dancingthroughchaos

‘We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.’ – Oscar Wilde

I’m fairly certain that Mr Wilde and I wouldn’t see eye to eye on this subject, nevertheless everything can get a bit serious as the new school year begins even if your kids aren’t that age anymore. I know I still find it difficult to shake off the restrictions of the three term calendar.

In order to lift our spirits or simply distract us, I thought I’d bring you some trivia that I’ve stumbled across while I was busy procrastinating – writers do this a lot so the chances are we have a fairly good grasp of absolutely useless information.

I started actively looking for obscure facts after eating at a not-very-upmarket eatery where I was intrigued by a picture on the wall.   It seemed to portray the juxtaposition of a giraffe and a turnip – not a pairing that you come across frequently.  On closer inspection, it was absolutely that, with the added text informing me that the world’s longest parsnip was measured at 5.7 metres (19ft 2inches for those still in the land of Imperial measurements), which is approximate to the average height of an adult giraffe.  Illustrating the fact so vividly brought home the sheer scale of this particular root vegetable.  

The whole thing felt slightly surreal and before long I’d found another picture declaring the news that the record number for eating Brussel sprouts in a minute is/was held by a man in Switzerland.  How he packed thirty-one away inside sixty seconds is a mystery to me as one who commits to swallowing a maximum of two every 25th December.  Whether this record stands I cannot say, but for anyone who enjoyed the cheery face and demeanour of Roy Castle on record breakers back in the day, feel free to Google to your hearts content.

Meanwhile, I’ll share ten of the best that I came across (all websites were functioning at the time of publication):

1. In deference to the champion Swiss sprout scoffer I can tell you that in his home country no-one is allowed to keep just one guinea pig. Because they are social animals only having one as a pet is considered animal abuse.
2. Because dopamine makes us more creative, you may have your best ideas in the shower. Knowing this, you can now spend considerably more time under those warm water spouts guilt-free and mark it off as research time.
3. Apparently and oddly, a sloth can hold it’s breath for longer than a dolphin (20-40 minutes as opposed to 10 minutes) by simply lowering it’s heart rate.
4. Because cat urine has a high phosphorus content, it glows bright in ultra-violet light. So, if you’re really bored why not get together with your friends and see how clean your cat owners’ house is?
5. The heart of a blue whale is the size of a golf cart, is 1% of it’s body weight and can be heard 2 miles away (by other whales?  Echo location?  Not sure. If you find out, let me know).
6. Before 1524 there was no letter ‘j’ in our alphabet.  The letter ‘i’ was used for both i and j sounds and was brought to us by an Italian grammarian – who knew there was such a thing?
7. Japan boasts over 200 flavours of that two fingered snack we enjoy whenever we want to take a break, including wasabi.  Talk about spoilt for choice!
8. Were you to fall through the centre of the earth (Jules Verne eat your heart out), it would take 42 minutes provided there was no friction and no air resistance. I wonder whether Douglas Adams knew this and hence arrived at 42 as ‘the answer to life, the universe and everything.’
9. Science tells us that potatoes, bananas and spinach are all radio active.. Fear not; you’d have to eat about a thousand bananas to ingest even enough to raise your risk by 1 in a million. Also, our clever bodies ensure that there is not a cumulative build up of potentially lethal potassium Rest easy and enjoy unless you plan to eat a billion at one sitting in which case I would advocate for some medical intervention.
10. The average colour of the universe is called ‘Cosmic latte’. Sounds rather dull in the light of the sheer beauty of so much of what we’ve discovered.  I doubt that any major paint companies will be picking it upon next season’s cooler palette either.

Now that I’ve distracted you from the five hundred and six things on your own to do list, I’ll leave you to either explore the links at your leisure or shake your head in disbelief as I go and re-engage with my own list.

Oh, OK then; just one more: here’s the world’s longest carrot measuring 5.54m (19ft1.96inches) – three times the height of the average man (whoever he is). Enjoy.