Beech Tree News Network

This week we pick up 50 fast facts with #16.  There’s a 3,500 year old song.  Known as “Hurrian Hymn #6, the music, inscribed in cuneiform on clay tablets, were excavated from the ancient city of Ugarit(today’s Northern Suria), dating back to 1400 B.C.  You can actually listen to the tune, performed on lyre, by composer Michael Levy.  T’s not exactly top 40 material but still an interesting listen.

The twitter bird has a name.  Larry, supposedly named after former NBA player Larry Bird, who used to play for co-founder Biz Stone’s home-state team Boston Celtics.  There is a Museum of Failure.  Located in Sweden, the museum boasts a “one of a kind international collection of over 100 innovational failures”.  The touring M.O.F. features displays on such bad ideas as Harley-Davidson perfume, Colgate beef lasagna and Google Glass.  

Just 18 out of 1 million LEGO pieces are defective.  The molds manufacturing process of LEGO bricks is so accurate and effective, that only 18 out of 1 million are found to be defective, according to the company.  

The fast food shop Kailis garnered a good bit of publicity a few years ago when it turned two great things into one weird thing-fish and chip gelato.  Reports of its taste were not as bad as one might expect but it’s likely, as one person put it, “it didn’t taste like fish and chips”.

We think of dolphins as fun loving and friendly but think again.  Scientists have found that young male dolphins go on the attack, killing fellow porpoises when they were sexually frustrated.  People may think that dolphins are loving creatures but the mammals are actually one of the 30 most deadly.

According to Olympic records, the youngest athlete to ever become a medalist in the Olympics was Greek gymnast Dimitrios Loundras, who finished third in the 1896 Olympic Games when he was 10 and a half years old.  That’s right: he was still counting half years.

Final fact of the week: Loch Ness contains more freshwater than all of England’s lakes—combined.

The second-largest lake in Scotland, with a surface area of 22 square miles and depth of 788 feet, Loch Ness holds more fresh water than all the lakes of England—and Wales—combined. If any body of water could play home a giant mythical sea monster, it’s this one.