10 things we didn’t know, from last weeks news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.
Courtesy of BBC Magazine Monitor, your recommended daily allowance of news and culture.
- The 999 emergency number was chosen over 111 because telegraph wires rubbing together in the wind transmitted the equivalent of 111.
- In space, an item as small as a toolbag can be seen from Earth.
- There are only eight mycologists in the UK.
- US Intelligence kept a file on Tony Blair’s personal life.
- Premium chocolate tasters don’t swallow the goods.
- Police use curry to combat alleged drugs possession.
- A dog’s mucus enhances its sense of smell.
- The speechwriting “tricolon technique” has been used by Julius Caesar and Barack Obama.
- A French cologne has a scent inspired by the smell of human sperm.
- Gordon Brown writes to X Factor contestants.
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