Every week the BBC News website posts an item called 10 things we didn’t know last week. I just happened to look at this week’s and was struck by some of the oddities therein …

1. The UK’s national time signal is accurate to within 1,000th of a second of Coordinated Universal Time.
2. Drinking, drug-taking teenagers are in the decline in England, according to a survey by the Information Centre.
3. The average water temperature of the UK’s rivers and lakes is 5C in winter, 18C in summer.
4. Eight of the 10 most crowded train journeys in the UK are outside London. [That did surprise me when I saw it earlier in the week; but then note they are measuring overground trains, not the London Underground.]
5. The average duvet is home to 20,000 live dust mites. [I’m surprised that’s all; I would have expected the number to be 100 times bigger!]
6. Designer discount retailer TK Maxx is called TJ Maxx in the US. [Try to understand the importance of this.]
7. Having a baby can cost you up to two months sleep in the first year. [I would have thought that continues for something like 20 years, doesn’t it? Though never having been selfish enough to have children I wouldn’t know.]
8. Chimps and bonobos differ from humans by only 1% of DNA and could accept a blood transfusion or a kidney. [I knew the 1% difference in DNA, but hadn’t realised the implications for transplants. But why a chimp would want a human kidney baffles me.]
9. Britain’s peat bogs store carbon that is equivalent to 20 years’ worth of national industrial emissions.
10. Dogs can seemingly perform the Heimlich manoeuvre (a technique for helping someone who is choking). [I have this bizarre picture of a coiffed miniature poodle trying to do the HM on an 18 stone rugby player!]