of the British Empire I recon.

[Nightshade]

It is :nod:. Lots of footballers , cricketrs and other sports people not to meniossin celb types get them :nod:

[Virgil]

What's "OBE"?



In the business world, it usually means Overcome By Events. I'm surprised you haven't seen that as an engineer.

Exept it doesn't fit here:

2. Children whose parents have an OBE can marry at St Paul's cathedral.

What does it stand for here?


edit: It seems like Aimus might be right.

[Scheherazade]

Yes, OBE, on this side of the pond, is:
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by King George V. The Order includes five classes in civil and military divisions; in decreasing order of seniority, these are

Knight Grand Cross or Dame Grand Cross (GBE)
Knight Commander or Dame Commander (KBE or DBE)
Commander (CBE)
Officer (OBE)
Member (MBE)
Only the two highest ranks entail admission into knighthood allowing the receiver to use the title 'Sir' (male) or 'Dame' (female) before one's name.

There is also a related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are not members of the Order, but which is affiliated with the Order nonetheless. This is no longer conferred in the United Kingdom, but is still used in some overseas territories and Commonwealth nations.

The Order's motto is For God and the Empire. It is the most junior of the British orders of chivalry and has more members than any other.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_British_Empire

Though I personally fancy 'Out-of-Body Experience' explanation!

'Nope, sorry, kids! Unless your parents had out-of-body experience, we shan't let you get married in our Church...'

:D

[Scheherazade]

1. Komodo dragons can have virgin births with offspring produced without any male contact.

2. The human nose, pressed to the ground like a dog's, is sensitive enough to track a scent laid in an open field.

3. In Japan the term "Paris syndrome" describes the psychological damage experienced by tourists shocked by the rudeness of Parisians.

4. A two-headed reptile has been found in fossil form in China.

5. There will be 18 million vehicles on the UK's roads this weekend.

6. Comedy duo Laurel and Hardy had to provide their own clothes for their movies.

7. The final Harry Potter book was planned, in part, a dozen years ago, says JK Rowling.

8. The Turkmenistan president, Saparmurat Niyazov, who died this week, had banned beards, ballet, gold teeth, opera and recorded music on television.

9. The Vauxhall Belmont is the car most likely to have been stolen last year.

10. The Archbishop of York was once approached as a possible candidate for Celebrity Big Brother.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a007842

[Scheherazade]

1. Pele has always hated his nickname, which he says sounds like "baby-talk in Portuguese".

2. There are 200 million blogs which are no longer being updated, say technology analysts.

3. Urban birds have developed a short, fast "rap style" of singing, different from their rural counterparts.

4. Bristol is the least anti-social place in England, says the National Audit Office.

5. Standard-sized condoms are too big for most Indian men.

6. The late Alan "Fluff" Freeman, famous as a DJ, had trained as an opera singer.

7. The lion costume in the film Wizard of Oz was made from real lions.

8. There are 6.5 million sets of fingerprints on file in the UK.

9. Fathers tend to determine the height of their child, mothers their weight.

10. Panspermia is the idea that life on Earth originated on another planet.

11. An infestation of head lice is called pediculosis.

12. The Pope's been known to wear red Prada shoes.

13. The fastest supercomputer in the UK can make 15.4 trillion calculations per second.

14. Online shoppers will only wait an average of four seconds for an internet page to load before giving up.

15. Donald Rumsfeld was both the youngest and the oldest defence secretary in US history.

16. Spending on Halloween has risen 10-fold - from £12m to £120m in the UK, in five years.

17. Coco Chanel started the trend for sun tans in 1923 when she got accidentally burnt on a cruise.

18. Up to 25% of hospital keyboards carry the MRSA infection.

19. The UK population grew at a rate of 500 per day last year as immigration out-stripped emigration.

20. Sex workers in Roman times charged the equivalent price of eight glasses of red wine.

21. English is now the only "traditional" academic subject in the top 10 most popular university courses.

22. The number of people committing suicide in the UK has fallen to its lowest recorded level.

23. More than one in eight people in the United States show signs of addiction to the internet, says a study.

24. One third of all the cod fished in the world is consumed in the UK.

25. In Kingston upon Thames, men on average live to be 78. In Kingston-upon-Hull it is 73.

26. Each person sends an average of 55 greetings cards per year.

27. Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 litre bottles.

28. More than 90% of plane crashes have survivors.

29. Tony Blair’s favourite meal to cook is spaghetti bolognaise.

30. The brain is soft and gelatinous - its consistency is something between jelly and cooked pasta.

31. The Mona Lisa used to hang on the wall of Napoleon’s bedroom.

32. Barbie's full name is Barbie Millicent Roberts.

33. Eating a packet of crisps a day is equivalent to drinking five litres of cooking oil a year.

34. Plant seeds that have been stored for more than 200 years can be coaxed into new life.

35. There were no numbers in the very first UK phone directory, only names and addresses. Operators would connect callers.

36. The InterCity 125 train was designed by the same man who came up with the angle-poise lamp and Kenwood Chef mixer.

37. Pavements are tested using an 80 square metre artificial pavement at a research centre called Pamela (the Pedestrian Accessibility and Movement Environment Laboratory).

38. A common American poplar has twice as many genes as a human being.

39. The world's fastest supercomputer will have its speed measured in "petaflops", which represent 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

40. The medical name for the part of the brain associated with teenage sulking is "superior temporal sulcus".

41. Some Royal Mail stamps, which of course carry the Queen's image, are printed in Holland.

42. Helen Mirren was born Ilyena Lydia Mironov, the daughter of a Russian-born violinist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

43. There is only one cheddar cheese maker in Cheddar, even though cheddar is the most popular hard cheese in the English-speaking world.

44. For every 10 successful attempts to climb Mount Everest there is one fatality.

45. Cows can have regional accents, says a professor of phonetics, after studying cattle in Somerset

46. Involuntary bad language, a symptom affecting about one in 10 people with Tourette's syndrome, is called "coprolalia".

47. Watching television can act as a natural painkiller for children, say researchers from the University of Siena.

48. Allotment plots come in the standard measure of 10 poles - a pole is the length of the back of the plough to the nose of the ox.

49. When filming summer scenes in winter, actors suck on ice cubes just before the camera rolls - it cools their mouths so their breath doesn't condense in the cold air.

50. There are 60 Acacia Avenues in the UK.

51. Gritters come out in hot weather too - to spread rock dust, which stops roads melting.

52. Forty-eight percent of the population is ex-directory.

53. Red Buttons - real name Aaron Chwatt - took his surname from the nickname for hotel porters, a job he did in his teens.

54. The CND symbol incorporates the semaphore letters for N and D for nuclear and disarmament.

55. While 53% of households have access to a garage, only 24% use them for parking cars.

56. Mortgage borrowing now accounts for 42% of take-home salary.

57. The word "time" is the most common noun in the English language, according to the latest Oxford dictionary.

58. Forty-one percent of English women have punched or kicked their partners, according to a study.

59. Dogs with harelips can end up with two noses.

60. The clitoris derives its name from the ancient Greek word kleitoris, meaning "little hill".

61. A domestic cat can frighten a black bear to climb a tree.

62. Thirty-four percent of the UK has a surname that is ranked as "posher" than the Royal Family's given name, Windsor.

63. The Downing St garden is actually a Royal Park.

64. Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobiacs is the term for people who fear the number 666.

65. The more panels a football has - and therefore the more seams - the easier it is to control in the air.

66. One in four smokers use roll-ups.

67. Music can help reduce chronic pain by more than 20% and can alleviate depression by up to 25%.

68. The egg came first.

69. Humans were first infected with the HIV virus in the 1930s.

70. Sir Paul McCartney is only the second richest music millionaire in the UK - Clive Calder, is top.

71. Publishers have coined the term "Brownsploitation" for the rash of books that have sprung up in the wake of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code blockbuster.

72. Modern teenagers are better behaved than their counterparts of 20 years ago, showing "less problematic behaviour" involving sex, drugs and drink.

73. George Bush's personal highlight of his presidency is catching a 7.5lb (3.4kg) perch.

74. Britain is still paying off debts that predate the Napoleonic wars because it's cheaper to do so than buy back the bonds on which they are based.

75. Five billion apples are eaten a year in the UK.

76. In Bhutan government policy is based on Gross National Happiness; thus most street advertising is banned, as are tobacco and plastic bags.

77. Metal detector enthusiasts are referred to as "detectorists"; there are about 30,000 in the UK.

78. The Labour Party spent £299.63 on Star Trek outfits for the last election, while the Tories shelled out £1,269 to import groundhog costumes.

79. The best-value consumer purchase in terms of the price and usage is an electric kettle.

80. Camel's milk, which is widely drunk in Arab countries, has 10 times more iron than cow's milk.

81. Iceland has the highest concentration of broadband users in the world.

82. There are 2.5 million rodent-owning households in Britain, according to the Pet Food Manufacturers' Association.

83. Rainfall on the roof and gutters of a three-bed detached house can amount to 120,000 litres each year.

84. Thinking about your muscles can make you stronger.

85. The age limit for marriage in France was, until recently, 15 for girls, but 18 for boys. The age for girls was raised to 18 in 2006.

86. Six million people use TV subtitles, despite having no hearing impairment.

87. Goths, those pasty-faced teenagers who revel in black clothing, are likely to become doctors, lawyers and architects.

88. Nelson Mandela used to steal pigs as a child.

89. There are an average of 4.4 sparrows in each British garden. In 1979, there were 10 per garden.

90. The Himalayas cover one-tenth of the Earth's surface.

91. Lord Levy, recruited by Tony Blair to raise money for the Labour party, made his own fortune managing Alvin Stardust, among others.

92. In a fight between a polar bear and a lion, the polar bear would win.

93. If left alone, 70% of birthmarks gradually fade away.

94. There are two million cars and trucks in Brazil which run on alcohol.

95. US Secret Service sniffer dogs are put up in five-star hotels during overseas presidential visits.

96. Flushing a toilet costs, on average, 1.5p.

97. Tufty the road safety squirrel had a surname. It was Fluffytail.

98. A "lost world" exists in the Indonesian jungle that is home to dozens of hitherto unknown animal and plant species.

99. The term "misfeasance" means to carry out a legal act illegally.

100. In the 1960s, the CIA used to watch Mission Impossible to get ideas about spying.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a007948

[Scheherazade]

1. Scooby-Doo was named after Frank Sinatra's final phrase in "Strangers in the Night".

2. A king's ransom is worth approximately £685m in today's money, loosely based on the sum paid by Eleanor of Aquitaine to secure the release of Richard the Lionheart in 1194.

3. Ancient coroners' rules dictate that if a body is taken to a royal palace, it falls under the jurisdiction of the Queen's Coroner and any inquest jury must be drawn from the royal household. Diana's body lay in the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace, hence the debate over whether a jury would be made up of ordinary men and women, or not.

4. In the mid-1980s, it was predicted that by 2000 there would be 900,000 mobile phones worldwide. That year came, and 900,000 phones were sold every 19 hours.

5. Adding milk to tea negates the health-giving effects of a hot brew.

6. Snap decisions are more likely to be correct than those pondered over, a study at University College London found.

7. The government has 951 websites - 551 of which are set to close.

8. The word "jaywalking" came from the US slang "jay", a term popular in the early 20th Century meaning a rustic newcomer unfamiliar with city ways.

9. Sophia Loren's first marriage, aged 22, to the recently deceased film producer Carlo Ponti, was a proxy marriage with lawyers taking their places.

10. The world's tallest flower is the Titan Arum, reaching just under 3m (10ft).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a008461

[Scheherazade]

1. Cloudy apple juice is healthier than clear, containing almost double the antioxidants which protect against heart disease and cancer.

2. Eating tomatoes and broccoli in the same meal is more effective at fighting prostate cancer than separately, according to a study at the University of Illinois.

3. The infant in iconic 1980s poster Man and Baby was named Stelios.

4. Gordon Brown prefers the X Factor to Big Brother.

5. Campaigners believe unpaid care of the elderly in the UK saves the British state £57bn a year.

6. China opens a new coal-fired power station every five days.

7. Just 200 people are responsible for most of the large-scale vandalism on the rail network.

8. School starts at age three in France - and many children start at two.

9. Thursday's storm - the most powerful to hit England since Burns Night 1990 - caused even more damage in northern Europe after developing what's known as a "sting jet", caused by cold air high above the clouds rushing down to Earth like an avalanche of high wind.

10. Citrus fruit growers in California use wind machines to protect their crops from frost damage.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/

[Scheherazade]

1. The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, was asked to be on Celebrity Big Brother.

2. Rail passenger numbers could increase by 30-40% in the next 10 years.

3. Dishcloths are purged of 99% of their bacteria during two minutes in a microwave.

4. But they can pretty easily catch fire while doing so.

5. Only four postcodes in the UK do not have a Tesco. They are the Outer Hebrides, the Shetlands, Orkney and Harrogate.

6. Uninsured vehicles are 10 times more likely to be involved in hit-and-run crashes.

7. Guinness turns out red, rather than black, if the barley is roasted for less time than normal.

8. Today presenter John Humphrys gets up one minute before 4am and is in the BBC studio at 16 mins past.

9. People who live within 500 metres of a motorway grow up with significantly reduced lung capacity.

10. A haddock's mating call starts as a slow knocking sound, before turning into a quicker hum similar to a small motorcycle revving its engine.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a008981

[Virgil]

3. Dishcloths are purged of 99% of their bacteria during two minutes in a microwave.

4. But they can pretty easily catch fire while doing so.


Wow, I put my scrubbing sponge in the microwave. I wonder if it's safe. But I had read you only needed 45 sec to a minute.

[Scheherazade]

1. The Dutch have overtaken the Americans as the tallest people on Earth.

2. The candiru, or toothpick fish, can swim into a tiny body orifice such as the penis, erect a spine and feed on blood and tissue.

3. Seahorses do not mate for life but are promiscuous and bisexual - the most indiscriminate being the Australian bigbellied seahorse.

4. Newcastle is the noisiest place in England.

5. In China, James Bond is known as Lingling Qi - 007.

6. There are twice as many privately-owned tigers in the US as there are in the wild in the rest of the world.

7. The people who built Stonehenge lived at an ancient village in Durrington Walls.

8. Lavender and tea tree oil products can cause young boys to develop breasts.

9. Palm oil is present in one in 10 supermarket products.

10. Brazil nuts are seeds encased in an outer shell that weighs more than 1kg.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a009276

[Scheherazade]

1. Catherine Cookson novels have been borrowed from UK libraries 25 million times in the last 10 years.

2. Ireland has the highest crime rate in the European Union.

3. A pig's mood is indicated by its tail. It is happy when the tail is tightly coiled and unhappy when it hangs limp.

4. The National Theatre's electricity bill is £600,000 a year.

5. There is one practising GP among the MPs in the House of Commons - Labour's Howard Stoate.

6. Astronauts wear nappies during launch and re-entry because they can't stop what they're doing should they need to urinate.

7. Vikings may have used a special crystal to navigate when fog obscured the sun.

8. Frankie Laine set a marathon dance record of 3501 hours in 145 consecutive days in 1932.

9. Eighty-eight percent of children in Poland aged 12 to 18 use instant messaging, compared to 50% in the UK, says a survey.

10. The Southern Cross has more stars than the five commonly depicted on the Australian flag, astronomers have discovered.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a009540

[Scheherazade]

1. Georgic is a punishment dished out to Eton pupils which involves the copying out of hundreds of lines of Latin.

2. Only 10% of the three million men in the UK who suffer from impotence are being treated, says Boots.

3. The left ear is more responsive to words of emotion whispered into it than the right.

4. One in three households in the UK is dependent on the state for at least half its income, says thinktank Civitas.

5. A siesta can drastically reduce the risk of death from heart disease.

6. Tony Blair does not keep a personal diary.

7. Antony and Cleopatra were ugly.

8. Women in the UK travelled on average 6,300 miles in 2005, 1,900 miles less than men.

9. Two-thirds of Frosties are eaten by men aged 18+.

10. 10% of university work from across the UK is plagiarised.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2007/02/10_things_we_didnt_know_last_w_14.shtml

[Serenata]

Where do you find this information?

[Scheherazade]

Where do you find this information?There is a link at the end of my post to BBC's Magazine page where they come from.


1. Two cups of spearmint tea a day is thought to control excessive hair growth for women.

2. Less than 5% of cohabiting couples stay together for longer than 10 years.

3. A baby can survive being born after a gestation period of 22 weeks.

4. Dog bites have doubled in 10 years, judging by admissions to hospital.

5. Chimpanzees make their own spears for hunting.

6. Cross-country skiing is a useful skill to have when exploring the moon.

7. Poor maths is costing UK shoppers £800m a year because they don’t notice when they are short-changed.

8. Peter Hain’s house in Neath has a dancefloor.

9. Trabants were made from plasticised cotton waste, called Duroplast.

10. Tony Blair still plays his guitar most days.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a010047

[Scheherazade]

1. Burglar alarms, traffic wardens and crowded busses are good news for home owners, signalling an area is on the up.

2. "Wet disposal" means a hurried assassination.

3. Despite what the movies suggest, a lit cigarette won't ignite clothes doused in petrol, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms research laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland.

4. The tentacles of the colossal squid caught by New Zealand fisherman would make calamari rings the size of tractor tyres.

5. Incest is not illegal in France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium or Portugal.

6. But advertising wine on French TV is banned.

7. It's illegal to introduce beavers into the wild.

8. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez hosts a daily radio phone-in show.

9. Some modern cars have a "limp home" mode.

10. A rise in crematorium funerals is causing an increase in damaging mercury emissions in the air from melted dental fillings.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a010309

[Virgil]

10. A rise in crematorium funerals is causing an increase in damaging mercury emissions in the air from melted dental fillings.


Oh no. :eek: And I bet it's contributing to global warmng too. :p :p

[Scheherazade]

1. The premium rate phone services market in the UK is the biggest in the world, worth £1.2bn a year - that's £20 each for every man, woman and child.

2. Terry Wogan gets paid for presenting Children in Need - the only presenter to do so.

3. More than half (52%) of smokers haven't told their parents about their habit.

4. Producing palm oil - hailed as a future biofuel – can produce carbon emissions 10 times that of petroleum.

5. Prince Charles is a fan of veteran reggae artist Sugar Minott - requesting one of his songs be played while visiting a record shop in London.

6. Coffee doesn't make you more alert in the morning, according to a study by Bristol University.

7. Superheroes are susceptible to snipers, with Captain America being killed by a bullet.

8. Only about half of China's population can speak the national language, Mandarin.

9. There are 946 billionaires in the world .

10. The moon glows a coppery red when totally eclipsed by the shadow of the earth - itshue determined by how much dust is in the earth's upper atmosphere.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a010595

[Virgil]

6. Coffee doesn't make you more alert in the morning, according to a study by Bristol University.



Well, that's a crock. Whoever paid for that study got ripped off.

[Shalot]

Well, that's a crock. Whoever paid for that study got ripped off.

I agree. Who could make through the hours between 8 and 12 without a cup of joe (cuppajoe) or other cafeinne supplement....

[kilted exile]

2. Terry Wogan gets paid for presenting Children in Need - the only presenter to do so.


Just another reason on the already long list why I dont like the smarmy git.


In relation to the caffeine study:

In my final year at school back in Scotland Iremember having to do a final project in Chem. My topic was analysing and comparing caffeine content in various drinks/products (tea, coffee, coke, "pep pills") - I really chose that topic 'cause I got to mess about with chloroform.......

With regards to the effects of caffeine, it is of course a stimulant and increases alertness etc. From what I remember however it also has a psychological addiction property to it, and where people are used to having it the morning and then for some reason do not the effect is greater than someone not drinking coffee and then having a cup one morning. I can only assume the research is somehow based on this, otherwise it would appear to be a huge waste of money.

[Asa Adams]

I think the same goes for smokers. They become satisfyed after having one, and therefore they are chemically and psychologically addicted. I guess.

[Scheherazade]

1. Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister were written not only to entertain but to promote the idea that working for a unified public interest was a myth - as argued by Margaret Thatcher's favourite theorist, James Buchanan.

2. Mobile phones in large part have little effect on medical equipment, despite bans on their use in most hospitals.

3. Comic Relief has raised £425m since it started 21 years ago up until Friday's extravaganza.

4. Parting hair on the left is said to emphasise masculine traits as it draws attention to left-brain activities; similarly, parting on the right is said to emphasise feminine traits.

5. About 200 million light bulbs - of the common or garden incandescent tungsten filament variety - are sold each year in the UK; there are plans to phase these out by 2011.

6. The brief flowering of the cherry blossom tree is taken so seriously in Japan that forecasts are used to plan festivals, and travel agents use them to plan tours.

7. The woman who invented the modern incarnation of Mother's Day was so distressed by its commercialisation that she tried to copyright the date to protect her idea. She failed.

8. Four out of every 10 children are born out of wedlock.

9. To be found attractive, women should sway their hips and men their shoulders (although researchers call this a "shoulder swagger").

10. There are 1.3 billion £20 notes in circulation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a010595

[Virgil]

4. Parting hair on the left is said to emphasise masculine traits as it draws attention to left-brain activities; similarly, parting on the right is said to emphasise feminine traits.


Now this is one of the most rediculous things I've ever heard. This is the ultimate psycho babble.

[*Classic*Charm*]

Uh oh. I'm parting on the wrong side.:D


What about people who part down the middle?:idea:

[Scheherazade]

Now this is one of the most rediculous things I've ever heard. This is the ultimate psycho babble.U-oh!

*has a feeling that 'somone' is parting his hair on the right! :p :D


Uh oh. I'm parting on the wrong side.:D No worries, me too, it seems like! :D

[Virgil]

U-oh!

*has a feeling that 'somone' is parting his hair on the right! :p :D

No, as a teenager I used to part my hair on the left. As an adult I started parting down the middle. I can't tell you how this psychobabble irks me. It's nonsense, like astrology.



What about people who part down the middle?:idea:

Good question. I could quip and say "bi" but per above I part down the middle and I'm completely and only straight. :D

[autumn rose]

10. A rise in crematorium funerals is causing an increase in damaging mercury emissions in the air from melted dental fillings.



Eeee!:eek: I wonder if I have toxic teeth.Can the mercury seep out of your fillings and kill you? *pulls teeth out*

[Domer121]

1.Chiyo(The name of the Geisha in Memoirs of a Geisha)

2.That Squid eat eachother especially during sex( I just read the first page of this thread:)

3.How much people don't like Wuthering Heights on this forum:)

4. That Survivor winner Rich Hatch is in prison for 4 1/2 years for tax evasion.

5. That it will rain tomorrow.

6.That I am actually an okay Scrabble player.

7.That I will be going to the Orchestra on Thursday.

8. That Ions are not that interesting.

9. That my memory is not as great as it used to be:)

10. That I can eat French Silk Pie for breakfast and I don't get sick.(my mother was wrong!:)

[Scheherazade]

1. There are 30,000 wild parakeets in London.

2. Alan Sugar is a big fan of Masterchef.

3. It's possible to map a 248-dimensional structure.

4. Harvesting rhubarb in candlelight helps preserve its flavour.

5. The Quakers invented the modern protest campaign - in calling for an end to the slave trade – deploying petitions, consumer boycotts, images, a logo and a slogan.

6. The Legal limit for flying a plane is 20mg of alcohol.

7. Martina Navratilova has spent four years secretly working as an artist.

8. NHS hospitals took more than £95m in car parking charges in 2004/2005.

9. Alcohol and tobacco are more "harmful" than cannabis, ecstasy and LSD according to a new ranking drawn up by the Lancet.

10. Tony Blair isn't a bad comedy actor, judging by his performance on Comic Relief.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a011187

[Scheherazade]

1. The UK's national time signal is accurate to within 1,000th of a second of Co-ordinated Universal Time.

2. Drinking, drug-taking teenagers are in the decline, according to a survey by the Information Centre.

3. The average water temperature of the UK's rivers and lakes is 5C in winter, 18C in summer.

4. Eight of the 10 most crowded train journeys in the UK are outside London.

5. The average duvet is home to 20,000 live dust mites.

6. Designer discount retailer TK Maxx is called TJ Maxx in the US.

7. Having a baby can cost you up to two months sleep in the first year.

8. Chimps and bonobos differ from humans by only 1% of DNA and could accept a blood transfusion or a kidney.

9. Britain's peat bogs store carbon that is equivalent to 20 years' worth of national industrial emissions.

10. Dogs can seemingly perform the Heimlich manoeuvre – a technique for helping someone who is choking.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a011459

[Scheherazade]

1. More servicemen and women in the British armed forces have taken their own lives (697) over the past two decades than have been killed in combat (438) according to the Ministry of Defence.

2. Serving anything more than tea and biscuits at a political meeting is an offence called "treating" and punishable by a year in prison or an unlimited fine, under the the Representation of the People Act 1893.

3. There are four Knight Rider cars, one of which is in a museum in Cumbria.

4. The record-breaking TGV train, which reached 584km/h, took 10 miles to stop when the brakes were fully applied in test runs.

5. Human ashes are called cremains.

6. "Lunatics, idiots, deaf and dumb" people are barred from standing for election under laws dating from 1766 which still apply.

7. Keith Richards has been trepanned.

8. It is cheaper to ship waste from London to Shenzen in China than it is to send it by road from London to Manchester.

9. There is mobile phone reception from the summit of Mount Everest.

10. Prisoners of war returning from Vietnam were told by the US government that the word "whatever" had become a common form of slang while they were away, to imply boredom.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a011675

[papayahed]

I just looked up trepanned and I'm still not sure what it means. :confused: Was a circular protion of his skull removed?

[Nightshade]

I just found out only 5 or six people died in the Fire of London in 1666.

[Virgil]

5. Human ashes are called cremains.

7. Keith Richards has been trepanned.


I wonder if it has anything to do with snorting your father's ashes?:lol: :lol:

From M-W:

Main Entry: 1tre·pan
Pronunciation: tri-'pan
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): tre·panned; tre·pan·ning
Etymology: Middle English, from trepane trephine
1 : to use a trephine on (the skull)
2 : to remove a disk or cylindrical core (as from metal for testing)
- trep·a·na·tion /"tre-p&-'nA-sh&n/ noun

or from dictionary.com:

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source
tre·pan1 /trɪˈpæn/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[tri-pan] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, -panned, -pan·ning.
–noun 1. a tool for cutting shallow holes by removing a core.
2. Surgery. an obsolete form of the trephine resembling a carpenter's bit and brace.
–verb (used with object) 3. Machinery. to cut circular disks from (plate stock) using a rotating cutter.
4. Surgery. to operate upon with a trepan; trephine.

[Niamh]

I just looked up trepanned and I'm still not sure what it means. :confused: Was a circular protion of his skull removed?

Thats what Trepanned is isnt it? Didnt know people still did it today. I know that many ancient Native American tribes used to do it. like being anointed to a tribe. Others believed that it created a closer link with the spirit world.

[Virgil]

I just quoted the definition above your post Niamh. You must of been writing as I posted.

[papayahed]

Thats what Trepanned is isnt it? Didnt know people still did it today. I know that many ancient Native American tribes used to do it. like being anointed to a tribe. Others believed that it created a closer link with the spirit world.


That's why it seems so odd.

[Rinas_Jaded]

I feel so very informed now. I wish school was like this, it would be much more interesting.

[Layka]

Ostriches have eyes bigger than their brains.

[Scheherazade]

1. Boris Yeltsin lost a thumb and index finger on his left hand while playing with a hand grenade as a child.

2. Runner's World, Wilfred Owen poetry and Uncle Tom's Cabin are restricted in Guantanamo Bay, lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith says.

3. Neighbours is the most watched daytime telly show other than the BBC's One o'clock news.

4. Scouting for Boys by Lord Baden-Powell is the fourth bestselling book of the 20th Century, after the Bible, the Koran and Mao's Little Red Book.

5. We each get a completely new skeleton every 10 years, because of cell renewal.

6. Smoking will be banned in police interview rooms in England when the new law takes effect, although it is not banned in Scotland. More details

7. Kryptonite exists.

8. Nearly half of all cases handled by top divorce lawyers last year involved a private detective to check on alleged infidelity.

9. £26m of pennies have been lost on UK streets since 1971.

10. North Korea is the least visited country in the world – only 1,800 Westerners make the trip each year.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a012556

[LoveToFreeRead]

Ten Things I didn’t know last week...

1… that Albert Einstein actually contemplated how long the human race could exist without bees: 4 years.
2…that Stephen Hawking would get to float weightless. Very cool for him!
3…Dubya would do a dance for malaria: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqy91GnS-Bg
4…that the Dow would surpass 13,000!
5… that this photo of Phil Spector existed: http://s89690178.onlinehome.us/PhilSpectorHair-sm.jpg
6…that the US has imported the television show,“Katie & Peter” – as if we don’t have enough talentless “celebrities” already. I thought her name was Jordan, anyway?
7…that a chimp could live to be 75. http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-cheeta16apr22,0,3519768.story?coll=la-home-magazine
8…that an Italian researcher is working on making a “Spider-man” suit. http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Real_life_spider_men_Italian_resear_04262007.html
9…that a story like this could make it onto CNN’s website, regardless of its categorization as “Offbeat” : http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/ptech/04/22/top.texter.ap/index.html
10…Keith Richards has been trepanned (learned that right here in this thread).

[Scheherazade]

1. Asda's buttock-slap is one of the few gestures to have been trademarked.

2. The goat who became an internet phenomenon after "marrying" a Sudanese man was named Rose.

3. New York may be "the city that never sleeps", but its pedestrians only rank eighth in a global study of walking pace.

4. Pandas in captivity don't need "Viagra, panda porn videos, or other previously tried artificial stimulants" to contemplate a spot of rumpy-pumpy after all.

5. Mirror tycoon Robert Maxwell ate grapes by lowering a bunch into his mouth, stripping the fruit and taking it out leaving only the stalks.

6. Apes communicate with gestures that have different meanings depending on the context - a chimpanzee with an extended arm and open hand may be begging for food, asking a female chimp for sex or reconciling with a male after a fight.

7. Men bitten by the Brazilian wandering spider can experience long and painful erections - a condition known as priapism.

8. Maggots can treat MRSA.

9. Blushing can be treated by cutting the nerve that creates the red flush in the face, neck or upper chest.

10. Danny deVito - yes the actor - has created his own brand of Limon cello, the lemony Italian liqueur.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a012953

[Nightshade]

1. Asda's buttock-slap is one of the few gestures to have been trademarked.

2. The goat who became an internet phenomenon after "marrying" a Sudanese man was named Rose.


Say what? :eek: :goof: not sure which suprises me more the goat getting married over the internet, or that Asda has gone and trademarked slapping money in your back pocket......:lol:

[kenikki]

9. Music can help reduce chronic pain by more than 20% and can alleviate depression by up to 25%.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5021232.stm#10things

That is VERY true, People do not realise the power that music has on you. I listeten to music when I'm physically or mentally ill and I feel instantly better.

[Scheherazade]

1. The British eat a third of the world’s cod.

2. Squirrels can peel bananas.

3. Pre-schoolers will watch a favourite DVD or video for an average of 17 times before getting bored.

4. Astronauts wear adult nappies on spacewalks and during launch. But Nasa likes to call them "Maximum Absorbency Garments".

5. Seventy-thousand teenagers failed to turn up to take a GCSE exam last year.

6. Tony Blair smoked his last cigarette 15 minutes before he got married.
More details

7. Widening the M1 will cost more than the annual economies of a third of the world’s nations.

8. Fewer than 3% of rewards offered for information about crimes are paid out each year in the UK.

9. Four ingredients have been added to bread by law since WW2 – niacin, thiamine, iron and calcium.

10. UK’s oldest working household appliance is a 50-year-old Prestcold Fridge in Norfolk.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a013222

[Nightshade]

3. Pre-schoolers will watch a favourite DVD or video for an average of 17 times before getting bored.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a013222

This is in a week isnt it?

[Scheherazade]

1. Hair loss in humans might be reversible.

2. Almost one-third of men are balding by the time they reach 30.

3. 14% of Rolls-Royce owners also own a private jet

4. Dirty Harry and The Exorcist III are based on a spate of unsolved murders in San Francisco in the late 1960s.

5. Jose Mourinho has a Yorkshire terrier called Gullit, named after the Dutch footballer Ruud Gullit.

6. Nearly half of pregnancies are unplanned.

7. The UK has the most post offices in Europe.

8. The insults "moron", "idiot", "imbecile" and "cretin" were once official medical diagnoses.

9. There were no sperm donors in Northern Ireland, until recently, and only 208 in the UK.

10. Cranes disappeared from the UK 400 years ago because the East Anglian fenland was drained. They recently returned.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2007/05/10_things_7.shtml

[Scheherazade]

1. Pizza was known as “Italian Welsh rarebit” in 1950s Britain.

2. Using a gas-fired patio heater for just one hour can waste enough energy to make 400 cups of tea, according to Friends of the Earth.

3 Laurence Olivier and Tintin's creator Herge were born on the same day.

4. A swarm of bees can ground a Boeing 737.

5. On the first day of filming Star Wars in the deserts of Tunisia, the country experienced its first major rainstorm in 50 years and a rest day had to be called.

6. Sharks have virgin births.

7. Articles of 50,000 words - parliamentary reports in particular - were common in the Times in the early 1890s, just as the first tabloid newspapers came into being.

8. Japanese whalers in the 17th Century buried the foetuses of the pregnant whales they caught in a special graveyard facing out to sea.

9. One in four house sales fall through.

10. Captive elephants often don’t know how to look after their young because they don’t work on instinct – in the wild, calves are looked after by the herd and this is how young females learn mothering skills.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2007/05/10_things_we_didnt_know_last_w_23.shtml

[Haven]

Shark gets pregnant on her own without mating with male shark. Baby female shark did not have a single strand of male genetic material.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=457008&in_page_id=1965

Okay realise that is only one thing...anyone else got anything?

[Niamh]

god bless friends of the earth! They sent me a copy of An Inconvienient truth to say thank you for being a loyal donator! Now isnt that sweet!

[Scheherazade]

1. It's 1999 in Ethiopia.

2. The Spanish national anthem has no words.

3. There are 1,200 exhumations every year in the UK, but not all of those are part of criminal cases.

4. There are 14 different spellings of Mohammed in the top 3,000 baby boy names in the UK, propelling it to number two just behind Jack.

5. Nearly seven out of 10 (69%) of adults are still in touch with at least one childhood friend.

6. Seb Coe is partially colour-blind.

7. Twenty-three billion jars and bottles have been recycled in the UK since the first bottle bank opened in 1977.

8. Unemployment is back up to 1979 levels.

9. Footage can be checked to see if it is harmful to people with epilepsy by a gadget called the Harding Flash and Pattern Analyser.

10. Tre Azam, fired this week from The Apprentice, had a near-fatal car crash 10 years ago. He still has steel plates in his back and pins in both legs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2007/06/10_things_we_didnt_know_this_t_1.shtml

[Scheherazade]

1. Lewis Hamilton is named after US sprinter Carl Lewis.

2. Bolivian President Evo Morales sacrifices llamas for good luck.

3. Drinking aftershave (among other things) has been blamed for half of all deaths of Russian men of working age.

4. Pickpockets watch for those who react to signs warning of their presence, as many people will pat their wallet on reading the notice.

5. Eighteen percent of all new homes are built on residential land, up from 11% a decade ago.

6. As recently as the early 1980s, mortgages were rationed.

7. Only two judges have been fired since 1701's Act of Settlement gave the Lord Chancellor alone that power. The first was in in 1830, for stealing court funds; the second was in 1983, for smuggling whiskey and cigarettes into Britain on a private yacht.

8. Prince Philip came to be venerated as an island god because villagers in Vanuatu have for centuries believed that a pale-skinned son of a mountain spirit had ventured across the seas to look for a powerful woman to marry. The Duke of Edinburgh has been the focus of this legend since the 1960s.

9. Jail and prison are not the same thing in the United States - it depends on the size and governing body of the facility. Paris Hilton, for instance, is in jail, not prison.

10. Blood can turn a dark greenish-black - like a Vulcan's - if taking a certain type of migraine medication.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a014656

[applepie]

10. Blood can turn a dark greenish-black - like a Vulcan's - if taking a certain type of migraine medication.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a014656

I would almost like to see this just to say I have. That is something strange that I never imagined.

[Scheherazade]

1. Comedian Mike Reid was Roger Moore's stunt double in The Saint.

2. Office printers could be as harmful as cigarettes, emitting tiny particles of toner that can cause respiratory irritation to more chronic illnesses.

3. One joint of cannabis could be as harmful to the lungs as five cigarettes.

4. Being left-handed could be linked to genes.

5. Coffee could protect your skin.

6. Chris Langham used to write for the Muppet Show – and at one stage was the sole British writer.

7. One-hundred-and-forty-one people died from being struck by lightning in China in July.

8. Bottom-pinching is subject to a fixed-penalty fine.

9. Amstrad is an acronym of Alan Michael Sugar Trading.

10. Basking sharks have no teeth.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2007/08/10_things_we_didnt_know_last_w_27.shtml

[Scheherazade]

1. Russian and American pilots exchange smiles when encroaching on each others terrirtories.

2. Mahjong can trigger epileptic seizures.

3. Dr Debby Reynolds, chief vet, is a vegetarian.

4. President George W Bush has fitness levels in the top 3% of the US population.

5. There are dogs with two noses.

6. There have been at least two children given the name "Superman" in the UK since 1984.

7. The world's tallest man is 8ft 5in Ukrainian Leonid Stadnyk.

8. The clock faces on Big Ben/the Palace of Westminster clock tower are cleaned every five years by abseilers.

9. Bill Murray's sister Nancy is a nun who acts.

10. When bits of glaciers break off, it is know as "calving".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a016630

[Virgil]

Who would name their children superman? :sick: How stupid. I saw that tallest man on TV and wow. He's tall.

[NickAdams]

2. Mahjong can trigger epileptic seizures.


First Anime now this. Asian entertainment is dangerous!



9. Bill Murray's sister Nancy is a nun who acts.


She's a real Sister Act ... I should be hung for such a pun.:lol:

[Niamh]

First Anime now this. Asian entertainment is dangerous!



She's a real Sister Act ... I should be hung for such a pun.:lol:

:lol: I was about to post the exact the same pun.

[NickAdams]

:lol: I was about to post the exact the same pun.

Well you know what they say about great minds ...;)

[Niamh]

Well you know what they say about great minds ...;)think alike
But fools they seldomn differ. But which are we!;)

[Scheherazade]

1. Uncollected council tax totals £760m.

2. Some otters don't like swimming.

3. The Rubik’s Cube can be done in 26 moves.

4. Crows can use tools.

5. CDs were nearly called mini-racks.

6. CDs have 74 minutes' audio capacity, originally to accommodate Beethoven's 9th Symphony – before that they were just an hour.

7. Attractive people are, on average, less selfish than moderately attractive people.

8. The name Hells Angels was coined by a squadron of World War I fighter pilots.

9. Seven double espressos can land you in hospital, with caffeine intoxication.

10. Left-handed people are called sinistral.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a016858

[Niamh]

4. Crows can use tools.
:eek: Really?!


9. Seven double espressos can land you in hospital, with caffeine intoxication.:lol: Better remember that next time i feel really tired and need a caffeine boost!


10. Left-handed people are called sinistral.
Being of the left. (wonder if the word sinister originated fron this. after all lefties were seen as evil beings in the middle ages!:p )

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a016858[/QUOTE]

[Virgil]

7. Attractive people are, on average, less selfish than moderately attractive people.

Has anyone noticed how unselfish I am? :p ;)

[Granny5]

Has anyone noticed how unselfish I am? :p ;)

You know, Virgil, I was just going to comment on how unselfish you seem to be! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[Scheherazade]

1. The number of pounds in circulation doubles every 15 years due to economic growth and inflation.

2. Each slug eats twice its body weight a day.

3. Performers cannot even smoke herbal cigarettes on stage in Scotland, which has no dispensation for "artistic integrity" in its smoking ban, unlike other parts of the UK.

4. Voyagers 1 and 2, launched in 1977 and still beaming back data from billions of miles from the solar system's edge, run on generators that produce 300 watts - which would power several standard light bulbs.

5. Chickens can be diagnosed with depression.

6. There are almost four times more knife-related killings as firearms killings.

7. You can be arrested for using someone's wi-fi network without permission.

8. One in 10 people claim to have had out-of-body experiences.

9. More than half the books on the fiction charts are crime titles - a genre predominately read and written by women.

10. Queen Victoria and Pope Leo XIII were among the celebrities to endorse charities.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a017052

[Virgil]

5. Chickens can be diagnosed with depression.

Well, if you were headed for decapitation and stuffing and roasting, wouldn't you be depressed too. ;)



9. More than half the books on the fiction charts are crime titles - a genre predominately read and written by women.
I wonder why that is. I know my wife loves to read them too but i never get a straight answer as to why.

[Lote-Tree]

Well, if you were headed for decapitation and stuffing and roasting, wouldn't you be depressed too. ;)


Depression is linked to Artistic ability and creativity thus we have underestimated intelligence of chickens :D



I wonder why that is. I know my wife loves to read them too but i never get a straight answer as to why.

Same reason why women like "bad" men? :D

[Virgil]

Depression is linked to Artistic ability and creativity thus we have underestimated intelligence of chickens :D



Same reason why women like "bad" men? :D

:lol: Well, I am Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know. :D

[Lote-Tree]

:lol: Well, I am Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know. :D

So I guess your wife is always all over you :D

[Niamh]

3. Performers cannot even smoke herbal cigarettes on stage in Scotland, which has no dispensation for "artistic integrity" in its smoking ban, unlike other parts of the UK.
When the smoking ban came into ireland over three and a half years ago we all debate that the herbel cig shouldnt be included in the tobacco smoking ban list because it isnt tobacco. didnt work.


5. Chickens can be diagnosed with depression.
i'm with virgil on this one.



8. One in 10 people claim to have had out-of-body experiences.
I had a weird experience once. I was in secondary school and after one of my classes i started to walk to my next lesson with one on the teachers when suddenly i was watching myself walking beside the teacher from behind. Only lasted a few seconds but it was weird. Mabe i have a doppelganger.


9. More than half the books on the fiction charts are crime titles - a genre predominately read and written by women.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a017052
:thumbs_up

[Scheherazade]

1. Rock stars are twice as likely to die prematurely as the wider population.

2. The collective noun for meerkats is a "mob".

3. In Ethiopia it is almost the start of the year 2000 and the beginning of millennium celebrations.

4. Bees can detect explosives.

5. There are 287 franchised World Trade Centers around the world, including one in Hull.

6. Clarissa Dickson Wright became the country's youngest female barrister at 21, a record she still holds.

7. An RAF Tornado costs £40,000 an hour to fly.

8. Depression is a more disabling condition than angina, arthritis, asthma and diabetes.

9. Sitting straight is bad for backs.

10. A suspect in Portugal is called an arguido and has certain rights.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2007/09/10_things_14.shtml

[Niamh]

Can i just say that this is probably my favourite thread on litnet. The things that gives me lots more useless info to over load the useless info cabinet in my head! Thanks Scher!

[Scheherazade]

1. Being born without an ear is called microtia.

2. Zsa Zsa Gabor is related to Paris Hilton.

3. In Iceland, 96% of women go to university.

4. Gordon Brown has broken prime ministerial convention by getting a mobile phone, but it does not take incoming calls.

5. It costs 100 euros to hire one of the prostitutes' windows in Amsterdam for part of the day.

6. About 16,000 hyphens have been dropped from the latest edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

7. The Belgian army had to be called in recently to deal with an infestation of moths.

8. Dinosaurs had creches.

9. 'Conservative haircut' is economists' jargon for a form of loan collateral.

10. Meteorites do not let off dangerous fumes - but on landing can expose rotting organic matter, filling the air with methane, hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a018019

[AimusSage]

5. It costs 100 euros to hire one of the prostitutes' windows in Amsterdam for part of the day.
Are you sure that is the most recent rate? Last week some 20% off all windows were closed down. This might drive the prizes up.

[Scheherazade]

Are you sure that is the most recent rate? Last week some 20% off all windows were closed down. This might drive the prizes up.Dunno. The compiler of the article may not be as up to date on the prices as you are, of course! :p :D

[AimusSage]

Dunno. The compiler of the article may not be as up to date on the prices as you are, of course! :p :D
True enough, I follow the news a lot closer than the compiler does. :lol:

[Virgil]

True enough, I follow the news a lot closer than the compiler does. :lol:

Oh tell the truth. You visit those windows every day. :p :D

[Niamh]

Are you sure that is the most recent rate? Last week some 20% off all windows were closed down. This might drive the prizes up.


Dunno. The compiler of the article may not be as up to date on the prices as you are, of course! :p :D
:lol: your secrets out Aimus!


8. Dinosaurs had creches.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a018019

Awwww!!!!

[Scheherazade]

1. Adults use maths skills 14 times daily on average and literacy skills 23 times a day.

2. The sabretooth tiger might have looked fearsome but had a bite only a third as strong as a modern-day lion.

3. The opening bars to the theme tune of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em spelt the title of the series in Morse code.

4. The founder of Which? magazine, Michael Young, also founded the Open University.

5. Robbie Williams has 600 pairs of shoes at his Los Angeles home.

6. The children who sang on Pink Floyd's number one hit Another Brick in the Wall (Pt 2) couldn't appear in the video because they didn't hold Equity cards.

7. Jennifer Aniston has the most bankable face for a magazine cover according to research by Forbes magazine in the US.

8. To skim a stone 51 times it would need to be thrown at a speed of at least 80 kmh.

9. Sputnik is the Russian word for satellite.

10. Fifty-seven per cent of children don't know that haggis comes from Scotland.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a018580

[Virgil]

2. The sabretooth tiger might have looked fearsome but had a bite only a third as strong as a modern-day lion.


I found the article on the sabertooth bite very interesting. We use in engineering such stress analysis (finite element analysis, or FEA) as described for designing many parts for their stress load capability.

[Niamh]

2. The sabretooth tiger might have looked fearsome but had a bite only a third as strong as a modern-day lion.
My Antie use to get my sister, brother and myself to help her with the gardening in her garden in wexford by telling us that sabretooth Rabbits would eat her garden if it wasnt maintained. We couldnt have that! :p


3. The opening bars to the theme tune of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em spelt the title of the series in Morse code.
Really?*Hums it in her head* cool!


10. Fifty-seven per cent of children don't know that haggis comes from Scotland.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a018580

Ick! Haggis:sick:

[Scheherazade]

1. A bdelloid rotifer is a pond-dwelling organism that has survived 80 million years without sex.

2. Pregnant moose seek out human company to avoid the threat of bears.

3. Woodwork lessons are known as "resistant materials" in schools.

4. Housework causes asthma.

5. There were 61 billion web searches made in August.

6. Hitler received 1,000 letters a month of fan mail.

7. Bees frighten elephants.

8. Dormouse stew is a delicacy in Italy.

9. Chancellor Alistair Darling has a mortgage with Northern Rock.

10. Children in Cuba say "I want to be like Che" every day at school.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2007/10/10_things_16.shtml

[Virgil]

10. Children in Cuba say "I want to be like Che" every day at school.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2007/10/10_things_16.shtml

Sounds like brainwashing ala 1984. Ah, those communists never give up.

[Granny5]

4. Housework causes asthma.

Thank you, Scheherazade. I needed a new excuse.

[Scheherazade]

1. The brain responds to facial expressions at a speed of less than 40 milliseconds.

2. Having sex daily can improve a man's sperm quality - increasing their partner's chance of getting pregnant.

3. CO2 emissions from shipping are twice the level of aviation.

4. George Clooney and Pierce Brosnan have had Bell's Palsy - a nerve condition that can result in paralysis on one side of the face.

5. Middlesbrough's first professional football club, established in the late Victorian era, was called Middlesbrough Ironopolis.

6. Four people died in France in the Great Storm of 1987.

7. Migrants earned on average £424 per week last year, compared with £395 for UK-born workers.

8. Discrimination against atheists is allowed in employment in Texas, according to the state's constitution.

9. Leeches are used as treatment for cauliflower ears.

10. Asterix was so-called so he would appear at the start of an encyclopaedia of comics.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a019187

[Scheherazade]

1. An ai is a three-toed sloth from South America (and the word that clinched Paul Allan the title of national Scrabble champion).

2. Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa originally had eyebrows and eyelashes

3. Dumbledore is gay.

4. A £500,000 note is not technically a counterfeit, because that word refers to legal tender - and the Bank of England has never issued £500,000 notes.

5. But £1,000 notes were in circulation until being withdrawn in 1943.

6. UN population projections go as far as 2300.

7. Forty percent of household packaging can’t be recycled.

8. Sheffield FC is the world’s oldest football club.

9. One percent of organic food on sale in the UK is air-freighted in from abroad.

10. Obesity rates in England were by 2005 the highest of the 15 member states who then formed the European Union.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2007/10/post_32.shtml

[Scheherazade]

1. Dogs can have blood of any type if it's just one transfusion, but cats need to be blood type matched.

2. Trick or treating was first noted as arriving in England by the Times in 1986.

3. The sculptor of the giant spider at the Tate is 95 and still working.

4. Sniffer dogs can smell out a termite.

5. Clams can get very, very old.

6. Of the waste in UK landfills, 0.1 is plastic carrier bags.

7. Dogs occasionally shoot their owners in the US.

8. IP addresses will run out in 2010.

9. People carrying the OR11H7P gene are hypersensitive to the smell of sweat.

10. One fungal disease has made 40 frog species extinct since 1980.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a019659

[Granny5]

I really like this thread. Always some interesting information. But are you sure about #2? 1986?
#7 happened recently. The dog stepped on the rifle when the hunter laid it down to climb over a fence. The gun went off and shot the hunter in the leg,
Imagine going hunting with Cheney and his dog!

[Scheherazade]

1. King Tut had buck teeth.

2. Britons send as many text messages in a week now as they did in the whole of 1999.

3. The defining measure for a kilogram is "Le Grand K", a cylinder of platinum and iridium held in Paris.

4. Using camera traps to count tigers - differentiated by their stripe patterns - was pioneered in the 1920s by Englishman FW Champion.

5. There are 29 "Labour and the Co-operative Party" MPs in Parliament, including Ed Balls.

6. The Italian Mafia have commandments.

7. Gun ownership per person in Finland is the third highest in the world.

8. Dinosaurs breathed like penguins.

9. The brain can turn down its ability to see in order to listen to complex sounds like music.

10. For every one millibar decrease in pressure the sea rises 1cm.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a019925

[Niamh]

1. King Tut had buck teeth.

8. Dinosaurs breathed like penguins.
How do they know these things? So random.

9. The brain can turn down its ability to see in order to listen to complex sounds like music.
Well that explains alot!

[Scheherazade]

How do they know these things? So random.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a019925Click on the link!

[Scheherazade]

1. Superstitious people in rural India sometimes organise weddings to animals in the hope of warding off curses.

2. Janet and John were named Alice and Jerry in the United States.

3. Until the late 1990s, the RAF's nuclear bombs could be activated using a bicycle lock key.

4. Qwerty is a regular on lists of most-popular passwords.

5. Residents of Middlesbrough are 25% more likely to suffer from heart disease than the UK average.

6. There is an average of 90 suicides a day in Japan.

7. Landfill rubbish sites in the UK cover in total an area of 109sq miles.

8. Twelve per cent of people with no religion pray sometimes.

9. Cats can be police constables.

10. The next generation of chip will pack more than four hundred million transistors into an area the size of a postage stamp.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a020177

[Virgil]

12. Janet and John were named Alice and Jerry in the United States.


Who's Janet and John and who's Alice and Jerry? I don't recall either set. I remember learning to read with Dick and Jane. I guess they've changed in 40 years.

[Scheherazade]

Who's Janet and John and who's Alice and Jerry? I don't recall either set. I remember learning to read with Dick and Jane. I guess they've changed in 40 years.Here is the related article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7092601.stm

[Granny5]

Who's Janet and John and who's Alice and Jerry? I don't recall either set. I remember learning to read with Dick and Jane. I guess they've changed in 40 years.

I remember Dick and Jane and their little sister Penny, and I recall Jack and Janet, but no Janet and John or Alice and Jerry either.

[papayahed]

19. The brain can turn down its ability to see in order to listen to complex sounds like music.


So that's why guys have to turn down the radio when they're lost!!!:D

[Scheherazade]

1. The word Blighty comes from "bilayti", the Urdu for homeland.

2. Spotting a bargain releases "happy chemicals" like serotonin and adrenalin in the brain.

3. Babies make moral judgements about people.

4. Japan’s population will fall by 30% in 50 years.

5. The Queen took her corgi on honeymoon.

6. The brains of migraine sufferers are thicker in part of the cortex than those free of the severe headaches.

7. Radiohead's Thom Yorke paid nothing to download his latest album (just like the two-thirds of his fans who also got it for free).

8. The presence of kingfishers indicate that a waterway is in a healthy ecological state.

9. Beer has fewer calories than a similar measure of wine, milk or fruit juice.

10. Each economically active person is on 700 databases on average.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/