This document contains a variety of facts and trivia about different topics. It provides information about: 1) The origins of HP Sauce and the Cadbury company. 2) How long it would take a snail to complete a marathon based on its speed. 3) That the Olympic torch relay was initiated by Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Games.

1. A P.S.A.L.M.
A Puzzle and Something A Little More

2. You have thirty seconds to get as near to the target as possible by combining the six numbers using:
addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Not all numbers need to be used. A number can be used as many times as it appears.
Fractions are not allowed—only positive integers may be used at any stage of the calculation.

4. The recipe for HP Sauce was invented by
Nottingham grocer Frederick Gibson Garton in
1895. He chose the name “HP” after being told
the sauce was being sold by a restaurant at the
Houses of Parliament.
John Cadbury's shop was launched in Birmingham in 1824
and the Bournville factory was opened five years later.
A snail can cover two inches in a minute. It would take this
same snail 18 months to complete a marathon!

5. According to a 2004 Times report the Olympic torch relay was initiated by Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Games.
Peter I Tchaikovsky, composer of the ballet Swan Lake (1876), tried to commit suicide by walking into a river with
the intent of catching pneumonia.
The Sybarites invented the chamber pot which they carried to their drinking parties.

6. Which of these regions of Spain shares a border with Portugal?
The Hindenburg exploded in 1937, but where?
The USSR (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was established in 1922, thus uniting Russia,
Belorussia, Ukraine and the Transcaucasian Federation
(Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia). True or False?
A tuning fork is made out of aluminium. True or False?
A group of turtles is called a dole. True or False?

7. Doctors in Britain weren't permitted to work on
dead bodies for research purposes until an act of
Parliament allowed to do this in 1832. Up until
this time the only bodies they could use were
those of executed criminals.
The corpses were therefore somewhat rare and
hard to come by. When they did obtain a body,
often by illegitimate means, grave robbers etc.
and once they had finished with the dissection
they would hide the skeleton in the closet for
anatomical reasons, but also to escape the
authorities.
Possible origin of the idiom – Skeleton in the closet