?? Blue lights, Conveyor Belts, and Hypnic-Jerks

SINCE 2014 ?

2,500 metres ?- ?Height that two German slackline athletes successfully walked across a rope, set between two hot air balloons, this week. It beat the old world record by 600 metres. (watch)

14 - 84% ?- ?Percentage drop in suicide at some Japanese railways stations after they installed blue lights. The blue light is thought to calm people. In the UK, two places now feature them; one is a train crossing in Scotland and the other is Gatwick airport station.

320 miles ?- ?Length of a conveyor belt road planned to be built in Japan, linking Tokyo and Osaka. ?It will be a covered lane that houses an army of robotic pallets. It can do the work of 25,000 trucks per day.?

$17,253 ?- ?Value of the most valuable Lego figure in the world. It's a Spider-Man minifigure, released at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con and given to 350 raffle winners. (see the other top sets)

70%? - ?Percentage of people who will experience hypnic-jerking at least once in their lives. It's the feeling of being in freefall causing you to wake up as you're falling asleep. 10% of the population experience it regularly.

10 minutes ?- ?Maximum length of time that Doctors recommend you spend on the toilet. Longer than this increases the risk of haemorrhoids and weakened pelvic muscles, according to a report this week. Scrolling on phones has been blamed for extended toilet sessions.

32%? - ?Percentage of medical Doctors in the UK who were trained abroad.?

96 ?- ?Aged that the inventor of Vaseline, Robert A. Chesebrough, lived to. He claimed that eating a teaspoon of it every day helped him live a long life.

2.35 kg ?- ?Amount of CO2 that the average WhatsApp group uses each week. That's the equivalent of driving 12 miles in a petrol car.?

3 trillion ?- ?Estimated number of planets in the Milky Way. Some estimates put the figure as high as 8 trillion.? ?

This Week in History . .

1851 - "Moby Dick" is first published. The whale in the story is based on a real-life whale called Mocha Dick. He was a 70 foot albino sperm whale known for swimming calmly next to whaling boats but, at the first sign of a harpoon, he would try to destroy the boat. He was killed in 1839 and had 19 harpoons lodged in his side.?

1962 - Demi Moore is born. The fact that she's an Arsenal fan and uses leeches to stay young are not even the most shocking things about her. She is considered one of the world's most high-profile doll collectors. She has a separate house to shelter her 2,000+ dolls.?

1990 - The World Wide Web is first proposed by CERN computer scientists Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau. Tim Berners-Lee was born in 1955; the same year that Albert Einstein died. Incredibly Greta Garbo and Ava Gardner both died in 1990 meaning they lived alongside the World Wide Web.?

1994 - First public trains run through the Channel Tunnel, linking England and France under the English Channel. It's only the 11th longest tunnel in the world.?

2020 - Kylie Minogue becomes the first woman to top the UK album chart over five consecutive decades with "Disco". Famously small, at 5 foot she is the same height as Dolly Parton, Paula Abdul, and Dawn French.?

Have a great weekend, and if you're hiring soon, give me a call.

Charlie