Ask Mr Brain...all will be explained

Where did Teddy bears get their name from? Teddy bears were named after a president of the United States. In November 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt was hunting in Mississippi. Some of his group caught a bear and tied it to a tree.

However, Mr Roosevelt thought this was most unsporting and refused to shoot the bear. The following day the Washington Post published a cartoon of the incident, which aroused public interest.

Capitalising on this interest, New York shopkeeper Morris Michtom displayed two toy bears - made by his wife Rose - in the window of his shop. Mr Michtom asked the president for permission to call them 'Teddy's bears', 'Teddy' being short for 'Theodore'. The president agreed and the bears were a great success.

Does Atlantis exist? LESANDA Maryknoll Convent School Ever since the Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 BC) told the tale of an ancient harmonious and advanced civilisation which sank beneath the waves, people have debated whether such a place ever existed.

Some say Plato simply invented Atlantis to make a point in one of his philosophical discussions. Others say the legend might be based on the real destruction of a Mediterranean island close to present-day Crete. The island was destroyed by volcanic activity in 1500 BC.

Nowadays, however, you can almost pick any place in the world and find someone who claims to have discovered evidence of the lost civilisation of Atlantis. The East Indies, Egypt, the Azores, Britain, the Mediterranean, the Antarctic and, closer to home,, Indonesia have all been claimed as the site of Atlantis. A lot of 'research' on Atlantis is accompanied by bizarre and totally baseless claims that Atlantis was the cradle of world civilisation, religion, technology, philosophy, and so on.