Interesting Facts

20th March 1956 - Tunisia gained independence from France. 1993 - Johnathan Ball, aged 3, died in a bomb attack in Warrington. He was in town with his babysitter buying a Mothering Sunday Card. Tim Parry, 12, was fatally injured and died five days later in hospital. 1997 - The Liggett Group, the fifth-largest U.S. tobacco company, admitted that smoking was addictive and caused health problems and that the tobacco industry had sought for years to sell its products to children as young as 14. 2003 - American launched missiles hit the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Civilian casualties were not counted.

According to a Freedom of Information request from the BBC, since the introduction of UK legislation in October 2015 that bans anyone from smoking in cars with children present, no fines have been issued. (Of course this does not mean that people have suddenly stopped blowing smoke into their children's lungs, it simply means this is yet another unenforceable piece of legislation.)

According to a study carried out by the British Heart Foundation, Brits spend about 19 minutes a day on regrets, which means we waste 2 hours a week dwelling on things we wish we had (or hadn't) done. (The average Brit seemingly has six major regrets.  The most frequent are not travelling enough and failing to keep in touch with friends.  Here are the top 20 regrets:- 1. Not travelling more and seeing more of the world 2. Not keeping in touch with more friends from the past 3. Taking too little exercise 4. Not saving enough money 5. Taking up smoking 6. Not working harder at school 7. Choice of career 8. Wasting years with the wrong partner 9. Eating unhealthily 10. Not asking grandparents more about their lives before they died 11. Not learning to speak a foreign language properly 12. Not spending enough time with family and friends 13. Not telling a relative who’s now dead that I loved them 14. Drinking too much alcohol 15. Not undertaking a once in a li...

Since 2012 all large shops and supermarkets in England had to hide tobacco products from public view, and now all shops will have to do so from 6th April. (The original ban only applied to shops of more than 280 sq m (3,014 sq ft), and small outlets were exempt until 2015, but that is about to end as the ban comes into force across the UK.  The ban will stop cigarettes being visible at the point of sale in any small shops and other premises selling tobacco such as cafes, pubs and clubs. It seems to be working too, with smoking rates for England at their lowest ever levels: the latest figures show only 8% of 15 year olds are now regular smokers, compared with 22% in 2003. Interestingly on a recent trip to France, every other shop seemed to sell e-cigarettes.)

11th March National No Smoking Day - Go on, stub it out. 

According to research published by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), smoking breaks and additional sick leave are costing UK businesses £8.7 billion in lost productivity every year. (Their research showed that the average smoker takes four smoking breaks a day, lasting for around ten minutes. Smokers also take nearly a day more of sick leave a year on average compared to their non-smoking colleagues. The BHF is calling on employers to join thousands of organisations in running No Smoking Day events today, March 12.)

March 12th is No Smoking Day. Go on - stub it out.

An estimated 1.3 million people now use e-cigarettes in Britain. (E-cigarettes are banned in Hungary, Brazil, Finland, Lebanon, Malaysia, and Singapore, and they can't be sold to under 16s in Italy. The Weatherspoons chain of pubs in the UK has banned them too.)

According to Scottish charity Action on Hearing Loss (AHL) Scotland, thousands of young people are risking irreversible hearing loss by failing to turn down the volume on their iPods and MP3 players. (Many people, especially youngsters, listen to music for up to one third of their waking day, but any noise over 85 decibels can be harmful. The built-in limit to iPods is around 100dB but many people have found ways to override it. The problem is, it's a bit like smoking; the damage is a gradual process, which means that it sneaks up on people and is only noticed when it is too late. So, here's your chance to learn phrasal verbs by doing: Turn it down.)

Officials in Colorado replaced a "MILE 420" sign near Stratton, about 25 miles from the Kansas border, with a sign that says "MILE 419.99. (Why? Because people kept stealing the old one. Why? Well, seemingly, this innocent looking three digit number 420, (pronounced four-twenty), has long been associated with cannabis and smoking cannabis. I found a couple of reasons for this:- Because a group of pot heads called the Waldos used to meet at 4:20pm. Because 4oz used to cost $20. I guess we'll never know. But this isn't the first place in Colorado with a fractional mile marker. Cameron Pass in Larimer County has a "MILE 68.5" sign after frequent thefts of the "MILE 69" sign, I'm not even going to try to attempt to explain that one.) Sources:  The Independent / Wikipedia

According to a study run by vouchercloud.com, 79% of office workers in the UK waste 4 hours and 22 minutes every day. (On average respondents believed that they actually did 2 hours and 53 minutes of productive work. The favourite pastimes that eat up "productive" time were:- 1.       Checking social media – 47% 2.       Reading news websites – 45% 3.       Discussing out of work activities with colleagues – 38% 4.       Making hot drinks – 31% 5.       Smoking breaks – 28% 6.       Texting /instant messaging – 27% 7.       Eating snacks – 25% 8.       Making food in office – 24% 9.       Making calls to partner/ friends- 24% 10.   Searching for new jobs – 19% Average time spent on each distraction: 1.       Checking social media – 44 minutes 2.       Reading news websites – 1 hour 5 minutes ...

According to research from Cancer Research and the Imperial College London, an estimated 463 children, some as young as 11, start smoking every day in England, 50 in Scotland, 30 in Wales and 19 in Northern Ireland. (That means around 600 children in the UK begin smoking every day. Between 2010 and 2011 there were 50,000 more child smokers than the previous the year, making a total of 207,000. It's so sad, because no matter what I say, it won't change.  Kids think it makes them look adult, but it just makes them smell bad.)

According to research into adolescent health, published in the Lancet, our brains are not fully developed until the age of 24. (In the UK, young people can legally smoke and have sex at 16, drive at 17, drink alcohol, vote and are deemed adults at 18, but the brain is ill-equipped before the age of 24 to deal with the effects of all the drinking they do and less able to assess risk. I wish I had known this when I was a bit younger. I'd have had a good excuse for all the crazy things I did: "Hey, give me a break, my brain isn't fully developed yet.")

In Bahrain, South Africa and Cyprus, drivers are banned from smoking in cars if children are aboard. (In the UK it's against the law to smoke at work, but you can do what you want to your children's, still growing, lungs.)

According to research from the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, the effects of smoking can be passed on to future generations. (The study was carried out on rats, but a rat’s physiology is sufficiently similar to a human’s to suspect the same thing may be true in Homo sapiens. In a nutshell, Dr Rehan showed that if pregnant rats are exposed to nicotine, not only will their offspring develop asthma induced by nicotine, so will the offspring of those offspring, neither of whom had been directly exposed to nicotine.) Source

A newly discovered letter reveals that doctors knew about the risk tobacco posed to people's health as early as the 18th century. (Medical student William Adams, wrote to his father in 1799 saying how he feared his mother's pipe-smoking habit was harmful. He said tobacco had a narcotic power, and its use destroyed digestion. Adams, who was studying in Edinburgh, also referred to a case where a woman had died after being given the wrong dose of tobacco by a chemist.)

13.4% of British mums to be admit to smoking whilst pregnant. (Some areas of the UK are black tar spots as rates varied from 2.8% in Brent, London, to 30.3% in Blackpool. The good news is that the statistics are lower than they used to be.)

According to the results of a study published by the University of Queensland, watching too much TV is as bad for your health as smoking. (They calculated that over the age of 25 an hour of TV shortens the lifespan by an average of around 22 minutes, so >six hours of daily television viewing can cut a person’s life expectancy by five years. Tick tock, tick tock. Oh dear, I wonder if the same is true for staring at a computer monitor, or sitting behind a camera?)

Apart from the obvious toll on health, the cost of smoking can add up to thousands of pounds a year. (In the UK the average price for a pack of 20 fags is around £6 (give or take a few pence). So, if someone smokes a pack a day:- Cost of Smoking Per Day - £6.00 Cost of Smoking Per Week - £42.00 Cost of Smoking Per Month - £182.00 Cost of Smoking Per Year - £2,184.00 Cost of Smoking Over Five Years - £10,950.00 You can work out your own costs here . Maybe there should be a new warning: Cigarettes can seriously damage your wallet.)

According to a study led by the WHO, passive smoking causes 600,000 deaths every year. (One-third of those killed are children, often exposed to smoke at home or in the family car. The study, carried out in 192 countries, found that passive smoking is particularly dangerous for children, said to be at higher risk of sudden infant death syndrome, pneumonia and asthma. And yet people still smoke. Especially outside the school gates as they pick up their children. We are a funny species.)