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COPYRIGHT

Fourth Estate

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First published in paperback 1997

Copyright © Jenny Paschall and Ron Lyon 1997

Jenny Paschall and Ron Lyon assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006388159

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2016 ISBN: 9780008192099

Version: 2016-06-07

DEDICATION

WITH LOVE

TO CAMERON STEPHANIE LYON

Hatched on 14th August 1996

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Hatches

Matches

Dispatches

About the Publisher

HATCHES
Confusion – 1 Science – 0

IF the number of humans on planet Earth were to continue to increase at the current rate, by the year 3530 the total weight of all the living human bodies would equal the mass of the earth itself. Given the same rate of population expansion, by the year 6826, the total mass of humanity would equal the size of the entire known universe.

ON the other hand, Danish researchers have found that men’s average sperm count has almost halved over the past fifty years, and that semen quantity has decreased by almost twenty-five per cent. Similar results are being found in tests being conducted in other parts of the world. So far, no one has been able to identify the cause. Scientists are concerned that if this trend continues, it could lead ultimately to a sterile population.

PERHAPS man’s diminishing fertility is caused by his first love, the car.

Driving for more than three hours a day can reduce a man’s fertility. Scientists have discovered that driving a car and sitting in traffic jams, especially whilst wearing tight-fitting clothes and underpants, causes overheating of the testes, which reduces the output of sperm.

HOWEVER, it seems that if a good part of a man’s day is spent overheating his testes, he may be able to counteract the problem by drinking plenty of coffee. According to doctors at New York University Medical School, the caffeine in coffee prolongs the life span of male sperm and keeps them moving.

Eggcentric Tales

ALL the female eggs needed to produce the next generation of the human race can be contained within the shell of one chicken’s egg.

IN 1982 Lee Perry, a female Harvard university professor, sued Dr Richard Atkinson, chancellor of the University of California at San Diego, because he refused to make her pregnant. She volunteered to abandon the case in exchange for Dr Atkinson’s sperm.

ACCORDING to research in Norway, eggs are an aphrodisiac. In a study of men with low libidos, it was found that eighty-four per cent felt an increase in sexual desire after being treated with an extract from fertilized chickens’ eggs. Soft lights, music, wine and … scrambled eggs? We’ll stick with oysters!

WHEN a 5,000-year-old man was found preserved in ice in the Alps, researchers at Austria’s Innsbruck University were inundated with calls from women who wanted to be artificially inseminated with the sperm of the original Mr Cool.

IN 1863, during the United States Civil War, a woman was artificially inseminated by a bullet. While watching a battle from her front porch, with her mother and sister, this young lady was wounded in the abdomen by a stray bullet, which had already hit a soldier in his scrotum.

Both the soldier and the girl recovered. Nine months later, the girl delivered a baby boy, who closely resembled the young soldier. The surgeon who treated them both, Captain L. G. Capers, hypothesized that the bullet that struck the soldier carried the sperm into the young woman’s uterus, thereby causing her to conceive. Following this discovery, the soldier and the young woman were formally introduced, fell in love and married. They had two more children, using less dramatic methods of conception.

ANOTHER unusual long-distance conception occurred in Sydney, Australia in 1969, when a fifteen-year-old school-girl claimed she had become pregnant after swimming in a public pool. Doctors confirmed the pregnant girl was a virgin, and the courts ruled that she had been impregnated by sperm in the swimming pool water.

ACCORDING to the World Health Organization, the sex act takes place at least 100 million times a day. This figure was computed by multiplying the world birth rate by the accepted estimate of the number of times sex does not result in conception.

THE largest cell in the human body is the female ovum, and the smallest is the male sperm. One egg cell weighs the same as 175,000 sperm.

To Be or Not To Be

THERE are 75 million volunteer workers on the China Family Planning Association.

A 1983 study showed that half of all pregnancies are mistakes.

ONE of the earliest methods of contraception, found on Egyptian papyrus dating from approximately 1850 BC, was a mixture of honey, soda, crocodile excrement, and some kind of gum, inserted into the vagina. It is uncertain whether it was supposed to kill sperm, or just destroy the man’s urge to proceed!

THE first contraceptive diaphragms were citrus rinds.

JULIUS Caesar was so worried about the falling population of Rome, that he offered rewards to Romans for producing numerous children. Conversely, he punished childless women, by forbidding them to ride in carriages or wear jewellery.

UNTIL the beginning of the twentieth century, it was customary for a Muslim peasant woman in Upper Egypt to terminate an unwanted pregnancy by lying face down between railway tracks until a train came and passed over her. Conversely, women who had difficulty conceiving would lie on their backs in the belief that as the train passed over them, they would be impregnated. Trains were also thought to represent fertility in India, where women trying to conceive would rush to the tracks as a train approached. As the train rushed past, they would lift their skirts in the hope of being made pregnant.

LOVE may be blind, but it’s not heat resistant. The lowest number of babies are born in April and May because temperatures in July and August are too hot for romance. The peak months for births are August and September. In heat wave years, the birth rate drops even more dramatically than the average April and May figures.

THE human female is the only animal capable of constant sexual arousal and is physically capable of making love every day of her adult life.

CASANOVA, one of the world’s greatest lovers, boasted that England was the most sexually wild country. He also claimed he preferred to use British condoms.

DAN Patrick, general manager of Houston radio station KSEV, broadcast his regular morning talk show while undergoing a vasectomy.

When the show’s producer said ‘Cut!’ – he really meant it!

IN the Yanomamo tribe, who live in Brazilian rain forests, a woman could kill her female babies until she gave birth to a son. Once she had borne a son, she could kill any further unwanted children.

IF music be the food of love … then why not try the singing condom? Invented by Hungarian Ferenc Kovacs, it begins to play immediately the condom is unrolled. The discerning user can choose one of two tunes: ‘You Sweet Little Dumbbell’, or ‘Arise Ye Worker’.