10 THINGS !

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. Pizza was known as “Italian Welsh rarebit” in 1950s Britain. More details

2. Using a gas-fired patio heater for just one hour can waste enough energy to make 400 cups of tea, according to Friends of the Earth. More details

3 Laurence Olivier and Tintin's creator Herge were born on the same day. More details More details

4. A swarm of bees can ground a Boeing 737. More details

5. On the first day of filming Star Wars in the deserts of Tunisia, the country experienced its first major rainstorm in 50 years and a rest day had to be called. More details

6. Sharks have virgin births. More details

7. Articles of 50,000 words - parliamentary reports in particular - were common in the Times in the early 1890s, just as the first tabloid newspapers came into being.

8. Japanese whalers in the 17th Century buried the foetuses of the pregnant whales they caught in a special graveyard facing out to sea.More details

9. One in four house sales fall through.

10. Captive elephants often don’t know how to look after their young because they don’t work on instinct – in the wild, calves are looked after by the herd and this is how young females learn mothering skills. More details

(Sources, where not linked: 7. A Tabloid is Born, BBC Four, 23 May; 9. Which? online.)
BBC MAGAZINE