Sports Calendar

Lee Illis, Hon Emeritus Consultant Neurologist, Southampton University Hospitals

The hypnagogic contracture is not well understood. One theory is that the muscles relax at the onset of sleep, but because the brain is not yet fully unconscious it can misinterpret this as the same feeling as when falling. Hence the reflex attempt to counteract the perceived fall by tensing the muscles and the accompanying sensation that the sleeper is falling/tripping up in their dreamlike state.

Godfrey Manning, Middlesex

Questions

How and when did the colours red and blue become attributed to the US Republican and Democratic parties, and how did it come about that the more conservative party is red?

Michael Wright, London

What would happen if it really did rain for 40 days and 40 nights?

Alfie Noakes, Kennet & Avon Canal

He’s “all mouth and trowsers”. Where does that come from?

David Wright, Derby

Why do animals have vastly superior strength than humans?

Richard Wakeford, Braunton, Devon

Why, for no obvious reason, does the English term for a place change? Holland has become known as the Netherlands. Recently we were instructed that Bombay was “wrong”, and it is Mumbai. Who makes the rules?

Roger Sansom, Hainault, Essex

Do Germans commemorate Armistice Day in the same way that the British do? Or do they have an equivalent day of remembrance?

Simon Cheadle

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