Interesting Facts

The footwear used in 85% of footprints can be identified by a pilot scheme which police hope could make the marks as useful as fingerprints in crime detection.

85 million girls worldwide are unable to attend school, compared with 45 million boys. Source - The Independent.

67% of all illiterate adults are women. Source - The Independent.

In the UK women in full-time jobs earn an average 17% less than British men. Source - The Independent

The difference between lifetime earnings of men and women in the UK finance sector is £970,000. Source - The Independent

62% of unpaid family workers are female. Source - The Independent

21% of the world's managers are female. Source - The Independent

In the UK 10% of company directors are women. Source - The Indpendent

In the UK 9% of judges and 10% of top police officers are women.

No chancellor of the exchequer in more than 150 years has delivered 10 Budgets in a row. Gordon Brown achieved that feat on this day. (So here we have the 10th budget from the man who has been waiting 10 years to get into number 10.)

1% of the titled land in the world is owned by women. Source - The Independent

Sales of porridge and oatmeal in the UK have nearly doubled in the last five years. (According to figures, sales of porridge, a popular breakfast cereal, and oatmeal soared by 81% to £85m from 2000 to 2005. Britons ate 50,000 tonnes of oats last year.  Of course "To get one's oats" has a completely different meaning, as does "To sow one's oats" as is "to do porridge".)

Hummingbirds are the only creatures, apart from humans, known to have an episodic memory - enabling them to remember where and when they last fed. (I also know some people who can't do this.)

Chimpanzees ruin their fingers by walking on their knuckles. (I know some men like that.)

Pooh Bear illustrator EH Shepard hated Pooh bear. (Never bite the bear that feeds you.)

The "Rhubarb triangle" is an area of West Yorkshire farms bordered by Leeds, Wakefield and Bradford, where rhubarb is grown. (Actually I'm not sure if this qualifies as an "interesting place".)

Rhubarb, that classic fruit dreaded by English schoolchildren, was introduced to Britain from Siberia. (Actually rhubarb is an interesting word too: Actors with a ‘non-speaking’ role might be asked to ‘pretend’ to be speaking, in order to get a natural feeling. Traditionally, this involved saying ‘rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb’.)

A new product is launched every three-and-a-half minutes. (Of course most of them are old products - relaunched, new, bigger, better...)

There is a road called Psycho Path in Traverse City, Michigan, US. (I wonder if anyone ever walks down it at night, on Halloween. Shudder.)

The brand name Swarfega comes from Swarf, being the old engineering term for oil and grease and 'ega' as in eager to remove.

Swarfega actually started life as a liquid silk stocking preservative called Deb Silkware Protector.

Swarfega was invented by chemist Audley Bowdler Williamson (1916 - 2004). (It is now now sold in over 100 countries. Well you know what they say - Where there's muck there's brass.)

Flushing a toilet costs, on average, 1.5p. (So, no more spending a penny.)

US Secret Service sniffer dogs are put up in five-star hotels during overseas presidential visits. (Sam wants to know where he can apply. He can sniff out a dog treat within 2 minutes.)

The author Stephen King doesn't own a mobile phone. (Good for him.)

Cats can catch bird flu. (Poor Spooky has to be kept in now. As do all cats in Germany.)

And the winners are:- The People Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line - Best actress Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote - Best actor Rachel Weisz in The Constant Gardener - Best supporting actress George Clooney in Syriana - Best supporting actor Ang Lee Brokeback Mountain - Best director Robert Altman - Lifetime achievement The Films Crash - Best motion picture Crash - Best original screenplay Crash - Best film editing Brokeback Mountain - Best adapted screenplay Brokeback Mountain - Best music (score) Memoirs of a Geisha - Best cinematography Memoirs of a Geisha - Best art direction King Kong - Best visual effects King Kong - Best sound mixing Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit - Best animated feature film Tsotsi - Best foreign language film March of the Penguins - Best documentary feature

Christopher Lee, a former Bond villain, is a distant cousin of 007 creator Ian Fleming. (That's what I call nepotism.)

John Irving, the brother of Holocaust-denier historian David Irving, is chairman of the Wiltshire Racial Equality Council. (There are some strange coincidences in the world.)

Daniel Craig, the latest incarnation of 007, cannot drive manual cars - meaning Bond's classic Aston Martin DB5 has had to be converted to automatic. (Even I can drive a manual car. How on earth can you do a proper tyre ripping, emergency turn in an automatic?)

Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, who is portrayed in the Bafta-winning film Capote, lives a reclusive life in Alabama and has written nothing but four articles since the book's release in 1960. (Now that's a shame. I'm sure there's at least one more book in there.)

Competetive ski jumpers are susceptible to anorexia. (That explains why I'm useless at skiing then.)