Eggs have long represented creation and rebirth in many ancient cultures, largely because so many living creatures - from reptiles to birds to humans - begin life in or from an egg.
Place an egg in water - if it sinks, it's fresh; if it floats, it's stale. This is due to air building up inside the shell as the egg ages.
Dinosaurs laid the largest eggs ever found - one discovered in China in the 1990s measured 60 cm long and 20 cm wide. Among living species, ostriches lay the largest eggs, up to 15 cm long and nearly 1.5 kg - around 20 times heavier than a chicken egg.
The British Member of Parliament MP Edwina "Eggwina" Currie made a claim in 1988 that most British eggs were contaminated with salmonella. This caused a 60% decline in egg sales. 400 million eggs needed to be destroyed and 4 million hens slaughtered to stop them laying any more. The British government paid out millions in compensation.
A decade later, TV chef Delia Smith taught Britain how to boil an egg on her show How to Cook. Egg sales spiked, proving the nation's appetite could be restored with a little kitchen confidence.
Eggs that you eat are laid by hens (female chickens). Egg-laying hens are bred specifically for their productivity, but male chicks born to these hens are typically culled within a day as they aren't needed - a practice still common in the industry, though animal welfare campaigns have pushed for alternatives, like in-egg sexing or male chick rearing in some countries.
There is a place in Switzerland called Egg with a population of just under 8000 people. There is another town called Egg in Austria with a population of just under 3500 people. In the Bahamas there is Egg Island. Residing on the island are chickens owned by residents of other islands who visit Egg Island to collect the eggs of their chickens
Ostriches can lay one egg every two days from mid-March to mid-August
In the 1950s, eggs were advertised on British TV by comedian Tony Hancock. The famous campaign, and its slogan, "Go To Work On An Egg," promoted the affordability and health benefits of eating eggs for breakfast each morning. An attempt by the British Egg Information Service (there's an egg information service?!) to rebroadcast the commercials in 2007 was declined by advertising regulators because they didn't promote a varied diet! You can watch these dangerous commercials here!
The first ever cover star on The Beano, Britain's longest running comic, was Big Eggo, on ostrich. Other famous(ish) eggs include Dizzy from a series of video games of the 1980s and 1990s, Chuckie Egg from 1980s home computers, and of course, Humpty Dumpty. Well, people assume he's an egg! The nursery rhyme never actually mentions that he is. There is also The Instagram Egg (2019), a stock photo of an egg posted by @world_record_egg, which became the most-liked Instagram post ever, surpassing Kylie Jenner's baby photo. It now has over 55 million likes.
