Blast from the past
A woman who lost a mixtape she had made in the early 90s has found it while visiting an art exhibition in Sweden. Stella Wedell was just 12 when her homemade cassette was lost in either the Costa Brava or Majorca. Then she randomly found it on display an exhibition called Sea of Artefacts. The tape featured hits by Shaggy, UB40 and the Pet Shop Boys.
Niggly surfaces
A reader writes: "I am the Dianne Wheelton (now Fenn) niggly daughter of Peter Wheelton who featured in Sideswipe yesterday. I wrote the letter Simon has found while renovating his house. Dad passed away in 1981. Could you pass on my details to Simon I would be very interested in visiting his house and would be happy to bring along a drink on behalf of Dad."
Random facts ...
1. Wilma Flintstone's maiden name is Slaghoople.
2. Up until a certain age, babies don't have a sense of object permanence, which means if something is no longer in their field of perception, they believe it is gone from the universe. It's why peekaboo is so exciting.
3. Less than 750k humans have ever been to Antarctica and 500k of those were in the last 15 years.
4. If you get a drop of blood on clothing, you can remove it spitting on it. Only works if it's your blood and your spit though, because the enzymes need to match.
5. It is illegal to care for only one guinea pig in Switzerland, since they are social animals and get lonely easily so must be housed in pairs of two or more.
6. Pierce Brosnan wore his bow tie undone in the dance scene with Rene Russo in Thomas Crown Affair because he was under contract as James Bond and couldn't wear tied bow ties in any other movies during that contract.
7. Carrots are orange because of a political statement. Originally carrots came in multiple colours, including white, yellow, and purple, but orange ones were selectively bred by the Dutch as support for William of Orange, who led the the struggle for Dutch independence. You can still get the other colours but this is why orange has market dominance today.