100 Things We Didn't Know Last Year

gollum123 writes "The BBC news magazine is running a compilation of the interesting and sometimes downright unexpected facts that we did not know last year, but now know. some examples — There are 200 million blogs which are no longer being updated, say technology analysts. Urban birds have developed a short, fast 'rap style' of singing, different from their rural counterparts. The lion costume in the film 'Wizard of Oz' was made from real lions. Online shoppers will only wait an average of four seconds for an internet page to load before giving up. Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 litre bottles. For every 10 successful attempts to climb Mount Everest there is one fatality. Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobiacs is the term for people who fear the number 666. The egg came first."

Most useful

[nick255]

The one I found most useful was:

79. The best-value consumer purchase in terms of the price and usage is an electric kettle.

I wonder what the worst is?

The brain is soft and gelatinous...? Really?

[turrican]

"30. The brain is soft and gelatinous - its consistency is something between jelly and cooked pasta."

Not to jump on the bandwagon late, here - but I'm pretty sure that's NOT something we didn't know last year...

Re:stat on everest

[Ars Dilbert]

No, the original article is correct. Average fatality rate is just under 10%.

Actually, prior to commercialization of Everest around 1990, the fatality rate was an unbelievable 37%.

But since about 1990, various commercial outfits have started taking paying climbers to the Everest summit. Everest is now a multi million dollar business! Climbers are supported by experienced sherpas, and the various expeditions have fixed permanent ropes and ladders up on the Everest. That's 1) reduced fatalities and 2) allowed many more (relatively inexperienced) climbers to climb the summit. So the average fatality rate has dropped to about 10%.

Everest has become a zoo in the past 15 years or so. There's garbage all over the mountain (equipment, oxygen bottles, etc...). Ropes and ladders are fixed in place to help with the more technical climbs. Dead bodies litter the very paths to the summit.

Causes of death vary wildly. Some climbers are killed on lower slopes of the mountain by avalanches or by falling into crevasses. Others slip and fall hundreds or thousands of feet on the more technical climbs higher up on the mountain. Others still succumb to frostbite. Some get altitude sickness above 26,000 feet, lose their reasoning abilities and sometimes vision and motor skills, and just get stuck and die up there. Some return to BC only to keel over in their tent and die.

Everest could own you, no matter how experienced you think you are.

Re:Not quite

[StikyPad]

6. The late Alan "Fluff" Freeman had trained as an opera singer.
Because it was a non-story? Or did people really care?
7. The lion costume in the film Wizard of Oz was made from real lions.
I'm assuming they knew this when they made it.
9. Fathers tend to determine the height of their child, mothers their weight.
Maybe scientists didn't know this, but tall men have probably known it for a while.
11. An infestation of head lice is called pediculosis.
An infestation of inaccurate headlines is called ridiculosis.
15. Donald Rumsfeld was both the youngest and the oldest defence secretary in US history.
I'm guessing someone figured that out three years ago when he surpassed George Marshall as the oldest.
17. Coco Chanel started the trend for sun tans in 1923 when she got accidentally burnt on a cruise.
Does that even warrant a comment?
20. Sex workers in Roman times charged the equivalent price of eight glasses of red wine.
Even assuming "things we forgot" counts as things we didn't know, that brothel was discovered in 1862 [scotsman.com].
24. One third of all the cod fished in the world is consumed in the UK.
Only 1/3?
28. More than 90% of plane crashes have survivors.
If you count the crashes that don't involve falling out of the sky. Anyway, the story appeared on CNN in 2005 [cnn.com], and the report is from 2000.
32. Barbie's full name is Barbie Millicent Roberts.
This is from 2003 [archive.org]..
35. There were no numbers in the very first UK phone directory, only names and addresses. Operators would connect callers.
Someone just finally got around to opening the very first UK phone directory?
37. Pavements are tested using an 80 square metre artificial pavement at a research centre
You mean they test materials now?
41. Some Royal Mail stamps, which of course carry the Queen's image, are printed in Holland.
Insert prior evidence here [gbstamps.com].
42. Helen Mirren was born Ilyena Lydia Mironov
2004 [wikipedia.org].
48. Allotment plots come in the standard measure of 10 poles
2001 [archive.org]
49. When filming summer scenes in winter, actors suck on ice cubes
1978 [imdb.com]
50. There are 60 Acacia Avenues in the UK.
Didn't know, or didn't care to know?

I'll let someone else do the last 50.

Re:Not quite

[Solra Bizna]

See here [wikipedia.org] for why that doesn't mean anything.

-:sigma.SB

Re:Duh

[zeno_2]

So.. id need around 4kg of methane to substitute a gallon of gas (i'm realizing this is a big guesstimate), which takes about 2 weeks to create. How long did it take to make that gallon of gas, a few hundred millions of years or so? I'm not really trying to convince anyone that methane is the way to go, but using a figure of time to show how long it takes to create a type of fuel doesn't really work here. Of course you have the fact that petroleum is releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, and that CO2 has been underground for a long time, by releasing this gas into the air adds to the total amount of carbon in our air, whereas any CO2 a cow releases, if any (sorry dont really want to read about cows right now), doesn't add to the problem we may or may not be having with global warming. In any case, I believe that research into any sort of fuel that 1)Doesn't increase the amount of net CO2 in the atmosphere, and 2)Stops us from relying upon OPEC for most of our oil is going to be a good thing(tm). We should be focusing our efforts in finding a way out of this, vs. not looking ahead and pointing out why we are stuck in the situation we are in.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone think that we would have gone to war in Iraq if they had no oil reserves? Honestly, who gives a shit what happens all the way across the world, when our country is all fucked up. Then again, its really easy to not see the problems at home.. So far, we've spent.. oh, as a guess, about 350 billion dollars on the war in Iraq. Who here thinks that money could have gone to a better cause at home?

There are all sorts of leaders out there who treat their people like shit. Is it strange we only seem to be concerned with a country who has a large amount of oil reserves? Iraq is 2nd behind Saudi Arabia when it comes to oil reserves. Does anyone find it odd that ExxonMobil recorded a record profit of almost 11 billion dollars in just one quarter of last year? In fact, many "gas" companies recorded very high profits from last year. I'm surprised that no one seems to be looking into this. Ok, well, im not surprised, but its alarming. When we had the 9/11 plane crashes, the airline industry took a huge hit. When we went to war against a country who produces a bunch of oil, the companies involved reap in the profits, and its the American "consumer" is the one footing the bill, just trying to make the 200 bucks that day so they can pay their bills.

Then again, I'm not going to pretend that I know how things work. I can only read what is available to me, and, like you said, I try to take that with a grain of salt as well.

Quite honestly, when the profits of a large American corporation are more important then the 300 million people in this country trying to get to work every day, then we have a problem.

Well, sorry for rambling, most of this is not directed towards the parent poster, and im drunk =)

Re:Most useful

[Anonymous Coward]

According to a similar Swedish survey, a fondue pot was among the worst. Each buyer used it on average once or twice, and it usually cost around $100.