THE MINI MASK MAN AND COOL STUFF!!!

Fact 144: What does the word Television literally mean in English? The word television is made up of two words one half of the word is Greek and the other word is Latin, the first word it is made up of is the word tele this word is Greek and the word means distance or far as in telecommunications, distance communications, the word vision is Latin it and this means sight or the ability to see, so the word television literally means far sight or distance seeing.

Fact143 How many pirates buried treasure underground? The answer is technically none however you could argue it is only one because the only known documented evidence of someone burying treasure was actually a Scottish Privateer, a privateer is basically a pirate working for a county's government and navy, normally they are used to capture energy ships during war and Privateers had to carry legal documents conforming (by the government who employed them, that they were operating within the rules of legal warfare and William Kidd the Scottish privateer did bury treasure on Gardiners Island because he travelled to America (New York) however because he was a private, technically no pirate ever buried treasure so, none is the right answer!

Fact 142: What is David Bowie's real name? David bowie's real name is David Robert Jones however he changed his name in 1965 when he was 18 to avoid any confusion with another British actor and singer who had a similar name, Davy Jones (David Thomas Jones), who later became the frontman for The Monkees. David Bowie chose the surname Bowie because of Jim Bowie, we know this because John F. Lyons wrote in a book called America in the British Imagination (published in 2013): “In 1965, David Jones adopted the name David Bowie in homage to Jim Bowie.” Lyons went on to explain that the surname was because David Bowie was a fan of the 1960 film called, The Alamo(1960), the film was directed by John Wayne (Marion Robert Morrison) and Jim Bowie was played by Richard Weedt Widmark. *This drawing was drawn by me I created a stencil using an image of David Bowie!

Fact 141: Who invented the first telescope? The person who first created the telescope wasn't Galileo Galilei (Italian) in 1609 it was in fact Hans Lippershey who was a Dutch glasses maker and had a glasses shop, his telescope was made in 1608 however someone else whose name was Jacob (or James) Metius (who is also Dutch and a Lenz, glasses maker) he made his telescope in 1608 a few weeks after Hans Lippershey, and zacharias janssen (yes he was also Dutch) is thought to have created his compund microscope/or telescope, sometime between 1590 and 1618, basically, he created a microscope that used a telescope for the magnification, however, however these dates were only mentioned 20 years after his death by his son so the dates are unreliable and technically it is a compund microscope so you could argue it doesn't count, until you see a picture.     *This image is of Galileo Galilei.

Fact 140: Where does the name Paddington come from? The Bear is named helpfully after the station, The station is interestingly named after an anglo saxon land owner called Lord Padda, Lord Padda is in the Doomsday book (on page 102=CII) because he owned a place called Brampton, Suffolk. He also had land in London however I can't find any evidence except, that according to the Devonshire London (Paddington) Newspaper (and a couple of other websites), Padda owned some land in London near where Marble Arch is today and the small bit of land is called a turn, and turn is old English meaning a small bit of land. The turn Lord Padda owned was called a turn and known as Padda's turn and the name was overtime Padda's turn morphed into Paddington and this is were the name for the station came from.

Fact 239: What is the oldest London underground tube line? The oldest London underground tube line is also the oldest tube line in the world and it is the (railway) line between Paddington and Farringdon this is because it was the first in London, it was opened in 1863.

Fact 138: Do trees fart? Yes they do, in the sense that trees release methane from their trunks, now this is fine if the tree is alive and well because of photosynthesis the tree's leaves will offset the methane gase, however ghost trees (dead trees) don't offset the methane that is created, scientists don't fully understand how or why the trees create methane, however this is a problem because the mean course of dead trees is salt water in the soil because of rising sea levels and as sea levels rise more trees will die as a result of the salt in the soil, it is likely that as sea levels rise entire forests could be wiped out in fact there are already about five ghost forests on the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula in North Carolina. And all of others trees in the forests are still releasing tree farts (methane) this is really bad for climate change because methane is a greenhouse gas, this means basically the build up of the gas in the atmosphere, acts like a greenhouse and thi

Fact 137: Who won Eurovision in 1974? The answer is Sweden, ABBA with the hit Waterloo (and yes, the uk was the only country not to vote for them).  ABBA is a Swedish band consisting of four people who are: Agnetha Fältskog,  Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson.  The original name for ABBA was actually originally called Festfolk, the name ABBA came from their manager Stig Anderson the letters at the start of their names so with 2 Bs and 2 As he created the name ABBA, ABBA was formed. I fact ABBA is now doing a hologram show called ABBA Voyag it is in a custom-built arena in London (the capital city of England of UK) *the picture is of London Waterloo Station (clock)

Fact 136: What came first, the chicken or the egg? Now, apparently this is one of those unanswered questions, a mystery to everyone, and yet everyone delights in the knowledge that chickens descended from dinosaurs and in the knowledge that chickens are currently the closest living relative of the T.rex. Dinosaurs are famous for being reptiles (sauropsids) and having eggs that look massive! Dinosaurs predate chickens and birds. Spoiler alert the egg came first! The oldest dinosaur fossil is roughly 230 million years old (according to the Natural Geographic), and the oldest bird fossil is about 150 million years old (according to the Natural History museums) So 230 million -150 million = 80 million, so, give or take, the dinosaurs predate the chicken by 80 million years and there for, so does the egg. It is likely that the chicken descended from a group of dinosaurs called theropods (theropods includes the T.rex) in a group called Coelurosauria. "This includes not only tyrannosaurs

Fact 135: Who first invented the touch screen and what was it used for? The first touch screen was invented in 1965 by Eric Arthur Johnson he built the first touch screen (in Malvern, England) at the Royal Radar Establishment (RRE). Basically the RAF needed someone to create a device or something to help with accurate decision making for air traffic control operators and this device also had to have a good response time (no delays), and so Johnson create a touch screen (interface) to control the uk British Air traffic control computers.  Eric A. Johnson patented his design in 1966, Johnson later improved and made some adjustments to the design in 1969.  Eric A. Johnson wrote in a journal called  Touch display—a novel input/output device for computers, On the 1st October 1965, (on page 219 – 220) About his invention and he writes "This device, the ‘touch display’, provides a very efficient coupling between man and machine." The uk air traffic control centers only started to pr

Fact 134: Are zebras black with white stripes or white with black stripes? Zebras are in fact actually, black with white stripes. So now you know! Interestingly nobody really knows why zebras have stripes there are scientists who think it might be for camouflage so predators can't see them, interestingly Charles Darwin didn't think this, and one of the other reasons for the stripes that some scientists, including Charles Darwin thought the stripes were for zebras to tell apart male and female. One of the otherreasons I found out is, that zebra's might be to discourage flies from landing and biting them.  All the stripes on a zebra are unique like a human finger print.

Fact 133: What is freaky about the way the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus reproduce? The Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus can be found in forests in Brazil, Africa and Thailand. The freaky and strange thing about the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus the way it reproduces, the way it reproduces is freaky because it control an ants brain and can take over an ants entire body. Basically the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus attacks the carpenter ants by penetrating the head of the ant and the ant is completely unaware of this because all the ant needs to do is walk next to the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus and the process has started. The fungus starts by controlling the ants behaviour and controlling other parts of the ants brain. The fungus will fully kill the ant with in about 2 days of it coming into contact with the ant, however just before the fungus fully kills the ant, the fungus controls the (doomed) zombie ant's brain to walk down the tree or up a tree shrub (e

Fact 132: Pica pica the scientific name for what animal? Pica Pica sounds like the scientific name for Pikachu (Pokémon), however unfortunately due to the fact that Pikachu is, unfortunately fictional it isn't, however it is the scientific name for a very common bird, this bird is associated with steeling or copying something or someone or copying an idea, it is a Magpie, Magpie's are apart of the Corvidae family.

Fact 131: What bird is Puffinus Puffinus the scientific name for? Just for a minute let's just bear in mind Rattus Rattus is a Rat and Iguana Iguana is a Iguana and Gerbillus Gerbillus is the scientific name for a Gerbil, so surely Puffinus Puffinus is obviously a bird that lives near the coast and eat small fish (this is unintentionally all true, it is a bird that eats small fish and lives near Walsh and Scottish coasts) however, it is confusingly not a Puffin (good guess though). it is in fact a completely different and unrated bird called a Manx shearwater. The scientific name for a Puffin is Fratercula, Fratercula is Latin for little brother, the is because the black and white *plumage* was thought to resemble, monastic robes worn by monks.  The word Puffinus is from the original Latin word for a sea-birds, mergus and the old English word Puffin which means swollen (and fat) which is Puffin, and the bird Puffin also gets it name because of the old English meaning of the word Pu

Fact 130: What is a Dromedary? Dromedary camels are a one humped camels. Bactrian camels are a two humped camels. Australia has both Dromedary and Bactrian camels and both are counted in the 750,000 wild camels they have.

Fact 129: What do RATs do on the out side of sky scrapers? First of all sorry because the question and the picture is (in my opinion cleverly however) sightly misleading because I am not referring to the animal I am referring to what (in this scenario) RATs stands for and that are: Rope Access Technicians (RATs). They are basically window cleaners, maintenance, inspectors, building surveyors and construction workers. RATs are always connected to two ropes one is a back up (which is helpfully called the back up rope) and they absale down and up really tall buildings were scaffolding and a cables would be to difficult or in other words to high up, or even to dangerous to be used. On the back up rope it has a back up device that stops the rope from moving basically a safety catch called a Mobile fall arrester for rope, this is also known as the duck which is similar to what is used at\for some climbing wall based activities, this is connected to a lanyard called the cows tail (the lanyard

Fact 128: What sport equipment was slightly inlarged for TV by the ITTF? This answer may surprise you to know that the answer is a Ping-pong balls, they were inlarged from 38mm in diameter to 40mm in diameter to make it easier for spectors to see the ball, to make Ping-pong more of a spectator sport research into different sizes of Ping-pong balls were carried out by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) to monitor the enjoyment of spectors watching the game and the impact on the size had on the game, the sizes they chose to research and to test were 28mm (original size was used to compare changes in speed and velocity and distense traveled in metres per second), 40mm, 42mm, 43mm, 44mm. Research showed that 40 mm was able to be seen by sectators and the cameras to see and similar in movement and speed to the 28mm. The ITTF also nearly considered 44mm however they worked out it only preformed well in one move but was really visible and there for people enjoying watching the s

Fact 127: Was a pirate Captain ever out voted as Captain by his own crew? Yes, there was a pirate Captain that was actually out voted as captain by his own crew in the summer of 1716. The pirate Captain was called Benjamin Hornigold and he was out voted as captain by his own crew and he was apparently put in a boat (like a small rowing) boat which was tied-up behind the ship, the crew elected a another pirate called Samuel Bellamy as Captain. Benjamin Hornigold is probably most famous for being Blackbeard's mentor and the person who trained Blackbeard, in other words Blackbeard was Hornigold's second in comarnd and right hand man.  This was not necessarily Benjamin Hornigold. It was the only good copyright free image I could find 

Fact 126: Is there a exoplanet in our galaxy the milkyway where 1year lasts for only 2 hours?  Yes there is. The word exoplanet just means a planet that isn't in our solar system this means it doesn't orbit our sun it orbits a sun called CaRoT 7 and the planet that was only discovered in 2009 is called CaRoT 7b the temperature of the plant is a scorching 2760 °C (5000°F) and the reason a year is 20 hours is because it takes 20 hours to complete one full orbit of it's sun which is called one year, this I because CoRoT 7b is really close to CoRoT 7, about 2.6 million km. The name CoRoT comes from the French satellite CoRoT that discovered it, CoRoT stands for Convection Rotation and planetary Transit.  CaRoT 7b was on the first rocky exoplanet to be discovered, Earth is also a rocky planet although our planet is inhabitable and CoRoT 7b is not. If the fact it is to far-away and extremely hot didn't put you off the idea of visiting It is also constantly rains pebbles or g

Fact 125: Did pirates ever actually force people to walk the plank? No, is the answer there is no historical (documented) evidence that pirates ever force people to walk the plank.

Fact 124: Are killer whales actually whales? Killer Whale or Orca (Orca is its common name, however I will tell you later why this is an ill chosen name). Orcinus orca is its scientific name. Now, interestingly, the killer whale is actually not a whale it is, in fact, a dolphin because killer whales are a part of the Delphinidae family (dolphin family). One of the reasons we call them Killer whales is because of a mistranslation of the Spanish word for a Killer whale, which is ballena asesina this correctly translated means whale killer or actually Whale Murderess however it was incorrectly translated to Killer whale, one of the other reasons we call them Killer whales is because sailors noticed that killer whales, killed whales and so they named them whale killers and the words switched over at some point to Killer Whale.  Acouding to the NOAA, "Orcas have anywhere form 40 to 56 interlocking teeth each one around three inches long." The Latin name (and also the Scientific na

Fact 123: Can you name a whale that is good at killing other animals? Now I have done some research and I have chosen some whales i that are good at killing other animals. The whales that I have chosen are, Beluga whales (34 teeth) because they hunt in a packs to kill fish and the sperm whales (20 to 26 teeth only on their lower jaw) because they can actually eat squid by vacuuming in a squid into there mouths from about three feet away.  I have also chosen the Narwhales because acouding to Canadian scientists Narwhales have been know to actually use there long tooth or tusk on there head to hunt other animals and they eat acouding to the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Narwhales eat "Greenland halibut, polar and Arctic cod, shrimp, and Gonatus squid". Narwhales are unusual because they are apart of the odontocete or toothed whale and yet they have basically no teeth except for the one tooth sticking out there head, so technically they have one.  I have

Fact 122: What is the name of the world's smallest registered mountain? The smallest registered mountain is Located in Australia's in the small town called Wycheproof. The worlds smallest mountain is called (slightly Unimaginatively) Mount Wycheproof, Mount Wycheproof is 486 ft (148.133 meters) above sea level (see level is normally measured from the nearest sea at high tide and low tide). 

Fact 121: what is the single most expensive object on Earth? The single most expensive object on Earth is the Itaipu hydroelectric dam ( 7.9 km long, with a maximum height of 196 m.) on the Paraná River (4,880 km) between Brazil and Paraguay cost $27 billion, it was build in 1984 the estimated cost now is about $35.93 billion, making it the single most expensive object on Earth.

Fact 120: What is the difference between a moth and a butterfly? The moths and butterflies are from the same scientific family, the Lepidoptera (family). One of the differences is that moths form in a cocoon underground, and butterflies form in a chrysalis above ground and normally on trees and mainly on the leaves. Moths are nocturnal where as butterflies are not nocturnal.  Moths antennas are feathery where as butterflies antennas are long and thin with a ball shape at the end. Moths are normally not colourful and butterflies are normally colourful.

 Fact 119: What is the difference between an alligator and a crocodile? The main difference is the snout (nose and mouth and in this scenario the front) of the alligator and the crocodile are different because the alligator has a curved snout (often referred to as a U-shaped snout) and the crocodile have a pointy snout (often referred to an A-shaped snout).  The other difference which, if you are able to identify, if it is a crocodile or an alligator from this, then it is probably time to run, is the number of teeth they have because crocodiles have between 60 and 70 teeth and alligators have 80 teeth. The other difference is that alligators prefer fresh water and crocodiles prefer salty water or slightly salty water ( brackish water). Technically Lyle, from Lyle Lyle crocodile, is actually an Alligator, not a crocodile because the snout is u-shaped and Lyle likes to bathe in fresh water (in a bath).

 Fact 118: What is the most expensive man-made object? This man-made object's total estimated cost will be around £66.7 billion and it is not on Earth, in fact, the most expensive man-made object that I am referring to is the International Space Station (ISS). T he  International Space Station  is  357 feet long ( from end to end) (If you lived for 66.7 billion minutes you would be 126,903 years old)  The International Space Station orbits around the Earth, at an average altitude (basically means height) of 248 miles (400 kilometres) the  International Space Station  circles the Earth every 90 minutes at an average speed of about 17,500 mph.

 Fact 117: Between which steps are you more likely to spill your cup of coffee? According to researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) Hans Mayer and Rouslan Krechetnikov who are studying fluid physics (fluid dynamics). They have worked out, that you are more likely to spill your drink (cup of coffee because that is what their research was on) between your 7th and 10th step, this is because the average walking pace and movement of a human is similar to the movement (oscillation) of coffee in an average sized coffee cup (7cm in diameter and 10cm tall) there for the motion of the steps combined with the fact the human (us) is moving at a similar oscillation of the coffee, there for the coffee movement and oscillation rhythm is amplified and this means it is more likely to spill between your 7th and 10th step this doesn't mean it will it just means there is a greater chance it could, however, it depends on different variables and thickness of the coffee (how