10 Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Week

[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/...2.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/...9.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/...2.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/...2.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/...6.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