Last Sunday was the Superbowl - the orgy of consumption and over-excess that signals the end of the American Football season. I stay up every year to watch it, and traditionally take the following day off work. Even when I was temping in Sydney I managed it, although temps weren't allowed time off - I mysteriously succumbed to a case of 'Superbowlitis' and couldn't come in on that Monday. Miraculously I had recovered by the Tuesday. These 24hr bugs, you know how it is. Anyhow, this Monday gone I was off work (legitimately) and spent most of it sat on the sofa in my lounging trousers in a hungover fug of lack of sleep, sore eyes, and several hundredweight of tortilla chips very, very slowly working their way through. Comforted by the warming feeling of the Macbook on my lap - and boy do they get warm - I fell back on the best way to spend a lazy hour(s) - trawling Wikipedia for facts. Here's what I found - I pass on these titbits, in the hope that you too will grow as a person from having discovered them. May your laps always be warm.
1. The Smallest Park in the World
[park (noun) - a large public green area in a town, used for recreation]. I'm not quite sure what kind of recreation you would be able to do in Mill Ends Park, Portland. Forget the frisbee. Leave the dog at home. At 0.3sq metres, you'd probably struggle to walk your pet woodlouse. Created in 1948 as a refuge for leprechauns to hold snail races (I kid you not), the park sits in the middle of a pedestrian crossing cunningly disguised as a flowering pot plant. But it was fully inaugurated in 1976, and at less than two feet across, makes for a fun (and brief) day out. Link
2. The Saint who didn't go quickly
Saint Teresa of Ávila is the patron saint of Spain, Croatia, headaches, and lacemakers. She founded the Discalced Brethren in November 1568 - 'discalced' being a fancy term for 'shoeless', apparently (one for crossword addicts there). She once had a rather painful-sounding vision - a seraph repeatedly driving a golden lance through her heart - after which she cried out what became her motto - "Lord Let Me Suffer Or Let Me Die" (I think every saint has to have a catchphrase). Someone up there obviously has a sense of humour, as she died at midnight on the 4th of October 1582 - the exact moment Spain switched to the Gregorian calendar. To fit this new system, the day after jumped directly to the 15th of October, the Lord therefore letting her die peacefully in her sleep over the course of 11 days that never existed. Link
3. The Ploughman's Lunch Deception
'A ploughman's lunch is a cold meal - featuring at a minimum, a thick piece of cheese, pickle, crusty bap or chunk of bread, and butter. It is often accompanied by a green salad; other common additions are half an apple, celery, pâté, sliced hard-boiled egg or beetroot.' Pâté? Keep all those EU subsidies rolling in! But the article continues...'In Britain ploughing is usually done during winter. At that time of year the ploughman’s wife or mother would have been unlikely to include salad in the ploughman’s lunch. Err, yeah. I guess. 'Green vegetables would be difficult to get in winter.' Hmmm. I smell a rat. 'A real ploughman's lunch would have more likely consisted of just cheese and pickle.' So...so what's the deal? 'Lexicographer Edwin Radford in To Coin a Phrase (1974) attributes the current usage to Richard Trehane, chairman of the English Country Cheese Council.' The buggers! Working in cahoots with the English Crusty Bap Council, no doubt. Link
4. How many mice live on the Tube?
Half a million, give or take - covered in brake dust so they appear black. London Underground facts have their own Wiki entry, and there are some fascinating pearls amongst them. Five stations are named afer nearby pubs: Angel, Elephant & Castle, Manor House, Royal Oak and Swiss Cottage. The shortest distance between stations is 250m - Covent Garden to Leicester Square on the Picadilly Line (which your author has, for some reason, timed at 19 seconds). If you buy a single ticket for that journey you'll be paying the equivalent of £25 a mile. The recording of "MIND THE GAP" is spoken by a studio sound engineer, after the actor hired to read the line insisted on royalty payments and it had to be re-recorded after he had left. And if you think the Tube smells bad - on the 23rd March 2001 a specially created fragrance called 'Madelaine' was pumped into Picadilly Circus underground. It was discontinued after a single day as it made people feel sick. Link
5. 110 million editors can't be wrong
Well, they can - Wikipedia isn't an exact science. The site's most innovative selling point is also it's biggest source of controversy. Allowing anybody to edit articles leaves Wiki open to error, feuds, lies, and practical jokes. Ranging from my mate Craig's attempts to prevent people cluttering up his favourite listings with pointless waffle, to the man who was sacked from his job for creating a fake biography of his boss, linking him to the Kennedy assassination. The scandals must be good publicity - Wikipedia is currently the 12th most popular site on the internet. In case you were wondering what people actually use it for, the ten most commonly read pages out of the 1,626,814 articles it contains are: Wiki statistics (3.9m views per day), Wikipedia Main Page, Saddam Hussein, Sex, United States of America, Naruto, (a manga series) Wii, Gerald Ford, List of Sex Positions, WWII [as of Jan '07 - List in full]
Link
