The Grampound Times

Spring 2008 (Edition 47)
Our community in Cornwall

The Grampound Times
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I have said in earlier editions how much I personally enjoy the assortment of facts and figures that comprise the occasional “DID YOU KNOW” column, so it should not surprise you to realise that at the first next opportunity to include the feature I am doing so. Why don’t you read - marvel - enjoy this latest batch (Ed.)

Did you Know?

  • Legend has it that the mummy of Cleopatra was left in a Paris museum when the treasurers looted from Egypt by Napoleon were returned. In the 1940’s workmen found a mummy case and emptied its contents into the sewers. The case was later identified as that of Cleopatra.

  • The Japanese have the longest life span of any people on Earth.

  • El Dorado was not a city or country of vast treasures of gold as originally thought by the Conquistadors, but the name belonged to the ruler of Columbia, an Indian town near Bogota. In 1969 a golden model of a raft bearing El Dorado and his oarsmen was discovered in a cave near Bogota.

  • According to the Bills of Mortality compiled after the Great Fire of London in 1666, only 6 people died as a result of the conflagration.

  • In the Congo professional corpse painters used to decorate the dead with elaborate art and charge people to see the results.

  • During the Boer War in South Africa a women’s unit called Boer Amazons fought side by side with their men-folk against the British from 1899 to 1902 most effectively in guerrilla actions.

  • Two-thirds of all the lawyers in the world live in the U.S.A

  • All Sumo wrestlers are obliged to join a so-called stable and live a celibate life together in a barracks.

  • Wild Bill Hickok, said to be the fastest gunslinger in the west, was shot from behind during a poker game. The perpetrator was summarily executed.

  • The origin of Punch (and Judy) fame seems to be an Italian puppet created by Silvio Fiorelli in the early 1600’s. He arrived at the Court of King Charles II and since then his popularity has never seriously waned.

  • Only 2 flowering plants grow in Antarctica - one is grass and the other a relative of the carnation.

  • According to scientists the amount of water on Earth has remained the same since the planet was created some 4600 million years ago.

BETTY MURDOCH

 

 

 


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