This is the March 2024 edition of my fascinating facts newsletter, which includes a range of interesting topics. This includes writeups about Easter Eggs, Thames Frost Fairs and Expensive Snacks.

Fascinating Facts March 2024 Contents

You can download the full newsletter to read HERE, however some snippets are listed below.

EASTER EGG FACTS

The first chocolate factory in Britain started production in 1657. The first chocolate Easter egg was produced in Bristol in 1873 by Fry’s chocolate company. According to Guinness World Records, the world’s biggest chocolate Easter egg weighed 15,873 pounds. At over 34 feet tall, it was taller than a giraffe and heavier than an elephant. It was made in Cortenuova, Italy. Decorated with gold leaf and white flowers and taking three days to make, the world’s most expensive chocolate egg sold for £7,000 on 20th March 2012. British people spend an average of £299 million on 80 million chocolate Easter eggs every year.

The practice of decorating eggshells is quite ancient, with decorated, engraved ostrich eggs found in Africa, which are 60,000 years old. In the pre-dynastic period of Egypt and the earlier cultures of Mesopotamia and Crete, eggs were associated with death and rebirth, as well as with kingship. Decorated ostrich eggs, and representation of ostrich eggs in gold and silver, were commonly placed in graves of the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians as early as 5,000 years ago. These cultural relationships may have influenced early Christian and Islamic cultures in those areas, as well as through mercantile, religious, and political links from those areas around the Mediterranean. Read More…

THAMES FROST FAIRS

I suppose one of the most obvious indicators of a warming planet is the River Thames and the frost fairs in some winters, starting at least as early as the late 7th century and continuing less frequently until the early 19th century. But most were held between the early 17th and early 19th centuries during the period known as the Little Ice Age, when the river froze over most frequently. During that time, the winter was more severe; the river was wider and flowed slower, further impeded by the 19 piers of the medieval Old London Bridge which were removed in 1831. Read More…

Expensive Snacks White Truffles

White truffles, edible spores of a type of underground fungus, also known as Alba truffles, are one of the most expensive truffles in the world. They have a strong, earthy oak and garlic flavours and are primarily found in the Piedmont region of Italy, and parts of Croatia and Slovenia. To grow the truffle, fungi have a special relationship with tree roots in order to grow. The fungi help the trees to gather water and minerals, and the tree feeds the truffle with sugars. They are so rare that an ounce of white truffles could cost £200.00. Read More…

60 million bricks to build London’s elevated railway

With my family living around Deptford and Rotherhithe in London in the 1930s, I was quite familiar with what they referred to as the 500 arches, as we had to pass under them many times to go shopping or visiting. These structures carry the former London and Greenwich Railway line and consist of 851 semicircular arches and 27 skew arches or road bridges. It is the longest run of arches in Britain, and also one of the oldest railway viaducts in the world, as well as being the earliest example of an entirely elevated railway line. Read More…

Sagrada Família Started 1882 & Still Building

On 19 March 1882, construction of the Sagrada Família began under architect Francisco de Paula del Villar. One year later, Villar resigned and Gaudí took over as chief architect, transforming the project using his architectural and engineering style, combining Gothic and curvilinear Art nouveau forms. He devoted the remainder of his life to the project and was buried in the crypt. At the time of his death 44 years later, less than a quarter of the project of the world’s largest unfinished Catholic church was complete. Read More…

COANDA EFFECT FROM AIRCRAFT TO HAIR DRYER

From drying one’s hair with a towel to a blow dry hair dryer and now a hair dryer using an air phenomenon first demonstrated by Thomas Young in a lecture given to The Royal Society in 1800. Then, in 1910, Romanian inventor Henri Coandă recognised the practical application of the phenomenon in aircraft design. Put simply, the Coandă effect is the tendency of a jet of fluid or air, emerging from an orifice to follow an adjacent flat or curved surface and to entrain fluid or air from the surroundings so a region of lower pressure develops. Read More…