No! Not with Loquacious Pensive, you bet! :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
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No! Not with Loquacious Pensive, you bet! :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
OBE?Quote:
2. Children whose parents have an OBE can marry at St Paul's cathedral.
Ottawa Board of Education?
Overcome By Events?
Operating Base Earthquake? (Is that one some kind of euphemism for hyperactive children?)
Order of the British Empire I recon.
It is :nod:. Lots of footballers , cricketrs and other sports people not to meniossin celb types get them :nod:
In the business world, it usually means Overcome By Events. I'm surprised you haven't seen that as an engineer.Quote:
Originally Posted by papayahed
Exept it doesn't fit here:
What does it stand for here?Quote:
2. Children whose parents have an OBE can marry at St Paul's cathedral.
edit: It seems like Aimus might be right.
Yes, OBE, on this side of the pond, is:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_o...British_EmpireQuote:
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.
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
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/magazinem...x.html#a007842
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.
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75. Five billion apples are eaten a year in the UK.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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92. In a fight between a polar bear and a lion, the polar bear would win.
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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.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a007948
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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/magazinem...x.html#a008461
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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.
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8. School starts at age three in France - and many children start at two.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/
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4. But they can pretty easily catch fire while doing so.
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6. Uninsured vehicles are 10 times more likely to be involved in hit-and-run crashes.
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8. Today presenter John Humphrys gets up one minute before 4am and is in the BBC studio at 16 mins past.
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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/magazinem...x.html#a008981
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by 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/magazinem...x.html#a009276
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/magazinem...x.html#a009540
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/magazinem...ast_w_14.shtml