Facts

Einstein, when asked the speed of light, responded, "I don't bother to fill my head with facts that I can easily find in books." Well how he was able to do that, I would love to know because my brain gathers up facts the way a Dyson vacuum cleaner hoovers up dust! I'm especially attracted to facts of the historical and numerical variety.

There was a magazine called Look and Learn that I used to read every school holiday. It was a great source of factual information and here are some of the myriad facts that have accumulated in my grey matter:

• the speed of light is 300,000 m/s, but so far the speed of thought has not been measured
• it was while Winston Churchill was Secretary of State in 1921 that the Kurds of Iraq were first gassed - do you think that's where Sadaam Hussein got the idea from?
• at the height of his power, ie when he was Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte had a net worth significantly more than Bill Gate's current net worth
• Thierry Henry can run 100m in 10.75s. When Marion Jones won the 100m Olympic title in Sydney 2000, she stopped the clock at 10.78s.

I find that juggling helps with my factual recall. Something about focusing on a mechanical act while whatever it is does the search and retrieval.