10 things we didn't know last week

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baby looking pensiveImage source, Thinkstock

1. Age renders you less certain of whether a badger or a baboon would win in a fight.

2. Babies practise their first word in their heads for months before saying it out loud.

3. Until this week, the last bearded Conservative Cabinet minister was the 4th Earl of Onslow, president of the board of agriculture until March 1905.

4. Baby turtles co-ordinate their hatching by talking to one another through their egg shells.

5. Just 34 people are claiming Jobseekers Allowance in the Staffordshire town of Uttoxeter - population 12,000.

6. Bubble wrap can be used for blood and bacteria tests - the bubbles are injected with a syringe and can be sealed with clear nail hardener.

7. In Seoul, it's common to use your lunch break for a snooze.

8. Two millennia ago in Sudan people used to munch on the purple nutsedge weed - and it might be why so few of them appear to have dental cavities.

9. People don't just walk more slowly when they're on smartphones, their field of vision is reduced to 5% of what it should be.

10. When given a date far in the future, William Hague can tell you off the top of his head which day of the week it will be.

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