To many people Neil Gaiman is best known for the Sandman series of comics. Some would say the comics are his best work, and others prefer his telescripts or his writing for younger readers, but if you are looking at his novels written for adults, the... (read more)

Since your question was posted there have been two pieces of news about Steve Darcis. The first, and a shock to many, was that he beat Rafael Nadal in the first round of Wimbledon in June 2013. He defeated Nadal, the world no. 5 who would normally have... (read more)

If you have to write an invitation letter for an overseas visitor, you can find some very good advice in another answer on this site - please click here.... (read more)

In recent news, the US has finally been overtaken as the world's fattest nation by Mexico. This actually means the fattest major nation - there are some countries with very small (numerically) populations that have an even bigger weight problem, but they... (read more)

The National Basketball Association was founded on 6 June 1946, so it is now 67 years old. It was originally called the Basketball Association of America when it was founded in New York City, but changed its name to the National Basketball Association... (read more)

Lauryn Hill has just been sentenced to three months in prison for tax evasion. It seems that she is likely to serve the full term, and... (read more)

No, he hasn't done that yet, but he has had a very successful career. David Ferrer has been a professional player for 13 years and is now 31 years old, which would be quite a late age to win the Grand Slam now. That said, he has had a lot of successes... (read more)

A good source of information for questions like this is Ethnologue. This site has a huge database on language, and according to Ethnologue's figures Hebrew today has 5.3 million speakers in total. Most of these... (read more)

In 1999 Arabic was estimated to have about 206 native speakers (though by some other estimates the figure is much higher, nearer 280 million) and about 450 million speakers in total - this figure includes people who aren't fluent but have some knowledge... (read more)

David Beckham began his professional football career in early 1992, at the age of 17, so he has now been a professional football player for over 19 years. He started his career playing for Manchester United,... (read more)

If we take the figures from 2011 as an example, we can see that almost 17 million people chose to take a holiday outside Japan (these are figures only for people who used their passports, so we don't know how many people chose to holiday at home or which... (read more)

It is always best to try and find a childminder through personal recommendation, so ask everyone you know in the area who has children. If you are new to the area you may need to go through the more official channlels, and a good place to start is a government... (read more)

Siri is an app for Apple's iPhone 4S. It is best described as an intelligent virtual personal assistant and can also be called a knowledge navigator. It works as part of the phone, so you don't really need to know much to use it. When you turn on your... (read more)

The most recent advice from the UK Foreign Office is that it is best not to travel to most of Egypt unless you have to, and if you are there already to think about leaving. The advice doesn't cover all areas of the country; seaside resorts in the Red... (read more)

The original story that inspired Despicable Me was created by a writer called Sergio Pablos. However, the film, released in july 2010, was directed by Pierre Coffin, a French director with a background in animation, and Chris Renaud, who is also an illustrator... (read more)

The answer to that is everywhere - and nowhere. The fact is that you can see the Milky Way from everywhere on Earth, and you don't need a telescope although you will of course see... (read more)

In reflux, the milk that a baby has drunk comes back up into the oesophagus (sometimes called the food pipe) or the mouth, instead of staying in the stomach. Of course, adults can also have a similar problem after eating their food - this can be caled... (read more)

Nowadays Ubuntu is probably best known worldwide as the name of an operating system for PCs and laptops, developed in South Africa but used internationally. However, the name takes its origin from the word ubuntu, which comes from one of the Bantu languages... (read more)

NASA images which appear on the internet are mostly not copyrighted, which means that you can usually use them for non-commercial purposes without permission. You can link NASA material to your own website, use it for educational purposes etc, and this... (read more)

The Google Doodles are created and drawn by a team of illustrators and engineers that work for Google. The illustrators are known as Doodlers. Their names aren't usually made public, but in fact the original idea for Doodles goes back to the company founders,... (read more)