A homophone is defined as a word that has two or more different spellings but is pronounced the same, eg their/there, four/fore/for, scent/sent, conquer/conker. What is a word that is pronounced in...
If a man was a soldier (NCO) from age 16 for 9 years, finishing his service in 1960 but dying before reaching retirement age, and was married while in the army, could his widow expect a military...
If you damage the mains input of your laptop, the repair cost is greater than the value of the computer. Yet everything else continues to work. I have an ADVENT laptop, the battery has six contacts....
My laptop computer (Advent 7601M) is apparently unusable because the mains power input socket has been damaged. I am told that a repair is uneconomic. Yet the rest of the computer is perfectly sound,...
Arthur C Clarke in his book '3001' has someone expressing surprise that no-one can explain the origin of the expression 'to know something like I know the back of my hand'. I doubt if I could...
Can anyone provide me with the complete quotation from Diodorus Siculus, allegedly describing Britain, Stonehenge and the people who used it. And in the original Greek would be even better!
During the last war, railings were ripped up from all over Britain. I have heard that it was found to be useless for turning into tanks, ships, aeroplanes armaments etc: is this true, and if so, what...
Can anyone shed any light on the story that an eagle picked up a child in North Italy , May 1959, and deposited it, still alive, on a mountain top? This was supposed to have happened near the town on...
'Try everything once except folk dancing and incest'. Only one person could have come up with this saying the first time round, yet at least five well known people are supposed to have done so,...
Drive between Catania and Palermo on the dual-carriageway autostrada and you cannot but be impressed by its construction - much of the road is on stilts about 20 feet above the ground. It has been...
This is bugging me. I heard a really good joke the other day, but now I can only recall the punchline. It's to do with some guys (aliens?) in a car park, and ends up with one of them exclaiming...
Many years ago I read this book. I also saw the film. I was sure that at the end of the book the 'cuckoos' removed themselves from the neighbourhood by the simple (to them) expedient of making their...