— The Nelson Evening Mail, Wednesday, July 15 1908
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The comedian Joe Pasquale (born Joseph Ellis Pasquale) has not died.

The US government spends more per head on their dysfunctional healthcare system than the UK spends per person on the NHS.

There is not much colour in Lincolnshire.

There is a cricket team called the British Guiana Boers. They play in Boston, Massachusetts.

Mandarin and Arabic are different.

People who eat dark chocolate are less likely to be depressed than those who don’t.

Owls are the second-least intelligent birds in the world.

76.5% of Sri Lankans believe that members of their parliament have unexplained wealth.

You don’t have to spend the night alone.

Leeds Castle have late-availability wedding offers from just £7950.

The English-language folk song ‘Bobby Shafto’s Gone to Sea’ has a Roud index number of 1359.

Anthony McGowan has been named the Adidas High School Wrestler of the Week.

Batman gifs are the height of orientalism.
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—
For The Oldie

— The Nelson Evening Mail, October 4 1906
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The beheading of the sperm whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced whale surgeons very much pride themselves.

Great lips take hydration and balls.

Pease pudding has been flagged up by airport security on more than one occasion.

There is a place in China called Asbestos County.

At 35, 139, Labour MP Diane Abbott’s majority in 2017 was greater than the total number of General Election votes Nigel Farage has received in his entire career.

Zmas rushes towards us like a slavering one-eyed hell-hound.

A suspected thief in Mumbai has been fed 36 bananas in an attempt to recover stolen property.

The Celler can rock. Yes.

House, M.D. is the most popular TV show worldwide.

A young man from Torbay has, on a long boat trip to the Far East, found himself the object of the amorous intentions of a gorilla.

Richard II was a Free Brother.

The Swedish have no verb for ‘to bowl a cricket ball’.

Bognor’s ‘wrong Theresa May’ is awaiting an apology from Donald Trump.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, January 6 1909
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In LA there is a chess set designed for the East India Company, featuring Sikh soldiers vs Afghans.

Among a certain kind of people, being ‘passionate about Israel/Palestine’ is usually a substitute for having any actual political thought.

During WWII, in Germany, a Django Reinhardt record was worth 2kgs of butter on the black market.

A sailor has a tattoo of a swallow for every 5,000 nautical miles he has travelled.

Sam Lewis Craft has been named the Rain Men Player of the Year.

Alfred the Great of England believed that a thorough grounding in the liberal arts was essential for those called to exercise judgement and authority.

A South Benfleet millionaire has revealed how she earns £1,472/hr.

A town in Iceland has painted 3D zebra crossings in an attempt to slow down speeding cars.

Bobby Kennedy had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, then had her killed by Communists.

Truth is harder to bear than ignorance, and so ignorance is valued more.

Brett Dean’s new opera, Hamlet, contains precisely zero tunes.

The Fuegian word ‘mamihlapintafoi’ means ‘(two people) looking at each other, hoping that either will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do’.

In 2017 over half the people living in absolute poverty work for a living.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, July 26 1906
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The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk.

Though rare, there have been exactly 201 documented cases of spontaneous combustion.

J Sainbury plc is cutting 2000 Human Resources employees.

The collective noun for brown anchovies is a ‘finish’.

Typing and playing the piano can wear your fingerprints away.

Actors cheers each other up by exchanging bad reviews.

When a ship sinks, the crew are released from their oath of loyalty to the captain.

Translator and poet Paul Celan committed suicide in 1970.

It’s Van Month this October at Renault.

Just because it’s in the Guardian doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

The men of Crete are mostly fair, very tall, sometimes gigantic.

It looks very much as if Everton will be looking for a new manager in the morning.

Without George W Bush there would have been no President Trump.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, August 31 1906

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There is a typo in Punjabi birth certificates.

Since January 2013, a Russian cruise ship has been drifting unmanned in the North Atlantic.

Toxic trolls are pushing Vicky and Ferne too far.

Jan Ladislav Dussek is the fattest composer on records.

The 50^th Annual Spring Lunch of the Concrete Society (London & South East Region) will be held this Friday at the KIA Oval. Tickets £90+VAT.

Richard Dawkins’ real first name is ‘Clinton’.

In the 1600s, some doctors recommended their patients fart in jars to help treat exposure to the bubonic plague.

Only one person can make instant coffee at a time.

In sudden leaps the flexible tiger appears.

A Melchizedek holds the equivalent of 40 standard bottles of wine.

Reasons for admission to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (1864-1889) included ‘bad whiskey’, ‘masturbation for 30 years’, and ‘novel reading’.

Every Mother’s Day needs a Mother’s Night.

Americans do not have kettles.

— The Nelson Evening Mail, January 22 1907

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It is a German conceit, that the vertebrae are absolutely undeveloped skulls.

Vladivostock is 1000km east of Beijing.

The Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association allows for two spaces after a full stop in draft manuscripts, but recommends one space in published work.

Journalists are suicide merchants.

A dachshund has never won Crufts.

A lawyer representing an alleged arsonist has set his trousers on fire.

Iceland has an official Naming Committee which rules on the validity of children’s names.

The piccolo is known as ‘Satan’s instrument’.

Sri Lanka has 94 members of parliament without any O Levels.

The official Nudie Jeans Online Shop has the best selection of Nudie Jeans denim.

Sick Boy’s real name in Trainspotting was Simon Williamson.

Kurt Franz, final commandant of the Treblinka death camp, kept an album of his time there titled ‘Beautiful Years’.

It is never worth pointing out the irony. In life. To anyone. Ever.

— The Nelson Evening Mail, June 22 1912

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In English maritime law a ship is not ‘wrecked’ if the cat survives.

Ezra Pound heard many performances of the Bellringers’ Guild.

Kale is a winter vegetable.

Napoleon’s troops shot the nose off the Egyptian sphinx for target practice.

If you put a chameleon on tartan it will explode.

You are twice as likely to crash while texting than drink-driving. (So if you need to send an urgent text, put an inebriated friend behind the wheel, instead.)

1% of marmalade sales are to people under 28.

Beauty and the Beast isn’t the first Disney movie for LGBT audiences.

The Welsh character is an interesting study.

John Travolta is 63 years old.

Turtles find it very difficult to look happy.

You never know with clowns.

Canadian passports have images of ice hockey in them.

— The Nelson Evening Mail, September 27 1906

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The French king Louis XIII was known as ‘the Just’ because he was born under the sign of the Libra.

Maxwell Branning is reported to have caused the Walford bus crash.

The original name for Ian Fleming’s Goldeneye estate was to have been ‘Shame Lady’.

An early form of the asterisk was used by Aristarchus to identify lines replicated between the Iliad and Odyssey.

A weekly bulletin of international news is broadcast in Latin by Finland’s Yleisradio Oy, on Friday evenings. Pronunciation is classical.

‘Ananias’, ‘Azarias’ and ‘Misael’ refer to the same Biblical characters as ‘Shadrach’, ‘Meshach’ and ‘Abednego’.

Ceylon tea is now more expensive to produce than it is worth on the international market.

The Quaggy River flows 17 miles through the South-East London boroughs of Bromley, Greenwich, and Lewisham.

A standard-class one-way ticket from Ashford, Kent, to Ashford, Surrey, costs £34.10, off-peak.

The people of the South Sudan believe that the moon is the property of the white man.

Don Quixote was printed in a first edition of 400 copies. Most of them were despatched to the Americas, where they were lost in a shipwreck off the coast of Cuba.

Stephanie Davis says Jeremy McConnell is 100% the father of her son.