QI: The Book of General Ignorance - The Noticeably Stouter Edition

by John Lloyd

  The exact recipe is – you guessed it – ‘a closely guarded secret’. Since 2000 it’s been owned by Unilever, proprietors of Persil, Domestos, Colman’s, Cif, Cornetto and Impulse. Its annual sales exceed 24 million jars.

  Marmite exerts a strange hold on British popular consciousness – its taste is one of the things that ex-pats claim they miss most about home. Bill Bryson has described it as ‘an edible yeast extract with the visual properties of an industrial lubricant’.

  A marmite is a traditional French lidded cooking pot, the shape of which is echoed by that of the Marmite jar. The word originally meant ‘hypocrite’, deriving from marmouser or marmotter, ‘to murmur’ (perhaps because both hypocrites and cooking pots hide things from view and bubble away quietly).

  CLIVE But the whole point about Marmite … They advertise it on the basis that some people love it and some people hate it. So he’d have solved the problem, then they’d have wars between the … the pro-Marmiters and the anti-Marmiters! They’d be back to warfare again!

  Which is the hottest part of a chilli?

  A generation of television chefs have had us believe that the hottest bit of the chilli pepper is its seeds. Not so.

  It is the central membrane to which the seeds are attached. The membrane contains the highest levels of capsaicin, the colourless, odourless compound that gives chillies their distinctive heat.

  Chilli heat is measured using the Scoville Scale, created by American pharmacist Wilbur L. Scoville in 1912. In his early tests, Scoville mixed a range of chilli extracts dissolved in alcohol and diluted in sugar water. He asked a panel of testers to consume a range of concentrations of various chillies until they ceased to taste hot. A numerical scale was then devised according to the heat of the chillies.

  A jalapeño pepper, for example, is said to have 4,500 Scoville Heat Units (SHU), because it has to be diluted 4,500-fold before it loses its heat.

  The hottest chilli in the world is from Dorset, on the south-west coast of England. Michael and Joy Michaud’s Dorset Naga – naga is Sanskrit for ‘serpent’ – was grown on a plant from Bangladesh.

  It was tested by two American laboratories in 2005, and came in at a palate-torching 923,000 SHU. Even half a small Naga would render a curry inedible, and consuming a whole one would mean a trip to hospital. Despite this, 250,000 Nagas were sold last year.

  To put it in perspective, pure capsaicin powder delivers 15–16 million SHU. It is so hot that pharmacists who experiment with it must work in a filtered ‘tox room’ wearing a full protective body-suit with a closed hood to prevent inhalation.

  There are an estimated 3,510 varieties of chilli.

  Where do tulips come from?

  Whether from Amsterdam or elsewhere, tulips are as famous a symbol of Holland as windmills and clogs, but they are not native to the Netherlands.

  The natural habitat of the tulip is mountainous terrain.

  It was only in 1554 that the first tulips were imported from Constantinople (now Istanbul) into the Netherlands. Wild tulips can be found in southern Europe, North Africa, and parts of Asia up to north-east China. The tulip is the national flower of both Turkey and Iran.

  The name of the flower comes from the word tülbent which is the Turkish pronunciation of the Persian word dulband, meaning turban. This is because of what etymologists call a ‘fancied resemblance’ of the shape of the flower when not in full blossom to a turban (or perhaps because the Turks traditionally wore the bloom in their headwear).

  Tulips did become exceedingly popular in the Netherlands (as it should be called: ‘Holland’ only describes two of the country’s twelve provinces) but the stories of the great ‘tulipomania’ bubble of the early seventeenth century now look rather overcooked.

  According to Professor Peter Garber, Head of Global Strategy at Deutsche Bank, the most lurid tales of people being ruined by the collapse of tulip prices stem mainly from a single book – Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay published in 1852 – and were the result of a moralistic campaign by the Dutch government to spread scare stories to discourage tulip speculation.

  It’s true that the price of tulips was inflated (and that one bulb of the most valuable plants could cost as much as a house) but there are many instances of even higher values being achieved in other countries for other plants, for example, orchids in nineteenth-century England.

  At its wildest, Garber says that the Dutch speculation ‘was a phenomenon lasting one month in the dreary Dutch winter of 1637 … and was of no real economic consequence’.

  Today, Holland produces about three billion tulip bulbs a year, of which two billion are exported.

  How many crocuses does it take to make a kilo of saffron?

  Between 85,000 and 140,000. Which is why, even today, top-grade Spanish ‘mancha’ saffron retails at £3,750 per pound.

  There are frescoes in Minoan Crete dated to 1600 BC showing saffron being gathered. Alexander the Great washed his hair in saffron to keep it a lovely shiny orange colour. It was a seriously upmarket shampoo: at that time saffron was as rare as diamonds, and more expensive than gold.

  In fifteenth-century Nuremberg and during the reign of Henry VIII in England, adulterating saffron by mixing it with something else was a capital offence. Culprits were burned at the stake, or buried alive with their illegal wares.

  The town of Saffron Walden in Essex takes its name from the spice: it was the centre of the English saffron trade. Legend has it that this dates from the fourteenth century when a pilgrim from the Middle East arrived with a stolen bulb of a saffron crocus hidden in his stick. Until then, the town was simply called Walden.

  Only the arrival of tea, coffee, vanilla and chocolate saw its cultivation decline, although it remained an important crop in Italy, Spain and France.

  The word saffron comes from the Arabic asfar, meaning ‘yellow’.

  What can you tell about a man from his shoe size?

  Stop sniggering at the back there. In most cases, it won’t even tell you the size of his feet.

  A study in 2002, published in the British Journal of Urology International, scientifically proved there is no link between shoe size and penis size. Nurses at St Mary’s Hospital and University College Hospital in London measured the foot size and penis length of 104 men. In each case, the penis was ‘gently stretched’ before it was measured, but no correlation was found.

  Previous studies, which had seemed to indicate a mild link between the two, relied on simply asking male subjects for their intimate personal details rather than, in this case, whipping them out for some hard evidence.

  The average Caucasian man’s penis is 3.5 inches (8.9 cm) long when limp and 5.1 inches long (12.9 cm) when erect. Most penises stop growing when their owner is in his sixteenth year, although there is some evidence to suggest that it begins to shrink in middle age. Most men who opt for penis enlargements are in fact average-sized rather than small, though no doubt the people who carry out the operations have good reason to encourage them to think otherwise.

  Even more surprisingly, most people don’t know how big their own feet are and they don’t wear the correct shoe size. According to David G. Armstrong, Professor of Surgery at the William M. Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine in Chicago, three-quarters of people wear the wrong-sized shoes. The reason for this may be that they stick to a size they were measured for when young and fail to realise that their feet change shape throughout their lives. Or it may be that they like to get value for money and wear and re-wear a pair of shoes even if they don’t fit.

  Somewhat stating the obvious, podiatrists (‘foot doctors’ to you and me) recommend trying on shoes first rather than buying a standard size off the peg, as each brand uses slightly different measurements, though they stop short at suggesting you buy a different size shoe for each foot.

  Alternatively, you could give up wearing shoes altogether. Shoes are actually bad for you. In 2007, a South African study in the podiatry j
ournal, The Foot, looked at the feet of 180 people from three different ethnic backgrounds (Sotho, Zulu and European) and compared them to 2,000-year-old skeletons. The research concluded that human beings had healthier feet, joints and posture before the invention of shoes. The Zulu, who often go barefoot, had the healthiest feet of the three groups in the study.

  What drives human sperm wild?

  The smell of lily of the valley.

  It appears sperm have ‘noses’ which they use to navigate towards a woman’s egg. Researchers experimented with a range of floral fragrances and lily of the valley came top, getting the random sperm wiggling in the same direction at twice the normal speed.

  The research was carried out at Ruhr University in Germany in 2003. They discovered a new sperm protein, hOR17-4, which acted as a receptor for sperm in exactly the same way as protein sensors in the nose detect smells. They then tested their new sperm ‘nose’ on hundreds of synthetic compounds, many of them used to mimic floral scents in commercial perfumes.

  One of these, bourgeonal, is used to create the lily of the valley fragrance. It had two dramatic effects on the behaviour of sperm: doubling its speed and changing undirected swimming behaviour to direct movement. The ‘foot-to-the-floor’ effect seems to derive from hOR17-4 making the sperm wag their ‘tails’ harder.

  Bourgeonal is now being used in fertility treatment to pick out the Mark Spitzes of the sperm world.

  JACKIE It depends whether they’re male or female sperm. Boy sperm swim faster, but don’t live as long.

  JO The girl sperm do the bloody hoovering and the washing-up.

  Why do racing cyclists shave their legs?

  Because it feels nice, apparently, and also helps if they get injured. The idea that it gives them a speed advantage is ludicrous. There is no aerodynamic advantage in cycling with shaved legs.

  It’s true that swimmers who shave their bodies can gain a 2 per cent boost to their speed, but that’s in water. The main reason given for leg-shaving among cyclists is that it makes it easier to clean a wound after a fall, and sticking plasters stay on better (and pull off less painfully). They also have their calves massaged a lot, and that’s more comfortable on a shaved leg.

  Personal aesthetic considerations may also be a consideration – it’s part of le look. Austrian cyclist René Haselbacher had his shorts ripped off in a fall in the 2003 Tour de France, and it emerged that he had comprehensively shaved where the wind doesn’t blow.

  The original idea of the Tour de France was to sell copies of L’Auto newspaper, a publicity stunt that was such a success it destroyed the paper’s rival Le Vélo in the process.

  The winner of the first Tour (in 1903) was well-known French rider Maurice Garin, nicknamed the ‘Chimney Sweep’. In the second year, almost everyone cheated: fans left nails in the road in front of their favourites’ rivals while the competitors themselves gained an edge by taking their bicycles on car trips and even train rides. The winner actually finished fifth, but the first four riders across the line were disqualified.

  It used to be that a rider had to make his own repairs. In 1913, Eugène Christophe snapped some forks on his bike and so begged a piece of metal and fixed it. However, he was punished with a time delay: a young boy had helped him by operating the bellows at his hastily borrowed forge.

  In 1919, the first person to be offered the famous yellow jersey (awarded for being in the lead) turned it down because he thought it would make him a more obvious target for his rivals.

  The Tour is the toughest sporting event in the world. According to Dan Coyle, biographer of seven-times winner Lance Armstrong, studies have shown that Tour riders expend more daily energy than Everest climbers over an event that lasts three weeks. To fuel this effort, they need to eat the equivalent of twenty-eight cheeseburgers a day. Early cheats dosed themselves with alcohol and ether. Not to improve their speed, but to numb the pain.

  What was the first invention to break the sound barrier?

  The whip.

  Whips were invented in China 7,000 years ago but it wasn’t until the invention of high-speed photography in 1927 that the ‘crack’ of the whip was seen to be a mini sonic-boom and not the leather hitting the handle.

  The whip’s crack is caused by a loop that forms in the whip as you flick it. The loop travels along the length of the whip and, because the leather tapers to a fine tip, the loop speeds up as it travels, reaching over ten times its original speed. The ‘crack’ is when the loop breaks the sound barrier at about 1,194 kph (742 mph).

  The Bell X1 was the first aircraft to break the sound barrier, piloted by Chuck Yeager in 1947. In 1948 it reached 1,540 kph (957 mph) at 21,900 metres (71,850 feet).

  The record for the fastest manned flight is still held by the X-15A which reached 6,389 kph (3,970 mph) at 31,200 metres (102,360 feet) in 1967.

  The fastest any human has ever travelled was on the reentry of Apollo 10 in 1969. This was recorded at 39,897 kph (24,791 mph).

  What kind of music charms snakes most?

  They don’t care, it’s all the same to them.

  Cobras in snake-charming acts are responding to the sight of the flute, not its sound.

  Snakes don’t really ‘hear’ music though they are certainly not deaf. They have no external ears or eardrums, but can sense vibrations transmitted up from the ground into their jaw and the belly muscles. They also seem to be able to detect airborne sounds via an inner ear.

  It used to be thought that snakes could not hear at all because they don’t respond to loud noises but research at Princeton has shown that they have acute hearing.

  The key discovery was how the snake’s inner ear functions. Snakes were wired to voltmeters and the effect of airborne sound on their brains measured. It appears that their hearing is ‘tuned’ to the frequency range of noises and vibrations made by the movement of larger animals, so music would be meaningless to them.

  ‘Charmed’ cobras stand upright if threatened and sway in response to the movement of the instrument. If they strike at the flute, they hurt themselves, so they don’t do it again.

  Most cobras have had their fangs removed but, even so, they can only strike at a distance within their own length, rather as if you put your elbow on a table and strike downward with your hand.

  The cobra’s natural attitude is defensive, not aggressive.

  ALAN When I was a kid, there was a rattlesnake on TV, every week. Every week, in something, there was always a rattlesnake. And nowadays, there’s never a rattlesnake on TV. It was like a big thing in the ’70s.

  What are violin strings made from?

  Violin strings are not made of catgut, and never have been.

  This is a myth started by medieval Italian violin-makers who had discovered that sheep intestines made good strings for their instruments. Killing a cat brought terribly bad luck, so they protected their invention by telling everyone else their strings were made from the intestines of cats.

  The legend was that a saddle-maker called Erasmo, in the Abruzzi mountain village of Salle, near Pescara, heard the wind blowing through the strands of drying sheep’s gut one day and thought that they might make a good string for the early violin known as the renaissance fiddle.

  Salle became the centre of violin string production for 600 years and Erasmo was canonised as the patron saint of string-makers.

  Bad earthquakes in 1905 and 1933 brought an end to the industry in Salle itself, but two of the world’s leading string makers – D’Addario and Mari – are still run by Sallese families.

  Until 1750 all violins used sheep’s-gut strings. The gut must be removed from the animal when warm, stripped of fat and waste and soaked in cold water. The best sections are then cut into ribbons and twisted and scraped until a string of the required thickness is made.

  Today a combination of gut, nylon and steel are used, although most aficionados still believe that gut produces the warmest tone.

  Richard Wagner circulated a terrible story to discre
dit Brahms, whom he loathed. He claimed Brahms had received a gift from Czech composer Antonín Dvořák of a ‘Bohemian sparrow-slaying bow’. With this he allegedly took pot-shots at passing cats from his Viennese apartment window.

  Wagner went on: ‘After spearing the poor brutes, he reeled them in to his room after the manner of a trout-fisher. Then he eagerly listened to the expiring groans of his victims and carefully jotted down in his notebook their ante mortem remarks.’

  Wagner had never visited Brahms or seen his apartment; there seems to be no record of such a ‘sparrow bow’ existing, let alone being sent by Dvořák.

  Cats tend to die, like most other species, in silence.

  Despite this, the rumours of felicide have stuck to Brahms and the claim has been reproduced as fact in several biographies.

  STEPHEN The fact is, cat gut has never gone into the making of violins. It was a myth that was put about by the …

  ALAN By dogs.

  What’s the best floor of a building to throw a cat from?

  Any of them above the seventh floor.

  Higher than the seventh floor, it doesn’t really matter how far the cat falls, as long as its oxygen holds out.

  Like many small animals, cats have a non-fatal terminal velocity – in cats this is about 100 kph or 60 mph. Once they relax, they orientate themselves, spread out, and parachute to earth like a squirrel.