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.)
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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.)
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
I heard about this, it won a contest for the oddest street name, I think in the US.Quote:
Originally Posted by 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/...0.stm#10things
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
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
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
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. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
Nice to see you back, Scher.
Thank you, Virgil! :)Quote:
Originally Posted by 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/...0.stm#10things
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/...4.stm#10things
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
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by 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.
I car pool. I drive once or twice a week. Otherwise I try to sleep.