A S H Smyth

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The barnacles are scraped off British men-of-war twice a year..5

— The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, September 6 1906
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Wicca is the fastest-growing religion in the UK after Islam.

The Dutch term for a sex buddy is ‘seksbuddy’.

George I and his prime minister conversed officially in dog Latin.

Irish 6th-formers know what The Communist Manifesto is called.

Right-wing New York slumlord Fred C. Trump’s middle name was ‘Christ’.

The stranded prawn is in danger of dying out.

Nations Trust Bank is now in Kalutara.

Those whose bunks are in Port Said suffer the worst.

Walter Rothschild opened his first museum when he was 10.

A garbage man is much cheaper to hire than a dirty magistrate.

Plenty of Unitarians were also Utilitarians.

There is no longer room to park a car in Harvard Yard.

Irony don’t care if you’re a fan or not.
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In the United States only one about one building in three thousand is even nominally fire-proof.

— The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, March 14 1907
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Ellis Paz has become the first man in history to be awarded a doctorate by the University of Oxford while wearing just his pants.

Matthew Perry once entered a Vanilla Ice lookalike competition and came fourth.

There is no single recognised word for ‘gay’ in Pashto.

Trypophobia is an aversion to the sight of irregular patterns or clusters of small holes or bumps.

Air India have bespoke a special plane in order to transport the sacred Parsee flame.

There are few bears in Edinburgh.

There is an emoji oversight board.

Emma Bunton “wouldn’t know where to start” in trying to come up with a vaccine for Covid-19.

BMX has been breaking ground in Nigeria.

‘Eelam’ is the Tamil name for spurge, for toddy and also for gold.

Readers of books on nature are expected to be interested in poetry in a way that readers of literary biography are not necessarily expected to be interested in willow warbler migration.

Mussolini didn’t diet.

Even an Oxford man cannot summon knowledge out of the ether.
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One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

— The Nelson Evening Mail, Wednesday, August 29 1906
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Globalisation is going into reverse.

The (great) auk became extinct because he forgot how to fly.

Your underpants contain cellulose.

In the medieval period, walking through a labyrinth or maze was seen as a mystical alternative to the laborious completion of a pilgrimage to, say, Jerusalem.

To get a full stop on a European keyboard, you need to use the Shift key.

There are no seal-hunters left in K’akartoq.

Five-card Charlie pays 5 to 1.

Jeff Bezos is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire.

The Bible is written over Herodotus, and the Koran over that.

Diamonds are easy to steal.

There is more genetic diversity within Africa than there is in the rest of the world put together.

The Marquis of C made sacks in Botany Bay.

None of us knows how long fear takes to decay.
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