Each week the Magazine picks out snippets from the news, and compiles them into 10 Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Week. Here's an end of year almanac.Here are a few that aren't totally based in British-only interest.
4. An average record shop needs to sell at least two copies of a CD per year to make it worth stocking, according to Wired magazine.
5. Nicole Kidman is scared of butterflies. "I jump out of planes, I could be covered in cockroaches, I do all sorts of things, but I just don't like the feel of butterflies' bodies," she says.
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.
10. Humans can be born suffering from a rare condition known as "sirenomelia" or "mermaid syndrome", in which the legs are fused together to resemble the tail of a fish.
10 butterfly eggs by Peter Rettenberger
11. One in 10 Europeans is allegedly conceived in an Ikea bed.
12. Until the 1940s rhubarb was considered a vegetable. It became a fruit when US customs officials, baffled by the foreign food, decided it should be classified according to the way it was eaten.
15. Lionesses like their males to be deep brunettes.
More details
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".22. The length of a man's fingers can reveal how physically aggressive he is, scientists say.
23. In America it's possible to subpoena a dog.
Full story
29. When faced with danger, the octopus can wrap six of its legs around its head to disguise itself as a fallen coconut shell and escape by walking backwards on the other two legs, scientists discovered.35. The name Lego came from two Danish words "leg godt", meaning "play well". It also means "I put together" in Latin.
36. The average employee spends 14 working days a year on personal e-mails, phone calls and web browsing, outside official breaks, according to employment analysts Captor.
37. Cyclist Lance Armstrong's heart is almost a third larger than the average man's.
38. Nasa boss Michael Griffin has seven university degrees: a bachelor's degree, a PhD, and five masters degrees.
39. Australians host barbecues at polling stations on general election days.
More details52. You're 10 times more likely to be bitten by a human than a rat.
More details60. Newborn dolphins and killer whales don't sleep for a month, according to research carried out by University of California.
61. You can bet on your own death.
Full story
No comments:
Post a Comment