Hatches, Matches and Despatches

Hatches, Matches and Despatches
Jenny Paschall

Ron Lyon

Fascinating, bizarre and hilarious facts about the most universal of experiences of life – birth, death and matrimony …All the female eggs needed to produce the next generation of the human race could be contained in the shell of one chicken’s egg … Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ cloakroom … Attila the Hun drank himself to death on his wedding night … in Tanzanian weddings the bride and groom sit on the lap of an old woman … Indian Chief Blackbird was buried sitting on his horse …From Roman births to Bedouin wedding feasts, from the touching tale of the marriage of two white rhinos to the gruesome stories of the final resting places of Oliver Cromwell’s head and Gallileo’s fingers, Hatches, Matches and Dispatches reveals the true facts of life!

COPYRIGHT (#ulink_4918ba74-c70c-58d4-affc-181120c6501c)

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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First published in paperback 1997

Copyright © Jenny Paschall and Ron Lyon 1997

Jenny Paschall and Ron Lyon assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006388159

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2016 ISBN: 9780008192099

Version: 2016-06-07

DEDICATION (#ulink_41377fc9-b2a5-5823-abc3-75c217db01e1)

WITH LOVE

TO CAMERON STEPHANIE LYON

Hatched on 14th August 1996

CONTENTS

Cover (#u667b291b-ed47-5272-937c-147a51bb4592)

Title Page (#u5a491087-01cf-5103-86c0-081cd8397b90)

Copyright (#ulink_de94b5f9-d911-5870-9826-f475999a14cf)

Dedication (#ulink_c639bc8e-5cdf-5fe7-92fe-352ac6ee917a)

Hatches (#ulink_6ca8c240-619d-5ec5-b158-d4bf3f878764)

Matches (#ulink_14173853-d83d-5d84-8a0a-5284eefd3de8)

Dispatches (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

HATCHES (#ulink_2e8194dd-0630-5a38-93e0-e3ff9cac7bb1)

Confusion – 1 Science – 0

IF the number of humans on planet Earth were to continue to increase at the current rate, by the year 3530 the total weight of all the living human bodies would equal the mass of the earth itself. Given the same rate of population expansion, by the year 6826, the total mass of humanity would equal the size of the entire known universe.

ON the other hand, Danish researchers have found that men’s average sperm count has almost halved over the past fifty years, and that semen quantity has decreased by almost twenty-five per cent. Similar results are being found in tests being conducted in other parts of the world. So far, no one has been able to identify the cause. Scientists are concerned that if this trend continues, it could lead ultimately to a sterile population.

PERHAPS man’s diminishing fertility is caused by his first love, the car.

Driving for more than three hours a day can reduce a man’s fertility. Scientists have discovered that driving a car and sitting in traffic jams, especially whilst wearing tight-fitting clothes and underpants, causes overheating of the testes, which reduces the output of sperm.

HOWEVER, it seems that if a good part of a man’s day is spent overheating his testes, he may be able to counteract the problem by drinking plenty of coffee. According to doctors at New York University Medical School, the caffeine in coffee prolongs the life span of male sperm and keeps them moving.

Eggcentric Tales

ALL the female eggs needed to produce the next generation of the human race can be contained within the shell of one chicken’s egg.

IN 1982 Lee Perry, a female Harvard university professor, sued Dr Richard Atkinson, chancellor of the University of California at San Diego, because he refused to make her pregnant. She volunteered to abandon the case in exchange for Dr Atkinson’s sperm.

ACCORDING to research in Norway, eggs are an aphrodisiac. In a study of men with low libidos, it was found that eighty-four per cent felt an increase in sexual desire after being treated with an extract from fertilized chickens’ eggs. Soft lights, music, wine and … scrambled eggs? We’ll stick with oysters!

WHEN a 5,000-year-old man was found preserved in ice in the Alps, researchers at Austria’s Innsbruck University were inundated with calls from women who wanted to be artificially inseminated with the sperm of the original Mr Cool.

IN 1863, during the United States Civil War, a woman was artificially inseminated by a bullet. While watching a battle from her front porch, with her mother and sister, this young lady was wounded in the abdomen by a stray bullet, which had already hit a soldier in his scrotum.

Both the soldier and the girl recovered. Nine months later, the girl delivered a baby boy, who closely resembled the young soldier. The surgeon who treated them both, Captain L. G. Capers, hypothesized that the bullet that struck the soldier carried the sperm into the young woman’s uterus, thereby causing her to conceive. Following this discovery, the soldier and the young woman were formally introduced, fell in love and married. They had two more children, using less dramatic methods of conception.

ANOTHER unusual long-distance conception occurred in Sydney, Australia in 1969, when a fifteen-year-old school-girl claimed she had become pregnant after swimming in a public pool. Doctors confirmed the pregnant girl was a virgin, and the courts ruled that she had been impregnated by sperm in the swimming pool water.

ACCORDING to the World Health Organization, the sex act takes place at least 100 million times a day. This figure was computed by multiplying the world birth rate by the accepted estimate of the number of times sex does not result in conception.

THE largest cell in the human body is the female ovum, and the smallest is the male sperm. One egg cell weighs the same as 175,000 sperm.

To Be or Not To Be

THERE are 75 million volunteer workers on the China Family Planning Association.