Interesting Facts

A couple of shopping centres in the UK are going to trial the removal of mirrors in the changing rooms. (Their rather twisted logic for a mirror-free shopping experience is that 71% of women in the UK decide not to buy an outfit after they see themselves in the mirror! What? That's because the outfit either doesn't fit them, or doesn't suit them! I can see a big #fail coming here.)

According to linguists Carmen Fought and Karen Eisenhauer Disney films are dominated by men when it comes to dialogue. (Pocahontas, Mulan and The Little Mermaid were all named after the main female character, but that didn't help: In Pocahontas 76% of the dialogue was from the men, it was 77% in Mulan  and 68% in The Little Mermaid. Beauty and the Beast had male characters speaking 71% of the time, while in Aladdin it was 90%. Early Disney films such as Snow White had fewer speaking roles but spread them equally between male and female characters, and in Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty women seemingly had more dialogue than men. To be fair it's not just Disney. In the film The Avengers, none of the female characters talked to each other at any point.)

According to educational charity, the Sutton Trust if you have a private education, you are considerably more likely to get to the top of British public life. (Their research shows that Oxbridge graduates are over represented in top jobs in fields as diverse as the law, politics, medicine, journalism, and even acting. In 2014 the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission reported that 59% of the Cabinet were Oxbridge graduates (compared to the average of less than 1% of the public as a whole). This recent research shows that although only 7% of the population attend independent fee-paying schools, almost three quarters (71%) of top military officers were educated privately, with just 12% having been taught in comprehensive schools. Sir Peter Lampl, chair of the Sutton Trust, said: “As well as academic achievement, an independent education tends to develop essential skills such as confidence, articulacy and teamwork, which are vital to career success." Sir Peter, I think y...

According to a survey by The Wildlife Trusts, 4 in 10 British children have never seen a hedgehog in the wild in the UK. (The same survey found that 71 per cent of British children have never seen a lizard in the wild, while more than half have not seen a flock of starlings in flight (called a mumuration). Mrs Tiggiwinkle will be incensed.)  

According to a poll conducted by magazine Terre de Vins (Wine Country), most French people don't know much about wine. (71% of people surveyed said that they didn't know much about wine, of these 43% admitted to knowing nothing at all. Only 3% thought they were well versed in the subject, whilst 26% said they "knew enough." For me, wine is like art, I know what I like.)

When signing up to Facebook you now have 71 gender options. (In addition people who select a custom gender will now have the ability to choose the pronoun they’d like to be referred to publicly — male (he/his), female (she/her) or neutral (they/their). Here are the options (please don't ask me what they all mean, I have lived a sheltered life):- Agender Androgyne Androgynes Androgynous Asexual Bigender Cis Cis Female Cis Male Cis Man Cis Woman Cisgender Cisgender Female Cisgender Male Cisgender Man Cisgender Woman Female to Male FTM Female to male trans man Female to male transgender man Female to male transsexual man Gender Fluid Gender neutral Gender Nonconforming Gender Questioning Gender Variant Genderqueer Hermaphrodite Intersex Intersex man Intersex person Intersex woman Male to Female Male to female trans woman Male to female transgender woman Male to female transsexual woman MTF M2F Man Nei...

The first Christmas card was designed by John Callcott Horsley and commissioned by Sir Henry Cole, a civil servant and inventor, in 1843. (It featured a design showing three generations of a family raising a toast to the recipient, and cost 1 shilling (that's 10p in new money). The average price of a Christmas card in the UK now (in 2005) is 71p, which might sound expensive in comparison, but it's actually much cheaper. A shilling could have bought you a meal back in the 1800s, so its buying power today is probably around £10.)