Tuesday, January 02, 2007

There must be more, but not as weird, well maybe

I really like reading the BBC's "Magazine Monitor" because, as they put it, the site "...chronicles interesting and sometimes downright unexpected facts from the news".
To celebrate the end of another year, they comprised a list of "100 things we didn't know last year". It's definitely long and it really takes a few sittings to browse through the whole thing, so, after having done so myself, I give you the shorter list of things I read there and deemed worthy of a post:

a. Dogs with harelips can end up with two noses: If you follow the link you will be able to read about a dog with a severe case of harelip, which gave him, what looks like, two noses. You can have a look at the picture above, and skip the link - it doesn't say that much anyway.
b. Cows also 'have regional accents': This is actually a link worth checking out, since they even have a recording of live mooooing being compared. Personally, I think the cow from Essex has a real problem - it don't sound to healthy to me - but the expert deems it "a stiletto-wearing, card carrying, Essex cow". Hmm.
c. Barbie has a whole name: her full name is "Barbie Millicent Roberts". Other famous Millicents in history: Dame Millicent Fawcett and Millicent Martin.
d. The lion costume in the film Wizard of Oz was made from real lions: I know it sounds horrible, but relax, it's not like they ground up live lions to make the tail-stuffing. All they did was take lion pelts and sow them together. That doesn't sound too cruel.
...On second thought, it is horrible. screw them.
e. Donald Rumsfeld was both the youngest and the oldest defense secretary in US history: I didn't know about him being defense secretary during the Ford administration, so at first I didn't really understand how the guy could be both the youngest and the oldest. I ended up reading the article, which is both fairly interesting and not too long, and it speaks about his career, in light of its end.
f. There are people who fear the number 666: Enough at least to deserve a proper name - hexakosioihexekontahexaphobiacs. The issue received a bit of publicity, since this year we had a 6th of June 2006 (aka 06.06.06.). You know what, I wouldn't mind having that as a birth date, but I guess some people do have problems with it.
g. Nelson Mandela stole pigs as a teenager: So sue me, it's not really news, and frankly, who the hell cares, but still, what would his rabbi say? I mean, what's worse - stealing, eating pork, or maybe waisting beer just to lure animals?
h. The egg came first: I thought they solved it ages ago, but it seems there's an issue i didn't think about: If a kangaroo lays an egg and a chicken hatches out of it, would you call the egg a chicken egg or a kangaroo egg? According to the article, experts would call it a chicken egg, because what counts is what's inside.

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