10 Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Week

[Scheherazade]

1. Being born without an ear is called microtia.

2. Zsa Zsa Gabor is related to Paris Hilton.

3. In Iceland, 96% of women go to university.

4. Gordon Brown has broken prime ministerial convention by getting a mobile phone, but it does not take incoming calls.

5. It costs 100 euros to hire one of the prostitutes' windows in Amsterdam for part of the day.

6. About 16,000 hyphens have been dropped from the latest edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

7. The Belgian army had to be called in recently to deal with an infestation of moths.

8. Dinosaurs had creches.

9. 'Conservative haircut' is economists' jargon for a form of loan collateral.

10. Meteorites do not let off dangerous fumes - but on landing can expose rotting organic matter, filling the air with methane, hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a018019

[AimusSage]

5. It costs 100 euros to hire one of the prostitutes' windows in Amsterdam for part of the day.

Are you sure that is the most recent rate? Last week some 20% off all windows were closed down. This might drive the prizes up.

[Scheherazade]

Are you sure that is the most recent rate? Last week some 20% off all windows were closed down. This might drive the prizes up.

Dunno. The compiler of the article may not be as up to date on the prices as you are, of course!

[AimusSage]

Dunno. The compiler of the article may not be as up to date on the prices as you are, of course!

True enough, I follow the news a lot closer than the compiler does.

[Virgil]

True enough, I follow the news a lot closer than the compiler does.

Oh tell the truth. You visit those windows every day.

[Niamh]

Are you sure that is the most recent rate? Last week some 20% off all windows were closed down. This might drive the prizes up.

Dunno. The compiler of the article may not be as up to date on the prices as you are, of course!

your secrets out Aimus!

8. Dinosaurs had creches.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a018019

Awwww!!!!

[Scheherazade]

1. Adults use maths skills 14 times daily on average and literacy skills 23 times a day.

2. The sabretooth tiger might have looked fearsome but had a bite only a third as strong as a modern-day lion.

3. The opening bars to the theme tune of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em spelt the title of the series in Morse code.

4. The founder of Which? magazine, Michael Young, also founded the Open University.

5. Robbie Williams has 600 pairs of shoes at his Los Angeles home.

6. The children who sang on Pink Floyd's number one hit Another Brick in the Wall (Pt 2) couldn't appear in the video because they didn't hold Equity cards.

7. Jennifer Aniston has the most bankable face for a magazine cover according to research by Forbes magazine in the US.

8. To skim a stone 51 times it would need to be thrown at a speed of at least 80 kmh.

9. Sputnik is the Russian word for satellite.

10. Fifty-seven per cent of children don't know that haggis comes from Scotland.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a018580

[Virgil]

2. The sabretooth tiger might have looked fearsome but had a bite only a third as strong as a modern-day lion.

I found the article on the sabertooth bite very interesting. We use in engineering such stress analysis (finite element analysis, or FEA) as described for designing many parts for their stress load capability.

[Niamh]

2. The sabretooth tiger might have looked fearsome but had a bite only a third as strong as a modern-day lion.

My Antie use to get my sister, brother and myself to help her with the gardening in her garden in wexford by telling us that sabretooth Rabbits would eat her garden if it wasnt maintained. We couldnt have that!

3. The opening bars to the theme tune of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em spelt the title of the series in Morse code.

Really?*Hums it in her head* cool!

10. Fifty-seven per cent of children don't know that haggis comes from Scotland.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a018580

Ick! Haggis

[Scheherazade]

1. A bdelloid rotifer is a pond-dwelling organism that has survived 80 million years without sex.

2. Pregnant moose seek out human company to avoid the threat of bears.

3. Woodwork lessons are known as "resistant materials" in schools.

4. Housework causes asthma.

5. There were 61 billion web searches made in August.

6. Hitler received 1,000 letters a month of fan mail.

7. Bees frighten elephants.

8. Dormouse stew is a delicacy in Italy.

9. Chancellor Alistair Darling has a mortgage with Northern Rock.

10. Children in Cuba say "I want to be like Che" every day at school.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...hings_16.shtml

[Virgil]

10. Children in Cuba say "I want to be like Che" every day at school.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...hings_16.shtml

Sounds like brainwashing ala 1984. Ah, those communists never give up.

[Granny5]

4. Housework causes asthma.

Thank you, Scheherazade. I needed a new excuse.

[Scheherazade]

1. The brain responds to facial expressions at a speed of less than 40 milliseconds.

2. Having sex daily can improve a man's sperm quality - increasing their partner's chance of getting pregnant.

3. CO2 emissions from shipping are twice the level of aviation.

4. George Clooney and Pierce Brosnan have had Bell's Palsy - a nerve condition that can result in paralysis on one side of the face.

5. Middlesbrough's first professional football club, established in the late Victorian era, was called Middlesbrough Ironopolis.

6. Four people died in France in the Great Storm of 1987.

7. Migrants earned on average £424 per week last year, compared with £395 for UK-born workers.

8. Discrimination against atheists is allowed in employment in Texas, according to the state's constitution.

9. Leeches are used as treatment for cauliflower ears.

10. Asterix was so-called so he would appear at the start of an encyclopaedia of comics.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a019187

[Scheherazade]

1. An ai is a three-toed sloth from South America (and the word that clinched Paul Allan the title of national Scrabble champion).

2. Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa originally had eyebrows and eyelashes

3. Dumbledore is gay.

4. A £500,000 note is not technically a counterfeit, because that word refers to legal tender - and the Bank of England has never issued £500,000 notes.

5. But £1,000 notes were in circulation until being withdrawn in 1943.

6. UN population projections go as far as 2300.

7. Forty percent of household packaging can’t be recycled.

8. Sheffield FC is the world’s oldest football club.

9. One percent of organic food on sale in the UK is air-freighted in from abroad.

10. Obesity rates in England were by 2005 the highest of the 15 member states who then formed the European Union.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem.../post_32.shtml

[Scheherazade]

1. Dogs can have blood of any type if it's just one transfusion, but cats need to be blood type matched.

2. Trick or treating was first noted as arriving in England by the Times in 1986.

3. The sculptor of the giant spider at the Tate is 95 and still working.

4. Sniffer dogs can smell out a termite.

5. Clams can get very, very old.

6. Of the waste in UK landfills, 0.1 is plastic carrier bags.

7. Dogs occasionally shoot their owners in the US.

8. IP addresses will run out in 2010.

9. People carrying the OR11H7P gene are hypersensitive to the smell of sweat.

10. One fungal disease has made 40 frog species extinct since 1980.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a019659