Mike's World (brain farts and other adventures)Apparantly we learn something new every day. To see if this is true my new years resolution is to record what I learn each day. Note it is not to learn something new every day so it must be something I learn as I go about my normal life.
If you love the four times table, the Olympic Games (not the cold one) is the sporting occasion for you.*
I was interested in the fact that the Olympic rings are meant to represent all the colours on any flag of the world.
For example that great Olympic country Russia has a flag that is red white and blue, represented by the red ring, the blue ring and the white background. Here highlighted in pharmeceuticals and faecal brown…
*or the Euros if you are not English
Wednesday 29th December (3 days to go)
Some stick insects can grow up to 13 inches (33cm) long.
Thursday 30th December (2 days to go)
Sepp Blatter is up for re election next year as chief corruptor of football (ie FIFA president). Lets hope he pays £15 million for his elecction campaign and only gets one vote maybe losing to someone from Qatar
Friday 31st December…
You need to ingest about 4.5 pounds (just over 2kg) of green potatoes before you will feel the effects of the toxins in the potato.
Incidently I think I established today that you really do learn something new every day!
Along with the other things I learnt this year I did learn that robins see magnetic fields using their right eye, so a robin blind in the right eye is not so hot on its navigation skills. Cannot remember which day I learnt that odd fact though…
Wednesday
The Bill is no longer recorded (and had its last episode showed this August). Never watched it so there is no reason why I should have known this before.
Thursday
Florence Nightingale’s rose diagrams showed by length of radius that most deaths were preventable during the Crimean War (not by area as I had assumed).
Friday
There were more than one species of tyrannosaurus (I assumed rex was the only one up until today!)
Saturday
A costermonger sells fruit and veg.
Sunday
The story of King Canute first appeared 100 years after his reign and is probably not true.
Monday
England last retained the ashes in 1986-1987, and now Australia have scored a record low of 98 they may do so again this year.
Tuesday
Onychophagia is the technical name for nail biting.
Wednesday
As medicine advances the percentage of HIV carriers in a population tends to stabalise, so a reduction in this percentage could be a sign of poor health provision.
Thursday
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was based partly from ideas in Shada the unscreened episode of Dr Who.
Friday
White sandy beaches are actually made from the droppings of parrot fish.
Saturday
Great Britain is the third most populated island in the world (and the 9th largest).
Sunday
Horses communicate with their ears, and white horses are born black.
Monday
Flu symptoms tend to appear more rapidly than colds (if I had known this the previous Wednesday when my symptoms appeared between 6.30 and 7 I may have consulted a Doctor sooner). I learnt today that I definately had flu.
Tuesday
King Henri IV’s embalmed head was discovered redcently in a French attic.
Wednesday
The probability of drawing unique names in a secret Santa is an alternating series that eventually converges at 1/e. (Obvious once I realised that it is related to derangements).
Thursday
Individual African elephants can have different numbers of ribs.
Friday
Found a neat way of explaining !n.
Saturday
Catnip can for some cats be a calming influence.
Sunday
The large blue butterfly caterpillar is adopted by ants and feeds on ant larvae until it metamorphosises.
Monday
Michael Bear is the present Lord Mayor of London (not to be confused with Boris, the Mayor of London).
Tuesday
Rupert the bear was 90 this year.
Wednesday
Anil Kapoor = Slumdog millionaire quiz host = President Omar Hassan in day 8 of 24.
Thursday
The wessex and essex saddleback pig can crossbreed to form the british saddleback.
Friday
The largest rabbit in the world is the Flemish Giant.
Saturday
Cinderella’s slippers were probably made of squirrel
Sunday
They have found a new bacteria living within the wreckage of the titanic.
Monday
Indonesia is the worlds 3rd largest democracy.
Tuesday
A hinny is like a mule but has a donkey mother(and is slightly rarer) and gets its name fromHorse + jenny (female donkeys are known as Jennys, another thing learnt in a donkey full day)
Wednesday
The first 4 digits of the security number on a credit or debit card is the last 4 digits of the card.
Thursday
Brick cheese (which I was told does not exist when at school) is from the USA (Winconsin).
Friday
Nicole Kidman named her child Sunday.
Saturday
The first christmas card was designed in 1853
Sunday
Weston-Super-Mare pier has a go kart track in it
Monday
Traffic was banned from Oxford Street and Regent Street last Saturday.
Tuesday
A sloth is faster than a giant tortoise
Wednesday
The pigpen code is also known as the freemasons cipher
Thursday
A driving theory test costs £31 (on 17th November 2010).
Friday
Heathrow terminal 2 is due to reopen for the 2012 olympics
Saturday
hugh laurie’s father won an Olympic gold medal
Sunday
Dance performances can be recorded using something called labanotation
Monday
An International Draughts borad is 10×10 (in some places 12×12 draught boards are used) and kings can move an unlimited number of squares diagonally
Tuesday
A monkey = £500 a pony =£25
Wednesday
I learnt how a XOR goat cardboard model works.
Thursday
Koch described the snowflake curve in 1904.
Friday
There is a train from Bridgwater to Taunton at 1.07 am on Saturday morning.
Saturday
I learnt the identity of South Park’s Mint Berry Crunch (Bradley Biggle brother of a goth kid).
Sunday
The bolt in Frankenstein’s monster in the film is actually connections for electrodes, not to keep the head on.
Monday
“Now is the winter of our discontent” was from Richard III. Roy Orbison died the same year English pound notes stopped being legal tender.
Tuesday
Prince William will have a father in law called Mike (assuming all goes smoothly etc.)
Wednesday
African Pangolins mainly give birth to one offspring at a time whereas the Asian ones are more likely to go for twins or triplets.
Thursday
The collective noun for hamsters is a horde.
Friday
The real Maria Von Trapp made a fleeting appearance in The Sound of Music.
Saturday
Swindon Supermarine made this years FA cup 1st round, I can remember being entertained by a bad tempered game between them and Taunton Town a few years ago…
Sunday
A 600g box of jelly babies contains approximately 100 jelly babies.
Monday
The Hungarian Algorithm was actually dvised in america based on the previous work of 2 Hungarian Mathematicians.
Tuesday
140g of sugar puffs will give you 100% of the daily recommended amount of vitamin B1.