The boom in the Pacific Ocean, seen here off San Francisco, is designed to catch plastic (Image: THE OCEAN CLEANUP)
Q: How large is the boom that has recently been placed in the Pacific Ocean to pick up excess plastic? And, dare I ask, is it made of plastic?
Chris Schuman, Reading, Berkshire
A: The giant Pacific Ocean plastic catcher designed by the Dutchman Boyan Slat is 600 metres (2,000 feet) long but is only the first of 60 such cleanup booms. The original plan was for one boom six miles long. It is made of vulcanised rubber and the prototype was named Boomy McBoomface.
Q: Growing up in the 1950s, I recall a woman known as Sabrina who was on TV and turned up at many events and fetes, rather like an early version of Katie Price. Can you tell me what happened to her?
Clive Hope, Walsall, West Midlands
A: Sabrina whose real name was Norma Ann Sykes, was a model in the 1950s whose 42-19-36 figure led to her being cast as a glamorous sidekick to Arthur Askey in his Before Your Very Eyes comedy series in 1955-56 and also appeared with Hughie Green on Double Your Money. The BBC called her “the bosomy blonde who didn’t talk,” though she did utter a few lines. Her appearance in a nonspeaking role in Blue Murder At St Trinian’s (1957) confirmed her typecasting as a dumb blonde, by all accounts she was tough but far from dumb.
She married a Hollywood gynaecologist in 1967 but they divorced 10 years later. She died in 2016 aged 80.
Q: Why is the number 20 known as a “score”, and what are the origins of this?
David Garbutt, by email
A: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the use of “score” to mean 20 dates back to the Middle Ages and comes from the practice of counting herds of sheep or cattle – “counting orally from 1 to 20 and making a ‘score’ or notch on a stick before proceeding to count the next 20”. The French must have had a similar practice resulting in their word for 80 being “quatre-vingts” (four twenties).
Q: Is there any record of who or even what type of person was employed to act as headsman/ executioner in executions of prominent condemned persons at the Tower of London in Tudor times? I’m thinking especially of Lady Jane Grey, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell and many others. Surely this wasn’t a task that could be entrusted to just anybody. A well-known exception is of course the swordsman of Calais who dispatched Anne Boleyn.
Denis Duffy, Palmerston North, New Zealand
Sabrina born Norma Ann Sykes was an English glamour model and actress (Image: ALAMY)
A: The names of the executioners were generally kept secret including, I think, in all the cases you mention. We do not even know the name of the “Swordsman of Calais” who was selected to behead Anne Boleyn with a sword instead of the usual axe.
Details of the executioners we do know of that period, however, suggest that no special skills were required other than the desire to lop off someone’s head. The most famous executioner was Jack Ketch, a bloodthirsty rogue who took the job of executioner to avoid being transported to Australia.
Some of his executions took many blows with a blunt axe to sever the head and he was known to take bribes from both the condemned man and his enemies to make the suffering less or more. When he was later sent to prison for “affronting a sheriff” his post as executioner was taken by his deputy Paskah Rose but Ketch was brought back to execute Rose after the latter was convicted of robbery. Both men died in 1686 – Rose before Ketch obviously!
English executioner Jack Ketch, who was notorious for his incompetent execution technique (Image: GETTY)
Q: Will the Dukedom of Cambridge become extinct? I’m wondering what will become of it when Prince William becomes Prince of Wales. Will it remain a subordinate title of his, pass to Prince George, or vanish? When William becomes King and George becomes Prince of Wales, does it go back in the pot, ready to be bestowed by the Crown on someone else?
Matthew Jones, Maidenhead, Berkshire
A: William is not only Duke of Cambridge but also Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus. He will keep these titles for life or until he inherits the throne, when the titles would merge with the Crown and would then be available to be given to someone else.
The rules for the Duchy of Cornwall are even more convoluted: this Dukedom goes to the eldest living son of the monarch who is also the heir apparent, so if Prince Charles dies before the Queen, the heir apparent would be William, who would not become Duke of Cornwall as he would not be a son of the monarch. The title would then merge with the Crown as happened when George II was succeeded by his grandson, George III.
Prince William is the Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn and Baron of Carrickfergus (Image: GETTY)
Q:How are the cyclists in the big races such as the Tour de France timed to the last second?
Joan Hunt, Great Barr, Birmingham
A: Photo cells are used on the starting line of each stage to give a signal to start the clock with the same start time given for all riders on mass starts. This may be used to measure intermediate times wherever needed. Every bike is equipped with a small chip, a transponder, that enables each rider to be identified as he crosses intermediate time checks and the finish line. Photo-finish cameras complete the job measuring not just to the second but to the hundredth or even thousandth of a second.
Q: Why does men’s hair go grey while their eyebrows stay black?
Mrs JM Ward, Chester
A man with grey hair and dark eyebrows (Image: GETTY)
A: This doesn’t always happen but when it does there seem to be three main reasons: First, both the hairs and follicles in eyebrows and on the head differ in several ways: head hairs are thinner with thinner roots than eyebrows, while eyebrow hair also takes longer to shed.
This may contribute to favour eyebrow hair in the production and transmission of the melanin that gives hair its colour. Second, eyebrow hair is also thicker and grows from wider follicles than head hair. This may also have a role in melanin production as well as explaining why eyebrows grow bushier with age while head hairs may fall out.
Finally, research suggests hydrogen peroxide in hair cells may bleach hairs or halt melanin production. An enzyme called catalase breaks down hydrogen peroxide but the production of this enzyme slows as we age. Whether it slows more in the head than in the eyebrows is unclear. Our nose hairs, incidentally, usually go grey first.
