Interesting Facts

21st March 1960 - More than 50 people were killed in the South African township of Sharpeville when police opened fire on a "peaceful" protest. The death toll rose to 69 and the number of injuries to 180.

The first TV licence in the UK cost 10 shillings (that's 50p in today's money). (The licence was originally known as a wireless licence, and today it costs £145.50 for a colour TV. That's inflation for you.)

According to research carried out on the 2014 census study 48.8% of the population of England and Wales say they don't identify with any religion. (The number of 'nones' is now above 50 per cent, almost double the figure of 25% recorded in the census just three years earlier. People defining themselves as Christian, including Anglicans, Catholics and other denominations, made up 43.8% of the population. The Church of England expects congregations to continue to fall for another 30 years as the population ages and younger generations shun faith. I just think they should put a reply on the census that says, "Mind your own business". )

The next English £5, £10 and £20 banknotes will be printed on plastic. (The fiver will be issued first in September 2016, followed by the tenner, which will be issued in 2017, but the £20 note will have to wait until 2020. Their appearance will change too. Sir Winston Churchill will feature on the £5 banknote, replacing Elizabeth Fry, ​​Jane Austen will replace Charles Darwin on the £10 banknote, and artist J.M.W. Turner will feature on the £20 not, replacing economist Adam Smith. Nothing has been said about the £50 note, which features the engineers Matthew Boulton and James Watt. Historical characters have only appeared on bank notes since 1970.  Other people depicted on previous notes have been: Sir Edward Elgar (composer) Michael Faraday (scientist) Sir John Houblon (first Governor of the Bank of England) Sir Isaac Newton (scientist) Florence Nightingale (nursing) William Shakespeare (poet/playwright) George Stephenson (engineer) 1st Duke of Wellington (gener...

According to researchers from the Sao Jose Faculty of Medicine in Brazil, time goes by more quickly when you're over 50. (In the study people were asked to close their eyes and mentally count the passing of 120 seconds.  They all counted too quickly. On average, men and women in the 15 to 29 age group counted down the 120 seconds in 115 seconds.  In the 30 to 49 age group they took 96 seconds, but the over-50s took just 86 seconds. This meant the oldest group perceived time as passing 25 per cent more quickly than the youngest did. The researchers believe it is possibly due to age-related changes in levels of brain chemicals involved in concentration and memory, both of which are involved in estimating the passage of time. I think it's more likely that at 50+ you simply have more to do, and feel you have less time to do it in.) Source PS -If you want to be able to count in seconds more accurately, say the number plus the word elephants.

According to a study conducted by TopCashback website, on average, in 2015 pedestrians in the UK picked up £5.45 each in dropped change, and one in 20 managed to find £20. (However, millions of Brits would not stoop to pick up anything less than 50p dropped on the floor: only 4 in 10 people would bother to bend down to pick up a penny, and most would ignore anything that wasn't silver.  1 in 3 people said they would not pick up any cash dropped as in their eyes it would be stealing, however 8 in 10 Brits applied the finders-keepers rule, but they were unsur about how much they would pocket if no-one was around.  Most agreed that anything over £10 and they would hand it into the police, or give the cash to charity or a homeless person. 6 in 10 would hand in money left at a cash point by mistake, but only a fifth would run after the person who absent mindedly walked off without it.  Scarily 1 in 10 would quietly pop it into their purse or wallet. I will admit, I pi...

According to a study carried out by home insurer MORE TH>N women are at their most fashionable around the age of 30. (By this time the average British woman owns 212 items worth around £7,658.  Their wardrobe usually consists of 166 items of clothing (including designer outfits worth £2,399, 7 pairs of designer shoes, costing £2,086, and some, 24 pieces of jewellery worth £2,800. Men on the other hand hit their peak at 36, but will own a staggering of £8,868 worth of clothing, shoes, watches, bags and jewellery by then. However, 1 year later, the value of a person's wardrobe falls, and between the ages of 30 and 50 women see a 26% decrease in the value of their wardrobe and a 70% decrease in the number of designer items.  For men, the value plunge is even more pronounced, dropping by 46% over the same period. This either means everyone develops some common sense, or they have children.)

The Social Media site Friends Reunited is closing down as it is unable to cover its costs. (It launched in 2000 and was extremely popular in the UK, with over 12 million members in 2005, almost 50% of UK internet users back then.  Sadly, since then, rivals like Facebook have ensured its demise.)

According to a report from Oxfam, 62 people are now as rich as 50% of the rest of the world. (The richest 62 people in the world now own as much as the poorest half of the world's population. They would fit on a bus. Last year it was 80, and in 2010 it was 388. So, someone, somewhere is making a killing.)

According to neuroscientists from the Salk institute, the human brain has 10 x more memory capacity than previously thought. (They measured the storage capacity of each synapse - the connections within the brain that are responsible for storing memories - and discovered that, on average, one synapse can hold about 4.7 bits of information. This means that the human brain has a capacity of one petabyte, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. One petabyte is about the same as about 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets filled with text or about the same as 13.3 years of HD-TV recordings, or 4.7 billion books.   One big problem here: I can barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday. It all sounds very exciting, until you realise that Google handles 20 petabytes of data every day. And a mere 50 petabytes can hold the entire written works of humankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages. I think we need to be able to upgrade our brains, or add bits, like...

Since introducing the 5p levy on plastic bags in England, 520 million of them have been pinched from shops. (When I first heard this, I thought "How?", but seemingly it's at the self service checkout.  When people are asked if they have brought their own bag 50% say, "Yes", even when they haven't. At £26,000,000 that's the biggest heist, ever.)  

According to website LatestinBeauty.com, 1 in 3 three women are disappointed when they open the present from their partner on Christmas Day. (25% of men were branded “clueless” when it came to buying gifts, and 50% of women admitted they were unlikely to get their dream present as their partners had good intentions but were hopeless at getting it right. The worst gifts ever received were:- a Shewee (A reusable plastic contraption for those caught short while out and about.) a fishing rod cellulite cream intimate bodywash a windscreen wash kit (Spot who went to the all night garage.) a fossil a dustpan and brush a chainsaw weighing scales a high visibility jacket for dog walking a lurid green jumper with an embroidered alien In reality most women’s wish lists are fairly straightforward: a designer handbag, a romantic break or a watch were amongst the longed for items. Hubby gave me a Swiss Army knife once, but I asked him to.)

According to a survey conducted by money saving website VoucherCodesPro, the average British man doesn't learn to cook until he's 27, and is 22 before he figures out how to make the bed. (It doesn't stop at cooking either; over 50% said they had not bothered learning as they did not need to know how to do the housework, and 39% said they had someone to do it for them.  It looks as if men are turning into Tamagotchis.)

According to a study by insurance company RIAS, younger workers in the UK take twice as much time off sick as people over 50. (Just a quarter of over-50s took time off sick in the past year, compared to half of those aged between 20 and 29. They are also more likely to fake an illness: 44%  of younger people were found to have faked being ill to avoid coming into work, compared to just 12% of over-50s. It's probably because older workers are more worried about getting another job.)

Over the last 50 years short-sightedness amongst children in the UK has doubled. ( In the 1960s just 10% of British 12 and 13-year-olds had myopia, today that is 23%. Experts are blaming this increase on our increasingly indoor lifestyles and use of computers.   And it's not just happening in the UK, in the US in the 1970s 25% of children were diagnosed myopic, by the year 2000 this had risen to over 40%.  In China The journal Nature reported that around 90% of China's teenage and young adult population are short-sighted, up from 10 to 20% of the total population 60 years ago. One Chinese city is so worried, they are experimenting with transparent classrooms to expose children to more sunlight. How about giving them more time and space to play outside?)

Good news for once! Some areas of the brain do not peak until we are in our fifties. (A published paper in the journal Psychological Science, states that each cognitive skill peaks at a different age. For example, raw speed in processing information appears to peak around age 18 or 19, then immediately starts to decline. Short-term memory continues to improve until around age 25, when it levels off and then begins to drop around age 35. The ability to recognize faces improves until the early 30s before gradually starting to decline,  but the ability to evaluate another person's emotional state peaks in our 40s or 50s. At 60 we are still learning new vocabulary skills, and between 60 - 70+: our intelligence actually peaks. I think the main point is, just keep learning, keep on learning, learn, learn learning.)

A Star Wars toy cost £1.50 when it came out 35 years ago, and has sold at auction for £18,000. (Collector, Craig Stevens, from Croydon, bought the figure, which is of bounty hunter Boba Fett, still in its original packaging, for £50 in 1990. Before you go rummaging in your attic, the figure was in mint condition and in its original packaging.  In other words, no child had ever played with it.  Haven't these people seen Toy Story!) 

When writing a CV, over 50s in the UK are removing references to their O-levels to give themselves a better chance of getting an interview. (The O'level is a pre-1988 secondary school qualification replaced by GCSEs.  Once something to be proud of, nowadays by writing O'level on a CV you are giving away your age, and in our ageist society people just think - past it. )

According to a study commissioned by Nurofen express, the biggest headache of modern life is a laptop / computer freezing. (The top 50 things that stress people out in the UK nowadays are supposedly:- 1. Your laptop/computer freezing 2. PPI calls 3. Slow Wi-Fi 4. Being stuck in traffic 5. People who take up two parking spaces 6. Public transport delays 7. Junk mail 8. Waiting on the phone for the doctors 9. When people chuck their rubbish out of the car window 10. People who don't use their indicators 11. Pot holes 12. Stepping in dog muck 13. When you hold the door open for someone and they don't say thank you 14. The rising cost of living 15. When people let their children misbehave in restaurants 16. Rude sales assistants 17. Screaming kids 18. Buying property 19. When people hold a conversation in a door way 20. People cancelling on you 21. Noisy neighbours 22. Reality TV shows 23. Road works 24. Middle lane hoggers ...

According to data from life insurance companies you are less likely to die in your 50s and 60s than at any other time in your life. (Good news for anyone facing middle age.)