A QUITE INTERESTING BOOK

1,339 QI FACTS

TO MAKE YOUR JAW DROP

Compiled by

John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

& James Harkin

with the QI Elves

Anne Miller, Andrew Hunter Murray,

Anna Ptaszynski & Alex Bell

Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Epigraph

1,339 Facts

A Note on Sources

Index

About the Authors

By the Same Authors

Copyright

Introduction

Truth is the daughter of search.

ARABIC PROVERB

When we came to write our first volume of facts – 1,227 Quite Interesting Facts To Blow Your Socks Off – we set ourselves the modest goal of producing 1,000 nuggets of information that seemed to us unforgettable. We pooled ten years of extraordinary comparisons (there are 1,000 times as many bacteria in your gut as there are stars in the Milky Way); astonishing statistics (a single male produces enough sperm in two weeks to impregnate every fertile woman on the planet); unexpected truths (the Bible is the most shoplifted book in America) and memorable absurdities (Richard Gere’s middle name is Tiffany), and then counted up what we had. It turned out we had a file of 1,227 facts, which seemed both more interesting and more appropriate than the 1,000 we’d originally targeted.

In the course of editing and arranging that material we discovered something surprising: the facts seemed to have a mind of their own. Far from being inert pieces of trivia, they behaved much more like molecules, bristling with energy and a desire to form strong attractions with other facts to make longer and more meaningful sequences. All we had to do was keep trying the best combinations.

As well as being deeply satisfying, this process of fact-matching also meant we needed to create a much deeper pool of truth in which to dip our editorial spoon. And before we’d finished, we realised that the new pile of strange and wonderful facts we hadn’t been able to sequence was already forming the core of a new book.

We always tell our researchers that to find the best stuff, all you have to do is to look longer and more closely. That has been our guiding principle in compiling this second volume. Once you are in the Fact Zone, everywhere you look, astonishing new facts seem to wave and demand inclusion. We hope you find the combinations that we – and they – have made as satisfying as last time.

And, to adapt a line of Groucho Marx, if you don’t like them – well, we’ve got others.

JOHN LLOYD, JOHN MITCHINSON

& JAMES HARKIN

Facts are to the mind

what food is to the body.

EDMUND BURKE (1729–1797)

There are 1,339 bank branches

in Peru.

There are 1,339 outdoor sculptures

in Texas.

There are 1,339 Christian churches

in Wenzhou, China.

There are 1,339 illegal factories

in Samanabad, Pakistan.

Pakistan means

‘Land of the Pure’

in Urdu.

The most commonly used

word for ‘detergent’ in Urdu

is ‘Surf’.

It is illegal in China

to show TV ads for

haemorrhoid cream

at mealtimes.

One in seven UK banknotes

carries traces of

anal bacteria.

Babies are born

with no bacteria

in their bodies.

The word ‘infant’

is from the Latin for

‘unable to speak’.

‘Bow-wow’, ‘Ding-dong’ and ‘Pooh-pooh’

are all names for different theories

about the origin of language.

Winnie the Pooh’s

real name is

Edward Bear.

The offspring of

a polar bear and a grizzly bear

is called a pizzly bear.

A baby pterosaur

is called a flapling.

Cockroaches

appeared 120 million years

before the dinosaurs.

The Himalayas were formed

25 million years after the last dinosaur

died out.

All the mountains

on Saturn’s moon Titan

are named after peaks in

The Lord of the Rings.

J. R. R. Tolkien and Adolf Hitler

both fought at

the battle of the Somme.

During Hitler’s years in power,

Mein Kampf was given away free

to every newly-wed couple.

Mussolini described Mein Kampf as

‘a boring tome that I have never

been able to read’.

The most-read publication in the UK

is Tesco magazine.

A pint of milk in a supermarket

can contain milk from

over a thousand different cows.

The average Briton consumes

8 cows, 36 sheep and 36 pigs

in a lifetime.

A raw carrot

is still alive when you eat it.

Half the food

produced in the world

is left to rot.

Every hour,

the UK produces enough waste

to fill the Albert Hall.

If the Albert Hall were a freezer,

it could hold all the galaxies

in the visible universe

if they were the size of

frozen peas.

Howard Hughes

kept a ruler in his hotel room

to measure any peas he ordered,

sending back those that

were ‘too big’.

CCD

(canine compulsive disorder)

is OCD for dogs.

In German,

‘Dogging’

is jogging with your dog.

Bloodhounds’ noses

are 100 million times more sensitive

than human noses.

Astronauts’ helmets

contain a small piece of Velcro

so they can scratch their noses.

According to

Velcro’s official website,

there is no such thing as Velcro.

Splenda was an insecticide

that became a sweetener

when an assistant misheard

an order to ‘test’ it as ‘taste’ it.

Samsung’s

first product was

dried fish.

Wrigley’s

originally made

soap.

Chewing gum costs

3p a stick to buy

but 10p a blob

to clean off the pavement.

Second Street is the most common

street name in the USA.

First Street is the

third most common.

The oldest bridge in Paris

is the Pont Neuf,

or ‘New Bridge’.

More than half

the fish in the USA

labelled as tuna

is not tuna.

Half of all animal and plant species

live in only one country and

nowhere else.

Half of British adults

don’t believe in evolution.

Most clams begin life as males,

but half of them

turn female when older.

The Green Zone Golf Club

is on the border of Finland and Sweden:

half the holes are in one country

and half in the other.

The first woman to play golf was

Mary Queen of Scots.

Agatha Christie

was a keen surfer.

George W. Bush

was a college cheerleader.

Bruce Lee

was Hong Kong’s 1958

cha-cha dance champion.

The oldest dance

still performed is

the Austrian shoe-slapping dance.

The oldest animal ever found

was a 405-year-old Icelandic clam.

It was killed by researchers

trying to work out its age.

Women

look their oldest

at 3.30 p.m. on Wednesdays.

Nudiustertian means

‘relating to the day before yesterday’.

The word ‘journey’

is from the French journée

and once meant the distance

one could walk in a day.

The Swahili for ‘journey’

is safari.

The Express, the Telegraph,

the Economist, the Times,

the Star and the Independent

were all London-based stagecoaches

in the 1830s.

The Solar System is travelling

round the galaxy at more than

half a million miles per hour.

A Manx shearwater

flies over 5 million miles

in its lifetime.

Zugunruhe

is the restlessness of caged birds

in the migration season.

Urban birds have learned to line

their nests with cigarette butts.

Nicotine is a powerful insecticide

that wards off mites, lice and fleas.

The nectar of citrus plants

contains caffeine

to attract bees.

David Cameron

used to be president of the

Oxfordshire Bee Keepers’ Association.

Pannage

was a tax on keeping

pigs in royal forests

that was paid in pigs.

Henry VIII

put a tax on beards in 1535,

but made sure his own was exempt.

King David I of Scotland

gave tax rebates to subjects

with good table manners.

William the Conqueror

had been in England for a fortnight

before the battle of Hastings.

King John

was named ‘Softsword’

for his feeble military activities.

In the Hundred Years War,

the French called the English ‘godons’

because they were always shouting

‘God damn’.

Lalochezia is

using swearing to

relieve stress or pain.

The words

proctalgia, proctodynia,

pygalgia and rectalgia

all mean ‘pain in the backside’.

In Exodus 33:23,

God shows Moses his backside:

‘And I will take away mine hand,

and thou shalt see my back parts.’

St Martin of Tours

exorcised people

by shoving his arm down their throats

and forcing the devil out of their anus.

500,000 Italians

visit an exorcist every year.

‘The devil’s port-gate’

was an Elizabethan euphemism

for the vagina.

In the 18th century,

‘bum-fodder’ and ‘arse-wisp’

both meant toilet paper.

On an average day,

Britons spend

14 hours and 39 minutes

sitting down.

Before dentists’ chairs were invented,

the patient’s head was clenched

between the surgeon’s knees.

The electric chair

was invented by a dentist.

The first guillotine

was built by a harpsichord maker.

The first private detective agency

was started by a criminal.

Speed dating

was the brainchild of a rabbi.

The quickest possible

round-the-world flight time

by commercial airline

is 44 hours.

The remains of birds

hit by aeroplanes

are known as

‘snarge’.

80% of plane crashes

occur in the

first three or last eight

minutes of a flight.

Only 5%

of the world’s population

has ever been on an aeroplane.

Before Amy Johnson flew solo

from Britain to Australia,

the furthest she had flown was

from Hendon to Hull.

Nearly half of all airline pilots

admit they have

fallen asleep on the job.

The first man-made object in space

was the German V2 rocket.

Russian cosmonauts

routinely took guns into space

in case re-entry landed them

in the Siberian wilderness.

In 1905,

the city of Birmingham

banned rifle shooting in pubs.

The gun laws

in Tombstone, Arizona,

are less strict today

than they were at the time of

the OK Corral.

In Kennesaw, Georgia,

gun ownership is required by law.

There is only one gun shop in Mexico:

90% of the country’s firearms

are smuggled in from the USA.

On 18th February 1913,

Pedro Lascuráin resigned

as president of Mexico

after holding office

for less than an hour.

The Marianas Trench in the Pacific

is so deep that a coin

dropped into it from the surface

will take more than an hour

to reach the bottom.

Spiders can survive for hours underwater

by entering a self-induced coma.

A bite from the

Brazilian wandering spider

results in an erection

that lasts for several hours.

In Britain,

spiders outnumber people

by more than 500,000 to 1.

The Natural History Museum

in London has 22,000 drawers

filled with beetles.

If dung beetles

disappeared from the plains of Africa,

its human inhabitants would be

up to their waists in excrement

within a month.

Until biological softener

was invented in 1908,

the standard way to soften leather

was to smear it with dog faeces.

Entrance to the Tower of London

used to be free if you

brought a dog or a cat

to feed to the lions.

The Eiffel Tower

was scheduled to be

pulled down

in 1909.

The Louvre

was built in 1190

as a defence against Viking raids.

The Statue of Liberty

wears size 879 shoes.

Charles II of England

wore stilettos to his coronation.

Samantha Cameron is the

great-great-great-great-great-great-great-

granddaughter of Charles II’s mistress,

Nell Gwyn.

David Cameron is a

great-great-great-great-great-grandson

of King William IV.

At least 170 civil servants

in the UK are paid more than

the prime minister.

The House of Commons chamber

can only seat three-quarters

of the country’s MPs.

In July 2013,

more people in Britain

believed in ghosts than

supported the Labour Party.

More people in Britain

describe their religion as ‘Jedi Knight’

than are members of the Tory party.

Since the 2001 census,

the number of people in Britain

claiming to be Jedi

has fallen by more than half.

Harrison Ford used to be a carpenter.

He was fitting a door when

George Lucas asked him

to audition for Star Wars.

Ozzy Osbourne

worked in a morgue

and a slaughterhouse.

Warren Beatty

worked as a rat-catcher.

Danny DeVito

is a qualified hairdresser.

The average woman

has 150 different hairstyles

in her lifetime.

In 1950,

7% of American women

dyed their hair.

In 2013, it was 75%.

Healthy hair

can stretch by 50%

when wet.

Your hair grows

more quickly when

you’re anticipating sex.

Plants grow more quickly

if you talk to them

in a Geordie accent.

Magnolias are the oldest

surviving flowering plants;

they first appeared

100 million years ago.

The rarest flower in Britain

is the lady’s slipper orchid:

a single specimen lives on

a golf course in Lancashire

under police surveillance.

The symbol of the

Alzheimer’s Society of Canada

is the forget-me-not.

The existence of

photographic memory has

never been scientifically proven.

A decapitated

planarian flatworm

grows a new brain

complete with all its old memories.

A human liver

can grow back even after

75% of it has been removed.

95% of all avocados on sale today

are descended from one tree

grown by a Milwaukee postman in 1926.

In French, avocat means

both ‘lawyer’ and ‘avocado’.

In German, Strauss means

both ‘ostrich’ and ‘bunch of flowers’.

In Norwegian, pålegg is

‘anything that could conceivably

be put in a sandwich’.

In Old Norse, kveis meant

‘uneasiness after debauchery’.

Gambrinous means

‘being full of beer’.

Hops contain antioxidants,

but you’d have to drink

118 gallons of beer a day

to see any health benefit.

French wrestler

André the Giant

once drank 119 beers

in six hours.

In 1876,

the Munich Health Department

ruled that breastfeeding women

only needed to drink

two pints of beer a day.

Edgar Allan Poe’s poem ‘The Raven’

was originally going to be about

a talking parrot.

The last speaker

of the Amazonian Ature language

was a parrot.

Parrots

can live for 80 years.

There are whales alive today

that were born before

Moby-Dick was written

in 1851.

If a dead whale is found

on a British beach,

the head belongs to the king

and the tail to the queen.

The first two police officers

sworn into the Metropolitan Police

were both later sacked for

‘drunkenness in the streets’.

The ‘de-militarised’ zone

between North and South Korea

is the world’s most militarised zone.

The 1784 ‘Kettle War’

between the Netherlands

and the Holy Roman Empire

involved only a single shot.

It hit a kettle.

21% of British households

don’t possess a kettle.

One in eight British adults

owns a onesie.

Two-thirds of British children aged 5 to 13

can work a DVD player,

but fewer than half

can tie their shoelaces.

60% of British meals

are eaten in front of the TV.

Early BBC TV

showed pictures and sound alternately:

they only had one transmitter

so couldn’t do both at the same time.

Until the 1920s,

television was also known as

Hear-seeing, Seeing by Wireless,

Optiphone, Farscope

and the Electric Telescope.

‘TV dinners’ were so-called because

the compartments resembled

the screen and knobs

on an old-style round-cornered TV.

Rounded corners on electronic devices

have been patented

by Apple.

Nokia once made gas masks:

the Finnish army used them

until 1995.

The French company Bich

changed its name to Bic

to stop people in

English-speaking countries

pronouncing it ‘bitch’.

Play-Doh

was originally designed as

wallpaper cleaner.

The first bubblegum

produced bubbles that

had to be removed from the face

with turpentine.

James I of England

only ever washed

the tips of his fingers.

Louis XIII of France

wasn’t bathed until he was

almost seven.

According to a passenger from Sudan,

the first London Underground trains

smelt ‘like crocodile breath’.

The air in London

is cleaner now than at any time

since the 16th century.

In the 16th century,

Britain had one pub

for every 200 people.

At any one time,

45 million people in the world

are drunk.

Hangovers cost the US economy

more than $220 billion

in lost productivity each year.

A popular Roman hangover cure

was deep-fried canary.

Pliny the Elder

advised tying a fox’s genitals

to the brow

to cure headaches.

Chopin whistled

or played chords on the piano

when he had trouble urinating.

Giving Prozac to a snail

renders it unable

to stick to surfaces.

Viagra was developed

to treat angina.

Fatal heart attacks

were unknown before 1900.

The first medical description of one

in Britain was in 1925.

The human heart is not

on the left-hand side of the body,

it’s in the middle.

Each time a fertile man’s heart beats,

he makes 1,500 new sperm.

Over a lifetime,

the human heart pumps enough blood

to fill a football stadium.

In 1903,

the three largest

sports stadiums in the world

were all in Glasgow.

The pregnancy of the

frilled shark lasts for three years,

the longest in nature.

The tuatara,

a New Zealand reptile

that pre-dates the dinosaurs,

has three eyes.

Babies have three times

as many taste buds as adults.

Squid

taste with their

tentacles.

The Chinese fruit

Siraitia grosvenorii

is 300 times sweeter than sugar.

The principal killer of elephants

in American zoos

is obesity.

North Americans account for

less than a sixteenth of

the world’s people,

but more than a third

of their weight.

Kunga cake

is an East African food

made from millions of

crushed midges.

The star-nosed mole

can identify and eat

an insect quicker than

you can read the word ‘mole’.

Flamingo tongues

were a delicacy

in ancient Rome.

A tiger’s tongue is so rough

that if it licked your hand

it would draw blood.

More is known

about the behaviour of

big cats in Africa than

that of domestic cats in Britain.

In 17th-century England,

effigies of Guy Fawkes

were stuffed with live cats

to make the figure scream as it burned.

The Kattenstoet

was a medieval festival in Belgium

in which cats were thrown

from the town’s belfry.

In 1879, the Belgian city of Liège

commissioned 37 cats

to deliver mail to nearby villages.

The project was a complete failure.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney

both had cats named Jesus.

The Beatles classic ‘Yesterday’

was originally titled

‘Scrambled Eggs’.

‘I’m a Poached Egg’

is a love song by

George Gershwin.

Albert Einstein

claimed his second-best idea

was to boil his eggs in his soup,

thus saving on washing-up.

The Moon is shaped like an egg:

it only looks round because

the big end points towards Earth.

The coldest known place

in the Solar System

is in a crater at

the north pole of the Moon.

Oymyakon in Russia

is the coldest inhabited town on Earth:

its only hotel has no hot water

and an outside toilet.

Between 2010 and 2013,

the London Fire Brigade rescued

18 children with their heads

stuck in toilet seats.

After just four moves

in a game of chess, there are

318,979,564,000 possibilities

for the layout of the board.

The 1978 chess final at

HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs was

between ‘Moors Murderer’ Ian Brady

and disgraced MP John Stonehouse.

In 1913,

Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky, Tito,

Freud, Jung and Wittgenstein

were all living in Vienna.

Dublin, Glasgow, London,

Petroleum, Coal, Wax

Goforth, Stay and Jump

are all towns in Kentucky.

The Irish pub

furthest from Dublin

is Waxy O’Shea’s in

Invercargill, New Zealand.

Villages in County Durham

include Pity Me and

No Place.

There are six villages

in France called Silly,

12 called Billy

and two called Prat.

There are 11 places in Utah

called Mollys Nipple, Mollies Nipple or

Molleys Nipple.

Female giant jumping rats

have four nipples:

two in the armpits

and two in the groin.

Buzz

is Arabic for ‘nipple’.

Dad

is Albanian for ‘babysitter’.

Waterponie

is Afrikaans for ‘jet-ski’.

10,000 horses were killed

at the battle of Waterloo.

The first Skyscraper

was a particularly tall horse

that won the Epsom Derby

in 1789.

Snickers bars are named after

a horse owned by the Mars company.

Humans have one more bone

in their bodies than horses.

Human bone is

four times stronger

than concrete.

Your brain cells live longer

than any other cells

in your body.

You have taste receptors

in your lungs.

The Cornish for ‘heart’

is colon.

Hands evolved

before arms.

After a double hand transplant,

right-handed patients

can become left-handed.

Mothers over 40

are twice as likely

to have left-handed children

as women in their 20s.

Until the early 20th century,

left-handedness in a wife

was grounds for divorce in Japan.

The Japanese for ‘poverty’

is bimbo.

Raicho,

meaning ‘thunderbird’,

is Japanese for the

rock ptarmigan or

snow chicken.

Chicken, Alaska,

was going to be called

Ptarmigan, Alaska,

but no one could agree

on the spelling.

Alaska is the

northernmost, westernmost

and easternmost state

in the USA.

‘Alaska strawberries’

was 19th-century slang for

‘dried beans’.

Empress Isabelle of Bavaria

bathed in strawberry juice.

In the Azerbaijani town of Naftalan,

people bathe in crude oil

to ease joint pains.

Male eland antelopes

let other males know

how tough they are

by clicking their knees.

Anglerfish

have black-lined stomachs

to stop their insides

giving them away

after they eat something

luminous.

The longest recorded flight

of a domestic chicken

lasted 13 seconds.

The highest-ever jump

by a rabbit

measured 3 feet 3 inches.

A rabbit was the only casualty

of the first bomb in

the Second World War

to fall on British soil.

95% of baby rabbits

don’t survive beyond

their first six months.

In three years,

two mating rabbits

can theoretically produce

33 million relatives.

The world’s biggest rabbit,

Ralph from East Sussex,

costs £50 a week to feed.

Earmuffs

were invented by

a 13-year-old.

Within seven years of their invention,

60% of the US population

owned boomboxes.

A collection of boomerangs

and a Z-bed were found in

Tutankhamun’s tomb.

Tutankhamun died

of a broken leg.

Some whales are born

with a small leg

protruding from their body.

Whales have hip bones,

which means they must

have once left the oceans,

grown legs, decided they didn’t like it

and gone back into the sea again.

The barstools on

Aristotle Onassis’s yacht

were upholstered with

whales’ foreskins.

Moby-Dick

was based on a real sperm whale

called Mocha Dick.

Geronimo’s real name

was Goyathlay,

meaning

‘he who yawns’.

Yawning cools your brain,

like a fan cools the inside

of a computer.

Babies yawn in the womb;

they also swallow, stretch and hiccup.

Babies up to the age of six months

can swallow and breathe

at the same time.

Pandiculation is

yawning and stretching

at the same time.

There is enough tissue

in a human lung

to cover a tennis court.

There is enough carbon

in your body

to make 9,000 pencils.

You lose a pound of carbon

in weight every night

just from breathing.

Diamonds boil

at 4,027 °C.

–40 ° Celsius

and –40 ° Fahrenheit

are the same temperature.

15 °C is

the highest temperature

ever recorded in Antarctica.

There are 300 lakes

beneath Antarctica

that are kept from freezing by

the warmth of the Earth’s core.

Husky dogs have been banned

from Antarctica since 1994.

When Roald Amundsen

travelled to the South Pole,

he ate his huskies

on the way back.

Only one dog

has ever been to both

the North and South Poles.

During the 1962 World Cup,

a dog ran onto the pitch

and urinated on Jimmy Greaves.

Russian cosmonauts urinate

on the right rear wheel of the bus

taking them to the space shuttle

to bring themselves luck.

The ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button

on Google costs the company

$110 million a year

in lost ad revenue.

In 2006, a man named Ronald Man

had a heart attack and crashed his car;

the impact worked like a defibrillator

and restarted his heart.

James Dean’s

last appearance on film

before his fatal car crash in 1955

was in a road-safety commercial.

In 1895,

the only two cars in Ohio

crashed into each other.

The odds of hitting

two holes-in-one

in the same round of golf

are 67 million to one.

Mo Farah,

Sir Roger Bannister, Sir Chris Hoy,

Jason Kenny and Sir Steve Redgrave

were all born on March 23rd.

Moses, Raphael, Arnold Bennett,

Captain Oates and Ingrid Bergman

all died on their birthdays.

The ancient city of Alexandria

was built so that the sun

shone down the main street

on Alexander the Great’s birthday.

Galileo was born on the day that

Michelangelo died.

People who die of old age

are more likely to die at 11 a.m.

than at any other time.

Three US presidents died on 4th July:

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1826,

and James Monroe five years later.

Between April and July 1776,

US states issued

more than 90 different

Declarations of Independence.

John Adams,

2nd president of the USA,

took up smoking

at the age of eight.

John Tyler,

10th president of the USA,

was born in 1790 but

two of his grandsons are still alive.

When George W. Bush,

43rd president of the USA,

arrived in the White House, he found

the Clinton administration had removed

the ‘W’ keys from all the computers.

‘President Clinton of the USA’

is an anagram of

‘to copulate, he finds interns’.

In 1999,

the president of Niger was

Major Wanke.

In 1939,

835 sheep were killed by

a single lightning strike in Utah.

The best way to

avoid being struck by lightning

is to crouch down away from any trees

with your bottom sticking up in the air.

Blowing air up

an armadillo’s bottom

causes it to leap three feet into the air.

Air trapped inside hedgehogs

can make them blow up like a balloon.

They should be carefully

deflated with a syringe

before they burst.

The Victorians

kept hedgehogs

in their kitchens to

control cockroaches.

If a cockroach touches a person,

it immediately runs away

and washes itself.

Rats urinate on food

to mark it as edible.

Monkeys urinate

on themselves

to attract a mate.

An ostrich can

kill a lion

with a single blow.

Being attacked by an ostrich

left Johnny Cash with

an addiction to painkillers.

Early Arabic texts

refer to cannabis as

‘the bush of understanding’

and ‘the shrub of emotion’.

In 1850, cannabis was used in the USA

to treat tetanus, typhus, cholera, rabies,

dysentery, alcoholism, anthrax,

leprosy, snake bites, tonsillitis

and insanity.

Ketamine was the

most commonly used anaesthetic

during the Vietnam War.

A Macedonian soldier from 300 BC

was more likely to survive treatment

for a wound than a British soldier

at Sebastopol in 1854.

Patients admitted to hospital

at the weekend

are 40% more likely to die

than those admitted

during the working week.

A human being can survive

for nine seconds at 1,000 °C

without suffering lasting damage.

Since 1940,

157 people have fallen from planes

without parachutes and survived.

Since 1990,

more people have been killed by

sandcastles than by sharks.

Shark Bay, Australia,

is now called ‘Safety Beach’.

It changed its name

to attract tourists.

Kangaroo Island was named in 1802

by Matthew Flinders after he and his crew

slaughtered 31 kangaroos there

and made them into soup.

At birth, a kangaroo

is smaller than a cherry.

Because opossums have forked penises,

early naturalists thought males mated

with the female’s nose.

A renifleur is someone

who gets sexual pleasure

from smells.

The human nose

can distinguish between

over 10,000 different smells.

Rhinotillexomania

is the scientific term for being

unable to stop picking your nose.

It is impossible to hum

while holding your nose.

Humpback whales

can sing non-stop

for 20 hours.

Nightingales

can remember

over 200 different songs.

The fastest known muscle

in nature is found in the

throats of songbirds.

The superb fairy wren

teaches its chicks to sing

while they are still in the egg.

Ludo

was invented

in ancient India.

Jenga means ‘to build’

in Swahili.

Chinese checkers

was invented in

Germany.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

invented the sport of

rock-climbing.

William Webb Ellis

died in France, completely unaware

he had been credited with

the invention of rugby.

The French Vichy government

banned rugby league because

they considered it

a communist sport.

Rugby School’s

first official rugby kit in 1871

included a bow tie.

The Nazi uniforms

were designed by

Hugo Boss.

When Josef Mengele

fled to Argentina

he went through customs

with several suitcases full of

human body parts.

Iran is the

only country in the world

where it is legal to sell your kidneys.

In Alabama, it is illegal

to recommend shades of paint

without a licence.

The Knights Templar’s

most important rule was

to avoid kissing women.

The ancient Greek city of Megara

held a version of the Olympic Games

which included a kissing contest.

Only boys were allowed to enter.

PE teachers were originally banned

from the modern Olympics because

they were professionals.

At the 1908

Olympic Games in London,

Great Britain won

gold, silver and bronze

in the tug of war.

The Kalenjin people of Kenya

make up 0.05% of the world’s population

but have won almost 50% of its major

distance-running events since 1980.

The fastest 100 metres

run by an eight-year-old today

would have won bronze

at the 1896 Olympics.

The 1988 Olympics

included the sport of

solo synchronised swimming.

Polar bears

can swim 60 miles

without stopping.

An ostrich

could run the

London Marathon

in 45 minutes.

A garden snail

would take three years and two months

to make its way from

John O’Groats to Land’s End.

Light

travels from

John O’Groats to Land’s End

in 0.00469 seconds.

8,000 years ago,

Britain had so many trees

that a squirrel could go from

John O’Groats to Land’s End

without touching the ground.

Nemophilia

is the love of spending time

in forests.

Two out of three trees

in the world are

dangerously parched.

The only way to tell if trees

are short of water

is to record the sounds they make:

the thirstier they are,

the louder they get.

Different branches

on the same ash tree can be

male, female or both at once.

Oysters change their sex

up to four times a year.

Fruit bats enjoy fellatio.

Men are more likely to

die during sex if they’re

cheating on their wives.

More than one-third of

men using dating sites

are already married.

More than one-third of

married Canadians

sleep in separate rooms.

Ptolemy VII married

his sister Cleopatra II,

who was also his brother’s widow.

So his wife was not only his sister

but his sister-in-law.

Einstein, Rachmaninoff, Darwin,

H. G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe

all married their first cousins.

When filling in forms,

Agatha Christie

always gave her occupation as

‘married woman’.

90% of the world’s

teenage mothers aged 16 to 19

are married.

In London,

women over 40

are giving birth at

twice the rate of teenagers.

In Mexican slang,

to ‘mother’ something is to wreck it,

anything that ‘has no mother’ is very cool,

and ‘mothers!’ means ‘whoops!’

In Korean, there are

no words for ‘brother’ or ‘sister’,

but there are words for

an older or younger brother,

and an older or younger sister.

Having a younger brother or sister

can increase your blood pressure

by more than 5%.

It would take

1.2 million mosquitoes,

each sucking once,

to completely drain

the average human of blood.

A midge

beats its wings

62,750 times a minute.

It takes a male flea

six to eight hours

to unfold all the different parts

of its penis.

Woodlice

have 14 legs.

The vampire spider

is attracted to the smell

of human feet.

Mice

enjoy the smell

of marijuana.

The Japanese word kareishu

describes the smell of

old people.

Moths can smell one another

from seven miles away.

The faint trace

of perfume left in the wake

of a passing person is known as

sillage.

In 2007, the makers of Stilton

marketed Eau de Stilton,

a perfume to ‘recreate the

earthy and fruity aroma’

of the cheese.

A ‘cheeseling’

is a small cheese.

‘Cheeselips’

is another name for woodlice:

they were once used

to curdle milk.

A glass of milk

left in the Lut Desert in Iran

will not go off:

the heat is so intense

it kills all the bacteria.

All Neanderthals were

lactose intolerant.

Lee Pearson,

winner of ten Paralympic golds

for dressage,

is allergic to horses.

Pigs suffer from anorexia.

There were fewer than 50 restaurants

in Paris before the 1789 Revolution;

by 1814 there were more than 3,000.

The first Indian restaurant in the UK

opened 50 years before

the first fish-and-chip shop.

The oldest known English cookbook

is called the Forme of Cury.

An English person from 2013

could not understand

an English person from 1300

without a translator.

In the 14th century,

a high-spirited person

was known as a

‘great-willy’.

Cumbria has villages called

Great Snoring and Great Fryup,

and a hill called

Great Cockup.

Fletcher Christian

and William Wordsworth

were at school together in

Cockermouth, Cumbria.

Wordsworth

had no sense of smell.

Before sending his six-year-old son,

Auberon, to boarding school,

Evelyn Waugh threatened

to change the family name to

Stinkbottom.

Daniel Defoe changed his name

from Daniel Foe in order to sound

more upmarket.

Holly Golightly

from Breakfast at Tiffany’s

was originally going to be called

Connie Gustafson.

James Bond was originally going

to be called James Secretan.

Margaret Thatcher

was offered passport number 007

but she turned it down.

Brendan O’Carroll,

star of Mrs Brown’s Boys,

was once Mrs Thatcher’s butler.

In the 19th century,

a five-foot six-inch footman

cost £20 a year,

while a full six-footer

would set you back £40.

When they reach

a height of 100 metres,

trees stop growing leaves.

Ten trees were needed

to make the paper to

print the 2013 report

on the environmental impact

of the British HS2 rail scheme.

The British Standards Institution

has a 5,000 word report

on the correct way

to make a cup of tea.

When Swindon station opened in 1840,

all the trains passing through it

had to stop for a ten-minute tea break.

British soldiers

in the First World War

had a tea ration

of six pints a day.

Turning up

the music in a bar by 22%

makes people drink

26% faster.

To ‘dibble’ is

to drink like a duck,

lifting your head

after each sip.

Lifting your head

on a neutron star

would use more energy

than climbing Mount Everest.

The energy burned off

by the average footballer

in a single match is

equivalent to 15 Jaffa Cakes.

Boys’ GCSE results

dip by almost half a grade

in World Cup and

European Championship years.

60% of Premier League footballers

go bankrupt

within five years

of retirement.

Somebody in the UK

is declared bankrupt

every 50 seconds.

Plutomania

is the delusion

that one is immensely rich.

Hewlett-Packard printer ink

is 20 times more expensive

than 2003 vintage

Dom Pérignon champagne.

It is 14 million times cheaper

to store 1GB of data

on a hard drive

than it was in 1981.

There are 2,436

millionaire bankers in the UK,

compared to 170 in Germany

and 162 in France.

The best credit profiles in the UK

are held by men named Brian

and women called Helen.

Julius Caesar

had two sisters,

both called Julia.

Karl and Jenny Marx

named all four

of their daughters

Jenny.

George Foreman has five sons

called George, George Jr, George III,

George IV, George V and George VI,

and a daughter called Georgetta.

Emlyn Hughes’s son

is called Emlyn

and his daughter,

Emma-Lynn.

Almost half of newly hatched storks

abandon their nest to look for

a foster parent who might

feed them better.

At least 60% of species on Earth

are parasites.

There are ten times more

bacterial cells in your body

than human ones.

The average human navel

contains 67 different

species of bacteria.

Omphalodium is

another name

for tummy button.

Michelangelo was called a heretic

for giving Adam a belly button

on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Rembrandt’s

The Night Watch

was so over-restored in the 1940s

it was nicknamed

The Day Watch.

Edvard Munch’s

The Scream

is based on a Peruvian mummy

he saw in a Paris museum.

The Louvre

has a naked version

of the Mona Lisa,

painted by one of Da Vinci’s pupils.

Victor Hugo made

detailed erotic drawings

of all the women

he slept with.

The most expensive sex position

offered by ancient Greek prostitutes

was called keles, ‘the racehorse’.

Buckingham Palace

is built on the site

of a brothel.

When Queen Victoria arrived in 1837,

there were no bathrooms in

Buckingham Palace.

The word ‘palace’ comes from

the Palatine Hill in Rome,

where the emperors lived.

The Roman emperor Elagabalus

invented a whoopee cushion

which he used at dinner parties.

Whoopi Goldberg

got her nickname from her

childhood flatulence.

Laurel and Hardy are known as

Dick and Doof in Germany

and Gog and Cokke

in Denmark.

In 1379,

more than 600 years ago,

a baby girl in Yorkshire

was christened Diot Coke.

The Mayan calendar had 18 months,

including ‘Pop’, ‘Zip’, ‘Zac’, ‘Mac’

and ‘Moan’.

The Comper Mouse, Currie Wot,

Dart Kitten, English Electric Wren,

Luton Minor, Thruxton Jackaroo,

Pobjoy Pirate, Sopwith Grasshopper

and Watkinson Dingbat are all

names of early British aeroplanes.

Aerodontia is

the branch of dentistry

dealing with problems

caused by flying.

Human teeth can detect

a grain of sand

1/2,500 of an inch

in diameter.

Carp have teeth

in their throats.

A blue whale’s throat

is the same diameter

as its navel:

about the size of a side plate.

The krill eaten

by a blue whale every day

weigh as much as

40,000 cheeseburgers.

One krill is no longer

than your little finger,

but their swarms are so big

they can be seen from space.

An astronaut is someone who

flies aircraft higher

than 50 miles above sea level.

When Skylab burned up

in Earth’s atmosphere in 1979,

the government of Western Australia

fined NASA $400 for littering.

The fine was eventually paid in 2009.

In the USA,

one-third of the domestic waste

sent to landfill

is grass clippings.

Five species of grass

account for half the calories

in the human diet.

Americans eat

10 billion doughnuts

every year.

Obese drivers

are almost twice as likely

to die in a car accident.

Car doors injure

around 600 cyclists

in the UK every year.

Tolstoy had

his first cycling lesson

at 67.

Elgar had a bicycle called

‘Mr Phoebus’.

The Arabic word

for a hamster

translates as

‘Mr Saddlebags’.

Rodents prefer peanut butter

to cheese.

The world’s largest rodent

was a Venezuelan guinea pig

the size of a buffalo.

The world’s largest invertebrate

was Arthropleura, a ten-foot millipede

that lived in prehistoric Scotland.

The bird with the largest vocabulary

was Puck the Budgie, who died in 1998.

He knew 1,728 words,

the same as a four-year-old child.

The recently extinct

Ubykh language of southern Russia

had 84 consonants

but only two vowels.

The Sedang language

of Laos and Vietnam

has more than 50 vowel sounds.

Oaia aia e a ei

is a Romanian sentence

made only of vowels. It means

‘That sheep is hers.’

Vowel-schmowel:

the practice of adding a

rhyming word beginning with sch-

to another is called

‘shm-reduplication’.

We dot our ‘i’s,

but Shakespeare

‘tittled’ his.

The poet A. E. Housman

kept a notebook in which he jotted down

insults and unpleasant remarks that

occurred to him.

‘Son-of-a-bitch stew’

was a cowboy dish made from

the internal organs of a whole cow

and an onion.

Sob Lake in Canada began life as

‘Son of a Bitch Lake’.

It was named after a trapper

who had a log cabin on its shore.

Jellyfish Lake

in the Philippines

contains more than

13 million jellyfish.

Rudyard Kipling

got his name from

Rudyard Lake, Staffordshire,

the place where his parents met.

Fish in polluted lakes

lose their sense of smell.

Sunbathing on the shore of

Lake Karachai in Russia

for one hour can give you

a fatal dose of radiation.

There is one Kalashnikov in circulation

for every 70 people on Earth.

IKEA sells one bookcase

somewhere in the world

every ten seconds.

Heinz sells

two sachets of ketchup

each year for every person

on Earth.

Heinz baked beans

were first sold in Britain

at Fortnum & Mason,

as an exclusive luxury

imported from America.

Every Heinz baked bean

passes through a laser beam

to check that it is

the right colour.

The first laser was said to have

the power of one ‘Gillette’

as it could burn through

a single razor blade.

In the first seven years

after it opened in 2001,

only one company traded on

the Cameroon stock exchange.

The central European republic

of Carpatho-Ruthenia existed

for just one day, in 1939.

There is only one

Jewish citizen

in Afghanistan.

There is only one

mention of sneezing

in the Bible.

The Russian village of Kozino

has only one resident,

a 76-year-old woman

called Rimma.

The Andamanese language

has only two words for numbers:

they mean ‘one’ and

‘more than one’.

More than 800 languages

are spoken in New York today.

Ancient Rome

was eight times more

densely populated than

modern New York.

At the end of Roman mime plays,

audiences could demand that

the female lead strip on stage.

In the 1970s,

the British stripper Frank Jakeman

insured his penis for £1 million.

In Norway,

stripping counts as an art form

for tax purposes.

In the USA,

ransom payments to kidnappers

are tax-deductible.

In Armenia,

chess is a compulsory

school subject.

Eton College was founded

to provide free schooling

for poor boys.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

gave all five of his children

to a foundling hospital

so they wouldn’t interfere

with his work.

By the time they reach 17,

most British children

will have been driven

80,000 miles by their parents.

The average British child

makes its first mobile-phone call

at the age of eight.

There are 300,000

child soldiers

in the world.

There is only one pig in

Afghanistan.

Bush Market in Kabul,

named after George W. Bush,

sells food and supplies

stolen from US military bases.

When the British

invaded Afghanistan in 1839,

they brought 300 camel-loads of wine.

Camels have three sets of eyelids

and eight sets of eyelashes.

Dinosaurs

had no

eyelashes.

Crocodiles’ faces

are ten times more sensitive

than human fingertips.

Alligators’ penises

are permanently erect,

but concealed

inside their bodies.

Squirrels forget where they’ve buried

three-quarters of their nuts.

The most common place

to hide household valuables

is in the sock drawer;

this is also the first place

that burglars check.

Henrietta Maria,

wife of King Charles I,

pawned the Crown Jewels

to raise money for

the English Civil War.

Louis XIV had a coat with

123 diamond buttons on it.

Jacques Chirac,

president of France,

spent £60,000 a year on

spring vegetables.

The world’s most expensive car,

a 1957 Ferrari Testarossa,

was sold in 2011

for £10,750,000.

The world’s most expensive sheep

was sold in 2009

for £231,000.

A person who illegally exports sheep

is called an ‘owler’.

Selling illegal cigarettes

is known by US police

as ‘smurfing’.

The world’s largest producer of cigarettes

is the Chinese government.

Urea, the main ingredient in urine,

is added to cigarettes

to enhance their flavour.

Tobacco companies

use kitty litter

to make cigars bigger.

US patent no. 3,234,948,

held by Stuart M. Stebbings,

is for cheese-flavoured cigarettes.

Feta is the

oldest-known cheese:

it is mentioned

in The Odyssey.

At the age of nine,

the Carthaginian leader Hannibal

took an oath of perpetual hatred

against the Romans.

At the age of ten,

Pharaoh Rameses II

was a captain in the army

and had his own harem.

The Roman emperor Caligula

took revenge on the sea

for sinking his father’s fleet

by attacking the English Channel.

Kayak is an Inuit word meaning

‘man’s boat’; strictly speaking,

the Olympic women’s version

should be called the umiak competition.

A bronze in kayaking

is Togo’s only Olympic medal,

won in 2008 by a man who

had only been to Togo once.

There are only two

sets of escalators

in Wyoming.

Costa Rica is home

to the world’s only

sloth orphanage.

A sloth can take a month

to digest a single meal.

Queen Victoria

could eat a seven-course meal

in under half an hour.

‘Restaurants’

were originally meat soups

for ‘restoring’ strength.

When Menelik II,

emperor of Ethiopia,

felt unwell, he would eat

a few pages of the Bible.

The Bible is available in

2,426 languages.

More than 40%

of the world’s Catholics

live in South America.

Pope John XII

was killed by a jealous husband

in the act of committing adultery.

Pope John XX

never existed.

Five of the last eight popes

died in years when

Wales won the

Six Nations rugby tournament.

In the Koran,

Jesus is mentioned

five times more often

than Mohammed.

Earthworms

have five hearts.

Only five in a thousand

seahorses

survive to adulthood.

Herbert Spencer,

who coined the phrase

‘survival of the fittest’,

was the only one of eight siblings

to reach adulthood.

Only 2%

of Kuwaitis

are over 65.

Centenarians

are the fastest-growing

demographic in the UK.

Henry Ford

could still do handstands

at the age of 75.

Basketball, racquetball, volleyball

and Father’s Day

all began

in a YMCA.

More phone calls are made

on Mother’s Day

than on any other day.

More reverse-charge calls

are made on Father’s Day

than on any other day.

Male ants

do not

have fathers.

A queen ant

can fertilise her eggs

with sperm she’s stored for 30 years.

A velvet ant

is a type of wasp.

Bees

are vegetarian wasps.

Bees turn nectar into honey

by regurgitating it into

the mouths of other bees.

The extinct gastric brooding frog

used her stomach as a womb

and gave birth by vomiting.

Woodchucks can’t

‘chuck-up’.

A tick is

ten times larger after dinner

than before.

Japanese yellow swallowtail butterflies

can see with their bottoms.

The potoo bird can see

with its eyes shut.

Chickens can see daylight

45 minutes before humans can.

Astronauts at the

International Space Station

witness 16 sunrises and sunsets

every 24 hours.

The pumping station

at Cricklewood

was used as the location

for the engine room

in the movie Titanic.

The first-ever

international cricket tour

had to be postponed due to

the French Revolution.

The first-ever

air-conditioning system

was installed in the

House of Commons.

The first-ever actress

to appear naked in a film

was called Louise Willy.

Sigmund Freud’s

first research project

was on the sex life of the eel.

Eel blood

is toxic to humans.

The cigarette snail

is so called because

a bite from its venomous tooth

leaves you just enough time to

smoke a cigarette before you die.

Moths

can be trained to detect

plastic explosives.

Piranhas

enjoy beans and

other vegetables.

One in every 1,000

babies is born

with teeth.

The average age

of a human fat cell

is ten years.

Your eyebrows

renew themselves

every 64 days.

The human body

has the ability to regenerate

the tips of lost fingers or toes.

On Pluto, a 12-stone person

would weigh less than 12 pounds.

The atmospheric pressure

on Venus

is equivalent to being

half a mile under the sea

on Earth.

The volcanoes

on Jupiter’s moon Io

spew fountains of lava

250 miles high.

Every winter

on Uranus

lasts for 42 years.

For Christmas 1936,

Salvador Dalí sent Harpo Marx

a harp with barbed-wire strings.

Harpo sent back a photograph

of himself with bandaged fingers.

Drachenfutter is

a present from a German to his wife

to apologise for being out late.

It means ‘dragon fodder’.

In Canada,

Santa has his own postal code:

HOH OHO.

In 2009, a man dressed as Santa Claus

robbed a bank in Tennessee:

he claimed he needed money

to ‘pay his elves’.

On any given day,

half of the world’s population

are wearing jeans.

The small pocket

in the front of a pair of jeans

was designed for pocket watches.

In the 1840s,

trousers were known as

‘sit-down-upons’.

The largest millipede

in Tanzania is known as

the wandering leg sausage.

Insects outnumber humans

by 200 million to one.

No more than two flies

are allowed by law

in any public toilet

in China.

The horse fly Scaptia beyonceae

is named for its

‘pretty bootylicious’

golden abdomen.

A photo of Pamela Anderson

was taped to his handlebars

by cyclist Mario Cipollini

in the 1999 Tour de France

to boost his testosterone levels.

Wendy in Peter Pan was based on

the daughter of the man who inspired

Long John Silver in Treasure Island.

François le Clerc

is the only known pirate

to have had a peg-leg.

Sir Arthur Aston, Governor of Oxford

in the English Civil War,

was murdered in Ireland in 1649

by having his brains bashed out

with his own wooden leg.

In 1796, in a cricket match between

Greenwich Pensioners with One Arm and

Greenwich Pensioners with One Leg,

Greenwich Pensioners with One Leg

won by 103 runs.

Mark Twain said he wanted

to dig up Jane Austen and beat her

over the skull with her own shin bone.

If Jane Austen hadn’t

broken off her engagement,

she would have been known as

Mrs Harris Bigg-Wither.

One in ten women

cares more for a fictional man

than for her partner.

Dame Judi Dench

has the James Bond theme

as her ringtone.

Almost everyone

living in Pompeii escaped

when Vesuvius erupted.

500 million people

are at risk from volcanoes

in the world today.

80% of the world’s gold

was created by earthquakes.

Half the gold ever mined

has come from one place:

Witwatersrand, South Africa.

There is enough gold

in the Earth’s core

to coat its entire surface

to a depth of 1.5 feet.

The amount of gold in

one human body is 0.2 mg;

to mint one gold sovereign

would need 40,000 people.

In the American Gold Rush,

only one in 25 prospectors

found any gold.

Using nuclear reactors,

it is possible to turn lead into gold;

though it is much easier

to turn gold into lead.

If North Dakota

were an independent nation,

it would be the world’s

third-largest nuclear power.

Burning Mountain, Australia,

is a natural coal fire that has been

alight for 6,000 years.

Crayons, tights and aspirin

are all made from oil.

Russian bears

get high by sniffing

discarded aviation fuel.

Paddington Bear

was originally ‘from darkest Africa’

until it was pointed out that

there are no bears in Africa.

50% of

people in India

do not have a lavatory.

40 million people

in China

live in caves.

Half the world’s deaths

from air pollution

occur in China.

The Chinese state television company

is called CCTV.

Fortune cookies originated in America.

First imported to China in the 1990s,

they were advertised as

‘Genuine American Fortune Cookies’.

The e-reader was invented

in 1949.

A group of kittens is called

a ‘kindle’.

J. K. Rowling has no middle name.

Harry Potter in Calcutta (India),

Harry Potter and the Big Funnel (China)

and Tanya Grotter and

the Magical Double Bass (Russia)

are all Harry Potter rip-offs.

Working titles for

The Great Gatsby included

Trimalchio in West Egg and

The High-Bouncing Lover.

Something That Happened

was the original title of

John Steinbeck’s

Of Mice and Men.

The first manuscript of

Of Mice and Men was chewed up

by John Steinbeck’s dog, Toby.

A quarter of dog owners

sign their pet’s name

on greeting cards.

A medium-sized tube of toothpaste

contains enough chemicals

to kill 13 dogs.

In the UK, you must legally report

a road accident involving a dog,

but not one involving a cat.

Wearing jeans is illegal

in North Korea.

Drink-driving is not illegal

in Indonesia.

Aborting a child because of its sex

is legal in Sweden.

Saudi Arabian women

are only allowed to ride bicycles

for ‘entertainment purposes’.

In 1643, the Puritans

passed an act forbidding

‘the ringing of bells for pleasure’.

The UK Shadow Business Secretary,

Chuka Umunna, was one of the choirboys

who sang the Mr Bean theme tune.

Until 1972,

the national anthem of the Maldives

was sung to the tune of

‘Auld Lang Syne’.

In America,

Tarzan’s yell

is a registered trademark.

In the 2009 Star Trek film,

Zachary Quinto could only

manage the Vulcan salute after

his fingers were glued together.

Two-thirds

of human communication

is by gesture,

not speech.

The Queen

does the washing-up once a year.

There’s a special hut at Balmoral

for her to do it in.

78% of women say

they would love to receive

a romantic letter or poem,

but only 50% of men have ever

written either.

John Milton

sold the rights of Paradise Lost

for £10.

Arthur Conan Doyle

was one of the judges

at the world’s first-ever

bodybuilding contest.

Stanley Kubrick

financed his early movies

by playing illegal chess for money

in New York parks.

The Spice Girls

are mentioned five times

in the Oxford English Dictionary,

under ‘girl power’, ‘big’,

‘merchandised’, ‘popularist’

and ‘tabloid’.

In the 19th century,

Goldilocks

was known as

Silver Hair.

In 19th-century versions of Cinderella,

her sisters called her ‘Cinder-slut’.

Christian names in the Philippines

include Bing, Bong, Bambi, Bogie, Girlie,

Peanut and Bumbum.

President Aquino of the Philippines

is known as Noynoy

and his sisters are called

Pinky and Ballsy.

Wagner only ever wore

pink silk underwear.

After she died,

Queen Victoria’s underwear

was divided up between her courtiers

and sold as souvenirs.

Tallulah Bankhead acted in Lifeboat (1944)

without any underpants on.

When the film crew complained,

the director Alfred Hitchcock said,

‘I don’t know whether that’s a concern

for wardrobe or hairdressing.’

Johnny Depp collects Barbie dolls.

When Einstein saw his baby sister

for the first time, he thought she was a toy.

‘Where are the wheels?’ he asked.

Buzz Lightyear has more

space experience than Buzz Aldrin:

the toy spent 468 days there in 2008–9,

beating the record for the

longest human space flight.

Pixar devised the key characters

and plots of A Bug’s Life, WALL∙E,

Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo

in a single lunch meeting.

In the average lunch,

you eat about 150,000

kilometres of DNA.

Before Norfolk’s railway was built,

it was quicker to travel

to Amsterdam by sea

than to London by road.

In 2010, a traffic jam

near Beijing in China

stretched for 100 kilometres

and lasted nine days.

In any one week,

London Underground escalators

travel the equivalent of

twice round the world.

‘Lunting’

is walking

at the same time as

pipe-smoking.

The Scots king

who succeeded Macbeth

was called Lulach the Idiot.

Denmark pawned the

Shetland Islands in 1468.

In theory, they could buy them back

for 60,000 florins.

In Braveheart,

Mel Gibson’s

modern black jockey shorts

can be seen under his kilt.

Harris tweed is not made

on the Isle of Harris;

it’s made on the

Isle of Lewis.

Sporrans

are traditionally made

from otters.

Sea otters have as many hairs

on each square centimetre

of their bodies

as human beings have

on their entire heads.

Fake soy sauce

can be made from

human hair.

Queen bumblebees

go bald

in old age.

Only one woman’s age

is given in the Bible:

Abraham’s wife, Sarah (127).

Old people who completed

secondary education as children

are, on average, a centimetre taller

than those who don’t.

Half the brain

of an eight-year-old child

can be removed

with no ill effects.

Since the first stone tools were made,

the human brain

has tripled in size.

Your brain makes

a million new connections

every second.

Your brain uses

less power than

the light in your fridge.

Eigengrau (‘brain grey’)

is the colour your eyes see

in total darkness.

Elvis wore

blue suede shoes

to his senior prom.

Stephen Stills, Glen Campbell and

Charles Manson all failed their

auditions for The Monkees.

Chopin

only performed 30 concerts

in his entire life.

Irving Berlin

couldn’t read or write music

and could only play the piano in F sharp.

When Beethoven conducted the premiere

of his Ninth Symphony in Vienna,

he was completely deaf.

After it ended, one of the soloists

had to turn him around

so he could see the audience applauding.

Public applause is

banned in Belarus.

In the 16th century,

French actors hired

rieurs (laughers) and

chatouilleurs (ticklers)

to sit in the audience

and cheer everyone up.

The sound of arguments

can affect the brains

of sleeping babies.

Gilbert and Sullivan

split up after an argument

about the cost of a carpet

at the Savoy Theatre.

There’s a carpet shop

in Dublin called

‘Lino Ritchie’.

Cardiff has a

tiling-supplies outlet called

‘Bonny Tiler’.

Bristol has a

mobile kebab truck called

‘Jason Donervan’.

Portsmouth has a

locksmith called

‘Surelock Homes’.

In the Sherlock Holmes stories,

the first names of Moriarty

and his brother are

only mentioned once.

Both are called James.

James I of Scotland

was murdered in a sewer.

James II of Scotland

had a huge bright red birthmark,

which led to the nickname

‘Fiery Face’.

James II of England

was known in Ireland as

‘James the Be-Shitten’.

‘Science’ and ‘shit’ both come

from the ancient word skheid,

meaning to ‘separate’ or ‘divide’.

Science students who

wear white lab coats

perform better in tests.

Ernest Rutherford, who said,

‘All science is either physics

or stamp collecting,’

won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

The chemical company Bayer

lost the trademark for aspirin

as part of Germany’s reparations for

the First World War.

Suicide causes more deaths

than murder and war combined.

Suicide was a criminal offence

in the UK until 1961.

Bacteria that catch viruses

may commit suicide to protect

their neighbours from infection.

The man who wrote

‘I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside’

killed himself after being

booed off stage in Glasgow.

All the property in Glasgow

is worth less than the houses in

Elmbridge, Surrey.

There are more people buried in

Brookwood cemetery in Surrey

than there are living in

Southampton, Swindon or Oldham.

Surrey libraries

account for one-fifth

of all UK borrowing of

E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey.

The Kama Sutra

provides advice on

tongue-twisters and cockfighting.

In the Middle Ages,

erect penises were thought to be

full of pressurised air.

The pistol shrimp

uses jets of water to generate

a sonic boom as loud as Concorde’s.

‘Skunk’ comes

from the Algonquian word

seganku, meaning

‘he who squirts’.

A startled hagfish

can unleash more than

five gallons of defensive slime.

Uliginous means

‘having a slimy nature’.

Slugs dislike copper;

their slime reacts with it

and gives them an electric shock.

A slug’s anus

is on its head.

A shirime is a

Japanese monster

with an eye

in place of an anus.

Buddy

Holly was

so short-sighted

he couldn’t read the

top line of the eye chart.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

always wore two

pairs of spectacles.

Schubert

slept with his glasses on,

in case he got an idea

during the night.

When he gets writer’s block,

Dan Brown hangs upside down

to get his creative juices flowing.

A pipistrelle bat

weighs less than a 2p coin.

The copper in

a pre-1992 2p coin

is now worth

more than 3p.

In 2011, a Georgian woman,

digging for copper to sell as scrap,

sliced through a cable and cut off

the whole of Armenia from the Internet.

In 1999, the king of Bhutan

allowed his country Internet access

to celebrate his Silver Jubilee.

Thailand has a special language

used exclusively for

talking to the king.

Carl XVI of Sweden

is only the tenth Swedish king named Carl;

Carls I to VI were mythical.

Princess Lilian of Sweden

was born in Swansea,

the daughter

of a market trader.

Prince Philip

is 483rd in line

to the British throne.

Queen Elizabeth II is descended

from the Prophet Mohammed.

The Queen is

a Knight of the Elephant (Denmark),

a Knight of the Golden Fleece (Spain)

and a Knight of the White Eagle (Poland).

According to the 2011 census,

one in three Londoners

was born abroad.

Only 20% of the Royal Mint’s coins

are made for the UK.

The first image

on American television

was the dollar sign.

China has a greater reserve

of US dollars than

the USA itself.

The ancient Chinese believed that

the thicker your earlobe,

the wealthier you would be.

The most expensive

coffee in the world is made from

the dung of Thai elephants.

The Anglo-Saxons

called the little finger the ‘ear finger’

because it’s the one you use

to pick wax out of your ears.

The Romans called

the middle finger

digitus impudicus,

the ‘obscene’ or ‘offensive’ finger.

Galileo’s middle finger

is on display

at a museum in Florence.

Russian, Spanish and Persian

use the same words for

‘fingers’ as for ‘toes’.

The fleshy bulb

at the base of your thumb

is called the thenar.

Elephants suck their trunks

as children suck their thumbs.

Rubik’s cubers can

suffer from cubist’s thumb

and Rubik’s wrist.

The ‘tiny arms’ of

Tyrannosaurus rex

could each lift the equivalent of

two adult humans.

After losing his right arm in battle,

Horatio Nelson developed a

phantom limb in its place.

He considered it ‘direct proof

for the existence of the soul’.

When three people

were rushed to hospital

in the 1990s with twisted intestines,

the Chinese state media issued

warnings about hula-hooping.

In the Dutch version of Cluedo,

Professor Plum is called

Professor Pimpel.

In the Polish version of Scrabble,

the letter Z is only worth

one point.

Znuz is an old word

for ‘frost’.

Snowbroth is snow

which has been trodden

down into a mush.

New York gets

15 times as much snow

as the South Pole.

The snow on Venus

is made from heavy metals.

Until 323 BC,

Venus’s appearances

in the morning and evening

were thought to be different planets.

Venus is the most common

natural object to be

mistaken for a UFO.

The most popular item

in the FBI’s online reading room

is an unconfirmed report

of a UFO over New Mexico.

Abraham Lincoln

created the Secret Service

on the day he was shot.

Richard Nixon

applied unsuccessfully

to join the FBI.

The US Republican Party

hasn’t won a presidential election

without a Bush or a Nixon on the ticket

since 1928.

The Democrats and Republicans

ran over a million TV ads in 2012:

it would take more than a year

to watch them all.

When George Washington campaigned

for election in Virginia in 1758,

he bought every eligible voter

three pints of alcohol.

Ebriety

is the opposite of

sobriety.

In the late Middle Ages,

you could pay taxes

with beer.

In 1695, the American colonies

levied a tax on bachelors

to encourage men to marry.

In 1831, only 3%

of the population of Britain

was eligible to vote.

Switzerland

only gave women the vote

in 1971.

The man who sent

the world’s first email in 1971

can’t remember what it said.

In 1973, British Rail

was granted a patent

for a spaceship.

The guillotine

was last used in France

in 1977.

The hollow bit in the top of a brick

is called a frog.

The wire cage holding the cork

in a bottle of champagne

is called an agraffe.

The metal clip for a light bulb

inside a lamp shade

is called a harp.

The head of a cauliflower

is called a curd.

The fermented-cabbage museum in Seoul

has 100,000 visitors a year.

South Korea has a toilet theme park

started by a Mr Duck,

who was born in

an outside lavatory.

There are 34,000 statues

of Kim Il Sung in North Korea.

90% of archaeological artefacts

in the UK are found by

amateur treasure hunters.

Only one pirate is known

to have buried

any treasure.

There is only one

recorded case

of ‘walking the plank’.

There is no historical evidence

for any pirate having ever

owned a pet parrot.

Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management

contains recipes for parrot pie,

roast wallaby and curried kangaroo.

Colonel Sanders’ secret recipe

for Kentucky Fried Chicken

is written in pencil on a scrap of paper

and kept in a high-security vault

in Lexington, Kentucky.

The ingredient that

makes Brussels sprouts bitter

is cyanide.

15 apricot kernels

contain enough cyanide

to kill a child.

A key ingredient of gunpowder

is human urine.

Lobsters’ bladders

are in their

heads.

The Chinese soft-shelled turtle

urinates through its

mouth.

The Vietnamese fish

Phallostethus cuulong

has its penis under its chin.

In 1994,

‘Rasputin’s severed penis’

was offered to an auction house,

but it turned out to be a

dried sea cucumber.

A sea cucumber eats

through its anus.

Slender pearlfish

live inside the bottoms

of sea cucumbers.

Cucumbers are 95% water.

All the instruments of the

First Vienna Vegetable Orchestra

are made into soup

after each performance.

John Cage’s composition

0’ 0” (1962) is for

chopped vegetables

and blender.

In 1941, Henry Ford

made a car

out of soy beans.

The man who built

the town stocks in Boston

charged so much he became

the first man to be punished in them.

Special Brew

was created by Carlsberg

in honour of Winston Churchill.

There is a brewer in Oregon

who makes beer from yeast

collected from his own beard.

According to Guinness,

162,719 pints of ‘black gold’

are absorbed by beards

and moustaches each year.

Frank Beard

is the only member

of ZZ Top

who doesn’t have a beard.

During the Napoleonic wars,

British troops referred to

French soldiers’ moustaches as

‘appurtenances of terror’.

Grenade

is French for

‘pomegranate’.

Serviette

is French for

‘briefcase’.

Motdièse

(or ‘sharp-sign word’)

was coined by the French in 2013

to avoid using the English word

‘hashtag’.

Until 2013,

French had no word for French kissing.

Galocher (‘to kiss with tongues’)

is now an official entry in the 2014

Petit Robert French dictionary.

King John I of France

was proclaimed king

five months before he was born.

He only lived for five days.

Marie Thérèse, daughter of

Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette,

was queen of France

for 20 minutes.

A ‘moment’

is officially defined as

90 seconds.

The average US shareholding

lasts 22 seconds.

The Mayan calendar

had five days a year

that were known as

‘days with no name’.

The Saxon word for January

was Wulfmonath: the month

when starving wolves were

bold enough to enter villages.

In 15th-century France,

one in every four days was

an official holiday.

The Russian Olympic team

arrived 12 days late for the

1908 London Olympics because

they were still using the Julian Calendar.

The Royal Train

is never more than 15 seconds late

and must stop within six inches of its mark

or it will miss the red carpet.

All the departure boards at

Grand Central Station are

exactly one minute wrong.

All telephone services in the USA

were suspended for one minute

during the funeral of

Alexander Graham Bell.

The first mobile-phone call

took place on 3rd April 1973.

Motorola’s general manager

called their rivals AT&T

to let them know they’d got there first.

Lord Byron was the first man to swim

from Europe to Asia.

John Maynard Keynes’s mother, Florence,

was the first female mayor

of Cambridge.

The first-ever football chant

was written by

Edward Elgar.

Enid Blyton

liked to play tennis

in the nude.

The Famous Five never had

‘lashings of ginger beer’,

but they did have

‘lashings of hard-boiled eggs’

and ‘lashings of poisonous snakes’.

In Ian Fleming’s original books,

James Bond drinks 101 whiskies

but only 19 vodka Martinis.

Roget’s Thesaurus

has an index which is longer

than the book itself.

The most common book

people lie about having read is

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

George Orwell’s French teacher

was Aldous Huxley.

Handel and Jimi Hendrix lived at

the same house in London

250 years apart.

Mozart once proposed to

Marie Antoinette.

Newborn babies like

Mozart and Vivaldi,

but are indifferent to Beethoven.

Beethoven

had particularly hairy hands.

Hairy-legged tights are sold in China

to protect girls from

unwanted male attention.

In ancient China,

panda fur

was used for

sanitary towels.

All the pandas in the world

belong to China.

30,000 dogs a day

are slaughtered in China

for meat and fur.

The Swiss

are the only Europeans

who eat dog meat.

There are enough

nuclear shelters in Switzerland

to house the entire population.

66% of Mumbai’s inhabitants

live in just 8%

of the city’s area.

36,000 people in Bangladesh

talk Koch.

The British surname ‘Cock’

is four times less common today

than it was in 1881.

The most popular name in China is Wang:

there are 93 million Wangs in China.

Welshite

is a mineral named after its discoverer,

Wilfred R. Welsh.

In Indonesian,

a jayus is a joke

so terrible and badly told

that it becomes funny.

Until the mid-19th century,

Indonesia’s Banda Islands

were the world’s only source

of nutmeg and mace.

Chemical Mace,

the protective spray,

is named after the medieval weapon

not the spice.

Salt and pepper are

provided by NASA for astronauts

in liquid form.

Silly Putty

was taken on Apollo 8

to secure tools in

weightless conditions.

It is impossible

to whistle in a

spacesuit.

Dolphins use

their unique whistles

to call each other

by ‘name’.

Ne Win,

former prime minister of Burma,

bathed in dolphin’s blood,

believing it kept him

youthful.

Dolphins

can stay awake

for 15 days at a time.

Sloths

sleep for ten hours in the wild,

but 16 hours in zoos.

People who

suffer from dysania

find it difficult to

get out of bed in the morning.

Tragomaschalia is

having smelly armpits.

Human body odour

is irresistible to

female goats

on heat.

The South American hoatzin

or ‘stink bird’ has the

slowest digestion of any bird and

smells strongly of rotting manure.

The best way to repel a shark

is to wave rotting flesh

from one of its dead relatives at it.

A single rotten log in a forest

contains between 300 and 400

species of fungi.

Kiwis smell like

field mushrooms.

Franz Schubert was short and fat.

His friends called him ‘the mushroom’.

Schubert was a pall-bearer

at Mozart’s funeral.

William Walton

became a composer

‘to get away from Oldham’.

The explorer Thor Heyerdahl

once spent hours waiting for a taxi

at the BBC only to find that

the driver had been there all along,

waiting for ‘four Airedales’.

The first woman to run

the 400-metre hurdles

in under 53 seconds

was called

Marina Stepanova.

In 2012, the Olympic hurdler

Vania Stombolova

failed to reach the semi-finals

after she fell at the first hurdle.

In February 2013, Hartlepool United

beat Notts County 2–1. Hartlepool’s

scorers were Hartley and Poole.

In a 90-minute football match,

the average player is

in possession of the ball

for 53.4 seconds.

The only football team

with a 100% win rate against Barcelona

is Dundee United.

Manchester United FC

started out as Newton Heath LYR

(Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway) FC.

The first professional baseball team

was the Cincinnati Red Stockings.

Before forming The Beatles,

Lennon and McCartney

billed themselves as

The Nerk Twins.

Simon and Garfunkel

were originally called

Tom and Jerry.

Tom and Jerry

were originally called

Jasper and Jinx.

New Jersey

was originally called

Lorraine.

Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus

were both once called Regent Circus.

The present names were invented by

bus drivers to avoid confusion.

Bus Company Island

is a nature reserve

in Kent.

Nottingham

was first named Snottingham,

after a Viking called Snot.

Names of British castles include

Almond, Cadbury, Cooling,

Eye, Fail, Fast and Stalker.

There are towns in Kentucky called

Twenty-six, Seventy-six

and Eighty-eight.

The four highest mountains on Earth,

Everest, K2, Kanchenjunga and Lhotse,

were first scaled in

1953, 1954, 1955 and 1956

respectively.

As well as K2,

there are four other mountains

too remote to have local names:

K7, K9, K12 and K25.

The world’s highest unclimbed peak

is Gangkhar Puensu in Bhutan.

The mountain is considered sacred

and climbing above 6,000 metres

is banned by the government.

According to Mormonism,

the Garden of Eden

was in Missouri.

A gobemouche is someone who

believes anything

they’re told.

‘DOH’

is the abbreviation for

Doha International Airport

in Qatar.

Saudi Arabia

imports sand.

In the ancient Kush Empire

of North Africa,

a double chin was considered

the height of beauty.

The point of the chin

is called

the pogonion.

Bed makers Silent Night

employ a professional bed tester

whose bottom is insured

for £1 million.

William Pitt the Younger

was so thin he was nicknamed

‘The Bottomless Pitt’.

After pregnancy,

women have permanently

larger feet.

The lower the ratio between

a man’s index and ring fingers,

the longer his penis will be.

Some sea slugs

use a new penis

every time they have sex.

A ‘School of Undressing’ was founded

for women in Manhattan in 1937,

in the belief that

‘poor disrobing techniques’

were driving up divorce rates.

The Yagan of Australia

use mamihlapinatapei to mean

‘the wordless yet meaningful look

shared by two people who desire

to initiate something, but who

are both reluctant to start’.

The Amondawa people

of the Amazon

have no word for ‘time’.

Latin and Gaelic have no words

for ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Sgiomlaireachd (pron. scum-leerie)

is a Scots Gaelic word meaning

‘the kind of friend who

only drops in at

mealtimes’.

To groak is to silently watch

people while they’re eating,

hoping they’ll ask you to join them.

Twice as many forks as knives

are sold in the UK:

Britons increasingly

eat with just a fork.

To pingle is a

Norfolk word meaning

to play with your food.

The makers of Pringles

won a court case in 2008

arguing that Pringles aren’t crisps.

The verdict was overturned

the following year.

People are 50% heavier

and four inches taller

than they were in 1900;

the biggest changes to the

human body for 50 centuries.

Brazils, cashews, coconuts,

peanuts and walnuts

are not nuts.

Juglandaceous

means

‘walnutty’.

One jar of Nutella

is sold somewhere in the world

every 2.5 seconds.

In 2011, a lorry crashed on the M1

spilling enough Marmite

to cover 24 million slices of toast.

Until rubber’s uses were discovered

in 1770, pencil marks were erased

using lumps of fresh bread.

The best thing before sliced bread

was wrapped bread.

Sliced bread was advertised as

‘The Greatest Forward Step

Since Bread Was Wrapped’.

Ciabatta bread

was invented in 1982.

Baker’s yeast and humans

share 18% of their genes.

To read someone’s

entire genome out loud

would take nine and a half years.

In a single day,

a cow produces

up to 320 pints

of saliva.

To flink

is to behave in

a cowardly manner.

Boanthropy is

the delusion that you are

an ox or cow

Buffalo Bill

killed bison,

not buffalo.

The word ‘snapshot’

was first used in 1808.

It meant ‘to fire at a fast-moving

target without aiming properly’.

When taking snaps,

the French say ouistiti (‘marmoset’),

the Bulgarians say zele (‘cabbage’),

the Estonians say hernesupp (‘pea soup)’

and the Thais say pepsi

instead of ‘cheese’.

Over half the cheese

eaten in the UK

is Cheddar.

The ploughman’s lunch

was invented in 1956 by the

English Country Cheese Council.

Until the 15th century, ‘cake’ meant

a flat, round loaf of bread.

Before cane sugar

was introduced to Europe,

food was often sweetened

with parsnips.

As the Earth moves

it makes a musical note

too low for human hearing:

C sharp, 29 octaves below middle C.

Nobody has ever lasted

more than 45 minutes

in the world’s quietest room.

In its entire lifespan,

the average home power drill

in the UK is only used

for 20 minutes.

Steering wheels weren’t introduced

to British cars until 1898.

The first cars had steering tillers.

Killer whales

were originally called

‘whale killers’.

Only one

person is

known to have

been killed by a centipede.

The black mamba is not black;

it gets its name from

the colour of the

inside of its mouth.

An old name for the kestrel is

windfucker.

Fox tossing

was a popular 17th-century sport;

the fox was fired into the air

using a sling.

Dubai’s Burj Khalifa skyscraper

is so high, and its lifts are so fast,

that you can watch the sun set

at ground level, travel to the roof

and watch it set again.

The first skyscrapers

were buildings with ten to 20 floors;

today they are defined as

those with more than 40.

Locust swarms move so fast because

each locust is trying to eat the one in front

and avoid being eaten by the one behind.

Albatrosses

can fly around the world

in less than two months.

A Formula 1 racing car

could get round the M25

in 48 minutes.

Apollo 11’s flag is

no longer standing on the Moon.

It was planted too close to the

lunar module’s lift-off site

and was blown over

by the exhaust.

Exhaust emissions

can be reduced

by using pig’s urine.

22 of the first 29

US astronauts

were firstborns.

More people have

been into space

than have seen

a snow tiger in the wild.

Snow leopards

used to be called

‘ounces’.

Astatine

is an element so rare

there is only an ounce of it

in the whole world.

More chemical elements

have been discovered in Britain

than in any other country.

Over 98% of

the Earth’s crust

is made of only eight

chemical elements.

Half the mass

of most rock

is oxygen.

One gram of matter

contains as much energy

as 10,000 tonnes of TNT.

The mass of a Higgs boson is

0.0000000000000000000003 grams.

CERN is home to

the world’s largest magnet:

it weighs more than

the Eiffel Tower.

The paint on the Eiffel Tower

weighs as much as

ten elephants.

The water melting

from the Greenland ice sheet

each year weighs as much as

a hundred million bowhead whales

or a billion elephants.

The polar ice cap is melting

so quickly that, by 2050,

ships will be able to sail

to the North Pole.

If the temperature

in the UK reaches 50°C,

the roads will melt.

The Earth’s core

is about the same temperature

as the surface of the sun.

In 1673, Dover and Calais

were joined by ice.

There are more deer

in Britain today

than at any time

since the last Ice Age.

Fighting male deer

can lock antlers

and starve to death.

Moose masturbate

by rubbing their

antlers on trees.

Egyptian pharaohs

ritually masturbated into the Nile

to ensure an abundance of water.

Rose water was the

world’s most popular flavour

until the discovery of vanilla.

The technical term

for ice-cream brain freeze is

sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.

Japanese ice-cream flavours include:

cactus, raw horseflesh,

squid gut, pit viper, goat,

charcoal, collagen and Viagra.

In the 12th century,

one in ten Japanese

was a Samurai.

In 1602, the Japanese government

ordered all pet cats be released

to kill the mice threatening

the country’s silkworms.

In the Pyrenees

in the 18th century,

farmers buried live cats

to clear their land of weeds.

The magic word

‘abracadabra’

was first used to

ward off malaria.

There is a cult in Malaysia

that worships

a giant teapot.

The philosopher Jeremy Bentham

had a special teapot called Dickey.

In Tibet,

distances were traditionally measured

by the number of cups of tea

needed for each journey.

Britons drink

60 billion cups of tea

every year.

In 2011, under pressure from

animal-rights activists,

PG Tips agreed to stop testing

its tea on animals.

In the UK, octopuses enjoy

the same legal status as vertebrates.

An octopus has horizontal pupils;

whatever angle the octopus is at,

its pupils always stay aligned

with the horizon.

There is a fish

that mimics an octopus

mimicking a fish.

Prozac makes fish angry.

80% of front-page newspaper articles

are written by men.

More Nobel Peace Prizes

have been awarded to institutions

than to women.

Only 5% of the art

currently on display

in American museums

is by women.

The average woman spends

16 months of her life

crying.

Saudi Arabia has

the highest motor accident rate

in the world

and no women drivers.

Three times as many

Japanese people die

in bathtubs as in car crashes.

88% of adult Italians

have had sex in a car.

Tormentone is the Italian for

a summer hit song that is always

playing on your car radio.

Fiat is an acronym of

the Italian for

‘Italian Car Factory of Turin’.

BMW stands for

the German for

‘Bavarian Motor Works’.

Mazda is the ancient

Zoroastrian god of wisdom.

Samsung

means ‘three stars’

in Korean.

Mitsubishi means

‘three water chestnuts’

in Japanese.

CT body scans expose the patient

to the same amount of radiation

as that experienced within a mile

and a half of the Hiroshima bomb.

Marie Curie exposed herself

to so much radiation

that her kitchen cookbooks

are still radioactive.

In 1930, a radium-infused jockstrap

called the Scrotal Radiendocrinator

went on the market,

claiming to boost sexual virility.

A spermologer

is a collector of trivia.

Koinophilia

is sexual attraction to

average people.

Economics students

have more sexual partners

than those of any other subject.

Semen and seminar

both come from

the Latin for

‘seed’ or ‘offspring’.

The mean cost of

bringing up a British child

is estimated to be

£218,024.

Regular use of sunblock has

increased the incidence of rickets

among British children.

American children get

11% of their daily energy intake

from sugary drinks.

By 2050, one in three Americans

will be diabetic.

During the

Seven Years War (1754–63),

1,512 British soldiers were killed in action

and 100,000 were killed by scurvy.

In 1915, more men died

on the Western Front

than the total number of yards

gained by either side.

80% of men born

in the Soviet Union in 1923

were dead by 1945.

China’s Taipang Rebellion (1850–64)

killed 20 million people:

a tenth of the world’s population.

The first country to ban foie gras

on grounds of animal cruelty

was Nazi Germany.

Of almost 4,000 mammals

in Berlin Zoo in 1939,

only 91 survived the bombings

of the Second World War.

Half the world’s 6,000 languages

are not expected to survive

into the next century.

An apocaholic is a person

obsessed with the possibility

of imminent disaster.

Human settlement in the Pacific islands

has led to the disappearance

of a tenth of the world’s

bird species.

Animals found only in Fiji

include the montane emo skink,

the bicolored foxface and the

twilight fangblenny.

In Fiji, until 2003,

Prince Charles’s birthday

was a national holiday.

Hawaii is the only US state

that still has the Union Jack

as part of its flag.

The largest ship ever built

was too big to sail through

the English Channel.

Venice’s Grand Canal isn’t a canal,

it’s a seawater channel.

‘Bach’ means brook or stream.

Beethoven once remarked that Bach

should be known as ‘ocean’,

not ‘brook’.

At its mouth,

the Amazon River is nearly as wide

as the Thames is long.

A raindrop that falls

into the Thames will pass

through the bodies of eight people

before it reaches the sea.

It is impossible

to suck water up through a straw

more than 34 feet long.

Fell Beck Falls in Yorkshire

is twice the height of Niagara.

The second-highest waterfall in Canada

doesn’t have a name.

Toronto has a

sports accessories store named

‘The Merchant of Tennis’.

Canada’s Olympic lacrosse team of 1904

had players called Rain-in-Face,

Snake Eater and Man Afraid Soap.

Writer Ambrose Bierce’s siblings

were Abigail, Amelia, Ann, Addison,

Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew,

Albert, Arthur, Adelia and Aurelia.

Annabelle, Daisy, Emma, Elizabeth,

Gabriel, Joshua, Lulu, Maxine, Nicola,

Sebastian, Vanessa, Verity and Winston

are all varieties of potato.

Dutch poets you may not know include

Jacob Cats, Hans Plomp, Hubert Poot,

Wieny Curvers and Antony Staring.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s full name is

Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro.

He was named after

Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan’s

chief of staff was called

Donald Regan.

The Gral Secretary

of the Sri Lanka Teachers’ Union

is called Joseph Stalin.

There is a peer in the House of Lords

called Lady Garden.

Between 2002 and 2010,

335 people visited A&E in America

with pubic-hair-grooming injuries.

New Yorkers

bite 25 times more Americans

than sharks do.

A 1998 health-and-safety report

in Queensland, Australia,

advised against placing

‘any part of one’s body

in the mouth of a crocodile’.

In Queensland,

pet rabbits are illegal.

In Melbourne,

singing an obscene ballad is

punishable by six months in prison.

The name Canberra

resulted from a competition;

losing entries included

Democratia, Kangaremu

and Australamooloo.

When people first came to

Australia 40,000 years ago,

the land was covered with

tropical forests, brimming lakes

and snow-capped mountains.

A 2013 survey found

that 10% of Britons think

that Australia is further away

than the Moon.

The inflexible gloves that

astronauts wear cause

their fingernails to fall off.

The only mountain in Flanders

is 156 metres high.

First prize at the 2010

Karaoke World Championships

in Moscow was

one million dumplings.

The doomed Hindenburg airship was

equipped with a cigarette lighter;

it was chained to a table

in the smoking room.

‘Flak’ is an abbreviation

of the German word

Fliegerabwehrkanone

‘pilot warding-off cannon’.

A temherte slaq is an

Ethiopian punctuation mark

used to denote sarcasm.

In Finnish

an exclamation mark

is a ‘shout mark’;

in Spanish it’s

a ‘wonder symbol’.

Ruyton-XI-Towns, Shropshire,

is the only place in Britain

whose name contains Roman numerals.

In Roman law, balnearii were

criminals who stole

clothes from public baths.

The Roman army

used cobwebs

to dress wounds.

Spiders recycle their webs

by eating them.

Black-lace weaver spiders

increase their chances of survival

by eating their mother

before leaving the nest.

The average Briton

thinks there are

25 times as many

teenage mothers

as there actually are.

Osburgh, first wife of Ethelwulf,

was the mother of four English kings:

Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelred I

and Alfred the Great.

Karl Marx’s mother once said to him:

‘I wish you would make some capital

instead of just writing about it.’

A new law in China in 2013

means citizens could face jail

if they don’t visit their parents.

The average British woman

owns 22 items of clothing

that she never wears.

For 214 years until 2012,

it was illegal in Paris

for women to wear trousers.

Women’s size 14 trousers

are four inches bigger

at the waist today

than they were in the 1970s.

Robert Wadlow,

the tallest man in history,

went to school at the age of five

in a suit made for a 17-year-old.

Straitjackets used to be known

as ‘strait-waistcoats’.

The first piece of

high-visibility clothing

was a wedding dress.

The first heart pacemaker

had a battery that was

wheeled around in a cart.

In 1961, a Soviet surgeon

in Antarctica became

the first person to successfully

remove his own appendix.

In 1974,

the Soviet Union

drew up detailed plans

to invade Manchester.

Russia’s legal minimum

monthly wage is £93.

The minimum monthly

cost of living there is £125.

Knowing that Angela Merkel

is afraid of dogs, Vladimir Putin

arrived to meet her in 2007

with his black Labrador.

The word ‘bully’

once meant

‘sweetheart’.

The man who voiced

Mickey Mouse

for 32 years

married the woman

who voiced Minnie Mouse

for 27 years.

The actors who play Homer and Marge

in the French version of The Simpsons

are married in real life.

The married actors who voiced

Popeye and Olive Oyl

ate spinach at their wedding.

Paul Winchell, the man who voiced

Wacky Races villain Dick Dastardly,

built and patented the

first artificial heart in 1956.

Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny,

has ‘That’s All Folks!’

inscribed on his tombstone.

A whole series of The Flintstones

was recorded in Mel Blanc’s bedroom

when he was in a full-body cast

after a car accident.

Walt Disney

was so poor in his twenties,

he had to eat dog food.

Frederick the Great of Prussia

drank coffee mixed with

champagne and mustard.

Charles II massaged his body with

dust from mummified pharaohs

in the hope that their ‘greatness’

would rub off on him.

John Major failed

the selection process

to become a

bus conductor.

The first woman to run a

post office in Germany was

later burned as a witch.

The average keyboard

contains 3,295 germs

per square inch.

The first computer mouse

was called an

x–y position indicator.

At any given second,

6 million space bars are being hit

around the world.

When the Mona Lisa was stolen

from the Louvre in 1911,

people flocked to look at

the space where it had been.

‘Extramundane’

describes the empty space

in which the universe sits.

The silent letters

in words like ‘knife’ are called

aphthongs.

Bodhidharma,

the founder of Zen Buddhism,

spent nine years sitting

facing a wall.

From 1814 to 1830,

the French flag was

plain white.

Brown dwarf stars

are red or blue,

but never

brown.

Dung beetles

navigate using

the Milky Way.

The largest known black holes

are 20 billion times

more massive than the Sun.

39 digits of pi are enough to measure

the circumference of the universe

to the accuracy of the width of

a hydrogen atom.

The atom-bomb explosion at Hiroshima

was generated by matter weighing

no more than a paper clip.

The weight of the cows in any field

will always be less than

the weight of the worms beneath it.

When he died, Dr Atkins

(of the best-selling Atkins diet)

weighed over 18 stones.

Ben & Jerry became friends

at gym class after the coach

shouted at them for being

‘the two slowest, fattest kids’.

Obesity

kills three times as many people

as malnutrition.

One-third of Americans

have eaten cold pizza

for breakfast.

Cornflakes

have more salt per ounce

than salted peanuts.

There’s only a one-calorie difference

between a bowl of Frosties

and a bowl of Special K.

(The extra calorie is in Special K.)

Following Hurricane Katrina,

the use of names beginning with K

increased by 9%.

There are only four people called Kevin

in the Dictionary of National Biography,

and one of them is a woman.

In 1880, 46 baby girls born in the USA

were given the name John, 14 were

named Cecil and 13 were called Frank.

St Kevin is

the patron saint of blackbirds.

In the first quarter of 2012,

Apple sold more iPhones than

there were babies born in the world.

Londoners check their phones

150 times a day,

or once every six minutes.

The average UK office worker

gets 40 emails a day and almost half

never post a letter.

One in four British relationships

begin online.

One in every seven

minutes spent online is

spent on Facebook.

Six new articles

are published on Wikipedia

every second.

The word ‘twitter’ was first used

by Geoffrey Chaucer

in 1374.

The average Briton will text

the equivalent of two copies of

the Complete Works of Shakespeare

in a lifetime.

William Shakespeare

is an anagram of

‘I am a weakish speller’.

The scientific name for kookaburras,

Dacelo, is an anagram of Alcedo,

the scientific name for kingfishers.

Monday is the only day of the week

with a single-word anagram (‘dynamo’).

Cornish Yarg cheese

was invented by the Gray family;

Yarg is ‘Gray’ spelt backwards.

The fax machine was invented

30 years before the telephone.

The remote control

was developed during

the First World War

by the German army.

In the First World War,

it was patriotic in the UK

to kick dachshunds.

In the Second World War,

the Americans renamed

German measles

‘liberty measles’.

The cougar, or mountain lion,

holds the Guinness World Record

for the animal with the most names:

it has more than 40 in English alone.

The South American bullfrog

is eaten as a delicacy in Dominica,

where it is known as

‘mountain chicken’.

The mountain goat is not a goat,

the mountain ash is not an ash

and mountain spinach is not spinach.

The ‘naked mole rat’

is neither naked, a mole

nor a rat.

The circus performer Pasqual Pinon

was known as the ‘Two-headed Mexican’.

He only had one head

and came from Texas.

Seven Mile Beach

on Grand Cayman is

five and a half miles long.

The town of Sevenoaks

is home to eight oaks.

Tuvalu means

‘cluster of eight’ in Tuvaluan.

There are nine islands

in Tuvalu.

The Royal Train

is nine carriages long.

The Andorran army

is made up of ten soldiers.

You can fold a piece of paper

in half 13 times.

Bolivia

has 37 official languages.

Laotian rock rats were

thought to be extinct for 11 million years

until one was found for sale

in a market in Laos in 2006,

about to be turned into a kebab.

One in five doner kebabs

in the UK poses a ‘significant’

threat to public health.

The average British kebab

contains 98% of a person’s

daily salt requirement.

Penguins

can drink salt water.

Captain Scott’s

expedition to the South Pole

ate stewed penguin for

Christmas dinner.

Charles Darwin once ate

roast armadillo

and said he preferred it to duck.

Darwin’s tortoise Harriet

died in 2006

at the age of 176.

The dinosaur noises in Jurassic Park

were made using recordings

of tortoises having sex.

Moths can confuse bats’ ultrasound

by wiggling their genitals.

Whales navigate hundreds of miles

using a mental map created by

bouncing sound off the sea floor.

There are more than 3 million

shipwrecks under the world’s oceans.

Even when adjusted for inflation,

the movie Titanic cost

50% more to make than

the ship of the same name.

94% of the world’s information

is stored digitally.

90% of all the data

ever produced by humans

was created in the last two years.

Every two days,

Facebook records more ‘likes’

than there are people in the world.

The Internet domain name

Googlesucks.com

is owned by

Google.

IBM was originally called the

Computing-Tabulating-Recording

Company.

The first computer mouse

was made of wood.

The first golf balls

were made of wood.

The first golf tees

were little piles of sand.

Every grain of sand

on the planet

is unique.

Deserts make up 33%

of the Earth’s surface,

but only 20% of them

are sandy.

The world’s sandiest desert

is the Great Sandy in Australia,

but even that is only 50% sand.

Foster’s,

the Australian beer company,

is the world’s second-biggest

producer of wine.

Americans were so certain

crime was caused by alcohol

that, on the eve of Prohibition,

some towns in Iowa sold their jails.

A bank robbery

that takes place out of office hours

is classed as a mere burglary.

In 2013, a Milan court sentenced

a homeless man to house arrest.

Each night, police went round to his

bit of pavement to make sure

he was in his sleeping bag.

Sir Thomas Malory,

author of Le Morte d’Arthur,

was the only person in England

who wasn’t pardoned after

the Wars of the Roses.

Abraham Lincoln

was inducted into the

Wrestling Hall of Fame.

Before he became a writer,

Franz Kafka was an

accident insurance lawyer.

Oliver Cromwell was a

farmer until he was 40.

Al Capone’s business card

described him as

a used-furniture dealer.

In 1980,

Saddam Hussein

was awarded the key

to the city of Detroit.

Mussolini’s son

was a top jazz musician.

Fidel Castro’s son

is a champion golfer.

General Franco

kept the mummified hand of

St Teresa of Avila

on his bedside table

until his death.

American novelist

Sherwood Anderson

died from swallowing

the toothpick in the olive

in his Martini.

Dostoevsky’s father

was drowned in vodka

by his own serfs.

Rodin died of pneumonia

brought on by cold

after being refused a room

in the centrally heated museum

where his sculptures were kept.

Eugene Aserinsky,

one of the founders of sleep research,

died in a car crash

after falling asleep at the wheel.

Everyone sleeps

in one of six different positions:

‘foetus’, ‘log’, ‘yearner’,

‘soldier’, ‘freefaller’

or ‘starfish’.

The technical term

for sleep-talking is

somniloquy.

Most people dream

five times a night.

The ‘mare’ in ‘nightmare’

was a female demon

who suffocated people in their sleep

by sitting on their chests.

Cocaine, LSD, speed and crystal meth

are not narcotics.

Ernest Shackleton took cocaine

with him to the Antarctic

to combat snow blindness.

Pope Leo XIII carried

a hip flask full of wine

infused with cocaine.

Coca-Cola

started out as

the non-alcoholic version

of cocaine-based claret.

‘Alcohol’

is from the Arabic al-kuhl,

meaning

‘the essence of things’.

There is a cloud in

the constellation Aquila

that has enough alcohol in it to make

400 trillion trillion pints of beer.

The world’s oldest legal system,

in ancient Mesopotamia,

established beer as a

unit of currency.

The punishment

for serving bad beer

in ancient Babylon

was drowning.

Robert Oppenheimer,

‘the father of the atomic bomb’,

tried to kill his university tutor

with a poisoned apple.

In the Second World War,

the USA and New Zealand

secretly tested 3,700 ‘tsunami bombs’

designed to destroy coastal cities.

In 1958, the US Air Force

lost a hydrogen bomb

somewhere in Georgia.

In 2012, a Mr Kaboom of Akron, Ohio,

caused panic after leaving

an aluminium walking stick

engraved with his surname

outside City Hall.

In 1916, Samuel Born

was given the key to

the city of San Francisco

for inventing the machine that

inserts sticks into lollipops.

The ancient Greek for ‘little sticks’

is ‘bacteria’.

The word ‘mistletoe’

comes from the Anglo-Saxon for

‘dung on a stick’.

When greeting one another,

white-faced capuchin monkeys

stick their fingers

up each other’s noses.

King Alexander I of Greece

died after being bitten

by a pet monkey.

George IV

had a pet giraffe.

Henrik Ibsen

kept a pet scorpion

in an empty beer glass

on his desk.

Lord Kitchener

had four spaniels called

Shot, Bang, Miss

and Damn.

You only need to be

three feet underwater

to be protected from bullets.

The world record for

holding one’s breath underwater

is 22 minutes.

Newborn rats

can survive underwater

for 40 minutes.

In the first century AD,

polar bears fought seals

in Roman amphitheatres

flooded with water.

Every year, hundreds of

elephant seal pups are crushed to death

under mating adults.

Elephant seal milk

is twice as thick as

whipping cream.

Baikal seals live in Lake Baikal,

2,500 miles from the sea.

Nobody knows how they got there.

Nobody knows

who invented the fire hydrant:

the patent records

were destroyed in a fire.

Ignivomousness

is the ability

to vomit fire.

In the 19th century,

angry cats were known as

‘spitfires’.

The first Xerox photocopier

was so prone to bursting into flames

that it was fitted with its own

fire extinguisher.

The first cloned cat

was called ‘CC’,

short for

‘Carbon Copy’.

Great white sharks

are 200 times heavier

than domestic cats,

but their brains

weigh almost the same.

A domestic cat

has a stronger bite

than a Komodo dragon.

Komodo dragons

eat up to 80% of their body weight

in a single meal.

Fleas can live for a year

without eating.

The UK’s largest flea

lives on the pygmy shrew,

the UK’s smallest mammal.

A colony of the world’s smallest ants

could live comfortably inside the skull

of the world’s largest ant.

The AD/BC dating system

was devised by a monk called

Dennis the Small.

Dennis, Kevin, Justin and Marvin

are the least likely names

to be clicked on by women

on dating websites.

The words ‘whore’ and ‘charity’

both come from

a Germanic word meaning

‘one who desires’.

George IV only had sex

with his wife, Caroline of Brunswick,

three times,

all in the first two days

of their marriage.

According to English folklore,

if a woman feeds her husband roast owl,

he will become completely subservient

to her every wish.

A male hippo

attracts a female by spraying her

with excrement.

A Mills and Boon-style romance

in France is called

a ‘rose-water novel’.

In China, the Korean War is called

‘The War to Resist US Aggression

and Aid Korea’.

The Japanese word inemuri

means ‘sleeping on the job’;

the practice is supposed to show

how committed an employee is.

A hikikimori is a

Japanese teenager who

spends most of their time

in their bedroom.

An umbratile

is someone who

stays in the dark.

US President Calvin Coolidge

liked to eat breakfast in bed

while having his head rubbed

with Vaseline.

Vaselina

is the Mexican title for

the movie

Grease.

Mexicans drink

more Coca-Cola per head

than anyone else.

Pope Benedict XVI drank

more than five times his own body weight

in Fanta every year.

The total amount of water

ever drunk by humans

would cover the Earth’s oceans to

a depth of less than three millimetres.

Almost two-thirds

of all the water used in the UK

comes from other countries.

Only 22 of the

world’s 193 countries

have never been invaded

by the British.

Americans

have invaded Canada twice,

in 1775 and 1812.

They lost both times.

2009

was the first year

in recorded history that there were

no executions in Europe.

2013 was the first year since 1987

composed of four different

digits.

1457 was the first year

the word ‘golf’

appeared in print,

in an Act of Parliament

making it illegal.

The invention of the bicycle

increased the average distance between the

birthplaces of spouses in England

from one mile to 30 miles.

A human sperm

can swim 25 times its body length

every second.

If you laid all the viruses

in Earth’s oceans end to end,

they would make a line

100 million light years long,

passing 50,000 galaxies.

Just looking at a sick person

is enough to get your

immune system

working.

Abraham Lincoln was suffering

from smallpox when he gave

the Gettysburg Address.

Alfred Russel Wallace was delirious

with a malarial fever

when he came up with

the Theory of Natural Selection.

The human influenza virus

was first isolated in 1933

from a sick ferret.

A flu virus

can only survive

on most surfaces for 48 hours,

but can live on a banknote

for 17 days.

The Bank of England

used to heat its buildings

by incinerating old banknotes.

La Paz, Bolivia,

was the first South American city

to get an electricity supply.

It was powered by llama dung.

Until 2010,

the solar-panel industry

used more electricity

than it produced.

You would need to cover an area

the size of Wales with wind turbines

to meet one-sixth of the UK’s

daily energy needs.

One-third of batteries are thrown away

with 70% of their power left.

Sugar is an ingredient

in 70% of manufactured food.

70% of Americans

believe in angels.

In a 2004 experiment,

70% of Britons handed over

their computer passwords

in exchange for chocolate.

For 2,000 years,

chocolate was only known as a drink.

The first solid chocolate bar

was sold in 1849.

Hot chocolate seems tastier

if served in a cup

that is coloured

orange or cream.

Aristotle believed

rainbows only had

three colours.

To the Chinese,

rainbows have only

five colours.

You can only see a rainbow

if your back is to the sun.

A comet’s tail always faces

away from the sun:

it doesn’t tell you anything

about the way it’s going.

You are ten times more likely

to be hit by a comet

than to die in a plane crash.

The word ‘comet’ is from the Greek

kometes meaning

‘long-haired’.

Ponytails were

outlawed in China

in 1911.

In the 18th century,

to ‘queue’ meant

to tie your hair into a plait.

The French for ‘grand piano’

– piano à queue –

means ‘piano with a tail’.

Spotted animals

can have striped tails,

but stripy animals

can’t have spotty tails.

Because they are

such solitary animals,

there is no collective noun

for a group of snow leopards.

Sami people

never mention a polar bear by name

in case they offend it;

instead they call it

‘the old man in the fur coat’.

Human pollution has caused

the average length of

polar bears’ penises

to shrink.

A male polar bear will follow

the tracks of a breeding female

for more than 60 miles.

Spiny anteaters

form ‘love trains’ where

a female is followed for weeks

by a line of ten hopeful males.

‘Esperanto’ means ‘hopeful’

in Esperanto.

One in ten lottery tickets in Turkey

is bought from a single kiosk

with a reputation for

selling to winners.

In 2010,

exactly the same numbers

came up in the Israeli lottery

twice in three weeks.

Four is the only number

whose value is the same

as the number of letters

in its name.

Multiplying 21978 by 4

reverses the order of the numbers.

MOW, NOON and SWIMS

read the same when upside down.

In 2010, Brazil, Russia, India and China

invited South Africa to join

the BRIC group of nations.

They would have asked Nigeria,

but BRICS made a better acronym.

The acronym ‘lol’

was being used in the 1960s

to mean ‘little old lady’.

The Korean version

of ‘lol’ is KKK.

More than half of all Koreans

are called Kim, Lee, Park,

Choi or Jung.

Jung’s grandfather

taught his children Hebrew

so they would be able to read

the newspapers in heaven.

In the 1720s,

the Gloucester Journal apologised for

‘the present scarcity of news’

and offered its readers

a selection of poems instead.

Kinmel Hall in Wales

had a room that was used for nothing

but ironing the daily newspapers.

Royal household staff

iron a £5 note every Sunday

so that the Queen has something

to put in the church

collection plate.

The Union Jack

only flies over Buckingham Palace

when the Queen is not there.

The British subjects who

are happiest in their work

are gardeners and florists.

A ziraleet is

an outcry of joy,

especially by several people at once.

Strikhedonia is the joy of

not giving a damn.

Ataraxia is

complete freedom

from stress and anxiety.

John Le Carré

has a poster

in his study that reads

‘Keep Calm and Le Carré On’.

Abraham Lincoln

calmed himself down

during the American Civil War

by playing marbles.

Stressed koalas

suffer from a fatal condition called

‘wet bottom’.

A koala’s brain

is only 0.2% of its

body weight.

The smallest known brain

in a healthy person belonged to

Anatole France, winner of the

1921 Nobel Prize for Literature.

We have more brain cells

as a newborn baby

than we will ever have again.

There are 100 trillion atoms

in a human cell

and 100 trillion cells

in the human body.

50,000 cells in your body

have died since you

started reading this sentence.

The murder rate in the UK

is 11 people per million;

in Cabot Cove, the setting for

Murder, She Wrote,

it’s 1,490 per million.

In Germany, Murder, She Wrote

is called Mord ist ihr Hobby

(‘Murder Is Her Hobby’).

Man-eating tigers

almost always attack people

from behind.

In 23 movies,

Dolph Lundgren has

killed a total of 662 people.

Jagdish Raj, holder of

the Guinness World Record

for ‘most typecast actor’,

played a policeman in 144 movies.

The world record

for keeping a kite aloft

is seven and a half days.

The world shorthand record

was set at 350 words a minute in 1922

and has never been beaten.

In 2010, a British man

spent 121 days in a room with 40 snakes,

only to be told that Guinness no longer

maintain the world record he was

trying to break.

A rattlesnake

that has been out in the rain

will not rattle.

Birds can’t burp.

Mice can cough.

A crocodile cannot

move its tongue.

‘Jimber-jawed’ means

having a protruding lower jaw.

A jaguar’s jaws are strong enough

to bite through a turtle’s shell.

A Panamanian termite can

close its mouth at more

than 150 mph.

Adolf Hitler bit his nails.

Kooteninchela deppi

is an insect fossil

with triple-pronged claws,

named after Johnny Depp in

Edward Scissorhands.

Sylvilagus palustris hefneri

is a rabbit named

after Hugh Hefner.

Phialella zappai

is a jellyfish named after

Frank Zappa

because its discoverer

wanted to meet him.

The real names of the

Marx brothers were

Leonard, Julius, Herbert and Adolph.

Until the late 17th century,

pine cones were known as

‘pineapples’.

The word barack

is Hungarian for ‘peach’,

Hebrew for ‘flash of lightning’

and Swedish for ‘shed’.

Britons spend

60 million hours a week

in their sheds.

One in ten

National Lottery millionaires

bought caravans with their winnings;

one in four

bought hot tubs.

St Mungo,

the patron saint of Glasgow,

died of shock after

getting into a hot bath.

St Nicholas

resurrected three small boys

who had been cut into pieces

and pickled in brine.

The medieval French made up their

own saints, such as St Coquette,

the patron saint of talkative women,

and St Jambon, the patron saint of ham.

Pope John Paul II,

who held office for 26 years,

created more saints than all the popes

in the previous 500 years.

When Pope John Paul II

visited California, the Hollywood sign

was changed to read ‘Holywood’.

The Golden Palace Casino in Texas

bought Pope Benedict XVI’s

old VW Golf

on eBay.

According to the Vatican,

you can reduce the time

you spend in purgatory

by following the Pope

on Twitter.

The word papa

means ‘pope’ in Italian,

‘shark’ in Swahili, ‘potato’ in Quechua

and ‘arse’ in Maori.

The Italian name for @

is chiocciola, meaning

‘snail’.

The Dutch name for @

is apenstaart, meaning

‘monkey’s tail’.

The Danish name for @

is snabel-a, meaning

‘“a” with a long nose’.

The Czech name for @

is zavináč, meaning

‘pickled herring’.

The Manx word for ‘kipper’

is skeddan jiarg,

which literally translates

as ‘red herring’.

The word ‘jungle’

comes from the Hindi jangal,

meaning ‘waste ground’.

The Thai word for ‘tapir’

is P’som-sett, meaning ‘mixture’,

because tapirs look as if they are

made up of bits left over

from other animals.

The ‘slush’ in ‘slush fund’

was originally leftover fat

that sailors sold for profit.

In the 1790s,

a quarter of the sailors

in the Royal Navy

were black.

The modern British army

has more horses

than tanks.

American citizens

own more assault rifles

than the British army.

You can join the army at 16,

but you have to be 18

to play Call of Duty.

In an average

three-hour game

of American football,

the ball is in play

for just 11 minutes.

In 2011, the UK’s top-selling

single in cassette form

was *N Sync’s ‘I’ll Never Stop’.

It sold a total of 11 copies.

The Basque word for ‘11’

also means ‘infinite’.

111,111,111 x 111,111,111

=

12,345,678,987,654,321.

The Irish language

has one set of numbers for arithmetic,

one for counting humans

and one for counting non-humans.

Bees can count

up to four.

Wasps can recognise

each other’s faces.

Octopuses can be

taught to open jam jars,

but will have forgotten how

by the next day.

During Isaac Newton’s

29-year fellowship at Cambridge,

he taught only three pupils.

Handel wrote

the 259-page score of The Messiah

in 24 days.

The longest anyone

has gone without sleep is

18 days, 21 hours and 40 minutes.

The medical condition

known as a ‘stroke’

is short for

‘a stroke of God’s hand’.

North Carolina, Arkansas, Maryland,

Mississippi, South Carolina,

Tennessee and Texas

all ban atheists from

holding public office.

You need a licence

to sell seaweed in England.

Under the UK’s Salmon Act of 1986,

it is illegal to handle salmon

in suspicious circumstances.

Honking your car horn,

except in an emergency,

is illegal in the city

of New York.

Only 1% of car alarms that go off

are caused by an attempted theft.

When working as an organist,

Puccini stole and sold the pipes

and then changed the harmonies so

no one noticed the missing notes.

Charles Dickens’s brother Frederick

was imprisoned for debt

and died an alcoholic.

Dickens nicknamed

three of his children

Flaster Floby, Lucifer Box and

Chickenstalker.

Coyotes

can run faster

than roadrunners.

A coyote

crossed with a dog

is called a ‘coydog’.

A cross between

a zebra and a pony

is called a ‘zony’.

Chemshebongo,

the Swahili for ‘crossword’,

means ‘boil-brain’.

The world’s largest jigsaw

has 552,232 pieces.

The official state sport

of Maryland

is jousting.

The official state dance

of North Carolina

is the Shag.

The largest-ever Irish dance

involved 10,036 people,

and took place in

Dublin, Ohio.

The cancan

was originally a dance for couples

and its earliest stars

were men.

‘Hip-hop’

first appeared

in English in

1672.

Winston Churchill’s mother

had a tattoo of a snake

on her wrist.

King Charles XIV of Sweden

had a tattoo which read

‘Death to Kings’.

400,000 human beings

are born every day.

In June 2013,

21 women born

in the 19th century

were still alive,

but no men.

The average temperature

of a beehive

is the same as that

of the human body.

There is 40 times

more energy in empty space

than in matter.

Iceland is the

world’s youngest land mass;

Greenland is the oldest.

If we could extend

our lives indefinitely,

we’d still die, but in an accident,

at an average age

of 1,200.

An ‘endling’

is the final

individual in a species.

Eugene Cernan,

the last man to walk on the Moon,

wrote his daughter’s initials

in the lunar dust.

They will still be legible

in 50,000 years.

A Note on Sources

For anyone keen to verify any of the facts in the book, they can be found online by going to qi.com/1339 and typing the relevant book page number in the search box. There is also a wealth of additional background detail about much of the information. Please do let us know if you have a quibble or a correction and add your own discoveries via our Twitter account @qikipedia.

The three people credited with compiling these facts are not the only ones who deserve the credit for it. Particular thanks are due to the core research team of Anne Miller, Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Ptaszynski and Alex Bell, the miners of many more tons of factual ore than the book was able to carry. They were supported by the wider QI family: Rob Blake, Will Bowen, Stevyn Colgan, Mat Coward, Jenny Doughty, Piers Fletcher, Chris Gray, Molly Oldfield, Justin Pollard, Dan Schreiber, Freddy Soames, Liz Townsend and Richard Turner. And, as ever, the book’s first and best editor was Sarah Lloyd.

Thanks are also due to Faber, our esteemed publisher. If patience is nature’s secret then Stephen Page, Julian Loose, Eleanor Crow, John Grindrod, Hannah Marshall, Paula Turner and Anne Owen already have it cracked.

Index

This is here to help you find your favourite bits. Like the facts themselves, we’ve kept it as simple as we can.

*N Sync, 1;

007 1;

1,339 1

abortion 1;

abracadabra 1;

accidents 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

acronyms 1, 2, 3;

activists 1;

actors 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

adultery 1;

advertising 1, 2, 3;

aeroplanes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

Afghanistan 1, 2;

Africa 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

Afrikaans 1;

age 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16;

air 1, 2, 3, 4;

air-conditioning 1;

Airedales 1;

airports 1;

airships 1;

alarms 1;

Alaska 1, 2;

Albanian 1;

albatrosses 1;

Albert Hall 1;

alcohol 1, 2, 3, 4;

alcoholics 1;

Aldrin, Buzz 1;

Alexander the Great 1;

alligators 1;

Alzheimer’s 1;

Amazon 1, 2, 3;

America 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19;

Amundsen, Roald 1;

anagrams 1, 2;

Andaman Islands 1;

Anderson, Pamela 1;

Andorra 1;

angels 1;

anger 1;

angina 1;

animal cruelty 1;

animal testing 1;

anorexia 1;

Antarctica 1, 2, 3, 4;

anteaters 1;

antelopes 1;

antlers 1;

Antoinette, Marie 1, 2;

ants 1, 2, 3;

appendixes 1;

applause 1, 2;

Apple, Inc. 1, 2;

apples 1;

apricots 1;

Arabic 1, 2, 3, 4;

archaeology 1;

arguments 1;

Aristotle 1;

armadilloes 1;

Armenia 1, 2;

armies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

armpits 1, 2;

arms 1, 2, 3;

arse-wisp 1;

art 1, 2, 3, 4;

ash 1, 2;

aspirin 1, 2;

assassinations 1;

astatine 1;

astronauts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

atheism 1;

Atkins, Dr 1;

atomic bombs 1, 2, 3;

atoms 1, 2;

audiences 1, 2, 3;

‘Auld Lang Syne’ 1;

Austen, Jane 1;

Australia 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8;

avocados 1, 2;

Azerbaijan 1

babies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13;

Babylon 1;

Bach, Johann Sebastian 1;

bacteria 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

baked beans 1, 2;

balls 1, 2, 3;

Bangladesh 1;

Bank of England 1;

bankers 1;

banknotes 1, 2, 3;

bankruptcy 1;

banks 1, 2, 3;

barack 1;

Barbie 1;

Barcelona 1;

baseball 1;

Basque 1;

bathroom 1;

baths 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

bats 1, 2, 3;

batteries 1, 2;

battles 1, 2, 3, 4;

beaches 1, 2, 3;

beards 1, 2;

bears 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

Beatles 1, 2;

beauty 1;

beds 1, 2, 3, 4;

beehive 1;

beer 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

bees 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

Beethoven 1, 2, 3;

beetles 1, 2;

Belarus 1;

Belgium 1, 2;

Bell, Alexander Graham 1;

bells 1;

Ben & Jerry 1;

Bentham, Jeremy 1;

Berlin, Irving 1;

Beyoncé 1;

Bible 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

Bic 1;

bicycles 1, 2, 3;

Bierce, Ambrose 1;

bimbos 1;

birds 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10;

Birmingham 1;

birth 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

birthdays 1, 2, 3;

biting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

black holes 1;

black mamba 1;

blackbirds 1;

bladders 1;

Blanc, Mel 1;

blood 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

Blyton, Enid 1, 2;

body odour 1, 2;

bodybuilding 1;

Bolivia 1, 2;

bombs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

Bond, James Bond 1, 2, 3;

bones 1, 2, 3, 4;

bookcases 1;

books 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

boomboxes 1;

boomerangs 1;

bootylicious 1;

Boss, Hugo 1;

Boston 1;

bottoms 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9;

bow ties 1;

bragging 1;

brain freeze 1;

brains 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12;

bread 1, 2, 3;

breakfast 1, 2;

breathing 1, 2, 3, 4;

bribery 1;

bricks 1;

bridges 1;

briefcases 1;

Bristol 1;

Britain 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14;

British Rail 1;

brothels 1;

Brown, Dan 1;

Brussels sprouts 1;

bubblegum 1;

Buckingham Palace 1, 2, 3;

Buddhism 1;

budgies 1;

buffalo 1, 2;

Buffalo Bill 1;

Bugs Bunny 1;

bullfrogs 1;

bullies 1;

burglary 1, 2;

burial 1;

Burma 1;

burping 1;

buses 1;

Bush, George W. 1, 2, 3, 4;

butlers 1;

butterflies, 1;

buttons 1

cabbages 1, 2;

Caesar, Julius 1;

caffeine 1;

Cage, John 1;

cake 1, 2;

Calais 1;

calendars 1, 2, 3;

calmness 1;

calories 1, 2;

Cambridge 1, 2;

camels 1;

Cameron, David 1, 2;

Cameron, Samantha 1;

Cameroon 1;

campanology 1;

Canada 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

canals 1;

canaries 1;

Canberra 1;

cancan 1;

cannabis 1, 2;

cannibalism 1;

Capone, Al 1;

caravans 1;

carbon 1, 2;

Cardiff 1;

cards, greeting 1;

Carlsberg 1;

carp 1;

carpets 1, 2, 3;

carrots 1;

cars 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15;

Cash, Johnny 1;

cassettes 1;

castles 1;

Castro, Fidel 1;

Catholics 1;

cats 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8;

cauliflowers 1;

caves 1;

Cayman Islands 1;

CCTV 1;

cells 1, 2, 3, 4;

cemeteries 1;

centipedes 1;

cereal 1;

champagne 1, 2, 3;

charity 1;

Chaucer, Geoffrey 1;

Cheddar 1;

cheerleaders 1;

cheese 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

cheeseburgers 1;

chemistry 1, 2;

cherries 1;

chess 1, 2, 3;

chestnuts 1;

chewing gum 1;

chicken 1, 2, 3, 4;

children 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10;

China 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14;

Chinese checkers 1;

chins 1, 2;

chocolate 1, 2;

choirboys 1;

Chopin, Frederick 1, 2;

Christie, Agatha 1, 2;

Christmas 1, 2;

Churchill, Winston S. 1, 2;

ciabatta 1;

cigarettes 1, 2, 3, 4;

cigars 1;

Cinderella 1;

circuses 1;

civil servants 1;

clams 1, 2;

claret 1;

Cleopatra II 1;

Clinton, Bill 1, 2;

clones 1;

clothes 1, 2, 3;

clouds 1;

Cluedo 1;

coal 1;

cobwebs 1;

Coca-Cola 1, 2, 3;

cocaine 1;

cockroaches 1, 2;

coffee 1, 2;

coins 1, 2, 3;

coldness 1, 2, 3;

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 1;

colon 1;

Colonel Sanders 1;

colours 1, 2, 3, 4;

comas 1;

comets 1;

communication 1;

communism 1;

companies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10;

competitions 1, 2;

computer games 1;

computers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

concrete 1;

constellations 1;

cookbooks 1;

copper 1, 2;

Cornish 1, 2;

Costa Rica 1;

cougars 1;

coughing 1;

counterfeiting 1;

countries 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

cowards 1;

cowboys 1;

cows 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

coyotes 1;

crashes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8;

crayons 1;

cricket 1, 2;

Cricklewood 1;

crime 1, 2, 3, 4;

crisps 1;

crocodiles 1, 2, 3, 4;

Cromwell, Oliver 1;

crosswords 1;

crying 1;

crystal meth 1;

cucumbers 1, 2;

cults 1;

Cumbria 1;

curries 1, 2;

customs 1;

cyanide 1;

cycling 1;

Czech 1

Dalí, Salvador 1;

dancing 1, 2, 3, 4;

Danish 1;

darkness 1, 2;

Darling, Wendy 1;

Darwin, Charles 1, 2;

Dastardly, Dick 1;

data 1, 2;

dating 1, 2;

deafness 1;

Dean, James 1;

death 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12;

debauchery 1;

debt 1;

deer 1;

Defoe, Daniel 1;

delusions 1, 2;

demons 1;

Dench, Dame Judy 1;

Denmark 1, 2;

dentists 1, 2, 3;

Depp, Johnny 1, 2;

depth 1, 2, 3;

deserts 1, 2;

detectives 1;

detergent 1;

diabetes 1;

diamonds 1, 2;

Dickens, Charles 1;

diets 1;

digestion 1, 2;

dinosaurs 1, 2, 3, 4;

disaster 1;

discoveries 1, 2;

Disney, Walt 1;

distance 1, 2, 3;

divorce 1, 2;

DNA 1;

dog food 1;

dogs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9;

dollars 1;

dolls 1;

dolphins 1, 2;

Dominica 1;

Dostoevsky, Fyodor 1;

doughnuts 1;

Dover 1;

Doyle, Arthur Conan 1;

dreams 1;

drills 1;

drink-driving 1;

drinking 1, 2, 3;

drowning 1, 2;

drugs 1;

drunkenness 1, 2, 3;

Dublin 1, 2;

ducks 1, 2;

dumplings 1;

Dundee United 1;

Dutch 1, 2

e-readers 1;

earmuffs 1;

ears 1, 2;

Earth 1, 2, 3;

earthquakes 1;

eating 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

eBay 1;

echidnas 1;

Eden, Garden of 1;

education 1, 2;

eels 1, 2;

eggs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

Egypt 1;

Eiffel Tower 1, 2;

Einstein, Albert 1, 2, 3;

elections 1, 2;

elements 1, 2;

elephants 1, 2, 3, 4;

Elgar, Edward 1, 2;

elves 1;

Elvis 1;

emails 1, 2;

emissions 1;

emperors 1, 2, 3;

energy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

energy, renewable 1;

English 1, 2, 3, 4;

English Channel 1, 2;

erasers 1;

erections 1, 2, 3;

escalators 1, 2;

Esperanto 1;

Ethiopia 1;

Ethiopian 1;

ethnicity 1;

Eton 1;

euphemisms 1;

Europe 1, 2, 3, 4;

Everest 1, 2;

evolution 1, 2;

executions 1;

exorcisms 1;

explosives 1;

Express, The 1;

extinctions 1, 2;

eyebrows 1;

eyelashes 1, 2;

eyes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Facebook 1, 2;

faces 1, 2;

Fanta 1;

farmers 1;

fat 1, 2;

Father’s Day, 1;

faxes 1;

FBI 1, 2;

feet 1, 2;

fellatio 1;

Ferrari 1;

ferrets 1;

Fifty Shades of Grey 1;

Fiji 1;

films 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12;

fines 1;

fingernails 1, 2;

fingers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9;

Finland 1, 2;

Finnish 1;

fire 1, 2, 3;

Fire Brigade 1;

fire hydrants 1;

First World War 1, 2, 3, 4;

firstborns, 1;

fish 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

fittest, survival of 1;

flags 1, 2, 3, 4;

flamingos 1;

flatulence 1;

flatworms 1;

flavours 1, 2;

fleas 1, 2, 3;

Fleming, Ian 1;

flies 1, 2;

flight 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

Flintstones, The 1;

flirting 1;

Florence 1;

flowers 1, 2, 3;

flu 1;

flying 1, 2;

foie gras 1;

folding 1, 2;

folklore 1;

food 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

football 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

footmen 1;

Ford, Henry 1, 2;

Foreman, George 1;

foreskins 1;

forks 1;

Fortnum & Mason 1;

fortune cookies 1;

fossils 1;

foxes 1, 2;

France 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13;

Franco, General 1;

French 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10;

Freud, Sigmund 1;

friendship 1, 2;

frogs 1, 2;

frost 1;

fruit 1;

fuel 1;

funerals 1;

fungi 1;

fur 1, 2, 3

Gaelic, 1;

Galilei, Galileo 1, 2;

gambling 1;

games 1, 2;

Garden, Lady 1;

gardening 1;

gas masks 1;

GCSEs 1;

gender 1, 2;

genes 1;

genitals 1, 2;

geology 1;

Geordies 1;

German 1, 2, 3;

Germany 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

germs 1;

Geronimo 1;

Gershwin, George 1;

gestures 1;

ghosts 1;

Gilbert and Sullivan 1;

ginger beer 1;

giraffes 1;

Glasgow 1, 2, 3;

glasses 1;

gloves 1;

goats 1, 2;

God 1;

gold 1, 2;

Goldberg, Whoopi 1;

gold rushes 1;

Goldilocks 1;

golf 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

Golightly, Holly 1;

Google 1, 2;

Grand Central Station 1;

grass 1;

Grease 1;

Great Gatsby, The 1;

Greece 1;

Greenland 1, 2;

greetings 1;

grenades 1;

guillotine 1, 2;

guinea pigs 1;

Guinness 1;

Guinness World Records 1, 2;

gullible 1;

gunpowder 1;

guns 1, 2, 3, 4;

Guy Fawkes 1

haemorrhoids 1;

hagfish 1;

hair 1, 2, 3, 4 5, 6, 7;

ham 1;

hamsters 1;

Handel, George Frideric 1, 2;

hands 1, 2, 3;

handstands 1;

hangovers 1;

Hannibal 1;

happiness 1;

harps 1, 2;

harpsichords 1;

#hashtags 1;

hatred 1;

Hawaii 1;

headaches 1;

heads 1, 2, 3;

health and safety 1;

heart attacks 1, 2;

hearts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

heaven 1;

Hebrew 1, 2;

hedgehogs 1;

Hefner, Hugh 1;

height 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9;

Heinz 1, 2;

Hendrix, Jimi 1;

herrings 1, 2;

Heyerdahl, Thor 1;

hiding 1;

Higgs boson 1;

Himalayas 1;

Hindenburg 1;

Hindi 1;

hip-hop 1;

hippos 1;

Hiroshima 1, 2;

Hitchcock, Alfred 1;

Hitler 1, 2, 3;

holidays 1, 2;

Holly, Buddy 1;

Hollywood 1;

Holmes, Sherlock 1, 2b;

homelessness 1;

honey 1;

hope 1;

horses 1, 2, 3;

hospitals 1, 2, 3;

hot tubs 1;

house arrest 1;

House of Commons 1, 2;

House of Lords 1;

Hughes, Emlyn 1;

Hugo, Victor 1;

hula-hoops 1;

human body 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15;

humming 1;

humour 1;

hurdles 1;

hurricanes 1;

husbands 1, 2;

Huskies 1;

Hussein, Saddam

IBM 1;

Ibsen, Henrik 1;

ice 1, 2;

Ice Age 1;

ice cream 1, 2;

Iceland 1;

idiots 1;

IKEA 1;

illegal 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10;

imitations 1;

immune system 1;

indexes 1, 2;

India 1, 2, 3, 4;

Indian 1;

Indonesia 1, 2;

infinity 1;

information 1;

injuries 1, 2, 3;

ink 1;

insecticides 1;

insects 1, 2;

insomnia 1;

insults 1;

insurance 1, 2, 3;

Internet 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

intestines 1;

intoxication 1;

Inuit 1;

invasions 1, 2, 3, 4;

inventions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13;

invertebrates 1;

iPhones 1;

Iran 1, 2;

Irish 1, 2, 3;

ironing 1;

irony 1;

islands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

Israel 1;

Italian 1, 2, 3;

Italians 1, 2

Jaffa Cakes 1;

jaguars 1;

jails 1, 2, 3, 4;

jam 1;

January 1;

Japan 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

Japanese 1, 2, 3;

jaws 1;

jazz 1;

jeans 1, 2;

Jedi 1;

jellyfish 1, 2;

Jenga 1;

Jesus 1, 2;

jewels 1;

jigsaws 1;

jobs 1, 2, 3, 4;

John O’Groats 1;

Johnson, Amy 1;

jokes 1;

journalism 1;

journeys 1, 2;

jousting 1;

Judaism 1;

Jung, Carl 1, 2;

jungles 1;

Jupiter 1;

Jurassic Park 1

K2 1;

Kabul 1;

Kafka, Franz 1;

Kalashnikovs 1;

Kama Sutra 1;

kangaroos 1, 2;

karaoke 1;

kayaks 1;

kebabs 1, 2;

Kent 1;

Kentucky 1, 2;

Kentucky Fried Chicken 1;

Kenya 1;

kestrels 1;

Ketamine 1;

ketchup 1;

kettles 1, 2;

Kevins 1;

keyboards 1;

Keynes, John Maynard 1;

keys 1, 2;

kidnapping 1;

kidneys 1;

killing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12;

kilts 1;

kimchi 1;

kingfishers 1;

kings 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16;

Kipling, Rudyard 1;

kippers 1;

kissing 1, 2, 3;

Kitchener, Lord 1;

kites 1;

kitty litter 1;

kiwis 1;

knees 1;

knights 1;

Knights Templar 1;

knives 1;

koalas 1;

Komodo dragons 1;

kookaburras 1;

Koran 1;

Korea, North 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

Korea, South 1, 2, 3, 4;

Korean 1, 2, 3;

krill 1;

Kubrick, Stanley 1;

Kuwait 1

Labour Party 1;

lacrosse 1;

lakes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

lamps 1;

Land’s End 1;

landfill 1;

landscapes 1;

language 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19;

Laos 1, 2;

lasers 1;

Latin 1, 2, 3;

laughter 1;

Laurel and Hardy 1;

lava 1;

laws 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12;

lawyers 1, 2;

Le Carré, John 1;

lead 1;

Lee, Bruce 1;

left-handed 1;

legs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

letters 1, 2;

libraries 1;

lies 1;

lifts 1;

light 1, 2, 3;

lighters 1;

lightning 1, 2;

Lightyear, Buzz 1;

Lincoln, Abraham 1, 2, 3, 4;

lions 1;

literature 1;

livers 1;

llamas 1;

lobotomies 1;

lobsters 1;

locusts 1;

lol 1;

lollipops 1;

London 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13;

London Underground 1, 2;

Long John Silver 1;

look 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

Lord Byron 1;

Lord of the Rings 1;

lorries 1;

losing 1;

lotteries 1, 2;

Louvre 1, 2, 3;

love letters 1;

LSD 1;

luck 1;

Ludo 1;

lunches 1;

Lundgren, Dolph 1;

lungs 1, 2

Macbeth 1;

mace 1;

magnets 1;

magnolias 1;

Major, John 1;

malaria 1, 2;

Malaysia 1;

Maldives 1;

malnutrition 1;

Malory, Thomas 1;

Manchester 1;

Manchester United 1;

manners 1;

Manx 1;

Manx shearwater 1;

Maori 1;

marbles 1;

Marianas Trench 1;

markets 1, 2, 3;

Marmite 1;

marriage 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

Mars 1;

Martini 1, 2;

Marx Brothers 1;

Marx, Harpo 1;

Marx, Karl 1, 2;

Mary Queen of Scots 1;

Maryland 1, 2;

mass 1, 2;

masturbation 1;

maths 1;

mating 1, 2, 3, 4;

matter 1, 2;

Mayans 1, 2;

meals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

measles 1;

measurements 1, 2, 3, 4;

meat 1, 2, 3;

medals 1;

Mein Kampf 1;

melting 1, 2;

memory 1, 2, 3;

Mengele, Josef 1;

Merkel, Angela 1;

Mexicans 1;

Mexico 1, 2, 3, 4;

mice 1, 2, 3;

Michelangelo 1, 2;

Mickey Mouse 1;

midges 1, 2;

military 1, 2, 3;

milk 1, 2, 3, 4;

Milky Way 1;

millipedes 1, 2;

Milton, John 1;

minerals 1;

minimum wage 1;

Missouri 1;

mistakes 1;

mistletoe 1;

mobile phones 1, 2;

Moby-Dick 1, 2;

Mohammed 1, 2;

moles 1, 2;

moments 1;

Mona Lisa 1, 2;

money 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

monkeys 1, 2, 3, 4;

monks 1;

monsters 1;

Moon 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

moose 1;

Mormons 1;

mosquitos 1;

Mother’s Day 1;

mothers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

moths 1, 2, 3;

mountain lions 1;

mountains 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

mouse (computer) 1, 2;

moustaches 1;

mouths 1, 2, 3, 4;

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 1, 2;

MPs 1, 2;

Mr Bean 1;

Mrs Beeton 1;

Mrs Brown’s Boys 1;

Mumbai 1;

mummies 1, 2, 3;

Munch, Edvard 1;

murder 1, 2, 3, 4;

Murder, She Wrote 1;

museums 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

mushrooms 1;

music 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8;

Mussolini, Benito 1, 2;

mustard 1

names 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39;

Napoleonic wars 1;

NASA 1, 2;

national anthems 1;

navigation 1, 2;

Navy 1;

Nazis 1, 2;

Neanderthals 1;

nectar 1, 2;

Nelson, Horatio 1;

nests 1, 2, 3;

neutron stars 1;

New Jersey 1;

New Mexico 1;

New York 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

newspapers 1, 2, 3;

Newton, Isaac 1;

Niagara 1;

nicknames 1, 2, 3, 4;

nicotine 1;

Nigeria 1;

nightingales 1;

nightmares 1;

Nile 1;

Nineteen Eighty-Four 1;

nipples 1;

Nixon, Richard 1;

no 1;

Nobel Prize 1, 2, 3;

nobody knows 1;

Nokia 1;

Norfolk 1, 2;

Norse 1;

North Africa 1;

North Carolina 1, 2;

North Dakota 1;

North Pole 1, 2;

Norway 1;

Norwegian 1;

noses 1, 2, 3, 4;

notebooks 1;

Nottingham 1;

nuclear power 1, 2, 3;

nudity 1, 2, 3, 4;

numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12;

Nutella 1;

nutmeg 1;

nuts 1, 2

oaks 1;

obesity 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

OCD 1;

ocean 1;

oceans 1, 2;

octopuses 1, 2;

Odyssey 1;

Of Mice and Men 1, 2;

Ohio 1, 2, 3;

oil 1, 2;

OK Corral 1;

oldest 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

Oldham 1, 2;

olives 1;

Olympics 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

onesies 1;

opossums 1;

orchestras 1;

Oregon 1;

organs 1;

orphans 1;

Orwell, George 1, 2;

ostriches 1, 2, 3;

otters 1;

ounces 1;

overcrowding 1;

owls 1;

Oxford Circus 1;

oxygen 1;

oysters 1;

Osbourne, Ozzy 1

pacemakers 1;

Pacific islands 1;

Paddington Bear 1;

pain 1, 2, 3, 4;

paint 1, 2;

Pakistan 1, 2;

palaces 1, 2, 3, 4;

pandas 1;

paper 1, 2;

parachutes 1;

Paradise Lost 1;

Paralympics 1;

parasites 1;

pardons 1;

parents 1, 2, 3, 4;

Paris 1, 2, 3;

parliament 1;

parrots 1, 2;

parsnips 1;

passports 1;

passwords 1;

patents 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

patriotism 1;

pavements 1;

pawnbroking 1, 2;

peaches 1;

peanut butter 1;

peanuts 1, 2;

peas 1;

pencils 1, 2;

penguins 1, 2;

penises 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9;

pepper 1;

perfume 1;

Persian 1;

Peter Pan 1;

pets 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

phantom limbs 1;

pharaohs 1, 2, 3;

Philippines 1, 2;

phone calls 1, 2, 3;

phones 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

photocopiers 1;

photographs 1, 2;

pi 1;

pianos 1, 2, 3;

Piccadilly Circus 1;

pigs 1, 2, 3,4, 5;

pilots 1;

pimples 1;

pine cones 1;

pineapples 1;

pipes 1;

piranhas 1;

pirates 1, 2;

Pitt the Younger, William 1;

Pixar 1;

pizza 1;

planets 1;

plants 1, 2;

Play-Doh 1;

plays 1;

Pliny the Elder 1;

ploughman’s lunch 1;

Pluto 1;

pneumonia 1;

pockets 1;

Poe, Edgar Allan 1, 2;

poetry 1, 2, 3;

poets 1, 2;

police 1, 2;

Polish 1;

pollution 1, 2, 3;

pomegranates 1;

Pompeii 1;

ponies 1;

poo 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

popes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

Popeye 1;

populations 1;

Portsmouth 1;

positions 1, 2;

post 1, 2, 3, 4;

post offices 1;

postcodes 1;

potatoes 1, 2;

Potter, Harry 1;

poverty 1, 2;

pregnancy 1, 2;

presidents 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12;

pressure 1;

prime minister 1;

Prince Charles 1;

Prince Philip 1;

Pringles 1;

prohibition 1;

prostitutes 1, 2;

Prozac 1, 2;

pubs 1, 2, 3, 4;

public office 1;

Puccini, Giacomo 1;

punishment 1, 2, 3;

purgatory 1;

Puritans 1;

Pyrenees 1

Qatar 1;

Quechua 1;

Queen Elizabeth II 1, 2, 3;

queens 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

queue 1

rabbis 1;

rabbits 1, 2, 3, 4;

radiation 1, 2;

rain 1, 2;

rainbows 1, 2;

ransoms 1;

rarity 1, 2;

Rasputin, Grigori 1;

rats 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

razors 1;

Reagan, Ronald 1;

recipes 1, 2;

records 1, 2, 3;

refrigerators 1;

Regent Circus 1;

relationships 1;

relatives 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15;

Rembrandt 1;

remote controls 1;

repetitive strain injury 1;

reptiles 1;

restaurants 1, 2;

restlessness 1;

resurrection 1;

revolutions 1, 2;

rickets 1;

ringtones 1;

rivers 1;

roadrunners 1;

robbery 1, 2;

rock 1;

rock-climbing 1;

rockets 1;

rodents 1;

Rodin, Auguste 1;

Roman numerals 1;

romance 1, 2;

Romanian 1;

Rome 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

Ronaldo, Cristiano 1;

rose water 1, 2;

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 1;

rotting 1;

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 1;

Rowling, J. K. 1;

royalty 1, 2, 3, 4;

Rubik’s Cube 1;

rugby 1, 2;

rulers 1;

running 1, 2, 3;

Russia 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11;

Russian 1

safaris 1;

sailing 1, 2;

sailors 1, 2;

saints 1, 2, 3, 4;

saliva 1;

salmon 1;

salt 1, 2, 3;

Sami 1;

Samsung 1, 2;

samurai 1;

sand 1, 2, 3, 4;

sandcastles 1;

sandwiches 1;

sanitary towels 1;

Santa Claus 1;

sarcasm 1;

Saturn 1;

Saudi Arabia 1, 2, 3;

Saxons 1, 2, 3;

school 1, 2, 3;

Schubert, Franz 1, 2;

science 1;

scorpions 1;

Scotland 1, 2;

Scott, Robert Falcon 1;

Scrabble 1;

scurvy 1;

sea 1, 2;

sea cucumbers 1, 2;

sea slugs 1;

seahorses 1;

seals 1, 2;

seaweed 1;

Second World War 1, 2, 3, 4;

seeds 1;

serviettes 1;

sex 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10;

sexism 1, 2;

Shackleton, Ernest 1;

Shag 1;

Shakespeare 1, 2, 3;

shares 1;

sharks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

sheds 1;

sheep 1, 2, 3;

shelters 1;

Shetland Islands 1;

ships 1, 2;

shit 1, 2;

shoes 1, 2, 3, 4;

shooting 1, 2;

shops 1, 2, 3;

short-sightedness 1;

shorthand 1;

shrews 1;

shrimp 1;

sickness 1, 2;

sight 1, 2, 3;

silence 1, 2;

silkworms 1;

Silly 1;

Silly Putty 1;

Simon and Garfunkel 1;

Simpsons, The 1;

singing 1, 2;

Sistine Chapel 1;

sitting down 1, 2;

skulls 1;

skunk 1;

skyscrapers 1, 2;

sleep 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

slime 1, 2;

sloths 1, 2, 3;

slugs 1;

sluts 1;

smallpox 1;

smell 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9;

smoking 1, 2;

smuggling 1;

smurfs 1;

snails 1, 2, 3;

snakes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

snapshots 1;

sneezing 1;

Snickers 1;

snot 1;

snow 1;

snow leopards 1, 2;

snow tigers 1;

soap 1;

socks 1;

Solar System 1, 2;

soldiers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

sonar 1;

sonic booms 1;

souls 1;

sound 1, 2, 3;

soup 1, 2;

South Africa 1;

South America 1;

South Pole 1, 2, 3;

Soviet Union 1, 2;

soy 1;

soy sauce 1;

space 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8;

spaceships 1, 2;

spacesuits 1;

Spanish 1, 2;

species 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

speed 1, 2;

speed dating 1;

Spencer, Herbert 1;

sperm 1, 2, 3, 4;

Spice Girls 1;

spices 1;

spiders 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

spinach 1, 2;

Splenda 1;

sporrans 1;

sports 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8;

spots 1;

squid 1, 2;

squirrels 1, 2;

squirting 1;

Sri Lanka 1;

stadiums 1, 2;

stagecoaches 1;

Stalin, Joseph 1, 2;

Star Trek 1;

Star Wars 1;

stars 1, 2;

starvation 1, 2;

Statue of Liberty 1;

statues 1;

steering 1;

Steinbeck, John 1, 2;

stew 1;

sticks 1, 2;

stilettos 1;

Stilton 1;

Stinkbottom 1;

stock exchanges 1, 2;

Stockings 1;

stomachs 1, 2;

storks 1;

straitjackets 1;

straw 1;

strawberries 1;

streets 1, 2, 3;

stress 1, 2, 3;

stripes 1;

stripping 1, 2;

stroke 1;

students 1, 2;

sucking 1, 2;

suffrage 1;

sugar 1, 2, 3, 4;

suicide 1;

suitcases 1;

Sun 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

sunbathing 1;

sunrise 1;

sunset 1, 2;

Surf 1;

surgery 1;

Surrey 1;

survival 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11;

Swahili 1, 2, 3, 4;

swarms 1, 2;

swearing 1, 2;

Sweden 1, 2, 3, 4;

swimming 1, 2;

Swindon 1, 2;

Switzerland 1, 2

tails 1;

talking 1;

tanks 1;

Tanzania 1;

tapirs 1;

Tarzan 1;

taste 1, 2, 3;

tattoos 1;

tax 1, 2, 3;

taxis 1;

tea 1, 2;

teachers 1, 2;

teapots 1, 2;

teenagers 1, 2, 3, 4;

teeth 1, 2;

telephones 1, 2;

television 1, 2;

temperature 1, 2, 3, 4;

Tennessee 1;

tennis 1, 2, 3;

termites 1;

Tesco 1;

testosterone 1;

texting 1;

Thailand 1, 2;

Thames 1, 2;

Thatcher, Margaret 1;

theft 1, 2, 3;

thesaurus 1;

throat 1;

thumbs 1;

Tibet 1;

ticks 1;

tigers 1, 2;

tights 1, 2, 3;

time 1;

Titanic 1, 2;

TNT 1;

toast 1;

tobacco 1;

toes 1, 2;

toilet paper 1;

toilet seats 1;

toilets 1, 2, 3;

Tolkien, J. R. R. 1;

Tolstoy, Leo 1;

Tom and Jerry 1;

tombstones 1;

tongues 1, 2;

tools 1, 2;

toothpaste 1;

toothpicks 1;

Tories 1;

tortoises 1;

Tour de France 1;

Tower of London 1;

tracking 1;

traffic jams 1;

trains 1, 2, 3;

travelling 1;

treasure 1, 2;

Treasure Island 1;

trees 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;

trousers 1, 2;

tsunami 1;

tug of war 1;

tummy buttons 1, 2;

tuna 1;

Turkey 1;

turtles 1, 2;

Tutankhamun 1;

Tuvalu 1;

televisions 1, 2;

Twain, Mark 1;

tweed 1;

Twitter 1, 2;

Tyrannosaurus rex 1

UFOs 1, 2;

UK 1, 2;

underwear 1, 2;

undressing 1;

uniforms 1;

Universe 1, 2;

Uranus 1;

urine 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

USA 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9;

Utah 1, 2

vaginas 1;

vanilla 1;

vaseline 1;

vegetables 1, 2, 3;

vegetarianism 1;

Velcro 1, 2;

velvet 1;

Venice 1;

venom 1;

Venus 1, 2, 3;

Viagra 1, 2;

Vienna 1;

Vietnam 1;

vikings 1;

villages 1;

violence 1;

viruses 1, 2;

Vivaldi, Antonia 1;

vodka 1;

volcanoes 1, 2;

vomiting, 1, 2, 3;

vowels 1;

Vulcans 1

Wagner, Richard 1;

waiting 1;

Wales 1;

walking sticks 1;

walking the plank 1;

wallabies 1;

Wallace, Alfred Russel 1;

Walton, William 1;

wandering leg sausage 1;

Wang 1;

Wanke 1;

war 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7;

washing 1, 2;

Washington, George 1;

washing-up 1;

wasps 1, 2;

waste 1, 2;

watches 1;

water 1, 2, 3;

waterfalls 1;

Waugh, Evelyn 1;

wealth 1, 2;

weapons 1;

weddings 1, 2;

weeds 1;

weight 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8;

Welshite 1;

whales 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9;

wheels 1;

whistling 1;

whoopee cushions 1;

whoops! 1;

Wikipedia 1;

William the Conqueror 1;

Willy, Great 1;

Willy, Louise 1;

wind 1;

wine 1, 2, 3;

Winnie the Pooh 1;

winter 1;

wisdom 1;

witches 1;

wolves 1;

women 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19;

wood 1;

woodchucks 1;

wooden legs 1;

woodlice 1, 2;

words 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50 51, 52, 53;

Wordsworth, William 1;

work 1, 2, 3, 4;

worms 1, 2;

worship 1;

wrestling 1, 2;

Wrigley’s 1;

writer’s block 1;

Wyoming 1

yachts 1;

yawning 1, 2;

yeast 1, 2;

yes 1;

yesterday 1;

‘Yesterday’ 1;

YMCA 1

Z (letter) 1;

Zappa, Frank 1;

zebras 1;

zoo 1;

Zoroastrianism 1;

ZZ Top 1

About the Authors

John Lloyd CBE is the creator of QI and the man who devised The News Quiz and To the Manor Born for radio and Not the Nine O’Clock News, Spitting Image and Blackadder for television.

John Mitchinson, QI’s Director of Research, has been both bookseller and publisher and looked after authors as diverse as Haruki Murakami, The Beatles and a woman who knitted with dog hair.

James Harkin, QI’s Senior Researcher, has a maths and physics degree, a dark past as an accountant for a chain of pubs and is nicknamed ‘Turbo’ for his phenomenal work rate.

By the Same Authors

by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson & James Harkin

1,227 QI FACTS TO BLOW YOUR SOCKS OFF

by John Lloyd & John Mitchinson

THE BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE

THE SECOND BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE

THE BOOK OF ANIMAL IGNORANCE

ADVANCED BANTER: THE QI BOOK OF QUOTATIONS

THE QI BOOK OF THE DEAD

edited by John Lloyd & John Mitchinson

THE QI ‘E’ ANNUAL

THE QI ‘F’ ANNUAL

THE QI ‘G’ ANNUAL

THE QI ‘H’ ANNUAL

by John Lloyd & Douglas Adams

THE MEANING OF LIFF

THE DEEPER MEANING OF LIFF

by John Lloyd & Jon Canter

AFTERLIFF

Copyright

First published in 2013

by Faber and Faber Ltd

Bloomsbury House

74–77 Great Russell Street

London WC1B 3DA

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© QI Ltd, 2013

The right of QI Ltd to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

ISBN 978–0–571–30896–5

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Epigraph

1,339 Facts

A Note on Sources

Index

About the Authors

By the Same Authors

Copyright