10 Things You Didn't Know Last Week

1. We should work three days a week and retire later – that’s the suggestion of Carlos Slim, the world's second richest man. The Mexican tycoon has called for a three-day working week, insisting that a shorter week, offset by longer hours and later retirement, would boost productivity and improve our quality of life. "People are going to have to work for more years, until they are 70 or 75, and just work three days a week - perhaps 11 hours a day," he said. The Times

2. Newly-declassified documents show the US military planned to install a listening station on the moon to facilitate spying. Project Horizon was dreamt up in 1959, years before the moon landings. They also hoped to test a nuclear bomb on the moon, even discussing the effects of radiation on alien life. Daily Mail

3. Robert Downey Jr has been named as the highest-paid actor in Hollywood for the second year running. The list, compiled by Forbes magazine, suggests the Iron Man star earned $75m (£43m) in the last 12 months. Second place on the list goes to Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, star of GI Joe. Daily Telegraph

4. Primary school children in England have such bad teeth that in the past year, nearly 26,000 have been admitted for extractions – more than for any other cause. In most cases, children have four to eight teeth removed, but up to 14 is not uncommon. Some families have only one toothbrush between them – or none. The Sunday Times

5. Newly-discovered dinosaur fossils in Russia suggest that our image of them as dry, scaly creatures is wrong: scientists now believe dinosaurs all started life with feathers, though some later shed them. Feathers have now been found in fossils in both China and Russia, suggesting they were universal. Metro

6. The perfect time to leave your teabag in a cup is 25 seconds, according to a taste expert. Martin Isark, who drank 400 cups of tea in 48 hours to reach his conclusion, says if the bag is left in any less than that the brew will lack flavor, but if it is left in any longer there will be “too much tannin, giving your tea a horrible stewed taste”. Daily Express

7. The BBC racked up a £25.6million bill for redundancy payments last year – despite attempts to tighten spending at the corporation. Even though there has been ‘steadily declining levels of severance pay, payments in some cases are still significant,’ a report found. There were 413 pay-outs in 2013/14 – but most were subject to a £150,000 cap. Daily Mail

8. Fewer children are smoking than ever before, new figures suggest. One in five 11 to 15-year-olds admits to trying cigarettes - the lowest since records began in 1982, the Health and Social Care Information Centre found. And their attitudes to drinking and taking illegal drugs are ‘considerably healthier’ than a decade ago, it said. The Observer

9. Today, the normal arrangement of human teeth is an overbite: our top layer of incisors hang over the bottom layer. What the orthodontist doesn’t tell you is that our jaws have only been like this for about 250 years. Before the fork we would have clamped chewy food between our incisors, wearing teeth down. Once we started cutting our food into morsels - from childhood onwards - our incisors kept growing. This change in teeth happened around 900 years earlier in China than in Europe. The reason? Chopsticks! Daily Telegraph

10. The amount of money raised by VAT for the UK Treasury in the 2013/14 tax year was £100bn. It’s a record amount – VAT now accounts for £1 in £5 of the tax take. Financial Times