Interesting Facts

21st June 1305 – King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia and Poland died. 1377 – King Edward III of England died. 1652 – Inigo Jones died. 1905, Jean-Paul Sartre was born. 1948 – Columbia Records introduced the long-playing record album (LP) in a public demonstration at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. 1964 – Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner, were murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, United States, by members of the Ku Klux Klan. 1982 – Princess Diana gave birth to Prince William, heir to the throne. 1985 - Scientists announced that skeletal remains exhumed in Brazil were those of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele. 2001 – John Lee Hooker died. 2004 – SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight. 2009 – Self-rule was introduced in Greenland.

17th May 1521 – Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, was executed for treason. 1536 – George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford and four other men were executed for treason. 1590 – Anne of Denmark was crowned Queen of Scotland. 1792 – The New York Stock Exchange was formed. 1814 – The Constitution of Norway was signed and Danish Crown Prince Christian Frederik elected King of Norway by the Norwegian Constituent Assembly. 1974 – Thirty-three people were killed by terrorist bombings in Dublin and Monaghan, Ireland. 1978 - Charlie Chaplin's stolen body was found. 1984 – Prince Charles called the proposed addition to the National Gallery, London, a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend," sparking controversies on the proper role of the Royal Family and the course of modern architecture. 1992 – The WHO (World Health Organisation) took homosexuality out of its list of mental illnesses. 1994 - The U.N. Security Council approved sendi...

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...

19th February 1878 – Thomas Edison patented the phonograph. 1861 – Serfdom was abolished in Russia. 1674 – England and the Netherlands signed the Treaty of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transferred the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, whereupon it was renamed New York.

Pizza is thought to have been created over 1,000 years ago in Italy. (Of course it's now a worldwide phenomenon. In fact, the pizza effect is a term used to describe how elements of a nation or people's culture can be transformed or at least more fully embraced elsewhere, then re-imported back to their culture of origin. Some aspects of the change are not really something to celebrate though. For example, in the UK Pizza Hut created the Cheeseburger crust pizza with a staggering 2,880 calories. Whilst in New York the 24k pizza has been created with gold leaf, caviar, stilton cheese and truffles, a bargain at £1,600.  ( It's gone up since its invention in 2012 .)) Some people will buy into anything.)

8th December 1980 - Former Beatle John Lennon was shot to death outside his apartment building in New York City. He was 40.

Scientists from universities in China and New York have pieced together a “love map” of the human brain. (Using MRI scans they have been able to monitor the physical effects of love, resulting in the first empirical evidence of love-related alterations to the brain. They have found that several areas of the brain show increased activity in people who are in love, including in the parts of the brain linked to reward, motivation, emotion regulation, and the social cognition network. These results shed light on the “underlying mechanisms of romantic love” and could pave the way for a brain scan that could act as a “love test”. So the next time someone says, "I love you", you can answer, "Prove it", put on this brain scanner.)

According to a YouGov poll, 29% of Brits don’t think the button at pedestrian crossings does anything useful. (The fact is, according to the BBC, they are sometimes right. In New York, they are sometimes referred to as "placebo buttons", and in the UK, well - it depends. If you are at a standalone pedestrian crossing, unconnected to a junction, the button will turn a traffic light red. At some crossings, the button will work, but only between the hours of midnight and 7 a.m. In the daytime, the button has no effect. To be honest, I don't care, I'll still keep poking them.) Source

According to commercial property agents, C&W, Hong Kong has world's most expensive retail space. (Causeway Bay in Hong Kong is the most expensive retail location in Hong Kong, charging a whacking 1,859 euros per sqm per month, pushing New York's Fifth Avenue off top spot for the first time in 11 years.)

For over 36 hours in New York City, no-one was shot, stabbed, or otherwise killed. (In fact it seems that crime has been on the decline in New York City since the 1990s. On a sadder note, the crime freeze began after 22:25 on Sunday 25th November, when a man was shot in the head, and continued until another man was shot at 11:20 on Tuesday 27th November.)

A company called Knight Capital started losing literally $10 million [£6.4m] a minute when they switched on a computer program for trading on the New York stock exchange. (They ended up losing $440 million [£281m], and their shares have now lost 71pc of their value since the error.  The result is the trading company is awaiting a rescue package from a rival firm.  Someone should make a film of the whole thing, and call it "When algorithms collide".)

New York artist Ron Piccirillo says that several animals can be seen hidden in the Mona Lisa when it is viewed horizontally. (According to Mr Piccirillo, a lion, an ape and a buffalo can be seen around Mona Lisa’s head and a snake or crocodile is near her right shoulder.  I wonder what he was smoking when he saw them.) Source

New York City has over 28,000 acres of parks and 14 miles of beaches. (This really surprised me! I don't think of New York as green ( or yellow!) at all.) xx Source - Wikipedia

Croydon has more CCTV cameras than New York. (CCTV = Closed Circuit Television - Big brother is watching you!)