21 Mar 10 Learn something new no.7 – Last military action involving the longbow | #LearnSomethingNew
Courtesy of http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/
I strongly advise everyone to read this true story of Lieutenant Colonel (Mad) Jack Churchill – it is quite remarkable.
The last person to kill an enemy with a longbow in action against the enemy
It may be tempting to think of the Longbow as something used at Agincourt in the reign of Henry V, but the longb0w was used at least once in World War II By a British Officer, successfully killing a German soldier with it. The bowman, one Lieutenant Colonel Jack Churchill, known as ’Mad Jack’ Churchill was the sort of eccentric Englishman we like to think of as typical, but clearly they are atypical. Nevertheless, they are so remarkable that they imprint themselves upon our vision of own national character. Mad Jack went into battle with all the weaponry of 1940′w warfare, as well as a Claymore sword, a longbow and arrows and often bagpipes. His assertion that any officer who went into battle without a sword was ‘improperly dressed’. In later life he learnt to surf and was the first person to surf the River Severn’s tidal bore.
14 Mar 10 Learn something new no.6 – Sleep | #LearnSomethingNew
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Humans spend one-third of their lives asleep. A newborn child in a family will provide its parents with 400-750 hours lost sleep by it’s first birthday. The current world record for tsleeplessness is 11 days. This was set by an American, seventeen year old student in 1965 called Randy Gardner.
On some associated research:
- Heavy snorers get less sex.
- Rats deprived of sleep will die before those starved of food.
- Humans start yawning as foetuses 11 weeks after conception.
- Pythons require about 18 hours of sleep per day.
09 Mar 10 Learn something new no.5 – Water (and a bit about me and David Bellamy) | #LearnSomethingNew
David Bellamy (wearing some of the Rohan gear that I probably sent to him)
A long time ago, David Bellamy and I knew each other vaguely. He was a big fan of Rohan (clothing) and given that he was a regular on TV back then (late 80s), we were happy to clothe him and even took some inverted pride in his ‘Worst Dressed Man’ award. As Rohan’s Marketing Manager, it was part of my job to send all the gear to him. I later wrote articles in magazines, including one entitled ‘How Green Is Your Clothing’ for Outdoors Illustrated. I rang David to get his view on the subject and he kindly gave me an hour on the phone tutoring me in why cotton, natural as the plant is, can actually be an environmentally disastrous crop. The reason? It take 17 tons of water to produce 1 ton of cotton – cotton production is the reason that the Aral Sea in Russia effectively dried up.
Remembering this, I thought few other facts about the planet’s life giving fluid might be worth learning:
- It takes 120 gallons of water to produce one egg.
- A person can survive without food for more than 30 days, but less than a week without water.
- A gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds.
- For every 2.31 feet that water is raised above the earth’s surface it can create one pound per square inch of pressure.
- The average household uses 107,000 gallons of water per year.
- It takes 1,851 gallons of water to refine one barrel of crude oil.
- It takes 1,500 gallons of water to process one barrel of beer.
- 95 percent of the world’s cities still dump raw sewage into their water supplies. Thus it should come as no surprise to know that 80 percent of all the health maladies in developing countries can be traced back to unsanitary water.
07 Mar 10 Learn something new no.4 – What is the current historical era? | #LearnSomethingNew
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We’ve all heard of the Stone Age, The Bronze Age and The Iron Age, but what Age are we now living in?
These titles refer to social and technical advances in the human race and lasted for thusands of years, so to call the current era e.g. ‘The Technical Age’ is a little premature. Although steam power (technology in an early frm) has been around for some 2000 years it has only impacted on society and environment for some 300 years, when it heralded the start of the industrial revolution. So in millennia to come, others will decide in what era we currently reside.
However from a geological perspective, Earth is currently in the Cenozoic Era of the Phanerozoic Eon.
04 Mar 10 Learn something new no.3 – The effects of global warming and rising sea levels | #LearnSomethingNew
Things that get wet tend to shrink - like Holland
Today I have learnt that sea levels are rising and I will not be moving to Peterborough or New York.
With a rise in sea levels of 1 meter, the UK could see coastal towns like Hull, Portsmouth and Bognor Regis swallowed by the sea. Inland, it could also be bad news for Peterborough.
At the other extreme, with a 14m rise, large chunks of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Somerset will succumb to the waves, changing the distinctive outline of the UK dramatically.
In such extreme circumstances, Holland would almost completely disappear, leaving two islands, each little bigger than the Isle of Wight. Most coastal towns on the East coast of America would be overwhelmed, and an area of China about the size of England would disappear, As would many Pacific and Indonesian islands.
Current predictions have sea level rising by about 0.8m by the year 2100, which still makes the coast a dodgy place to live. The rest of us may have dry feet, but the further effect on tides and the meteorological impact on the gulf stream and air currents etc. means it will become a very different world.
Courtesy of http://flood.firetree.net/
03 Mar 10 Learn something new no.2 – How many websites are there | #LearnSomethingNew
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In March (of 2009 I think) it was estimated that there were at least 25.21 billion web pages online. In May (2009 I think again), the estimate is that these web pages belong to more than 109.5 million websites.
03 Mar 10 Learn something new no.1 – The list of human instincts | #LearnSomethingNew
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Recently I came to a realisation that: All knowledge is free via the web. Yet I waste my time on trivia and useless social media. Note to self: Learn something new online each day.
And I thought I would start by learning about humans
Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instinct
You can take all sorts of angles on this and get very academic about it. I have taken no side in this, I have just lumped them all together:
- Sex (life instinct)
- Aggression (death instinct)
- Reflexes (such as the Babinski Reflex fanning of the toes when the foot is stroked)
- Sleeping
- Altruism
- Disgust
- Face perception
- Language acquisitions
- Fight or flight
- Subjugate or be subjugated
- Fairness
