2. "A mate's father told me this one: When he was at school, he and friends would hang out in the physics lab that backed on to the rugby pitch. In the lab was an old Model T ignition coil, which could generate a high-voltage spark. They hooked this up to the corrugated-iron fence between the lab wall and the rugby pitch and waited until half time, when it was customary for players to relieve themselves behind the fence. At the critical moment, they switched on the spark coil and took great delight in seeing the burly 1st XV team members jump sky high when the shock travelled up the conductive urine streams."
Making a buck off a hiccup
A 13-year-old, Mallory Kievman, is chief executive and founder of a company that claims to have cured hiccups with a lollipop. Kievman is preparing to launch her product, the Hiccupop, a hiccup-stopping lollipop of her own invention, with a patent pending, financial backers, and a team of business consultants. She got the idea after trying to tame a stubborn bout of hiccups with different home remedies: drinking saltwater, sipping water out of an upside-down cup, eating spoonfuls of sugar, slurping pickle juice. She had developed the product in her family's Manchester, Connecticut, kitchen, amalgamating her three favorite cures - lollipops, apple cider vinegar and sugar. "I'm still "tweaking the taste," she says. But the combination of ingredients "triggers a set of nerves in your throat and mouth that are responsible for the hiccup reflex arc ... It basically over-stimulates those nerves and cancels out the message to hiccup." (Source: New York Times)
