10 things…I learned in June

  1. Dad dancing is now in the Oxford English Dictionary.
  2. Only 14% of British 65-69-year-olds report feeling depressed or anxious, the lowest proportion of any age group.
  3. Two of the Royal Navy’s daily toasts have been changed to reflect the number of female sailors. On Saturdays, officers will no longer toast ‘our wives and sweethearts’ (eliciting the response, ‘May they never meet!’) but ‘our families’ instead. Tuesday’s toast will change from ‘our men’ to ‘our sailors’.
  4. More than 3800 children aged five to 19 were treated for obesity-related conditions in 2009, up from 872 in 2000.
  5. Having a lie-in at the weekends can reduce adult men’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
  6. 1.2 million soldiers from the Indian Army fought for Britain in the First World War and 74,191 were killed in the conflict.
  7. IKEA is designing flatpack homes for refugees.
  8. Chickens can outperform toddlers in some feats of mental agility, for example, they can differentiate between numbers up to five.
  9. Dutch is the third most popular language for Wikipedia pages (after English and German).
  10. Cabbages reach their vitamin peak at noon.

10 things…we learned this spring

  1. Around the world, more iPhones are sold daily than babies born.
  2. Until the late 1960s, Disneyland used to deny entrance to male guests with long hair.
  3. A group of jellyfish is known as a bloom, a fluther, a smack or a sluth.
  4. Margarine was invented in 1869 in response to a prize offered by Napoleon III.
  5. A honey badger’s skin can withstand a machete blow. It can also twist right round within this skin to surprise attackers.
  6. It is illegal for a British MP to enter the Houses of Parliament in full armour, according to a 1313 statute.
  7. Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, and Katy Perry have more Twitter followers than the entire population of many countries, including Germany, Turkey, South Africa, Canada, Argentina, and Egypt
  8. 60% of internet users expect mobile sites to load on their phone in three seconds or less.
  9. Messiah is in the top 400 names for boys in America.
  10. Moustache transplants are popular in Turkey.

 

Brainwaves pages are edited by Elen Lewis, editor of The Marketing Society.

Elen.lewis@gmail.com @elenlewis 

  • © 2014 Elen Lewis
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