10 Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Week

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/...7.stm#10things

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

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

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

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Ah, one of my favorite children's books of all time! :D

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

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

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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. :)

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

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

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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).

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.

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

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

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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....

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

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

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

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

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

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/...8.stm#10things

I like no. 8 :D

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Originally Posted by Jay

I like no. 8 :D

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Oh great something else to worry about...

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

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

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This is good! ;)

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1. Trigamy is being married to three people.

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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)

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

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We read it as: Robin Hood grew a beard...

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

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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?

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Originally Posted by Taliesin

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)

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I agree with you, Tal. I was a little surprised too... but then again maybe because all these -gamies sound like a little likeOrigami, which might confuse some!

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Originally Posted by Taliesin

We read it as: Robin Hood grew a beard...

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Robin Cook

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Originally Posted by Taliesin

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?

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Ann Widdecombe

Top of the Pops is the weekly music chart show on BBC.

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/...8.stm#10things

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

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

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

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

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

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/image...ner_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/...8.stm#10things

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

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

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

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

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/...8.stm#10things

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

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

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

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

Only one....

1) I'm failing world History

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

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

*blinks at #10* :eek:

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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/...6.stm#10things

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/...6.stm#10things

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