1. The word fortnight (meaning 2 weeks) is actually a contraction of two words, those being “Fourteen Nights”.

2. Ever said, “I’ll be with you in a jiffy”? Well, you were being more specific than you thought as a “jiffy” is an actual unit of time, that being 1/100th of a second.

3. Feeling Lucky? If the month begins on a Sunday you can guarantee there will be a Friday the 13th in it.

4. Every wondered what the difference really is between a Gale Force 8 and a Gale Force 9? Well, each unit on the “Richter Scale” is equivalent to a power factor of about 32. So a 9 is 32 times more powerful than an 8!

5. Concord was the fastest passenger aircraft ever built. On a journey from London to New York (taking into account the time zones) you could arrive 2 hours before you left… Now that’s fast!

6. Light travels at the rate of 186,200 miles a second so the light from the sun takes about 8 minutes to reach Earth.

7. While our modern measurement of time (the Gregorian Calendar) was introduced by Pope Gregory in 1582, it took a full 200 years to be adopted by Great Britain and the English colonies in 1752.

8. The wristwatch was invented in 1904 by Louis Cartier.

9. To save you the effort of doing it yourself, if you add up the numbers 1-100 consecutively (1+2+3+4+5 etc) the total is 5050.

10. Ever had a speeding ticket and thought that the limit was too low for where you were driving? Well think yourself lucky. The world's first speed limit regulation was in England in 1903. It was 20 mph!