Facts About Rainbows

A rainbow is a long ribbon of colours which are bent as an arc, which is formed by reflection and refraction of the sun's rays inside raindrops. The main colours in a rainbow are Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. This is normally memorized by mnemonics for example “Roy G. Biv” – each letter represents the first letter of the main seven colours of the rainbow.


These seven colours in the rainbow are just the main ones, a rainbow is actually made up of an entire range of colours, any colour you’ve ever seen, even colours you haven’t seen! Nobody sees colours the same, everyone’s eyes react differently depending on how much light there is, so some people may see more colours than what you see.

“It was Sir Isaac Newton who discovered that sunlight falling upon a prism could split into its component colours. Newton named the component colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Most of these are easy to distinguish except for indigo. Legend has it that Newton included indigo because he felt that there should be seven rather than six colours in a rainbow due to his strong religious beliefs.”

Iris was the Greek goddess of the Rainbow

When you look at a rainbow you are actually looking at light being bounced of certain raindrops, although, the person next to you is looking at the rainbow from a totally different angle and different raindrops are being reflected, which makes each person’s view of a rainbow completely unique.

A rainbow appears after it has been raining; the sun is always behind you and the rain in front of you when a rainbow appears, so that the centre of the rainbow's arc is directly opposite the sun. It doesn't have to rain for us to see a rainbow however, rainbows can be seen in the early morning dew, in the mist from a waterfall or in the spray of water from the ocean!

An old European belief is that anyone passing underneath a rainbow would be changed from a man into a woman or woman into man! The idea that a pot of gold can be found at the rainbow's end originated in old Europe. In a place called Silesia it was said that the angels put the gold there and that only a nude man could obtain the prize. Unfortunately scientists says this is impossible to do, but believe who you want to believe!

Rainbows are the universal symbol of peace and harmony.

When I was younger, one of my school teachers told me she drove through the end of the rainbow, she said there was no pot of gold there but it was rather beautiful, she obviously forgot to mention it was just a dream because you can never actually reach the end of a rainbow, as you move, the rainbow that your eyes see also moves, because the raindrops are at different places in the air this means that any rainbow you try and get to, as close as it may seem, it will always be the same distance away as it was before you started to travel closer to it.

Rainbows can also be seen during night time! Moonlight can produce enough light to create a rainbow at night. “This is a lunar rainbow or 'moonbow'. Moonbows are rare because moonlight is not very bright. A bright moon near to full is needed, it must be raining opposite the moon, the sky must be dark and the moon must be less than 42º high. Put all these together and you do not get to see a moonbow very often! To the unaided eye they usually appear without colour because their light is not bright enough to activate the cone colour receptors in our eyes. Nonetheless colours have been reported and might be seen when the moon is bright.”

When you see a rainbow from the ground, you see an arc of colours, although when viewed from a plane it is possible to see an entire circle as you can look down on raindrops!

Rainbow was a childrens TV show back in the early 90's, some of you may remember te show, or at least characters from the show, Zippy being the most favourite! I'm not too sure if it was just a British show though...

One last thing, here's a funky wallpaper I've found and would like to share with you all, it made me laugh:

Click To Enlarge

Facts About Wotsits

Wotsits is a type of cheese puffs sold by the British company Walkers. Wotsits are mainly cheese flavoured curly shapes although over the years various other shapes (such as waffle-shaped Wotsits) and flavours have also been sold. There have been several Limited edition flavours and shapes too.

Wotsits packaging often comes with a joke on the back, which normally isn't funny at all. For example:

Q. What Special software does Harry Potter have on his computer?
A. A Spell Checker.

See what I mean? Cheesy.

In 2000, a variety of Wotsits was launched called "Mealtime Potato Shapes", which were made from potato and cheese, although they have been discontinued for quite a while now.

Wotsits was previously owned by Golden Wonder; however in 2002 it was sold off to Walkers because of Golden Wonder changing hands. Before Walkers owned Wotsits, they sold a rival known as Cheetos on the UK market.

In February 2007 Wotsits were re-launched in new packaging to coincide with the new usage of Sunseed oil in their ingredients. Don't worry though; they still have all the cheesy jokes on the back! Other Walkers brands such as Monster Munch and Quavers also had their packaging changed.

Wotsits are suitable for vegetarians and coeliacs - whatever that is...?

As found from personal experience, the main disadvantage from eating Wotsits is you get left with orange fingers...

Hitler And The Nazis Tried To Steal Christmas

A new exhibition at the National Socialism Documentation Centre in Cologne has discovered that the Nazi Party attempted to steal Christmas by making glittering swastika, iron cross and toy grenade baubles for the Christmas tree. They even removed religious references from Christmas carols.

Hitler made these changes to change the ways people think of Christmas, he did not want people seeing Christmas as the celebration to the birth of Jesus, because he was born Jewish. Several of the changes made are still in use today.

You probably won’t see the grenade baubles and the wrapping paper decorated with Nazi symbols, but in some Christmas carols we still sing today, there is slight evidence that Hitler and the Nazis tried to steal Christmas.

“I always thought that Unto Us a Time Has Come was a song about wandering through winter snow,” said Heidi Bertelson, 42, a lawyer who visited the exhibit told Times. “I didn’t realise that Christ had been excised.” The Nazi version, which removed the religious references and replaced them with images of snowy fields, remains in some song books and is sung in many households. The same goes for carols referring to Virgin Birth and lullabies that invoke the Baby Jesus. The rewriting was supervised by the chief Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and Heinrich Himmler led the way in de-Christing Christmas.

“Their plan was to remove the emotional ties of the Church and merge Christmas into a Julfest, a celebration of winter and light which drew on pagan traditions.

“The most important celebration in the calendar did not match their racist credo so they had to push out the Christian elements,” said Judith Breuer, who helped her mother, Rita, pull together the exhibition.”

Rita, the woman who put together the display started searching markets in the 1970s looking for her childhood Christmas and she found boxes of Nazi-era Christmas decorations full with grenades and swastikas.

Water Found On The Moon!

NASA’s Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) declared that they have found evidence of significant amounts of water on the Earth’s Moon. NASA sent two spacecrafts crashing into the lunar surface last month in an experiment to search Earth's nearest neighbour for water.

NASA said that the first information from a remarkable experiment on the Moon "indicates the mission successfully uncovered water in a permanently shadowed lunar crater... The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon."

Anthony Colaprete is the project scientist and principal investigator for the 79-million-dollar LCROSS mission, he explained that “we found water and we did not find only a little bit but [...] In the 20 to 30 meter crater we found maybe about a dozen, at least, two-gallon buckets of water. This is an initial result." He continued, "The full understanding of the LCROSS data may take some time. The data is that rich."

Scientists speculated that the moon was totally dry, except for the chance of ice at the bottom of craters, although seeing this extraordinary discovery has blown their minds

Only 12 men who are all Americans, have ever walked on the moon, and the last to set foot there were in 1972, at the end of the Apollo missions, which makes it nearly 40 years since we’ve been on the moon. NASA is hoping to send more astronauts there by 2020.

You can follow LCROSS on Twitter to keep updated.

Twenty-One Facts About The Number 12

Twelve is my lucky number, it's the number I would use in my Maths exams if I didn't know the answer to the question. Here are some random facts about this number that you probably didn't know...

1. There are 12 months in a year.
2. There are 12 hours in face of analogue clock.
3. There are 12 inches in a foot.
4. A dozen is a quantity that means twelve.
5. A gross is twelve dozen.
6. In astrology, there are 12 signs in the Zodiac.
7. In the Bible, Jacob had 12 sons.
8. Jesus had twelve disciples.
9. Twelve tribes were started after Moses led his people out of Egypt.
10. Twelve in Roman Numerals is XII.
11. A group of twelve things is called a Duodecad.
12. The 12th moon of Jupiter is called Lysithea.
13. D12 is a rap group also known as the Dirty Dozen.
14. In English, twelve is the largest number that has just one syllable.
15. There are twelve pairs of ribs in the human body – normally.
16. Twelve men have walked on the Earth's moon.
17. There are 12 stars on the Flag of Europe.
18. January the 5th is also the Twelfth Day of Christmas.
19. Under British law, when you reach the age of 12 you can buy a pet.
20. When you reach the age of 12, you can legally watch a 12 certificate film.
21. On the 12th day of Christmas my true love gave to me: Twelve Drummers Drumming...

I hope you find this useful, if you want to know more about this number, and think you are obsessed with it, you may want to check out this site: Number12Secret. The way he talks about the number reminds me of the film "The Number 23", where a man thinks his life is revolved around that number... It actually scares me, it's just a number!

Why We Remember The Fifth Of November

On the 5th November 1605 there was a person named Guy Fawkes, he was caught in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament with over twenty barrels of gunpowder. Guy Fawkes was then classed as a traitor alongside his people for plotting against the government.

Guy Fawkes was sentenced to death and the form of the execution was one of the most horrific ever accomplished, he was hung, drawn and quartered. This was done to show the seriousness of the crime of treason.

The next year (1606) was the start of an annual tradition for the King and Parliament to give a speech to remember the event. Lancelot Andrewes delivered the first of many Gunpowder Plot speeches. This tradition, alongside the nursery rhyme, made sure that this crime would never be forgotten, hence the words "Remember, remember the 5th of November".

The poem is sometimes referred to as 'Please to remember the fifth of November'. The point in having this poem and remembered every year is to warn each new generation that treason will never be forgotten.

In England the 5th November mainly known as bonfire night, and is still remembered each year with fireworks and bonfires finishing with the burning of a Guy Fawkes doll. The dolls are made by children by stuffing old clothes with crumpled newspapers and other stuff to look like a man.

Here’s the full rhyme if you didn’t know it:

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...