Particle of an article [collected articles]

Factually speaking, of course

Factually speaking, of course.

   We hear facts everyday. They come up in random conversations like, just the other day, I was talking to a friend about jelly beans. We were at a sweet shop and she said she'd get some jelly beans. Then I remembered the fact that I'd read off of my yogurt tube. New born Koala's are the size of a jelly bean. At first, two thoughts circulated in my mind. One was: 'crap, they must have big jelly beans wherever they made this'. The second was: 'woah, it's sooooo tiny and cute sounding'. I looked it up on-line, believing that the fact was load of crud, and found out the the koala is born majorly undeveloped,weighing 0.5 grams and being, approximately, nineteen millimetres long. It undertakes an arduous journey from the birth canal to the mother's pouch where it latches onto a teat. There it stays to continue its growth and development. But are these 'facts' true, or are they a load of shit?

   Did Thomas Crapper invent the toilet seat? I was told this by my nan just this afternoon. She burst out laughing at the factette she'd just told me. At first, I believed her but, later this evening, I was sat on the internet doing some history bridging work when I came across a site that had a page full of facts. It said: It is often incorrectly quoted that the toilet was invented by a Mr Thomas Crapper in the 18th century. Actually, simple toilets have been used since Babylonian times. In 1596, John Harrington invented an indoor water closet for Queen Elizabeth I. But Harrington then published a book with tasteless puns about his own invention. The toilet then dropped into obscurity for nearly 200 years. In 1775, London watchmaker Alexander Cummings patented the forerunner of today’s toilet. The standard flush toilet. When I saw that, I decided to write this, telling all of you people the truth: the whole 'Thomas Crapper invented the bog' 'fact' is load of crap (no pun intended there). That is just a shitty pun that people thought would be a laugh, apparently only to the old and the very young.

   Did we wear animal skins during the ice age? I typed in 'facts that were wrong' in Google and got several sites. I clicked onto one and got a chain of letters that were sent between 'conshyboy' and 'knowledge_seeker'. I scrolled through the letters and saw the fact 'Ice Age clothing was made of crudely formed animal hides'. It then went on to quote some text from a website. It said: “… the warm weather clothing of at least some of our ancestors included caps or snoods, belts, skirts, bandeaux (banding over the breasts), bracelets, and necklaces—all constructed of plant fibers in a great variety of woven textiles…”  I looked at this and thought: 'well, I won't be paying any attention to 'Gogs' in the near future. 'Gogs' is a claymation series about a stone age family. Sure, it's stupid to collect facts from a children's TV series but, come on, it's in more than just the 'Gocs'. For example, it's also shown in: 'The Flinstones', and there are odd cliplets of it in TV shows and films, like, if I'm correct, 'Doctor Who', 'Scooby Doo' and many more. (Some of these examples are set in the stone age.)

   Are there really seven colours in the rainbow? After remembering a fact from a TV show that was presented by Richard Hammond, this question popped up in my head. While watching it, there were several colour changes on the screen and Richard Hammond said something along the lines of 'though it's said that there are seven colours in the rainbow, there are actually eight. The eighth colour, though, can only be seen by a certain type of lens (He said the type of lens but I can't remember), it is a mix of two colours.' I looked deeper into this on the internet and found a website that said magenta was the eighth colour of the rainbow, that it was two parts red and one part blue and that it lay hidden between red and violet, therefore being the start and end - Alpha and Omega - of the light spectrum. I then looked at another website that was a photo that somebody had taken on their camera with the UV lens on that showed the eighth colour in the photo. It was really quite interesting. Another thing that I saw on the internet said (and this is from several different sites), that there can be anywhere from three to several thousand different colours in the rainbow.

   So, not only have I given you readers a greater knowledge by writing this, but I have also taught myself several new facts. Well, I say that that's a productive piece of writing. Wouldn't you agree?

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Hope you enjoyed my random fact file/article thingy as much as I enjoyed writing it - strange as that is. Usually, I would be mega bored writing something like this if I'd been told to, but by choice it's more enjoyable.

Read on book lovers, Josie, x