Each year, Google aggregates billions of search queries to provide its Zeitgeist – a search engine spirit of the times. The barometer gives something of the flavour of that year, indicating not only popularity but also emerging trends. Globally, chatroulette topped the fastest rising search terms. Chatroulette is a Russian-based site that randomly pairs strangers […]
Victorian Civil servant Sir Henry Cole is credited with “inventing” the Christmas card. A wealthy businessman also, he wanted to send friends, family and business contacts a greeting at Christmas. In 1843 he commissioned his artist friend John Callcott Horsley to design almost 1,000 hand-coloured lithographs to send out that year. The Christmas card was […]
Christmas crackers first appeared in 1847 when Victorian confectioner, Tom Smith, created a colour Paper package for sweets with a chemical-impregnated strip of Paper which created a noise when pulled apart. Smith had got the beginning of the idea in 1840 when he saw sugared almonds wrapped in twists of Paper in Paris. Apocryphally, he […]
Reindeer in Norway are to be fitted with high visibility collars in a bid to reduce road fatalities of the Christmassy beasts. Some 500 reindeer are killed in car crashes each year in Norway. Now the population of 200,000 reindeer are to sport reflective yellow collars or antler tags to alert drivers to their meaty […]
A man who has celebrated Christmas every day for the past 17 years is set to marry a Christmas tree, according to The Sun. Forty-seven-year-old Andy Park, also known as Mr Christmas, has eaten Christmas dinners every day since 1993, eating mince pies, sipping champagne and watching a recording of the Queen’s speech every afternoon. […]
In the mid-19th century, under Queen Victoria, Boxing Day began as a day on which the economically privileged would bestow gifts on the servile classes. Seasonal gifts to be given to the poor and socially inferior were kept in a "Christmas Box" which was opened on 26th December. In the words of Charles Dickens, Boxing […]
One in three adult Britons already know what they’re getting on Christmas Day because they’ve sneaked a peak at their hidden presents. One thousand British adults were interviewed for the survey, commissioned by insurance company insurastore.com, which found that 37 percent of them have sought out their gifts and eight in ten of these […]
A woman from Birmingham was horrified when live baby mice fell out of a bag of crisps she had just picked up at Tesco. They dropped out from multipacks of crisps in the Aston branch of the supermarket. “They were repulsive and made me feel revolting,” Liz Wray told the Daily Mail. “I was with […]
It was intended to satirize the use of sex to sell but now the creators of a nude Barbie calendar are being sued by Barbie doll makers, Mattel. Two Argentinean student artists, Breno Costa and Guilherme Souza, seem to have fashioned the calendar, in which Barbie appears nude, sometimes “provocatively posed” with another female doll, […]
The latest in cash storage is a piggy bank fashioned from a real taxidermized pig. The “Piglet Bank” is brought to you by Vancouver-based thecheeky.com. In the words of the creators: “Designed for anyone who has far too much money and loose change, this is the piggy bank of all piggy banks. Its [sic] a […]
How to plan the office Christmas party Whether you count down the days, or desperately scrabble around for an excuse not to go, the office Christmas party is an event on almost every company’s calendar. So, how do you plan a party that everyone will enjoy? It’s a tricky balance to get Bob from Accounts […]
Top tips to improve your time management skills Despite what people say, time is not a commodity. It cannot be traded, expanded or reduced. It is fixed. Our perception of time, however, is another concept. How often do you think at 4pm “Where has the day gone?” and go into panic mode to try to […]
Planning in business is essential Everything from the monthly sales drive to a new product launch or project needs planning. It promotes joined-up thinking and good decision-making throughout the whole organisation. “A goal without a plan is just a wish”, observed the famous writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery, summing up a key business principle. Each business […]
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