199 Things we didn't know last year

[pegkerr]

Each week, the BBC News Magazine chronicles interesting and sometimes downright unexpected facts from the news, through its strand 10 things we didn't know last week. Here, to round off the year, are some of the best from the past 12 months.

Comments

[aome.livejournal.com]

Eating a packet of crisps a day is equivalent to drinking five litres of cooking oil a year.

EWWWW! There's a dietary persuasion (or counter-persuasion) if I ever heard one.

Cows can have regional accents, says a professor of phonetics, after studying cattle in Somerset

Although I enjoy linguistics, this is one of those things where I can only shake my head in wonder that someone would actually finance such a study. :P

Happy New Year!

[musicbearmn.livejournal.com]

quite delightful. The British look at things so much different that we do.

[boxofdelights]

The first item there is "Just 20 words make up a third of teenagers' everyday speech," a lame factoid which has been analyzed by the linguists at languagelog. They point out that teenagers are not alone there: 20 words probably make up about a third of your everyday speech, too. And about a third of the words the BBC uses.