A three-pronged approach solved tricky pasta issue
Is it true that, when the German version of The Terminator was being dubbed, Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t allowed to dub his own voice? – D.
It is, as the producers thought that Arnie, who is Austrian, spoke German with a “rural” accent.
They believed that it would be silly to have the Terminator – a death machine from the future – talk with what would sound like a hillbilly voice.
“Hasta la vista, oo-arr!” as he may have said. Can you tell me which car is the fastest? –T.
The fastest production car is the 261mph Bugatti Chiron Sport.
The car land speed record was set at 763mph by Thrust SSC in 1997.
However, the fastest car is actually a Tesla Roadster. Launched into space on Elon Musk’s Falcon Heavy rocket, it is flying through space at a speed of 22,913mph.
As I struggled to chase a prawn round my plate, desperately trying to snare it with my chopsticks in a Chinese restaurant last night, I came up with a Query that I’m sure many other readers would like to know the answer to.
Namely, when did we start using forks to eat? – G.
The fork as we know it has been used since Roman times, and possibly originated in the east of the empire, around Byzantium in the third or fourth Century.
However, the ancient Egyptians used forks, implements with two prongs, sometimes three, as cooking utensils made from carved animal bone as far back as 2000 BC.
What we may think of today as a table fork wasn’t introduced into Western Europe until the year 972,
when Theophano Sklereina, the Byzantine wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II, produced one at a banquet, astonishing her guests.
Italy had strong ties with Byzantium so, by the 11th Century, the fork was becoming more commonplace, though the majority of the population, as in the rest of Europe, still used a large knife and their hands to dine.
But then pasta became a large part of the Italian diet.
At first, pasta was consumed using a long wooden spike, but this eventually evolved into three spikes, a design better suited to gathering pasta, especially noodles.
Eventually, the use of the fork became normal, as it was easier to pick up food from your plate, as I’m sure you realised when you were trying to scoop up your prawns. In my ’70s childhood, Peter Lorimer was often quoted as having the fastest shot in football at 70mph. With today’s lighter balls, I doubt that this is still the fastest. –M.
Sadly, you are correct, and the Leeds and Scotland attacking midfielder no longer holds the record.
In 2001, Spaniard Javier Galan Marin broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest football kick with a blistering shot which reached 80.1mph (129kmh). There is a font called Zapf dingbats, which I often use when writing letters to jazz things up a little. But can you explain the crazy name, please? – S.
Zapf dingbats are symbols such as ■●k pet and ..
Dingbats is the name given to ornamental character in typesetting and computing.
Zapf dingbats were invented by a German font designer, Hermann Zapf in the early ’80s.