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1/5/2003

King Edward II of England was assassinated with the connivance of his queen. So that there would be no visible wounds and it would look like a natural death, they killed him with a red-hot poker up the arse.

Q: How come the castles (rooks) in chess can move around the board, and at speed?
A: Because the piece originally represented a chariot (Persian 'rukh').

Afghanistan holds the record for the state with the most changes of national flag at least 21 in the last 100-odd years, with 8 in 1992 alone.

5/5/2003

Emperor Hirohito was the first person in history to renounce his divinity over the radio.

6/5/2003

Our concepts 'brother' and 'sister' don’t exist in New Guinea pidgin. Instead, the word 'borata' means 'same-sex-as-oneself sibling' while 'sisa' means 'different-sex-from-oneself sibling'.

7/5/2003

The Romans had concrete buildings but after the barbarian invasions the knowledge was lost. It took 1600 years for someone to reinvent it.

Q: What do George Gregan and Corné Krige have in common, besides facing each other as captains of international rugby teams?
A: Both were born in the same hospital in Lusaka, Zambia.

8/5/2003

The Great Pyramid at Giza was the world’s tallest building for 4,500 years, until overtaken by the Eiffel Tower not much more than a century ago.

Genghis Khan’s horsemen who conquered most of Asia lived on dried meat as they charged across the steppe. They tenderised, flattened and dried it by storing it under their saddles.

9/5/2003

Napoleon was a hands-on commander whose successful battles he directed on horseback. Would the battle of Waterloo have turned out differently if he hadn’t been unable to ride after a bad night with his piles?

12/5/2003

In the First World War a few daring young men chased each other around the sky in string & fabric flying machines, yes? Well, no. The various combatants built and used about 200,000 aircraft in the space of 4 years. 90% or more were crashed, shot down, captured or written off. Hundreds of different types were built, and the pace of development was such that many types had only a few months’ service before becoming obsolete.

13/5/2003

I've always wondered why the last words uttered by King George V on his deathbed were "Bugger Bognor".

14/5/2003

Q: Why does the sun cross the sky from left to right in the northern hemisphere, but from right to left down here?
A: When you face the sun's path in the northern hemisphere you're looking south (instead of north as we do) and so the east is then on your left instead of your right.

Buddy Holly, 'The music died' on what day? 3 Feb 1959 - TW's 10th birthday.

If you laid all the people in China head to foot, not only would they reach past the moon, but many of them would be dead before you’d finished while most of the rest would be pretty bored.

Take any multi-digit number, add the digits together, subtract the resulting number from your original number and the result will be a multiple of 9.

15/5/2003

The French, who pride themselves on the logic and clarity of their language, have no specific word for 70, 80 or 90, using instead 'sixty-ten', sixty-eleven', 'four twenties', 'four-twenties-nineteen' etc. After the Revolution, sensible alternatives were officially adopted. Unfortunately, language is not very susceptible to legislation and soon everyone carried on as before.

While they were at it, the French Revolution idealogues responsible for rationalising, dereligioning and decimalising everything decided to rearrange the year into ten months (with cute names like 'Misty' and 'Snowy'). They even wanted a ten-day week. The Earth, though, being like language a bit stubborn about being legislated, wouldn't change its orbit around the sun to a nice neat decimal number - it continued to take an untidy 365.24 days as it always had.

Q: Why does the tenth month, and not the eighth, start with 'Oct'? Why does the twelfth month start with 'Dec' as in 'decimal' or ' decapod'?
A: When Julius Caesar and his successor the emperor Augustus were deified, the ten-month Roman calendar was rearranged to fit in two extra months (July and August) dedicated to the two new gods.

When Christopher Columbus rediscovered America, he had seriously underestimated the circumference of the Earth and thought he had landed in 'the Indies' (as India and lands further east were called). So the Caribbean islands came to be called the West Indies, and the natives of the Americas 'Indians'. Ironically though, many of the people of the West Indies (especially Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago) are Indians, the British having brought in thousands as plantation workers.

16/5/2003

Longest 'Blonde Moment' in History: European gentlemen go platinum for a century. Men's hair got longer and longer in the mid-17th Century, and styling it must have been such a bitch that they eventually thought it would be simpler to have most of it cut off and wear wigs.
Other advantages: 1. Fewer lice (unless you wore them continuosly for weeks at a time)
2. Stay platinum blond forever! This lunacy went on for over a century, and only disappeared with the French Revolution. Of course, your average peasant had no time or money for such fripperies and had gone wigless. The wigs worn by British judges are based on those worn at the end of the 17th Century, while barristers' are simplified versions of wigs current in the 1780s.

Q: Why are tanks (armoured vehicles) so called?
A: Because for security reasons early examples were transported to the Western Front in 1916 in crates identified as containing 'water tanks'.

These days a centurion is someone who has scored 100 runs, or has played 100 games for a team, but the original centurion of the Roman army was so named because he commanded (at least in theory) a 'century' of one hundred men, the basic command unit of a legion. As such he was the equivalent of the modern captain of an infantry company. A legion would ideally consist of 60 centuries organised into ten 'cohorts' (battalions).

19/5/2003

Q: What do the emperor Nero and Mark Todd have in common?
A: I imagine a number of things spring to mind, but the most notable (and the most grounded in fact) is that they both competed in equestrian events at the Olympics. Nero was a Roman 'boy racer' who fancied himself as a charioteer, although he probably 'qualified' for the Games by virtue of being emperor. Who would be prepared to tell him 'Sorry, not good enough'?

Is there any rhyme or reason to how metric symbols are written? Yes. The general rule is lower case, e.g. km, mm, g, kg, ml.
Exceptions: 1. When the unit is named after a person, e.g. kW (kilowatt, from James Watt); kPa (Kilopascal, from Blaise Pascal); V (volt, from Alessandro Volta); N.m (newton metre, from Isaac Newton); A (ampere or amp, from André-Marie Ampère).
2. To avoid confusion between 'milli' (1/1000th) and 'mega' (1 million). Thus mW = milliwatt but MW = megawatt.
3. By extension from No.2, very large multiples are capitalised, e.g. GW = gigawatt (1 billion); TW = terawatt (1 trillion).
Note that adding 's' for plurals is never necessary.

Q: So what the hell is a hectare, exactly?
A: The 'are' (pronounced like 'air') was intended to be the basic unit of land measure, equal to 100 square metres, but in practice the square metre is now used for small areas like floor spaces while the 100-are unit, the hectare, is used for larger areas like fields. ['Hect' is the metric prefix for 100, but is not in very common use. You occasionally come across 'hectolitre'.] If you can imagine two football fields side by side (an area about 100 metres square), then you can visualise a hectare. Strictly speaking, a square kilometre is a myriare (myria = 10,000).

Czech is a language we don't tend to borrow from, but one word we have adopted is robot. It's derived from the word for 'forced labour' and dates from the success in the USA of a 1920s play about mechanical men by the Czech writer Karel Capek.

20/5/2003

Finland has a higher percentage of water to land surface than any other country. It has more that 60,000 lakes.

Q: If an army major ranks higher than a lieutenant, why does a major-general rank below a lieutenant-general?
A: Because 'major-general' is actually an abbreviation of 'sergeant-major-general', and sergeant major is a non-commisioned rank below lieutenant.

21/5/2003

This morning's paper featured a photo of Iskandar Muda airport in Aceh, reminding me of how strong a footprint Alexander the Great left (Iskandar is Arabic for Alexander). There are places named after (and often by) him from Iskandar Muda to Kandahar in Afghanistan to Alexandria in Egypt - even Alexandra in Otago, indirectly. Alexandra was Edward VII's queen, and like everyone called Alex, Alexei, Alexis, Alessandro, Alejandro, Sandra, Sandy, Sandro or Sandor was named after the emperor.

22/5/2003

Apparently the world's longest golf hole, somewhere in North Carolina, is a 681-metre par 6. Matt says he would do it easily in 5.

Q: Why does the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal (Solomon Islands) have a name of Arabic origin?
A: A Spanish explorer discovered it in the 16th Century and named it after a place (his home town?) near Seville. The town had been called 'Canalia' at the end of the Roman period, extended to 'Wadi-al-Canal'(wadi = river) after the Arab conquest. Other examples of this kind of placename are the Spanish and Mexican towns of Guadalajara ('Wadi-al-Hiyara'), and the Guadalquivir river in Spain ('Wadi-al-Kibir - 'big river').

23/5/2003

The first recorded owner of a billiard table is Mary, Queen of Scots, in the 16th Century.

26/5/2003

The flag of Paraguay is unique in that it has a different emblem on each side. The only no-rectangular national flag is that of Nepal it consists of two triangles). The Southern Cross featured on the flags of Australia and New Zealand also appears on the flags of Samoa, Solomon Islands, Papua-New Guinea and Brazil.

The 15th-Century Queen Joanna of Naples was always in trouble (mostly of her own making). At one point she was under seige in her capital, and the mercenary army defending the city was bribed into defecting. Luckily for her, she was not handed over to her enemies, as her agents had succeeded in getting the besieging army (also mecenaries) to change sides. So the besiegers ended up being the rescue party.

27/5/2003

The South Island high country station 'Erewhon' is of course 'Nowhere' spelt backwards. In the USA this method of naming places was particularly popular - there are dozens of examples. A peculiar one is Orestod, Colorado, which grew up at the other end of a railway line from Dotsero, the line's starting point (0.0 miles - get it?). Mind you, people were obviously desperate for new ways to come up with names - favourites were getting pretty overused. There are 256 places, in 43 states, called 'Fairview' - with 29 in Tennessee alone!

It was just as well that Walter Clopton Wingfield took up a friend's suggestion that he call the game he had invented 'lawn tennis', or it might never have caught on. He had wanted to call it 'sphairixtike'.

The world's silliest name? A British officer by the name of Major Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraduati Tollemache-Tollemache de Orellana-Plantagenet-Tollemache-Tollemache was killed in the First World War. (Probably shot on his way back from the latrines in the dark - not able to get his name out in time when challenged 'Who goes there?')

28/5/2003

Attila the Hun, Pope Leo VIII, President Fauré of France and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller all died during 'over-exertion in the bedroom'. In Attila's case, it was his (umpteenth) wedding night, but for the others it was in compromising and embarrassing circumstances.

The quickest goal recorded in soccer was scored by Brazilian great Rivelino in a club match in 1974. The ref whistled the kick-off, and Rivelino, noticing the opposition goalkeeper was still on his knees offering up a pre-match prayer, hoofed the ball into the goal from half-way. (A spectator carrying a pistol then ran onto the field towards the unfortunate goalie, but contented himself with firing six shots into the football.)

29/5/2003

Here is Rule 11 from the earliest recorded rules for a cricket match, dated 1727:
'That there shall be one Umpire of each Side; and that if any of the Gamesters shall speak or give their opinion, on any point of the Game, they are to be turned out and voided in the Match. This not to extend to the Duke of Richmond and Mr Brodrick.' (The Duke and Mr Brodrick were the respective captains.) How long would today's Australian team last on the field under this rule?

The most common English surname, for hundreds of years, has been 'Smith', but surely this can’t be because there were more blacksmiths than any other profession when surnames became common. Perhaps smithies were just better breeders?

The most common forename has been 'John' for as long as there have been records, but my impression from the paper's birth columns is that this will soon no longer be so: there is almost never a John to be seen. Among the bewildering blizzard of neonomenclatures I have seen (and I'm not making any of these up) are:
Boys - Arien (Japanese for 'alien'?), Chase, Colt, Dennym, Eadon, Jabez, Jaive, Javaan, Jezum, Kairon, Kentaro, Kruze, Meikle, Raine, Roylin, Ruslan, Shaeden, Shoniell, Teancum, Tejas, Traevyn, Vaysion and Zigzag.
Girls - Abbalea, Amigene, Beige, Breffni, Brozlyn, Cartier, Champaigne, Chellcey, Chynna, Desrae, Destiny, Janae, Jarrah, Jezney, Jorja, Justiss, LaChanze, Lorese, Maresha, Midori, Monet, Myami, Phineix, Richette, Shanthi, Swayde, Taiecia, Tanisha, Tarsil, T'neya, Tuscany, Tyreece, Veliste and Vivica.

30/5/2003

War ­ what is it good for? Well, civilisation is indebted to the poison gas warfare of the First World War. Kleenex tissues were developed from gas mask filters.

How far would these nebbishes have got if they hadn't changed their names: Israel Baline, Archie Leach, Josef Dugashvili, Robert Zimmerman, Harry Webb, Reg Dwight, Angelo Siciliano, Kal-el? (alias: Irving Berlin, Cary Grant, Josef Stalin, Bob Dylan, Cliff Richard, Elton John, Charles Atlas, Superman.)

The Amsterdam police have a special unit known as the 'Grachtenvissers' (canal fishers). They deal with the perpetual problem of cars and their passengers who have ended up in the canals.

2/6/2003

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