Odd factoids

[Drago]

Shakespeare's real name was Barry. However, he had a fondness for getting drunk every friday down at the lounge bar of the Quack and Leeches, whereupon he would drop his keks and SHAKE his pork SPEAR at at any passing wench. He reveled in the saucy nickname, and used it as a pseudonym for when he wrote The Day of the Triffids.

 

[Tribansman]

39% of Scouse boys born in the 70s were named Barry

 

[bruce1530]

In the Welsh holiday resort of Barry Island, all of the population are called "Barry”. However, Welsh law is very proscriptive in what you can call people, and “Barry” is not on the list of names approved by the Queen of Wales. It its simply a familiar contraction of the populations real names - all of the women are actually called “Barbara” and all of the men are “Barold”.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Tossing the caber is an sport first established by young single Scottish lads before a battle. He who tossed the furthest became the chieftan. The practice is now over 2,000 years old.

 

[Drago]

Early telegraph poles were in fact cabers that had landed end-on into the ground. After all that tossing the competitors hands were too sore to be bothered to try snd retrieve them.

 

[Chris S]

Subway have commemorated the first anniversary of the Black Lives Matter movement by bringing out a BLM sandwich - bacon, lettuce and mayonnaise.

 

[roubaixtuesday]

Dirk Energy is believed by highly intelligent theoretical physicists to hold the key to merging the currently incompatible concepts of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity into a Theory of Everything (ToE) allowing us an insight into the very mind of God.

He's actually an online fitness instructor from Wolverhampton currently incapacitated by an infected digit (toe).

 

[Drago]

Dirk Energy was always late for work. He was never ready. when he formed hismown company making batteries and enormous bicycle lights he decided to name the company after his own Never Ready nickname, but a mistake at the printers meant Ever Ready was born,

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Every Ready was actual a new form of dark light created by Dirk Energy. You could be riding along a perfectly adequately lit high street, turn on your Every Ready lights, and suddenly the street would be plunged into the darkest of nights, with cars crashing left and right. The Ever Ready was in effect not a light source but a light sink.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Sweet corn is grown on gorse bushes. The yellow flowers are picked by trained ponies, then compressed and glued onto a soft wooden cob, at the factory. Hence corn on the cob.

 

[roubaixtuesday]

The "Light Sink" was invented by Royal Doulton, but never a market success. Manufactured from carbon fibre and filled with helium, it was designed as a single sink for all uses in the home, as it could float upstairs when required and be easily pushed from kitchen to bathroom.

Unfortunately, losses mounted as sinks accidentally took wrong turns out of front doors. The "light sink" was withdrawn from the market at the end of the last century, and the few remaining can be seen in low earth orbit, where NASA monitors them as potentially dangerous space debris.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Enterprising individuals have bought squeegees and filled the orbital light sinks with water. Astronauts to and from the ISS are getting sick and tired of having their wind screens washed and then being asked for payment.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

The northern light sinks often refract the suns light at night putting on an amazing show.

 

[Drago]

The Northern Lights are actually south of the equator, but get their name because if you listen carefully you can hear them whisper "eee ba gum lad..."

 

[roubaixtuesday]

The Northern Lights are a temperance organisation based in Todmorden.

They were formed after a drinking competition with Eastbourne which to everyone's surprise was won by the southerners. The Todmorden team was forever afterwards known as the "Northern Lightweights", and such was their shame they decided to own the label and form a temperance society rather than face the prospect of further ignominy in the planned rematch.

They now drink only grapefruit juice, although rumours of bachannalial revels fuelled by lime cordial persist.