I say potato You say potato

2008: The Year of the Potato
In 2008 the United Nations declared it the International Year of the Potato. The main aim of the year was to note "that the potato is a staple food in the diet of the world's population" and "revive public awareness of the relationship that exists between poverty, food security, malnutrition and the potential contribution of the potato to defeating hunger"

• In 2007 China was the worlds top potato producer, supplying the world with over 72 million tonnes of potatoes
• Per person, Europeans ate 87.8kg of potatoes in 2005
• The top potato consumers in Europe were the Russians eating over 18 million tonnes, not even closely followed by the Ukrainians and the United Kingdom, each consuming a mere 6 million tonnes.

Potato or Potatoe
In 1994 Vice-President of the USA, Dan Qualye, visited Munoz Rivera Elementary School in Trenton, New Jersey for a Spelling Bee. 12-year old student William Figueroa was at the board and was given the word potato, which he spelled correctly. However, Quayle didn't agree and told the boy "Add one little bit on the end... Think of 'potato', how's it spelled? You're right phonetically, but what else...? There ya' go... all right!", reluctantly the poor kid added an 'e', and Dan Quayle has never been allowed to forget.

Pocket Warmers
“In cold temperatures batteries lose their power quickly so it’s a good idea to carry extra. In order to keep your spare[s] from draining in a cold camera bag, use an old trick for keeping warm in the cold. Put a hot foil-wrapped baked potato in your pocket. It will keep your spare batteries warm, give your trigger finger a place to warm up and after you’ve been out shooting in the cold for a while, you’ll have a nutritious snack.”

This is a terrible bit of advice for a few different reasons. It is true that batteries do not produce as much current in colder temperatures so keeping them warm can help them last longer. However, keeping a battery in your pocket next to aluminium foil could cause the battery to short circuit, and shorting a lithium ion battery can result in a nasty fire or explosion...which would be very undesirable in your pocket!

Also baked potatoes that have been wrapped in foil have been linked to cases of botulism. Clostridium botulinum spores can survive the baking process and the foil wrap seals the potato preventing oxygen from being present. In this environment, and at the right temperature, spores on the potato can germinate and grow - producing their deadly toxin.

Potatoes in Space
The first food to be grown in space was a potato. Tiny seed potatoes, called minitubers, were sent aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia to see how they would grow in the microgravity environment of space and control set of minitubers was grown at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Both sets of plants grew similar amounts of roots but those on the space shuttle were considerably longer.

School children from Devon dressed a potato up as Father Christmas, placed him into Spudnik2, tied it to a helium weather balloon, attached a camera and launched it from a local car park. It reached over 90,000ft, before the balloon expanded and burst and fell back to earth in Hampshire, some 140 miles away. The project – which carried the catchline ''one small step for spud, one giant leap for spudkind'' – was given the name Spudnik2 after the first mission – Spudnik1 – failed.