The ten things you never knew about…..sheep

My co-worker recently came back from London and brought me back a copy of the Daily Express.  In it was the following article, published on May 24, 2010:

Ten Things you never knew about…sheep
William Hartston

On May 24, 1830, exactly 180 years ago today, Sarah Josepha Hale published her poem Mary Had A Little Lamb

1. The poem is based on a real incident in which an American girl called Mary Sawyer caused a commotion by taking her pet lamb to school
2. There are 200 mentions of sheep and 188 of lambs in the Bible, making them by far the most frequently mentioned animal.
3. Until 1818 in Britain, you could be hanged for the crime of sheep-stealing
4. Research shows that a sheep can remember the faces of 50 other sheep for more than two years
5. It is untrue that there is no English word that rhymes with ‘silver’: a chilver is a ewe-lamb.
6. Half-a-gallon of diesel fuel can be made from the fat of an average lamb.  In 1986, a test fleet of 40 New Zealand lorries averaged 10 miles per lamb.
7. On July 22, 1918, in the Wasatch National Park in Utah, 504 sheep were killed by lightning.
8. At a dinner served in honour of the King of France, Henry VIII once served a feast including 2,000 fish, 1,000 sheep and a dolphin.
9. There are about 13 sheep for every person in New Zealand but in the Falkland Islands there around 300 times as many sheep as people.
10. The dwarf blue sheep is found only in Tibet

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