Things I learned from Tuesday’s Independent

From ‘the games page’:
On average, a McDonald’s Big Mac bun has 178 sesame seeds. (Oh…now THERE’s a fun job…’174…175…176…wait…where was I?’)

In the sport of Tiddlywinks, you might encounter the terms ‘squidge’ and ‘squop.’ (And I thought cricket terms were strange.)

The lace curtains at 10 Downing Street are bulletproof. (I can’t help but think it may have been easier and more effective to make the actual glass bulletproof instead.)


From the ‘Europe’ section:
In a church in Civitavecchia in central Italy, a statue of Mary was seen crying ‘tears of blood.’ This was reported 13 times, most recently in March 1995. Pope John II sent the parish a golden rosary bead. (You know, if it were reported to me that a statue of Mary was crying tears of blood thirteen times, I’d probably cough up money for the entire rosary.)

The World Santa Claus Congress is being held at an amusement park in Copenhagen. More than 100 Santa Clauses and ‘their little helpers’ gathered for the three-day convention that includes a chimney-climbing competition and a parade. The participating Santa Clauses are drafting plans to improve their working conditions by calling on the European Union to standardise chimney widths throughout the EU and holding Christmas twice a year to ‘lessen the one-day-a-year burden on Santas. (This is all fine and good, but they’re avoiding the real issue here: shouldn’t the proper term be ‘Santas Claus’?)