Five things we learned last month

Matt Sayles/AP/Press Association Images, Aijaz Rahi/AP/Press Associaton Images, PA/PA Archive/Press Association Images

Issue #16 of Delayed Gratification is just about rolling off the presses and while putting it together we acquired loads of facts that will make you the star of any Christmas dinner party. Because sharing is caring, here are the five most fascinating snippets we picked up in November.

1) Films in which Robin Williams sported a beard made an average $30 million more than films with a smooth-faced Williams. Critical reception (as measured by Rotten Tomatoes) was an average 24 percent higher.

2) The name Pakistan is actually an acronym devised in 1933 by then-Cambridge student Choudhary Rahmat Ali. In his pamphlet ‘Now or never: Are we to live or perish for ever?’ he appealed for independence ‘on behalf of the thirty million Muslims of PAKISTAN, who live in the five Northern Units of India’: Punjab, Afghan Province, Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistan.

3) This year’s September issue of Vogue UK was the biggest ever, weighing 1.26 kilogrammes. If that’s a bit too much to carry around, fear not: tearing out all ads will bring the weight of the publication right down to a much more moderate 432 grammes.

4) It cost less for the Indian Space Research Organisation to send an unmanned mission to orbit Mars than it did to make the movie ‘Gravity’.

5) There hasn’t been a film in the UK’s top five most-viewed TV transmissions since 1989, when Crocodile Dundee topped the charts. Talent shows made their debut in the top five in 2002, two years after ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ was the last gameshow to appear in the top five.

 

Posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2014 - Categories: Extras, Things we've learned.