Ten things which raised an eyebrow this week - 22/11/2013

EP brings you a brief round-up of some of the news items which were perhaps as surprising as they were enlightening

1. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics a person is more likely to die from contact with a hot water tap than a venomous spider and nine times more likely to drown in the bathtub than by being hit by a train...
2. ...while "everyday life" in Australia has been immortalised online with an hilarious collection of photos & screengrabs including a Police force with a sense of humour, a Spacetrooper on a Unicycle, a very rude train and a photo-bombing cow!
3. What do you think about when you are alone in the car? How do you make a tuna sandwich? If you were to get rid of one state in the US, which would it be and why? ... some of the stranger questions posed to potential employees during job interviews were somewhat unexpected
4. A man in Essex tried to escap a speeding fine by saying his grandmother was responsible - despite the fact she lives in Sierra Leone, has never visited the UK and doesn't have a drivers license!
5. Did you know the average American throws away between 209 and 254lbs of edible food every year? Some of the more alarming facts about our cousins in the States show that, annually, enough food is thrown away to fill the Empire State Building 91 times over
6. A compilation of photos of the 33 most beautiful abandoned places in the world includes the bobsleigh track from the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, a sunken yacht in Antarctica and "The Wonderland Amusement Park" outside Beijing
7. A campaign has been launched - in the guise of a children's book - to save some of the more obscure words and phrases in the English language including "begrumpled" (sad), "slubberdegullion" (scoundrel) and "ninnyhammer" (a fool)
8. Investigations are under way after cleaners found 24 bars of gold in the toilet of a commercial plane in India
9. In a decision deemed both "bizarre" and "unenforcable" Bath Council have banned the use of Sat-Nav's by the city's taxi drivers
10. An exhibition of cheese has been opened at The Science Gallery in Dublin - nothing too strange there, except that the American scientist who made all the cheese did so with samples of bacteria collected from human donors including their saliva, tears, belly button fluff and "matter" from between their toes and inside their nostrils!

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