Archives for December 2005

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Found these on the BBC. Here are a few samples.

6. WD-40 dissolves cocaine – it has been used by a pub landlord to prevent drug-taking in his pub’s toilets.

7. Baboons can tell the difference between English and French. Zoo keepers at Port Lympne wild animal park in Kent are having to learn French to communicate with the baboons which had been transferred from Paris zoo.

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8. Devout Orthodox Jews are three times as likely to jaywalk as other people, according to an Israeli survey reported in the New Scientist. The researchers say it’s possibly because religious people have less fear of death.

9. The energy used to build an average Victorian terrace house would be enough to send a car round the Earth five times, says English Heritage.
19. The = sign was invented by 16th Century Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde, who was fed up with writing “is equal to” in his equations. He chose the two lines because “noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle”.
20. The Queen has never been on a computer, she told Bill Gates as she awarded him an honorary knighthood.

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67. Giant squid eat each other – especially during sex.

68. The Very Hungry Caterpillar has sold one copy every minute since its 1969 publication.
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69. First-born children are less creative but more stable, while last-born are more promiscuous, says US research.

PORT ORANGE, Fla. (AP) — A man who woke up and found his head bleeding, drove to work and left a note for his boss before going to the hospital to find he had a bullet lodged in his brain, authorities said.

When Glen Thomas Betterley, 53, noticed the blood Thursday morning he asked his girlfriend if she had struck him. Emma Lorene Larsen, 65, said no.

Betterley went to Halifax Medical Center emergency room where he learned he had been shot in the forehead.

While Betterley was being treated, police called Larsen and heard a single gunshot. When investigators arrived at the home, they found Larsen dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot to the head.

Oy.

“A WOMAN rushed to hospital with tummy trouble, fearing she had eaten a dodgy kebab, was shocked to give birth instead, a British newspaper reported today.

Helen Smitham, 25, of Distington in northwest England, had no idea she was pregnant when she complained of feeling a bit rough – with an iffy kebab thought to blame.

Her mother rushed her to the nearby West Cumberland Hospital where she gave birth so quickly that doctors did not even have time to tell her she was expecting.

Her baby son Deaton was born on December 24 weighing four pounds and 11 ounces (2.1kg) said The Sun, Britain’s biggest-selling daily.

“I had absolutely no idea,” a stunned Ms Smitham said.”

How do you not know that you are pregnant.

It is coming, at least I think that it is. If I can grab a chunk of time today I will put together my 2005 end of the year recap. It might be a monster post or it might be a couple of paragraphs, only time will tell.