// -- set up global variables var avail = new Array() var para = new Array() var isSpace i = n = 0 // -- Available items para[0] = '

There\'s more to Underground Paris than the Metro. A system of pipes 1,000km long, sends compressed air to homes and businesses — it serves many purposes, but it was built originally to operate clocks and elevators

' para[1] = '

Paris\' best known monument, The Eiffel Tower, was due to be demolished in 1909. It was saved by the fact that it carried an important radio telegraphy aerial.

' para[2] = '

Until 1836, the Red Flag Act required any self-propelled vehicle in Britain to be preceded by a man carrying a red flag, thereby limiting the speed to 4mph, the average speed of cars in London today.

' para[3] = '

London\'s Parliament Square hosted the world\'s first traffic lights, run on gas, to help MPs get out of the House of Commons. They exploded in 1869 but were repaired and continued for another 3 years.

' para[4] = '

The last German-built Volkswagen Beetle — designed in 1938 as The People\'s Car — rolled off the production line in Wolfsburg on Jan. 19, 1978. However, Beetle were being produced as late as July 2003 in Mexico.

' para[5] = '

The Anglo-French Concorde airliner made its first flight from Toulouse on March 2, 1969, "heralding a new era of supersonic passenger flight". Both Air France and British Airways now plan to scrap their Concorde fleets in October 2003

' para[6] = '

Dublin\'s oldest workhouse closed its doors for the last time in July 1969. Based in Smithfield, the premises housed 10,037 orphan children during the one hundred and seventy years it operated.

' para[7] = '

Before today\'s skyscrapers, London\'s skyline was largely the creation of a single man, Sir Christoper Wren (1632-1723), who had had only six months of architectural traing in Paris.

' para[8] = '

Royalties from the sales of Mein Kampf, the book in which Adolf Hitler laid out the racist and nationalist theories which lead to the death of millions in war and Holocaust, and the redrawing of the Europen landscape, are now paid by publishers Pimlico to a variety of Jewish charities

' // -- generate urls while ( i < 999 ) { // -- pick a number, any number ... var a = Math.round(Math.random() * 10) // -- Is the item a). available and b). an item at all ... if (avail[a] != 'no' && para[a] != null) { avail[a] = 'no' document.write ( para[a] ) // -- Does this require space between quotes? if (isSpace != null) { document.write ( '

' ) } // -- have we reached the display limit? if (n > displayTotal - 2) { // -- If yes, this fails out of the loop i = 1000 } n++ } i++ }