Useless awesomeness
i) Maggie Thatcher was part of the team of Oxford chemists that invented Mr. Whippy ice cream.

ii) The "Hitler only had one ball" song is a British wartime ditty. When the Russians opened up bits of their Presidential Archive decades later, people were stunned by the fact that according to the autopsy, it was actually true. However, the autopsy report on Hitler has a series of addenda in biro (the rest were typed) which it is suspected were done by a mischievious caretaker.

iii) Arsenal's team were drawn from the Woolwich Arsenal - hence their name. If that doesn't count as being named after an area, then Crystal Palace do very well. There's an area called 'Crystal Palace', but the team isn't from there and never has been - it is named after the Palace, being a team made of workers from it - Palace also shoot down the oft-cited 'Surrey is one of the only three (?)counties without a league club' thing.

iv) The English name for the capital of China is 'Peking'. Beijing is an attempt at making our pronunciation sound more like Mandarin, whereas Peking is from the Cantonese name for it. Posh important people spoke Mandarin though, and plebs spoke Cantonese. Tells you what you need to know about the old Chinese view of Westerners, eh...

v) The Nike Corporation promoted and funded basketball as a sport to allow them to sell their basketball shoes. They did in the USA, now in China. They are very successful, despite the fact that basketball is as much fun as an enema.

vi) Lemmings aren't as suicidal as people think. Their reputation is based on a Disney film which purported to show a mass exodus to a cliff to throw themselves off. In fact it was camera TRICKERY.

vii) County border changes mean that the county town of Surrey (Kingston-upon-Thames) is now no longer in Surrey.

viii) Acronyms - some debatable...
OK = zero killed
SNAFU = 'situation normal' all fucked up*
FUBAR = fucked up beyond all recognition

ix) In Java, there is no concept of race. To be Javanese means to conform to their cultural forms. Consequently, 'you're not very Javanese' is how they'd say you were being weird or rude...

/relurk

* 'situation normal' was the 'we're all okay and nothing odd is going on' call sign in 'Nam.
( Chrysogenated - the Uber-lurker, Mon 21 Mar 2005, 13:35, Reply)