10 things we didn't know this time last week

10 THINGS 10 missed calls by Philip Whitehead See 10 things? Send us a picture

It's easy to lose track of the news. So at the end of the week, it's good to keep an eye on some of those things which shouldn't go unnoticed.

If you spot something you think should be included next week, send it to us using the form at the bottom of the page.

 

1. The South Pacific island Niue was the only country in the world to have nationwide wireless internet access, until the transmitter was destroyed by a cyclone earlier this month.

2. Jack Straw's favourite joke: Name three fish which begin and end with the letter K. The answer: Killer shark, Kwiksave frozen haddock and Kilmarnock (a place in Scotland). He admits it's terrible.

3. Straw once told the joke to his principal private secretary, while sitting in his office waiting for his Russian counterpart to come on to the phone. His PPS said: "Hang on Foreign Secretary, the Russians may be listening."  And then a voice piped up: "The Russians are listening.  We are trying to understand the joke."

4. After Kodak founder George Eastman's suicide in 1932, a note was found explaining his decision to end it all. "My work is done," it read. "Why wait?"

5. The most popular cosmetic surgery procedure among British men is otoplasty, or the pinning back of prominent ears. Rounding out the top five are nose jobs, eyelid lifts, face and neck lifts, and liposuction. Men account for less than 8% of cosmetic operations carried out in the UK.

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6. Silence is "not the absence of sound", according to the late John Cage, composer of the four-and-a-half minutes of silence broadcast on Radio 3 on Friday. It is instead "the unintended operation of my nervous system and the circulation of my blood".

7. Ethiopia has the largest natural reserves of water in Africa, yet the nation harnesses only a fraction of it. Most Ethiopians rely solely on the intermittent rains. (Thanks to Michael Buerk's This World)

8. Any volunteers for President Bush's desire to send a human to Mars? It's just a 490 million km trip there, and would take at least six months (one way).

9. Men who get married are less likely to be criminals than those who don't, according to research from the University of Maryland. Professor John Laub said of the men in the study: "I think that the marriage was significant in a number of ways, I think part of it was for many of these men who grew up in sorely disadvantaged backgrounds this was the first time in their life that they had someone that they were strongly attached and emotionally bonded to, and so they had social support as a result of the marriage. But in addition the wives played a key role in monitoring these guys' behaviour."

10. In parts of India, sporting a moustache gives a man gravitas. Traffic policemen in Bhopal have been asked to grow taches because it's been found that they keep better order when they do.

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If you see something you think should be included next week, let us know using the form below. Thanks to Chris May.