1. Arthur Ashe, Roger Taylor, John McEnroe and Eshmayel El Shafi are the only four tennis players to have defeated Bjorn Borg at Wimbledon.
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2. Amethyst gets its name from the Greek words for ‘not intoxicated’ because it was believed to prevent intoxication.
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3. Piggly Wiggly was the first true self-service grocery store. It was founded on September 6th, 1916 at 79 Jefferson Street in Memphis, Tennesse. A replica of the original store has been constructed in the Memphis Pink Palace Museum.
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4. Thermos flasks were earlier called Dewar vessels after their inventor, Sir James Dewar.
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5. There is no mention of cats in the Bible.
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6. February 15th, 1971 is also called referred to as D-day in the UK. It was on this day that decimalised currency was first introduced.
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7. Foreman, Longman, Lechman, Littleman and Thuma are the old names for the fingers on the hand.
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8. Chiasmus is the figure of speech where the order of the terms in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second. Examples are “It’s not the men in my life, it’s the life in my men that matters” and “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
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9. Louis Vuitton began his career as a clothes packer for Empress Eugene, wife of Napoleon III, before founding his own luggage business in 1854.
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10. The town of Portsmouth in England is popularly known as Pompey.
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About:
Iqbal Mohammed is Head of Innovation & Strategy at a digital innovation agency serving the DACH and wider European markets. He is the winner of the WPP Atticus Award for Best Original Published Writing in Marketing & Communication.
He blogs about #innovation, #technology and #marketing at misentropy.com. You can reach him via email or Twitter.