10 things … we discovered this spring

1 Lightning can contain enough energy to boil eight million cups of tea.

2 Wearing a white lab coat helps you perform better in tests.

3 In the UK, 34% of households have just one person living in them.

4 A tweet by Jamie Oliver is worth $3,250 (£2,044).

5 The UK is the world’s third-largest purchaser of human hair.

6 The longest word ever used in the House of Commons is floccinaucinihilipilification. (It means ‘act or habit of estimating as worthless’).

7 In Britain, 47% of households with a cat have at least one person educated to degree level, compared to 38% of homes with dogs.

8 France is the second largest market for McDonald’s in the world (after the US), with over 1,200 franchises.

9 A source in an FBI report described Steve Jobs as a “deceptive individual who is not completely forthright and honest”.

10 Of the 20 highest grossing films of the 2000s, only one (Finding Nemo) had an original screenplay and was not a sequel.

This article featured in Market Leader, July 2012.