10 things we learned in 2006

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As the year draws to a close, can we honestly say we are any wiser? Of course we can, and if you're in any doubt, here are 10 things we learned in 2006.
A stingray swims in its enclosure at the Sydney Aquarium (Image © MARK BAKER/AP/EMPICS)

Stingrays can kill
The death of TV naturalist Steve Irwin made headlines in September. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the news was the fact that a man famed for getting up close and personal with crocodiles, snakes and spiders was killed by a stingray. Stingrays are a usually docile fish not known for their aggressive behaviour.

 

If threatened however, the animal is likely to use the razor sharp barb at the end of its tail to defend itself. In the case of Steve Irwin, a stingray barb pierced his heart, making him only the third person to have died in Australia from a stingray attack. 

 

David Blunkett is not a man to be messed with
The publication of David Blunkett’s diaries earlier in the year seemed to suggest that the then Home Secretary had "dithered" over how best to deal with a prison riot in 2002. Nonsense claims Martin Narey, the Head of the Prison Service at the time. In an interview with The Times newspaper in October, Mr Narey described how Mr Blunkett, "…shrieked at me that he didn't care about lives, told me to call in the Army and 'machine-gun' the prisoners and - still shrieking - again ordered me to take the prison back immediately."

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il claps on the balcony as soldiers salute him during a massive military parade, celebrating the foundation of the armed forces in Pyongyang, North Korea (Image © KATSUMI KASAHARA/AP/EMPICS)

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is a film fanatic
Reports suggest the 'Dear Leader' has a movie library consisting of over 20,000 titles. Kim has a particular penchant for Disney movies but was allegedly unhappy with the way his country was portrayed in the 2002 James Bond film, Die Another Day.

 

Polonium 210 is a deadly poison
It was first discovered by Marie Curie at the end of the 19th century but most of us only learned of the radioactive substance after it was used to poison former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko. Polonium 210 is a naturally occurring radioactive material which is found in soil, tobacco and in the atmosphere, in fact each and every one of us carries a small amount of it in our bodies.

 

In higher doses however, Polonium 210 can prove fatal, destroying body tissue and organs. The dose which killed Alexander Litvinenko was not a naturally occurring one and experts believe it would have required an individual with the right connections and a bulging wallet to obtain the lethal dose.

 

London has the best public transport system in the world
At least according to tourists. A survey conducted by TripAdvisor found that international tourists rated London above Paris and New York for the quality of its public transport system.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes pose in their wedding attire (Image © AP Photo/Robert Evans)

Girls need  a comb, perhaps a cat
The wedding of the year happened to be a Scientology one, as Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes tied the knot in Italy. While details of Tom and Katie’s ceremony remain a little sketchy to those who didn’t attend, the media frenzy surrounding the wedding served to shed a little light on the vows exchanged by devotees of Scientology.

 

Men seem to get the best deal with a clause allowing for forgotten anniversaries and, dare we say, infidelity, seemingly present in the lines, "Young men are free and may forget." Meanwhile, grooms are urged to remember that, "Girls need clothes and food and tender happiness and frills, a pan, a comb, perhaps a cat. All caprice if you will, but still they need them." Indeed.

 

The UK is the tornado capital of the world
The tornado that ripped through a north London suburb in December may have been a severe instance of weather but it was by no means a freak occurrence. According to a spokesperson from the Met Office, "The UK has the highest frequency of reported tornadoes per unit area in the world, but most of them are far smaller than the tornadoes we are used to seeing on TV pictures from the USA. About 30-50 tornadoes are reported each year in the UK."

This photo taken by the Hubble Space telescope and released by NASA shows the planet Pluto (Image © HUBBLE TELESCOPE/AP/EMPICS)

Pluto is not a planet
While it may have started 2006 with its celestial status firmly intact, by the end of the year, Pluto had been demoted to a humble 'dwarf planet'. The dramatic change came about after the International Astronomical Unions (IAU) decided to adopt new guidelines on what defines a planet.

 

"I have a slight tear in my eye today, yes; but at the end of the day we have to describe the Solar System as it really is, not as we would like it to be," said Professor Iwan Williams, chair of the IAU panel. Given its distance from Earth however, Pluto will not find out about the bad news until 2015 at the earliest.

 

The cost of saving the planet is 1 percent of global GDP
The Stern Review was the first report of its kind to highlight the economic impact of climate change. Its author, Sir Nicholas Stern suggests that unchecked global warming could shrink the global economy by 20 per cent in the long term, but immediate action would cost just 1 percent of global gross domestic product.

 

Crisps are bad
Eating a packet of crisps each day is equivalent to drinking almost five litres of cooking oil every year. This particular figure was released by the British Heart Foundation as part of their Food4Thought campaign. The campaign also suggested that the number of crisps eaten in the UK would be enough to fill a telephone box every 43 seconds.