Still around.
Sorry - Very busy at a Customer site. Will have limited access to the grid for a while, but thanks - I appreciate the concern. Keep up the good work keeping the Team thread alive!!

I have been lurking due to work requirements and a short week next week. Labour Day really makes life interesting when your faced with time constraints.


Meanwhile lets keep crunching.....

It's back to school time, after the summer break, here in England.

To celebrate, today's COCONUT facts are for children to enlighten their teacher..

26 Coconuts are brown and hairy.

27 Coconuts are roundish.

28 Coconuts are heavy, no not drop them on your toes.

29 The correct way to open a coconut is to ask a grown up. Do not drop them from a height, (the coconuts!)

30 Quote this to your teacher he/she will be most impressed.

" The 2001 Ig Nobel prize for medicine was awarded to Peter Barss for his study of "injuries due to falling coconuts". Barss carried out his study after noticing that a full 2.5% of trauma admissions to his hospital in Papua New Guinea were coconut-related (1984 Journal of Trauma 21 990-1). Coconuts can weigh as much as 4 kg and are formidable projectiles when they fall from treetops. Some victims, sustaining a force to the head of 100N, have required craniotomy, while others have died. Quite a few of the victims were highlanders, who had little experience with coconut palms and had chosen to sleep beneath the pleasant looking palms while visiting relatives on the coast." So never sit or sleep under a coconut palm.

Watch out for tomorrow's thrilling COCONUT facts

Thought i,de drop in and say hello and see what the crunchmasters are up to. Now i am much better coconut informed. Cheers to all on your team Rob, stormin, Gotham...

Inspired by pond scum's recent post the first three COCONUT facts are...

The COCONUT at WAR

31 Lieutenant, Junior Grade, John F Kennedy captained the PT109, a small, but fast Patrol Torpedo (PT) boat during World War II. He and his crew supported the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in holding back the Japenese in their conquest through the South Pacific Islands.

In 1943 the PT109 was destroyed by the Japenese destroyer, Amagiri. Kennedy's crew made it to a near by island where Kennedy scratched a message into a coconut husk that brought their rescue. A Purple Heart was given to Kennedy for his heroism in the rescue of his crew. History does not record what happened to the coconut.

32 The water obtained from immature coconuts contains sugars and is sterile. It is said that fields surgeons in World War II used coconut water when supplies of interveinal glocose solution ran out. The antiviral properties of coconut water was also used in the treatment of abscesses and dysentery.

33 On December 17th, 1944 Lt. Hiroo Onoda of the Japenese army left for the Philippines. Here, Onoda was given orders by Major Yoshimi Taniguchi and Major Takahashi. Onoda was ordered to lead the Lubang Garrison in guerrilla warefare. As Onoda and his comrades were getting ready to leave on their mission, they stopped by to report to the division commander. The division commander ordered: " You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand. It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens we'll come back for you. Until then, so long as you have one soldier, you are to continue to lead him. You may have to live on coconuts. If that's the case, live on Coconuts". Onoda took these words more literally and seriously than the division commander could have realised.

In 1944 Onoda and his men wre sent to the remote island of Lubang. Unfortunately he was never offically told the war ended in 1945: so for 29 years, Onoda continued to live in the jungle, ready for when his country would again need his services. Eating Coconuts and bananas and deftly evading search parties he believed were enemy scouts, Onoda finally emerged from the jungle on March 19, 1972!

34 The wood from the coconut palm is known as Porcupine Wood. It is a very hard and dense wood and is used to make fruniture.

35 Hawaiian islanders hollowed out the trunk of the coconut palm to make a drum, a container and even a small canoe.

In tomorrow's thrilling instalment, how to make a toothbrush from the coconut!