1. Argentinian footballer Claudio Caniggia’s wife has registered her children as trademarks – protecting 17 versions of their names for use on future products from cleaning sprays to toiletries and shoes. Registered names include Charlotte Champagne.
2. Men named Brian and women called Helen have the best credit profiles in the UK on average.
3. Women get more stressed than men when they read bad news stories.
4. Plants grow better if you talk to them in a north-east of England accent.
5. Facebook’s population is as large as that of the entire world in 1804.
6. As a cub reporter, Ruth Rendell wrote up a tennis club dinner without attending it and so missed the speaker dying mid-speech.
7. Japanese ice cream flavours include goat, cactus, raw horseflesh, squid gut, pit viper, collagen and Viagra.
8. A quarter-ounce bullet fired from a Kalashnikov has a force of impact equal to a brick dropped from the top of St Paul’s Cathedral.
9. Every day, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army consumes 41.4 million steamed buns.
10. A blue whale eats the equivalent of 16,667 cheeseburgers in krill every day.
This article featured in Market Leader, Spring 2013.