Burns and the phone

Our web editor came out with a good fact last week.

The Simpsons character Mr Burns answers the phone by saying 'ahoy, hoy'. In the early days of the phone, there was much discussion about what the standard telephone greeting should be - and 'ahoy, hoy', or just 'ahoy', was proposed by inventor Alexander Graham Bell.

Of course the telephone greeting that eventually became standard is 'hello' – as proposed by another inventor, Thomas Edison.