9 surprising facts about the 1966 World Cup in England

There are several things about the 1966 World Cup we all learned a long time ago. You probably know it's the only trophy the England football team have ever won. You must be aware Sir Geoff Hurst bagged a hat-trick in the final. And, unless you're REALLY bad at maths, you will know that on 30th July 2016, it will be exactly 50 years since that glorious day at Wembley. However, while we all know the obvious details, there are a whole load of 1966 World Cup facts that could really surprise you… 1. Only one of the quarter-finals was on TV 1966 was a much smaller tournament than the modern World Cups, with only 16 teams competing. Even so, not all of the games were on television. It seems inconceivable in an era where Fifa re-jigged the 2014 draw a little to give England-Italy in Manaus a better time-slot for Europe, but in 1966 all four quarter-finals kicked off at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon.read more

Five weird and wonderful hair loss treatments

I

n over 15 years of counselling men dealing with hair loss, I’ve pretty much heard it all. Weird, wacky, and even frankly worrisome: there are treatments out there that make you want to shake your head with laughter, incredulous that anyone would resort to such desperate – and unscientific – measures.

But however colourful the treatments I'm about to tell you about, they carry a serious message: that men care deeply about their hair. The fact is that 55 per cent of men experience male pattern baldness by the age of 35, and that partly explains why more than $2 billion is spent annually by these vulnerable blokes on often futile cures ...read more

Ten weird body parts you didn't know you still had - from claw retractors to a third eyelid

Modern humans have been walking the Earth for about 200,000 years.

So it’s not surprising that over time our bodies have adapted.

From looking out for sabre-tooth tigers in the distant past to checking the latest on social media now, our frames have had to cope with changing demands.

But, says BBC Focus magazine, some adaptations have left a few weird leftovers in modern humans...

1) A tail

Before you were born, you had a tail, albeit only for a few weeks.-read more

Local sports used to be really weird

Hello! Chris Donlan here. Simon Parkin and I recently attended a wonderful talk at Brighton'sCatalyst Club, in which historian Mathew Homewood picked over some of the strangest sports in Sussex history. I think it's quite interesting to think of games as being related to this quirky lineage, and so I asked him to write a bit about bizarre and forgotten sports for Eurogamer. I really hope you enjoy it.

Most of us have participated in those classic sports day events; the egg and spoon race, the sack race, and the tug of war. Relatively 'normal' activities for both children and adults. However, many years ago, grown men and women were participating in far more weird and unusual sporting events. The county of Sussex appears to have been one of the leading lights in this world of bizarre sporting behaviour. In Brighton's Royal Gardens, as far back as the 1820s, one could witness such events as climbing the greasy pole, grinning through horse collars, catching a cock 'with hands tied behind'(!), and jingling matches, which involved a man with a bell round his neck being chased around a field by an army of men with blindfolds. An experienced jingler may lead these men into a merry game of cat and mouse. However, one might have some sympathy for the inexperienced jingler, cantering around a field, jangling away, and being bundled over by an excited mob.

The greasy pole was often used in village sports days. A vertical pole, standing upwards of three meters would be coated with grease. A prize would then be placed at the top - sometimes a hat, but more often a leg of mutton - and crowds would watch enthusiastic, and often hopeless attempts to gain the prize. Another use for the greasy pole was to lay it vertically over a pit of cold water, sit two men on it, arm them will sacks full of something heavy, and let them battle it out until one (or both) fell into the water.-read more