Archive for February, 2012


10 fascinating facts about the leap day

February 29th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

Today is, of course, 29 February – a leap day that only happens once every four years. You can read 10 interesting bits of information about the leap day here.

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Word of the day: OK

February 28th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

It’s one of there most commonly-used words in the English language – but what is the origin of OK? There are lots of incorrect explanations, but one can find the true history in the book “The Story Of English In 100 Words” [my review here]. The term first appeared in 1839 in a Boston newspaper. […]

Posted in Cultural issues, History | Comments (1)


The Faberge Big Egg Hunt

February 27th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

I like it when art comes out of the gallery and in to the streets. Here, in London, we have had coloured cows and coloured elephants dotted round the city at different times. And now we have something different: coloured eggs in the shape of The Faberge Big Egg Hunt. Apparently the event was unveiled […]

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“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”

February 26th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

The film was released in Britain this weekend and we saw it in our local multiplex in Harrow where the theatre was absolutely full (we have a large Asian community in the area). We loved it and you can read my review here. Almost all the movie is shot in the wonderful Indian city of […]

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“Fifty Things You Need To Know About World History”

February 26th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

If you were writing a book on world history of just 400 pages and decided to select only 50 events or people or developments, what would you chose? You can see the choice of Hugh Williams here. I think that it is important to have some appreciation of the history of the world and not […]

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The rise and rise of the app

February 25th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

On my iPhone and iPad, I am a a big user of apps – and it ia market which has simply exploded. Apple’s Apps Store now has a choice of over 550,000 apps. It is clocking up around 500 downloads a second and is about to hit the 25 billion mark. The revenue raised will […]

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The day 17 Chinese came to tea

February 24th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

Our Chinese ‘son’ Zhihao makes his living by accompanying various Chinese delegations on their tours of the UK and his current delegation had a different request from others: they wanted to visit a typical British home. This is how 17 Chinese turned up at our semi-detached house today – a bit of a crush but […]

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Putting time back in its box of light

February 24th, 2012 by Roger Darlington

Can anything travel faster than the speed of light? According to the Special Theory of Relativity, no. But, in September 2011, Italian scientists reported on an experiment which seems to suggest that some neutrinos may be capable of travelling faster than the speed of light which would raise the notion of time travelling backwards. The […]

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The curse of the quotation marks

February 23rd, 2012 by Roger Darlington

How not to use quotation marks – see here. How to use quotation marks – see here.

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How good is your knowledge of English?

February 22nd, 2012 by Roger Darlington

It will need to be quite good to appreciate these little jokes: There’s no “t” in China There’s no “x” in alimony There’s no “q” in Tesco There’s no “u” in solipsism

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