Interesting Facts

Apart from its great name, Miserden in Gloucestershire is interesting because, according to cable.co.uk, it has the worst broadband in the UK. (The fastest place in the UK was Rickmansworth with download speeds of over 77Mbps, but Miserden is a digital black hole where only 17% of villagers are able to access superfast broadband, and the rest have to make do with average download speeds of 1.3Mbps.  One poor resident recorded a "staggeringly low" speed of 0.12Mbps, it would be faster to send a letter! At that rate the company worked out that it would take residents of Miserden 11 hours to download a high def version of the latest Bond film, Sceptre. Amusingly, they would get faster broadband if they moved to Everest base camp!)

According to a report from the Department of Transport, the slowest road in England is the A306 Northbound at Richmond, which has a rush hour speed of just 3.5 mph. (We are slowing down: In the year ending to December 2015, average speeds on local ‘A’ roads in England during the weekday morning peak were a measly 23.4 mph. The actual speed limit on a dual carriageway can vary from 40mph and 70mph, but you'll be lucky to get the chance.  One theory is that roads are getting congested by all the online shopping deliveries. Outside of London Nottingham is home to the slowest road: The A6005 Eastbound with rush hour speeds of just 6.4 mph.  This shouldn't come as a surprise to Amatsu.)

According to research by the UK communications regulator Ofcom, the fairy lights on your Christmas tree can slow down your WiFi. (The research also revealed that nearly 6 million homes and offices in the UK have underperforming Wi-Fi, and it's not just fairy lights that can affect speeds: other electronic devices, including lamps, speakers, TVs and monitors can, and I believe a wet dog walking through the room will also block the signal. I often get told that WiFi is fine for our online sessions, but now I feel justified in my statement to people, use a broadband cable.)

Britain’s first ever fast pedestrian lane has opened in Liverpool city centre. (Following research that claims 47% of the nation finds slow walking the most annoying aspect of high-street shopping, the Liverpool One shopping centre is going to experiment with a "fast lane".   This seems to follow on from the introduction of "slow lanes" in cities in China.  I wonder if all this means we will start having to indicate to change lanes.

Police forces across the UK will no longer be applying a margin of error for people driving over the speed limit. (For many years British motorists have relied on police allowing a ‘small margin for error’ when the speed dial creeps over the limit. Traditionally, this has been set at 10% plus 2mph of the posted speed limit, so in a 50mph zone, that would be 5mph plus an extra 2mph before the police would have issued a ticket or fine. However, new technology is so accurate that police chiefs are giving the order to crack down on anyone driving over the speed limit, in order to stem the rising number of deaths and serious injuries on British roads. In Scotland, the police force has announced it is abandoning the previous discretionary allowance and will issue any driver exceeding the speed limit by even 1mph with a warning.)

According to the American Mosquito Control Association, mosquitoes can only fly at between 1 to 1.5 miles an hour. (Seemingly air is like treacle to them, due to their size. I don't understand.  If they are so slow, how come they are so difficult to swat?)

A 60mph (mile per hour) speed limit is set to be introduced on some sections of motorways in the UK. (Currently the speed limit is 70mph, and there had been talk of increasing it (Of course this never applies if there are roadworks, or you're on the M25 (good luck getting above 25mph on that monster, I never realised it was named after its top speed)).  The first motorway to be affected will be a 32-mile stretch of the M1 in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire.   The idea is to cut pollution levels to meet EU regulations, and if you're laughing at people in Derby, don't ... it could be brought in on other sections around the country if air quality is deemed to be at risk. The problem for me is that whenever we travel back to the UK, after German motorways, the British motorway system seems to be so slow.) Source:  The Independent

No, it's not a typo, I mean Jenson Bottom (well that's her nickname). Her real name is Jolene Van Vugt and she has just set a new land speed record – on a motorised toilet. (The 31-year-old former motocross champion was performing at performing at the Nitro Circus stunt show, and she managed to speed along at 46mph – 4mph faster than the previous Guinness world record. It's people like her who make me think there's hope for us yet:- ) Source

According to a report published by the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development, in 2010, South Korea had the fastest broadband in the world. (South Korea recorded a nice, healthy, average speed of 14.6 Mbps, while Japan occupied the second spot with an average speed of 7.9 Mbps. Constanta in Romania was found to be the fastest European city for broadband, with internet users able to download at an average of 8.23Mb. And the UK? 26th place! I checked my speed last week, and found I get a measly 3.5Mb. So, it's no wonder it takes me so long to post here!)

Hakskeen Pan, in the Northern Cape of South Africa, is to host the world’s first 1,000mph land speed record attempt in 2012. (Just one little hitch, the Bloodhound Project needs every inch of over an area of 250 million square feet cleared of stones – by hand. They're asking for volunteers - no pay, backbreaking work, but the chance to be in on something historic.)

China has the world's fastest supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A supercomputer, which is capable of carrying out more than 2.5 thousand trillion calculations a second. (The computer has more than 7,000 graphics processors and 14,000 Intel chips and has taken over the top spot from America's XT5 Jaguar at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee, which can only carry out 1.75 petaflops. One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.  I still love the word "petaflop".  It reminds me of Sam.)

Scientists have been measuring the speed of light for three centuries, and they have it down to an accuracy of half a foot per second. The speed of light is 186, 282.3959 miles per second. Which reminds me of the Monty Python song:- Whenever life gets you down Mrs Brown, And things seem hard or tough. And people are stupid, obnoxious, or daft, And you feel that you've had quite enough... Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour, That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned, A sun that is the source of all our power. The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see Are moving at a million miles a day. In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour, Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'. Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars. It's a hundred thousand light years side to side. It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light ye...

The average speed of Heinz tomato ketchup leaving the bottle is 25 miles per year . (That's about the average speed at which I get up in the morning.)