Saturday 31 July 2010

Light speed!

Light doesn’t always travel at ‘the speed of light’ (299,792,458 metres per second). It only travels at that speed when travelling through a vacuum; when it passes through matter, it slows down. The slowest light has ever been recorded moving at is a 38mph, while passing through an ultracold gas of sodium atoms.

So if you have been down the M1 you van say you have travelled travled faster than light!

Twins!

Twins are always born at about the same time.

But the world record for the longest gap between one twin being born and its sibling emerging is held by American Peggy Lynn, who gave birth to twins on November 11 1995, and February 2 1996 - an incredible 84 days apart.

I have been away for a week so a small catch up

According to MBT a shoe company, flip-flops 'injure 200,000 people a year'.


The injuries range from trips and falls, joint pain and other conditions linked to long-term use, and it costs the NHS £40m a year! Yes these innocuous looking pieces of cheap, flimsy plastic are death traps in disguise.























Thursday 22 July 2010

Fillip, not just a boys name

I found this one intresting, a brief thank you to Tom Brennan for telling me this.

A fillip is the act of clicking your fingers. So you dont click you fillip!


Its been a while

Its been a while and I am really struggling. Most days I try to work out if something i have learnt is worthy of blogging or just a silly bit of trivia. Both sides interest me but this journey is definitely pushing me to try harder with the things I am blogging. So this is the 1st of my belated posts .

The Eiffel Tower, built in 1889, stands at 325 m high and is the seventh tallest building in France. Gustave Eiffel, designer of the Eiffel Tower, had a successful career as an architect despite having dyslexia and a paralyzing fear of heights.

Gustave also helped design the Statue of Liberty!!


Sunday 18 July 2010

Life would have been so different

In a very early draft of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones carried brass knuckles instead of a bullwhip.




Man on the moon

The last person on the moon was Eugene Cernan. He and fellow explorer Harrison Schmidt left the moon at 5.40, December 13th 1972 and no one has been to the moon ever since.

This black and white picture was taken from a color television transmission made by the color RCA TV camera mounted on the Lunar Roving Vehicle. Astronaut Ronald E. Evans, command module pilot, remained with the Command and Service Modules in lunar orbit.
Harrison is in front with Eugene behind.

Tuesday 13 July 2010

pukey lukey

Ok, I have failed already!

I was going to try and do this every day but have not managed it! Today i have a great one!



I have spent a lot of my life being called names that rhyme with mine, 'puke' being one of them. Today i have found out where the birth of 'puke' came from



The first recorded use of the word 'puke' in the English language comes from William Shakespeare, who used it in the 'All the world's a stage' speech in As You Like It - where he refers to 'the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.'



Who knew puke was such a poetic word?



Wednesday 7 July 2010

Weblog, web log, we blog and blog

The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997.

The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April 1999.

The term blog became used as a noun and a verb "to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog" by a guy called Evan Williams from a company called Pyro Labs.

Tuesday 6 July 2010

Peak 15

In 1852 a young Indian mathematician called Radhanath Sickdhar became the first person to calculate the height of the Mount Everest, then named Peak 15, at 29,000 feet exactly. He belived people would think he had guessed the height, as it was too much of a round figure so he added 2 extra feet.

Since then China and Nepal have argued about the actual height. Nepal say it is 29,029 feet high and China say it is 29,016 feet high.

and a little extra

Mount Everist is named after Sir George Everest but his last name was pronounced eeverest

Monday 5 July 2010

Can you work it out.

Wingdings has a history of controversy. In 1992, only days after the release of Windows 3.1, it was discovered that the character sequence "NYC" in Wingdings was rendered as a skull and crossbones symbol, Star of David, and thumbs up gesture. This could be interpreted as a message of approval of killing Jews , especially those from New York City.

Microsoft strongly denied this was intentional, and insisted that the final arrangement of the glyphs in the font was largely random. (The character sequence "NYC" in the later-released Webdings font, in turn, is rendered as eye, heart, and city skyline, which could be interpreted as "I Love New York". Microsoft has stated that this is intentional.)

Short but sweet

The first cash machine to be installed in England was installed in Enfield 43 years ago by a Mr. Shepherd-Barron. He was chilling out in his bath when he though about a machine that could give you your money.


Thank you Mr Shepherd-Barron!


Saturday 3 July 2010

The Davison medal

So around the 1800, Nelson was was working for the government, going into battles and plundering enemy warships.

Nelson would commendeer the enemy ships, bring them back to england and sell them to the government. He would recieve a lumpsum which he would give half to his crew to split between them and he would keep the other half.

Davison was Nelsons agent. He felt that putting the men into battle and paying them so little was wrong.

Davison decided as extra incentive he would create the Davison medal. It was awarded to sailors when they came back from battle.



Thursday 1 July 2010

Strange but true

Ok so it is no secret that i have a phobia of tomatoes. It is compleatly irrational, and contrary to belife my fear of tomatoes does not extend to all tomato based products, it is just the fruit that freaks me out!

I wondered about others types of phobias.

So here is a small list;

Lockiophobia
A fear of childbirth

Arachibutyrophobia
fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth!
Barophobia
Im not sure how this works but... a fear of gravity

Bibliophobia
Not a fear of bibles as i first thought but a fear of books.

Blennophobia
Luckily the Ghostbusters were not afraid of this because it is a fear of slime

Soceraphobia
My current favorite. A fear of parent-in-laws
And here is one reason why im scared of tomatoes...