ON THIS DAY
October 25, 2016
IT’S DAY 299 OF 2016
YOU always see lightning before you hear thunder because light travels at more than 299 million metres per second, while sound moves at just 340 metres per second. Lightning is hotter than the surface of the Sun, reaching temperatures of around 30,000c. PAULA RADCLIFFE still holds the women’s marathon world record of two hours, 15 minutes and 25 seconds that she secured back in 2003, but when she made her national running debut in the English Schools Cross-Country Championships in 1986, she finished in 299th place — though she was just 12 at the time.
THERE ARE 67 DAYS LEFT
OUR belly buttons contain an average of 67 types of bacteria, according to researchers at the North Carolina State University. Several species had only previously been found in the ocean. THE UK’s first nationwide sex survey 67 years ago was deemed so shocking its findings were not published for 50 years. The 1948 Kinsey Report found that one in four men admitted to having had sex with prostitutes, one in five women had had an extra-marital affair, and 20 per cent of men and women said they’d had a homosexual experience.
A BOEINg 747 jumbo jet weighs the same as 67 African elephants.
HILLARY CLINTON managed to speak for six minutes more than rival Donald Trump in last week’s televised debate, despite him interrupting her and host Chris Wallace 67 times — the same number of times he has posted tweets suggesting Barack Obama was not born in the U.S.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
NANCY CARTWRIgHT, 59. Best known for being the voice of Bart Simpson (right) on animated TV show The Simpsons for the past 29 years, she also voices other characters, including Nelson Muntz, Ralph Wiggum and Todd Flanders. She says it’s ‘the best acting job in the world’ because it takes her less than half a day to record an episode. Plus, she gets paid $300,000 (£246,000) per show. KATY PERRY, 32. The U.S. singer-songwriter — ex-wife of comedian Russell Brand — is the only woman to have had five U.S. number ones from a single album, Teenage Dream (sharing the record with Michael Jackson’s Bad). Her insurers ordered her to stop wearing a spinning ‘peppermint bra’ on tour because of fears she’d injure her neck after her hair kept getting caught in it.
BORN ON THIS DAY
PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973), pictured. Since his death, the artist’s name has been used to sell everything from underwear to carpets and Citroen peoplecarriers. His heirs even brought a case against DaimlerChrysler for using the apparently similar name ‘Picaro’. JOHANN STRAUSS II (18251899). Austrian composer who wrote more than 500 dance tunes, most famously the Blue Danube. As a child, he studied the violin secretly with the first violinist of his father’s orchestra, Franz Amon — and was given a severe beating when his father, who wanted his son to become a banker, caught him practising.
ON OCTOBER 25...
IN 1400, geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, died in London. He was the first writer interred in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. IN 1983, U.S. troops invaded the Caribbean island of grenada, a Commonwealth country. Mrs Thatcher was furious that President Reagan hadn’t given her advance warning and he later phoned her to apologise, opening the conversation with: ‘If I were there, Margaret, I’d throw my hat in the door before I came in.’
QUOTE FOR TODAY
The best way out is always through. Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT’S the difference between a wet day and an injured lion? One’s pouring with rain; the other’s roaring with pain.