THE BIG QUESTIONS
My gran tells me that the actor who voiced Paddington Bear in the short movie with the late Queen is from her home town of Wishaw, but can’t recall his name. – L
The actor actually hails from Clifton, in Bedfordshire, but his name is Ben Whishaw.
A rising star, he has won a Bafta in 2012 for his role as Richard II in The Hollow Crown and, in 2019, won another Bafta and an Emmy, for his appearance as Norman in A Very English Scandal.
My uncle took me for a ride in the vehicle he drives at work, a 44-tonne lorry, and I thought it was huge. But what is the world’s biggest drivable vehicle? – E
A 44-tonne lorry is typically around 13.4 metres long and carries 28 tonnes.
However, that’s pretty puny compared to the he largest vehicle I can find, the Bagger 293.
It’s a bucket wheel excavator, an earth-moving machine built in Germany for an open-cast coal mine.
Weighing in at 41,196 tonnes, 220m long and 94m in height, it has 18 buckets fitted to a wheel at the front, each capable of lifting 6,600 litres of earth.
However, top speed is only 0.6kmh.
I heard on the radio the other day that video games have long outsold music albums, so can you tell me the top sellers in each category? – S
Michael Jackson’s Thriller, released in 1982, is believed to have racked up a total of 70,000,000 sales worldwide.
In comparison, the best-selling video game is Minecraft, with a whopping 238,000,000 sales since its release in 2011. The global games market is worth around $200 billion a year.