Healthiest Breakfast Cereal

There are many breakfast cereals which claim to be healthy. There are 2 children in our house and we get through a fair number of different sorts of cereals (here in the UK). The table below is a list of what we've got at the moment and I'll aim to add to it as the cereal range in our breakfast cupboard evolves...

I'm judging healthiest by least amount of sugar. Values below are grams in 100g of product. Main ingredient is the first thing listed on the ingredients list.

Name	Manuf	Fat	Carbs	Sugar	Main ingredient
Shredded Wheat	Nestle	2.2	67.8	0.7	100% wholegrain wheat
Shredded Wheat Bitesize	Nestle	2.2	68.7	0.7	100% wholegrain wheat
Fuel - Protibrick	The fuel station	1.9	67.8	2.9	90% wholegrain wheat
Weetabix	Weetabix	2.0	69.0	4.4	95% wholegrain wheat
Wheat biscuits	Tesco	2.0	68.6	4.4	95% wheat
Corn flakes	Sainsbury	0.9	84.1	7.2	Maize
Corn flakes	Kellogs	0.9	84.0	8.0	Maize
Rice Snaps	Tesco	1.2	85.2	9.7	Rice
Rice Krispies	Kellogs	1.0	87.0	10.0	Rice
Shreddies	Nestle	2.1	72.4	14.9	93.5% wholegrain wheat
Malt wheats	Tesco	1.9	72.7	15.7	92% wholewheat
Multigrain hoops	Tesco	4.5	73.7	19.3	75% cereal flour
Multi-grain Shapes	Kellogs	2.5	77.0	21.0	cereal flours
Honey Loops	Kellogs	3.0	77.0	21.0	cereal flours
All Bran High Fibre Museli (cran+sult)	Kellogs	5.5	58.0	21.0	33% Oats
Multigrain boulders	Tesco	1.7	83.2	26.7	Wheat flour
Coco pops	Kellogs	2.5	85.0	35.0	Rice
Frosties	Kellogs	0.6	87.0	37.0	Maize

GB Olympics medal history

I was trying to find out how team GB had fared in previous olympics, and couldn't find that in a simple list - so here we are - Thanks to Wikipedia for each line..

When	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total	Position	Where
2012						London
2008	19	13	15	47	4	Beijing
2004	9	9	12	30	10	Athens
2000	11	10	7	28	10	Sydney
1996	1	8	6	15	36	Atlanta
1992	5	3	12	20	13	Barcelona
1988	5	10	9	24	12	Seoul
1984	5	11	21	37	11	Los Angeles
1980	5	7	9	21	9	Moscow
1976	3	5	5	13	13	Montreal
1972	4	5	9	18	12	Munich
1968	5	5	3	13	10	Mexico City
1964	4	12	2	18	10	Tokyo
1960	2	6	12	20	12	Rome
1956	6	7	11	24	8	Melbourne
1952	1	2	8	11	18	Helsinki
1948	3	14	6	23	12	London

Oldest Bottle of Wine

Random discussion - which (and where) is the worlds oldest bottle of wine. This seems to be difficult to find out. The most obvious contender is a bottle of wine which was buried with a Roman noble.

After that, its more difficult. There would appear to be some wines from before 1700 which are still drinkable and still in their cask/barrels. I'm not sure if wine drawn from these casks and then bottled counts. There seem to be several different bottled contenders from the 1770's and beyond. I've not listed anything after 1800.

Year	Where		Which wine
350	Pfalz Historical Musuem	Germany	Buried with a Roman noble
1472	La Cave Historique des Hospices de Strasbourg	Strasbourg	Still in barrel
1653	Town hall, Bremen	Germany	Still in cask
1727	Graycliff Hotel	Bahamas	Rudesheimer Apostelwein from Bremen Ratsfeller. Bottled in 1950s
1775	??	??	Massandra
1787	??	??	Château d’Yquem
1787	former U.S President, Thomas Jefferson	??	Chateau Lafite
1787	??	??	Chateau Margaux
1788	Baltic Seabed, Aland	Aland, Finland	Clicquot, Juglar, Heidsieck Champagne

An assortment of links for these:

http://www.museum.speyer.de/English/Permanent_exhibitions/Weinmuseum_The_Wine_Museum_.htm
http://www.strasbourg.info/sights/wine-cellar/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_Hall_of_Bremen
http://www.finestandrarest.com/german.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10673322

Million plus cities

I was looking at a historical atlas the other day which gave a map of the world with cities over 1million population. It is commonly held that London was the first city to get to 1million, however this would not appear to be true. This post tries to find the order which cities reached 1milion population up to 1900.

My take on this is:

City Year  Beijing 1775 London 1800 Paris 1835 Manchester 1850 Wuhan 1850 New York 1870 Vienna 1875 Berlin 1875 St Petersburg 1875 Shanghai 1880 Tokyo 1885 Chicago 1890 Philadelphia 1890 Moscow 1897 Istanbul 1900

There's a raft of contradictory information out there - initial sources are:
http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/twps0027.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_urban_community_sizes
https://faculty.washington.edu/modelski/WcitiesH.htm
http://www.odi.org.uk/events/docs/1125.pdf

http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa011201a.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_throughout_history


It would seem also that there may have been cities greater than 1 million earlier, but the lack of census makes these estimates.

Potentially populations over 1 million (which were then not over 1 million by 1900):

Alexandria - 100BC
Rome - 0AD to 300 AD
Chang'an 700AD to 800 AD
Baghdad 925AD to 1200AD
Kaifeng 1200AD
Hangzhou 1200AD
Nanjing 1400AD

p.s. a proper list here that I've had to make myself, rather than find one that someone else has done and repeat. Hooray!

Adverts on TV

I was watching Have I Got News For You on Dave the other day, and was frustrated by the frequency of adverts, which of course, you don't get on the BBC. This led me to wonder if the BBC is unique in its lack of adverts....

Of course, this turns out to be a complicated question. There are adverts and there are adverts - one where you get "commercial breaks" - which is what I had in mind with this question, and the other where there are product placements, "sponsorships" etc. etc. allowing programmes to be provided without commercial breaks. Therefore, I could re-phrase my question - are there any other channels without commercial breaks?

It also turns out that there are a lot of TV channels around the world, and it doesn't seem to be easy to find out if there are commercial breaks or not, and there appear to be plenty of subscription channels which are advert free. Perhaps my question should be -  are there any other free-to-air channels without commercial breaks?

Of course, this post seems to be turning into a list of questions rather than a list which answers a question. A first stab gives this list:

Country	Channels
UK	BBC
Denmark	DR
US	PBS
Australia	ABC

I'll come back to this another time and see if I can find out more. Couple of useful links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_advertisement
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111101063033AAVP6Ke

Longest Career - UK Entertainer

I was watching the telly over Christmas and heard the joke: Question - how does Brucie keep looking so young? Answer - He doesn't. I know Brucie has been around for a few years, and I thought I'd see if I could find out who has the longest career as an entertainer in the UK.

General caveats - I'm excluding musicians and writers to begin with, and focusing on TV and Radio. I'm also trying to exclude "one offs" at the tail end of careers.

Who	Start	Programme	Finish	Programme	Years
Bruce Forsyth	1939	Come and be Televised	2011	Strictly Come Dancing	72
David Attenborough	1954	Zoo Quest	2011	Frozen Planet	57
Rolf Harris	1953	Jigsaw	2010	Jamie's Dream School	57
Patrick Moore	1957	The Sky at Night	2012	The Sky at Night	55
Nicholas Parsons	1957	The Arthur Haynes Show	2012	Just a Minute	55
Ronnie Corbett	1957	Sheep's Clothing	2011	Ronnie Corbetts Comedy Britain	54
William Roache	1960	Coronation Street	2012	Coronation Street	52
David Dimbleby	1962	Top of the form	2012	Question Time	50

My conclusion would seem to be that Bruce Forsyth does have the longest entertainment career, unless anyone else knows better - happy to take suggestions, or indeed for anyone else with a 50+ year career. Data sources - Wikipedia, BBC, IMDB, Radio Times, BFI Screenonline web sites.

Note - Bruce Forsyth was not on TV between 1939 and 1958, when he hosted Sunday Night at the London Palladium. giving him 53 years on TV, which might make me prefer to put Rolf Harris or David Attenborough at the top of the table.

Edit - 21st Jan 12 - David Frost started 1962 TWTWTW.

Worlds Oldest Zoo

I recently went to Bristol Zoo which claims to be the fifth oldest zoo in the world. Which ones are older, I wonder?


Bristol zoo is currently celebrating its 175th anniversary, originally opening in 1836 - on Monday 11th July. http://www.bristolzoo.org.uk/.


A search on the worlds oldest zoo appears to be easy - London comes up, opening 27th April 1828, but not open to the public until 1847. http://www.zsl.org/zsl-london-zoo/ 


However, Tiergarten Schönbrunn (Vienna Zoo) also claims to be the same, opening in 1752, http://www.zoovienna.at/en/zoo-and-visitors/welcome-worlds-oldest-zoo/


Equally, the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes in Paris claims to be the oldest, opening in 1635, with a menagerie added in 1793. http://www.mnhn.fr/museum/foffice/transverse/transverse/accueil.xsp?cl=en  


So, that gives three Zoos that are older and claim to be the oldest, which leaves one other to  come between? It would seem to be Dublin, which opened  1 September 1831 http://www.dublinzoo.ie/


So, that answers the question? Maybe not, as it would seem there are less well know zoos that could fit: Madrid zoo - open since 1770 http://www.zoomadrid.com/, and the more elusive Kazan Zoo in Russia, opened in 1806. http://www.kzn.ru/eng/page3736.htm


I'm not the first person to ask this question, and here are a few other takes: 
http://int.rgo.ru/news/oldest-zoos-in-the-world/
http://www.zoochat.com/2/oldest-zoo-19898/


Of course, its possible to find references to older zoo's that are now closed, but I'll leave this list to zoos that are currently open. My take on the list, from the info I've found is:


Vienna - 1752
Madrid - 1770
Paris - 1793
Kazan - 1806
London - 1828
Dublin - 1831
Bristol - 1836


My conclusion is that Bristol is probably not the 5th oldest zoo in the world. I was going to claim that it is the oldest zoo outside of a capital city, until I found Kazan zoo....


Of course, I must acknowledge Wikipedia for much of my information (principally the first link, but I didn't find that initially):


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiergarten_Sch%C3%B6nbrunn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_Aquarium_de_Madrid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9nagerie_du_Jardin_des_Plantes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_zoo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Zoo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Zoo


Other avenues which failed summarised in Wikipedia  (thinking of Empires and explorers):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahore_Zoo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alipore_Zoological_Gardens
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Zoo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Zoo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_Zoo