1. In the saying, many what will make light work?
2. Following the gruesome nursery rhyme recipe, how many blackbirds would be baked in two pie?
3 Which fruit of grapes, pears and plums is bought by the bunch?
4. What form of transport is the French TGV?
5. Tortillas originally from which country?
6. Which garden linked building gives its name to a climate effect?
7. What was the number of the first Apollo mission to land on the Moon?
8. The Dalai Lama is the spiritualist leader of which country?
9. Around which part of your body would you tie a cummerbund?
10. What did the Romans keep in a catacomb?
11. Which object appears on the Canadian flag?
12. What happens to the rows of letters when reading down an eye-test chart?
13. In Roman numerals what does XX stand for?
14. Which of these is not one of Snow White's seven dwarfs: Funny, Grumpy and Happy?
15. What did David Bowie call his first child?
16. If the first of a month is a Thursday, what day will the eighth be?
17. Cassata is a type of which food?
18. In 'The Wombles', which Great Uncle shares his name with a country?
19. Which side of a ship is starboard?
20. Which colour is usually used to show the sea on a map?
21. Maoris were the first settlers in which country?
22. 'The Deer Hunter' has which war as its subject matter?
23. What is the main language of North America's two main countries?
24. Which vegetable is produced from the plant maize?
25. In which part of the UK was Charlotte Church born?
26. Dennis Bergkamp refuses to use what type of transport?
27. Which weapon is used in Pete Sampras's nickname?
28. Mozambique is on which coast of Africa?
29. Who starred as 007 in 'The World Is Not Enough'?
30. Which sport is covered by the Wisden Almanac?
31. William Henry Gates III became seriously rich through which industry?
32. Which superstar did film producer Guy Ritchie marry in 2000?
33. Which continent is the most crowded and the smallest?
34. Which word describes homes for birds as well as sets of tables?
35. Frank Zappa was leader of the group 'The Mother Of...' what?
36. In which continent is the Amazon rainforest?
37. A hovercraft moves along on a cushion of what?
38. Which one of the following tools is pronged: Hoe, Spade or Rake?
39. What does a person hold in their hand when practising semaphore?
40. Which of the following was a leap year: 1991, 1992 or 1994?
Answers Posted Wed 7th March
http://quiztimeuk.multiply.com/
28.2.07
Weekly Quick Quiz Challenge - Week 5
28th February
| |||
 | |||
 | |||
 | |||
 | 1986: Swedish prime minister assassinated Olof Palme� the prime minister of Sweden� is shot dead and his wife Lisbeth wounded in a street ambush in central Stockholm. | ||
| |||
| 2001: At least 10 die in Selby rail crash Up to 13 are killed and more than 70 injured when a high speed train is hit by a car which careered off the motorway. | |||
| |||
| 1975: Dozens killed in Moorgate Tube crash A London Underground train crashes at Moorgate� killing the driver and at least 29 passengers. | |||
SendToToys 2.5
Configure the 'Send To' menu
Platform Windows 2000, Windows XP Freeware Manufacturer Gabriele Ponti Size 737KbThe Windows right mouse button menu enables you to perform a number of functions, particularly in regards to a file residing on your system. The ‘Send To’ menu is an underutilised part of this menu, yet you can use this menu to send a file to a recipient, copy/move it to your ‘My Documents’ folder and much more.
This ‘Send To’ menu option is highly configurable, if you have the right tool. You can set up a default mailto: recipient and specific folders for your destination.
SendToToys is a tool that will enable you to configure and add or remove entries in to your ‘Send To’ menu. If you want to send an image file to a particular image editor, you can use SendToToys to configure this option. There are many more built-in additional functions. For instance, SendToToys enables you to not only send files to Trash, but also shred the files permanently if you hold down your CTRL key on your keyboard.
Recovery programme for email addicts
Alcoholics have a 12-step programme to tackle their addiction, drug addicts too, and now there is one for those addicted to email.
Forget the mantra "I am so and so and I am an alcoholic", the new programme will have people admitting that email is managing them rather than the other way round, and will help them to tackle their obsession for reading or replying to emails on holiday, in the car and even in the bathroom.
 | |
A life coach for business executives in America devised the plan for cases such as a golfer who checked his BlackBerry after every shot and lost a potential client who thought he was a socially-inept obsessive. Marsha Egan said email misuse could cost businesses millions of pounds in lost productivity.
One of her clients could not walk by a computer — her own or anyone else's — without checking for messages. Another had 3,600 emails in his inbox.
Others wait for emails and send themselves a message if one hasn't shown up for several minutes, she claimed.
Research by King's College London says addiction to email is doubly worrying because such technology depletes cognitive abilities more rapidly than drugs.
Email users suffered a 10 per cent drop in IQ scores, more than twice the fall recorded by marijuana users.
Brothers are last to speak dialect
A rare dialect that is only spoken by two elderly brothers is to be recorded for posterity before it disappears.
Bobby Hogg, 87, and his brother Gordon, 80, are believed to be the last fluent speakers of the "Cromarty fisher dialect". It is said to be the most threatened dialect in Scotland and is to be recorded for an internet-based cultural archive. It evolved when local fishermen in the town of Cromarty, on the Black Isle north of Inverness, picked up words from English soldiers based in the area in the 17th and 18th centuries. The fishermen adopted formal words such as thee, thou and thine, but also mispronunciations, substituting "erring" for "herring" and "hears" for "ears".
Bobby Hogg said: "You hear the odd smattering of it in some of the things people from Cromarty say, but nobody speaks it fluently these days but for us two." His wife Helen added: "My husband is fluent in the Cromarty fisher dialect. I understand it, but his brother is the only other person who can speak it." A spokesman for Am Baile, a Highland internet archive, said it was important to capture a recording of the last two speakers. Robin McColl Miller of Aberdeen University's English department said the Cromarty fisher dialect was the most threatened in Scotland, and one of five different dialects once found in the same small area. Talking Cromarty • Thee're no talkin' licht • Ut aboot a wee suppie for me • Thee nay'te big fiya sclaafert yet me boy • Pit oot thy fire til I light mine |
Spectrum plan threatens radio mic
The future of radio microphones - used at concerts, sporting events, festivals and theatre shows - is under threat from new proposals from Ofcom.
The media regulator is considering auctioning off the spectrum they operate on to the highest bidder, as part of the digital switchover.
Ofcom argues that putting spectrum on the open market is the only way to make sure it is used to its full potential.
Critics say that the spectrum crucial to radio mics needs to be ring-fenced.
The future of the frequencies that radio mics operate on is part of a wider discussion about the allocation of spectrum after the switch from analogue to digital TV.
Many in the entertainment industry are concerned that Ofcom has given no indication of who will control the spectrum after 2012.
Spare channels
Plans to auction the spectrum could see theatres, festival organisers and broadcasters that rely on radio mics squeezed out by those with deeper pockets, such as companies offering mobile services.
Even if radio mics can still operate, sharing the spectrum with others could lead to major interference problems experts say.
"Ofcom needs to have a serious discussion with parties involved in using radio mics and find a way of achieving a sensible outcome," said Brian Copsey, secretary of the Association of Service Providers, a body which obtains spectrum for the entertainment industry.
"We need a way forward to ring-fence this spectrum on a geographical basis. It is important to the whole UK economy. West End theatre sees 12.5m visitors each year and not one of those shows work without radio mics," he added.
Radio mics operate on the so-called interleaved spectrum - spare channels used by broadcasters - which is being reviewed in the lead up to the switch-over from analogue to digital.
Serious problem
Spectrum is an extremely valuable resource - like land or water 
Ofcom proposes that the spectrum be put up for auction, which experts worry will see it bought up by mobile phone companies or digital broadcasters.
"Once the auctioning process is started there will be a range of organisations that are very interested. It is prime spectrum but there are no provisions in Ofcom's proposals to put in place any system for radio mics," said Mr Copsey.
If users of radio mics are forced on to different frequencies, it would mean thousands of pounds of upgrades which theatres and other organisations could ill-afford, he said.
The other alternative - digital mics - is not a magic bullet, despite it being pushed as the way forward by regulators, said Mr Copsey. As well as the expense of buying the new mics there have been other issues in their development, not least the fact that they are less spectrum-efficient, he points out.
Increasingly organisations that rely on radio mics, such as the BBC, are realising that there is a serious problem.
"Ofcom doesn't appear to realise the importance of radio mics in modern production setups," Jules Silvester, resource manager in BBC studios, told the BBC's in-house magazine Ariel.
"We should raise this issue now before it's too late. We need to retain the digital interleaved spectrum for programme makers and special events," he said.
Ofcom maintains that its plans for spectrum are essential if it is to be used to its full potential
"In future there won't be guaranteed access to radio spectrum, which will inevitably create a certain degree of uncertainty," said an Ofcom spokesperson.
Bringing spectrum to the market is not simply about making money though, he said.
"Ofcom's objective is not to raise revenue for the Treasury but to make sure it is used to the full. Spectrum is an extremely valuable resource - like land or water," he added.
Freeze 'condemned Neanderthals'
A sharp freeze could have dealt the killer blow that finished off our evolutionary cousins the Neanderthals, according to a new study. 
The ancient humans are thought to have died out in most parts of Europe by about 35,000 years ago.
And now new data from their last known refuge in southern Iberia indicates the final population was probably beaten by a cold spell some 24,000 years ago.
The research is reported by experts from the Gibraltar Museum and Spain.
They say a climate downturn may have caused a drought, placing pressure on the last surviving Neanderthals by reducing their supplies of fresh water and killing off the animals they hunted.
Sediment cores drilled from the sea bed near the Balearic Islands show the average sea-surface temperature plunged to 8C (46F). Modern-day sea surface temperatures in the same region vary from 14C (57F) to 20C (68F).
In addition, increased amounts of sand were deposited in the sea and the amount of river water running into the sea also plummeted.
Southern refuge
Neanderthals appear in the fossil record about 350,000 years ago and, at their peak, these squat, physically powerful hunters dominated a wide range, spanning Britain and Iberia in the west to Israel in the south and Uzbekistan in the east.
Our own species, Homo sapiens, evolved in Africa, and displaced the Neanderthals after entering Europe about 40,000 years ago.
During the last Ice Age, the Iberian Peninsula was a refuge where Neanderthals lived on for several thousand years after they had died out elsewhere in Europe. 
These creatures (Homo neanderthalensis) had survived in local pockets during previous Ice Ages, bouncing back when conditions improved. But the last one appears to have been characterised by several rapid and severe changes in climate which hit a peak 30,000 years ago.
Southern Iberia appears to have been sheltered from the worst of these. But about 24,000 years ago, conditions did deteriorate there.
This event was the most severe the region had seen for 250,000 years, report Clive Finlayson, from the Gibraltar Museum; Francisco Jimenez-Espejo, from the University of Granada, Spain; and colleagues.
Their findings are published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.
Rare event
"It looks pretty severe and also quite short," Professor Finlayson told BBC News.
"Things like olive trees and oak trees that are still with us today managed to ride it out. But a very fragmented, stressed population of Neanderthals - and perhaps other elements of the fauna - did not."
The cause of this chill may have been cyclical changes in the Earth's position relative to the Sun - so-called Milankovitch cycles.
But a rare combination of freezing polar air blowing down the Rhone valley and Saharan air blowing north seems to have helped cool this part of the Mediterranean Sea, contributing to the severe conditions. 
More detailsGorham's Cave on Gibraltar shows evidence of occupation by groups of Neanderthals until 24,000 years ago. But thereafter, researchers have found no signs of their presence.
However, in an interesting new development, scientists are also now reporting another site, from south-east Spain, which has yielded evidence for the late survival of Neanderthals.
In a study published in the journal Geobios, Jose Carrion, Santiago Fernandez Jimenez, from the University of Murcia; and colleagues analysed pollen from soil layers at Carihuela cave to determine how vegetation had changed in the area during the past 15,000 years.
They also obtained ages for sediment samples from the cave, using radiocarbon dating and uranium-thorium dating.
Sediment layers containing Neanderthal tools were found to date from 45,000 years ago until 21,000 years ago.
Caution needed
These radiocarbon dates are "raw", and do not exactly correspond to calendar dates. They cannot therefore be compared directly with those from Gibraltar, which are calibrated.
Spanish archaeologists carried out a detailed excavation of Carihuela between 1979 and 1992. But the cave is currently closed due to a dispute between national and regional governments over rights to dig there.
Neanderthal bones have also been excavated from these sediment units, including a male skull fragment which could potentially be very recent. But Professor Carrion is reluctant to draw conclusions.
"The human bones have been recovered in different excavation campaigns over 50 years. The relationship between them and the dates I provide must be treated with caution," Professor Carrion told BBC News.
He added that sediments in parts of the cave could have been churned up, mixing old bones in with younger material.
Clive Finlayson suggested the late Neanderthal dates from Carihuela might agree well with those from Gibraltar once they were calibrated.
Peddle your porn if you must, but don't preach
By Boris Johnson
Phwoar. This is the stuff. Excuse me while I loosen my tie and wipe the computer screen. It's getting a bit steamed up in here.
As love scenes go, this prose certainly beats the hell out of that bit in the Wide Sargasso Sea. It's up there with the business in Birdsong where the chap meets the lonely French housewife. In fact I'd say it's even hotter than the opening of The Godfather, you know, with the bride's eldest brother and the bridesmaid in the broom cupboard.
It's - well, I am only about a quarter of the way through a massive 4,022 word dispatch from Sydney, Australia, and - boy oh boy - I don't know how much detail you can take.
It's a report about the famous film star who has it away with a Qantas flight attendant in the toilet at 35,000ft, and for all those tragic members of the male sex who have ever wondered how a gorgeous 5ft 9in blonde Australian air stewardess might respond to your overtures, here is the answer.
"He held my hands. Then he started kissing me. The kissing was very passionate and his hands were all over me. I just melted. He was caressing my neck, holding my head and starting to undo the buttons on my dress. The way he was going, he would have made love to me right there.
I was very turned on and so was he. I had butterflies in my stomach. I was touching his face and hair. He had beautiful skin. I was undoing his shirt as well " - and then I am afraid it becomes frankly unsuitable for a chaste newspaper such as this one.
I can almost hear the marmalade dropping across the nation, and people asking me indignantly what my purpose is in recycling this filth; and the answer is that this bizarre piece of porn is in fact of great political interest and importance, because it is of a kind that appears almost daily in a certain tabloid newspaper.
The paradox, the mystery, is that this paper - let us call it the Beast - is just about the most savage and hysterical and reactionary paper in Britain. In common with some other tabloids, the Beast's columnists and editorialists seem to believe that Britain has collapsed into a Hogarthian stew of licence.
They slobber and fume about marital breakdown and divorce and single parents and degeneracy of all kinds. They rave about swearing on television, and the casual pornography of the airwaves.
They denounce the daily exposure of our children to sexual material; and yet how do they stuff their news pages? They get their ace reporter to fly half way round the world, laden with hundreds of thousands of pounds, and they buy the story of some poor misguided girl who should have known better, and then they quote her in the manner of a Readers' Wives column.
You want more? You don't? Never mind: here goes. "Eventually I couldn't bear it any longer. I just grabbed his hand and said, 'Come in here a minute.' By this time we had half our clothes off and I didn't care about anything. I led him to the cabin lavatory next to where we had been sitting and locked the door "
At which point I am afraid it becomes truly dirty, and the point is we would all be in blissful ignorance of this pornography if it had not been for the Beast's decision to flex its massive cheque book, and we are therefore entitled to ask what on earth the tabloids think they are doing.
How can they cope in this bordello, all those moralising columnists of the Beast? How can they mount their pulpits, whilst simultaneously purveying these scenes of fornication?
There they are, these moral mullahs, lining up like the bearded women in Monty Python's Life of Brian, to shriek and throw stones at the very practices so lovingly detailed in their own pages.
How can they do it? For the benefit of those people who have never read the tabloid press, and for all those sensitive foreigners who are appalled at the British media, let me explain.
The first thing to grasp is that these tabloids sell sex. That is the name of the game. Every day for the past fortnight, the Beast has been trying to boost sales with some red-hot DVD called Sins or Jackie Collins's Guide to Adultery, or whatever; and every week these tabloid papers pry, bribe, lie and bug in order to reveal that human beings are sometimes engaged in carnal activity.
They then publish these titillating details, which are devoured across the land with a mixture of gratitude and self-disgust, and which are indispensable to maintaining circulation.
But you cannot just give the public a tide of sex. People don't want to feel dirty, or that their baser instincts are being manipulated. It is therefore vital, if you are a tabloid editor, simultaneously to purport to disapprove of the filth you purvey.
That is why you also hire lots of columnists to engage in bishop-like finger-wagging, to legitimate the sexual revelations; and of course the more disapproval there is, the more titillating it all is.
That is the beautiful symmetry; that is the magnificent hypocrisy of the product. The moralising intensifies the pleasure of reading the revelations, just as Gladstone intensified his pleasure in encountering prostitutes by flailing himself later on. The exercise is therefore essentially literary, and to that extent it is not to be taken seriously.
Reactionary tabloid attitudes may often be justified. But they fulfil the same literary function as the articles about economics in Playboy - ballast intended to boost the excitement of the main attraction.
I make these points, because I sometimes worry that politicians care too much about these tabloid fulminations, when the editors don't really mean to be serious, and don't really have a moral position. If they did, we would all be obliged to investigate the private lives of tabloid editors, to see whether they could really pass judgment on the rest of us.
Did any tabloid editor ever have the slightest whiff of cannabis at university? Hmm? Come on, 'fess up. On the other hand, maybe we just don't want to know. Carry on peddling the porn, folks, but don't expect us to listen to the hellfire sermon.
Boris Johnson is MP for Henley
Giant step to discovering alien life
Astronomers have captured enough light from two planets far beyond our own solar system to reveal details of their chemical make-up, marking a new phase in the search for extraterrestrial life.
By analysing the faint glow of one of these alien worlds they have found tentative evidence that suggests the presence of chemicals which play a role in one theory of how life began on Earth. The chemicals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, may have helped the formation of RNA, the ancestral genetic material of DNA, the building-blocks of life on our own planet. Although this planet seems to lack water and is at a searing 800 C - which is thought to be much too hot for life - three teams announce today they have successfully carried out the feat on this and one other alien world, marking a breakthrough in the development of techniques capable of scouring the cosmos for signs of life. The research builds on earlier work with the Hubble Space Telescope which detected sodium, hydrogen and carbon from starlight passing through the atmosphere of the planet with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and shows that it is possible to measure the chemical make-up of "extrasolar" planets - those outside our solar system - and to hunt for the chemical markers of life in the far-flung reaches of space. Of the 200 alien planets so far detected in the 20 billion planetary systems estimated to be in our galaxy alone, 14 pass in front of their parent stars of which two are bright enough to be analysed by the new method, which reveals the signatures of particles and gases present in a planet's spectrum, like fingerprints. By reading these fingerprints, researchers can learn about an atmosphere's composition and even deduce the presence of clouds, perhaps even the presence of life - if it comes in a form that we can recognise. Jeremy Richardson of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, and colleagues describe today in the journal Nature how they have obtained the infrared spectrum of the extrasolar planet, HD 209458b, nicknamed Osiris, which orbits a Sun like star in the constellation Pegasus using the Spitzer Space Telescope, a £400 million instrument launched in 2003. Similar conclusions are reached using the same data, analysed by a team led by Mark Swain at JPL. And another spectrum is reported by Carl Grillmair of the Spitzer Science Centre Caltech and colleagues who studied another exoplanet, HD 189733b. This is a technical tour de force because light from the parent stars swamps the relatively dim glow of the planets. Working with Drake Deming, Karen Horning, Sara Seager and Joseph Harrington, Richardson observed the infra red light spectrum of the planet and parent star together before the planet passed behind the star, and again whilst it was hidden behind the star. By subtracting their measurements during these two three-hour long eclipses, they were able to infer the planet's own rainbow like spectrum, even though it took the light around 150 years to reach the Spitzer. Because the spectrum contains lines corresponding to where chemicals absorb or emit light, forming dark and bright bands, they can probe the conditions of its atmosphere. The planet is a so called "hot Jupiter," that is a gas giant like our own Jupiter, but orbiting much closer to its parent star, some 10 times closer than Mercury is to our Sun. Calculations of what the spectrum of such a planet would look like if it contained water vapour do not fit today's measurements, suggesting it is dry, or that the vapour is hidden under thick clouds. The planet seems to contain silicate dust at high altitudes, according to one broad emission peak, a mineral common on Earth and in our Solar System. There is also an unidentified feature in the spectrum, a much sharper peak at a wavelength of around 7.78 micrometres, which is hard to identify but may correspond to polycyclic aromatic hyrocarbons, or PACs, ("a more exotic possibility"), and what the team says are "several other suggestive features." Another planet, called known as HD 189733b. was studied in a similar way by a team led by Grillmair. "In a sense, we're getting our first sniffs of air from an alien world," said his colleague David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. "And what we found surprised us. Or more accurately, what we DIDN'T find surprised us." "We expected to see common molecules like water, methane, or carbon dioxide," explained Grillmair. "But we didn't see any of those. The spectrum was flat, with no molecular fingerprints that we could detect." The planet HD 189733b is another hot Jupiter that orbits a star slightly cooler and less massive than the Sun located 63 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Vulpecula. Theoretical calculations by different teams unanimously predicted that water vapour should be the most obvious spectral feature. However, the fingerprint of water was also missing from HD 189733b. Astronomers also expected a prominent signature of methane, but that was missing as well. "The most fundamental thing we predicted was wrong," said Grillmair, co-author of a report in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Additional observations should clarify these puzzling finds and, although the modest size of the Spitzer Space Telescope currently limits scientists to studying the brightest planets that pass before stars, the bigger James Webb Space Telescope should be able to measure the spectrum of a 'hot Earth', a rocky planet like our own close to its parent star. Although several attempts at carrying out this technique have been made from Earth-based observatories, no spectrum has yet been measured for any extrasolar planets until now. "It's incredibly significant and a fantastic achievement," commented Prof Alan Fitzsimmons of Queen's University Belfast. "This is a momentous observation - it is the first detailed spectrum of an exoplanet and will enable our understanding of their atmospheric structure to be placed on a firm footing for the first time," said his colleague, Dr Don Pollacco. "Amazing." "This is clearly an observational tour de force," commented Hugh Jones of the University of Hertfordshire. "The somewhat strange appearance of the spectrum (not predicted by the models) continues the usual trend in this field of finding the unexpected. "Models for Jupiter mass planets orbiting with three day orbits around their host star are new and exceedingly complex. They require a wide range of high temperature physics and chemistry much of which is rather poorly understood. From the description this is a ropey spectrum which they have explained by fitting ad hoc/uncertain models. "Further observations of HD209458 and other brighter transiting planets within the next year or two should enable a much cleaner spectrum to be derived for hot Jupiter exoplanets." Both NASA and the European Space Agency are planning space telescopes that will hunt specifically for Earth-like worlds.
|
NZ fishermen land colossal squid
New Zealand fishermen have caught what is expected to be a world-record-breaking colossal squid. 
Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton said the squid, weighing an estimated 450kg (990lb),took two hours to land in Antarctic waters.
Local news said the Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni was about 10m (33ft) long, and was the first adult colossal squid landed intact.
One expert said calamari rings made from it would be like tractor tyres.
"I can assure you that this is going to draw phenomenal interest. It is truly amazing," Steve O'Shea from Auckland's University of Technology told local media.
Colossal squid, which are found deep in Antarctic waters, are thought to be about the same length as giant squid (Architeutis dux) but are much heavier.
The species was first identified in 1925, but very few specimens have been found.
The first specimen recovered intact, a 150kg (330lb) immature female, was caught on the surface in the Ross Sea near the Antarctic coast in April 2003.
'Nearly dead'
Mr Anderton said the fishermen had been fishing for Patagonian toothfish in deep Antarctic waters when the squid - which was eating a toothfish - was caught.
"The squid was almost dead when it reached the surface, and the careful work of the crew was paramount in getting this specimen aboard in good condition," he said.
The squid was frozen in the ship's hull and brought back to New Zealand for scientific examination.
"The colossal squid has just arrived in New Zealand and it is likely that it is the first intact adult male colossal squid to ever be successfully landed," Mr Anderton said.Pub News
Top stories:
Lancashire pub seizes Cumberland sausage crown
The Fence Gate Inn throws down the gauntlet to rival county
Big D turns up the heat
New recipe for relaunch of Chilli nuts
Pupils pop to the pub for lunch
Somerset pub serving up school dinners
Young pub chef up for regional award
Chris Penn of the Harris Arms in Taste of the West finals
Imported meat 'most plausible' cause of bird flu outbreak
Defra report focuses on Hungarian meat imports
Steak with source?
MLC wants pubs to identify the origins of meat on the menu
Leading pubco cuts trans fatty acids
A leading managed pub company is pioneering cutting trans fatty acids from pubs.
More news this month:
3663 puts an extra month in the year- Classeq cleans up at The Publican Live
- Customers hit the road for pub food
Pub Food features:
Beer and food matching: Best combinations
We ask our panel of beer and food expert what dish goes well with a pint of Best
North West Focus Food: Buzz about bangers
Lancashire licensee Kevin Berkins' sausages have made his pub food famous
Fuller's grows its own chefs
Fuller's ensures the quality of its food by training its chefs to high standards
Food with a Punch
The Spirit acquisition and the looming smoking ban are driving Punch's focus
Product Trial: Roll with it
The Red Lion found Jus-Rol All Butter pastry made perfect pies
Kitchen refurb focus: Time for a makeover?
A new kitchen is the engune room of caf� bar Grahams on the Green
Cricket World Cup: a Caribbean flavour
Spicier dishes are increasingly popular, so here's some ideas to add to your menu
Mysterious bones of Jesus, Joseph and Mary
In a scene worthy of a Dan Brown novel, archaeologists a quarter of a century ago unearthed a burial chamber near Jerusalem.
Inside they found ossuaries, or boxes of bones, marked with the names of Jesus, Joseph and Mary.
Then one of the ossuaries went missing. The human remains inside were destroyed before any DNA testing could be carried out.
While Middle East academics doubt that the relics belong to the Holy Family, the issue is about to be exposed to a blaze of publicity with the publication next week of a book.
Entitled The Jesus Tomb and co-written by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, the book promises the inside story of "what may very well be the greatest archaeological find of all time".
Some of the ossuaries will be at the book launch in New York, released by the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The story began in March 1980 when Yosef Gat, an archaeologist employed by the IAA, surveyed a burial chamber on the south-eastern approaches of Jerusalem.
The area was being developed into the latest suburb of the city, East Talpiot, and bulldozers had uncovered an archaeological site.
Mr Gat found a standard-looking Jewish tomb dating from the era of King Herod, the Jewish king known for his ambitious building works and for his murder of infants at the time of the birth of Jesus.
After crawling into the necropolis Mr Gat found the main chamber had been silted up with soil and debris, with six "kokhim", coffin shaped spaces leading off the main chamber where human remains were housed.
According to Jewish rites, bodies would be left for a year or so to decompose in the "kokhim" before relatives came back to gather the bones and store them in ossuaries.
Mr Gat found 10 ossuaries bearing inscriptions. Some were in ancient Greek and some were in Hebrew.
One inscription said "Jesus, son of Joseph", another said "Mara", a common form of Mary, and another said "Yose", a common form of Joseph.
The authors were unavailable for comment yesterday but it is understood they base their claim that the burial chamber contained the remains of the Holy Family on their own study carried out inside the structure.
The chamber has been closed for years because a building was constructed on top of it but the authors got permission to break through an apartment block floor.
They claim to have found human material on which they performed DNA testing in a New York laboratory.
"Tests prove the names are genetically of the same family and statistically, there is a one in 10 million chance this is a family other than the Holy Family," the pre-publication publicity for the book said.
However, according to strict Christian teaching, Jesus ascended to heaven, so there would be no bones left behind.
Mr Gat died several years ago. His boss, Prof Amos Kloner said that while the names together had "a certain power" they are standard.
"At least three other ossuaries have been found inscribed with the name Jesus and countless others with Joseph and Mary," he said.
The 10 ossuaries were taken initially to the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum outside the Old City of Jerusalem. Nine were catalogued and stored but the tenth was left outside in a courtyard.
That ossuary has subsequently gone missing.
The story went cold until two accounts of the discovery were published by Israeli academics in the mid 1990s. Prof Kloner wrote the second one in the IAA's in-house magazine Atiquot in 1996.
It sparked publicity, most notably a BBC programme shown that Easter produced by Ray Bruce called The Body In Question. However, Prof Kloner said there was no way the tomb housed the Holy Family.
"It is just not possible that a family who came from Galilee, as the New Testament tells us of Joseph and Mary, would be buried over several generations in Jerusalem."
However, in this Dan Brown era, we can't help wondering.
10 things we didn't know last week
Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.
1. Two cups of spearmint tea a day is thought to control excessive hair growth for women.
More details
2. Less than 5% of cohabiting couples stay together for longer than 10 years.
3. A baby can survive being born after a gestation period of 22 weeks.
More details
4. Dog bites have doubled in 10 years, judging by admissions to hospital.
More details
5. Chimpanzees make their own spears for hunting.
More details
6. Cross-country skiing is a useful skill to have when exploring the moon.
More details
7. Poor maths is costing UK shoppers £800m a year because they don’t notice when they are short-changed.
8. Peter Hain’s house in Neath has a dancefloor.
9. Trabants were made from plasticised cotton waste, called Duroplast.
More details
10. Tony Blair still plays his guitar most days.
More details
Sources: 2: the Times, 22 February; 7: Scotsman, 21 February; 8: Aga magazine;
Does tallness make you a potential medal winner?
UK Sport is running a campaign to find tall people who might have the ability to help Great Britain do well in the medals at the 2012 Olympics. But is it possible to find the stars of tomorrow just from their physical characteristics?
If you are a man who is over 6ft 3in (190cm) or a woman who is over 5ft 11in (180cm), and you are between 16 and 25, your country may need you.
The British athletics powers-that-be have decided that Great Britain must do well in the medals table in 2012 and they are now getting into the business of "systematic talent identification" and "talent detection" to make sure this happens.
The first targets are rowing, handball and volleyball, but candidates from all sports on show at the games - bar tennis and football - will be considered.
There have been many programmes over the years, most famously in the old Soviet Bloc countries and China, which have sought to identify genetic ability at sport at an early age in order to enhance the prospect of success with intensive training and development.
Modern proponents of talent identification include Australia and Brazil. Countries are often tempted to institute a systematic programme ahead of hosting the Olympics, with South Korea following that path for the 1988 games.
But UK Sport believes talent can be identified among those in their early 20s. They are particularly looking for people who may be training hard in a sport they are not excelling at. Matched to a more suitable sport, they may flourish.
There is an established domestic precedent in rowing. Universities encourage people who have never tried the sport to join a fast track if they meet certain physical criteria, largely regarding height and weight.
UK Sport cites the example of Anna Bebington, who began rowing in 2001 at the age of 18 at university, started intensive training two years later and by 2005 was competing in the world championships.
Other examples include Shelley Rudman, who took up skeleton bob a mere four years before securing a silver medal at the Winter Olympics. She had previously been a 400m hurdler.
Rebecca Ramiro made the jump from rowing to track cycling four years ago after a back injury and has already won medals. Jason Queally made the transition from water polo player to medal-winning track cyclist.
But as unlikely as the transitions might seem, many of the sports involved have upper body strength as a factor. If you're only OK at one, perhaps you might be outstanding at another.
Chelsea Warr, UK Sport talent identification lead officer, says one of the main characteristics scouts are looking for is "games intelligence", the innate ability some people have to be in the right place at the right time to take or make a pass or make a tackle. "Coachability" and physical characteristics make up the rest of the package.
They are most likely to get results from diverting people into rowing, handball and volleyball but are also looking at candidates for other sports. But those who have never played any sport should probably not bother applying.
"Could we find a couch potato and take them through to the Olympics - it could happen but it's unlikely."
But there are sports out there where physical characteristics matter more. Basketball scouts from US schools and colleges have always cultivated contacts in Africa, where tall tribes such as the Dinka, have contributed some of the US NBA's best-known players.
Basketball journalist Mark Woods explains: "Particularly in high schools, you hear of someone who is 7ft and they have moulded them into a players."
Zairean Dikembe Mutombo came to the US on a medicine scholarship but was encouraged to take up basketball by college coaches and enjoyed a successful NBA career.
Britain's own basketball star John Amaechi was spotted in Manchester by a coach as a 16-year-old who suggested he took up the game, Woods says.
Elsewhere Dinka tribesman Manute Bol, at 7ft 7in (231cm) one of the tallest players ever to be a professional, was encouraged to come to the US by a visiting college coach.
And there have always been rumours that Chinese superstar Yao Ming's father (reported to be as tall as 6ft 10 in) and his 6ft 3in mother were encouraged in their romance by the Chinese sporting authorities, who dreamed of a future star.
The same authorities will no doubt be delighted that Yao is in a long-term relationship with Ye Li, a 6ft 3in star of the women's game.
There could be some player in the pipeline.
Quiz scandal
TV host Richard Madeley has said he and wife Judy Finnegan are "livid" about problems with the You Say, We Pay quiz on their Channel 4 show. 
It follows claims that callers were told to phone a premium rate number even after contestants had been chosen.
Speaking to the Daily Mirror Madeley said: "I think it is a cock-up, not a conspiracy. We're angry on behalf of our viewers."
Channel 4 said it plans to refund the callers or donate the money to charity.
Hotline
A freephone hotline has been set up for anyone who believes they were not correctly entered into the competition.
Channel 4 has promised to donate any cash profit they may have made during the competition to Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Premium rate phone regulator Icstis has also launched an investigation.
Icstis said it would look into the matter as quickly as possible, owing to the "big public interest" in the allegations.
It seems some callers have not been properly entered into the competition
The presenters claim they were unaware of the issue surrounding the quiz, which has been suspended until the investigation is complete.
Speaking on the show, Finnegan said: "Many of you will have read over the weekend and today that some problems have come to light with the You Say We Pay competition.
"It seems some callers have not been properly entered into the competition."
Madeley continued: "A full investigation has been launched to find out exactly what's happened, and we won't be running You Say We Pay for the time being. "
Finnegan added: "Richard and I knew nothing about this until late on Friday afternoon - we were very shocked and also angry on your behalf. We're very sorry."
It is being reported this scandal could cost Channel 4 thousands.
Leaked emails
A spokesman for the broadcaster said: "We cannot confirm any figures and we would caution against extrapolating them because the number of calls varies significantly from week to week."
However the network has admitted the problem affects the current and last series of the show.
The Mail on Sunday claimed leaked emails showed that the quiz's premium rate entry line continued to be promoted after a contestant had been selected.
Icstis spokesman Rob Dwight said the regulator would ask to view the evidence that led to the Mail on Sunday article.
It will also talk to Channel 4, production company Cactus TV and Eckoh, the provider of the £1-a-time phone service.
"As a consumer protection body, we have a duty to investigate all complaints, so that is what we will be doing," Mr Dwight said.
The Mail on Sunday claimed it had obtained a copy of a message sent by Eckoh to Cactus TV timed at 1709 GMT last Wednesday, listing 24 names and numbers.
But ten minutes later the programme again invited callers to try their luck on the quiz, the report said.This is how you stop an apocalyptic asteroid
Attempts to save mankind by smashing asteroids as they head towards Earth may do more harm than good, scientists believe.
) | |
Rather than Hollywood's preferred option, engineers are trying to develop unmanned rockets that can land on space rocks and use the asteroids' own material to propel them into a safer orbit.
The plan will be detailed at a conference, sponsored by Nasa next month, at which its scientists will reveal their -estimate that 100,000 asteroids orbiting near Earth are large enough to destroy a city. So far the agency has only been able to identify and track 4,000 of them.
Just one football pitch-sized asteroid smashing into the planet would create destruction on a terrifying scale, wiping out any area it hit, sending flaming debris into the atmosphere and causing tidal waves. Scientists claim that it is only a matter of time before one is found on a collision course.
Research to be unveiled at the three-day Planetary Defence Conference in Washington DC will reveal that defending the Earth may not be as simple as suggested by films such as Armageddon in which Bruce Willis's character destroys a giant asteroid using a nuclearbomb.
Gianmarco Radice of Glasgow University will be one of more than 200 scientists at the conference. He said: "A nuclear blast may cause it to fragment. So instead of having one large object on an impact course, you have five largish objects.
"Also, we do not know a huge amount about the composition of these asteroids. Some are made of rock, others are ice while others are just piles of rubble. If you smash something into a pile of rubble, it will just break up and then reform by gravity."
Nasa has already tested the approach by smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid in its Deep Impact mission last year. The European Space Agency is planning a similar test, sending a craft to smash into a 500-yard wide asteroid while another spacecraft -monitors the results.
Now an engineering firm in Atlanta, Georgia, has been commissioned by Nasa to develop a new kind of mission to land on an asteroid, drill through the surface and pump the debris into space. Anchoring several unmanned spacecraft, nicknamed Madmen, to an asteroid and ejecting material, would produce enough force in the opposite direction to push an asteroid slowly off its dangerous course.
"It is like throwing rocks out of a rowing boat on a lake. The rocks go in one direction and the boat is slowly pushed in the other under the laws of physics," said John Olds, the chief executive of SpaceWorks, the firm behind the scheme. "Over several months we think we can make the difference between a hit and a miss." Astronomers fear that a 400-yard wide asteroid will pass dangerously close to the Earth within 30 years. Typically, one the size of a football pitch strikes every 100 years or so, and it is also almost 100 years since the last major impact which caused an explosion equivalent to a 15 megaton nuclear bomb in Tunguska, Siberia on June 30, 1908.
Fears were heightened in 2004 by the discovery of a 45 million-ton rock orbiting the Sun called Apophis, which will pass just 22,000 miles from the Earth in April 2029. In 2036, it will have a close encounter. Some scientists calculate it may even hit the planet.
Nasa believes that it has managed to identify nearly 90 per cent of all asteroids larger than 1,000 yards. These are capable of causing a -global disaster, throwing huge amounts of debris into the air and have historically caused widespread extinction.
Dictionary of despair
A linguistic raw nerve has been prodded.
Hundreds of responses from anguished readers have come into The Daily Telegraph offices in response to Christopher Howse's article on Saturday exploring the clumsy phrases that most irritate us.
The list of the accused is wide-ranging — from politicians to senior police officers, education authorities and even BBC Radio 3 announcers.
Derek O'Connor, whose letter can be read in today's newspaper, lamented "the flagrant over-use of engage, when what is meant is involve, co-operate or participate".
Mr O'Connor wrote: "It seems that clarity of expression is to be avoided at all costs in case it commits the speaker unequivocally to some well-defined course of action."
Richard Johnson complained: "The over-use of having said that is a constant irritation to me where a simple nevertheless or even but will usually suffice."
An infuriated Janet Walkley declared: "From now on I shall be using the term similar from (as the natural opposite of different to) and anticipate some interesting discussions with pedantic modernists."
Elsewhere, Mike Appleton wondered "why do Radio 3 announcers persist in using phrases such as. . . recorded back in 1985 or. . . from a performance back in 1953?"
And Gina Brown, a primary school governor, wrote: "I was stunned to discover that pupils are now supposed to be referred to as learners. What I don't understand is who on earth decides there is something wrong with words like 'pupils' and how much are we paying them? Whatever it is, it's too much!"
For some, a talent for empty phraseology is practically a job requirement.
As Steve Bowers pointed out, a man "will never become a politician unless he is able to deal with a problem by putting in place a full range of measures".
And so it continued — from added bonus and new innovation to first invented by, hikes and rafts of, a dictionary of despair is being compiled across a frustrated nation.
27th February
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
 | 2002: Hindus die in train fire A fire on a train in India results in the deaths of 57 Hindu pilgrims returning from the disputed holy site of Ayodhya. | ||
| |||
| 1975: PC murder linked to IRA bomb factory Scotland Yard says the man who shot dead a police officer in London yesterday had been staying in a flat used as a "bomb factory" by the IRA. | |||
| |||
| 1963: Argoud charged over de Gaulle plot Antoine Argoud� President De Gaulle's arch enemy and a former colonel in the French Army� is charged with an assassination attempt. | |||
BitTorrent download portal debuts
The creators of the BitTorrent file-sharing network have opened the doors on a legal download service.
The BitTorrent Entertainment Network launched on 26 February and gives subscribers access to a large catalogue of movies, music and videos.
It has the backing of several movie and TV studios and will build on the large numbers of existing BitTorrent users.
However, it will face stiff competition from the many other multimedia stores and video sites found online.
Hard task
At launch the service will have about 3,000 movies and TV shows available from companies such as Warner Brothers, Paramount, MTV, MGM, 20th Century Fox and Lionsgate.
New releases will include films such as Superman Returns and featured TV shows will include 24 and Prison Break.
We need to give them a price that feels like a good value relative to what they were getting for free
New movies will cost $3.99 (£2) but older films will cost $2.99 to download. TV shows will be $1.99 though high definition versions will be $2.99. There is no official word yet on non-US prices.
Once downloaded the TV shows available via the service can be kept indefinitely but movies can only be stored for up to 30 days. Anyone signing up must also use Windows Media Player to watch or listen to anything they download.
BitTorrent also hopes to encourage the creation of a community around the entertainment site where customers will be able to post videos they have made for others to download.
The market for multimedia portals is starting to get crowded and BitTorrent will face competition from Amazon, Apple, Wal-Mart , Microsoft's Xbox as well as from YouTube, Joost and the CinemaNow and Movielink sites.
The BitTorrent software is thought to have been installed on more than 135 million computers and the BitTorrent company hopes to persuade some of those users to sign up for its entertainment service.
However, it acknowledges that it will have a hard task convincing those who currently get all the movies, TV shows and music they want without paying.
"We're really hammering the studios to say, 'Go easy on this audience,'" said Ashwin Navin, co-founder and president of BitTorrent. "We need to give them a price that feels like a good value relative to what they were getting for free."
12.2.07
National 'sex quiz' reveals British ignorance
A national "sex quiz" has revealed widespread confusion and misunderstandings about some of the facts of life. One in three people thinks vigorous exercise, visiting the bathroom or washing after sex will stop her getting pregnant, and half of people do not know when a woman is most fertile. |
Nearly nine in 10 had no idea how long sperm could live inside the female body, precipitating pregnancy.
Launching Contraceptive Awareness Week, the FPA said the results of its sex quiz showed sex and relationships education "must become a statutory subject in the national curriculum".
Its survey, conducted by pollsters Gfk NOP among a representative 500 people, was based on common questions asked by callers to the FPA’s national helpline, the charity said.
Anne Weyman, chief executive of the FPA, said: "This survey exposes how far the current system of providing sex education is failing and also that people are acutely aware that it is letting them down.
"Reproductive biology is the only statutory part of the national curriculum and even this isn’t achieving acceptable educational standards.
"In today’s sexualised society, we are bombarded with a multitude of sexual imagery and messages. Nevertheless, providing people with the information and skills they need to make positive choices about their health and lives is not considered a priority" she continued.
"The consequences of Government not taking action to make sex and relationships education compulsory will be continued poor levels of sexual health across all groups in society, and especially the young."
She added: "None of us are born with the facts about sex and reproduction we are taught them.
"If this doesn’t happen, myths start getting into circulation and people end up not being able to tell fact from fiction. If contraception isn’t used or if it fails, instead of seeking professional help and advice people may take action that is completely ineffective in preventing a pregnancy.
"One in five pregnancies ends in abortion so the effects of this reaches far into people’s lives. It is now time to make sex and relationships education a statutory subject in schools."
Respondents were asked to judge the sex education they received at school. Only four per cent said it was excellent. Most respondents answered negatively: a combined 39 per cent said it was either poor or extremely poor, while 25 per cent said it was adequate and 18 per cent said they never had any.
Dr Dawn Harper, a women’s health specialist, said abortion figures were unnecessarily high. "If women were better educated about long-acting reversible contraceptives, including the intrauterine system (IUS), intrauterine device (IUD), injection or implant, less would be faced with an unwanted pregnancy. These are not teenage girls we’re talking about, but women in their late 20s and 30s in long-term relationships, for whom long acting reversible contraceptives could be suitable."
The IUS is a contraceptive inside the uterus which can be removed at any time. It takes five minutes to be positioned by a doctor or nurse and provides effective long-term contraception for up to five years but does not protect against sexually transmitted infections, so women may have to use condoms as well.
An IUD is a small plastic and copper device fitted in the uterus which stops the egg settling in the uterus. It is fitted by a doctor but again does not protect against sexually transmitted infections.
Contraceptive injections contain a progestogen hormone and last for around eight to 12 weeks.
Because of concerns over its effects on bone density however, care has to be taken for use in women under 18 and over 45 and it does not protect from sexually transmitted infections either.
An implant is a small flexible rod placed just under the skin in the upper arm which releases a progestogen hormone. Inserted by a doctor or nurse, it will last for three years but women need to ensure condoms are used to protect against infection.
Sexual health direct, FPA’s helpline and information service receives 80,000 enquiries a year about contraception and sexual health, and provides details of clinics. The helpline number is 0845 310 1334 and is open 9-6pm Monday-Friday.
Simon Blake, chief executive of Brook, one of the main providers for sexual health services to people under 25, urged the Government not to let young people’s sexual health services suffer as a result of financial constraints on the NHS.
He said: "It’s essential that NHS funding problems don’t lead to fewer sexual health services for young people, at a time when there is clearly such a need for reliable sexual health advice."
Love Island
Mark Palmer opens a special Valentine's Day report by mapping out the best places in Britain to find romance - and keep it. It's your move, singletons...
Juliet Hetherington doesn't mind admitting that she was desperate, although, actually, she does mind because that's not her real name. But you get the idea. The point is that she was desperate to convince herself that a long-term relationship wasn't slipping from her increasingly tense grasp. She was looking for love.
) | |
Click to enlarge |
"There I was in London with a good job and lots of friends, but approaching 40 as a single woman and beginning to despair about ever having a family of my own, complete with everything that goes with it," she says. Then she got the opportunity to move to Exeter for six months. The estate agents she worked for were opening an office in the West Country and Juliet was asked to head the commercial department until they recruited someone from the area.
"I didn't know anything about Exeter. I hardly knew where it was on the map," she says, while feeding her infant daughter. "And I had no idea what sort of people I would meet. But it turned out to be the best thing that's ever happened to me.
"From the start I was quite social and then I was invited to a party by an estate agent from a different company. I didn't know a soul. In London, I would have felt really awkward and out of place. But here I found myself going up to a man and introducing myself. I told him I was from London and he said: 'You'll get over it.'" That made me laugh."
That man is now Juliet's husband and the father of her nine-month-old child, Molly. Perhaps she should have consulted our British Love Map a little earlier. Staying put in London - with all its opportunities to meet people, its restaurants, bars and clubs, and its brash "come over here and let's spend 30 seconds seeing if we fancy each other" - was doing her no good. Worse, it was doing her harm. It was making her think that London was typical of the rest of Britain.
Which, of course, it isn't. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), in percentage terms there are more single people in Lambeth than any other borough but, sadly, there is no reliable data to tell you how many of them are singletons by choice. And, let's face it, the Borough of Lambeth might not register highly on a list of desirable places to seek a soul mate.
So, the search is on. But first, some good news: marriage is more popular today than it was in 1993 and the divorce rate over the past decade or so has, at the very least, flattened out. In fact, according to ONS, there were 165,018 decree absolutes issued in England and Wales in 1993, compared with 141,750 in 2005.
Outside the capital, towns and cities with an above-average number of singletons are Cambridge, Manchester, Nottingham, Brighton and Liverpool. Conversely, two places where you will find relatively few single people compared with elsewhere are north Norfolk and east Dorset.
Not everyone, however, is looking for love in the right places. "The other day, I came across a woman who lives in Maida Vale [north London] but wanted to meet a pig farmer," says Fiona Harrold, a life-coaching expert. "How crazy is that? She was sitting in Maida Vale and going on websites but couldn't understand why she was having so little success.
"It's the classic Cinderella syndrome: waiting for someone to come along and sweep you off your feet. It's very tempting to think that life will change when Mr or Miss Right comes along, but it doesn't tend to work like that. You have to take responsibility for being the person you really are. And to be that person might involve uprooting yourself and moving to a different part of the country."
Direct action of one kind or another is often what's required. Adrian Flook, the former MP for Taunton, advertised for a wife in Westminster's in-house magazine. Apparently, he wasn't having much success with the chat-up line: "Hello, I'm a Conservative MP. Will you marry me?'' Flook lost his seat in 2005 but not before he had found what he was looking for in the shape of Frangelica O'Shea. They have now been married four years.
Moving is another option, but it's worth researching the area first. Janet Hartree, 58, decamped from Devon to the Scottish Highlands seven years ago, even though this is a part of the country where men are notoriously thin on the ground. Predictably, disappointment followed.
"I'm not really complaining, because I know I could settle somewhere else if I wanted to. It's just that the Highland man needs a lot of prodding. He still tends to stand there and stare, leaving you to make the first move. I also happen to love men who wear suits and ties - and in the Highlands no one seems to wear a suit unless it's for a wedding or a funeral."
Even so, psychologist and Affluenza author Oliver James says there's a better chance of meeting the right sort of person in rural areas than in crowded conurbations. "Rural people are roughly half as likely to be suffering from mental illness than urban people," he says. "And people who are depressed are flaky. They aren't ready for long-term commitment. They are too bound up with themselves.
"It's not a myth that rural life is more authentic. People in cities are far more motivated by money, possessions, social and physical appearances - all the things that prevent you from functioning properly."
James has firm views on what conditions might make true love flourish. "The less Americanised people are, the better potential they have for love. Americans, especially those in big cities such as New York and Los Angeles, see themselves, and others, as commodities. And if you see yourself as a commodity, you need to market yourself. That means playing a game. The result is that you fall in and out of love with people, and people fall in and out of love with you. Which might be fun at the time but ultimately is unrewarding."
Push him on which specific areas of Britain might be good hunting grounds for potential spouses and he opts for the south-west and the north of England. "As a general rule, go where people have strong roots," he says.
Dr Lisa Matthewman, who runs the organisation Life Management Consultancy, reckons that men in the north will let a woman know he fancies her a lot quicker than men in the south. Fine. But will he do anything about it? "The northern man tends to be more traditional but he can also be more guarded and might not always make the first move," says Matthewman. "But it's a difficult one, because a woman doesn't want to appear to be too forward.
"In the south, it's all a bit more subtle and there's likely to be more game-playing, more flirting. Everything about life in a big city is more hedonistic - it's all easy come, easy go. You meet someone, then you think that someone better might just as easily come along.
"Sexual pleasure is also more emphasised in the south than in the north."
Of course, a romantic setting can help. Christopher Winn, whose book, I Never Knew That About Scotland, is published next month, defies anyone not to fall in love with the person he or she is with when standing outside New Abbey, in Kirkcudbrightshire, better known as Sweetheart Abbey.
It was founded in 1273 by Devorgilla, Lady of Galloway, who married John Balliol, the founder of Balliol College at Oxford. When he died in 1268, she had his "sweet heart" embalmed in an ivory casket banded with silver, which she carried around with her until her own death in 1290. She was buried at New Abbey with the casket on her breast and the abbey became known as Dulce Cor, or Sweetheart Abbey.
Winn also regards Wales as hugely romantic. "The Welsh tend to be more concerned with emotions than business, even though South Wales likes to think of itself as gritty," he says.
One of his favourite spots in Wales for evoking thoughts of love and abandonment is Nantgwyllt House in the Elan Valley, Radnorshire. It's here that the poet Shelley and his child bride Harriet came to live in 1812.
Despite Wales's romantic possibilities - and despite Oliver James's views on rural rootedness - the farmers in that part of Britain are finding it hard to meet members of the opposite sex. Some have started putting their photographs on the side of milk cartons, with a caption that reads: "Fancy a farmer?"
Iwan Jones, who farms 250 acres near Denbigh, came up with the idea after reaching the age of 30 with no potential wife in sight. "The countryside is a great place to live but it can be a hard place to find a date," he says. "The ratio of men to women is skewed because a lot of young women move to other areas to find work after leaving college."
Country Living magazine has done its best to help the lonely rural farmer. Four years ago, it launched the Farmer Wants A Wife campaign, which culminated in a giant blind-date barn dance. So far, this has led to 15 marriages and 10 babies. "We've been asked to do it again but we're trying to be a magazine, not a dating agency,'' says Susy Smith, Country Living's editor. "It shows what a need there is to help people meet up, especially for farmers who spend much of their day in a tractor with only a radio for company.''
It was Shakespeare who assured us that "the course of true love never did run smooth". Finding it in the first place is also far from smooth, but there are still so many regional differences and enough cultural diversity to make Britain an ideal hunting ground for love-hounds of all ages.
12th February
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
 | 1989: Belfast lawyer Finucane murdered Leading solicitor Pat Finucane is shot dead at his home in north Belfast in front of his wife and children. | ||
| |||
| 1964: Deaths follow Cyprus truce breach Fighting between ethnic Turks and Greeks in the disputed island of Cyprus has left at least 16 people dead. | |||
| |||
| 1994: Art thieves snatch Scream One of the world's best-known paintings� The Scream by Edvard Munch� is stolen from a museum in Norway. | |||
11.2.07
11th February
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
 | 1990: Freedom for Nelson Mandela Leading anti-apartheid campaigner Nelson Mandela has been freed from prison in South Africa after 27 years. | ||
| |||
| 1956: 'Cambridge spies' surface in Moscow Two British diplomats� Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean� who vanished in mysterious circumstances five years ago re-appear in the Soviet Union. | |||
| |||
| 1979: Victory for Khomeini as army steps aside Supporters of the Ayatollah Khomeini appear to be in control of the Iranian capital� Tehran tonight. | |||
'Old' music's digital comeback
With music downloads outselling CD singles by four to one in the UK and the music charts revamped to include download sales, the digital revolution is having a big impact on the music industry.
Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars was one of the biggest selling singles of 2006. On sales of CDs and downloads it went as high as number six in the UK charts.
As is standard practice, a few weeks later the record company deleted the CD and removed it from the shops.
With no physical format available to buy, the song no longer qualified for a chart position and disappeared from the top 40.
But with music download sites now the UK's favourite place to buy singles, each with massive back catalogues of songs, it was decided that just listing the singles currently on release may not reflect the way people were actually buying songs.
So from 1 January 2007, every song that is available to download is now allowed to chart.
Long-tail
"In the days of the physical single you were basically restricted to what record companies released in a particular week, and what physical retailers were able to stock," explained Steve Redford of the Official UK Charts Company.
"And even the biggest store wasn't going to stock more than about 100 singles at any one time."
"In this new world you've literally got a choice of 300 million tracks every week. This changes the whole economics of the record business, because keeping things in stock isn't really that expensive in the digital world."
It is called the long-tail, the gradual sales of music, books and DVDs that are permanently available long after their release date.
Some analysts think this is going to make the most money in the internet age. Instead of trying to selling a lot of a little, you sell a little of a lot.
So how did all this affect the new look chart? Well, in the first week, long after the CD was deleted, Snow Patrol re-entered the charts at number nine on downloads alone - people had been downloading it in enough numbers all along.
Unsigned and in the charts
The following week, another first - the band Koopa became the first band to enter the top 40 without ever having a record deal, or a record in the shops.
Doing their own online marketing, the band bypassed the need to have a big record company behind them.
So, definitely one in the eye for the industry, but as Joe Murphy from the band points out - without any help, it was tough going.
"We built our own website. Then we started advertising that on Google, places like that. From there it was just getting on MySpace and our website, and making sure you're keeping people up to date with regular newsletters, messages and blogs on MySpace."
"From MySpace people were taking our banners and things like that, and putting them on their MySpace pages and we thought we could take that further and have things on MySpace and our website that people can download or send to their friends, just to invite them to check out the band."
It is not the first time an artist has used the power of the web, and social networking sites like MySpace, to create the hype to launch their career - Lily Allen famously did just that last year.
There's growing speculation that the Beatles catalogue is going to be made available online for the first time in the next few weeks
But Koopa were the first successful band who did not even wait to be signed up by a record company.
So is this the nirvana every band has been searching for? A world where you can have a hit without having to impress the suits at the big music labels? The suits do not think so.
"To make a splash in the consumer mind these days, more often than not, you need the power of a big company behind you," says Mr Redford.
"Even in the digital world there's a requirement for someone to do that job."
"It may well be the case that some bands decide, effectively, to create their own record company, but nobody should be in any doubt that there's a lot of work attached to that. They can't simply decide that they're going to have a hit, they're going to have to work it just like a record company would do."
"In other words, the band becomes the record company."
In fact, the big music companies may be tempted to just sit back and let the bands do the work.
Fan base
"I've heard rumours of A&R departments that will only go to a band's gig once they've got a thousand friends on MySpace because they want that momentum to exist already, they don't want to have to create it themselves," said Paul Stokes, news editor of NME.
"So it's almost like the bands have to do the work and then A&Rs can come along and cherry pick the ones they want."
The UK is ahead of the curve on this one. Worldwide, downloads only account for 10% of music sales, but it is a good indicator of how the industry in each country will eventually change.
And there are more changes to come, thinks Steve Redford.
"Go back a couple of years ago and there was a real chance that the singles chart had gone stale. It was predictable. Record companies became very good at marketing things into the charts. In the new digital world all bets are off."
"There's growing speculation that the Beatles catalogue is going to be made available online for the first time in the next few weeks.
"The significance of this new rule change in the charts is it's entirely possible that you could end up with the top 10 in the singles chart entirely dominated by Beatles tracks."
10.2.07
10 things we didn't know last week
Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.
1. Catherine Cookson novels have been borrowed from UK libraries 25 million times in the last 10 years.
2. Ireland has the highest crime rate in the European Union.
More details
3. A pig's mood is indicated by its tail. It is happy when the tail is tightly coiled and unhappy when it hangs limp.
More details
4. The National Theatre's electricity bill is £600,000 a year.
5. There is one practising GP among the MPs in the House of Commons - Labour's Howard Stoate.
6. Astronauts wear nappies during launch and re-entry because they can't stop what they're doing should they need to urinate.
More details
7. Vikings may have used a special crystal to navigate when fog obscured the sun.
8. Frankie Laine set a marathon dance record of 3501 hours in 145 consecutive days in 1932.
More details
9. Eighty-eight percent of children in Poland aged 12 to 18 use instant messaging, compared to 50% in the UK, says a survey.
10. The Southern Cross has more stars than the five commonly depicted on the Australian flag, astronomers have discovered.
Sources where stories not linked: 1. TImes, Friday 4. Guardian, Wednesday 5. Guardian, Saturday 9. Daily Telegraph, Tuesday. 10. Times, Friday.
10th February
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
 | 1996: Docklands bomb ends IRA ceasefire The IRA admit planting the bomb that exploded in the Docklands area of London last night. | ||
| |||
| 1983: British police on trail of mass murderer Police launch a mass murder investigation in London after discovering human remains in drains. | |||
| |||
| 1962: Russia frees US spy plane pilot American spy plane pilot Captain Francis "Gary" Powers is freed from prison in the Soviet Union in exchange for a Russian spy jailed in the US. | |||
9.2.07
Chris's Pig Of A Quiz
 |
 |
40 Questions to Test Your Braincells
9-30 Start at The Ancient Oak, Cottam, Preston, Lancashire
New Teams Are Always Welcome!
Cash Prizes for the Top 3 Teams (50p per team member to enter)
There is also a Gallon of Beer Raffle & A Music Bingo Quiz!!!
Check Out Past Quizzes - Visit Chris's New Website
AbiWord 2.5.1
AbiWord 2.5.1
Competent free word processor
Platform Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP Freeware Manufacturer Dom Lachowicz Size 5.16MBFree download
AbiWord is worthy of consideration should you be looking for a free word processor but don't require the comprehensiveness of Microsoft Word and its ilk.
It is very similar in design and layout to Word, and is fully compatible with Word documents (.doc) and many other file formats, inlcuding rich and plain text, WordPerfect, Microsoft Write, and various Psion and Palm document formats.
It may not be feature-packed but it has more than just the basics. Images can be inserted into documents (BMP and PNG formats only), documents can be saved as web pages, and comprehensive text formatting is included.
More advanced features are freely available as plugins from the AbiWord website (see above). These include dictionaries, translation tools, thesauruses and image editing tools.
Obvious omissions are the inability to insert tables and a lack of 3D support.
However, the majority of you probably use about 10 per cent of Word's total functionality, so why waste money on such a product when Abiword does it for free?
Note that Linux and Mac OS X versions are available on the download page.
AVG Anti-virus
AVG Antivirus 7.5.4441
Impressive & free antivirus package
Platform Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP Freeware Manufacturer Grisoft Inc Size 18.3MBFree download
The word 'free' often equates to an inferior product but, in this case, there is no doubt that this is a professional product.
Split into three sections and a Control Centre, AVG Anti-virus protects against viruses in a number of key areas. The Resident Shield works in the background and checks all files and file types (including floppy disk, CD content etc.) for viruses, whilst the Email Scanner works with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook.
The Boot-up Scanner operates at start-up, and checks the most important areas of a PC before you begin to use it. Every aspect of AVG's virus protection can be configured using the Control Centre, which allows you to modify a number of program settings and to schedule scans, among other things.
When installing there's an option to create a rescue disk for use should any of your key system files become infected. All crucial areas and files on a PC are backed up, and can be restored from this disk.
Note: This download is only valid for private, non-commercial, single home computer use.
9th February
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
 | 1950: McCarthy launches anti-red crusade United States Senator Joe McCarthy accuses more than 200 staff in the State Department of being Communists. | ||
| |||
| 1979: Forest break football transfer record Football club Nottingham Forest clinches Britain's first �1m transfer deal. | |||
| |||
| 1983: Police hunt Shergar's kidnappers A nationwide hunt for 1981 Derby winner and prize stallion Shergar begins in Ireland. | |||
| |||
'Doomsday' vault design unveiled
The final design for a "doomsday" vault that will house seeds from all known varieties of food crops has been unveiled by the Norwegian government. 
The Svalbard International Seed Vault will be built into a mountainside on a remote island near the North Pole.
The vault aims to safeguard the world's agriculture from future catastrophes, such as nuclear war, asteroid strikes and climate change.
Construction begins in March, and the seed bank is scheduled to open in 2008.
The Norwegian government is paying the $5m (£2.5m) construction costs of the vault, which will have enough space to house three million seed samples.
The collection and maintenance of the collection is being organised by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which has responsibility of ensuring the "conservation of crop diversity in perpetuity".
"We want a safety net because we do not want to take too many chances with crop biodiversity," said Cary Fowler, the Trust's executive secretary.
"Can you imagine an effective, efficient, sustainable response to climate change, water shortages, food security issues without what is going to go in the vault - it is the raw material of agriculture."
Future proof
The seed vault will be built 120m (364ft) inside a mountain on Spitsbergen, one of four islands that make up Svalbard.
Dr Fowler said Svalbard, 1,000km (621 miles) north of mainland Norway, was chosen as the location for the vault because it was very remote and it also offered the level of stability required for the long-term project.
"We looked very far into the future. We looked at radiation levels inside the mountain, and we looked at the area's geological structure," he told BBC News.
"We also modelled climate change in a drastic form 200 years into future, which included the melting of ice sheets at the North and South Poles, and Greenland, to make sure that this site was above the resulting water level."
By building the vault deep inside the mountain, the surrounding permafrost would continue to provide natural refrigeration if the mechanical system failed, explained Dr Fowler.
'Living Fort Knox'
The Arctic vault will act as a back-up store for a global network of seed banks financially supported by the trust.
Dr Fowler said that a proportion of the seeds housed at these banks would be deposited at Svalbard, which will act as a "living Fort Knox".
Although the vault was designed to protect the specimens from catastrophic events, he added that it could also be used to replenish national seed banks.
"One example happened in September when a typhoon ripped through the Philippines and destroyed its seed bank," Dr Fowler recalled.
"The storm brought two feet of water and mud into the bank, and that is the last thing you want in a seed bank."
Low maintenance
Once inside the vault, the samples will be stored at -18C (0F). The length of time that seeds kept in a frozen state maintain their ability to germinate depends on the species.
Some crops, such as peas, may only survive for 20-30 years. Others, such as sunflowers and grain crops, are understood to last for many decades or even hundreds of years. 
Once the collection has been established at Svalbard, Dr Fowler said the facility would operate with very little human intervention.
"Somebody will go up there once every year to physically check inside to see that everything is OK, but there will be no full-time staff," he explained.
"If you design a facility to be used in worst-case scenarios, then you cannot actually have too much dependency on human beings."
£100,000 prize for digital hunter
After nearly two years, a cryptic treasure hunt played out between the real and virtual worlds has been won. 
Andy Darley from the UK was one of 50,000 players who took part in the alternate reality game, Perplex City.
Gamers from 92 countries have solved clues on the web and around the world in a quest for the Receda Cube, an "artefact" buried in a hidden location.
Mr Darley eventually tracked the object to a wood in Northamptonshire. Finding it nets him £100,000 ($200,000).
"I was playing for the puzzles and the stories, but it was only a few days ago that I thought I was in with a chance," said Mr Darley.
"As I pulled the Cube from the sticky, wet clay, and even afterwards as I was waiting to return the Cube, all I could think about was how bizarre the whole thing really was."
Elaborate clues
Perplex city is one of a number of alternate reality games (ARGs) that blur the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds. The first recognised one was The Beast, developed as part of a marketing campaign for the film AI.
They use real world events and clues planted on the internet, television and newspapers to guide players on a real-life treasure hunt.
Perplex City also used puzzle cards, bought in shops and on the internet, that contained optical illusions, cryptography, and riddles. The rarest cards have traded hands for more than £200 on online auction sites.
Music with clues in the melodies and real life parties, often with elaborate scenarios, also led gamers towards the final goal.
Perplex City has been running since April 2005 but speculation about the location of the hidden object has escalated in recent weeks.
Following a recent live event, Mr Darley tracked the cube down to Wakerly Great Wood, Northamptonshire at 0400 GMT on 02 February. To claim his prize and end the game he returned the cube to the Perplex City headquarters in London.
A new Perplex City game will start later this year.The brain scan that can read people's intentions
 |  Using the technology is 'like shining a torch, looking for writing on a wall'. CT image: Charles O'Rear/Corbis |
The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists' ability to probe people's minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future.
The team used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way.
"Using the scanner, we could look around the brain for this information and read out something that from the outside there's no way you could possibly tell is in there. It's like shining a torch around, looking for writing on a wall," said John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, who led the study with colleagues at University College London and Oxford University.
The research builds on a series of recent studies in which brain imaging has been used to identify tell-tale activity linked to lying, violent behaviour and racial prejudice.
The latest work reveals the dramatic pace at which neuroscience is progressing, prompting the researchers to call for an urgent debate into the ethical issues surrounding future uses for the technology. If brain-reading can be refined, it could quickly be adopted to assist interrogations of criminals and terrorists, and even usher in a "Minority Report" era (as portrayed in the Steven Spielberg science fiction film of that name), where judgments are handed down before the law is broken on the strength of an incriminating brain scan.
"These techniques are emerging and we need an ethical debate about the implications, so that one day we're not surprised and overwhelmed and caught on the wrong foot by what they can do. These things are going to come to us in the next few years and we should really be prepared," Professor Haynes told the Guardian.
The use of brain scanners to judge whether people are likely to commit crimes is a contentious issue that society should tackle now, according to Prof Haynes. "We see the danger that this might become compulsory one day, but we have to be aware that if we prohibit it, we are also denying people who aren't going to commit any crime the possibility of proving their innocence."
During the study, the researchers asked volunteers to decide whether to add or subtract two numbers they were later shown on a screen.
Before the numbers flashed up, they were given a brain scan using a technique called functional magnetic imaging resonance. The researchers then used a software that had been designed to spot subtle differences in brain activity to predict the person's intentions with 70% accuracy.
The study revealed signatures of activity in a marble-sized part of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex that changed when a person intended to add the numbers or subtract them.
Because brains differ so much, the scientists need a good idea of what a person's brain activity looks like when they are thinking something to be able to spot it in a scan, but researchers are already devising ways of deducing what patterns are associated with different thoughts.
Barbara Sahakian, a professor of neuro-psychology at Cambridge University, said the rapid advances in neuroscience had forced scientists in the field to set up their own neuroethics society late last year to consider the ramifications of their research.
"Do we want to become a 'Minority Report' society where we're preventing crimes that might not happen?," she asked. "For some of these techniques, it's just a matter of time. It is just another new technology that society has to come to terms with and use for the good, but we should discuss and debate it now because what we don't want is for it to leak into use in court willy nilly without people having thought about the consequences.
"A lot of neuroscientists in the field are very cautious and say we can't talk about reading individuals' minds, and right now that is very true, but we're moving ahead so rapidly, it's not going to be that long before we will be able to tell whether someone's making up a story, or whether someone intended to do a crime with a certain degree of certainty."
Professor Colin Blakemore, a neuroscientist and director of the Medical Research Council, said: "We shouldn't go overboard about the power of these techniques at the moment, but what you can be absolutely sure of is that these will continue to roll out and we will have more and more ability to probe people's intentions, minds, background thoughts, hopes and emotions.
"Some of that is extremely desirable, because it will help with diagnosis, education and so on, but we need to be thinking the ethical issues through. It adds a whole new gloss to personal medical data and how it might be used."
The technology could also drive advances in brain-controlled computers and machinery to boost the quality of life for disabled people. Being able to read thoughts as they arise in a person's mind could lead to computers that allow people to operate email and the internet using thought alone, and write with word processors that can predict which word or sentence you want to type . The technology is also expected to lead to improvements in thought-controlled wheelchairs and artificial limbs that respond when a person imagines moving.
"You can imagine how tedious it is if you want to write a letter by using a cursor to pick out letters on a screen," said Prof Haynes. "It would be much better if you thought, 'I want to reply to this email', or, 'I'm thinking this word', and the computer can read that and understand what you want to do."
· FAQ: Mind reading
What have the scientists developed?
They have devised a system that analyses brain activity to work out a person's intentions before they have acted on them. More advanced versions may be able to read complex thoughts and even pick them up before the person is conscious of them.
How does it work?
The computer learns unique patterns of brain activity or signatures that correspond to different thoughts. It then scans the brain to look for these signatures and predicts what the person is thinking.
How could it be used?
It is expected to drive advances in brain-controlled computers, leading to artificial limbs and machinery that respond to thoughts. More advanced versions could be used to help interrogate criminals and assess prisoners before they are released. Controversially, they may be able to spot people who plan to commit crimes before they break the law.
What is next?
The researchers are honing the technique to distinguish between passing thoughts and genuine intentions.
8.2.07
Celebrity costumes Quiz
Test yourself on the world of celebrity dressing-up.
How turkey became a fast food
The grisly fate of the 160,000 turkeys gassed at a Bernard Matthews farm in Suffolk this week is the latest regrettable twist in the history of the bird.
Even its name derives from a cock up - 16th Century Europeans confused the bird with the guinea fowl, which had recently been introduced to Europe by the Turkish.
By the 19th Century, however, turkey had an esteemed culinary status in the UK, when it was beloved of the upper and middle classes as a quality food, says food historian Ivan Day.
Fast-forward a century or so, and it has become as unremarkable as beans on toast, and every bit as cheap. 
From pre-prepared oven-ready steaks to frozen breaded drumsticks, turkey is a staple of many a modern diet. In its mechanically-recovered form, it even crops up in such culinary delights as gravy powder, pet food, diet chicken curry and tinned mini hot dogs.
A popular variety of novelty luncheon sausage uses turkey to render the face of a children's cartoon character.
Today, almost half the flesh consumed in the UK is poultry, and turkey accounts for 6% of the meat market as a whole. UK breeders reared more than 17 million turkeys for our consumption last year.
In its unprocessed state, turkey was the only meat to make it onto an influential list of 14 "superfoods" to eat for health and vitality (along with blueberries, broccoli and walnuts). And with meat high in protein and low in fat, it's a favourite with followers of the Atkins, Zone, GI and South Beach diets.
However, the Turkey Twizzler, a legend in its own lunchtime after it became the focus of a campaign to buck up school nutrition standards, is no more. The outcry was too much and even Bernard Matthews, whose company made the product, admitted its "nutritional value wasn't fantastic".
Meet the ancestors
Such economies come at a price, though. Today's top-heavy variety of factory farmed turkey - with its overdeveloped breasts bred for more lean meat - would struggle to recognise its native American forbears.
The first turkeys brought back to Europe from North America in the early 16th Century were "scrawnier, with browner, gamier flesh" than today's, says Mr Day. Farmers in East Anglia set to work on cross-breeding it, and some time later exported the plumper result back across the Atlantic. 
By the 19th Century, turkey had become the Christmas dinner of choice and a not uncommon fixture on grand country house menus. Yet the privations of two world wars meant that by the mid-20th Century it, along with chicken, was in seriously short supply.
But turkey had some important factors in its favour, says Mr Day. Easy to rear, particularly, when compared to goose, indoors; cheap to feed and able to "put on a fantastic amount of weight quickly", turkey lent itself well to the emerging techniques of factory farming.
Step forward Bernard Matthews, the prime mover in democratising this previously elitist food.
"Everyone remembers his "bootiful" ads. He brought turkey to a wider audience, not just the Christmas market," says Richard Griffiths, of the British Poultry Council.
Says Ivan Day: "Turkeys became the protein factories of the 1960s and 70s. Breeders tried to develop new strains to put on more breast meat." 
Matthews' sealed his place in every harassed housewife's heart with the launch of his first breaded product - Crispy Crumb Turkey Steaks - in 1982. Today, 2.7 million of the eight million turkeys devoured at Christmas in the UK are from his farms; other products include "turkey ham" for sandwiches, novelty dinosaur-shaped nuggets and, at the posher end of the scale, marinated fillets.
But blazing a trail before Mr Matthews was US food scientist Robert Baker, who transformed the way we eat poultry by devising products that fed the post-World War II demand for convenience food (and used parts of birds that otherwise would go to waste). He patented his chicken nugget recipe in the 1950s, and invented the aforementioned "turkey ham". Today, 40% of poultry sales involve processed meat.
Staple ingredient
Yet to food writer Joanna Blythman, turkey's triumph tells a wider, worrying story about the UK public's attitude to food.
"Turkey is a kind of iconic food and symbolic of what's gone wrong with British food production," says Ms Blythman, author of Bad Food Britain: How A Nation Ruined Its Appetite. 
"It's easy to prepare, very low grade, intensively farmed food and very cheap. It has almost no taste without the additives they put in. The turkeys that provide this meat have hugely overdeveloped breasts and are a travesty of what a turkey should be."
There are signs, however, of more traditional turkey trends resurfacing. Sales of organic, free-range birds have rocketed, and in the US, so-called Heritage Turkeys - tastier, traditional breeds - are making a comeback.
But these birds are almost exclusively reared for the festive season, be it Christmas or Thanksgiving. Those eaten year-round are, by and large, factory-farmed turkeys. While sales of UK-reared turkeys are down from the early 1990s peak of 30m a year, Mr Griffiths says this is because of an increase in imported turkey meat - also likely to be intensively-reared - rather than a drop in consumption.
Previous bird flu scares haven't dented poultry sales in this country. Now that H5N1 has come to these shores, only time will tell how sales of this now staple ingredient will hold up.New owners in Donington takeover
One of Britain's oldest motor-racing circuits has been sold for an undisclosed sum. 
Donington Park which houses one of the world's largest collection of grand-prix cars has been bought by Donington Ventures Leisure.
Built in 1931, the Leicestershire venue was recently owned by the entertainment corporation Clear Channel.
The new owners said they wanted to improve the site for motor-racing fans and add new facilities.
We are absolutely committed to realising the full potential of the Park
Chief executive officer Simon Gillett said: "We are naturally delighted and very proud to have acquired Donington Park.
"The circuit is steeped in motor-racing heritage and has an incredibly fond place in the heart of every motor-racing enthusiast whether on two or four wheels."
He added: "We are absolutely committed to realising the full potential of the Park by making the necessary investments in current and future events that will see Donington revitalised, ensuring its leading position as one of the most iconic racing circuits in the world."
Donington Park founder Tom Wheatcroft has agreed to join Donington Ventures Leisure as president.
The circuit is the home of the British Motorcycle Grand Prix and this year will be hosting the first of three British rounds of the World Superbike Championship - the first time for six years it has staged the event - and the World Motorcross Grand Prix.
Donington Park also holds what is described as "the biggest and loudest music concert in Britain", the Download Festival.8th February
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
 | 1952: New Queen proclaimed for UK Princess Elizabeth proclaims herself Queen at a ceremony in St James's Palace� London. | ||
| |||
| 1994: Police probe MP's suspicious death Forensic scientists investigate the "suspicious circumstances" of the death of Conservative MP for Eastleigh Stephen Milligan. | |||
| |||
| 1962: Eight die in Paris riot At least eight people have been killed during a demonstration in the French capital protesting against the independence of Algeria. | |||
| |||
Pub News
Top stories:
Pubs in the dark as Satvision goes bust
Licensees left with many questions about their technology as Stockport-based screen supplier goes into liquidation
Licensee wins David and Goliath case against energy supplier
Licensee strikes blow after energy company hikes his bill
Pubs to get free no-smoking signs
Easter roll-out for signage ahead of the July 1 ban
Health minister calls on local authorities to help businesses over the smoking ban
Caroline Flint urged them to engage with businesses
Licensees could face seven years in prison over duty stamps
The warning comes from Customs & Excise (C&E) following the recent theft of £40,000-worth of Sebor Absinth and Prava Slivovice
Solicitor accused of acting for both sides in satellite row
A district judge has accused a solicitor of acting both for suppliers of satellite equipment and licensees
Other news this week:
- SIBA calls on pubcos to go local
- England should follow Scots on smoking
- Licensee appeals against foreign satellite decision
- More MPs support campaign against supermarket pricing
- Clock in Cardiff gives countdown to smoke ban
- Fuller's sends out smoke signals
- Leading pubco cuts trans fatty acids
- Support urged for National Skills Academy
- LTC announces fundraising ball
- Still time to prepare for Community Pubs Week, says CAMRA
- OFT launches Scam Awareness month
- Money laundering to be discussed at BBPA forum
Features
The rules of the game
What does the latest ruling on foreign satellite systems mean?
Pubs to get free no-smoking signs
Easter roll-out for signage ahead of the July 1 ban
Free no-smoking signs are to be made available in England from Easter.
The Department of Health and Smokefree England have confirmed that signs meeting the requirements of the new regulations will be given to pubs across the country.
The decision will be one less worry for pubs this year. During consultation the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers had highlighted the fact that getting the appropriate signage together could cost the industry more than £2m.
Under the regulations, which are subject to approval by the European Union, all smokefree premises must display a no-smoking sign in a prominent position at each entrance that:
• is the equivalent of A5 in area
• displays the international no-smoking symbol in colour, a minimum of 70mm in diameter
• carries the words in characters that can be easily read: “No smoking. It is against the law to smoke in these premises”.
On the sign, the words “these premises” may be changed to refer to the particular premises where the sign is displayed, for example “this hotel” or “this NHS clinic”.
The regulations also set out that staff-only entrances must display a sign that displays the international no-smoking symbol in colour, a minimum of 70mm in diameter.
How the US sent $12bn in cash to Iraq. And watched it vanish
Special flights brought in tonnes of banknotes which disappeared into the war zone
An armed guard poses beside pallets of $100 bills in Baghdad. Almost $12bn in cash was spent by the US-led authority
The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a US congressional committee.
In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tonnes, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22 2004, six days before the handover.
Details of the shipments have emerged in a memorandum prepared for the meeting of the House committee on oversight and government reform which is examining Iraqi reconstruction. Its chairman, Henry Waxman, a fierce critic of the war, said the way the cash had been handled was mind-boggling. "The numbers are so large that it doesn't seem possible that they're true. Who in their right mind would send 363 tonnes of cash into a war zone?"
The memorandum details the casual manner in which the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority disbursed the money, which came from Iraqi oil sales, surplus funds from the UN oil-for-food programme and seized Iraqi assets.
"One CPA official described an environment awash in $100 bills," the memorandum says. "One contractor received a $2m payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped bundles of currency. Auditors discovered that the key to a vault was kept in an unsecured backpack.
"They also found that $774,300 in cash had been stolen from one division's vault. Cash payments were made from the back of a pickup truck, and cash was stored in unguarded sacks in Iraqi ministry offices. One official was given $6.75m in cash, and was ordered to spend it in one week before the interim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds."
The minutes from a May 2004 CPA meeting reveal "a single disbursement of $500m in security funding labelled merely 'TBD', meaning 'to be determined'."
The memorandum concludes: "Many of the funds appear to have been lost to corruption and waste ... thousands of 'ghost employees' were receiving pay cheques from Iraqi ministries under the CPA's control. Some of the funds could have enriched both criminals and insurgents fighting the United States."
According to Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, the $8.8bn funds to Iraqi ministries were disbursed "without assurance the monies were properly used or accounted for". But, according to the memorandum, "he now believes that the lack of accountability and transparency extended to the entire $20bn expended by the CPA".
To oversee the expenditure the CPA was supposed to appoint an independent certified public accounting firm. "Instead the CPA hired an obscure consulting firm called North Star Consultants Inc. The firm was so small that it reportedly operates out of a private home in San Diego." Mr Bowen found that the company "did not perform a review of internal controls as required by the contract".
However, evidence before the committee suggests that senior American officials were unconcerned about the situation because the billions were not US taxpayers' money. Paul Bremer, the head of the CPA, reminded the committee that "the subject of today's hearing is the CPA's use and accounting for funds belonging to the Iraqi people held in the so-called Development Fund for Iraq. These are not appropriated American funds. They are Iraqi funds. I believe the CPA discharged its responsibilities to manage these Iraqi funds on behalf of the Iraqi people."
Bremer's financial adviser, retired Admiral David Oliver, is even more direct. The memorandum quotes an interview with the BBC World Service. Asked what had happened to the $8.8bn he replied: "I have no idea. I can't tell you whether or not the money went to the right things or didn't - nor do I actually think it's important."
Q: "But the fact is billions of dollars have disappeared without trace."
Oliver: "Of their money. Billions of dollars of their money, yeah I understand. I'm saying what difference does it make?"
Mr Bremer, whose disbanding of the Iraqi armed forces and de-Ba'athification programme have been blamed as contributing to the present chaos, told the committee: "I acknowledge that I made mistakes and that with the benefit of hindsight, I would have made some decisions differently. Our top priority was to get the economy moving again. The first step was to get money into the hands of the Iraqi people as quickly as possible."
Millions of civil service families had not received salaries or pensions for months and there was no effective banking system. "It was not a perfect solution," he said. "Delay might well have exacerbated the nascent insurgency and thereby increased the danger to Americans."
Don't be chicken – Britain needs you to eat bootiful turkey today
By Boris Johnson
As soon as I arrived at work this morning I told the troops their duty. This is it, I said. The Russians have banned our turkey. The pathetic Japanese have slapped an embargo on any poultry emanating from this country. South Korea, Hong Kong and South Africa are all equally chicken about our chicken.
We are the second largest poultry exporters in Europe, I reminded them, with a £300 million business at stake. Here we are, in the cockpit of the nation, and the people expect us to show a lead. It is a time for greatness, a time for calm, a time for reassurance – and we are going to show all three.
I reached for my wallet and fished out twenty. "Frances," I said, "go to the supermarket and buy as many slices of Bernard Matthews as you can find. Someone somewhere has got to show that the great British turkey is safe to eat! And that someone is going to be us."
In no time she was back, laden with an extraordinary assortment of meat and meat-related produce. As we beheld the bewildering versatility of Mr Matthews's fowls, I felt a spasm of rage that the people of South Korea – where they eat poodles, for heaven's sake – should turn their noses up at the favourites of the British people.
We had Bernard Matthews wafer thin turkey ham, 95 per cent fat free. We had a perfectly cylindrical Turkey Breast Roast, serving three or four. Mr Matthews's chefs had miraculously added water, potato and rice starch (and about 20 nourishing chemicals) to what the front of the packet said was "100 per cent breast meat". We had delicious golden turkey escalopes, containing as much as 38 per cent turkey.
Look at that, I said: three oven-glove sized crispy escalopes, and all for £1.99. In fact, it all looked so good I didn't know where to begin.
Here, I said, peeling back the lid of some Premium Sage and Onion turkey breast. A rich aroma filled the room. Come on now, I said, as they shrank back, who is going to be first?
"I'm not eating it unless you eat it," said one. Eh? I said. You don't understand. I'm John Selwyn Gummer, and you are Cordelia. You eat the hamburger, or in this case the slice of sage and onion turkey blend. I merely offer it to you. Or, I said, would you prefer a Bernard Matthews Turkey Dinosaur?
I unpeeled another packet. This one contained a mixture of turkey skin, pea starch, milk, potassium chloride, sodium nitrite and assorted other life-giving ingredients, boiled up and turned into a sliced roll complete with a beautiful picture of a dinosaur. Look! I held up the Dinosaur, showing how it ran all the way through, like a stick of rock.
No, no, they said. You've got to do it first. OK, I said, no problem.
It was a time for leadership. When the news bulletins are full of pictures of men in white space suits slaughtering thousands of birds; when everyone is panicking about the H5N1 strain of bird flu; when poor Bernard Matthews and his colleagues are beside themselves with worry about the threat to the UK's £3.4 billion poultry industry, it was time to eat turkey.
I took out that slice of sage and onion 98 per cent fat free, I folded it politely, and I chomped for Britain. Flavour flooded my mouth. It was little short of heavenly, ambrosial, I told my friends; and I suggest that we all do the same.
Let's say snooks to the Koreans and the Russians, and let's get stuck into British turkey; and I say this because I remember writing exactly the same – 11 years ago – about British beef. I was right then and I am right now.
Do you remember that whole disgraceful BSE business, at the sad fag-end of the Major government?
Do you remember the way those unscrupulous lentil-munching Labour MPs whipped up public hysteria over British beef?
Thousands of blameless British cattle farmers had their livelihoods destroyed. Their continental rivals conspired with their EU governments to impose an outrageous and unjustified ban on British beef, and which the French have only just got round to lifting.
The British taxpayer coughed up £5 billion for the whole shambles – and all because we were told that British beef could give you mad cow disease.
Do you remember that government scientist who went around predicting that there would be hospices on every street corner, full of victims of nvCreutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and that the entire population was going to be punished for its addiction to hamburgers by being sent slowly and humiliatingly insane? What ever happened to him?
I in no way mean to minimise the suffering of those few people who have contracted nvCJD, but the panic was ludicrous in proportion to the risk; and having looked at this bird flu business, I reckon we are in danger of stampeding over exactly the same cliff.
As far as I can see, you would need to enter into a civil partnership with one of Bernard Matthews' turkeys, and then perform prolonged mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the startled bird, in order to contract the new type of avian flu. You might get bird flu if you ate ground-up turkey droppings on your cornflakes for a week, or there again you might not.
And even then we still have no evidence that the disease can be transmitted from one human being to another, in the way of other flu epidemics.
I tell you what is driving this story: it's a bourgeois horror of processed meat of the kind that Bernard Matthews produces so cheaply and so deliciously.
It's all about people's sense of guilt at the ease of their lives, and the cheapness of supermarket food. It's a Marie Antoinette faddishness about farming, a belief that it should all be so much more natural.
I say phooey. OK, so Bernard Matthews mixes milk and turkey skin. Is that any odder than a restaurant offering black pudding and marmalade fritter?
It's time for Blair to follow our lead, eat a slice of patriotic turkey and tell the Russians where to get off. Anyone failing to do so is a snob, a sissy and a scaredy-cat.
Valentines Day 2007 Quiz Pack
Peacock Email Pub Quizzes
Valentines Day 2007 Quiz Pack
Peacock Quizzes bring you this years Valentine Quiz Pack
Five rounds of questions all based around Love and Romance
Round One: The Other Half
Ten Questions on husbands and wives
Round Two: A Rose for a Rose
Ah the gift of flowers. Ten questions with a floral link
Round Three: All you need is love
Ten questions of love and lovers
Round Four: Be my Valentine
Valentine mixed bag
Round Five: The two of us
Famous Couples duo's and Partners
Your Quiz Pack also comes with tie break questions your usual
Snowball Question and the ever popular Picture Quiz
Your full Quiz Pack will cost you £3.50
simply click on the Buy it Now button below
All Peacock Quizzes are made in PDF format and require Adobe
To print your quiz pack simply click on the PDF attachment in your email
and press the print button.
7.2.07
Weekly Quick Quiz Challenge - Week 4 Answers
1. The delphinium flower gets its name from its supposed resemblance to which sea creature?
Dolphin
2. Which member of the Bach family wrote the Brandenburg Concertos: Johann Christian or Johann Sebastian?
Johann Sebastian
3. Which of these is a tool: Hassock, Mattock or Hummock?
Mattock
4. In which game would you play with a 'double six' and 'double blank'?
Dominoes
5. Which comedy improvisation show, hosted by Clive Anderson, had Richard Vranch as resident pianist?
Whose Line Is It Anyway
6. In the army, how many stripes or chevrons are there on a sergeant's badge of rank?
Three
7. In nature, what is a type of farming opposed to the use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides?
Organic
8. Which Batman star was born Michael Douglas and therefore had to change his name?
Michael Keaton
9. What type of medieval weapon fires a 'bolt' or 'quarrel'?
Crossbow
10. In music, who had a UK top ten hit in 1962 with 'Breaking Up Is Hard To Do'?
Neil Sedaka
11. In medicine, 'peptic', 'duodenal' and 'gastric' are all types of what condition?
Ulcers
12. Which author wrote 'Murder At The Vicarage' in 1930?
Agatha Christie
13. In medicine, what is a state of deep unconsciousness from which the patient cannot be woken?
Coma
14. In the USA, which major city stands on the left bank of the Potomac River?
Washington
15. The Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Churches and the Protestant Churches are all branches of which religion?
Christianity
16. In the animal kingdom, which species of squirrel was introduced to Britain from North America?
Grey
17. In which year did the Des O'Connor Show first appear on British TV?
1963
18. Complete the title of this Alan Bennett play: 'The Madness Of George The...' what?
Third
19. In geography, Dublin is on which coast of Ireland: East or West?
East
20. To which country would you be flying if you were arriving at Marco Polo International Airport?
Italy
21. The oil terminal of Sullom Voe is in which island group?
Shetlands
22. Who succeeded Fulgencio Batista as the leader of Cuba in 1959?
Castro
23. Which Australian TV entertainer had a hit in 1960 with 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport'?
Rolf Harris
24. In which decade of the Twentieth century was the first American football Super Bowl held?
1960s
25. Which English playwright is famous for his Talking Heads series?
Alan Bennett
26. Flat racing involves what type of four-legged animal?
Horse
27. In children's toys, what is the name of the toy figure that springs out of a box when it is opened?
Jack In The Box
28. What H is the horny casing of the toe of some mammals in place of a claw?
Hoof
29. Did computer floppy disks get their name because they were originally floppy?
Yes
30. What were the two first names of Bell, the inventor of the telephone?
Alexander Graham
31. Are agoutis native to: Australia or South America?
South America
32. Who painted 'The Garden Of Earthly Delights'?
Bosch
33. In which decade was it made compulsory to wear a seatbelt in the front seat of a car in the UK?
80s
34. Which ancient civilisation is associated with Homer?
Greek
35. Which 1850 novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne features an adultress in seventeenth century New England?
The Scarlet Letter
36. In UK geography, what R is on English city in North Yorkshire on the River Ure?
Ripon
37. In the US, 'OH' is the abbreviation for which state?
Ohio
38. In theatre, in which country was the dramatist and poet Henrik Ibsen born?
Norway
39. In the King James Version of the Bible, how many books are their in the Old Testament?
39
40. Who married Aristotle Onassis in 1968?
Jackie Kennedy
Cricket World Cup: get padded up!
Your customers might just rediscover their enthusiasm for the summer game this spring. This series of articles cover all you need to make the most of the World Cup, and includes a TV guide, Caribbean recipes and cocktails and more.
Cricket is, according to the latest survey, the third most popular sport to watch in a pub behind football and rugby. More than 30 per cent said they enjoyed watching the Summer Game over a drink, a figure that had shot up an astonishing 16 per cent in the space of a year.
Unfortunately, the latest survey was carried out last June, when memories of England’s 2005 Ashes triumph were still fresh and England’s abject 2006 Ashes defeat was still a nightmare to come.
Quite how fickle the pub cricket fan is will be revealed during the sport’s World Cup, 51 one-day internationals played out under the Caribbean sun starting March 13 and providing a live game on Sky pretty much every day until the final on April 28.
With the umpires walking out onto the square mid-afternoon British time and stumps being drawn on most contests around old-fashioned pub closing time, it couldn’t provide a more perfect opportunity for licensees to reinvigorate their customers’ enthusiasm.
While you can’t do much about the way England are going to play, you are at least guaranteed a couple of weeks when they are competing, and if you know you have a group of die-hard cricket fans among your regulars they can form the core of a bigger audience.
As with any other big sporting event, you need to get the basics right and generate a bit of an atmosphere around it.
Make sure that your coverage is well-advertised, of course. Talk it up among your customers - there is always plenty to talk about when it comes to cricket - and display posters outside, too.
As matches go on for several hours, and it’s likely you’ll get people coming and going, catching a few overs here and there, rather than sitting through the whole thing, the atmosphere will be lower key than for other sports.
But you can still provide the cues to make viewing more sociable and more enjoyable even when there’s not too much to get excited about on the pitch.
Caribbean themed food and drink is a good idea, either running as extras through the tournament or just for games you expect a good turnout for.
Remember this might not be only the England games. Scotland are playing, too, and you’ve probably got customers who will keenly follow other nations as well as the big clashes in the later stages, whoever is playing.
7th February
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
 | 1945: Black Sea talks plan defeat of Germany Plans are being drawn up by London� Washington and Moscow for the final phase of the war against Germany. | ||
| |||
| 1964: Beatlemania arrives in the US Four members of the British hit band� the Beatles� arrive in New York at the start of their first tour of the United States. | |||
| |||
| 1974: Heath calls snap election over miners Prime Minister Edward Heath announces a general election and appeals to the miners to suspend their planned strike. | |||
| |||
Crooner Frankie Laine dies at 93
Veteran singer Frankie Laine has died in a California hospital aged 93 after suffering a heart attack following hip replacement surgery. 
He was one of the most popular singers of the late 1940s and 1950s before rock 'n' roll put him in the shade.
His hits include Jezebel, I Believe, and the theme from television Western series Rawhide.
"He was one of the greatest singers, one of the last Italian crooner types," said his producer Jimmy Marino.
He gave his last public performance little more than a year ago, singing his first big hit That's My Desire on a TV show.
Born Frank LoVecchio, he was the son of a barber who moved to the United States from Sicily.
He struggled to earn a living until he was in his 30s. He had his first hit in 1947, after jazz musician Hoagy Carmichael enthused about his performance in a Los Angeles nightclub.
"Ten years is a good stretch of scuffling," Laine later said. "But I scuffled for 17 years before it happened, and 17 is a bit much."
Country covers
In a career lasting four decades, Laine achieved 21 gold records, and sold about 250 million albums. 
Among his other hits were Mule Train, Cool Water, Granada and That Lucky Old Sun.
He holds a UK singles chart record for the most weeks at number one with one song, with I Believe topping the chart for 18 weeks in three spells during the spring and summer of 1953.
Laine enjoyed two other number one hits later that year, Hey Joe, and Answer Me, giving him 27 weeks at the top of the chart in 1953.
He had a further chart-topper in 1956, A Woman In Love.
As well as Rawhide, he sang the theme to Mel Brooks' parody 1974 Western movie, Blazing Saddles.
He also covered songs by country singers, including Hank Williams' classics Hey Good Lookin' and Your Cheatin' Heart.
Laine's family said he would be remembered for the beautiful music he brought into the world, his wit and his sense of humour.*****************************************************************************************
Frankie Laine, who died on Tuesday aged 93, was the most successful of the black-influenced white singers who came to prominence in the post-war era belting out blues in American nightclubs; he became one of the country's biggest stars, with a string of more than 70 hits and international sales of more than 250 million.
 | |
Laine's soulful, masculine style and highly emotional delivery dealt a blow to the gentler crooning styles of the day and paved the way for later blues and rock and roll artists such as Johnnie Ray and Elvis Presley. Naturally gifted with a powerful voice (his nicknames included "Old Leather Lungs"), Laine was known for his dramatic vocal battles with massed choirs and pulsating strings, and he ranged into such varied genres as novelty pop, gospel, folk, country and western and rock and roll. He had major hits with That's My Desire (1947); Mule Train (1949); That Lucky Old Sun; Jezebel; Cry of the Wild Goose (all 1950); On The Sunny Side Of The Street (1951); I Believe (1953); and Moonlight Gambler (1957), among many others.
He became exceedingly popular in Britain, where he broke attendance records at the London Palladium in 1952 and gave a command performance for the Queen in 1954. In 1953 he set two British chart records: when I Believe remained at No 1 for 18 weeks, and when he achieved an unprecedented 27 weeks at the top of the charts after Hey Joe! and Answer Me also went to No 1. In spite of the popularity of artists such as Elvis Presley and The Beatles, both of Laine's records still stand.
His popularity in Britain mystified The Daily Telegraph's then theatre critic WA Darlington who, having seen Laine at the Palladium, noted loftily: "Mr Laine is a very large man with a very large and rather raucous voice which he pours pitilessly down an amplifier. Musically, the result is horrifying. I take it that what the screaming ladies admire so much is the power of the performance. For myself, I spent most of his turn thinking nostalgically of the acrobats and the Tiller Girls."
From the 1950s Laine enjoyed a second career recording versions of the title songs of Hollywood and television Westerns such as Gunfight At OK Corral; 3:10 To Yuma; Bullwhip; Champion the Wonder Horse and Rawhide.
His rendition of the title song for Mel Brooks's spoof Western Blazing Saddles (1974) won an Oscar nomination for Best Song, and, on television, his recording of Rawhide for the series starring Clint Eastwood ("Rain and wind and weather/Hell-bent for leather/Wishin' my gal was by my side… ") became one of the most familiar and popular theme songs of the century. "There is no other singer in the world who can yell 'yee-hah' with such conviction and make it sound sensible," one critic observed.
The eldest of eight children, he was born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio on March 30 1913 in Chicago, where his parents had moved from Sicily. His father began as a waterboy for the Chicago Railroad and later worked as the personal barber to Al Capone.
Frankie realised he wanted to be a singer after going to see Al Jolson in The Singing Fool. At 15, while attending Lane Technical School, he sang in front of a crowd at the Merry Garden Ballroom in Chicago and also did weekly performances for a radio station, where the programme director suggested he should change his name to Frankie Laine.
After leaving school he worked as a machinist, car salesman and beer parlour bouncer and, during the Depression, joined a company which toured dance marathons. In 1932, at Wilson's Pier in Atlantic City, he set an all-time dance record of 3,501 hours in 145 consecutive days. Altogether he participated in 14 marathons, winning three and coming second once and fifth twice. During these feats he would entertain spectators with his singing during the 15-minute breaks the dancers were given each hour.
In 1943 he moved to California, where he got odd jobs singing in the choruses of Hollywood films and dubbed the singing voice for an actor in the Danny Kaye comedy The Kid From Brooklyn.
Unemployed after the war, he took to dropping in to Los Angeles nightclubs hoping the performing band would invite him to sing. In 1946 Hoagy Carmichael happened to be in the audience at Billy Berg's club when Laine sang Carmichael's own Rockin' Chair. The songwriter was so impressed he suggested Berg give Laine a contract. "What for?" Berg asked. "He comes in here every night and sings for nothing." But he agreed to pay him $75 a week, and Laine went on to land a contract with Mercury records.
In 1946 Laine's version of That's My Desire rose to No 1 in the American charts, winning him his first gold disc. However, he had his greatest success after the Mercury impresario Mitch Miller began to exploit his talent for songs with a western or folk tinge. Together they went on to establish Mercury as one of the most successful record labels of its time, with a string of hits including That Lucky Old Sun, Mule Train, On the Sunny Side of the Street, Dream a Little Dream of Me, Georgia on My Mind, and many others.
When Miller left Mercury for Columbia in 1950 he took Laine with him, and during the 1950s and early 1960s his tally of hits lengthened with such favourites as High Noon ("Do not forsake me, oh my darlin"), Jealousy (Jalousie), The Girl in the Woods, When You're in Love, Way Down Yonder in New Orleans (with Jo Stafford), Your Cheatin' Heart, Hey Joe!, A Woman in Love, and Moonlight Gambler. He also had hits as a duettist with Patti Page, Doris Day, Jimmy Boyd and Johnnie Ray.
During this time Laine became involved in the civil rights movement. In the 1950s, when Nat King Cole's television show was unable to get a sponsor, he became the first white artist to appear as a guest on the show, forgoing his usual fee and setting an example which other white performers then followed. In the 1960s he performed in a free concert for Martin Luther King's supporters during their march on Washington. At the same time he was active in social charities, including Meals on Wheels and the Salvation Army, singing in benefit concerts and participating in fundraising drives.
Laine appeared as a guest in a number of Hollywood musicals, including Meet Me In Las Vegas (1956), starring Cyd Charisse, in which Laine, playing himself, can be seen performing Hell Hath No Fury. In the 1950s he hosted variety shows on American television and appeared as a guest on other shows. In the 1960s he took on guest-starring roles in series such as Rawhide, Burke's Law, and Perry Mason.
In 1963 Frankie Laine left Columbia for Capitol Records, but his two years there produced only one album and a handful of singles. After switching to ABC Records in the late 1960s he reached the top of the charts again with I'll Take Care of Your Cares, which was followed by several more hits. Later he founded his own label, Score Records, with which he continued to record into the 21st century. Despite having had open heart surgery, he toured Britain in 1988, singing as vigorously as ever. His last record, released shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, was dedicated to New York City's firemen.
His autobiography, That Lucky Old Sun, was published in 1993.
Frankie Laine married first, in 1950, the actress Nan Grey, whose two daughters he adopted. She died in 1993, and in 1999 he married Marcia Kline.
6.2.07
6th February
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
 | 1958: United players killed in air disaster Seven Manchester United footballers are among 21 dead after an air crash in Munich. | ||
| |||
| 1952: King George VI dies in his sleep His Majesty� King George VI� dies peacefully in his sleep at Sandringham House� aged 56. | |||
| |||
| 2001: Sharon sweeps to power The leader of the right-wing Likud party� Ariel Sharon� wins a landslide victory to become the new prime minister of Israel. | |||
| |||
Human skin harbours unknown bugs
Human skin is a "virtual zoo" of bacteria, say researchers who have identified more than 200 species in samples taken from the forearm. 
About 8% of the species were previously unknown, according to the study published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The team at New York Medical School used genetic analysis to work out what bacteria were present.
Microbiology experts said bacteria had a vital role in keeping skin healthy.
In the past our knowledge of bacteria has come from observing what happened when cells were grown in culture in a Petri dish.
The skin is home to a virtual zoo of bacteria
But researchers now have much more sensitive techniques at their fingertips.
Recent work has looked at what bacteria are present in areas such as the gut and the mouth.
Study leader Professor Martin Blaser, professor of microbiology, and colleagues extracted ribosomal DNA from bacteria found in skin samples taken from forearms of six volunteers.
They amplified the rDNA and used markers to pick out genetic regions specific to different species of bacteria.
Participants were swabbed again eight to 10 months later to see if there had been any changes.
New types
In the first set of analysis, the team found 182 species of bacteria, but at the repeated test a further 65 showed up.
Just over half of the bacteria found in the skin samples belonged to species that were already known to be common - Propionibacteria, Corynebacteria, Staphylococcus and Streptococcus.
And 8% were species that had not previously been described in the literature.
Almost three-quarters of the total number of bacterial species were unique to individual volunteers, suggesting the skin is "highly diversified".
Professor Blaser said: "Over the years maybe about 50 different organisms have been found in human skin but we knew there were organisms present that we couldn't grow. "We have gone up five-fold from what's been known before."
He now plans to repeat the study in people who have certain skin conditions such as psoriasis or eczema.
"The skin is home to a virtual zoo of bacteria. I see this as a form of explanation to see what's there."
Dr Richard Bojar, principal research fellow at the skin research centre, said there had been an explosion in the number of different bacteria identified because of better technology, but it did not necessarily have a clinical application.
"We have now got such a broad range of organisms. But these studies can't tell you how much are there.
"We now need to look at how we can use the technology usefully."
He added: "The microflora in your skin is important to keep your skin healthy but these days people tend to take more showers and use chemicals."
"The ancient Romans wiped on olive oil and wiped it off which gives you very good skin."
Briefcase 'that changed the world'
In the summer of 1940, the war with Germany was at a critical stage. 
France had recently surrendered and the Luftwaffe was engaged in a concerted bombing campaign against British cities.
The United Kingdom was being cut off from the Continent, and without allies to help her, she would soon be near the limit of her productive capacity - particularly in the all important field of electronics.
On the morning of 29 August, a small team of the country's top scientists and engineers, under the direction of Sir Henry Tizard and in conditions of absolute secrecy, was about to board a converted ocean liner.
With them they carried possibly the most precious cargo of the war - a black japanned metal deed box containing all of Britain's most valuable technological secrets.
They were on their way to America - to give them away.
This high-powered team included representatives from the Army, Navy and Air Force, along with specialists in the new technologies of war.
Earlier that morning, radar expert, Dr Edward "Taffy" Bowen - a vital member of this Tizard Mission and responsible for looking after the metal deed box that was to become known as "Tizard's briefcase" - almost lost it.
When he had arrived at London's Euston station, the Welshman had handed it to a porter while gathering up his remaining luggage, then watched helplessly as the man headed off to find the 0830 boat train to Liverpool without waiting for his customer.
As he struggled to keep the porter in sight above the wartime throngs, Eddie Bowen would not have drawn much attention from the busy Londoners. Only his face would have betrayed his concern.
Short distance
Just five days short of the war's first anniversary, Britain faced one of its most desperate hours.
The Battle of Britain was raging, and bombs were falling nightly on Liverpool. Nazi armies ringed the country from the Norwegian coast down to France; an invasion was expected within weeks.
As Bowen knew, the seemingly ordinary solicitor's deed box - for which he was personally responsible - held the power to change the course of the war.
Inside lay nothing less than all Britain's military secrets. There were blueprints and circuit diagrams for rockets, explosives, superchargers, gyroscopic gunsights, submarine detection devices, self-sealing fuel tanks, and even the germs of ideas that would lead to the jet engine and the atomic bomb.
But the greatest treasure of all was the prototype of a piece of hardware called a cavity magnetron, which had been invented a few months earlier by two scientists in Birmingham.
John Randall and Harry Boot had invented the cavity magnetron almost by accident.
It was a valve that could spit out pulses of microwave radio energy on a wavelength of 10cm. This was unheard of. Nothing like it had been invented before.
The wavelength for the radar system we were using at the start of the war was one-and-a-half metres. The equipment needed was bulky and the signals indistinct.
The cavity magnetron was to be the key that would allow us to develop airborne radar.
Kitchen technology
"It was a massive, massive breakthrough," says Andy Manning from the Radar Museum in Horning.
"It is deemed by many, even now, to be the most important invention that came out of the Second World War".
Professor of military history at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, David Zimmerman, agrees: "The magnetron remains the essential radio tube for shortwave radio signals of all types.
"It not only changed the course of the war by allowing us to develop airborne radar systems, it remains the key piece of technology that lies at the heart of your microwave oven today. The cavity magnetron's invention changed the world."
Because Britain had no money to develop the magnetron on a massive scale, Churchill had agreed that Sir Henry Tizard should offer the magnetron to the Americans in exchange for their financial and industrial help. No strings attached.
It was an extraordinary gesture. By September, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had set up a secret laboratory; by November, the cavity magnetron was in mass production; and by early 1941, portable airborne radar had been developed and fitted to both American and British planes.
The course of the Second World War was about to be changed. It was, says writer Robert Buderi, possibly the most important development of the 20th Century.
In fact, it was so important a development that the official historian of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, James Phinney Baxter III, wrote: "When the members of the Tizard Mission brought the cavity magnetron to America in 1940, they carried the most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores."
The World in a Briefcase, made by Pier Productions, is on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 5 February at 2000 GMT. You will also be able to hear the programme on the Listen Again service on the Radio 4 website.
The original cavity magnetron is held at the Science Museum in London.
'Super-scope' opens for business
The biggest science facility to be built in the UK for 30 years - the Diamond Light Source synchrotron - has opened its doors for business. 
Computer simulation The vast machine, which covers the area of five football pitches, generates intense light beams to probe matter down to the molecular and atomic scale.
The South Oxfordshire-based facility will be used by many fields, including medicine and environmental science.
Researchers have now commenced their experiments at its "beamline" stations.
Gerhard Materlik, chief executive of Diamond, said: "The first users possess an extensive knowledge of synchrotron science and bring a range of research projects to Diamond, from cancer research, to advancing data storage techniques, to unravelling the mysteries of the Solar System."
Under pressure
Within the machine, which is sometimes described as a "super microscope", electrons are accelerated into a thin, doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber, which measures 562.6m (1,846ft) in circumference.
As the particles whizz around and around, almost reaching the speed of light, they lose energy in the form of synchrotron light.
This intense light, which falls in the range of x-ray, ultra-violet and infra-red, is then channelled off into beamlines, where it passes through samples of material, probing deep into their fine-structure. 
On completion of phase one of its construction, Diamond has seven beamlines, each designed to carry out different kinds of experiments.
Professor Chris Binns, a physicist from the University of Leicester and one of the first researchers to use the facility, said: "We are looking at methods for making new high-performance magnetic materials for the future by assembling nanoparticles.
"The problem is, to understand them, we need to understand the magnetic structure at nanometre scales. The beamline we have been using for the last six days has a special microscope that can image magnetic structures at these very small scales."
His work, he said, was key to storing greater amounts of data on ever-shrinking devices.
Other beamlines are dedicated to studying materials under intense pressure; looking at the chemical make-up of complex materials, such as moon rocks and other geological samples; and understanding diverse biological samples.
'A revelation'
Professor Dave Stuart, a structural biologist from the University of Oxford, is about to begin using one of the beamlines to investigate the structure of protein molecules found in human cells, to understand the molecular basis of diseases such as cancer.
He told BBC News: "It is wonderful that Diamond has opened in the UK. Over the last two years I have made about 50 trips to the European synchrotron in Grenoble, France.
"It will be a revelation for us to have this here and it is great to be one of the first users.
"It will also affect the science we will do; our samples are sometimes not very stable and often the experiments don't work first time, so if we have to make an aeroplane trip or long drive it can be very difficult." 
Enlarge ImageThe team running the facility says on average another four to five new beamlines will added every year until 2011.
The project has cost about £300m, funded by the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC) and the Wellcome Trust.
Dr Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, said: "This is a monumental occasion and represents the culmination of a huge amount of work by a large number of people."
The Diamond synchrotron will be replacing the Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS) in Daresbury, Cheshire. The SRS was the world's first dedicated synchrotron but is due to close at the end of 2008.
Many countries have their own synchrotrons, and new ones are being built in France, the US and China.
Records shattered at £400million art auction
Art collectors from across the world parted with more than £94 million in three hours at Sotheby’s last night on the first night of what is likely to prove to be Europe’s biggest art sale.
Masterpieces by Monet, Degas and other iconic names sparked frenzied bidding as estimates were ignored and records tumbled. As many as 30 works sold for more than £1 million and broke six world records in a record total for a London evening sale. Over the coming days at Sotheby’s and rival auctioneers Christie’s as much as £400 million is likely to change hands.
Such was the desperation for museum-quality works that buyers were placing bids before the auctioneer could utter the next figure.
The biggest collectors concealed their identity by bidding over the telephone or through agents and the fiercest battle raged over Soutine’s angst-ridden L’Homme au Foulard Rouge, 1921. Faced with the chance to acquire an epitome of the artist’s mature style with its expressive pose, rhythmically charged brushstrokes and intense colours, the battle was reduced to three collectors who sent bidding soaring to £8.75 million.
Figures leapt out in increments that would buy a London house and collectors broke the artist’s record of £7.8 million. It went to a woman who had been sitting quietly in the second row until then.
As the hammer fell, there were hushed gasps from art lovers, dealers and onlookers crammed into the saleroom. Some might have remembered that, as recently as 1997, it had been bought by last night’s seller for £1.6 million.
The great irony was that Soutine was a tortured soul, a Russian emigré living in poverty in Paris. Like Van Gogh, he is more sought-after than ever.
Melanie Clore, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s, said: “It was a great evening, with strong prices across the board.” Dealers and outside experts agreed. Stephen Somerville, a leading fine art consultant, said: “The prices were phenomenally strong. The market is strong.”
Ten years ago, such auctions were dependent on American interest. Last night, the interest came from America, Asia and continental Europe. Having lavished their enormous wealth on mansions, yachts and football clubs, about 200 wealthy Russians with prime residences in London and Moscow are buying art in vast quantities. They like buying at auction because the interest from an underbidder reassures them that the art-work must be worth buying.
Bidders fought to acquire Dufy’s La Foire aux Oignons, a vibrant Breton market scene dating from 1907, which went for a record £4.05 million, against an estimated £1.8 million. They were just as keen on Sisley’s dreamy landscape Le Loing a Moret, en Été. Their bidding broke the world auction record in taking the figure to £2.9 million, well over the upper estimate of £2.5 million.
The sale had got off to a good start. Within 45 minutes, German and Austrian works alone had made more than £13.7 million. That the sale did so well came as little surprise to the trade. The quality of art again reflected London’s increasing status. More than 800 people, record numbers for London, turned up. As well its main room, Sotheby’s set aside a further two rooms for the overspill. Even then, about 300 people were prepared to stand.
Much of the main activity took place over the telephone. With every bid announced by the auctioneer, all eyes turned to the 40 or so members of Sotheby’s staff manning telephones lined up along the length of the room. They were speaking to Russian oligarchs and American billionaires, not to mention the wealthiest Taiwanese, Hong Kong and Chinese collectors, who prefer to conceal their identities. Boris Berezovsky, the exiled billionaire businessman, was believed to be among them.
The perception of a weak dollar is significant, but few expected it to affect the regulars such as Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas casino owner, and Steve Cohen, the Wall Street hedge fund billionaire.
Under the hammer
£8.75m Chaim Soutine L’Homme Au Foulard Rouge
£6.85m Pierre-Auguste Renoir Les Deux Soeurs
£4.16m Edgar Degas Trois Danseuses Jupes Violettes
£4.05m Raoul Dufy Le Foire aux Oignions
£3.82m Edvard Munch View from the Nordstrand
£3.15m Edvard Munch Springtime
£3.04m Maurice de Vlaminck Symphonie en couleurs (fleurs)
£2.9m William Sisley Le Loing a Moret, en Été
£2.26m Claude Monet Chrysanthãmes
£1.53m Ludwig Meidner My Nocturnal Visage
*******************************************************
Fierce bidding and a tense, overcrowded saleroom last night opened the biggest week in British art auction history as some of the world's richest dealers and collectors descended on Sotheby's in London for the opening sales. Sotheby's and its rival, Christie's, are auctioning paintings – Impressionists, 20th Century and modern pictures – with estimates of more than £400 million. They are billed as the biggest auctions ever held outside America.
The discerning, with deep pockets, fell on London to pick from an extraordinary mix from Impressionists such as Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, Monet, Gauguin, and Modigliani; and Surrealists Magritte, Ernst, Duchamp and Dali. The sale also included contemporary works from artists such as Warhol, Richter, Bacon, Lichtenstein, the graffiti artist Banksy and Damien Hirst. In the biggest Impressionist sale since the 1980s last night, all was not plain sailing. The first big lot, Edgar Degas's pastel Trois Danseurs de Jupe Violette, made just £3.7 million. Sotheby's had put its value between £4 million and £6 million. |
The biggest lot of the night, Renoir's Les Deux Soeurs, owned by a member of the Revlon Cosmetics dynasty, sold for £6.8 million. Its estimate had been £6 million to £8 million.
Sotheby's spokesman said that unprecedented numbers of bidders had asked for tickets for the 450 seats in its main saleroom. An overspill room, with a second auctioneer, was hastily laid on when nearly double that number turned up.
The booming world economy has sent art prices soaring, with strong interest particularly from newly rich countries such as Russia and China.
There were few plutocrats to be seen in the flesh last night, but Sotheby's staff manned all the 30 telephones and it is thought that many of the bids were coming from overseas.
An Asian bidder on a cellphone snapped another early lot, Monet's Maison du Jardiniere for £3.6 million, just above Sotheby's low estimate of £3.5 million.
Early bidding was erratic. Four lots in a row in the first sale, on Austrian and German art, failed to reach their reserve prices. But a world record was set for a Wilhelm Lehmbruck sculpture of a female torso.
The Torso der Schreitenden (Torso of a Walking Woman) sold for £1 million against the estimate of £250,000 to £350,000. There was strong interest in the bust because it had recently been returned to descendants of its pre-war Czech owners after being seized by the Nazis in 1939.
The biggest lot of the week is expected to come up at Christie's on Thursday. It is a Francis Bacon painting from his "Pope" series, owned by Sophia Loren, the actress. It has an estimate of £12 million and if it reaches £15 million it will become the most expensive picture produced since the Second World War.
"The ability to work with this piece of art is really one in a million," Pilar Ordovas, the head of Christie's Post-war and Contemporary Art Department in London, said. "The market is so exciting at the moment. It's almost like going to the theatre."
By the end of the year, all Christie's auctions will be broadcast on the internet through the company's Christie's Live, a move that Ms Ordovas said would allow anyone to watch the tense bidding in real time.
Trois Danseurs de Jupe Violette
Edgar Degas
Price: £3.7 million
Estimate: £4-6 million
Les Deux Soeurs
Renoir
Price: £6.8 million
Estimate: £6-8 million
Maison du Jardiniere
Monet
Price: £3.6 million
Estimate: £3.5 million
Female torso
Wilhelm Lehmbruck
Price: £1 million
Estimate: £250,000 to £300,000
5.2.07
500 from the Vaults
What is known as Adam's Ale? Water
What is mach 1? Speed of sound (at sea level)
What is the capital of Canada? Ottawa
What is the collective name for a group of fish? A school
What is the common name for iron pyrites? Fools gold
What is the square root of 225? 15
What is the traditional dress of Japan? The kimono
What name is given to a litter of pigs? A farrow
What nationality is F1 driver Jaques Villeneuve? Canadian
What nationality was George Bernard Shaw? Irish
What rhymes with 'Cupid' on the title of the Connie Francis No. 1? Stupid
What sort of animal is the komodo dragon? A lizard
What sort of creature is a corncrake? A bird
What sort of creature is a dingo? A wild dog
What sort of creature is a Natterjack? Toad
What sort of food is lobster bisque? A soup
What type of film was Bruce Lee's speciality? Martial arts
What was Clarence Birdseye's lasting invention? Frozen foods
What was the former name of Cape Canaveral? Cape Kennedy
What was WW1 flyer Baron von Richthofen's nickname? Red Baron
What weight is the women's discus - 1kg, 1.5kg or 2kg? 1kg
What were built at Kariba and Aswan on the Nile? Dams
What wood is used for the black keys on a piano? Ebony
What word can follow foot, base and basket? Ball
What word is opposite to serious, dark and heavy? Light
What would a quiver contain? Arrows
Where in Arizona did the Gunfight at the OK Corral take place? Tombstone
Where might you be obstructed by a sand bunker? On a golf course
Where was the alarm clock in Peter Pan? Inside the crocodile
Which 2 disciplines make up the Biathlon? Cross country skiing and shooting
Which actress married Prince Rainier of Monaco? Grace Kelly
Which Age came between the Stone and Iron Ages? Bronze Age
Which animal is named in one of Shakespeare's play titles? A shrew
Which Bob sang with the Wailers? Marley
Which canal conects the Mediterranean with the Red Sea? Suez
Which capital city is heated by volcanic springs? Reykjavik
Which cartoon character is chased by Wile E Coyote? Roadrunner
Which cartoon character is known as TC? Top Cat
Which chess piece can only move diagonally? Bishop
Which Clarence first had the idea of freezing foods? Birdseye
Which country had a king called Zog? Albania
Which country is ruled by Robert Mugabe? Zimbabwe
Which country is the home of Renault motor cars? France
Which country's soldiers are awarded the Iron Cross? Germany's
Which creatures belong to the Order Arachnida? Spiders
Which Don and Phil woke up little Suzy? Everly
Which element has the symbol C? Carbon
Which emperor had a wife called Josephine? Napoleon
Which European country produces most wine? France
Which farm animal do you associate with New Zealand? Sheep
Which flightless bird is the New Zealand emblem? Kiwi
Which French word describes an afternoon show? Matinee
Which game is divided into chukkas? Polo
Which garment was invented by Levi Strauss? Jeans
Which gas makes up roughly 20% of air? Oxygen
Which German actress starred in "The Blue Angel?" Marlene Dietrich
Which girls name is found in the eye? Iris
Which high kicking dance originated in Paris about 1830? The Can Can
Which instrument combines two telescopes? Binoculars
Which instrument does Jeff Beck play? Guitar
Which Irish plant represents the Holy Trinity? The shamrock
Which is the largest coral reef in the world? The Great Barrier Reef
Which is the largest Mediterranean island? Sicily
Which is the main religion in Afghanistan? Islam
Which is the softest and heaviest of the common metals? Lead
Which king turned everything he touched into gold? Midas
Which lake is the world's saltiest? The Dead Sea
Which major falls are on the Zambezi? Victoria Falls
Which major river flows through Cairo? The Nile
Which metal has the symbol Cu? Copper
Which metal is liquid at room temperature? Mercury
Which ocean lies to the north of Russia? Arctic
Which of Shakespeare's plays was set in Verona? Romeo and Juliet
Which part of a rattlesnake contains the rattle? Its tail
Which part of the eye controls the amount of light entering? The iris
Which people were led by King Attila? The Huns
Which queen of England was known as the Virgin Queen? Elizabeth l
Which Shakespearean character demanded his pound of flesh? Shylock
Which son of Adam and Eve was killed by his brother? Abel
Which sport can be Nordic or Alpine? Skiing
Which sport featured in the Thriller in Manila? Boxing
Which star sign has the bull as its symbol? Taurus
Which super-hero did Diana Prince turn into?
Which word can follow boxing, teething and wedding? Ring
Who does a narcissist love? Himself
Who first perfected freezing food commercially? Clarence Birdseye
Who in the bible had a coat of many colours? Joseph
Who invented tomato sauce? Henry Heinz
Who is Agatha Christie's female detective? Miss Marple
Who is Joan Collins' novelist sister? Jackie Collins
Who is Yogi bear's little friend? Boo Boo
Who launched the Sputnik series of satellites? USSR
Who met the people of Lilliput and Brobdignag? Gulliver
Who played the Jackal in The Day of the Jackal? Edward Fox
Who says "Not many people know that?" Michael Caine
Who starred in the Beverly Hills Cop series? Eddie Murphy
Who starred in the film Barbarella? Jane Fonda
Who succeeded King George VI in the UK? Queen Elizabeth II
Who was Christopher Dean's ice dance partner? Jane Torvill
Who was female star of Some Like It Hot? Marilyn Monroe
Who was Ginger Rogers' famous screen partner? Fred Astaire
Who was king Solomon's father? David
Who was known as "The Virgin Queen?" ElizabethI
Who was the first President of the USA? George Washington
Who were the sailors who sailed with Jason? The Argonauts
Who wrote "Gulliver's Travels?" Jonathon Swift
Who wrote The Importance of being Earnest? Oscar Wilde
With what do Volleyball players hit the ball? Hands and forearms
With which sense are the optic nerves connected? Sight
With which sport do you associate Billie-Jean King? Tennis
With which sport do you associate Don Bradman? Cricket
With which sport do you associate the Schumacher brothers? Motor racing
With which sport was Olga Korbutt associated? Gymnastics
Which US city holds a famous Mardi Gras carnival? New Orleans
How was whisky known to American Indians? Firewater
By what initials was Larry Hagman known in Dallas? JR
A string quartet features 2 violins, a viola and what? Cello
After which country are gipsies named? Egypt
Are there more or less than 200 bones in our body? More
Around which pole do we find polar bears? North Pole
Bovine relates to which type of animal? Cattle
For what would a musician use a plectrum? Plucking strings
For which type of transport is George Stephenson famous? Railway
For who were the Pips the backing group? Gladys Knight
From which country does Pete Sampras come? USA
From which kind of animal do we get mohair? The Angora goat
Grog was a mixture of water and which spirit? Rum
Has a harp usually more or less than 50 strings? Less (47)
How are the small islands off Florida known? Florida Keys
How big was Tim in the Christmas Carol? Tiny
How is singer Gordon Sumner better known? Sting
How is the humerus bone commonly known? The funny bone
How many faces has a square based pyramid? 5
How many furlongs in a mile? Eight
How many minutes would 3000 seconds make? 50
How many sides has a heptagon? 7
How many surfaces has a square based pyramid? 5
How many years are there in a decade? Ten
How were Russian rulers Peter and Catherine described? The Great
In music, what is a hi hat made from? Two cymbals
In mythology, for what did Jason search? The Golden Fleece
In the Old Testament, who was Joseph's father? Jacob
In the song what was Venus wearing? Blue jeans
In which area of New York are most skyscrapers? Manhatton
In which city is the Sorbonne? Paris
In which country did paella originate? Spain
In which country is the city of Tijuana? Mexico
In which country is the resort of Tangier? Morocco
In which country is the Taj Mahal? India
In which country is the Yellow river? China
In which country is Transylvania? Romania
In which country is Zurich? Switzerland
In which country would you find North and South Holland? Netherlands
In which country would you find the leaning tower of Pisa? Italy
In which European country would you find Brugges? Belgium
In which film did Julia Andrews portray a man? Victor/Victoria
In which hand is the Statue of Liberty's torch? Right
In which US state is Anchorage? Alaska
In which US state would you expect to see the hula? Hawaii
In which war were tanks first used? World War 1
In which year was Mount Everest first conquered? 1953
Labial refers to which body parts? Lips
March is said to go out like which animal? A lamb
Of what is hydrophobia a fear? Water
Of which African country was Haile Selassie emperor? Ethiopia
Of which country is Baghdad the capital? Iraq
Of which country was Leonid Brezhnev leader? USSR
On what did Sleeping Beauty prick her finger? A spinning wheel
On which Japanese city was the first atomic bomb dropped? Hiroshima
Papa Doc and Baby Doc were both dictators of where? Haiti
Plumbers get their name fom the Latin name for which metal? Lead
Rabbits live in a system of tunnels called what? A warren
Saving Private Ryan was directed by who? Steven Spielberg
The Teal belongs to which family of birds? Ducks
To which country is the Black Swan native? Australia
What are Etna, Vesuvius and Stromboli? Volcanoes
What are hermaphrodites? Organisms with male and female sex organs
What are the Grand Coolee and Aswan High? Dams
What are the Mistral and Sirocco? Winds or cars
What can be Blue or Beluga? Whales
What can be tea, hybrid or floribunda? Roses
What colour are the stripes on the French flag? Red, white and blue
What do cartographers make? Maps
What do claustrophobics fear? Closed spaces
What do the spots on a die add up to? 21
What do we call a baby eel? An elver
What do we call the long haired Tibetan ox? The yak
What does a cooper make? Barrels
What does crescendo mean? Getting louder and louder
What figures are found on Easter Island? Stone statues
What happens to atoms during fission?
What is a ship's painter? A rope
What is added to tomato juice to make a Bloody Maria? Tequila
What is boxer James Smith's nickname? Bonecrusher
What is forty in Roman numerals? XL
What is measured with a pedometer? Walking distance
What is struck in a game of badminton? A shuttlecock
What is the common name for the trachea? Throat
What is the international registration letter for Portugal? P
What is the Matterhorn? A mountain
What is the monsoon? Heavy summer rain
What is the name of the Muppet frog? Kermit
What is the name of the USA's National Cemetery? Arlington
What is the next number in the series 2, 5, 10, 17? 26
What is the next prime number after 13? 17
What is the starting ingredient for rum? Sugar cane
What is the title of the spiritual ruler of Tibet? Dalai Lama
What is your trachea? Windpipe
What letter do dashes represent in Morse Code? O
What nationality was cricketer Don Bradman? Australian
What nationality was the author of Anna Karenina? Russian
What nationality was the poet Omar Khayyam? Persian
What part did William Shatner play in Star Trek? Capt James T Kirk
What part of a garment can be raglan? The sleeve
What separates the bones in the backbone? Cartilage discs
What sex would a filly be? Female
What sort of angle is less than 90°? Acute
What sort of creature is a Drill? Monkey
What sort of creature is a kittiwake? A bird
What sort of creatures are kept in an apiary? Bees
What sort of fuels are coal, oil and natural gas? Fossil fuels
What type of dance goes with Spandau? Ballet
What was Bing Crosby's first name? Harry
What was invented by Georg and Lazlo Biro? The ballpen
What was Lazlo Biro's famous invention? The ball-point pen
What was the name of Dick Turpin's horse? Black Bess
What was the theme tune to Dr Zhivago? Lara's theme
What word describes to year olds? Teenager
What word describes made to measure clothes? Bespoke
What would you find in a carillon? Bells
Where in the body is haemoglobin found? The blood
Where on a fish is its dorsal fin? The back
Where was Buzz Aldrin the second to stand? On the moon
Where would you find ebony and ivory together? Piano keyboard
Where would you find the Sea of Tranquility? On the moon
Which 2 pigments would you mix to give green? Blue and Yellow
Which actress became Princess of Monaco? Grace Kelly
Which airport serves Chicago? O'Hare
Which American statesman experimented with lightening? Ben Franklin
Which animal is most similar to man? The chimpanzee
Which animals do the Australians call jumbucks? Sheep
Which armoured combat vehicle was first used in WW1? The tank
Which artist cut off part of his ear? Van Gogh
Which bodily stucture is made up of vertebrae? The spine
Which British monarch was known as the Virgin Queen? Elizabeth 1
Which cartoon character has an anchor tattooed on his arm? Popeye
Which cat can run fastest? The cheetah
Which chess piece only moves diagonally? The Bishop
Which country adopted glasnost in the 1990s? USSR
Which country was ruled by dictator Pol Pot? Cambodia
Which country's cars carry the registration plate D? Germany
Which country's national flower is the edelweiss? Austria
Which elephants have the biggest ears, African or Indian? African
Which European country has an area called Flanders? Belgium
Which famous Greek statue is armless? The Venus de Milo
Which famous natural feature is found in Arizona? Grand Canyon
Which film about a giant ape was first shown in 1933? King Kong
Which flower is the Scottish emblem? The thistle
Which former Hollywood actor became US President? Ronald Regan
Which insects live in a formicarium? Ants
Which is ex-racer Niki Lauda's home country? Austria
Which is the 13th letter of the alphabet? M
Which is the world's largest bird? The ostrich
Which London street is famous for private medicine? Harley Street
Which metal has the chemical symbol Cu? Copper
Which name for the Netherlands is a region of the country? Holland
Which New York street is famous for its theatres? Broadway
Which nursery rhyme character stole some tarts? The Knave of Hearts
Which of the 7 virtues begins with C? Charity
Which part of the teeth is the hardest? The enamel
Which planet lies between Mars and Saturn? Jupiter
Which planet lies between Saturn and Neptune? Uranus
Which planet orbits between Saturn and Neptune? Uranus
Which plants are traditionally used for Bonsai? Trees
Which Royal castle is the largest in Britain? Windsor
Which singer made 2 versions of the Banana Boat song? Harry Belafonte
Which sport is divided into chukkas? Polo
Which star is roughly 9million miles from Earth? The Sun
Which Turkish city was previously known as Constantinople? Istanbul
Which two gangs featured in West Side Story? The Jets and Sharks
Which US President was married to Jane Wyman? Ronald Reagan
Which US state has the Arctic Circle running through it? Alaska
Which vitamin is also known as ascorbic acid? Vitamin C
Which warriors were led by Genghis Khan? The Mongols
Who did Glenn Close play in 101 Dalmations? Cruella de Ville
Who did Madonna marry in December 2000? Guy Richie
Who drew up the rules of boxing in 1867? Marquess of Queensbury
Who invented a code made up of dots and dashes? Samuel Morse
Who is Agatha Christie's Belgian detective? Hercule Poirot
Who is considered to be the father of the radio? Marconi
Who is the patron saint of travellers? St Christopher
Who is the patron Saint of Wales? Saint David
Who played the leading role in the film Citizen Kane? Orson Welles
Who sang that he was Born in the USA Bruce Springsteen
Who shot Abraham Lincoln? John Wilkes Booth
Who spent the last 21 years of his life in Spandau jail? Rudolph Hess
Who starred with Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde? Faye Dunaway
Who was author of the book Mein Kampf? Adolf Hitler
Who was Dr Jekyll's alter ego? Mr Hyde
Who was the author of "Dr Zhivago?" Boris Pasternak
Who was the central character in the film Braveheart? William Wallace
Who was the last king of Egypt? King Farouk
Who was the male star of the film "Grease?" John Travolta
Who was Tina Turner's first husband? Ike Turner
Who would fast during Ramadan?
Who wrote "The Importance of being Earnest?" Oscar Wilde
Who wrote the novel "Goldfinger?" Ian Fleming
Who wrote the play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?" Tennessee Williams
With which trio did D'Artagnan team up The Three Musketeers
What was John Logie Baird's major invention? Television
What is the name of the Beckham's second son? Romeo
According to legend, which city did Romulus and Remus found? Rome
Bones and Spock were in which TV series? Star Trek
Bouillabaise is what kind of fish dish? Soup
Bronze is a mixture of tin and which other metal? Copper
By what name is an elk known in North America? Moose
Cape Kennedy became what again in 1973? Cape Canaveral
Coir is a coarse fibre made from the husks of which fruit? Coconut
Complete the saying - Beauty is only? Skin deep
During which war was the Battle of Gettysburg? American Civil War
For which film did John Wayne win his only Oscar? True Grit
From where was the barber in Rossini's opera? Seville
From which country do Bretons come? France (Brittany)
From which country does Chianti come? Italy
How can you score 50 with one dart? Bull's eye
How do we refer to electronic mail? Email
How is La Gioconda better known? The Mona Lisa
How many athletes are there in a 400m relay team? 4
How many cents are there in a US dollar? 100
How many degrees make a semi-circle? 180
How many masts are there on a clipper sailing ship? Three
How many sides has a decagon? Ten
How many sides has a pentagon? 5
How many strings does a guitar usually have? Six
How many Wacky Races did Dick Dastardley win? None
If an Australian says something has gone walkabout, where is it? Missing
In Cockney rhyming slang, what is "Barnet Fair?" Hair
In France, who was the Dauphin? The king's eldest son
In which century was the American Declaration of Independence issued? 18th
In which city would you expect to travel by gondola? Venice
In which country did fireworks originate? China
In which country is the Kentucky Derby run? USA
In which country is the resort of Estoril? Portugal
In which country is the river Loire? France
In which event did Daley Thompson twice win Olympic gold? Decathlon
In which game can you get strikes and spares? 10 pin bowling
In which Italian town was Saint Francis born? Assisi
In which novel do we meet Benn Gunn? Treasure Island
In which river was Jesus Christ baptised? The Jordan
In which series were Little Joe, Hoss and Ben Cartwright? Bonanza
Bam Bam is the son of which Cartoon Family? (Barny and Betty Rubble)
Barbara Millicent Roberts is better known to millions worldwide as whom? (Barbie Doll)
Barcelona is the capital of which Spanish region? (Catalonia)
Baron Greenback is the villain in which children's TV cartoon series? Dangermouse
Barry Bulsara is serving life imprisonment for murder who was his victim Jill Dando
Bauxite is the principal ore of what metal? ALUMINIUM
Before 1961 what colour was a £note?( White)
Before being handed back to China, what was the capital of Hong Kong? (Victoria)
Before Charles Kennedy, who was leader of the Lib Dems? (Paddy Ashdown)
Before fame as a Singer, Julio Inglesias was a Goal Keeper with which team? (Real Madrid )
Before he change his name, what was Cassius Clays middle name? (Marcellus)
Before London what general accepted as being the capital of England? (Winchester)
Before the 2001 tournament. Who were the ball boys at Wimbledon warned not to stare at? Anna Kournikova
Before the start of which sporting event do the team captains toss up using an 1829 sovereign? THE UNIVERSITY BOAT RACE
Belgrade is on the banks of which river? (Danube)
Benjamin Britten composed an opera entitled "Gloriana" to commemorate which historical event? (Coronation of QE2)
Berlin 's "Take my breath away" was the theme for which movie? (Top Gun)
Bewick and Whooper are types of what bird? Swan
Bill Owen played which character in Last of the Summer Wine? COMPO
Birds - Which part of a Redshank is red? Legs
Bishop Auckland is the home to what Bishop ? (Durham)
Bob Hawke and Paul Keating were Prime Ministers of which country? Answer-Australia
Boob Day is the Spanish Equivalent of what in Britain? (April Fools Day)
Born in 1550 John Napier originated the concept of which mathematical device to aid in calculations? LOGARITHM
Born in 1874, which famous politician wrote 'A History of the English-Speaking Peoples'? Winston Churchill
Born this week, and names after a New York borough, what is his 2nd Forename? (Joseph)
Brazil have won the World Cup most times, which country did they beat to win it the 1st time? (Sweden 1958)
Brian Lara has recently regained a world he lost last year, for runs in a test match - how many runs did he score? (400 not out)
Britain is currently resisting pressure from the European Union to levy V.A.T. on what type of goods? (Children's clothes and shoes)
British Children are offered an 'All-in-one' vaccine called 'MMR' what does 'MMR' stand for? (Measles, Mumps and Rubella)
British singer/rapper Niomi McLean-Daley is better known as who? Ms. Dynamite
Bruce Willis played the Character 'John McClane' in which Film? (Die Hard series)
Butch and Sundance made the News in January 1998, who were they? (Escaped Tamworth Pigs)
By birth what nationality is or was Osama bin Laden? (Saudi Arabian)
By the age of 40, what does one out of every three British men have? (Criminal Record)
By the age of 40, what does one out of every three British men have? (Criminal Record)
By what military rank is the President of Libya known ? (Colonel ~ Quaddaffi)
By what more common name are the 3rd Molars known? WISDOM TEETH
By what name are the Sandwich Islands now known? Hawaii
By what name did protester David Daniel Hooper become better known? (Swampy)
By what name do we now know British Honduras ? ( Belize )
By what name is a domesticated polecat known? A FERRET
By what name is a Modulator-Demodulator better known ? Modem
By what name is Edson Arantes do Nascimento better known? Pele
By what name is Eldrick Woods better known? (Tiger Woods)
By what name is Nyasaland now known? (Malawi)
By what name is solid carbon dioxide known? Dry ice
By what name is the flower truss of the Hazel and Willow tress known? (Catkin)
By what name is the marsupial Sarcophilus harrisi better known? (Tasmanian devil)
By what name is the present Pope known? John Paul II
In which sport did Mark Spitz win 7 Olympic golds in 1972? Swimming
In which US city is the arty district of Greenwich Village? New York
In which US state are Memphis and Nashville? Tennessee
In which US state are the Everglades? Florida
In which US state is the Alamo? Texas
In which US state is the Grand Canyon? Arizona
In which year did the first World War begin? 1914
In whichcountry did the D Day landings take place? France
Into what do sardines grow? Pilchards
Into what does digestion reduce proteins? Amino acids
Into which superhero does Peter Parker turn? Spiderman
Of which Asian country is Katmandu the capital? Nepal
Of which country was Brian Boru king? Ireland
On what type of tree do dates grow? Palm
On which lake does Geneva stand? Lake Geneva
Taste buds can detect sweet, salt, sour and what else? Bitter
The Panama Canal links the Pacific with where? Caribbean
The Roman god Vulcan was the god of what? Fire
To what did Elton John say "Goodbye?" The Yellow Brick Road
To which country is the dingo now native? Australia
What are the flat treeless plains of Argentina called? The Pampas
What can be hunter and half hunter? Pocket watches
What colour is jet? Black
What colour wine gave Elkie Brookes chart success? Lilac
What did Marie Antoinette suggest the starving citizens eat? Cake
What did the Midas touch do? Turn everything into gold
What did the Romans call todays France? Gaul
What do we call a group of camels? A caravan
What do we call natural jets of steam and boiling water? Geysers
What do we call solid carbon dioxide? Dry ice
What do we call young squirrels? Kittens
What does a barometer measure? Atmospheric (air) pressure
What does an altimeter measure? A planes height
What does the musical term forte mean? Loud
What event took place in Salem in 1692? The witch trials
What food was developed by William Kellogg? Cornflakes
What information does a pilot get from the altimeter? Height
What is 0.2as a percentage? 25%
What is a baby bat called? A pup
What is a capon? A castrated cockerel
What is a dumb waiter? A food lift
What is a vertical divider in a window called? A mullion
What is campanology? Bell ringing
What is Greg Norman's nickname? The Great White Shark
What is the capital of Switzerland? Bern
What is the character Crocodile Dundee's first name? Mick
What is the cube root of 216? 6
What is the French word for apple? Pomme
What is the Italian word for pie? Pizza
What is the Japanese art of origami? Paper folding
What is the least number of shots needed to score 41 in snooker? (or 10)
What is the name for a fork's prong? A tine
What is the surname of sisters Magda, Eva and Zsa Zsa? Gabor
What kind of fish is a hammerhead? A shark
What name was given to the ancient rulers of Egypt? Pharaoh
What number is dos in Spanish? 2
What poisonous fluid do snakes make? Venom
What profession is the subject of James Herriot's books? Vets
What single word describes a cave dweller? Troglodyte
What sort of animal is a cony? A rabbit
What sort of creature is a corncrake? A bird
What sort of creature is a guillemot? A bird
What sort of creature is a hoopoe? A bird
What sort of creature is a shrike? A bird
What sort of fish will a smolt grow into? A salmon
What sort of insects live in a vespiary? Wasps
What was Sleeping Beauty's name? Princess Aurora
What was the capital of King Arthur's kingdom? Camelot
What was the first name of circus boss P T Barnum? Phineas
What was the former name of Ho Chi Minh City? Saigon
What waterway is Port Said on? Suez Canal
What word can follow sedan, arm and high? Chair
What zodiac sign represents Gemini? Twins
Where in the body would you find enamel? Coating the teeth
Where is the Golden Gate Bridge? San Francisco
Where would you use SCUBA gear? Under water
Which animals make up a skein? Flying geese
Which anniversary is your 25th? Silver
Which Australian state is an island? Tasmania
Which band is found in the desert? Oasis
Which bay housed the island prison of Alcatraz? San Francisco
Which big cat ia also called a panther? Leopard
Which bird can fly all day without flapping its wings? The albatross
Which bird is the fastest runner? The ostrich
Which blood vessels carry blood from the heart? Arteries
Which business group was set up by Richard Branson? Virgin
Which car company owns Jaguar? Ford
Which cartoon dog sings "Clementine?" Huckleberry Hound
Which comic police force was invented by Mack Sennett? Keystone cops
Which country is home to Gruyere cheese? Switzerland
Which country is policed by the RCMP? Canada
Which country lies west of Switzerland? France
Which famous Australian bush ranger was caught and hanged in 1880? Ned Kelly
Which film featured Lara's Theme? Dr Zhivago
Which food is most eaten throughout the world? Rice
Which former film artist became the 40th US President? Ronald Regan
Which game has playing periods called chukkas? Polo
Which game uses 22 balls? Snooker
Which gas has the formula CO2? Carbon dioxide
Which German born physicist developed the Theory of Relativity? Albert Einstein
5th February
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
 | 1994: Market massacre in Sarajevo A mortar bomb explodes in the main market square in Sarajevo killing 68 and wounding 200 people. | ||
| |||
| 1996: First GM food goes on sale in UK Two British supermarket chains will be stocking genetically modified tomato puree from today - the first GM food to be sold in this country. | |||
| |||
| 1974: Newspaper heiress kidnapped The 19-year-old daughter of the millionaire American publisher� Randolph Hearst� is kidnapped from her home in California. | |||
Bird flu: it's here to stay
The deadliest strain of bird flu is believed to be present in the wild bird population and is the likeliest cause of Britain's biggest outbreak, scientists said yesterday.
 | |
H5N1 has been widely thought to have infected birds in mainland Europe but its emergence in Suffolk at the weekend has forced experts to admit that it may have crossed the North Sea.
If so, scientists say the country is likely to have to live for years with the prospect of more outbreaks of the disease, which it is feared could one day combine with human flu and mutate into a strain that could cause a pandemic.
Patricia Hewitt, the Heath Secretary, said yesterday that the Government was preparing "very, very seriously" for the possibility of a pandemic.
Food industry figures advised consumers to heed advice from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which said no infected birds have entered the food chain.
As Defra officials culled 159,000 turkeys at a Bernard Matthews farm at Holton, near Halesworth, where the disease was confirmed on Saturday, an investigation began into how the disease arrived.
The department extended movement restrictions to an area of 1,300 square miles of east Suffolk and south-east Norfolk where poultry must be isolated from wild birds.
Tests are to be carried out on wild bird droppings, the most likely source of the infection. Defra began a survey in which every movement of staff, food or bedding will be analysed to see whether there could be a link with the outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of the virus in Hungary 10 days ago.
The virus found at Holton was identified by a Government laboratory on Saturday as being of a very similar strain of the same virus.
This raises the possibility that it found its way in to the farm on the shoes of someone who had been near waterfowl infected with the disease or that a small bird, which had caught the disease from waterfowl, found its way into the feed or the bedding used on the Norfolk farm.
Fears were raised last year, after a swan with H5N1 was found in Fife, that the disease could have reached the wild bird population, but these faded after it was found to have migrated across the North Sea during cold weather.
This year ornithologists say there has not been the same movements of wild birds, because of the warmer winter, so it is possible that the strain arrived in the autumn.
 | |
Some waterfowl, particularly geese, gulls and ducks such as pochard, are known to be "virus time bombs" because they can carry the disease without it being apparent.
David Catlow, the president of the British Veterinary Association, said: "There are two lines of inquiry – one that it comes from Hungary, the other that it is in wild birds.
"We do think there is a low level of H5N1 in the wild bird population in Europe. We have put all the controls in place to stop direct transmission but we can't stop a bird population moving around.
Britain blocks islanders ever going home
More than three decades after British islands in the Indian Ocean were depopulated to make way for an American base, the Government will ask the courts today to ban the inhabitants from ever returning home.
The Chagos Islands, forming the British Indian Ocean Territory, are one of the world's most isolated archipelagos, found some 2,200 miles east of Mombasa on the Kenyan coast.
 |
At America's request, Britain cleared the islands of all 2,000 of their inhabitants – referred to by one Foreign Office diplomat as "Tarzans and Men Fridays" – between 1966 and 1973. After this, a US naval and air base was constructed on the biggest island, Diego Garcia.
The High Court has twice given the islanders, known as the Chagossians, the right to return and Britain had initially accepted the ruling when the islanders won their first case in 2000.
But today the Government will try and overturn a second ruling in the Court of Appeal.
"The evidence points to this being done largely at Washington's request," said Clive Baldwin, from the Minority Rights Group, which is campaigning for the Chagossians. "After September 11 and with the island being used as a base for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the military value of Diego Garcia has increased."
When the islanders won their first case in 2000, the Government accepted the ruling. Robin Cook, then the foreign secretary, said: "The Government will not be appealing." He declined to defend "what was done or said 30 years ago".
The Government issued an order allowing the Chagossians, who were deported to Mauritius, to return home, while reserving Diego Garcia for military use. But after the terrorist attacks on September 11, this policy was abruptly reversed.
 | |
Bombers operating from Diego Garcia can strike deep into the Middle East and South Asia. Naval vessels using its harbour can patrol the strategically vital waters of the Indian Ocean and the approaches to the Red Sea. Diego Garcia was a crucial launching pad for the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Some 1,000 American and 40 British military personnel are based there.
In 2004, Jack Straw, as foreign secretary, issued a new order banning the Chagossians from going home. Once again, this was overturned in the High Court, which ruled in favour of the islanders and gave them a right to return last year.
A letter of November 2004 from Lincoln Bloomfield, an assistant secretary at the US state department, to Robert Culshaw, a British official responsible for overseas territories, read: "Diego Garcia is a vital and indispensable platform for global US military operations. . . an attempt to resettle any of the islands of the Chagos Archipelago would severely compromise Diego Garcia's unparalleled security and have a deleterious impact on our military operations."
Asked about its motivations for today's appeal, a Foreign Office spokesman declined to comment on the case. "Our hands are tied by the ongoing legal action," he said.
A cool operation to keep wines fit for a Queen
The Queen may have opened parts of Buckingham Palace to the paying visitor but very few get a peek below stairs at the royal wine cellars.
The contents – reputedly worth £2 million – are kept under the watchful eye of the Yeoman of the Royal Cellars and connoisseurs have always been left guessing about the bottles on the racks. Until now, that is. For a quiet revolution is under way in these 300-year-old vaults. The Queen's wine is about to go green. In the next three months, as part of the Royal Household's drive to reduce energy consumption, her cellars will be cooled directly from a borehole in the palace gardens. So, it was in the interests of research that The Daily Telegraph finally got behind the door for a quick tour of this warren of wine and a chance to see what guests could be sipping in the near future. For years the keepers of the Queen's cellars have safeguarded her investment with a system of energy-sapping condenser fans and a maze of duct work to cool stone walls which date back to 1703. |
The cellars have remained pretty much unchanged. Today they are a working concern serving "the Firm" which annually entertains 20,000 at receptions, lunches and government dinners (not including the 30,000 attending the alcohol-free garden parties).
To do this economically the Queen buys much of her wine en primeur to lay down. Given this, the cellar temperature – ideally 9C to 13C – is crucial.
There are seven cellar rooms and a glance at the reds revealed dusty rows of labels such as Château Latour à Pomerol 1995, Nuits St Georges 1996, Château Chasse Spleen 1990, Château Léoville Barton 1988, Château Fonroque 1995, as well as Château Meyney 1996, Château Beau-Site 1995 and Château Batailley 1994.
Among the whites, South African chardonnays and New Zealand's Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc have found favour.
So too has the English sparkler Nyetimber, though the myth that this is the Queen's favourite must be debunked. It is usually served only when patriotism demands – such as to sway the International Olympic Committee.
There are golden banks of non-vintage champagne. Also gathering dust are superb ports, including the 1963 Fonseca and Quinta do Noval.
Parts of the cellars do, however, look more Royle Family than Royal Family, with crates of Tetley alongside boxes of Carlsberg. Other beers celebrate various coronations.
Most noteworthy is the 1660 sherry dug up when the new London Bridge was built and presented to the palace.
But only now can the yeoman have whites colder than reds, or the ports and champagnes at the ideal temperature. A spokesman said the use of borehole water to cool the cellars was one of several initiatives to cut energy consumption in all areas of the palace.
For two months workmen have been laying more pipes from the borehole, which was dug in 2002. Once its water has been cooled it will be fed through smaller pipes into each part of the cellar. The water then goes to top up the palace lake. The borehole already airconditions the Queen's Gallery and engineers hope its use can be extended so that one day the palace will be entirely water self-sufficient.
In 74 minutes, Wilkinson lifts a nation
| Six Nations on Telegraph TV |
| In pics: Six Nations action |
| Six Nations scoresheet |
The capturing of the hearts and minds of the Twickenham faithful is not on Jonny Wilkinson's agenda but that is exactly what he managed to achieve even before he stepped down the tunnel. His aura penetrates even normally buttoned-up rugger buggers.
 | |
Wilkinson is an anti-celebrity. There is not a splinter of ego in his body, not a fragment of his being that craves attention.
Yet it is this diffidence, this innate sense of old-fashioned Englishness, which draws people to him. That, and the fact that he can bang over eight goals with the seeming nonchalance of a country maid shelling peas. His try wasn't the scruffiest bit of athleticism you'll ever see, either, even if his foot was in touch.
Even the gods, or Irish video refs, couldn't bring themselves to deny the return of the conquering hero. Nor could officials who normally haul off players for the merest trickle of blood. Wilkinson spent most of the match looking as if he'd done 15 rounds with Mike Tyson. His mashed lip required 14 stitches afterwards. Were they going to get him off the field? Were they, heck.
The feel-good factor is back in English rugby. And for that, Rugby Football Union treasurers are on bended knee. Three weeks ago you could have bought a swathe of tickets for the game against Italy on Saturday. Today the sold-out notices will be posted. Only Wilkinson can do this. As well as a few of his reunited chums in white — the Andy Farrells and Jason Robinsons of the Brian Ashton-created order.
Rugby is often paraded as the ultimate team game, a union of contrasting types. It's rare that an individual can so dominate a match or be so responsible for a mood. Gareth and Barry managed it for Wales, Jonah for New Zealand.
Wilkinson is not of that ilk. But his influence is profound. Thirty Tests had passed since he last pulled on an England shirt. He had played only just over 40 minutes in three months before Saturday. Yet within minutes he was thumping into tackles. Never can a roar have greeted the mere lining up and subsequent slotting of his first penalty goal in the 11th minute. A thing of beauty, indeed. Even carping Kiwis might give us that one. His 27 points was a Calcutta Cup record.
Wilkinson gave himself the luxury of a day off yesterday, even if his idea of a rest did involve a trip to the gym to get his aching muscles on the move again.
What next? "If selected," was his immediate reaction to questions posed about Italy. His humility is not forced. Not taking anything for granted is why he spends so much time on the training field.
"I'd rather go into a game tired but heavily-prepared as opposed to a sprinter who wants to save on energy," Wilkinson said. "It does all feel strange, a bit of a dream. I don't know how recovery will go. It's been over three years. The body does seize up. But I always feel that I can overpower these things as long as I've got ambition and drive."
Wilkinson certainly has that. He was more nervous than normal beforehand. "You feel like shooting out the back door, hopping on a plane and getting a two-week holiday, " he said. "It's painful."
And the try? "I never thought I'd be at the centre of such a conflict," he said. "I'm not in the best seat to judge."
Ashton said in the build-up that the 27-year-old was a better player than when he last appeared in an England shirt in the 2003 World Cup final. "Jonny's footwork going to the line is really good now. It was good before, but he did it before the line, whereas now he takes on defenders further up and moves them around which creates doubt in them and space for us," Ashton said.
The midfield alliance with Farrell was also key. "The commentary there between them is quite staggering," Ashton said. "Jonny's communication skills have stepped up since 2003 which makes his game generalship better."
Wilkinson left the field to a riotous ovation in the 74th minute. Job done.
Ashton awaits medical bulletins before naming the team to face Italy either today or tomorrow. Changes are most unlikely, not least in the No 10 shirt.
74 minutes
27 points
14 stitches (in a cut lip)
5 penalties
2 conversions
1 dropped goal
1 try
4.2.07
1000 Questions Free from Worldsbrainiest.com
1000 Questions Free from Worldsbrainiest.com
1. The layer beneath the Earth's crust is called the what? Answer - Mantle
2. What characters did Jim Henson create? Answer - Muppets
3. A group of six musicians is known as what? Answer - Sextet
4. By what name is singer Paul Hewson better known? Answer - Bono
5. What is the medical name for a blackhead? Answer - Comedo
6. How many Grams make a dekagram? Answer - 10
7. What was Elvis Presley's middle name? Answer - Aaron
8. Who directed the 1988 film 'Rain Man' starring Dustin Hoffman? Answer - Barry Levinson
9. What do Fletchers make? Answer - Arrows
10. The song Mellow Yellow was sung by who? Answer - Donovan
11. What gas is CH4 Answer - Methane
12. Which animal symbolizes the zodiacal sign Taurus? Answer - Bull
13. What does a Conchologist collect? Answer - Shells
14. What was the character played by Paul Newman in 'The Hustler' Answer - Fast Eddie
15. What year was the Treaty of Versailles signed? Answer - 1919
16. Who owned the Manor Farm in the book 'Animal Farm'? Answer - Mr Jones
17. Who wrote the opera Lakme? Answer - Delibes
18. What is the name of the priest who anoints Solomon as king in the Bibles First book of Kings? Answer - Zadock
19. How many sides does an hexagon have? Answer - 6
20. Which mountain was sacred to Apollo and the Muses? Answer - Parnassus
21. In the TV programme 'The Dukes of Hazzard' who played Daisy Duke? Answer - Catherine Bach
22. What ship did John Jacob Astor die on? Answer - Titanic
23. In Astronomy Polaris is also known as what? Answer - Pole Star
24. AD is an abbreviation of which Latin phrase? Answer - Anno Domini
25. What period immediately precedes the Triassic Period? Answer - Jurassic
26. What is the title of Tammy Wynette's autobiography? Answer - Stand By Your Man
27. Who Won the American Superbowl in 1977? Answer - Oakland Raiders
28. What type of food is Greek 'Pita'? Answer - Bread
29. Which is America's Gambling State? Answer - Nevada
30. What is the Morse Code for the letter 'O'? Answer - Dash Dash Dash
31. What Hebrew word is both a Greeting and a Farewell? Answer - Shalom
32. What is the International radio code for the letter 'Q' Answer - Quebec
33. What Year did Stalin Die? Answer - 1953
34. Who was the Roman God of fertility? Answer - Vertumnus
35. What type of animal is a Garganey? Answer - Duck
36. Which was Roger Moore's first James Bond Movie? Answer - Live and Let Die
37. What is the nearest star to the Earth? Answer - Sun
38. Rainfall is measured by what instrument? Answer - Pluviometer
39. Buddy Holly died in which year? Answer - 1959
40. Where can you find the 'Wailing Wall'? Answer - Jerusalem
41. What does a vintner produce? Answer - Wine
42. Who was Sherlock Holmes' housemaid? Answer - Mrs Hudson
43. Which chemical element has the symbol 'Se'? Answer - Selenium
44. Crocus Sativus is the Latin name for which spice? Answer - Saffron
45. What are you playing if you play for the Ryder Cup? Answer - Golf
46. What organ is affected by 'encephalitis'? Answer - Brain
47. Crazy Horse was who's right hand man? Answer - Sitting Bull
48. All roads lead to..Where? Answer - Rome
49. Who won the baseball world series in 2000? Answer - New York Yankees
50. Hydrophobia is a fear of what? Answer - Water
51. What is the actor Christopher Lee's middle name? Answer - Carandini
52. Who was the first man to set foot on the Moon? Answer - Neil Armstrong
53. What nationality was Marie Curie? Answer - Polish
54. What is the name of the fault that threatens San Fransisco? Answer - San Andreas
55. How many points are there on a Backgammon board? Answer - 24
56. What year was the first copy of the book 'Nineteen Eighty Four' sold? Answer - 1949
57. Who was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic? Answer - Amelia Earhart
58. In the Movie '28 Days' Who was the character that Sandra Bullock Played? Answer - Gwen Cummings
59. Which Florida National Park is Bisected by 'Alligator Alley'? Answer - Everglades
60. Which bird is the symbol of Peace? Answer - Dove
61. What is the only clockwise rotating planet? Answer - Venus
62. What number on the Beaufort scale is a moderate breeze? Answer - 4
63. A young Beaver is called a what? Answer - Kitten
64. Which is the worlds largest hot desert? Answer - Sahara
65. Harry Houdini was born in which Country? Answer - Hungary
66. In which year did Catherine Zeta Jones give birth to Dylan? Answer - 2000
67. If you were born on May 25th what zodiacal sign are you? Answer - Gemini
68. What is PVC the abbreviation for? Answer - polyvinylchloride
69. What does the musical term 'Largo' mean? Answer - Slowly
70. What is the highest score you can get with three darts? Answer - 180
71. Who created James Bond? Answer - Ian Fleming
72. Elmer J. Fudd is the arch enemy of which cartoon character? Answer - Bugs Bunny
73. What part of the body would you find the Thyroid Gland? Answer - Neck
74. Who directed 'Spartacus'? Answer - Stanley Kubrick
75. What book starts with the words..If you want to find Cherry Tree Lane all you have to do is ask a policeman at the crossroads. Answer - Mary Poppins
76. A Mamba is what type of creature? Answer - Snake
77. What is a Female Swan called? Answer - Pen
78. Who was the first Prime Minister of India? Answer - Jawaharlal Nehru
79. In the TV series Hogan's Heroes, who Played Colonel Robert Hogan? Answer - Bob Crane
80. What was the name of Thor Heyerdahl's third raft? Answer - Tigris
81. Who produces the perfume Ysatis? Answer - Givenchy
82. What do you call the cry of a Falcon? Answer - Chant
83. What year was Streptomycin discovered? Answer - 1943
84. What is the main ingredient of Glass? Answer - Sand
85. Who followed Neil Armstrong on the moon? Answer - Buzz Aldrin
86. What is the name of the mythological winged horse of Greece. Answer - Pegasus
87. Which is the longest bone in the human body? Answer - Femur
88. What was Lady Chatterley's first name? Answer - Constance
89. Which Russian flew in Vostok 1 Answer - Yuri Gagarin
90. How many colours are there in the spectrum? Answer - 7
91. What does a gynephobic man fear? Answer - Women
92. What ology is the study of wine? Answer - oenology
93. Who directed the movie The Truman Show? Answer - Peter Weir
94. What Year was the Chinese year of the Rabbit? Answer - 1999
95. Adrastea is a satellite of which planet? Answer - Jupiter
96. What element has the chemical symbol Pb? Answer - Lead
97. What is Tio Pepe? Answer - Sherry
98. What Roman God is January named after? Answer - Janus
99. How many wings does a Bee have? Answer - 4
100. What character did Mel Gibson play in the 1987 Movie 'Lethal Weapon'? Answer - Martin Riggs
101. What year was chloroform discovered? Answer - 1901
102. Who was the Pharisee who secretly came to speak to Jesus at night? Answer - Nicodemus
103. Which reggae star was shot dead in 1987? Answer - Peter Tosh
104. What book starts with the words, "All happy families are alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion"? Answer - Anna Karenina
105. What is the name of Orion's dog? Answer - Arctophonos
106. What Spanish dance is said to have been invented in Cadiz around 1780? Answer - Bolero
107. Which film had the theme 'Take My Breath Away'? Answer - Top Gun
108. What fruit was called the 'Ida' in about 45AD? Answer - Raspberry
109. Who was the mythological ferryman who transported the dead across the river Styx to Hades? Answer - Charon
110. It has 332 Pimples and is hit surprisingly hard? Answer - Golf Ball
111. What is the official animal of Canada? Answer - Beaver
112. What is the Japanese national sport? Answer - Sumo Wrestling
113. What is the minimum number of bars on an Abacus? Answer - 9
114. How many balls are in the game of snooker? Answer - 22
115. How many deeds did Hercules perform to free himself? Answer - 12
116. Where would you find the 'Arch of Hadrian'? Answer - Athens
117. Bird and Bat droppings are called what? Answer - Guano
118. Where did the Rumba Originate? Answer - Cuba
119. Which is the hardest bone in the human body? Answer - Jawbone
120. What city did the wooden horse help to conquer? Answer - Troy
121. How many sides does an heptagon have? Answer - 7
122. What is the square of 12? Answer - 144
123. Which bird lays the largest eggs Answer - Ostrich
124. What does a notaphile collect? Answer - Bank Notes
125. Who was the first president of the United States? Answer - George Washington
126. What are the two ends of a magnet called? Answer - Poles
127. What Roman Emporer gave Constantinople its name? Answer - Constantine
128. What U.S. state has no borders. Answer - Hawaii
129. What is 400 in Roman Numerals? Answer - CD
130. Who created Peter Rabbit? Answer - Beatrix Potter
131. What year did the U.K. join the E.E.C.? Answer - 1973
132. What is the first letter in the Russian Alphabet? Answer - A
133. How many years did Sleeping Beauty sleep? Answer - 100
134. What country did roulette originate? Answer - France
135. What are map makers called? Answer - Cartographers
136. What disease do the French call 'La Rage'? Answer - Rabies
137. What film did Liza Minelli play Sally Bowles? Answer - Cabaret
138. What city is weiner schnitzel named after? Answer - Vienna
139. How many stars make up Orion's Belt? Answer - 3
140. Who was Miss Piggy in love with? Answer - Kermit
141. What is the most abundant element in the Sun? Answer - Hydrogen
142. What gas did Joseph Priestley discover in 1774? Answer - Oxygen
143. What was the name of Jacques Cousteau's research ship? Answer - Calypso
144. Who wrote the Bourne Identity? Answer - Robert Ludlum
145. Where are the Pampas? Answer - Argentina
146. What was William Tell's nationality? Answer - Swiss
147. What is the main boulevard of Paris? Answer - Champs Elysees
148. Who wrote Rhapsody in Blue? Answer - George Gershwin
149. Who was known as the mad monk? Answer - Rasputin
150. Who moves first in a game of chess, Black or White? Answer - White
151. How many sides does a snowflake have? Answer - 6
152. What civilization invented the arch? Answer - Roman
153. In Eskimo language what kind of animal is a nanook? Answer - Polar Bear
154. What was Henry Fonda's Last Film? Answer - On Golden Pond
155. What Island is the boot of Italy kicking? Answer - Sicily
156. What year follows 789BC? Answer - 788
157. What is ganja in Jamaica? Answer - Marijuana
158. How many funnels did the Titanic have? Answer - 4
159. How many spaces are there on a Scrabble board? Answer - 225
160. Which country star was a DJ on Texan KGRI in the early 1950's? Answer - Jim Reeves
161. What is the latin name for the coconut? Answer - Cocos Nucifera
162. 1992 was the Chinese year of what? Answer - Monkey
163. The painting entitled 'Three Dancers' in the Tate gallery was painted by who? Answer - Picasso
164. Soiless agriculture is called what? Answer - Hydroponics
165. In the movie 'What Women Want' what character did Mel Gibson play? Answer - Nick Marshall
166. FISA is the ruling body for which sporting event? Answer - Rowing
167. Which vitamin is a prevention of Beri Beri? Answer - B
168. Name the robber and murderer who was freed instead of Jesus? Answer - Barabbas
169. Which country won the eurovision song contest in 1977? Answer - France
170. Name the Egyptian god with the head of a Jackal who guides souls to the world beyond? Answer - Anubis
171. The armour that covers the head and face in Kendo. Answer - Men
172. How many tentacles does a squid have? Answer - 10
173. What was the first book to be set in print? Answer - Gutenberg Bible
174. What year was the Suez Canal first closed? Answer - 1967
175. Who wrote 'An Enemy of the People'? Answer - Henrik Ibsen
176. What is triskaidekaphobia a fear of? Answer - Number Thirteen
177. Which century was the Taj Mahal constructed? Answer - seventeenth
178. Who was the commander of the first shuttle flight? Answer - John Young
179. What is the opposite of Hibernation? Answer - Aestivation
180. What do you call someone who breeds silk worms? Answer - Sericulturist
181. Who was the boy star of 'Home Alone'? Answer - Macaulay Culkin
182. How many pawns are there in a game of chess? Answer - 16
183. What year did the Titanic sink? Answer - 1912
184. What language did those in ancient Rome speak? Answer - Latin
185. What instrument is used to examine the ear? Answer - Otoscope
186. The film 'Brief Encounter' was adapted from which Noel Coward Play? Answer - Still Life
187. What is the name of Michael Jacksons chimpanzee? Answer - Bubbles
188. Who was the first woman to walk in space? Answer - Svetlana Savitskaya
189. What single letter is used as the chemical symbol of Tungsten? Answer - W
190. What is the capital of Japan? Answer - Tokyo
191. What colour are wild Budgerigars? Answer - Green
192. The musical instruction adagissimo means what? Answer - Very Slow
193. The largest portion of Yellowstone National Park is in which American State? Answer - Wyoming
194. Which country won the Football World Cup in 1962 Answer - Brazil
195. Who was known as the father of medicine? Answer - Hippocrates
196. In Walt Disneys film Peter Pan, Which hand of Hook's was a hook? Answer - Left
197. Who was the 24th American President? Answer - Grover Cleveland
198. In Morse Code, How is the letter H defined? Answer - Dot Dot Dot Dot
199. What is Austria's National flower? Answer - Edelweiss
200. What day did Solomon Grundy get married? Answer - Wednesday
201. Which State of the United States has the longest coastline? Answer - Alaska
202. Which color moves first in a game of chess? Answer - White
203. Who was known as the 'mad monk'? Answer - Rasputin
204. Who crossed the Niagra Falls in 1855 on a tightrope? Answer - Charles Blondin
205. Norma Jean Baker was famously known as who? Answer - Marilyn Monroe
206. Which god of love was the offspring of Aphrodite and Ares. Answer - Eros
207. Which actor played the part of Ed in the TV series Lou Grant? Answer - Edward Asner
208. Which of Charles Dickens books was the only one with a female narrator? Answer - Bleak House
209. Which is the worlds largest continent? Answer - Asia
210. What year did Barbra Streisand star in the film 'Funny Girl'? Answer - 1968
211. How many voyages did Sinbad make? Answer - 7
212. What is the Chinese art of paper folding called? Answer - Origami
213. Which American singer had a wooden heart? Answer - Elvis Presley
214. How many cars lined up to win the 'Wacky Races'? Answer - 11
215. Who was the 16th president of the United States? Answer - Abraham Lincoln
216. What gas did Joseph Priestley discover in 1774? Answer - Oxygen
217. Who wrote the Count of Monte Cristo? Answer - Alexandre Dumas
218. What fluid surrounds an unborn baby? Answer - Amniotic
219. What nationality was the first woman to climb Everest? Answer - Japanese
220. Who is M's Secretary? Answer - Miss Moneypenny
221. What animal represents the zodiacal sign Capricorn? Answer - Goat
222. Which part of your body would you find Rods and Cones? Answer - Eyes
223. Which Carbon is used to date ancient objects? Answer - 14
224. Who won the 1986 World Cup? Answer - Argentina
225. What year was Streptomycin discovered? Answer - 1943
226. What do you call somebody who sells cloth and cloth goods? Answer - Draper
227. Who was the character Tom Cruise played in Movie Top Gun? Answer - Maverick
228. Io is the satellite of which planet of our Solar System? Answer - Jupiter
229. If you were born on the 6th of June, which sign of the zodiac are you? Answer - Gemini
230. What is the only Human bone that does not connect to any other? Answer - Hyoid
231. Which Golfer originated the Masters Tournament? Answer - Bobby Jones
232. Which City do Brummies come from? Answer - Birmingham
233. What was the name of Charles Darwin's survey ship? Answer - Beagle
234. Which City would you find the 'Arch of Hadrian'? Answer - Athens
235. Who was the famous Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie? Answer - Hercule Poirot
236. How many Bits in a Byte Answer - 8
237. What metal must be present in an Amalgam? Answer - Mercury
238. Who was the painter famous for his Water Lilies? Answer - Monet
239. Which character made 'The Ring' in J.R.R.Tolkein's books? Answer - Sauron
240. Which actor played the lead role in the movie 'Little Big Man'? Answer - Dustin Hoffman
241. How many compartments does a cows stomach have? Answer - 4
242. How many tiles are there in a game of Scrabble? Answer - 100
243. How is the number 99 written in Roman Numerals? Answer - XCIX
244. The musical instruction Lento means what? Answer - Slow
245. Which Shakespearean play starts with the question "When shall we three meet again?"? Answer - Macbeth
246. What does the 'T' stand for in James T Kirk played by William Shatner? Answer - Tiberius
247. How many characters are there in the Braille alphabet? Answer - 63
248. Dendrophobia is a fear of what? Answer - Trees
249. Who 's catchphrase was " I'm smarter than the average bear"? Answer - Yogi Bear
250. What is Morse Code for the letter X? Answer - Dash Dot Dot Dash
251. How many peddles does a Grand Piano have? Answer - 3
252. What color is Diamond dust? Answer - Black
253. What is the Roman Numeral for Fifty? Answer - L
254. Who wrote the book Ben Hur? Answer - Lew Wallace
255. What date was the newspaper Le Figaro founded? Answer - 1828
256. What is the chemical symbol of Mercury? Answer - Hg
257. Which Italian artist painted 'Birth of Venus'? Answer - Botticelli
258. What was the name of Steve Mcqueen's last film? Answer - The Hunter
259. What would your birthstone be if you were born in November? Answer - Topaz
260. What material did the Ancient Egyptians use as paper? Answer - Papyrus
261. How many claws does a domesticated cat have? Answer - 18
262. What nuts are used in marzipan? Answer - Almonds
263. What sculptor created 'The Kiss'? Answer - Rodin
264. What turns blue litmus paper red? Answer - Acid
265. What did D.H. Lawrence die of? Answer - Tuberculosis
266. In which country would you find Lake Como? Answer - Italy
267. Who Illustrates the Harry Potter books? Answer - Mary Grandpre
268. What drink does James Bond request shaken not stirred? Answer - Martini
269. What 'K' is Rhinoceros horn made of? Answer - Keratin
270. What is Australia's national airline? Answer - Qantas
271. In the movie Rosemary's Baby who played Rosemary? Answer - Mia Farrow
272. What are Seraphim and Cherubim? Answer - Angels
273. From which insect do you get Royal Jelly from? Answer - Bee
274. In a Limerick How many lines would you find? Answer - 5
275. The highest mountain in Africa is? Answer - Kilimanjaro
276. Who wrote the book Wuthering Heights? Answer - Emily Bronte
277. Which State of the United States is DisneyWorld in? Answer - Florida
278. Which planet in our Solar Sytem is nearest to the Sun? Answer - Mercury
279. What was John Wayne's name at birth? Answer - Marion Morrison
280. What type of animal was called 'Thumper' in the movie Bambi? Answer - Rabbit
281. What was the name of the ancient Egyptian Sun god? Answer - Ra
282. Which Italian city was called Patavium by the Romans? Answer - Padua
283. What is the Latin name for the perennial herb 'Tansy'? Answer - Tanacetum vulgare
284. What is the common name of Coryphaena hipparus? Answer - Dolphin
285. Who played the lead role in the movie 'The Bourne Identity'? Answer - Matt Damon
286. What gaseous chemical element has the symbol Xe? Answer - Xenon
287. How many bones are there in the human skull? Answer - 22
288. Which Country has the largest army? Answer - China
289. Which is the highest mountain on Crete? Answer - Ida
290. What is the name of the throwing stick that Aborigine's use? Answer - Boomerang
291. What is the name of the partition between the nostrils? Answer - Septum
292. What is the name of the ancient mexican god of civilization? Answer - Quetzacoatl
293. Which year was Martin Scorsese born? Answer - 1942
294. In Greek mythology, what creature had a head of snakes? Answer - Gorgon
295. What fruit is a cross between a Raspberry and a Blackberry? Answer - Loganberry
296. 'The colour of my love' was a song and album by which artist? Answer - Celine Dion
297. What is the name of the world's largest desert? Answer - Antarctica
298. The song 'They call the wind Maria' was from which movie? Answer - Paint your Wagon
299. Who invented the American Revolver? Answer - Samuel Colt
300. Brontophobia is a fear of what? Answer - Thunder
301. Vitiligo is a disease of what? Answer - Skin
302. What period follows the Cretaceous period? Answer - Jurassic
303. Which legendary singer sang 'Blueberry Hill'? Answer - Fats Domino
304. In the proverb 'All roads lead to.. Where? Answer - Rome
305. Who is the british presenter of the Weakest Link? Answer - Anne Robinson
306. What year was George Washington born? Answer - 1732
307. Who wrote the book 'Bambi'? Answer - Felix Salten
308. Who wrote the opera 'Otello'? Answer - Verdi
309. Who was Phileas Fogg's Valet? Answer - Passepartout
310. In the Bible who interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's dream? Answer - Daniel
311. Which is the largest muscle in the Human Body? Answer - Gluteus Maximus
312. What is the common name for Citrus Grandis? Answer - Grapefruit
313. What is the capital of Ghana? Answer - Accra
314. Merlin was the magician for which legendary King? Answer - Arthur
315. What was the name of Pinoccio's pet cat? Answer - Cleo
316. Which town in England was Boris Karloff born? Answer - Dulwich
317. Which Roman Emporer Succeeded Claudius? Answer - Nero
318. Who was the first Cosmonaut to walk in space? Answer - Alexei Leonov
319. What is the Cockney Rhyming slang for the word 'Stairs'? Answer - Apples and Pears
320. What was the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson's Real name? Answer - Walker Smith
321. How many sheets of paper are there in a ream? Answer - 500
322. Rioja Wines are a produce of what Country? Answer - Spain
323. Hiawatha lived on the shores of what river? Answer - Gitchee Gumee
324. Which cartoon character has a dog named Pluto? Answer - Mickey Mouse
325. In the bible how old was Methuselah when he died? Answer - 969
326. Who played the character Rhett Butler in the 1940 movie 'Gone with the Wind'? Answer - Clark Gable
327. Who killed Macbeth in Shakespeares play? Answer - Macduff
328. What is the Italian word for 'Green'? Answer - Verdi
329. What was the name of the butler in the TV series 'The Adams Family? Answer - Lurch
330. A cube has how many sides? Answer - 6
331. In the bible, who baptised Christ? Answer - John the Baptist
332. What is the name of the frog in the 'Muppet Show'? Answer - Kermit
333. How many degrees Fahrenheit equals zero degrees Centigrade? Answer - 32
334. Which plant has the Latin name of Ocimum basilicum? Answer - Basil
335. Which movie featured the song 'Wanderin' Star'? Answer - Paint Your Wagon
336. Which perfume house produces 'Poison'? Answer - Christian Dior
337. Who is quoted as saying "I can resist everything except temptation"? Answer - Oscar Wilde
338. What did Little Miss Muffet sit on? Answer - Tuffet
339. In the Bible how many years in total did Jacob work to win Rachel? Answer - 14
340. What is the name of the playing area in a game of baseball? Answer - Diamond
341. Which planet has two satellites named Phobos and Deimos? Answer - Mars
342. The movie Muriel's Wedding featured hits from which group? Answer - Abba
343. In what year was Anwar Sadat Assassinated? Answer - 1981
344. "Who said "One small step for man"? Answer - Neil Armstrong
345. W.H. Auden was a famous poet what does W.H. stand for? Answer - Wystan Hugh
346. Which brothers invented the Balloon? Answer - Montgolfier
347. Lucille Ball married which musician and actor? Answer - Desi Arnaz
348. Who wrote the book ' The Eagle Has Landed'? Answer - Jack Higgins
349. Who composed the Opera Tosca? Answer - Puccini
350. What is the Gestation period for a horse in days? Answer - 350
351. In what year was OXFAM founded? Answer - 1942
352. What is the first book of the Bible? Answer - Genesis
353. What planet was the birthplace of Superman? Answer - Krypton
354. How many Reindeer are used to pull Santas Sleigh? Answer - 8
355. Tinkerbell was a fairy in which childrens story? Answer - Peter Pan
356. What zodaical sign comes fourth? Answer - Cancer
357. A Capillary connects an artery with a what? Answer - Vein
358. What is the third letter in the Greek alphabet? Answer - Gamma
359. What book starts with the words 'Night is generally my time for waking'? Answer - The Old Curiosity Shop
360. In computer jargon a nibble is equal to how many bits? Answer - 4
361. Which actor played James Bond in the movie Octopussy? Answer - Roger Moore
362. What was the name of Tintins dog? Answer - Snowy
363. What is the name of the light sensitive part of the eye? Answer - Retina
364. What birthstone covers the month of January? Answer - Garnet
365. What is the name of Japanese pilots who performed suicide mission from the air in WW2? Answer - Kamikaze
366. Alopecia is the loss of what? Answer - Hair
367. Sulphur was once known as what kind of stone? Answer - Brimstone
368. What was the full name of baseball player Babe Ruth? Answer - George Herman Ruth
369. What is the Latin name for the common weed Dandelion? Answer - Taraxacum Officinale
370. In what year was the Great Fire of London? Answer - 1666
371. What is the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet? Answer - Epsilon
372. Who directed the 1987 movie 'Empire of the Sun'? Answer - Steven Spielberg
373. What was the name of Dick Dastardly's dog? Answer - Muttley
374. What acid forms in muscles during excercise? Answer - Lactic
375. What does the word Karate mean? Answer - Empty Hand
376. What is the maximum break possible in Snooker? Answer - 147
377. What is 'Marge Simpsons' Maiden Name? Answer - Bouvier
378. Clark Kent reports for which newspaper? Answer - Daily Planet
379. What is 90 in Roman Numerals? Answer - XC
380. In which sport would you use a 'foil'? Answer - Fencing
381. What Color is Chlorophyll? Answer - Green
382. How many players are there in a Polo team? Answer - 4
383. Beethoven initially dedicated his 'Eroica Symphony' to which historical figure? Answer - Napoleon Bonaparte
384. In what year was the first test tube baby born? Answer - 1978
385. What year saw the downfall of the Berlin Wall? Answer - 1989
386. How many points do you get for a conversion in Rugby Union? Answer - 2
387. Which fever is caused by the bacterium 'Salmonella Typhi'? Answer - Typhoid
388. Who changed his name to Yusef Islam? Answer - Cat Stevens
389. How many hours are there in a week? Answer - 168
390. Who wrote the book 'War and Peace'? Answer - Leo Tolstoy
391. In the Bible who murdered Abel? Answer - Cain
392. Who directed the 1992 movie 'Hook'? Answer - Steven Spielberg
393. In golf how many strokes under par is an eagle? Answer - 2
394. Which breed of Goat do we get mohair from? Answer - Angora
395. Which is the only even Prime Number? Answer - 2
396. What is the Cube Root of 27? Answer - 3
397. Mars was the Roman god of what? Answer - War
398. How many legs does a lobster have? Answer - 8
399. What instrument would you use to measure Humidity? Answer - Hygrometer
400. In which year was CND launched? Answer - 1958
401. Who assassinated the US president Abraham Lincoln? Answer - John Wilkes Booth
402. How is the number 32 represented in Binary? Answer - 00100000
403. Who directed the movie 'Star Wars'? Answer - George Lucas
404. How many properties are there on a Monopoly board? Answer - 28
405. What is the name of the last book of the Bible? Answer - Revelation
406. How many metres are there in a furlong? Answer - 201
407. What is the study of poisons called? Answer - Toxicology
408. Which was the first Antibiotic? Answer - Penicillin
409. What is the name given to a solid figure having eight plane faces? Answer - Octahedron
410. What sign of the zodiac are you if you were born on the 1st September? Answer - Virgo
411. The word feline is associated with which animal? Answer - Cat
412. Who wrote the book Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? Answer - Ian Fleming
413. The Monza Grand Prix is held in which country? Answer - Italy
414. Which state in the US would you find the Yosemite National Park? Answer - California
415. Who composed the Opera La Boheme? Answer - Puccini
416. What is the capital of Sweden? Answer - Stockholm
417. What type of fruit tree is a Bullace? Answer - Plum
418. In what year was David Bowie born? Answer - 1947
419. What is the cube of 4? Answer - 64
420. Which animal is the symbol of the World Wildlife Fund? Answer - Panda
421. Who wrote the book Frankenstein? Answer - Mary Shelley
422. Who invented the Hovercraft? Answer - Christopher Cockerell
423. Who was the Norse goddess of love? Answer - Freya
424. How many times did Bjorn Borg win Wimbledon? Answer - 5
425. What was the name of the character played by Julia Roberts in the movie Pretty Woman? Answer - Vivian Ward
426. What type of animal was Kaa in the Jungle Book? Answer - Python
427. In which month do Americans celebrate Thanksgiving? Answer - November
428. What is the name of the Forbidden City of Tibet? Answer - Lhasa
429. In Star Trek, what is 'Scotty's' First name? Answer - Montgomery
430. Who wrote the Opera ' The marriage of Figaro'? Answer - Mozart
431. Which American gangster was known as Scarface? Answer - Al Capone
432. Who played the title role in the movie 'Crocodile Dundee'? Answer - Paul Hogan
433. What color is the Bulls Eye on an Archery Board? Answer - Gold
434. In What year did Charlie Chaplin die? Answer - 1977
435. Which City 'Wasn't born in a day'? Answer - Rome
436. How many stripes are there on the American Flag? Answer - 13
437. In the movie 'Pirates of the Caribbean' who plays the part of Jack Sparrow? Answer - Johnny Depp
438. What is the every day name for the Larynx? Answer - Voice Box
439. In the Bible who was the husband of the woman turned into a pillar of salt? Answer - Lot
440. What sport was Jonah Lomu famous for? Answer - Rugby Union
441. How many sides has a Dodecagon got? Answer - 12
442. In which year did man last walk on the moon? Answer - 1973
443. Who wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel? Answer - Baroness Orczy
444. How many bytes are there in a kilobyte? Answer - 1024
445. Which planet has a Great Red Spot? Answer - Jupiter
446. What is a male seal called? Answer - Bull
447. Where would you find the Sea of Tranquility? Answer - Moon
448. In which year did Elvis Presley die? Answer - 1977
449. Who wrote the Moonlight Sonata? Answer - Beethoven
450. Which alcoholic drink is flavoured with Juniper? Answer - Gin
451. What chemical element has the symbol Na? Answer - Sodium
452. In which country would you find Orly airport? Answer - France
453. Who was the 'Maid of Orleans'? Answer - Joan of Arc
454. How many points are awarded for a try in Rugby Union? Answer - 5
455. Who starred with Will Smith in the movie 'Men In Black'? Answer - Tommy Lee Jones
456. How many players are there in a baseball team? Answer - 9
457. What is the capital of Switzerland? Answer - Berne
458. Who did James Bond marry? Answer - Teresa Draco
459. Who did Quasimodo love? Answer - Esmeralda
460. Which is the next prime number after 73? Answer - 79
461. Which element has the symbol K? Answer - Potassium
462. What is Japans National Religion? Answer - Shinto
463. Who is the Greek god of the sea? Answer - Poseidon
464. How many Centimetres are there in a Kilometre? Answer - 100000
465. What was the name of Jasons ship? Answer - Argo
466. Which blood group is the most common worldwide? Answer - O
467. What nationality is Celine Dion? Answer - Canadian
468. How many land miles are there in a league? Answer - 3
469. What nationality were the Michelin brothers who founded a tyre company in 1888? Answer - French
470. Who is the current President of Russia? Answer - Vladimir Putin
471. Who was 'Goldfinger's' bodyguard in the movie of the same name? Answer - Oddjob
472. What is the art of trimming bushes into shapes called? Answer - Topiary
473. Who wrote 'Paradise Lost'? Answer - John Milton
474. Which is the highest mountain in Australia? Answer - Kosciusko
475. What is the longest river in France? Answer - Loire
476. What is the chemical symbol of Potassium? Answer - K
477. What is Chandlers surname in the tv sitcom 'Friends'? Answer - Bing
478. What was Cary Grant's real name? Answer - Archibald Leach
479. In the tv series 'Hart to Hart' which actor played the part of Jonathan Hart? Answer - Robert Wagner
480. Who was the 30th President of the United States of America? Answer - Calvin Coolidge
481. Who wrote the book The Wind in the Willows? Answer - Kenneth Grahame
482. What is the scientific name for 'Laughing Gas'? Answer - Nitrous Oxide
483. Which US city is the home of Jazz? Answer - New Orleans
484. In what year did George Burns die? Answer - 1996
485. Who was the youngest player to win the mens singles Wimbeldon title in 1985? Answer - Boris Becker
486. What is the common name for the fruit bearing plant Fragaria vesca? Answer - Strawberry
487. What is the name of the queen of the fairies in Shakespeares Midsummer Night's dream? Answer - Titania
488. What kind of dog is Charles Schultz's Snoopy? Answer - Beagle
489. In a Sikh temple what is a langar? Answer - Kitchen
490. Who was the Roman governer of Judaea in AD 26? Answer - Pontius Pilate
491. The Bombyx mori is commonly known as what? Answer - Silkworm
492. Who was the goddess of the sea in Greek mythology? Answer - Amphitrite
493. What is Englands highest mountain? Answer - Scafell Pike
494. Which planet was the birthplace of Spock in the TV series Star Trek? Answer - Vulcan
495. What was Mahatma Gandhi's first name? Answer - Mohandas
496. The three headed dog cerberus in Greek mythology guarded the entrance to where? Answer - Hades
497. The Prado museum can be found in which Spanish city? Answer - Madrid
498. What scale of measurement is used to measure the magnitude of earthquakes? Answer - Richter
499. Which is the highest waterfall in the world? Answer - Angel Falls
500. What is the sugar found in milk? Answer - Lactose
501. What is a magnus hitch? Answer - Knot
502. How many players are there in an ice hockey team? Answer - 6
503. What is pyrophobia a fear of? Answer - Fire
504. What acid is produced in the stomach? Answer - Hydrochloric
505. What is the name of moving energy? Answer - Kinetic
506. In what year was the battle of the Alamo? Answer - 1836
507. Who composed the opera Carmen? Answer - Bizet
508. What is the largest moon in our Solar System? Answer - Ganymede
509. Who sang the theme song to the movie Goldfinger? Answer - Shirley Bassey
510. How many pieces does each player have in a game of backgammon? Answer - 15
511. What is the chemical symbol for Gold? Answer - Au
512. In which ocean would you find the Mariana Trench? Answer - Pacific
513. Which is the most northerly town in Europe? Answer - Hammerfest
514. What is the name of the rear of a ship? Answer - Stern
515. Which pop group had a hit in 1981 with 'Vienna'? Answer - Ultravox
516. Who was the Knight of La Mancha? Answer - Don Quixote
517. In the Bible, what was the portable place of worship for the Hebrews in their desert wanderings? Answer - Tabernacle
518. Who made the first telephone call to the moon? Answer - Richard Nixon
519. Who was the youngest President of the United States? Answer - Theodore Roosevelt
520. What is the largest denomination US dollar bill in circulation? Answer - 100
521. Which ocean surrounds 'Christmas Island'? Answer - Indian
522. Which side of the road do the Japanese drive? Answer - Left
523. How many time zones are their in China? Answer - 1
524. What is 1999 in Roman Numerals? Answer - MCMXCIX
525. Gene Pitney was how many hours from Tulsa? Answer - 24
526. What was Citizen Kane's first name? Answer - Charles
527. In which US state is Panama City? Answer - Florida
528. What was the name of Haile Selassie before he was crowned in 1930? Answer - Ras Tafari
529. How many lines are there in a sonnet? Answer - 14
530. Which computer operating system has a penguin as its logo? Answer - Linux
531. Who is Steveland Morris better known as? Answer - Stevie Wonder
532. Who is James Bond's usual CIA partner? Answer - Felix Leiter
533. In which country would you find the Caprivi Strip? Answer - Namibia
534. What is the last word in the New Testament? Answer - Amen
535. How many keys on a standard piano? Answer - 88
536. Which cat has no tail? Answer - Manx
537. What is a John Dory? Answer - Fish
538. What is the medical term for high blood pressure? Answer - Hypertension
539. Who was John Lennon's second wife? Answer - Yoko Ono
540. Who wrote the song "White Christmas"? Answer - Irving Berlin
541. What is Rambo's first name? Answer - John
542. Which chess piece does not move in a straight line? Answer - Knight
543. Which American president served the most terms in office? Answer - Roosevelt
544. In which city is the La Scala opera house? Answer - Milan
545. What is the flavor of Cointreau? Answer - Orange
546. Which is the last book of the Old Testament ? Answer - Malachi
547. Into which sea does the Nile flow? Answer - Mediterranean
548. Is the tomato fruit or vegetable? Answer - Fruit
549. Which is the largest city in Kosovo? Answer - Pristina
550. Which movie won the Best Picture Oscar in 1995? Answer - Braveheart
551. Which US president's middle name was 'Millhouse'? Answer - Nixon
552. Who killed John Lennon? Answer - Mark Chapman
553. Which Chinese year follow the year of the sheep? Answer - Monkey
554. Yapping Deng was a world champion at which sport? Answer - Table Tennis
555. In which country was Karl Marx born? Answer - Germany
556. What was the sequel to Jurassic Park? Answer - Lost World
557. Peninsula International Airport is in which US state? Answer - California
558. In what year was Grace Kelly born? Answer - 1929
559. Who directed the movie 'The Sting'? Answer - George Roy Hill
560. Which pop star died three days before Groucho Marx ? Answer - Elvis Presley
561. What is the main herb in a Pesto sauce? Answer - Basil
562. What?s the name of the Simpsons Cat? Answer - Snowball
563. Which river flows through Rome? Answer - Tiber
564. What colour is Angelica? Answer - Green
565. What is Iron Oxide more commonly referred to as? Answer - Rust
566. Which Greek author was famous for his fables? Answer - Aesop
567. Which gas is responsible for global warming? Answer - Carbon Dioxide
568. Which country pulled out of Vietnam in the 1950's Answer - France
569. In which state was Leonardo DiCaprio born? Answer - California
570. Who thought that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes? Answer - Andy Warhol
571. Which vitamin is required for blood clotting? Answer - k
572. How many of Snow Whites seven dwarves had beards? Answer - 6
573. In 'The Simpsons' who shot Mr. Burns? Answer - Maggie Simpson
574. What is the capital of Iraq? Answer - Baghdad
575. Which actor did Jennifer Aniston marry in July 2000? Answer - Brad Pitt
576. What does the "J" stand for in author J. K. Rowling's name? Answer - Joanne
577. In judo, what colour belt follows yellow? Answer - Orange
578. On a darts board, which number is directly opposite 1? Answer - 19
579. The condition of seasonal allergic rhinitis is better known by what name? Answer - Hayfever
580. What is the only bird that can swim but not fly? Answer - Penguin
581. In which year was actor Sean Connery born? Answer - 1930
582. By what name is a modulator-demodulator better known as? Answer - Modem
583. Who wrote the 1897 novel Dracula? Answer - Bram Stoker
584. How many sides does a Nonagon have? Answer - 9
585. In 1789 a famous mutiny took place on which ship, captained by William Bligh? Answer - Bounty
586. In which year did Prohibition end in the USA? Answer - 1933
587. In which year was the independent state of Israel formed? Answer - 1948
588. The Island of Bali is part of which Country? Answer - Indonesia
589. In which month is Beaujolais Nouveau launched? Answer - November
590. Who wrote the lyrics of the musical "Evita"? Answer - Tim Rice
591. Who plays the robot gunfighter in the film Westworld? Answer - Yul Brynner
592. To which shipping line did Titanic belong? Answer - White Star Line
593. Where in the East End of London did Jack the Ripper operate? Answer - Whitechapel
594. What is a computer?s smallest unit of information? Answer - Bit
595. Which vegetable is the key ingredient of traditional Moussaka? Answer - Aubergine
596. What type of animals are Cheviot and Merino? Answer - Sheep
597. What's the world?s warmest sea? Answer - Red Sea
598. What's the Capital of Albania ? Answer - Tirana
599. Which brown bear befriended Mowgli? Answer - Baloo
600. What is the term for a squirrel's home? Answer - Drey
601. In Trivial Pursuit, what colour are Entertainment questions? Answer - Pink
602. In which country is the Masai Mara game reserve? Answer - Kenya
603. Who was the third President of the United States? Answer - Thomas Jefferson
604. What makes leaves green? Answer - Chlorophyll
605. What is the highest-pitched woodwind musical instrument ? Answer - Piccolo
606. From which tree do koala bears eat from? Answer - Eucalyptus
607. Which city was devastated by an earthquake in September 1985? Answer - Mexico City
608. In the film Fantasia, who plays the part of the sorcerers apprentice? Answer - Mickey Mouse
609. What is the Italian name for Turin? Answer - Torino
610. How many notes are there in the musical scale? Answer - 8
611. What?s the capital of Cyprus? Answer - Nicosia
612. What name is given to the vast grassy plains of Russia? Answer - Steppes
613. What is the name of the ficticious suburb where Coronation Street is set? Answer - Weatherfield
614. How many quavers equal a minim? Answer - 4
615. Tartrazine colours food ? but what colour? Answer - Yellow
616. What colour are Bart Simpson?s shorts? Answer - Blue
617. In the film 'Cry Freedom' Denzil Washington plays which figure? Answer - Steve Biko
618. How many eyes does a bee have? Answer - 5
619. Name the Mayor in "The Dukes Of Hazzard"? Answer - Boss Hogg
620. How many hoops are used in a game of croquet? Answer - 6
621. How many moons has the planet Mars? Answer - 2
622. In which US city was Martin Luther King born? Answer - Atlanta
623. In which year did the French Revolution start? Answer - 1789
624. In the Bible what was the first bird to be released from the Ark? Answer - Raven
625. Which American city is known as The Big Apple? Answer - New York
626. Who wrote the 1939 novel Finnegans Wake? Answer - James Joyce
627. Which US television company has a Peacock as its logo? Answer - NBC
628. What was the nationality of Mata Hari? Answer - Dutch
629. Who is the actress who plays Phoebe in 'Friends'? Answer - Lisa Kudrow
630. Which Australian city is the capital of Queensland? Answer - Brisbane
631. Who invented the clockwork radio in 1993? Answer - Trevor Baylis
632. How many great pyramids are situated at Giza, Egypt? Answer - 3
633. What character did Michael Douglas play in the movie ' Romancing the Stone'? Answer - Jack Colton
634. What is the name of the largest lake in Africa? Answer - Victoria
635. What is the name for a male Goose? Answer - Gander
636. Which is the world's smallest ocean? Answer - Arctic
637. What does a tegestologist collect? Answer - Beer Mats
638. What is H is another name for a 'Mouth Organ'? Answer - Harmonica
639. Who invented the Saxophone? Answer - Adolphe Sax
640. In which comic did Spiderman first appear? Answer - Marvel
641. In Iranian Mythology Tishtrya was the god of what? Answer - Rain
642. In which country would actor Russell Crowe born? Answer - New Zealand
643. Which gas is used in airships? Answer - Helium
644. What is the square root of 25? Answer - 5
645. What is the name given to a pregnancy outside the womb? Answer - Ectopic
646. In which continent is Siberia? Answer - Asia
647. Which is the longest river in South America? Answer - Amazon
648. What kind of creature is a Lamprey? Answer - Fish
649. How many lenses does each human eye have? Answer - 1
650. Who killed Achilles at Troy? Answer - Paris
651. How may carats is pure Gold? Answer - 24
652. What did Madonna name her second child? Answer - Rocco
653. How many legs would a decapod have? Answer - 10
654. How many tiles are there in a standard Mah-Jong set? Answer - 144
655. What star sign would you be if you were born on 13th September? Answer - Virgo
656. Who wrote the opera Fidelio? Answer - Ludwig Van Beethoven
657. What is the young of the Zebra called? Answer - Foal
658. In which year was Napolean Bonaparte crowned emporer of France? Answer - 1804
659. From which english port did the Titanic set sail on her maiden voyage? Answer - Southampton
660. Which Chinese dynasty ruled between 1368-1644? Answer - Ming
661. Who sung 'That'll be the day' in 1957? Answer - Buddy Holly
662. What is the capital city of Ecuador? Answer - Quito
663. In the 'Jungle Book' what type of creature was Bagheera? Answer - Panther
664. What is the name of Liza Minnelli's mother? Answer - Judy Garland
665. The German tennis player Steffi Graf retired in which year? Answer - 1999
666. What is the term used for a single dot on a computer screen? Answer - Pixel
667. What P is an alloy of Lead and Tin? Answer - Pewter
668. Which bird feature in the Australian coat of arms? Answer - Emu
669. Which composer composed the music for 'The Love For Three Oranges'? Answer - Prokofiev
670. St Louis is the largest city in which US state? Answer - Missouri
671. From which musical is the song 'There is Nothin' Like a Dame'? Answer - South Pacific
672. In which year were the Rolling Stones Formed? Answer - 1962
673. What is the square root of 64? Answer - 8
674. What is the chemical symbol for tin? Answer - Sn
675. What precious gemstone is associated with the 45th wedding anniversary? Answer - Sapphire
676. Meaning 'before noon', what does the abbreviation a.m. stand for? Answer - ante meridiem
677. In which country were the 1970 football World Cup finals held? Answer - Mexico
678. Who starred in the films "Some Like It Hot", "Bus Stop" and "The Seven Year Itch"? Answer - Marilyn Monroe
679. What does the Italian word "Paparazzi" mean? Answer - Little Fleas
680. What book starts with the words ""Smell that air," said Major Mann. "? Answer - Catch a Falling Spy
681. What film was Bruce Lee making when he died? Answer - Enter The Dragon
682. Who wrote 'The Jungle Book'? Answer - Rudyard Kipling
683. Which dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous period has a name meaning 'Iguana Tooth'? Answer - Iguanodon
684. Which human organ stores and concentrates the bile produced in your liver? Answer - Gall Bladder
685. How many minutes are in a game of rugby? Answer - 80
686. Who wrote the book 'Robinson Crusoe'? Answer - Daniel Defoe
687. How many points do you need in chess to become a Grand Master? Answer - 2500
688. In a game of Scrabble what does the letter 'B' score? Answer - 3
689. Which colour light has the longest wavelength? Answer - Blue
690. Ailuophobia is a fear of what? Answer - Cats
691. Who invented the vacuum flask? Answer - James Dewar
692. Which is the worlds fastest moving land animal. Answer - Cheetah
693. In which country would you find the River Fraser? Answer - Canada
694. What metal is added to steel to make it stainless? Answer - Chromium
695. Which is the largest planet in our Solar System? Answer - Jupiter
696. Which is Scotlands largest lake? Answer - Loch Lomond
697. Who played the title role in the movie "Edward Scissorhands"? Answer - Johnny Depp
698. What is the capital of Lebanon? Answer - Beirut
699. Who composed The Planets? Answer - Gustav Holst
700. What year did Frank Sinatra die? Answer - 1998
701. The 'Sistine Madonna' was painted by which artist? Answer - Raphael
702. The South African city Johannesburg was founded in which year? Answer - 1886
703. What colour of jacket do winners of the US Masters Golf get? Answer - Green
704. From which fish is Caviar obtained? Answer - Sturgeon
705. What was the name of the ranch in the TV series Dallas? Answer - Southfork
706. What is the unit of currency in Venezuela? Answer - Bolivar
707. In John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" where are all forms of worldly pleasures sold? Answer - Vanity Fair
708. In Lord of the Rings where does Boromir come from? Answer - Gondor
709. Which country governs the Galapagos Islands? Answer - Ecuador
710. In the US which is the Golden State? Answer - California
711. Who is the patron saint of Germany? Answer - Boniface
712. Who made the first bifocal spectacles? Answer - Benjamin Franklin
713. Who was the last king of Egypt? Answer - Farouk
714. Who was the Roman goddess of wisdom? Answer - Minerva
715. How many bottles are there in a methusalah? Answer - 8
716. A Poult is the young of which bird? Answer - Grouse
717. What was the name of Dick Turpin's horse? Answer - Black Bess
718. What character did Bill Murray play in the movie 'Stripes'? Answer - John Winger
719. What do the letters DKNY stand for in the world of fashion? Answer - Donna Karan New York
720. Which is the largest of the Greek islands? Answer - Crete
721. What does the Italian word Pizza mean? Answer - Pie
722. Which is the first letter of the Greek alphabet? Answer - Alpha
723. Who wrote 'Das Kapital'? Answer - Karl Marx
724. In 1938 who invented the ballpoint pen? Answer - Laszlo Biro
725. Don McLean's song 'American Pie' was based on the death of which singer? Answer - Buddy Holly
726. What is the capital of Rwanda? Answer - Kigali
727. In Greek mythology who was the son of Daedalus who flew too near the Sun? Answer - Icarus
728. The last Chinese year of the Tiger was in what year? Answer - 1998
729. What kind of apes occupy the Rock of Gibralter? Answer - Barbary
730. What colour is the eight ball in a game of pool? Answer - Black
731. What is the cube of 9? Answer - 729
732. After Methuseleh, in the Bible who is the next oldest man? Answer - Noah
733. What is measured on the Beaufort scale? Answer - Wind
734. What is the name of the Manx Parliment? Answer - Tynwald
735. Who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun? Answer - Howard Carter
736. What is a young spider called? Answer - Spiderling
737. Who played James Bond in the movie Moonraker? Answer - Roger Moore
738. What sign of the zodiac do you come under if you were born on 25th July? Answer - Leo
739. What is the name given to the seat on the back of an elephant? Answer - Howdah
740. Who wrote the play Pygmalion? Answer - George Bernard Shaw
741. Which pop group had a hit with 'Jumpin Jack Flash'? Answer - Rolling Stones
742. The cartoon character Sylvester the cat chased which bird? Answer - Tweetie Pie
743. Where were the Olympic Games held in 1906? Answer - Athens
744. Pewter is an alloy of Tin and what other metal? Answer - Lead
745. In computing what does ROM stand for? Answer - Read Only Memory
746. In what year did the volcano Krakatoa erupt? Answer - 1883
747. What year did Emporer Hirohito of Japan come to the throne? Answer - 1926
748. What is the name of the Lion King? Answer - Simba
749. In Australia what is a Corroboree? Answer - Dance
750. What is the science of sound called? Answer - Acoustics
751. What is the substance that gels in water and enables jam to set? Answer - Pectin
752. Where does a Monegasque come from? Answer - Monaco
753. What nationality was the artist Whistler? Answer - American
754. What is the lowest female singing voice? Answer - Contralto
755. What is the French phrase for a pen-name? Answer - Nom De Plume
756. How many symphonies did Beethoven compose? Answer - 9
757. What is a female mouse called? Answer - Doe
758. In which country would you find the 'Bay of Pigs'? Answer - Cuba
759. What connect a baby to the placenta? Answer - Umbilical Cord
760. In the detective TV series what was Kojak's first name? Answer - Theo
761. What breed of dog is Scooby Doo? Answer - Great Dane
762. What do D. H. Lawrence's initials stand for? Answer - David Herbert
763. What is the study of shells called? Answer - Conchology
764. Who directed the movie 'The Birds'? Answer - Alfred Hitchcock
765. What country was once known as Hibernia? Answer - Ireland
766. What name is given to the male swan? Answer - Cob
767. Apart from the white ball, how many other balls are there in a game of pool? Answer - 15
768. What is the longest river in India? Answer - Brahmaputra
769. Who shot Lee Harvey Oswald? Answer - Jack Ruby
770. Which planet was named after the goddess of love? Answer - Venus
771. Carrots are rich in which vitamin? Answer - A
772. What nationality was the composer Chopin? Answer - Polish
773. In which country is Monte Carlo? Answer - Monaco
774. What is the name of the pig beginning with 'N' is in the book 'Animal Farm'? Answer - Napoleon
775. Which country produces Riesling wine? Answer - Yugoslavia
776. What was the name of Roy Rogers' horse? Answer - Trigger
777. How many squares will you find on a draughts or checkers board? Answer - 64
778. What is the name of the Samurai's strict code of chivalry? Answer - Bushido
779. What instrument did Glenn Miller normally play? Answer - Trombone
780. What was the nickname of the main character in 'Great Expectations'? Answer - Pip
781. From which fruit is the liqueur calbados made? Answer - Apple
782. What does U.F.O. stand for? Answer - Unidentified Flying Object
783. Who was 'Mommie Dearest'? Answer - Joan Crawford
784. Which American President was known as 'The Bull Moose'? Answer - Roosevelt
785. How many points is a touchdown worth in American football? Answer - 6
786. Formentera is part of which group of islands? Answer - Balearic
787. What type of creature is a Grackle? Answer - Bird
788. Kingston is the capital of which Island? Answer - Jamaica
789. In music how many quavers equal a crotchet? Answer - 2
790. What was the family surname in the sitcom 'Roseanne'? Answer - Conner
791. How many sides does a trapezium have? Answer - 4
792. What is a baby seal called? Answer - Pup
793. What was the name given to the lunar module that first landed on the moon? Answer - Eagle
794. Who played James Bond after Sean Connery? Answer - George Lazenby
795. Who was the first member of the Beatles to get married? Answer - John Lennon
796. Which singer was known as Reg Dwight? Answer - Elton John
797. Which sign of the Zodiac is depicted by scales? Answer - Libra
798. In which country was Rudyard Kipling born? Answer - India
799. What is the highest hand in Poker? Answer - Royal Flush
800. Sardines are the young of which fish? Answer - Herring
801. Which profession did Bop Hope follow in the movie 'The Paleface'? Answer - Dentist
802. In which city is the Metropolitan Opera House? Answer - New York
803. How many strings are there on a violin? Answer - 4
804. From which country did the drink Tequila originate? Answer - Mexico
805. What is tattooed on Popeye's forearm? Answer - Anchor
806. Which American state is known as the 'Show Me State'? Answer - Missouri
807. What is the Roman numeral for 500? Answer - D
808. Where is Gander Airport? Answer - Newfoundland
809. Who is Annie Mae Bullock? Answer - Tina Turner
810. Gamophobia is a fear of what? Answer - Marriage
811. A Geisha girl makes her face up in what colour? Answer - White
812. The aria ' One Fine Day' is from which opera? Answer - Madame Butterfly
813. What is a female warlock? Answer - Witch
814. What type of creature is a Cottonmouth? Answer - Snake
815. In the bible, who was Cain's eldest son? Answer - Enoch
816. How many rows of keys does the Janko piano have? Answer - 6
817. Which sign of the zodiac is symbolized by twins? Answer - Gemini
818. In which state in the USA is Houston situated? Answer - Texas
819. In Greek mythology who was the sister and wife of Zeus? Answer - Hera
820. Which is the third largest Ocean? Answer - Indian
821. Which Egyptian president was assassinated in 1981? Answer - Anwar Sadat
822. What is the opposite of an Anode? Answer - Cathode
823. How many degrees are there in a circle? Answer - 360
824. What is the name of Batmans butler? Answer - Alfred
825. Who wrote the book 'Gulliver's Travels'? Answer - Jonathan Swift
826. How many fused bones form the coccyx? Answer - 4
827. What is hydrogen's atomic number? Answer - 1
828. In what year was the tomb of Tutankhamen opened? Answer - 1922
829. The Simplon tunnel runs through which range of mountains? Answer - Alps
830. In the Muppets, what is Miss Piggy's surname? Answer - Lee
831. In which organ of the body would you find the mitral valve? Answer - Heart
832. What type of lens curves outwards? Answer - Convex
833. What is a young Zebra called? Answer - Colt
834. What is the second 'Perfect Number' in maths? Answer - 28
835. What colour is Emerald? Answer - Green
836. Which US state borders four of the five Great Lakes? Answer - Michigan
837. What meat is 'Prosciutto'? Answer - Ham
838. What is the nationality of golfer Gary Player? Answer - South African
839. What name is given to the home of an Eagle? Answer - Eyrie
840. On which lake does the Canadian city of Toronto stand? Answer - Ontario
841. How many legs has a Lobster? Answer - 10
842. What is the highest number on the Richter scale? Answer - 12
843. How many cents are there in an American nickel? Answer - 5
844. What is the sacred flower of India? Answer - Lotus
845. Who is Popeye's girlfriend? Answer - Olive Oyl
846. Who was the Roman slave who removed a thorn from a lion's paw? Answer - Androcles
847. Lionel Ritchie was once the lead singer of which group? Answer - Commodores
848. In the Bible, who was married to King Ahab? Answer - Jezebel
849. In the human body, which is the largest organ? Answer - Skin
850. Who invented the pneumatic tyre in 1888? Answer - John Dunlop
851. What is the medical term for hair loss? Answer - Alopecia
852. Which company makes the 'Electraglide' motorcycle'? Answer - Harley Davidson
853. What is the capital of Malaysia? Answer - Kuala Lumpur
854. What is the collective term used for a group of monkeys? Answer - Troop
855. How many hearts does an octopus have? Answer - 3
856. What is the longest river in Italy? Answer - Po
857. What type of acid is found in Vinegar? Answer - Acetic
858. Which radioactive gas has the chemical symbol Rn? Answer - Radon
859. To whom was William Shakespeare married? Answer - Anne Hathaway
860. Who Invented the Zip in 1891? Answer - Whitcomb Judson
861. What is the capital of the US state of Colorado? Answer - Denver
862. In which Australian state is Sydney? Answer - New South Wales
863. How many reeds does the woodwind instrument the oboe have? Answer - 2
864. Who is the lead singer in the group 'Hot Chocolate'? Answer - Errol Brown
865. Who was the first man to fly the Atlantic solo? Answer - Charles Lindbergh
866. Where did the Tamil Tigers guerilla movement operate? Answer - Sri Lanka
867. What is the 'capital' of South Australia? Answer - Adelaide
868. Which country won the 1998 soccer World Cup? Answer - France
869. In the Bible, in which garden was Jesus betrayed? Answer - Gethsemane
870. What is the national bird of India? Answer - Peacock
871. Which of the seven deadly sins begins with 'Gl'? Answer - Gluttony
872. Where would you find the 'Sea of Showers'? Answer - Moon
873. Who invented the tuning fork in 1711? Answer - John Shore
874. Jewish Potato pancakes are called what? Answer - Latkes
875. What was Charlie Chaplin's middle name? Answer - Spencer
876. When did Concorde first fly? Answer - 1969
877. For which month is topaz the birthstone? Answer - November
878. How many sides does an octagon have? Answer - 8
879. Who had a number 1 hit with the song "Lady In Red"? Answer - Chris De Burgh
880. What was Elvis Presley's first film? Answer - Love Me Tender
881. Which organ in the body secretes insulin? Answer - Pancreas
882. Which country do the 'All Blacks' represent in rugby? Answer - New Zealand
883. In which year did the space shuttle Challenger explode? Answer - 1986
884. What character did Harrison Ford play in the movie 'Star Wars'? Answer - Han Solo
885. Who was the queen of the Roman Gods? Answer - Juno
886. What is the collective term for a group of foxes? Answer - Skulk
887. Which is the largest city in Canada? Answer - Toronto
888. In which US state was Elvis Presley born? Answer - Mississippi
889. After whom was Rhodesia named? Answer - Cecil Rhodes
890. Which vitamin aids healthy vision? Answer - A
891. Who was the Roman god for sleep? Answer - Somnus
892. What is the name of the Flintstones' pet dinosaur? Answer - Dino
893. What is the wild dog of Australia? Answer - Dingo
894. How many points is the letter 'X' worth in a game of Scrabble? Answer - 8
895. How many pillars of Islam are there? Answer - 5
896. Which swimmer is nicknamed 'Thorpedo'? Answer - Ian Thorpe
897. What part of the human body is the patella? Answer - Kneecap
898. Which metal comes from Cinnabar? Answer - Mercury
899. What was the name given to the first US Space Shuttle? Answer - Columbia
900. Who played the part of Superman in the movies? Answer - Christopher Reeve
901. Which desert is in Botswana? Answer - Kalahari
902. What colour are the hottest stars? Answer - Blue
903. At what age was Buddy Holly killed? Answer - 22
904. Which gas in solid form is called 'Dry Ice'? Answer - Carbon Dioxide
905. Who is the most quoted Chinese philosopher? Answer - Confucius
906. Which animal appears on the flag of Tanzania? Answer - Giraffe
907. Who played the monster in the original film of Frankenstein? Answer - Boris Karloff
908. The Aleutian islands are part of which American state? Answer - Alaska
909. How many Sen make a Yen? Answer - 100
910. How many points does 'Double Top' score in darts? Answer - 40
911. How many strings does a Ukulele have? Answer - 4
912. What colour blood has a Lobster got? Answer - Blue
913. What colour is the starboard light on a ship? Answer - Green
914. From which garden were Adam and Eve expelled? Answer - Eden
915. What are hayfever sufferers allergic to? Answer - Pollen
916. Which Welsh actor married Elizabeth Taylor twice? Answer - Richard Burton
917. In which US state is Wichita? Answer - Kansas
918. What sort of creature is a Merganser? Answer - Duck
919. In Greek mythology who was the twin sister of Apollo? Answer - Artemis
920. Who was the first Vice President and the second President of the USA? Answer - John Adams
921. What is the longest river in Europe? Answer - Volga
922. What nationality was the artist Max Ernst? Answer - German
923. What is the singular of Graffiti? Answer - Graffito
924. What is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet? Answer - Zeta
925. How many players are there in a cricket team? Answer - 11
926. Which liquid has the chemical formula H2O? Answer - Water
927. What is the highest female singing voice? Answer - Soprano
928. Triton is the largest known satellite of which planet? Answer - Neptune
929. Who was the vice president of the USA under Ronald Reagan? Answer - George Bush
930. Mount Everest is part of which mountain system? Answer - Himalayas
931. In the bible, what is the fourth book of the Old Testament. Answer - Numbers
932. What is the name of the ancient Egyptian bull god? Answer - Apis
933. In which river can the Victoria Falls be found? Answer - Zambezi
934. Who won the Super Bowl in 1996? Answer - Dallas Cowboys
935. What type of creature is a Whippoorwill? Answer - Bird
936. What is an Ugli? Answer - Fruit
937. Who wrote the book 'Executive Orders'? Answer - Tom Clancy
938. What is the capital of Fiji? Answer - Suva
939. Who was the Roman god of fire? Answer - Vulcan
940. In which country was Picasso born? Answer - Spain
941. What do you get if you multiply Volts by Amperes? Answer - Watts
942. Which US talk show host received an Oscar for The Color Purple? Answer - Oprah Winfrey
943. In which stretch of water is Kharg Island? Answer - Persian Gulf
944. Who was head of the Gestapo in 1936? Answer - Himmler
945. What is the surname of Hawkeye in M.A.S.H? Answer - Pierce
946. What colour is the gem Peridot? Answer - Green
947. How many points does the Star of David have? Answer - 6
948. What is the chemical symbol of silver? Answer - Ag
949. What fruit grows on a palm tree? Answer - Date
950. What name is given to the food of the gods? Answer - Ambrosia
951. What is the name given to a whales nostril? Answer - Blowhole
952. What is the main ingredient of a traditional fondue? Answer - Cheese
953. Bill Gates is associated with which computer company? Answer - Microsoft
954. Who wanted the head of John the Baptist? Answer - Salome
955. How many atoms of oxygen are there in a molecule of water? Answer - 1
956. What fuel is used by a Bunsen Burner? Answer - Gas
957. What name is given to a young hare? Answer - Leveret
958. What is the chief port of Nigeria? Answer - Lagos
959. Which singer married model Christie Brinkley in 1985? Answer - Billy Joel
960. In which US state is Las Vegas? Answer - Nevada
961. Which part of the body is affected by presbyopia? Answer - Eyes
962. How many black squares are there on a chessboard? Answer - 32
963. What offence is committed by making a false statement under oath? Answer - Perjury
964. On a ship what is the Galley? Answer - Kitchen
965. Who was the founder of the Quaker movement? Answer - George Fox
966. What acid is contained in a bee sting? Answer - Formic
967. What was the name of the first cloned sheep? Answer - Dolly
968. Who is Mick Jaggers second wife? Answer - Jerry Hall
969. What nationality was Claude Debussy? Answer - French
970. Who wrote the book 'The Day of the Jackal'? Answer - Frederick Forsyth
971. In which resort is the famous Cresta Run? Answer - St Moritz
972. What is the medical term for the human shin bone? Answer - Tibia
973. Which Colonel Oliver starred in the US 'Irongate' court hearing? Answer - North
974. What is the Japanese art of miniature tree cultivation called? Answer - Bonsai
975. In chess which piece always remains on the same coloured squares? Answer - Bishop
976. In 'Star Trek', What colour was Mr Spock's blood? Answer - Green
977. Which Swedish scientist invented dynamite? Answer - Alfred Nobel
978. What is the capital of Peru? Answer - Lima
979. What name is given to a male fox? Answer - Dog
980. How many tournaments comprise the tennis Grand Slam? Answer - 4
981. How many sides are there to a rhombus? Answer - 4
982. What is the name given to a period of play in polo? Answer - Chukka
983. With what is Ameretto flavoured? Answer - Almond
984. What was the name of Buddy Holly's backing group? Answer - The Crickets
985. Who provided the voice for the cartoon character Bugs Bunny? Answer - Mel Blanc
986. Providence is the capital of which US state? Answer - Rhode Island
987. In the Bible who was thrown into the lions den? Answer - Daniel
988. Of which organ is the cerebellum a part? Answer - Brain
989. Which is the largest of the Great Lakes? Answer - Superior
990. What was the name of Dustin Hoffmans character in 'The Graduate'? Answer - Benjamin Braddock
991. What gas is represented by the symbol He? Answer - Helium
992. The planet Pluto was discovered in what year? Answer - 1930
993. In which American city was Abraham Lincoln assassinated? Answer - Washington
994. What is the worlds largest bird of prey? Answer - Condor
995. What is the medical name of the breastbone? Answer - Sternum
996. On which sea is Bombay situated? Answer - Arabian
997. Which river divides Cornwall and Devon? Answer - Tamar
998. In which organ would you find the Atrium? Answer - Heart
999. Which planet is surrounded by rings? Answer - Saturn
1000. How many are there in a bakers dozen? Answer - 13
You are free to use these questions in your quizzes. A mention of the source will be appreciated.
The integrity of the above questions is by no means guaranteed,
but every effort has been made to make sure they are accurate.
4th February
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
 | 1974: Soldiers and children killed in coach bombing Eleven people are killed in a bomb blast on a bus travelling to an army base in North Yorkshire. | ||
| |||
| 1998: 4�000 feared dead in Afghan earthquake An earthquake in northern Afghanistan leaves thousands dead� injured or homeless. | |||
| |||
| 1968: More Kenyan Asians flee to Britain Another 96 Indians and Pakistanis from Kenya arrive in Britain� the latest in a growing exodus of Kenyan Asians fleeing discrimination. | |||
| |||
Not a lot of people know that...
If the subject matter were not so erudite, it could be any old chat-room, anywhere in cyberspace. "Gerontius Grumpus" from Newcastle, a radiographer who lists his interests as "wildlife, archaeology, canals, biplanes and grumbling", wants it to be known that the "burbot (Lota lota)" is the only freshwater member of the cod family.
 | |
"Not a Number" from British Columbia, who gives his occupation as "Canadian icon", adds a rider that other names for the fish include cusk, eel pout, ling, lawyer and crankbait.
Just a few more drops in the ocean of knowledge swilling around on the internet.
Ten years ago, both men would probably have been dismissed as "anoraks", hoarders of information that might be accurate but could never possibly be useful. Today, thanks not least to the phenomenal success of the Quite Interesting brand, they are part of the mainstream.
A little learning is no longer "the dangerous thing" that Pope warned of: it is a much-coveted, 21st-century accessory.
These days, if you can persuade your dinner guests that American feminists never actually burnt their bras in 1968 (they wanted to, but the police told them it would be too dangerous) you will earn a reputation as an original thinker, someone intellectually equipped to challenge urban myths.
QI will be familiar to most through the BBC quiz show of the same name, hosted by Stephen Fry, but behind the programme is a burgeoning QI empire, based at its headquarters in central Oxford, and supported by the likes of Rowan Atkinson, Pierce Brosnan, Kate Winslet, Jeremy Clarkson, Philip Pullman, Alan Davies and Fry, who have all been spotted leaving QI HQ.
The QI Building, on Turl Street, has a bookshop, a café, a basement vodka bar and a suite of rooms, including a restaurant and reference library, used by the 800-odd members of the private QI Club, which hosts talks and events.
In addition to the best-selling The Book of General Ignorance, a spin-off from the TV series (and serialised in the Daily Telegraph for the past 20 weeks), two more QI books are in the offing, along with a QI radio show, a QI magazine and ''SQUIRE", an ambitious attempt to create a search engine to rival Google.
There is also QI Commercials, an advertising company (think Stephen Fry and Twinings tea, the Green Wing cast and Barclaycard) and even talk of launching The Interesting Channel on television.
The heartbeat of the organisation, however, is its website, www.qi.com, which predates the television series. Here, the likes of "Gerontius Grumpus" and "Not a Number", polymaths from around the world, lob questions at each other, pass on titbits of information, have a gossip, swap theories about why the England cricket team is so bad — because they wear baseball caps, suggests Gerontius — and generally while away the day like so many dons in an Oxford common room.
There is a definite cardigan-and-slippers flavour to the exchanges, as there is on the TV show: a whiff of fogeyism. But don't be fooled. This is not a freemasonry of the over-educated, preoccupied with keeping the plebs at bay. It is a broad church. A very broad church.
"You would be amazed how many young people are actively involved with the website," says Justin Gaynor, QI's commercial director. "I noticed someone called Smiley Face appearing in a lot of the chat-rooms. When I eventually met her, it turned out that she was a schoolgirl who had yet to sit her GCSEs. Some teenagers have an insatiable curiosity."
Hook them with the right little-known snippet — such as the fact that kangaroos have three vaginas — and they are hooked for life. Even if they get the facts hopelessly muddled, and start telling their friends that koala bears have six penises, all is not lost. At least they will have been stimulated out of the television-induced apathy that is the lot of so many children.
If the success of QI proves anything, it is that the thirst for knowledge, any knowledge, is unquenchable, in young and old alike. Last Christmas, in a statistic worthy of a QI show, The Book of General Ignorance was the most-ordered book in the whole world on the Amazon website (in second place was American presidential hopeful Barack Obama's book).
For John Lloyd, founder of QI, the success of the brand crowns a remarkable career in which light comedy and current affairs have been sinuously intertwined. As a television producer, his credits included Not the Nine O'Clock News, Spitting Image and Blackadder.
He was also the co-author, with Douglas Adams, of The Meaning of Liff (1983), a timeless classic of lexicological mischief. The trick was to marry English place-names with things for which no word existed. Thus "Farnham" was defined as "the feeling you get about four o'clock in the afternoon when you haven't got enough done"; "Kettering" as "the marks left on your bottom after you have been sunbathing in a wicker chair" and so on.
It was nonsense, but sublime nonsense, underpinned by a weird kind of sense. There were gaps in conventional dictionaries that needed to be filled. And that same need to plug the gaps lies behind Lloyd's new enterprise.
Did Mussolini make the trains run on time? Or was that just a myth, lazily handed down from generation to generation? Answer, as Lloyd discovered when he bothered to look into the matter: a myth. Just as it is a myth that Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco to England. Or that Nelson's last words were "Kiss me, Hardy". Get history wrong and you belittle the whole purpose of history, which is about rigorous inquiry, free from misconceptions.
"The unknown universe is massively more interesting than the known universe," says Lloyd. "At QI, we're not interested in deluging people with facts for the sake of facts. We want to stimulate them to ask their own questions about the world they live in."
When Lloyd strikes an evangelical note, you wonder whether he has missed his vocation as a preacher. But at the heart of the QI brand, in that self-deprecating "Quite", there is a very English kind of modesty. "I used to work in advertising, where everything had to be amazing, new, fantastic, fabulous. But 'quite interesting' is a far more accurate reflection of how we communicate with each other in this country. So often you hear someone say: 'I met this guy at a party. He was quite interesting.' That's the English vernacular for you."
Now in his fifties, Lloyd is more knowledgeable, in the narrow sense, than he has ever been. But the paradox of ageing, and the best justification for the lifelong learning that QI seeks to encourage, is that the more you know, the less you know.
QI, he concedes, is "old-fashioned telly", in the sense of being warm and cosy. "But wouldn't you rather that than Big Brother?" And cosiness is not the same as laziness. There is a lot of hard work behind those apparently ludic questions, with a team of QI "elves" checking and cross-checking every fact.
One elf is a distinguished military historian. Another is a pub accountant in Bolton. Then there is the astrophysicist turned zoo-keeper in Bath. All they share in common is an appetite for serendipitous knowledge, one question leading on to another question and then another.
"Behind the old-fashioned façade, it is one of the most modern shows on television," claims Lloyd. "We make maximum use of the internet, and of the virtual community that exists out there, to disseminate sometimes quite complex information.
"Most people realise instinctively when they are at school that the truths they are being taught are only ever half-truths: there are more complex truths behind and beyond them. It is our aim to fan that curiosity and convince people that everything in life, however dull it might seem, has intrinsic interest value."
What, everything?
"Absolutely. When QI was starting out, we played a game called 'Quite Boring'. People had to nominate something about which nothing interesting could be said or discovered. I nominated Chelmsford, which I had always found exceptionally dull. Within literally days, I discovered that it was the only English town named after Julius Caesar, that it had been capital of England for a week in the 13th century and that the first music broadcast on radio by Marconi was relayed from there. I'd call that quite interesting, wouldn't you?"
Such dotty little nuggets are the very life-blood of QI. They may not warrant a detour to Chelmsford but, in a glib age, where the soundbite is king, they keep the brain ticking over nicely.
Scratch 'n smell phone is born
You've seen the advert and heard the jingle. Now prepare yourself for the "odour logo". Electronics manufacturers, airlines and banks are commissioning unique fragrances for use in their stores and on their products.
 | |
Sony and Samsung are both testing signature scents, while Sony Ericsson, the mobile phone company, has launched a handset that releases a faint smell as it is used. The marketing ploy has emerged as research from Oxford University shows that it is possible to train people to associate smells with particular experiences or objects. Dr Charles Spence, an experimental psychologist at the university, is carrying out brain-scanning experiments while presenting people with new and recognisable smells to assess the response they invoke. He said: "We are finding that, although we thought our sense of smell was very bad, it in fact plays a huge role in our lives."
While smell has been used for years to help food sales, such as wafting the aroma of freshly baked bread or brewed coffee through supermarkets, it is increasingly being used to sell products and services that normally have no odour of their own.
British Airways has revealed that it releases the faint smell of freshly cut grass into its lounges to create a pleasant atmosphere while Sony has run trials of a unique combination of vanilla and orange in its SonyStyle stores in America and has also launched a new phone in Japan that gives off a fragrance designed to calm users.
Samsung has used honeydew melon in its stores, while its Korean competitor, LG Electronics, has used a chocolate fragrance in packaging for its "Chocolate" range of mobile phones.
This trend was revealed at a lecture last week organised by the Society of Cosmetic Scientists in London.
3.2.07
Can anyone make a citizen's arrest?
A father and son were charged with kidnap after making a "citizen's arrest" on a boy they alleged smashed a window and spat at a customer at their chip shop. But can't anyone make a citizen's arrest? 
The law provides general powers that allow any person to make a citizen's arrest under certain circumstances - including if they witness an arrestable offence. However, there are many legal issues which make it a complex matter with many grey areas.
Chip shop owner Nicholas Tyers, 46, and son Lee, 20, appear to have fallen foul of some of these grey areas after they spotted the 12-year-old suspect in the street and drove him back to their Bridlington shop, a day after the alleged offence, before alerting police.
Mr Tyers said he believed he was "doing his public duty" but then endured "six months of hell" until his case was dismissed by Judge John Dowse at Hull Crown Court.
The judge said the Tyers had acted "reasonably", leaving the Crown Prosecution to defend the prosecution as "being in the public interest".
Complexities
The case highlights the legal complexity and possible dangers of carrying out a citizen's arrest. The current powers of citizens' arrest, that apply to "any person", are broadly covered by three parts of the law.
• Arrest for an "indictable offence" under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.
• Arrest of persons committing, or about to commit a Breach of the Peace under common law.
• Use of reasonable force to prevent crime or arrest offenders or persons unlawfully at large under the Criminal Law Act 1967.
Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) and store detectives rely on these powers for aspects of their jobs. 
In its guidance to PCSOs, the Association of Chief Police Officers details cases which it says clarify a "deliberate policy to ensure that citizens only arrest in the clearest of circumstances".
John O'Connor, former commander of the Flying Squad, explained why citizens' arrests could be unpopular with law enforcers.
"The police don't particularly like citizens' arrests like this because very often the person who's making the arrest is putting themselves at risk," he says.
"They are putting themselves at risk - A of being assaulted by the person they are trying to arrest and secondly they may not necessarily understand what their powers are and they may go too far."
"We have often seen cases that do get prosecuted, where somebody, and usually it is a youngster, is taken from where he's arrested back to a premises where there's some form of interrogation or argy bargy that goes on that could be construed as him being held under duress." The CPS is trying to send a message that this is not to be undertaken lightly
Former Flying Squad commander
Normal citizens hadn't had the same training as store detectives or Police Community Support Officers to carry out the task, he says.
"If they haven't got the training they run the risk of not doing it correctly," he says.
Mr O'Connor says the "surrounding circumstances" of Mr Tyers' case had made their citizen's arrest "unwise". These included that the suspect was a child and the arrest was made a day after the alleged offence, he says.
'Reasonable' - discuss
Barrister Jodie Dunn says there isn't a form of words people must use when making a citizen's arrest but the person had to be informed they were under arrest "so that they understand what you are doing".
"You're allowed to restrain them and you're allowed to use reasonable force, but the word "reasonable" is something that's used in British law in an awful lot of different statutes and it always causes problems because you have to look at what's reasonable in those circumstances." 
She says that people needed to remember if the arrest was unlawful or it was proved later the suspect had not committed the crime, or the force used to detain them was too great "you could be the one facing charges later on".
Mr O'Connor says it comes down to a "question of balance", adding: "The CPS is trying to send a message that this is not to be undertaken lightly".
TV News highlights3rd February
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
 | 1959: Buddy Holly killed in air crash Three young rock 'n' roll stars� including 22-year-old singer Buddy Holly� die when their plane crashes in the United States. | ||
| |||
| 1960: Macmillan speaks of 'wind of change' in Africa Harold Macmillan outrages South African politicians with a speech warning of the "wind of change" in Africa. | |||
| |||
| 198 | |||