Interesting Facts

According to a survey commissioned by broadband provider Plusnet, 1 in 10 people believe that it only takes a small thing to salvage a bad day. (The top 10 things that make us cheerful are:- Doing a good deed for somebody (47 per cent)  Random acts of kindness from strangers (44 per cent)  Stumbling across a bargain (42 per cent) Spontaneous hug (40 per cent) A compliment from a stranger (39 per cent) A car stopping so you can cross the road (36 per cent) Being greeted by a pet (35 per cent) Getting a hand written letter in the post (31 per cent) Your favourite song coming on the radio (31 per cent) A stranger saying hello (30 per cent) Make my day. Try to do / experience at least 5 of these things today.)

According to Matthew Jockers, a University of Nebraska English professor, there are about 6 archetypal plot shapes in fiction. (Using an algorithm that abstracts the structure of plot by looking at how sentiment changes in a story, resulting in a sort of plot graph, from what he calls the man on a hill story - a mainly positive story in which there is a mid-way peak - to the 'man in a hole' story, which tends to follow a character as they get into trouble and crawl back out again. People have been looking at this for a long time, probably in an attempt to get computers to write best sellers. In 2004, Christopher Booker published The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, in which he suggested there were 7 types of tales: rags to riches; overcoming the monster; the quest; voyage and return; comedy; tragedy, and rebirth. Way back in the 18th Century, Italian playwright Carlos Gozzi said there were 36 dramatic situations, which included the revolt; the enigma; madness; i...

According to neuroscientists, children who write using good old fashioned pen and paper learn better than those who use a keyboard. (A study carried out at the University of Stavanger in Norway showed that people who are learning new letters—such as children learning to read for the first time, or as adults picking up a second language with new characters— retain the information best when writing the letters by hand. One of the researchers, Anne Mangen, said, "The movement for “the typing of a T is no different than the typing of a Y. Furthermore, when you write something on the keyboard, you get the visual output somewhere else, on the screen, as opposed to watching your hand when you write on paper." I am so tempted to say "Told you so" again.)

To any teenager who thinks text speak is "new", letters have revealed that Queen Victoria regularly used modern-day contractions such as ‘shd’ and ‘wd’, instead of should and would. (For example, in one note about a visit to Balmoral she wrote:- ‘I have never invited the Duke of Atholl to come over with his men and I think it wd. be better not to do so this year. It wd. entail the encampment of his men in our grounds wh. wd. be inconvenient.’  Not only that, but she had pretty awful handwriting too:-   I just wish I'd known this at school.  My English teacher always marked down my work because of my poor penmanship.) 

For over 70 years Briton Josie Ellis and American Mary Lasch have been penpals. (Through WWII and beyond, they shared all the significant milestones of their lives. After decades of letter writing the pair came face to face for the first time in 2006, but as far as I know they are still writing to each other.) Source

Well, virtual monkeys. Seemingly a computer programmer, Jesse Anderson, programmed a few million virtual monkeys to randomly bash keys on virtual typewriters in an attempt to re-create Shakespeare. (He set out to prove or disprove the long-standing saying of how an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time could write Shakespeare.   The virtual monkeys are small computer programs uploaded to Amazon servers. They regularly pump out random sequences of text nine characters long, each string of text is checked to see if it appears anywhere in the works of Shakespeare. If not, it is discarded. If it does match then progress has been made towards re-creating the works of the Bard.  Using these constraints, mathematicians say it would take “far, far longer than the age of the Universe” for monkeys to write Shakespeare. I haven't got that long, so I'll stick with the original.)

Being either left handed or right handed was once a trait believed to be unique to humans, but it turns out that parrots prefer to use one side of their body more than the other too.  (I wonder if we can teach them to write?!) xx Source - BBC

According to England's chief schools inspector, too many children leave primary school unable to read or write well enough. (The head of Ofsted, Christine Gilbert, said one in five is not at the level expected for English at age 11. Maybe they should make it less of a chore, and a bit more fun. After all since the Factory Acts we've been trying to protect children from exploitation, but now we seem to want to work them to death at school!)

80 years since the last one, a new Winnie-the-Pooh story is to be published. ("Return to the Hundred Acre Wood", written by David Benedictus, is to be released in Britain and the United States on October 5. Well, I've heard of milking the cow, but never of milking the bear.)

The first known examples of writing date back 5500 years. (Markings were found on fragments of pottery at a site called Harappa in Pakistan. Unfortunately it's a bit like my handwriting, nobody can understand what it says.)

Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown says that when he needs inspiration for writing, he hangs upside-down in gravity boots. (Now where did I put my pair?)

The average ballpoint pen can produce between two and three kilometers (up to two miles) of writing. (Not that anyone writes any more - we're all blogging!)

International safety standards state that pen tops should have a hole in the top to minimize the risk involved when children accidently inhale them. I think the idea is that you could continue to breathe throught the hole. (Anyone who knows me knows that they shouldn't just worry about children.)