- Pizza was known as “Italian Welsh rarebit” in 1950s Britain.
- Using a gas-fired patio heater for just one hour can waste enough energy to make 400 cups of tea, according to Friends of the Earth.
- Laurence Olivier and Tintin's creator Herge were born on the same day.
- A swarm of bees can ground a Boeing 737.
- On the first day of filming Star Wars in the deserts of Tunisia, the country experienced its first major rainstorm in 50 years and a rest day had to be called.
- Sharks have virgin births.
- Articles of 50,000 words - parliamentary reports in particular - were common in the Times in the early 1890s, just as the first tabloid newspapers came into being.
- Japanese whalers in the 17th Century buried the foetuses of the pregnant whales they caught in a special graveyard facing out to sea.
- One in four house sales fall through.
- Captive elephants often don’t know how to look after their young because they don’t work on instinct – in the wild, calves are looked after by the herd and this is how young females learn mothering skills.).
(Source: BBC)