1. Carom billiards is a family of billiards games played on pocktless tables.
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2. Deep ravines that run through much of the city are a distinctive feature of Toronto’s geography and for this reason the city has been referred to as ‘San Francisco turned upside down.’
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3. A Cephalophore saint is one who is depicted carrying his head in his hands; in art this signifies that the subject in question had been martyred by beheading.
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4. When not in use, military custom mandates that the American flag be folded down to a triangular shape - invoking the image of the three-pointed hats popular during the American Revolutionary War.
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5. The name Channel 9 - for the Microsoft discussion forum - was derived from the United Airlines open audio channel on which passengers can listen to the pilots during the course of the flight.
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6. Slavery was outlawed in Saudi Arabia only in 1962.
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7. The term “surreal” was first used by the poet Apollinaire to describe the experimental ballet “Parade.”
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8. Though between 50,000 and 150,000 Irishmen served in the Second World War with the British Armed forces, Ireland itself remained neutral in the conflict.
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9. The circle is the simplest member of the mathematical structures known as Lie groups. The largest and most complicated of the Lie group structures is known as E8 and was recently mapped my mathematicians. Its surface has 58 dimensions.
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10. William S Burroughs - the Beat Generation author - shot and killed his wife, Joan Vollmer, during a drunken game of William Tell.
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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.