10THINGS WE DIDN'T KNOW THIS TIME LAST WEEK!

10 THINGS

Snippets harvested from the week's news, chopped, sliced and diced for your weekend convenience.

1. People added uranium ore to their water jugs in the 1920s as it was thought to improve health.

2. And Radium-brand toothpaste, condoms and shoe polish were sold as the word was indicative of quality, much as "platinum" is today.

3. Forty-eight percent of the population is ex-directory.
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4. Nasa worked on inflatable spacecraft in the 1960s.
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5. An SAS dog made more than 20 parachute drops in World War II.

6. Red Buttons - real name Aaron Chwatt - took his surname from the nickname for hotel porters, a job he did in his teens.
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7. Nerve cells grow along bundles of a special fibre similar to spider silk.
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8. About 750 copies of Shakespeare's First Folio, which set down 18 plays for the first time, were printed 1623 - some 230 survive.

9. The Severn Estuary has the second highest tides in the world.

10. The postcode with the highest income in the country is KT19 7, for West Ewell, near Epsom in Surrey.

[Sources, where stories are not linked - 1 and 2: Horizon, BBC Two, 13 July. 5: The Times, 13 July. 8: Daily Telegraph, 14 July. 9. Coast, BBC Two, 13 July. 10. Daily Mail, 14 July.]

BBC Magazine