Things I learned this week (five)

  • The joys of eating home-made crème brûlée totaly outweigh the hassle of making home-made crème brûlée.
  • While I knew about American football, I never knew there’s such a thing as an American football indoor league. And apparently, you can rent out the space in the black stuff beneath your eyes as advertising space.
  • In other sports—and I’m using the term very loosely here—related news, there also is such a thing as a World Nettle Eating Championship.
  • Arthroscopic surgery—which we call a ‘kijkoperatie’ in Dutch—does actually involve more than just looking. Who knew?
  • LOL: In November, … the people of San Francisco will also vote on a measure to rename one of the city’s largest sewage works the George W Bush Sewage Plant, to provide a “fitting monument” to the outgoing commander-in-chief’s achievements.
  • The Door to Hell is a very large cavern underground filled with a poisonous gas in Turkmenistan. When discovered, the gas was ignited, expecting it to burn off in a few hours. Thirty-five years later, it still burns.
  • Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton’s It was a dark and stormy night is said to be the canonical opening sentence for bad novels. Enter the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, where people try to write the most horrendous opening lines for fictional novels.