I love animals, so I'm not really criticizing the activism. But isn't it funny trivial celebrities can be?Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
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I love animals, so I'm not really criticizing the activism. But isn't it funny trivial celebrities can be?Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
I think he had watched the movie as a child and affected by it deeply.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4520658.stmQuote:
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.
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
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
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
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
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by 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
Well, to be fair, that isn't a very high standard to meet. :pQuote:
Originally Posted by 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
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
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
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
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??**
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