100 things we didn't know last year
Interesting and unexpected facts can emerge from daily news stories and the Magazine picks out such snippets for its weekly feature, 10 things we didn't know last week. Here's an almanac of the best of 2014.
1. The Pentagon has a plan for combating a zombie apocalypse.
2. Seals like to have sex with penguins.
3. Hello Kitty is not a cat - she's a little girl.
4. It's quicker - by about three hours - to read the Hobbit than watch Peter Jackson's movie trilogy.
5. There have been lions in London since the 13th Century - arriving either in 1210 or 1235 - although they may have died out briefly under Henry VI in 1436.
6. Age renders you less certain as to whether a badger or a baboon would win in a fight.
7. Dreams get weirder as the night wears on.
8. Gladiators were mostly vegetarian.
9. The release of a track by Freddie Mercury and Michael Jackson was delayed more than 30 years because Mercury objected to the presence of Bubbles the chimp at its recording.
10. It's possible to charge a Nokia Lumia 930 using 800 apples and potatoes connected with copper wire and nails.
11. Watching action films makes you eat more.
12. Sir John Gielgud wrote the script for a gay porn film.
13. It's against the law in England and Wales to swallow and regurgitate goldfish, even if they survive, but it may be legal to do the same with an octopus.
14. American teachers are allowed to whack children with a paddle (a wooden bat a little shorter and thinner than a cricket bat) in 19 states.
15. There is a "right" way to eat chocolate - you pop a piece in your mouth, let it melt between the tongue and the palate, and then breathe in through your mouth and out through your nose.
16. It's actually fairly easy to weigh an ant.
17. At least three Google employees have lived for months in their vehicles on the firm's California campus, eating in the staff cafeteria and showering in gyms.
18. The bass line of Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side cost £17.
19. Dollar squiggles on the pavement denote electric cables below.
20. The most effective office regime is to work for 52 consecutive minutes and then have a 17-minute break.
21. Ukraine's navy is equipped with combat sea lions.
22. A porcupine can fight off a pride of lions.
23. Two per cent of Anglican clergy are not sure whether God is "more than a human construct".
24. Los Angeles prison inmates have to pass a "gay-dar" test to stay in the safest wing.
25. Over 88% of individual winners at the Darwin Awards are men.
26. At the Starbucks outlet in the CIA's Langley headquarters, baristas aren't allowed to write customers' names on their cups.
27. When a person's age ends with a nine they are more likely to seek extramarital affairs, sign up for their first marathon, and run marathons faster than when they were slightly older or slightly younger.
28. Popping a criminal's phone in a microwave and closing the door (but not switching it on) stops said criminal wiping it remotely.
29. In China, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are known as Curly Fu and Peanut.
30. The most expensive pies of any English league football club are to be found at Brighton & Hove Albion - Rochdale's are the cheapest.
31. It is almost impossible to take a German-registered car into Japan.
32. Olive oil and baking powder are rubbed onto parts of the Sydney Opera House in order to maintain it.
33. Tall men get married earlier but short men stay married longer.
34. Dodger Stadium, home of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is the most expensive Major League Baseball ground in which to propose marriage.
35. There are more bicycles in Copenhagen than people.
36. Lawrence of Arabia was offered a job as a nightwatchman at the Bank of England. He turned it down.
37. The Indian record for staff absenteeism is thought to have been set by a biology teacher who did not turn up for work for 23 years.
38. Senior technology gurus at the White House don't have to tuck their shirts in.
39. Elephants can differentiate between men and women, and between different ethnicities, when they hear a voice.
40. There is a brown bear living at the Chernobyl site.
41. The average length of a Best Picture Academy Award-winning film is two hours and 20 minutes.
42. The best way to prevent your headphones from tangling in your bag is to join the ends together.
43. It is illegal to race rubber ducks in some US states.
44. A salmon cannon fires 40 fish a minute.
45. Simon Cowell has a saying for people editing shots of him on X Factor: Two words - happy and handsome.
46. When making a decision, former England and Derbyshire fast bowler Devon Malcolm asks himself: "What would Margaret Beckett do?"
47. Yorkshire and Humberside are as red-headed as Ireland.
48. There is a symphonic Finnish prog-rock concept album about Scrooge McDuck.
49. In Somalia, the word for president also means "big head".
50. When Richard III was killed he suffered at least 11 injuries, although some of them might have been inflicted after death.
51. According to OED, Cornish and Welsh have had less influence on the English language than Hawaiian, Swahili or Zulu.
52. The US National Security Agency used to have a Clown Club for staff members.
53. Kenny G's Going Home is used in public spaces in China to tell people to go home.
54. Czech deer still avoid the Iron Curtain.
55. Sir Bradley Wiggins is a fan of the Archers.
56. The largest hunting dinosaur probably ate whole sharks.
57. In Oklahoma, the average marijuana joint costs the same as 2.41 bottles of Bud Light.
58. Group jogging is a crime in Burundi.
59. 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).
60. Some nurses in the UK wear fat suits as part of their training for dealing with morbidly obese patients.
61. People are more likely to catch yawns from people of their own ethnicity.
62. Putting broken pottery in plant pots doesn't aid drainage.
63. 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.
64. Detainees at Guantanamo are allowed to watch the World Cup but don't see it live - it is made available a day later to ensure nothing subversive can be conveyed.
65. Guinness in 1982 came close to re-launching the brand as an English beer brewed in west London.
66. Prince is very good at ping pong.
67. When crows drop stones into water to make food more accessible, they display the reasoning skills of children aged 5-7.
68. People called Eleanor are disproportionately likely to get into Oxford University.
69. Hillary Clinton hasn't driven a car since 1996.
70. Man-eating sharks are nine times more likely to kill men than women.
71. Cate Blanchett and her husband share an email account.
72. Men whose dating profile pictures are taken outdoors on a sunny day with trees in the background are most popular.
73. Main characters are more likely to die in children's cartoons than in films for adults.
74. The authorities in Oregon, USA, are very, very particular about getting urine in their reservoirs.
75. It's possible for a bat in the UK to fly across the sea to continental Europe.
76. Richard Nixon was interested in the mating habits of pandas.
77. The code A113 is implanted in every Pixar movie.
78. The coat of a dead dog called London Jack, whose stuffed remains were used to collect charity donations at railway stations, changed colour twice.
79. French trains are fatter than 50 years ago.
80. In primates there is a correlation between female infidelity and males having large testicles.
81. The last British Prime Minister to regularly wear a wedding ring in public was Lady Thatcher.
82. Kladdkaka, a flat gooey chocolate cake, is the most googled food in Sweden.
83. The faces of the fastest riders in the Tour de France are 25% more attractive to women than the slowest 10% of riders, although women on the pill had a reduced preference for quicker riders.
84. Early risers are more unethical at night and night owls more immoral in the morning.
85. St Mary's Church is the most ambiguous term on Wikipedia.
86. Researchers at Michigan Technical University have been looking for the existence of time travellers on the internet.
87. The sound of a ticking clock can make women keener to have babies younger.
88. Dead passengers on British Airways flights used to be given sunglasses, a vodka and tonic and a copy of the Daily Mail to disguise them from other passengers.
89. The Black Death improved public health in subsequent centuries, although no-one knows the exact reason.
90. There are at least three different approved ways of saying Hyundai, depending on whether you're in South Korea, the UK or US.
91. England manager Roy Hodgson and player Leighton Baines share a passion for the novelist Haruki Murakami.
92. The Star Wars character Han Solo was partly based on Francis Ford Coppola.
93. The first bar code on a commercial product was on a packet of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum.
94. Pennsylvania is the most linguistically rich US state - it has five dialects, compared with the typical two or three.
95. There is a once-a-year a bus service from Salisbury Plain to Imber.
96. Comedian Les Dawson wrote a secret romantic thriller under the nom de plume Maria Brett-Cooper.
97. Congo-Brazzaville has a peat bog the size of England.
98. Snakes squeeze tree trunks far harder than necessary.
99. Pope Paul VI believed that animals go to heaven.
100. The dark side of the Moon is actually turquoise.
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