10 Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Week

[Granny5]

I really like this thread. Always some interesting information. But are you sure about #2? 1986?
#7 happened recently. The dog stepped on the rifle when the hunter laid it down to climb over a fence. The gun went off and shot the hunter in the leg,
Imagine going hunting with Cheney and his dog!

[Scheherazade]

1. King Tut had buck teeth.

2. Britons send as many text messages in a week now as they did in the whole of 1999.

3. The defining measure for a kilogram is "Le Grand K", a cylinder of platinum and iridium held in Paris.

4. Using camera traps to count tigers - differentiated by their stripe patterns - was pioneered in the 1920s by Englishman FW Champion.

5. There are 29 "Labour and the Co-operative Party" MPs in Parliament, including Ed Balls.

6. The Italian Mafia have commandments.

7. Gun ownership per person in Finland is the third highest in the world.

8. Dinosaurs breathed like penguins.

9. The brain can turn down its ability to see in order to listen to complex sounds like music.

10. For every one millibar decrease in pressure the sea rises 1cm.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a019925

[Niamh]

1. King Tut had buck teeth.

8. Dinosaurs breathed like penguins.

How do they know these things? So random.

9. The brain can turn down its ability to see in order to listen to complex sounds like music.

Well that explains alot!

[Scheherazade]

How do they know these things? So random.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a019925

Click on the link!

[Scheherazade]

1. Superstitious people in rural India sometimes organise weddings to animals in the hope of warding off curses.

2. Janet and John were named Alice and Jerry in the United States.

3. Until the late 1990s, the RAF's nuclear bombs could be activated using a bicycle lock key.

4. Qwerty is a regular on lists of most-popular passwords.

5. Residents of Middlesbrough are 25% more likely to suffer from heart disease than the UK average.

6. There is an average of 90 suicides a day in Japan.

7. Landfill rubbish sites in the UK cover in total an area of 109sq miles.

8. Twelve per cent of people with no religion pray sometimes.

9. Cats can be police constables.

10. The next generation of chip will pack more than four hundred million transistors into an area the size of a postage stamp.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a020177

[Virgil]

12. Janet and John were named Alice and Jerry in the United States.

Who's Janet and John and who's Alice and Jerry? I don't recall either set. I remember learning to read with Dick and Jane. I guess they've changed in 40 years.

[Scheherazade]

Who's Janet and John and who's Alice and Jerry? I don't recall either set. I remember learning to read with Dick and Jane. I guess they've changed in 40 years.

Here is the related article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7092601.stm

[Granny5]

Who's Janet and John and who's Alice and Jerry? I don't recall either set. I remember learning to read with Dick and Jane. I guess they've changed in 40 years.

I remember Dick and Jane and their little sister Penny, and I recall Jack and Janet, but no Janet and John or Alice and Jerry either.

[papayahed]

19. The brain can turn down its ability to see in order to listen to complex sounds like music.

So that's why guys have to turn down the radio when they're lost!!!

[Scheherazade]

1. The word Blighty comes from "bilayti", the Urdu for homeland.

2. Spotting a bargain releases "happy chemicals" like serotonin and adrenalin in the brain.

3. Babies make moral judgements about people.

4. Japan’s population will fall by 30% in 50 years.

5. The Queen took her corgi on honeymoon.

6. The brains of migraine sufferers are thicker in part of the cortex than those free of the severe headaches.

7. Radiohead's Thom Yorke paid nothing to download his latest album (just like the two-thirds of his fans who also got it for free).

8. The presence of kingfishers indicate that a waterway is in a healthy ecological state.

9. Beer has fewer calories than a similar measure of wine, milk or fruit juice.

10. Each economically active person is on 700 databases on average.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/

[Scheherazade]

1. Eddie Irvine is Britain's wealthiest sports star – beating the Beckhams into second place by £30m.

2. Sleeping on the job is tolerated in Japanese work culture, as long as you remain upright and obey certain other rules. It's called inemuri.

3. Voltaire did not say "I disapprove of your views, but would fight to the death for your right to express them". It's a paraphrasing from a 1906 biography.

4. William Blake was not a fan of his poem in the preface to Milton, which became the words to the hymn Jerusalem. He removed it from later editions of the work.

5. The number of weather-related disasters has quadrupled over the past 20 years, the aid agency Oxfam says.

6. The first telephone directory, dating from 1880 and reissued this week online, had 248 names and no numbers. Callers were expected to call the operator and say the name of the person they wanted to talk to.

7. MI6 calls its spies "operational officers".

8. The Romans had roadmaps.

9. Pigeon racing is not regarded as a sport while baton twirling is, for taxation purposes, by HM Revenue and Customs, on the advice of the UK's Sports Councils and UK Sport.

10. By the time they are four, children from poor families are likely to have heard 13 million words. For children from better off families, a figure of 45 million is typical.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a020713

[Virgil]

2. Sleeping on the job is tolerated in Japanese work culture, as long as you remain upright and obey certain other rules. It's called inemuri.

How can one sleep and reman upright?

[Pensive]

1. The word Blighty comes from "bilayti", the Urdu for homeland.

In Urdu, it should be 'vilayti' which instead of meaning homeland means 'foreign'.

[Scheherazade]

1. To be declared dead there is no time limit - the seven-year rule only applies in the High Court on the settlement of a disputed estate.

2. No Briton has been extradited from Panama since an extradition treaty was signed 100 years ago.

3. JE55USS - and other combinations of letters and numbers with strong religious connotations - cannot be used for personalised number plates. Rude words are also banned.

4. There are fewer than 50 wild animals performing in UK-owned circuses.

5. Two-thirds of Ricky Hatton's calorie intake when training for a big fight - and trying to lose excess weight he piles on between bouts - is from meal replacement supplements.

6. India's "hugging saint" has dispensed 26 million cuddles - her helpers count each off with a clicker.

7. Books used to be bound in human skin.

8. Santa Claus, for Dutch and Belgian children, lives in Spain and travels north by steam ship.

9. One in four children don't count their father as immediate family.

10. Tango routes are longer routes flown by some airlines to by-pass the expense of flying through several air traffic zones.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a020997

[Scheherazade]

1. Renowned atheist Professor Richard Dawkins likes singing Christmas carols.

2. The White House grounds are a National Park.

3. The Australian town of Eucla has its own time zone.

4. Pentonville prison, when built in 1842, had toilets in all the cells. They were later taken out.

5. Church of England vicars don't have to wear a collar if there's a "justifiable cause".

6. Ike Turner made what's widely considered to be the first rock 'n' roll record - Rocket 88 - in 1951.

7. Iago in Othello is the third longest part in all of Shakespeare's plays.

8. The strength of wine has increased from 11.5% alcohol by volume (ABV) to 13.5% ABV in recent years.

9. Police were banned from striking in 1919, after walk-outs that year by officers in London and Liverpool.

10. Anyone convicted of a criminal offence is bound to pay a £15 "victims' surcharge".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...x.html#a021276