Interesting Facts

Pizza is thought to have been created over 1,000 years ago in Italy. (Of course it's now a worldwide phenomenon. In fact, the pizza effect is a term used to describe how elements of a nation or people's culture can be transformed or at least more fully embraced elsewhere, then re-imported back to their culture of origin. Some aspects of the change are not really something to celebrate though. For example, in the UK Pizza Hut created the Cheeseburger crust pizza with a staggering 2,880 calories. Whilst in New York the 24k pizza has been created with gold leaf, caviar, stilton cheese and truffles, a bargain at £1,600.  ( It's gone up since its invention in 2012 .)) Some people will buy into anything.)

The odds of Leicester City winning the Premier League at the start of the 2015/16 football season were 5000:1. This means that gamblers thought the following things were more likely to happen:- 2,500:1 - David Moyes to be an X Factor judge 2,500:1 - Arsenal would sack Arsene Wenger and install Piers Morgan as boss 2,000:1 - Kim Kardashian will become US President by 2020 1,000:1 - Sir Alex Ferguson would win Strictly Come Dancing 1,000:1 - Hugh Hefner would admit he's a virgin 1,000:1 - Robbie Savage will be named the next James Bond 1,000:1 - Bono will become the next Pope 500:1 - Simon Cowell will become the next Prime Minister of the UK 500:1 - Andy Murray would name his first born Novak You might need to look up some of these names to see how unlikely they are, apart from Kim Kardasian: As Trump is a contender, I don't see why this couldn't happen.) Update -  The people of Leicester must be very, very happy today.

According to data from hitched.co.uk, more and more Brits are getting married on a Thursday. (Is this because of tradition, or for religious reasons?  No.  It's because it's cheaper.  Seemingly, tying the knot at weekends can cost thousands of pounds more for the cost of venues, catering and entertainers. Caroline Hendry, editor of hitched.co.uk, said that Thursdays are popular as many venues charge the same high prices on a Friday as they do on the weekend. She added: ‘With many venues and wedding suppliers booking up months or even years in advance, a Thursday wedding can also give couples a better chance of booking their first choice vendors.’ At a time when everyone is struggling with debts and rising house prices, around 21,700 couples chose to marry on a Thursday in 2015 – about 6,000 more than in 2008. According to figures compiled by the Daily Mail, the Achnagairn Estate in the Highlands, where castle hire, including use of the ballroom and a two-night...

According toThe Money Advice Service (MAS), supermarkets are making an extra £1,000 from families each year by using BOGOF and other special offers. (76% of people regularly spend more than they mean due to the buy-one-get-one-free deals among others. On average, people said they spend £11.14 more on a weekly shop, than they had budgeted for. What's worse is some of the deals have been shown to be completely bogus, this could mean that confusing offers will be banned.)

15-year-old schoolboy Pranav Dhanawade, from the KC Gandhi High School, Kalyan, India, has become the first batsman to score 1000-plus runs in an innings in any form of cricket. (He reached 1000 runs in just 323 balls whilst batting against Arya Gurukul School in the Bhandari Cup (a tournament in India for under-16s). His score included 59 sixes and 129 fours, and his team declared the innings at 1465/3, which is also a world record, with Pranav unbeaten at 1009 runs. The previous record had stood for 116 years. Held by AEJ Collins since 1899 after he had struck an unbeaten 628 for Clark House against North Town House in the UK. I hope he's not a one-hit wonder.  Get it?  Oh never mind.)

The Queen has dropped out of the top 300 in the Sunday Times Rich List, for the first time. (The richest man in Britain is Warner Music owner Len Blavatnik with a fortune of £13.17bn! The Queen had been in the Rich List every year since she actually topped the first list in 1989, but you need a personal fortune of £100m to become one of the 1,000 richest people in the country. That's up £15m compared with the entry point of £85m in 2014. In 1997 it took a fortune of just £15m to join Britain's richest 1,000 people. Did I just say just £15m? Ridiculous!)

Japan 1 : Scotland 0 - A Japanese single malt has been named the best whisky in the world. (In a shock to Scottish distilleries the Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask 2013 as a drink of “near incredible genius”, awarding it 97.5 marks out of 100 in the 2015 World Whisky Bible. To add insult to injury Scottish malts failed to make the top five drams. Having tasted about 1,000 whiskies, Mr Murray said "Hic" - No, sorry, he actually said Scottish distilleries were in danger of churning out drab or mediocre malts and that it was time for “a little dose of humility” from the northern whisky makers so they could “realise something is missing.”)

According to the Guardian newspaper, there are only 987 independent bookshops in the UK. (The number of independent bookshops in the UK fell below 1,000 in 2013, with 67 closing, leaving just 987 across the UK. It's really sad, and Amazon needs to take some of the blame.) Source

French train operator SNCF has discovered that 2,000 new trains it ordered at a cost of 15bn euros (£12.1bn) are too wide for many regional platforms. (Officials say around 1,300 platforms will have to be adjusted  to create room for the new trains to pass through, because they were built more than 50 years ago when trains were a little slimmer. Weren't we all.)

An average family of four could save more than 1000 Euros a year just by drinking water from the tap. (Daily consumption of 1.5 litres a head costs about 10 Euros a year if it comes out of the tap, but the same amount of mineral water would cost around 1100 Euros.)

Glastonbury uses 30 megawatts of electricity over the weekend - about as much as the city of Bath. (Of course there is no electricity for your tent, so don't bother taking a hairdryer, but the 200 generators, which use 100km of cabling, are used to supply most of the stages, markets and backstage portacabins. The festival is also making a big push to use renewable energy. The Green Fields - including the 1,000-capacity Croissant Neuf marquee - only use renewable energy, mainly from solar and wind power. And there are solar-heated showers (although not many visitors use them), while generators in several areas use biodiesel sourced from recycled cooking fat. Listen Here.