Yeah. Magnetic Variation is now Zero in the western part of the UK; no more rhymes for the time being! It always used to be a standard 4 deg 20+ years ago.
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I never realised how complicated it was until a mate in Oz was doing his exam for taking a boat way offshore (I think it was 50km, Oz has different levels of maritime licensing).
He had all the charts and he had to navigate theoretical journeys, allowing for magnetic drift. Looked horrendous to me.
Also, years ago, I read a book by a guy called Tom Avery about beating a record to the North Pole using dogs. (IIRC he was trying to prove a discredited record could be done). He went into some detail about where the actual finish pint was, or wasn’t. It was somewhat over my head.
Were you standing in northern Alaska at the time? 
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oops. I’d need to be drunk to attempt it. 
It was an interesting book but he came across as bit of an entitled school boy adventurer type.
Love that sort of book. My all time fave is the story of Shackleton’s epic Antarctica expedition in 1901, and the sheer ingenuity and resilience if those guys surviving over winter despite their boat being crushed and then hiking hundreds of miles to elephant island and against all odds rescue. If it was a made up story you almost wouldn’t believe it.
Another good read is around the world in a penny farthing by Thomas Stevens, starting in San Francisco in 1884 and ending in Yokohama in 1886, although this stretches the limits of credibility a little far for me and my cynical guess is he got as far as Iran / Persia as was and made some of the India and China stuff up.
Another good read is Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Richard and Nicholas Crane, about their 1986 lightweight self supported ride to the furthest place on the earth from the sea, which they reckon is a place called Xinjiang in Western China. Intersecting fact- I was aged 12 then and Nicholas Crane’s mother was our school librarian. At least that’s how I remember it… It was a long time ago in fairness.
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If you shuffle a deck of cards properly, that order of cards will never have happen before, and never will happen again.
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Iirc seven riffle shuffles achieves that - probably heard it on the Paul Daniels show.
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But there are a finite number of permutations of a deck of cards. This number is 52! which is… 8 x 10^67
So by my reckoning, it could just happen. 1 / (8 x 10^67) is close to zero, but it is not zero. You’d be having a bad day admittedly.
I only know this because the odds of me ever getting to Kona are similar
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that’s a whole lot of zeros. ( the cards, not your KQ ).
I just like facts that are counter intuitive. You’d think the odds would be smaller, but its all but certain to never be repeated.
I believe if you Riffle shuffle perfectly they end up back in order again… maybe I just made that up. 
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Have a look at “full tilt” and “a place apart” by Dervla Murphy. Tremendous reads, I think you might enjoy them 
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The USS Phoenix survived the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, to be sunk by the British Navy 41 years later.
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- Take water from the Pacific Ocean, one drop at a time.
- Each time you fully empty the Pacific Ocean, put a grain of sand in the Grand Canyon.
- Each time you completely fill the Grand Canyon with sand, put a piece of A4 paper on the floor.
- Each time the pile of paper reaches the sun, buy a lottery ticket.
The number of drops of water you will have moved by time you win the jackpot, is roughly the same as the number of times you’ll have to shuffle to cards to get the same deck twice.
Drops in the Pacific = 10^25
Grains sand to fill Grand Canyon = 10^19
Sheets paper to the sun = 10^15
Lottery jackpot = 10^8
25+19+15+8 = 67
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You could get lucky and win first time around 
True and I guess same with the cards. Let’s get started
There is a rock formation in Antarctica informally known as “Una’s Tits”, named for the former secretary in the Falkland Islands government office and often the last person Antarctic researchers would see before setting sail.
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Limahl is an anagram of his surname.
#eightiesfacts
Mark …
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There’s a place in Argentina called Formosa.
Which is nice.
The antipode of Formosa Argentina is Taiwan.
Which is nice until…
Taiwan was formerly called The Republic of Formosa.
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