Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 31 December 2013 According to Popb!tch, there hasn’t been an instrumental (i.e. no vocals) Number 1 in any major music market in 21st Century. The last one? Mr Oizo, Flat Beat in UK, 1999. Many people can guess the world’s best selling singles – Bing Crosbie’s “White Christmas” (50 million), Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind 1997” (33 million) and USA for […]
Snippets
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 17 December 2013 Only one cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church has ever been executed whilst serving in office. Cardinal Fisher wore the distinctive scarlet robes of the most senior ‘princes of the Church’. The scarlet is intended to remind the cardinals that they must be willing to sacrifice themselves completely to the church, even if that means shedding their blood. Few have […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 5 November 2013 One of the most incongruous images present in Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Stalin: In the Court of the Red Tsar is Josef Stalin as a DJ. The Soviet dictator loved to put music on for his guests and “presided over the American gramophone … putting his favourite records on”. Green Lanes was, for much of its history, a drovers’ road […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 31 October 2013 Bluetooth is a very useful technology that allows devices to ‘talk’ to each other. The name comes from the 10th century Danish King Harald Blåtand or Harold Bluetooth in English. King Blåtand helped unite warring factions in parts of what are now Norway, Sweden and Denmark. As Bluetooth technology was created as an open standard to promote connectivity, it […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 19 September 2013 Chekov is second only to Shakespeare in the number of times a playwright’s plays have been staged around the world. Several Underworld tracks are named after greyhounds that ran at the Romford Stadium, including Born Slippy, Sappy’s Curry, and Pearl’s Girl. Heinz baked beans were first sold in the UK in 1886 in the upmarket Fortnum & Mason store in London […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 5 February 2013 According to the BBC’s Africa programme, a single ball of dung is enough to feed a dung beetle for life. It certainly explains why the insect goes to incredible lengths to roll the dung to a safe, cool and damp place for storage and impregnation with eggs. The great State of Nebraska banned almost all foreign language education in […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 29 January 2013 The Kop is a colloquial name for a number of football stands at stadia across the country. It is a contraction of ‘Spion Kop’, in commemoration of a famous battle in the Boer War. The steep terraces were said to evoke the hill near Ladysmith in South Africa that was the scene of the Battle of Spion Kop in January 1900. Arsenal’s […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 18 January 2013 The Wimbledon tennis championship is held at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club – and the croquet came first! The All England Croquet Club was founded in 1868 and tennis only became part of the club’s name in 1877, when this was changed to the The All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club. It adopted its present […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 10 January 2013 The UK’s state pension age would have to be 80 if it were to be restricted to the same percentage of people as received the original old age pensions provided in 1908, according to a study by Longevitas. Also vaguely interesting that the original pension age was set at 70 – fully two years more than will be reached […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 3 January 2013 In Underground, Overground: A Passenger’s History of the Tube the author, Andrew Martin, states that 1920s carriages from the London Underground were given a second life as changing rooms next to playing fields in southern England. The changing fashions of Londoners are vividly depicted in the returns to the London Underground’s lost property offices. In the 1930s, some 250,000 […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 28 December 2012 Home Secretaries were historically required to be present at royal births. Fortunately for Theresa May and the Duchess of Cambridge, the tradition was abandoned in 1948. Queen Victoria enjoyed Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland so much that she suggested he dedicate his next book to her. Lewis Carroll was, of course, a pen name for a distinguished Cambridge mathematician […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 13 November 2012 Mein Kampf was required reading in Hitler’s Third Reich – so much so that the state provided marrying couples with a special version for free – the Hochzeitsausgabe, or Wedding Edition. It came in a white slipcase and featured the seal of the province embossed in gold onto a parchment-like cover. The Queen’s Speech is written on goatskin vellum […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 2 May – 8 May 2012 James ‘Jim’ Callaghan is the only person to have served in all four of the Great Offices of State – Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary. Yes, Prime Minister – don’t give me any First Lord of the Treasury nonsense – the Ministers of the Crown Act 1937 gives unequivocal legal recognition to […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 21 April – 27 April 2012 According to the BBC’s QI, a swarm of gnats is called a “ghost”. In addition, the word ‘lemur’ means ‘ghost’. It was coined by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707-78) from the Latin, Lemures: ‘the shades of the departed’. The Perthshire village of Dull is attempting to forge civic links with the Oregan town of Boring. […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 14 April – 20 April 2012 John Adams, the second President of the United States, had a dog called Satan. Luxury clothing retailer Aquascutum has just gone into administration. Its name is a portmanteau of the Latin words ‘aqua’ and ‘scutum’ and translates as ‘water shield’, and was adopted after its founder discovered a process for waterproofing wool. The Eiffel Tower was […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 6 April – 13 April 2012 Maundy Thursday commemorates the day of the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with the Apostles. Many people assert that the word “Maundy” comes from the command or “mandatum” by Christ at the Last Supper, to love one another. Others theorize that the English name “Maundy Thursday” arose from “maundsor baskets” or “maundy purses” of alms which […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 30 March – 5 April Future president of the USA, John F. Kennedy, spent a summer’s vacation from his university studies at Harvard touring Europe. His journey included a spell in Nazi Germany and he only made it to London on 1 September 1939. He was in the gallery of the House of Commons to hear the United Kingdom’s declaration of […]
Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 22 March – 29 March A vast array of vaguely interesting snippets that aren’t quite long or interesting enough to be articles all on their own! Did an American women prevent Hitler from committing suicide after the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923? Helen Hanfstaengl’s brush with history isoutlined in Andrew Nagorski’s Hitlerland. The Louvre in Paris is the world’s most visited art […]