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Friday facts...

Taking the title of this post literally:


The name Friday comes from the Old English frīgedæg, meaning the day of Frige the Old English form of Frigg, a West Germanic translation of Latin dies Veneris, "day (of the planet) Venus." 


Friday is the sixth day in countries that adopt a Sunday-first convention. In work-based customs, and in countries adopting Monday-first conventions, it is the fifth day of the week. In most countries with a five-day work week, Friday is the last workday before the weekend and is, therefore, viewed as a cause for celebration or relief. In recent years, in some offices, employees are allowed to wear less formal attire on Fridays, known as Casual Friday or Dress-Down Friday. In Saudi Arabia and Iran, however, Friday is the last day of the weekend and Saturday is the first workday. 

  • Good Friday is the Friday before Easter in the Christian calendar and it commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus;
  • Black Friday refers to any of the historical disasters that happened on Fridays;
  • POETS Day is a term used by workers in England and Australia to refer to Friday being the last day of the work week and commonly stands for ‘Piss Off Early Tomorrow’s Saturday’
Using the title of this post as an excuse to share some randomness courtesy of George's employment blawg :

This collection of interesting, but irrelevant facts, is certainly offbeat. I suppose these facts are really true, but I have not looked them up. Anyhow, try these out:

  • Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated
  • Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite
  • There are more chickens than people in the world
  • Almonds are a member of the peach family
  • There are only four words in the English language which end in “dous”: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
  • Al Capone’s card said he was a used furniture dealer
  • An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
  • A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds
  •  The name for OZ in the “Wizard of OZ” was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence “OZ”
  • A cat has 32 muscles in each ear
  • Winston Churchill was born in a ladies room during a dance
Need another excuse not to do any more work on this Friday afternoon but wanna look busy? Check out these fun facts about how some companies got their names like, did you know that Apple was named after the favourite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard. Apple wanted to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by other computer companies at the time.

And if you wanna know some really strange stuff about carrots like, that the fact that the average person (yip, me and you) will eat 10,866 carrots in their lifetime, check out  this blog post from a cool blog called Friday Facts.

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