Interesting Facts

21st August 1770 – James Cook formally claimed eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales. 1831 – Nat Turner led black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. 1879 – The Virgin Mary, along with St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist, reportedly appeared to the people of Knock, County Mayo, Ireland. Paving the way for lots of little plastic figurines. 1911 – The Mona Lisa was stolen by an employee at the Louvre in Paris. 1968 - Dozens of people were killed in a massive military clampdown in Czechoslovakia. 1983 - Benigno Aquino, the Philippines opposition leader, was murdered just minutes after returning home from exile. 1986 - 1,700 people died when a cloud of lethal gas escaped from a volcanic lake, Lake Nyos, in Cameroon.

12th July 55 - Julius Caesar was born. 1543 – King Henry VIII of England married his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr at Hampton Court Palace. 1812 – The United States invaded Canada at Windsor, Ontario. 1961 – The Panshet and Khadakvasala dams in India burst destroying most of the older sections of the city of Pune. Half of the city was submerged. More than 100,000 families dislocated and the death tally exceeded 2,000. 1962 – The Rolling Stones performed their first ever concert, at the Marquee Club in London. 1998 - Three young brothers, Richard Quinn, 11, Mark Quinn, 9, and Jason Quinn, 7, were murdered in a loyalist arson attack as the stand-off between Orangemen and police at Drumcree in Ireland. 2006 - Hezbollah guerrillas kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in a cross-border raid; Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon in response.

29th April 1429 – Joan of Arc arrived to relieve the Siege of Orleans. 1770 – James Cook arrived at and named Botany Bay, Australia. 1882 – The "Elektromote" – forerunner of the tram – was tested by Ernst Werner von Siemens in Berlin. 1885 - Women were admitted for the first time to examinations at England's Oxford University. 1916 – Martial law in Ireland was lifted and the Easter rebellion officially ended with the surrender of Irish nationalists to British authorities in Dublin. 1945 – The German Army in Italy unconditionally surrendered to the Allies. 1945 – Adolf Hitler married his long-time partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designated Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor. 1945 - Dachau Concentration Camp was liberated by US Troops. 1967 – After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before (citing religious reasons), Muhammad Ali was stripped of his boxing title. 1985 - Four gunmen escaped with nearly $8 million in cash st...

8th April 1820 – The famous statue, the Venus de Milo, was discovered on the Aegean island of Melos. 1886 – William Ewart Gladstone introduced the first Irish Home Rule Bill into the British House of Commons. 1904 – The French Third Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland signed the Entente cordiale. 1908 – Harvard University voted to establish the Harvard Business School. 1994 - Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain, 27, was found dead in his Seattle home of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. 1995 - British-born Nicholas Ingram was executed in the electric chair.

24th March 1944 - 76 prisoners of war begin breaking out of Stalag Luft III. This was later dramatized in the movie The Great Escape. 1972 - The United Kingdom imposed "Direct Rule" over Northern Ireland.

According to the Gobal Gender Gap report, published by the WEF, Britain has dropped  eight places to stand 26th in the world for gender equality. (Not surprisingly the Nordic countries - Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark - were the most equal, and they have been joined by Nicaragua, Rwanda, Ireland, the Philippines and Belgium in the top 10. Yemen remained at the bottom of the chart for the ninth year in a row.) Source

US crime writer James Patterson is offering £250,000 to independent bookshops in the UK and Ireland. (Worried about the death of the independent bookshops, he has already run a similar scheme in the US, with grants of between £250 and £5,000 available to spend on schemes aimed at encouraging reading among children.  This is what you could call, putting your money where your mouth is.)

According to a UN-backed global study, Sweden is the best place in the world to be old. (Sweden, Norway and Germany headed the list, whilst Britain was rated 13th, one place behind Ireland. So, I guess I won't be moving any time soon.  Sorry to say Afghanistan, Tanzania and Pakistan ranked lowest, but don't worry, the only way is up.) Source: The Global AgeWatch Index is the first-ever overview of the wellbeing of older people around the world. http://www.helpage.org/global-agewatch/global-rankings/

Finland has been rated the best place in the world to be a mum in the annual Mothers' Index compiled by Save the Children. (Sweden and Norway, were also at the top, while Germany was 9th, Australia 10th, France 16th and Ireland 20th, Britain came 23rd, behind most of her European neighbours, and the United States was placed 30th in the ranking of 176 countries. Mums in the poorest countries are at most risk, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the world’s toughest place to be a mother.) Save the Children

St Valentine was buried somewhere along the Via Flaminia on February 14th. (Allegedly his relics are at Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin, Ireland. They were donated to the church in the 19th century by Pope Gregory XVI from their previous location in the cemetery of St. Hippolytus in Rome. How romantic!)

According to a review published in the British Medical Journal, adding 17.5% VAT to unhealthy foods in Britain could cut up to 2,700 heart disease deaths a year. (One US study showed a 35% increase in the price of sugar sweetened drinks – working out at 28p per drink – in a canteen led to a 26 per cent decline in sales. Dr Oliver Mytton and colleagues at Oxford University said so called fat taxes would need to be at least 20 per cent to have a meaningful effect on population health. In the past year, Denmark has introduced a fat tax, Hungary a junk food tax and France a tax on sweetened drinks. Other countries,  notably Ireland, are also considering such taxes. I want to know why they're not considering a champagne tax or caviar tax.) Source

Sean Quinn, once Ireland’s richest man, was declared bankrupt today at the High Court in Belfast. (The former billionaire was the boss of a manufacturing and insurance business empire, but he now allegedly owes €2.8bn to Anglo Irish Bank, which makes this bankruptcy one of the biggest of its kind ever made in either the United Kingdom or Ireland. Welcome to the 99% Mr Quinn.) #99%

According to a report in the International Business Times , Cryos International , the largest sperm bank in the world, has closed its door to redheads. (The sperm bank has reached its capacity of 70 liters of sperm, with 600 redheaded donors on its waiting list. Seemingly most of the demand for redheaded babies comes from Ireland, but there is more demand from men who are tall, with brown eyes and dark hair. Gosh, haven't people got fussy over the years?)

Corporate tax in Ireland is a mere 12.50%. (Compared with the UK - 28%, Germany - 30% and France - 34.43%. In Ireland the income tax for an individual is between 20% and 41% for the top earners. I wonder if you can set yourself up as a corporation?)

powered by ODEO According to the Guardian newspaper, around 98% of Ireland's schools are run by the Roman Catholic Church. (The problem arises when in some areas 48 percent of students are non-Catholic, but when there are too many students to choose from, the church is entitled by law to prefer a Catholic one. This means that emergency schools have been set up to provide education to the children of incoming workers.)

In the future anyone caught over the limit on Swiss roads may have to pay up to €113,000. (The majority of European countries have a drink driving limit of 0.5 mg. Though some countries have outright bans on any alcoholic trace in drivers' blood, countries like the UK, Ireland, and Switzerland allow 0.8 mg, and the Republic of Cyprus (that's the southern Greek-speaking part that is now an EU member state) has a 0.9 mg threshold. Fines will be calculated according to the income of the driver. This means that a millionaire caught speeding will have to pay around €19,000. Of course the overpaid lawyers will probably get them off on a technicality.)

A study commissioned by DEFRA in 2000, showed that UK consumers used eight billion plastic carrier bags per year. However, it also showed that more than 80 per cent of people in the UK re-use their plastic carrier bags. (In the Republic of Ireland, by introducing a 15 cent plastax, they cut their use by more than 90% and raised millions of euros in revenue. In Bangladesh polythene bags are banned altogether. I have a bag for life, but I still get given carrier bags, unless I tell the shop assistant I don't want one.)

Estate agent signs from Northern Ireland are being re-used as roofing tiles in South Africa. (The question is, "How do they get there?")

The colours of the Irish flag are orange, green and white. Each stripe has significance :- orange = Irish Protestants green = Irish Catholics and republicans white = hope for peace

The colour of the West German football team's away strip was green. (This is allegedly in honour of the fact that the first team who would play them after WWII was Ireland. Unfortunately it looks as if the truth is more mundane, in that it's the Deutscher Futball-Bund's official colour. Of course it's all moot now, as the away colours are black, which is probably in honour of John Player.)