10 things we didn't know last week
16:29 UK time, Friday, 22 June 2007
Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.
1. The Amazon is the longest river in the world, not the Nile.
2. The QE2 had the unglamorous name "Job number 736" while being built in a shipyard on the Clyde.
3. Europe has a vodka belt comprising Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Denmark and Sweden, although the drink is also made in countries such as Britain, France, Italy and Spain.
4. The average cash withdrawal from an ATM is £100.
5. Bernard Manning worked as an armed guard watching over senior Nazis locked up in Berlin’s Spandau prison, when aged 16 after the war.
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6. Sugar from fruit could be converted into a low-carbon fuel for cars, with far more energy than ethanol.
7. EastEnders actress Susan Tully, who played Michelle Fowler, was in the Islington restaurant Granita when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown famously discussed the future Labour leadership contest, on 31 May 1994.
8. There are 1,200 people employed at Glastonbury just to pick up and sort the rubbish.
9. There were 6.3 million 999 calls made in the last year, which is almost double the number of calls received 10 years ago.
10. A white tie given to Gordon Brown as a gift from the Daily Telegraph to wear for his Mansion House speech ended up in a charity shop in Notting Hill.
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Sources: 7: Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two, 19 June; 10: Times, 20 June.
Seen 10 things? . Thanks to Maria Verivaki for this week's picture of 10 cherries on a branch, cut from a tree in the village of Gerakari, Hania, Crete.
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