Interesting Facts

Paul Donovan called BT at 7.57pm on Saturday, August 1, to cancel his broadband package. He was put on hold with a pre-recorded message saying the 'lines were busy', a female voice then asked him to hold until one of their operators was free, he waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually, he went to bed, but he didn't disconnect and left his phone on charge. (When he got up on Sunday morning, he was still on hold - 14 hours and 31 minutes later, which is believed to be a UK record, but it's not a world record. That honour goes to Australian Andrew Kahn, who called Qantas Airways to confirm his flight from Adelaide, Australia, to New York City. He phoned the airline at 7:22 on a Wednesday evening and finally hung up at 11:01 Thursday morning. During his wait, he surfed the Internet, slept briefly and caught up on some reading, for 15 hours, 40 minutes and one second. How long would it take you to finally hang up? ) Source

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.)

Thousands of people on Twitter and Facebook observed the two-minute silence on Remembrance Sunday by not tweeting. (A campaign was run by the Royal British Legion to involve social media in the act of respect for the fallen. Called Thunderclap, people authorised their Twitter and Facebook accounts to send the tweet or message that read: 'I'll be remembering the fallen at 11 o'clock #2MinuteSilence #LestWeForget at 9am on Sunday November 11.)

Margaret Thatcher only suffered one parliamentary defeat during her "reign" as prime minister - on Sunday trading laws. (The UK trading act was eventually passed eight years later. But it still faced stiff opposition, and not just from religious groups, trade unions, and even some large stores such as Marks and Spencer and Waitrose were also opposed to the idea. Before Sunday opening, an interesting quote from a fictitious source stated: "If England has not been invaded since 1066, it is because foreigners dread having to spend a Sunday there.")