The BBC has an article called ’10 Things’ which reports on 10 things that the world really did not know last week. And there are some doozies This week. From this list, the top three are the most interesting. For instance people added uranium ore to their water jugs in the 1920s as it was thought to improve health. It did exactly the oposite… As did Radium-brand toothpaste, condoms and shoe polish were sold as the word was indicative of quality, much as “platinum” is today – or at least it would have caused health problems if they had actually included radium. And in the UK, 48% of phone numbers are unlisted.

At least on the last point I am doing my thing to help the stats here in Oz. Because of the work I do I have three landline numbers (Outsourced Fax, Outsources VoIP and voice line), and about 7 SIM cards (2 x Telstra Prepaid to test SMS with at 1 cent per SMS; a vodafone GPRS card with unlimited usage, two Optus GPRS sim cards and two telstra ones… and my normal mobile). That makes 12 phone numbers assigned to me. Of those, only my landline and my mobile are listed. As for the others mobiles, apart from the two I use for SMS I would not have any idea of the actual numbers of the cards since they never have calls on them. Well the numbers are on the bills, but apart from that I do not use the numbers.

And in case you are wondering, Australia has a greater than 100% mobile penetration thanks to people like me who have GPRS devices… And this is only set to increase…