IN a year of political shocks it may come as no surprise that Oxford Dictionaries has decided that 'post-truth' (an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals) is their 2016 international word of the year.

The BBC reports Oxford Dictionaries' spokesman Casper Grathwohl as saying that post-truth could become “one of the defining words of our time”.

He commented: “Fuelled by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment, post-truth as a concept has been finding its linguistic footing for some time.”

SCIENTISTS were delighted to be handed the biggest earthworm ever found in Britain before deciding to kill it!

An article in The Independent says that the earthworm, which was 40cm long and weighed 26g, was discovered in a vegetable patch by Paul Rees from Widnes whose stepson named it 'Dave.'

Scientists killed it so that 'Dave' can be preserved.

Natural History Museum scientist Emma Sherlock, who chairs the Earthworm Society of Britain, said: “Not only is it really long, it is almost twice as heavy as any other wild earthworm ever seen, weighing the same as a small chocolate bar.”

APPARENTLY the odds on this are a quintillion to one, so John Landy certainly had a surprise when he opened a box of 10 eggs to find that they all had double yolks.

He bought them during a visit to a supermarket near his home in Wigan, Lancashire.

John told the Daily Mirror: “When I got one double yolk, I was quite surprised because I had never see one before. I opened another one and that was one. We were having four eggs and they were all double yolkers. I decided to open the rest of the eggs and they were all double yolks.”

I wonder what the odds on this happening are:  A couple who disobeyed their parents to marry in Scotland 60 years ago have accidentally bought back the motorbike they eloped on, and reports the Daily Mail, the machine still had their love note in the engine.

Teenagers Jean and Bob Smith were married in secret at Gretna Green in 1956 because their parents considered them too young to wed and made the two-day 600 mile journey from their home in Cornwall on a 1947 Royal Enfield Flying Flea motorbike.

Jean and Bob had to sell the bike a few years later to cover bills but when 79 year old Bob recently spotted a similar model at a vintage rally he decided to buy it for old time's sake.

And when he repaired the crank shaft, he found the long forgotten note.

The BBC tells us that around 25,000 daffodil and bluebell bulbs are being planted at English Heritage gardens, including Queen Victoria's former home Osborne House, in Isle of Wight, because the flowers are under threat from hybrids and non-native species such as the Spanish bluebell.

John Watkins, head of gardens and landscapes at English Heritage, said: “Our native species and historic cultivars are increasingly under threat from cross-pollination with non-native species and hybrids that flower at the same time.”

He added: “The resulting offspring will be hybrids and likely to outperform and out-compete the native species. Historic gardens and landscapes are often the last refuge for ancient cultivars and native species.”

PONIES are definitely top dogs on the Scottish island of Foula: The Independent reports that there are 50 Shetland ponies to every one person on Foula, which lies off the north-eastern coast of Scotland.

Foula, which only has 38 human inhabitants, is where the Shetland breed originates from and the ponies are said to have lived there since the Bronze Age.