Facts to make you go“WOW!”
WORDS: DOUGLAS MCPHERSON
WOW! There is a cell in the base of the Elizabeth Tower specifically for locking up MPs who cause trouble in Parliament! Charles Bradlaugh was the last to spend a night there in 1880.
◆ The world’s biggest bell – the Tsar Bell, in the Kremlin – has never been rung as it broke during construction.
The hot air balloon was invented by brothers Joseph and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier in 1783.
◆ The “Siberian unicorn” was a prehistoric rhino that died out 39,000 years ago.
◆ The Wimbledon Tennis Championship had its highest single day attendance – 46,826 people – in 2009.
The London Underground has 408 escalators and 112 lifts.
◆ Approximately 10% of all weddings worldwide take place in June.
◆ Stingray was the first British TV series to be filmed in colour – three years before any UK station broadcast in colour.
◆ The Amazon was named by Francisco de Orellana after he encountered a tribe of women warriors who reminded him of the Amazons, female warriors from Greek mythology.
◆ Glover’s Roll, drawn up in the 1250s, was Britain’s first “roll of arms”, cataloguing 55 coats of arms.
◆ Britain’s biggest reservoir is Rutland Water in Cambridgeshire, which holds 128 million cubic metres of water.
◆ June’s full moon is known as the “Strawberry Moon” – like as its arrival coincides with ripening berries!
◆ The toupées William Shatner wore in the original Star Trek se
