These facts come courtesy of my friend Bev - being from Newcastle she has a way of putting things that makes me giggle so much that i left this almost all in her own words... hope you enjoy them - and Bev - I hope for your sake they are true or I'm coming to GET YOU!!!!

*The modern name for Ethiopia comes from the name of the race (not the other way on!) and Ethiopian translates from Ancient Egyptian as "those with burnt faces"

*If you pulled the Great Pyramid of Khufu to bits, you could build a wall 3 metres high around France, and Napoleon sat in its shadow and worked that one out.

*Napoleon once spent the night sleeping in the burial chamber of the Great Pyramid for a bet, and came out the next morning pale, white and shaking. He refused to tell anybody what happened while he was in there. He looked like he was going to on his deathbed, then he said "what's the use, you'd never believe me" (but in French obviously....) and died.

*There's a great big lump of natural rock inside each pyramid that forms some of the core to save on building stuff.

*If the cat died the family would shave their eyebrows off and have a week's mourning. If your RELATIVE died you let your beard grow (for a bloke....I hope....) or cut a lock of your hair off (for a woman) and you didn't do all the weeping and wailing yourself, you employed a bunch of paid professional mourners who'd tear their clothes, throw dust over their heads, and make that freaky shrieking noise called ululating. I can't do it so don't ask.

*If you weren't married by the time you were 9, you'd be seriously left on the shelf. You'd be some kind of embarassment if you hadn't had your first kid by the time you were 12.

*Mothers breastfed kids till they were 5. They'd be breastfed one day, and get a job the next.....kids would be employed (like proper jobs!) from about 5 in the fields, picking up grain.

*The pyramids were built without the wheel- that showed up about 1000 years later....people never think of that one....