100 new things… well, 18 actually

In the BBC magazine section, there is a list of a hundred things we didn’t know last year… apparently; they range across every area of human and animal activity and make interesting (and amusing) reading.

I’ve reduced the list to eighteen unusual facts discovered in 2014:

1. Gladiators were mostly vegetarian
2. It’s actually fairly easy to weigh an ant.
3. The most effective office regime is to work for 52 consecutive minutes and then have a 17-minute break.
4. Ukraine’s navy is equipped with combat sea lions.
5. In China, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are known as Curly Fu and Peanut.
6. The most expensive pies of any English league football club are to be found at Brighton & Hove Albion – Rochdale’s are the cheapest.
7. It is illegal to race rubber ducks in some US states.
8. When making a decision, former England and Derbyshire fast bowler Devon Malcolm asks himself: “What would Margaret Beckett do?”
9. Yorkshire and Humberside are as red-headed as Ireland.
10. The largest hunting dinosaur probably ate whole sharks.
11. It would cost £12.6 billion to issue every man, woman and child in the UK with an owl (and £69.3 billion if each was to get its own aviary).
12. Putting broken pottery in plant pots doesn’t aid drainage.
13. When given a date far in the future, William Hague can tell you off the top of his head which day of the week it will be.
14. When crows drop stones into water to make food more accessible, they display the reasoning skills of children aged 5-7.
15. People called Eleanor are disproportionately likely to get into Oxford University.
16. It’s possible for a bat in the UK to fly across the sea to continental Europe.
17. The Black Death improved public health in subsequent centuries, although no-one knows the exact reason.
18. Congo-Brazzaville has a peat bog the size of England

I love the idea of issuing owls to ever single person in the UK – let’s do it! damn the expense! And broken pottery doesn’t aid drainage? What? I always put broken pots under plants!! And William Hague knowing things off the top of his head… hi totally bald pate… Obviously crows are clever, whoever could doubt it?! And as for that England-sized bog in Congo… Gosh!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-30492726