the pod bay door

.: This list is from the BBC Magazine, and was posted at the end of 2005, so it’s a bit outdated, but still fascinating. 100 things we didn’t know this time last year is based on the Magazine’s weekly feature, 10 Things We Didn’t Know This Time Last Week. A number of “things” are endemic to the UK, but there are a few gems, such as:

• 3. While it’s an offence to drop litter on the pavement, it’s not an offence to throw it over someone’s garden wall.
• 6. WD-40 dissolves cocaine – it has been used by a pub landlord to prevent drug-taking in his pub’s toilets.
• 11. One in 10 Europeans is allegedly conceived in an Ikea bed.
• 12. Until the 1940s rhubarb was considered a vegetable. It became a fruit when US customs officials, baffled by the foreign food, decided it should be classified according to the way it was eaten.
• 19. The = sign was invented by 16th Century Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde, who was fed up with writing “is equal to” in his equations. He chose the two lines because “noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle”.
• 29. When faced with danger, the octopus can wrap six of its legs around its head to disguise itself as a fallen coconut shell and escape by walking backwards on the other two legs, scientists discovered.
• 32. “Restaurant” is the most mis-spelled word in search engines.
• 45. C3PO and R2D2 do not speak to each other off-camera because the actors don’t get on.
• 59. Oliver Twist is very popular in China, where its title is translated as Foggy City Orphan.
• 65. Actor James Doohan, who played Scotty, had a hand in creating the Klingon language that was used in the movies, and which Shakespeare plays were subsequently translated into
• 73. One in six children think that broccoli is a baby tree.
• 99. The Japanese word “chokuegambo” describes the wish that there were more designer-brand shops on a given street.

.: If you watch LOST and haven’t seen tonight’s episode, stop reading, this is a spoiler. I was quite surprised and disappointed at the final scene, in which Michael, rescued from the jungle by Jack and Kate, shoots and kills Ana Lucia and Libby in the hatch. Or are they dead? I have to hand it to the creators of this series, they really, really know how to get a rise out of the audience.

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