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3/11/2003

Q: The media is fond of describing East Timor as 'the world's newest country'. So which is the oldest?

A: The independent state which has been in continuous existence the longest is probably San Marino. It dates from the fourth century - local tradition says 301AD - and of the many Italian states that existed before the 1860s, it is the only one that declined to join the Kingdom (now republic) of Italy.

Don’t you hate the way those large 50 cent coins wear a hole in your pocket? Spare a thought for the people of Yap in Micronesia, whose rai currency is the world's largest. The 'coins' consist of discs of volcanic rock up to 4 metres in diameter, so they're obviously not for taking to the corner shop and buying an ice cream. They're used for major transactions like land purchases and wedding dowries, but aren't physically handed over - they stay where they are in the village 'bank', and everyone knows who owns which. Their value is not based solely on size but also on the quality of the stone and its history - was there a dangerous storm on the way back from the quarry on Palau, 500km away? Was someone killed? A 19th-Century trader made a good living for many years transporting rai in his sailing ship, but 'O'Keefe money', as it is called, is less valuable than the canoe-transported variety, although it did give the less well-off a chance to own some and get the status that comes with ownership.

4/11/2003

Antonio Salazar, the dictator who ruled Portugal for forty-odd years, was replaced by Marcello Caetano in 1968 after suffering a stroke. However, no-one told him, and so right up to his death two years later he believed he was still running the country.

5/11/2003

Q: A recent epic tennis match between Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, in which every set went to a tiebreaker, prompted the question: 'What is the longest recorded rally in tennis?'

A: In a tournament in 1984, two women fought out a match which took 6 hours 22 minutes and ended in a 13-11 tiebreak. One of the points took a mind-boggling 29 minutes, with the ball crossing the net 643 times. Clearly, neither player was a 'net rusher'. [A rally of 6,202 strokes has been recorded, but that was not in a match - the two 'players' were deliberately trying to keep the ball in play.]

6/11/2003

Thank goodness for acronyms - they save so much time. The US Navy, finding 'Commander, Subordinate Command, US Naval Forces Eastern Atlantic & Mediterranean, Commander Headquarters Support Activities' a bit of a mouthful, shortened it to the handy COMSUBCOMNELMCOMHEDSUPPACT.

7/11/2003

If you've ever played Scrabble, you'll know that a word with Z or Q on a triple score square is worth a lot of points. In fact, the most points you can score in a single play, without using letters already on the board, is 164 with the word 'quartzy'. [In theory it is possible to score an incredible 1778 points with 'oxyphenbutazone', but someone before you would have had to have already created 'butazone'.]

Those who've been to Invercargill will have noticed that the street names all seem to have only three letters: Tay St, Esk St, Dee St, Eye St, Don St, Kew Rd. Is this because the locals find longer names hard to spell? If so, at least they're smarter than the inhabitants of Å (Sweden), U (Micronesia), and Y (France). There's also a Lake L in the USA. (You guessed it - it's L-shaped.)

10/11/2003

One of the strangest words in English must have been zenzizenzizenzic, which meant 'the eighth power of a number' (e.g. 256 is the zenzizenzizenzic of 2). It's an elaboration on 'zenzic', which hundreds of years ago meant the square of a number.

There are lots of long words in English (and many languages have much longer ones), but Chinese goes to the opposite extreme and is practically monosyllabic, meaning that some words have to serve for many concepts. For example, yi has 215 different meanings. Usually the listerner can understand from the context as well as the language's system of 'tones', but think of the opportunities for multi-meaning puns!

11/11/2003

More language tidbits:
• Many languages use more physical gestures than does English ­ Greek, for instance, has at least 70 common 'expressions' including putting a hand on one knee, looking into the distance with one eye closed and waving the free hand up and down, which translates as 'I don't want anything to do with that'.
• Japanese and Malay have no native swear words.
• In French, it's a bad insult to call someone a cow or a camel, but it's worse to be called a kind of cow or a kind of camel.
• In many languages, an insult only has to contain a vague suggestion of incest to be considered extreme, e.g. Spanish ¡tu madre! ('your mother').
• The study of correct pronunciation is called orthoepy - which can be pronounced two different ways. [For more such nuggets, read Bill Bryson's book 'Mother Tongue'.]

12/11/2003

• Lieutenant Shrapnel, Royal Artillery, invented a cannon shell which would explode at a distance from the point of firing, and which played a significant part in the winning of the war against Napoleon. Shrapnel now usually refers to the shards of metal spread by the explosion.
• The ingredients of napalm are naphthalene (a petroleum extract) and palm oil.
• Before the invention of the naval weapon of the same name, torpedo was another name for the electric ray which stuns its prey (rendering them torpid).
• The British Army developed and manufactured a hollow-nosed bullet at their munitions factory in Dum Dum, near Calcutta.

13/11/2003

If you're launching a new brand name and any of these possibilities occur to you, forget it - they're already copyrighted:
Sic (a French soft drink)
Pschitt (another French soft drink)
Plopp (a Taiwanese chocolate bar)
Super Piss (a Finnish de-icer)

18/11/2003

Q: What is the commonest colour used on flags?

A: Red features in the design of fully 73% of the flags of nations and territories (more, if the clours of badges, coats of arms etc are counted). White is almost as common, and more than half use blue. Colours not usually associated with flags, like orange, brown, maroon and purple, feature in fewer than 1%

In light of the recent fiasco at Telstra Stadium in Sydney, should we remind ourselves who the reigning Olympic rugby champions are? The USA holds that honour, having beaten France for the gold medal in 1924 (Romania got the bronze). Previous winners were France in 1900 (silver medallists: Germany and the Moseley Wanderers Club!); Australia in 1908 (silver: Great Britain ­ there were only the two contestants); and the USA in 1920 (silver: France. Once again, only two contestants). Where the hell were the ABs!

19/11/2003

In 1900 Margaret Abbott of the USA won a nine-hole golf tournament in Paris, which she had entered 'for a lark'. Without realising it (the organisation being somewhat shambolic), she had won the Olympic title, becoming the first female gold medallist. She died in 1955 without ever being aware of it.

20/11/2003

Q: Why are marathons run over such an odd distance?

A: The official distance for a marathon has been set at 26 miles, 385 yards (42.19km) since the 1924 Olympics (at the 1908 London Olympics a 26-mile course had been laid out but the extra yards had been added at the last minute to make the course end at the royal box!). The distance is based on that which, according to legend, the messenger Pheidippides had run to announce the victory of the Athenians over the invading Persians at Marathon in 490BC. At the first modern Olympics in 1896 a 40km (24.85 miles) course was laid out beween Marathon and Athens, and a Greek shepherd, Spyridon Louis, won the race and became a national hero. As well as his trophy he won free shaves, and free meals at an Athens restaurant, for the rest of his life.

21/11/2003

• In Providence, Rhode Island, a bylaw bans the sale of toothbrushes (but not toothpaste) on a Sunday.
• In Atlanta, Georgia, it is illegal to tether a giraffe to a street lamp or power pole.
• In Breton, Alabama, you may not drive a motorboat down the streets (presumably they get a lot of rain there).
• In Atwoodville, Connecticut, you can't play Scrabble if you get bored waiting for a politician’s address to start.

25/11/2003

In Russia, it is customary on a first date to present a woman with flowers (roses or carnations), but one has to careful to give an odd number only - an even number is what one takes to a funeral.

Do you have any unusual Christmas customs in your family?
Well, in Armenia, Christmas Eve dinner traditionally consists of fried fish, lettuce and spinach.
In Italy they don't have Christmas trees but conical wooden stands decorated with fruit.
In Norway, after Christmas Eve dinner and gift exchanging, they hide all brooms overnight so that witches won't steal them.
In Caracas (Venezuela) they close off streets to traffic so that people can rollerskate to midnight mass.
In the Ukraine, a child is posted to look out for the Evening Star (Venus), whose appearance means Christmas Eve dinner can begin. They have two tablecloths ­ one for the ancestors and one for the living family. Traditionally, there are twelve courses (one for each of the apostles).
Christmas is on the 25th December if you're Catholic, but in religious matters Orthodox Ukrainians stick to the old Roman calendar and celebrate 13 days later.

26/11/2003

More interesting laws:
• In London it is illegal to drive a car from the back seat.
• In Idaho you could be in breach of the law if you give a present of sweets weighing more than 50 pounds.
• In Kentucky an old law requiring citizens to have a bath at least once a year is still on the books.
• Milan still has a law requiring a smile on the face of all citizens at all times (with the exception of those visiting hospitals or attending funerals).

27/11/2003

A few years ago a new weight-reducer was all the rage in Japan. It was called 'Seaweed Defat Scented Soap' and according to its Chinese manufacturers you could shave off the pounds just by washing with it. The Japanese government has now banned the importation of this miraculous product.

28/11/2003

Q: Are capuchin monkeys so called because the like a cappuccino?

A: No, but both words share the same origin, being a reference to Capuchin monks (in Italian, Cappuccini), an austere Franciscan order who wear a hooded cowl. The monkey has long hair hanging down over its ears, and the coffee has its covering of foam. There is also a capuchin pigeon with a feathery topknot. The origin of these words is the Italian cappuccio ('hood'), from Latin cappa ('cloak'), which also gave us cape and cap. [However, cape in the sense of 'headland' comes from the Latin for 'head', as do capital, captain and chapter.]

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