Interesting Facts

15th June 1215 – King John of England put his seal to the Magna Carta. 1667 – The first human blood transfusion was administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys. 1752 – Benjamin Franklin proved that lightning is electricity. 1785 – Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, co-pilot of the first-ever manned flight (1783), and his companion, Pierre Romain, became the first-ever casualties of an air crash when their hot air balloon exploded during an attempt to cross the English Channel. 1844 – Charles Goodyear received a patent for vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber. 1877 – Henry Ossian Flipper became the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy. 1909 – Representatives from England, Australia and South Africa met at Lord's and formed the ICC (Imperial Cricket Conference). 1911 – Tabulating Computing Recording Corporation (IBM) was incorporated. 1919 – John Alcock and Arthur Brown complete the first nonstop transatlantic flight a...

According to the website Sporting Intelligence, Manchester United is the most valuable football club in England. (It's worth a staggering £1.8bn. The figures were produced, using a formula involving total revenue, assets, stadium capacity and wage ratio. They are basically a money making machine, with the biggest stadium in the country, and other assets, including the most lucrative shirt sponsorship deal, worth £47m from Chevrolet, a 10-year kit deal with German sporting outifitters Adidas which is worth £750m over 10 years. Would anyone like to sponsor an LEN kit or shirt? Instead of buying overpriced football players, we will employ some lovely English teachers.) 

According to a report by Deloitte Real Estates, the Houses of Parliament refurbishment could cost between £3.5bn and £5.7bn. (The buildings date from the mid-nineteenth century, after the original Palace of Westminster was all but destroyed by fire in 1834. But now the roof is leaking, paintwork is peeling, stonework crumbling and lifts are creaking to the point that MPs have become trapped, missing key votes in the Commons. Costs of renovation could spiral to as high as £7.1bn (once that has been said, it is bound to be even more. The first time I read about this in 2014 they were quoting  £1bn.) Time to turn it into luxury flats, and move parliament to Manchester?)

A survey carried out by linguistics researchers at Manchester University found there were 7 different words for a bread roll in the UK. (In the South it was generally called a roll. In the North a bap or a bun. In the North-west a barm, or a muffin. In the Midlands a cob. In Yorkshire a tea cake! Now I'll go along with roll or a cob, but to me a bap is a softer, more floury bread roll, a muffin is an American cake, a bun is sweet and hopefully full of cream, and a tea cake is full of dried fruit and has to be toasted and served with lots of butter.)

England Premier League Club, Manchester City, has advised footballers from abroad to watch Teletubbies to improve their English. iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/L_g8AJU7O6E?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen> Alvaro Negedro has a better idea - he's going to teach Manchester how to speak Spanish:- )

The £144 record for the most expensive pancake has been broken, with a restaurant in the UK serving up a pancake that will set you back a whopping £800. (Chef Matthew Downes at the Opus restaurant in Mancester, has created what is now the world's most expensive pancake using Scottish lobster, Beluga caviar and Hulle Verge Truffle all served with a Dom Perignon Rose champagne hollandaise sauce. If you want to save yourself a fortune, try my recipe: http://www.learnenglish.de/recipe/Pancakes.html, served with sugar and lemon juice, you can't beat it.)

Swansea has been named the most likely place for a person to have a one night stand in the UK. (Runners up for this dubious honour were:- Edinburgh (11%) Birmingham (11%) London (10%) Chelmsford (9%) Coventry (9%) Brighton and Hove (9%) Oxford (9%) Manchester (8%) Belfast (8%) For this to actually make sense you need to know what a one night stand is, in this context it means a sexual relationship lasting only one night. Now, before you think "What a great idea!" and start booking your tickets, research has shown that one night stands are linked to depression and suicidal thoughts.)

According to the TV Licensing authority, the UK still has 13,000 black-and-white TVs. (London had the highest number of monochrome licences, at 2,715, followed by Birmingham and Manchester. Or maybe I should say there are 13,000 households with a black-and-white TV license. You see, a black-and-white TV licence costs £49 a year, but a colour licence costs £145.50.  You do the math.)

According to http://www.moneysupermarket.com/c/press-releases/voucher-mad-britain/0007241/ , more than 1,500 vouchers are redeemed in UK every minute. (That's 2.23 million discount vouchers every day, and this saves Brits, on average, £2.7 billion every year.  Across the country the figures vary, Londoners seem to be the keenest; here is the City Savings League:- City Monthly saving London £71 Cardiff £65 Edinburgh £60 Liverpool £57 Manchester £51 In Germany there aren't as many voucher offers, I guess because Aldi couldn't cut their margins without going the same way as Schlecker.)

Manchester Airport ran out of fuel today, delaying more than a dozen flights. (The airport gets through three million litres of aviation fuel a day. The fuel is pumped through a 30-mile pipeline, which is the airport's only source of aviation fuel, every day transporting the equivalent of 79 road tankers' worth of fuel, but suddenly the flow of fuel dried up as production problems at the the Essar refinery near Ellesmere Port in Cheshire meant that fuel stopped being pumped to the airport early this morning. Usually the airport has between 12 and 24 hours of spare capacity, but the Jubilee weekend had been very busy with about 300,000 people flying over the four days, and by 17:15 BST the fuel had run out.  I've only ever run out of fuel once, and it was hubby's fault.)

According to research by Jurys Inn to mark the start of British Tourism Week, the UK's least welcoming cities are:- 1. London 2. Glasgow 3. Bradford 4. Birmingham 5. Liverpool 6. Manchester 7. Aberdeen 8. Wolverhampton 9. Belfast 10. Leeds (No surprises at number 1, but I have to say I found Glasgow friendlier than Edinburgh.)

The Soviets planned to invade Manchester. (A map showing the route Soviet tanks would have taken is on display in an exhibition at the University of Manchester's John Rylands Library, Manchester. It shows the route chosen for taking the city which went along Washway Road, the Mancunian Way and Princess Road. These roads were considered wide enough for armoured vehicles and tanks to roll into the city centre. Personally speaking, if I was going to invade a city, it wouldn't be Manchester. I think a nice little village in the Cotswolds would be more to my liking.)

According to retail research firm Experian, up to 35,000 shops could close in the UK this year. (After surveying British town centres, they discovered that the high streets in Walkden - Greater Manchester, Harwich - Essex and Gateshead - Tyneside had the most vacant shops with almost 60% of retail premises standing empty. As the recession starts to really bite people have stopped shopping till they drop.)