10 Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Week

[Domer121]

1.Chiyo(The name of the Geisha in Memoirs of a Geisha)

2.That Squid eat eachother especially during sex( I just read the first page of this thread

3.How much people don't like Wuthering Heights on this forum

4. That Survivor winner Rich Hatch is in prison for 4 1/2 years for tax evasion.

5. That it will rain tomorrow.

6.That I am actually an okay Scrabble player.

7.That I will be going to the Orchestra on Thursday.

8. That Ions are not that interesting.

9. That my memory is not as great as it used to be

10. That I can eat French Silk Pie for breakfast and I don't get sick.(my mother was wrong!

[Scheherazade]

1. There are 30,000 wild parakeets in London.

2. Alan Sugar is a big fan of Masterchef.

3. It's possible to map a 248-dimensional structure.

4. Harvesting rhubarb in candlelight helps preserve its flavour.

5. The Quakers invented the modern protest campaign - in calling for an end to the slave trade – deploying petitions, consumer boycotts, images, a logo and a slogan.

6. The Legal limit for flying a plane is 20mg of alcohol.

7. Martina Navratilova has spent four years secretly working as an artist.

8. NHS hospitals took more than £95m in car parking charges in 2004/2005.

9. Alcohol and tobacco are more "harmful" than cannabis, ecstasy and LSD according to a new ranking drawn up by the Lancet.

10. Tony Blair isn't a bad comedy actor, judging by his performance on Comic Relief.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a011187

[Scheherazade]

1. The UK's national time signal is accurate to within 1,000th of a second of Co-ordinated Universal Time.

2. Drinking, drug-taking teenagers are in the decline, according to a survey by the Information Centre.

3. The average water temperature of the UK's rivers and lakes is 5C in winter, 18C in summer.

4. Eight of the 10 most crowded train journeys in the UK are outside London.

5. The average duvet is home to 20,000 live dust mites.

6. Designer discount retailer TK Maxx is called TJ Maxx in the US.

7. Having a baby can cost you up to two months sleep in the first year.

8. Chimps and bonobos differ from humans by only 1% of DNA and could accept a blood transfusion or a kidney.

9. Britain's peat bogs store carbon that is equivalent to 20 years' worth of national industrial emissions.

10. Dogs can seemingly perform the Heimlich manoeuvre – a technique for helping someone who is choking.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a011459

[Scheherazade]

1. More servicemen and women in the British armed forces have taken their own lives (697) over the past two decades than have been killed in combat (438) according to the Ministry of Defence.

2. Serving anything more than tea and biscuits at a political meeting is an offence called "treating" and punishable by a year in prison or an unlimited fine, under the the Representation of the People Act 1893.

3. There are four Knight Rider cars, one of which is in a museum in Cumbria.

4. The record-breaking TGV train, which reached 584km/h, took 10 miles to stop when the brakes were fully applied in test runs.

5. Human ashes are called cremains.

6. "Lunatics, idiots, deaf and dumb" people are barred from standing for election under laws dating from 1766 which still apply.

7. Keith Richards has been trepanned.

8. It is cheaper to ship waste from London to Shenzen in China than it is to send it by road from London to Manchester.

9. There is mobile phone reception from the summit of Mount Everest.

10. Prisoners of war returning from Vietnam were told by the US government that the word "whatever" had become a common form of slang while they were away, to imply boredom.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a011675

[papayahed]

I just looked up trepanned and I'm still not sure what it means. Was a circular protion of his skull removed?

[Nightshade]

I just found out only 5 or six people died in the Fire of London in 1666.

[Virgil]

5. Human ashes are called cremains.

7. Keith Richards has been trepanned.

I wonder if it has anything to do with snorting your father's ashes?

From M-W:

Main Entry: 1tre·pan
Pronunciation: tri-'pan
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): tre·panned; tre·pan·ning
Etymology: Middle English, from trepane trephine
1 : to use a trephine on (the skull)
2 : to remove a disk or cylindrical core (as from metal for testing)
- trep·a·na·tion /"tre-p&-'nA-sh&n/ noun

or from dictionary.com:

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source
tre·pan1 /trɪˈpæn/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[tri-pan] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, -panned, -pan·ning.
–noun 1. a tool for cutting shallow holes by removing a core.
2. Surgery. an obsolete form of the trephine resembling a carpenter's bit and brace.
–verb (used with object) 3. Machinery. to cut circular disks from (plate stock) using a rotating cutter.
4. Surgery. to operate upon with a trepan; trephine.

[Niamh]

I just looked up trepanned and I'm still not sure what it means. Was a circular protion of his skull removed?

Thats what Trepanned is isnt it? Didnt know people still did it today. I know that many ancient Native American tribes used to do it. like being anointed to a tribe. Others believed that it created a closer link with the spirit world.

[Virgil]

I just quoted the definition above your post Niamh. You must of been writing as I posted.

[papayahed]

Thats what Trepanned is isnt it? Didnt know people still did it today. I know that many ancient Native American tribes used to do it. like being anointed to a tribe. Others believed that it created a closer link with the spirit world.

That's why it seems so odd.

[Rinas_Jaded]

I feel so very informed now. I wish school was like this, it would be much more interesting.

[Layka]

Ostriches have eyes bigger than their brains.

[Scheherazade]

1. Boris Yeltsin lost a thumb and index finger on his left hand while playing with a hand grenade as a child.

2. Runner's World, Wilfred Owen poetry and Uncle Tom's Cabin are restricted in Guantanamo Bay, lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith says.

3. Neighbours is the most watched daytime telly show other than the BBC's One o'clock news.

4. Scouting for Boys by Lord Baden-Powell is the fourth bestselling book of the 20th Century, after the Bible, the Koran and Mao's Little Red Book.

5. We each get a completely new skeleton every 10 years, because of cell renewal.

6. Smoking will be banned in police interview rooms in England when the new law takes effect, although it is not banned in Scotland. More details

7. Kryptonite exists.

8. Nearly half of all cases handled by top divorce lawyers last year involved a private detective to check on alleged infidelity.

9. £26m of pennies have been lost on UK streets since 1971.

10. North Korea is the least visited country in the world – only 1,800 Westerners make the trip each year.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a012556

[LoveToFreeRead]

Ten Things I didn’t know last week...

1… that Albert Einstein actually contemplated how long the human race could exist without bees: 4 years.
2…that Stephen Hawking would get to float weightless. Very cool for him!
3…Dubya would do a dance for malaria: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqy91GnS-Bg
4…that the Dow would surpass 13,000!
5… that this photo of Phil Spector existed:
6…that the US has imported the television show,“Katie & Peter” – as if we don’t have enough talentless “celebrities” already. I thought her name was Jordan, anyway?
7…that a chimp could live to be 75. http://www.latimes.com/features/prin...-home-magazine
8…that an Italian researcher is working on making a “Spider-man” suit. http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Real_li..._04262007.html
9…that a story like this could make it onto CNN’s website, regardless of its categorization as “Offbeat” : http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/ptech/0....ap/index.html
10…Keith Richards has been trepanned (learned that right here in this thread).

[Scheherazade]

1. Asda's buttock-slap is one of the few gestures to have been trademarked.

2. The goat who became an internet phenomenon after "marrying" a Sudanese man was named Rose.

3. New York may be "the city that never sleeps", but its pedestrians only rank eighth in a global study of walking pace.

4. Pandas in captivity don't need "Viagra, panda porn videos, or other previously tried artificial stimulants" to contemplate a spot of rumpy-pumpy after all.

5. Mirror tycoon Robert Maxwell ate grapes by lowering a bunch into his mouth, stripping the fruit and taking it out leaving only the stalks.

6. Apes communicate with gestures that have different meanings depending on the context - a chimpanzee with an extended arm and open hand may be begging for food, asking a female chimp for sex or reconciling with a male after a fight.

7. Men bitten by the Brazilian wandering spider can experience long and painful erections - a condition known as priapism.

8. Maggots can treat MRSA.

9. Blushing can be treated by cutting the nerve that creates the red flush in the face, neck or upper chest.

10. Danny deVito - yes the actor - has created his own brand of Limon cello, the lemony Italian liqueur.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a012953