Incas
Controversial archaeologist Barry Schliemann has once again caused an outcry with the outrageous claim that there is an undiscovered Inca settlement on the outskirts of Dudley. Critics have scornfully demanded to know why he thinks a lost outpost of a vanished South American people is likely to be found next to a an overgrown motorway slip road in the West Midlands, and in his defence Schliemann has pointed out that you can't get much more lost than that.
Grit, Jam and Fluff
Geoff Jeffreys has turned atomic theory on its head by throwing out the standard model of particle physics and replacing it with a scheme in which only three particles are needed - elements which he has named Grit, Jam and Fluff.
"When you come down to it, most things are made up of just grit and fluff," he tells us. "Of course, you can't see these with the naked eye. You can't even see it with the microscope that my aunt bought me for Christmas, but by taping a couple of magnifying glasses together and fixing them to the end of my brother's telescope I found that I was able to determine the very building blocks of matter itself. And it's just grit and fluff. Seriously.
"Okay, occasionally you might see a bit of jam in there if you're looking at something particularly exotic, like a wasp's nest or a bit of trifle, but mostly it's just the grit and the fluff. Makes sense really, because when you look at the universe - as I do from time to time - it's fairly obvious that the planets are all made of grit and the stars and supernovas and gas clouds and stuff are mostly fluff with bits of jam. Simple. Right, so where's my Nobel Prize?"
Missing Episodes Find
At an eagerly anticipated press conference, the BBC has announced that it has discovered 42 missing episodes of The News, dating from the 1960s. The episodes, which had been lost for almost 50 years, were in the very last place the BBC looked - because, hey, that's always the way, right kids?
History nerds are particularly excited about the find, as the programmes contain reports on Belgium's first expedition to Venus, the reanimation of Oliver Cromwell and Nottinghamshire County Council's declaration of war with Norway - events which many experts had previously disputed due to the lack of documentary evidence. One programme also contains a brief interview with the doctor who invented a cure for hiccups, and it is hoped that its rediscovery might mean relief at last for the many thousands of people who suffer from this debilitating and highly comical condition.
As one excitable geek put it, "This is perhaps the greatest discovery in the field of historical research since archaeologists recovered a woodcut of Henry VIII's biplane from the wreck of the Mary Rose."
Along with the recovered episodes, the BBC has also found Bruce Forsythe's first hairpiece, a series of highly incriminating pictures of Lord Reith, and the keys to Valerie Singleton.
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