As of January 2012, Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities was top of the list not only of his own books, but of the best-selling books of all time. This may be a... (read more)

The last house Charles Dickens lived in was Gads Hill Place (sometimes spelt Gadshill or Gad's Hill) in the village of Higham near Rochester, Kent. The house is now the site of an independent school, and the full address can be found here.... (read more)

The honest answer is that nobody knows for sure. There is some evidence that, overall, being right-handed may give an advantage - left-handedness can be associated with difficulties in learning to speak and even with some types of mental illness - but... (read more)

The director is Juan Antonio Bayona, a Spanish (Catalan) director who studied directing at a Catalonian film school. He has made several movies, but before The Impossible he was most famous for The Orphanage, a Spanish language horror film made in 2007.... (read more)

Yes, this film is based on the experiences of a Spanish family who were caught in the terrible tsunami that began on 26 December 2004. How closely the film follows the experiences of this family is not sure, as they don't seem to have been publicly interviewed... (read more)

There is no set length overall, but where a time is given, two hours is fairly typical. However, this can vary a lot; many authors, especially if they are less well known, will just stay for as long as there are still people queuing up to have their books... (read more)

Perhaps the best known Hindi word beginning with A, and widely used in other languages, is 'avatar'. This comes from the Sanskrit avatara, which was used to refer to different gods in Hinduism and then came to be associated with the idea of 'incarnation'... (read more)

A number of locations were planned for the new James Bond film, including South Africa, India and Japan. However, there were various difficulties involving cost and permissions,... (read more)

In Mexico, and several other Latin American countries, this day is known as Dias de la Raza, or Day of the Race. Rather than being about the achievements of a single... (read more)

Columbus Day is held on 12 October to commemmorate the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas on that day in 1492. It is known by this name mainly in the US, where... (read more)

These two clubs have been playing against each other since 1902, so they have obviously played many matches - in fact a match between Real Madrid and Barcelona has its own name, being referred to as 'El Classico'. Now that the term is used for every match,... (read more)

The word 'labrador' is Spanish in origin and actually means 'worker', especially a manual worker. It comes from the Latin word 'labore' meaing work. The English word 'labour' has a broadly similar meaning, and you can see these Latin origins in other... (read more)

Yes, there is a module called 'who's viewed my profile'. However, if you just open a basic free account and don't do anything with the settings, you won't automatically receive this information. This is because your privacy settings are set to anonymous... (read more)

He is the reigning world champion, having won in 2010 and 2011, so there is every possibility that he will. He is also leading in the 2012... (read more)

This is a French word and refers to a thin strip of food, usually chicken or fish, coated in breadcrumbs and fried. In French the word means 'gudgeon', which means either a small fish often used as bait, or a type of pivot with another object swinging... (read more)

Maybe because it has a bit of everything - adventure, humour, romance, suspense... It's perfectly understandable to children but the humour appeals to adults - so many films classed as 'family entertainment' are really just films for children, but this... (read more)

It can be difficult, because boys (and girls, very often) in their teens don't have a lot of social skills, and will sometimes be unfriendly or even rude while trying to appear as if they don't care. This poem sums it up exactly: I... (read more)

Yes, there are. It may not feel like it, because extreme shyness isn't a nice feeling for the person who has it, but from the point of view of others - and therefore, of your own popularity - it has a lot of positives. If you are shy and accept it - ie,... (read more)

If you mean part-time jobs for teenagers still at school, in the 1990s it was about 40%, but in the last few years it has dropped dramatically and is now... (read more)

This is a question many scientists have tried to answer. Handedness itself is quite an odd phenomenon - most of our nearest relatives, such as chimpanzees, show no preference for one hand over the other (though in certain groups there is a bias, again... (read more)