If it’s news to me, it must be news to you!
Still moving
Another busy week with the hoped-for house move so a shorter than usual Sunday round-up as I try to catch up with last week.
Heavy metal
The inaugural Heavy Metal Knitting championships will kick off in the Finnish town of Joensuu in July. It’s a bit like air guitar but with knitting needles. Finland has 50 heavy metal bands per 100,00 population.
Meanwhile in Belgium
The town of Adinkerke hosted the European Gull Screeching Championship and competitors were required to channel their inner gull, both vocally and physically.
Serious link of the week
Why on earth didn’t we follow the Code of Good Practice on Referendums which the UK signed up to in 2006? This advocates a referendum as a two-part process, starting with an advisory vote and proceeding to a detailed proposal, with a second vote by either parliament or the people. They also advise that a vote below 55% in favour should be ignored.
Monstrous
An incredibly well-preserved fossil unearthed in Herefordshire has been named after a hideous creature from fiction: Sollasina Cthulhu.
Being Frank
Intelligence agency GCHQ has cracked secret codes hidden by the man behind cult comedy character Frank Sidebottom.
Do-re-mi
There is a name for the title of that song from The Sound of Music and it’s called solfège. It was invented by 11th-century Italian music theorist Guido of Arezzo who took the first syllable of each line of the Latin ‘Hymn to St. John the Baptist’.
Forever blowing
A North Carolina man achieved his seventh Guinness World Records title by putting thirteen people inside soap bubbles in thirty seconds.
Brief Lives
Paint-by-numbers creator Dan Robbins; former Liverpool captain Tommy Smith; Northern Ireland journalist Lyra McKee; provocative standup Ian Cognito; Trainspotting 2 actor Bradley Welsh; songwriter Les Reed responsible for Delilah by Tom Jones; pirate radio DJ ‘Baby’ Bob Stewart; Ringling Bros circus clown Jackie LeClaire; Ingmar Bergman actress Bibi Andersson and; Charles Van Doren who deceived millions of U.S. television viewers in the 1950s as the winning contestant on a rigged game show.