Interesting Facts

5th August 1858 - After several unsuccessful attempts, the first telegraph line across the Atlantic Ocean was completed. 1962 - Marilyn Monroe was found dead. 1973 - Three people were killed and 55 wounded when two gunmen opened fire in a crowded passenger lounge at Athens airport.

14th June 1381 – Richard II met leaders of the Peasants' Revolt on Blackheath. 1381 - The Tower of London was stormed by rebels who entered without resistance. 1645 – Battle of Naseby – 12,000 Royalist forces were beaten by 15,000 Parliamentarian soldiers. 1648 – Margaret Jones was hanged in Boston for witchcraft. 1777 – The Stars and Stripes was adopted by Congress as the Flag of the United States. 1789 – Bounty mutiny survivors including Captain William Bligh and 18 others reached Timor after a nearly 7,400 km (4,000-mile) journey in an open boat. 1789 – Whisky distilled from corn was first produced by American clergyman the Rev Elijah Craig. He called it Bourbon because he lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky. 1822 – Charles Babbage proposed a difference engine in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society entitled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables". 1839 – The village of Henley, on the River...

For everyone who was in today's Skype session.  Who does Greece owe money to? In Euros Germany - 68.2bn France - 43.8bn Italy - 38.4bn Spain - 25bn IMF - 21.4bn  (International Monetary Fund) ECB 18.1bn  (European Central Bank) The Netherlands 13.4bn The US - 11.3bn The UK 10.8bn Belgium 7.5bn Austria - 5.9bn Finland 3.7bn (I told you everyone needs to start learning big numbers nowadays.)

According to a report by the WHO (World Health Organisation) 74% of men and 64% of women in the UK will be overweight by 2030. ( That's almost three-quarters of men and two-thirds of women in the UK are on their way to being overweight within 15 years. Medically speaking, b eing “overweight” is defined as having a BMI ( Body Mass Index ) of between 25 and 29.9.  Being  “obese” is defined by a BMI of 30 and above. Worryingly  other European countries are facing growing obesity problems including Greece, Spain, Austria, the Czech Republic and even Sweden.   The only European country to escape is the Netherlands.  Must be all those bikes.) Source

From 1 January 2014, jugs of olive oil and dipping bowls will be banned from restaurants in Europe. (After that date olive oil "presented at a restaurant table" must be in pre-packaged, factory bottles with a tamper-proof dispensing nozzle and labelling in line with EU industrial standards. The European Commission, a committee of nameless bureaucrats, has used special Common Agriculture Policy regulations to pass this weird bill. Their reason for the ban is "hygiene" and to protect the "image of olive oil" to attempt to benefit struggling industrial producers in Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal. What a load of tosh!) Thanks to    + Luke Pettit for sharing this.

The island of Ikaria is almost as far east as Greece gets,  just 100 square miles in size, the mountainous island is 30 miles off the coast of Turkey, but that's not what makes it interesting. What is interesting is the people there live longer and better than almost anywhere else on the planet. (According to longevity expert, Dan Buettner, Ikaria has that certain je ne sais quoi, and he has added Ikaria to the list of places in the world that have come closest to cracking the secret of eternal life.  A study showed that people on Ikaria were reaching the age of 90 with two and a half times the frequency of Americans. Ikarian men, in particular, are four times as likely to reach 90, often in better health. Other places on the list are: the island of Okinawa in Japan, the town of Loma Linda in California, certain parts of Costa Rica and the hills around the province of Nuoro in Sardinia. So, now you know. Oh and there's a web site (of course) of all these blue zone...

There are 12 net contributors and 15 net recipients within the EU. (Net contributors receive less money from EU funds than they pay into the joint coffers.  Net recipients receive more grants and benefits than they pay.  The largest net contributors include Germany (at 9 billion euros), France (6.4 billion), Italy (5.9 billion), Great Britain (5.6 billion) and the Netherlands (2.2 billion).  The leading net recipients are Poland (11 billion), Greece (4.6 billion), Hungary (4.4 billion), Spain (2.9 billion), and Portugal (2.9 billion).  Calculating that for each individual EU citizen, however, the picture looks different: Danes pay the most into EU coffers at 150 euros each, while Hungary receives the biggest payout - 442 euros per capita in aid money from Brussels.)

Fakelaki (Φακελάκι) is a Greek word that means "little envelope". (It usually describes a little brown envelope stuffed with cash, and used to bribe officials or other people to "expedite" service. According to Transparency International the average family in Greece pays £1,200 a year in fakelaki, which if true, is astounding to someone who has never bribed anyone to do anything (and wouldn't even know how to go about such a thing). Fakelake - it's such a harmless sounding word, kind of cute, or maybe a bit rude, but the real translation is corruption, a bribe, which is not cute at all.)

Apparently the national anthem of Greece has 158 verses! (Well, not quite. The original was written by Dionýsios Solomós in 1823 and had 158 stanzas.  Fortunately for us in the Olympics next year, they now only use the first two!)

Greece has been given a €110 billion ($136bn; £94bn) to help it overcome its debt crisis. (Europe's Finance Ministers have also approved a comprehensive rescue package worth almost a trillion dollars aimed at ensuring financial stability across Europe. The whole world seems to be in debt, which means no one really owes anything. Let's rip it up and start again.)

According to data from the IMF (International Monetary Fund), in 2008 the Greek economy was the twenty-seventh largest in the world by GDP (gross domestic product). (It had the 22nd highest standard of living in the world. The public sector accounted for about 40% of GDP. The service sector contributed 75.8% of the total GDP, industry 20.8% and agriculture 3.4%. It was the twenty-fourth most globalized country in the world and classified as a high income economy. I'm not sure what the IMF rates it now.)

Since June 2007 an estimated 25,000 acres (10,000 hectares) of land has been destroyed in around 3,000 wildfires in Greece. (Some of the fires are natural, due to the high temperatures, but most have been started deliberately by developers. Because there is no land registry illegal construction is rife, but there is a simple solution, I suggest the authorities contact Google Earth for some pre fire photos, then replant in all those areas that were previously forest.) Listen Here

In ancient Greece, women counted their age from the date they were married. (That means I am 10 today!)