Fascinating Facts and Trivia

A quarter of a million demonstrators gathered in Washington DC in 1978 to celebrate Sun Day, in support of non polluting solar energy. They left behind ten acres of ankle deep litter.

East German swimmer Sylvia Ester set a world 100 metres record of 57.9 seconds in 1967 - but officials refused to recognise it because she swam in the nude.

When ad-men for Pepsi Cola had their slogan 'Come alive with Pepsi' translated into Mandarin Chinese, the translation turned out to mean 'Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave'

Here's a good bit of info I got from the satellite man yesterday when he came to find out why we had no signal on our second feed and nothing was recording. He told me that on old style aerials the birds would perch and sharpen their beaks on the small box that held the cables. Over a period of time this would develop a hole and allow the rain water to get in and thus short circuit the cables. Once the manufacturers realised this they moved the box to underneath the aerial so the birds could't get at it. The reason I mention that is one of our cables had been loosened and eventually come out - this was due he reckoned to a pigeon that might have pecked at it or pulled at it thinking it to be a worm. Had there been droppings on the dish we would have had to get some spikes put up to stop the little perishers getting at them. Once the cable had been put back in BINGO! we got our signal back and able to record again.

Police in Venezuela issued a warrant for the arrest of a known criminal. Unfortunately for them, the man's house was built slap across the Venezuela-Columbia border.

When they called to arrest him, he ran into his bedroom, locked the door and phoned his lawyer. The bedroom was in Columbian territory, and the offence with which he was to be charged was not punishable in that country.

The Venezualan police gave up.

Osama Bin Laden’s death was announced on 1st May 2011. Hitler’s death was announced on 1st May 1945. Both of these cruel leader’s deaths were announced on the same day, but due to the time difference, Bin Laden actually died on 2nd May. The announcement was made in the U.S. which was hours enough ahead to still be 1st May.

J.K. Rowling chose the unusual name ‘Hermione’ so young girls wouldn’t be teased for being nerdy. The name Hermione came from Shakespeare’s “A Winter’s Tale.” Rowling says when she chose the name, she “didn’t want a lot of fairly hard-working little girls to be teased if ever the book was published.”

During a parade through Ventura, California, USA, a drum major twirled his baton and threw it high in the air.

It hit a power cable and melted. It also blacked out ten blocks, put a radio station off the air and started a grass fire.

The name Guylian, the famous Belgian chocolate makers got their name from two people, a man called Guy and his sweetheart Lilian and they combined their names to make the famous name we have today-long before people started doing it with celebrities like John and Edward Grimes=Jedward.

9999!
The Bank of England holds the accounts of 90 commercial banks worldwide as they store their gold reserves there. Some time during the year a gold tell is done, this is literally counting every single bar of gold held and making a note of it; after all if you're a country storing your gold reserves you want to make absolutely sure every bar is accounted for - not that is likely to be stolen because gold weighs a ton. It is estimated that the Bank of England holds something like 400,000 bars of gold, one is worth £375,000 and with that amount of gold it comes to around £150bn!

The Bank of England has the second largest gold vaults in the world. The biggest is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds the prize as the world's biggest known stockpile of gold, some 550,000 glistening bars of the stuff buried deep into the bedrock of lower Manhattan. That's $203.3 billion worth of gold in a single place.

The Bank of England vaults some of the safest vaults in the world and enough security to deter the biggest would-be thief although you would have to be pretty daring to even attempt a robbery on that scale.

If you have any old banknotes you can take them to the Bank(they have a customer service area there) and they will exchange them for brand new banknotes - doesn't matter how old they are. They might keep some of the really rare notes but the old ones are usually bundled up and taken to a place deep below the Bank where they are finally obliterated-shredded into even smaller pieces than confetti. This can amount to billions of pounds, tenners, white fivers whatever is brought in.

Hewlett-Packard’s (also known as HP) name was decided in a coin toss in 1939. The name was always going to be a hyphenation of the two founders last names, so in order to decide between Hewlett-Packard and Packard-Hewlett, they flipped a coin.

There is a total of 1,710 steps in the Eiffel Tower. There is a total of 1,665 steps in the Eiffel Tower. Standing 108 stories tall, there are 1,710 steps to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower. However, guests are only allowed to climb the stairs until the first platform. From there, they must take a lift to the top.

The Pokémon Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan are based off of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. The third Pokemon of the Hitmons is also named after a martial artist. Hitmontop is named after a lesser known martial artist, Larry Top.