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France, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Greece, and Australia have always been in the modern Olympics since it began in 1896

The Olympic Games are considered to be the world’s foremost sports competition with more than 200 nations participating. The Olympic Games are held quadrennially, (every four years) with the Summer and Winter Games alternating, meaning they each occur every four years but two years apart. Their creation was inspired by the ancient Olympic Games, which were held in Olympia, Greece, from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD. BaronPierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894. The IOC is the governing body of the Olympic Movement, with the Olympic Charter defining its structure and authority.

The evolution of the Olympic Movement during the 20th and 21st centuries has resulted in several changes to the Olympic Games. Some of these adjustments include the creation of the Winter Games for ice and winter sports, the Paralympic Games for athletes with a disability, and the Youth Olympic Games for teenage athletes. The IOC has had to adapt to a variety of economic, political, and technological advancements. As a result, the Olympics shifted away from pure amateurism, as envisioned by Coubertin, to allow participation of professional athletes. The growing importance of mass media created the issue of corporate sponsorship and commercialization of the Games. World wars led to the cancellation of the 1916, 1940, and 1944 Games. Large boycotts during the Cold War limited participation in the 1980 and 1984 Games.

In the 1600s girls in London were attacked by 2 guys who would spank them with a rod, shout "Spanko!" and run away

Two sexual attackers in London and the nearby village of Hackney were known as ”Whipping Tom“. Both would attack women walking alone and beat them on the buttocks.

While there is some evidence that an earlier attacker in around 1672 was also nicknamed “Whipping Tom” and carried out similar attacks on women, the earliest recorded attacker of this nature was active in central London in 1681. He would approach unaccompanied women in alleys and courtyards and spank them on the buttocks, before fleeing. The inability of the authorities to apprehend the offender caused complaints about the ineffectiveness of London’s constabulary, and prompted vigilante patrols in the affected areas. A local haberdasherand his accomplice were captured and tried for the attacks.

A second attacker nicknamed “Whipping Tom” was active in late 1712 in Hackney, then a rural village outside London. This attacker would approach lone women in the countryside, and beat them on the buttocks with a birch rod. Around 70 attacks were carried out before a local man named Thomas Wallis was captured and confessed to the attacks.

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In some countries, octopuses surgeries may not be performed without anaesthesia.

In some countries, octopuses are on the list of experimental animals on which surgery may not be performed without anesthesia. In the UK, until 2013, the common octopus, (Octopus vulgaris), was the only invertebrate protected under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 extending to them protections not normally afforded to invertebrates. In 2013, this legislation was extended to include all cephalopods.

Octopuses are highly intelligent, possibly more so than any other order of invertebrates. The exact extent of their intelligence and learning capability is much debated among biologists, but maze and problem-solving experiments have shown evidence of a memory system that can store both short- and long-term memory. It is not known precisely what contribution learning makes to adult octopus behavior. Young octopuses learn almost no behaviors from their parents, with whom they have very little contact.

An octopus has a highly complex nervous system, only part of which is localized in its brain. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neuronsare found in the nerve cords of its arms, which have limited functional autonomy. Octopus arms show a variety of complex reflexactions that persist even when they have no input from the brain. Unlike vertebrates, the complex motor skills of octopuses are not organized in their brain using an internal somatotopic map of its body, instead using a nonsomatotopic system unique to large-brained invertebrates. Some octopuses, such as the mimic octopus, will move their arms in ways that emulate the shape and movements of other sea creatures.

In laboratory experiments, octopuses can be readily trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns. They have been reported to practice observational learning, although the validity of these findings is widely contested on a number of grounds. Octopuses have also been observed in what some have described as play: repeatedly releasing bottles or toys into a circular current in their aquariums and then catching them. Octopuses often break out of their aquariums and sometimes into others in search of food. They have even boarded fishing boats and opened holds to eat crabs.

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A 41-gun salute is the traditional salute to a royal birth in Great Britain.

The number of rounds fired in a salute depends on the place and occasion. The basic salutes are 21 rounds. In Hyde Park and Green Park an extra 20 rounds are added because they are Royal Parks. At the Tower of London 62 rounds are fired on royal anniversaries (the basic 21, plus a further 20 because the Tower is a Royal Palace and Fortress, plus another 21 ‘for the City of London’) and 41 on other occasions. The Tower of Londonprobably holds the record for the most rounds fired in a single salute — 124 are fired whenever the Duke of Edinburgh’s birthday (62 rounds) coincides with the Saturday designated as the Queen’s official birthday (also 62 rounds).

From 2016, the £5 note will feature Winston Churchill face

He was a British politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist. He is the only British Prime Minister in history to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was also the first person to be made an Honorary Citizen of the United States.