100 things we didn’t know this time last year
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.
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.More details67. Giant squid eat each other – especially during sex.
68. The Very Hungry Caterpillar has sold one copy every minute since its 1969 publication.
More details69. First-born children are less creative but more stable, while last-born are more promiscuous, says US research.
Tamara December 30, 2005 at 5:36 pm
OY @ #67
As far as Orthodox Jews more likely to J-Walk. You think it’s because they’re religious, or because most live in NY and everyone J-walks there 🙂