by John Lloyd
though Phengaris rebeli
strums its bottom like a guitar.
Every year,
Peruvians eat more than
60 million guinea pigs.
In Switzerland,
it is illegal to keep
just one guinea pig.
98% of British homes
have carpeted floors.
In Italy, only 2% do.
In Japan only 2% of adoptions are
of children;
98% are adult males
aged 25 to 30.
It’s unsafe for travellers to rely on
‘St Christopher’ any more:
he lost his sainthood
in 1969.
10% of US electricity
is made from
dismantled Soviet atomic bombs.
Until 1913, children in America
could legally be sent
by parcel post.
There are 5.9 calories
in the glue of a
British postage stamp.
All the batteries on Earth store
just ten minutes
of the world’s electricity needs.
Ancient Greek democracy
lasted for only
185 years.
The ancient Greeks
had no word for religion.
China
is the world’s largest supplier of Bibles:
one factory in Nanjing prints
a million a month.
The dialling code for Russia
is 007.
Collectively speaking, humans have spent
longer playing World of Warcraft
than they have existed
as a species separate from chimpanzees
(5.93 million years).
Charette n.
An intense flurry of activity
to finish something
by a deadline.
Muntin n.
The thin strip of wood or metal that
divides the panes of glass in a window.
Nikhedonia (n.)
The pleasurable anticipation of success
before any actual work
has been done.
Smout (n.)
A small, unimportant
Scottish person.
John Cleese’s father’s surname
was Cheese.
Cleese grew up ten miles from Cheddar
and his best friend at school
was called Barney Butter.
Digestive biscuits
have no particular digestive qualities.
In the USA it is illegal to sell them
under that name.
In 2010, the BBC spent
nearly £230,000 on tea,
but only £2,000 on biscuits.
Caffeine is made of
carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen:
the same as cocaine, thalidomide,
nylon, TNT and heroin.
The same man
invented heroin and aspirin
in the same year:
Felix Hoffman, 1897.
Heroin
was originally marketed
as cough medicine.
Worldwide sales of cocaine
earn more than
Microsoft, McDonald’s and Kellogg’s
combined.
More than 7,000 Americans die each year
and 1,500,000 are injured
as a result of doctors’
bad handwriting.
Fewer than 5%
of blind or visually impaired people
in the UK
can read Braille.
Attempting to swim the Channel
from France has been illegal
for 19 years.
The water-flow of the Ganges
is a state secret in India.
In 2012, Apple Inc.
had more cash
in the bank
than the US government.
In 2012, 20% of the world’s
top 20 snooker players
were colour-blind.
If you scaled a snooker ball up to
the size of the Earth,
it would have mountains
three times higher
than anything on the planet.
In 1903, its first year of trading,
Gillette sold just
168 razor blades.
The first advertising jingles
were written down in newspapers;
readers were expected
to sing them themselves.
There are more than three times
as many PR people in America
as there are journalists.
The Nazis made it illegal
on pain of death
for apes to give
the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute.
All but one of the ravens
at the Tower of London
died from stress during the Blitz.
British spies
stopped using semen as invisible ink
because it began to smell
if it wasn’t fresh.
Because Tonto means ‘stupid’ in Spanish,
when The Lone Ranger was shown in
Latin America, he was called Toro, ‘bull’.
Florence Green,
the last veteran of the First World War,
died in February 2012. Asked what it was
like to be 110, she replied,
‘Not much different to being 109.’
On her 120th birthday,
Jeanne Calment (1875–1997)
the oldest person ever recorded,
said, ‘I only have one wrinkle and
I’m sitting on it.’
The UK retail industry
makes £250 million a year
from gift cards that no one redeems.
In the 12th century,
the Danish army consisted of seven men.
In the 17th century,
the salary of the Governor of Barbados
was paid in sugar.
In the 18th century,
the French navy buried their dead
in the ship’s hold.
In the 19th century,
tobacco was used for ‘rectal inflation’:
blowing smoke up the anus
to resuscitate the drowned.
Cardiff
has more hours of sunlight
than Milan.
Glasgow
is twinned with
Nuremberg, Bethlehem and Havana.
Toasters
were banned in Havana
until 2008.
The Dyslexia Research Centre
is in Reading.
The technology behind smartphones
relies on up to
250,000 separate patents.
The human brain
takes in 11 million bits of
information every second,
but is only aware of 40.
The water in a blue whale’s mouth
weighs as much as its entire body.
The ancient Romans
discovered parrots could speak and
taught them to say ‘Hail Caesar’.
When they got bored with this,
they took to eating them instead.
The United States of America
maintains a military presence in
148 of the 192 United Nations countries.
On average, every square mile
of sea on the planet
contains 46,000 pieces of rubbish.
In 1251, Henry III was given
a polar bear by the king of Norway.
He kept it in the Tower of London,
on a long chain so that it could
swim in the Thames.
The tadpoles of the South American
paradoxical frog
are larger than the frog itself.
Historical Catholic clergy include:
Bishop Boil,
Bishop Boom,
Bishop Broccoli, Bishop Bolognese,
Bishop Busti, Bishop Butt
and Bishop Bishop.
Kuku kaki kakak kakak ku kayak kuku kaki
kakek kakek ku
is an Indonesian tongue-twister meaning
‘My sister’s toenails
look like my grandfather’s’.
In the 2009 Formula One season,
12% of Grand Prix drivers
were called Sebastian.
People in Victorian Britain
who couldn’t afford chimney sweeps
dropped live geese
down their chimneys instead.
You are three times more likely
to die in a plane crash
than you are to be eaten
by a mountain lion.
Gerbils can smell adrenaline
and are installed in airport security areas
to detect terrorists.
If you drilled a tunnel
straight through the Earth and jumped in,
it would take you exactly
42 minutes and 12 seconds
to get to the other side.
A medium-sized cumulus cloud
weighs about the same
as 80 elephants.
Fred Baur (1918–2002),
the designer of the Pringles can,
had his ashes buried in one.
Fred is Swedish for ‘peace’.
Nobles present at the 18th-century
battle of Bravalla between
Sweden and Denmark included
Hothbrodd the Furious,
Thorulf the Thick, Birvil the Pale,
Roldar Toe-Joint, Vati the Doubter,
Od the Englishman, Alf the Proud and
Frosti Bowl.
The Queen of England
is related to
Vlad the Impaler.
When customers visited
the first supermarkets in the UK,
they were afraid to pick up
goods from the shelves
in case they were told off.
Women buy 80%
of everything
that is for sale.
Between 1928 and 1948,
12 Olympic medals were awarded
for Town Planning.
On a clear, moonless night
the human eye can detect
a match being struck
50 miles away.
In the US between 1983 and 2000,
there were 568 plane crashes.
51,207 of the 53,487
people aboard
got out alive:
a survival rate of 96%.
Harry Houdini could
pick up pins with his eyelashes
and thread a needle
with his toes.
The Sami people of northern Finland use
a measure called Poronkusema:
the distance a reindeer can walk
before needing to urinate.
The Inca measurement of time
was based on
how long it took to boil a potato.
Potatoes were illegal in France
between 1748 and 1772.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
liked to eat fruit while
it was still attached to the tree.
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree,
the great Victorian actor-manager, once
hailed a taxi and got in. Absorbed in his
work, he sat silently reading in the back.
When the cabbie eventually asked,
‘Where to, guv?’ Sir Herbert spluttered,
‘Do you really think I would give
my address to the likes of you?’
On average, most people
have fewer friends
than their friends have.
This is known as the ‘friendship paradox’.
Blissom vb
To bleat with sexual desire.
Eye-servant n.
One who only works
when the boss is watching.
Hemipygic adj.
Having only one buttock;
half-arsed.
Marmalise vb
To give someone
a thrashing.
The modern world’s
first international sporting fixture
was a cricket match played in 1844
between Canada and the USA.
Canada won by 23 runs.
Baseball – the name and the game – was
invented in England in the 1750s.
Baseball legend Babe Ruth
always wore a cabbage leaf under his cap
to keep his head cool. In South Korea,
this is considered unsporting,
unless the player has a doctor’s note.
‘Soccer’ is not an Americanism.
It’s short for ‘Association Football’
and was popularised by
Charles Wreford-Brown, captain
of the English national team 1894–5.
James Naismith, a Canadian,
invented basketball in Massachusetts
in 1891. It was 21 years
before it occurred to anyone
to cut a hole in the bottom of the basket.
Captain John Smith
of Pocahontas fame
was the first man
to use the word
‘awning’.
Aerosmith have made more money
from Guitar Hero
than from any of their albums.
When Matt Smith became
the 11th Doctor Who in 2010,
UK bow-tie sales doubled in a month.
98% of the 7 billion billion billion
atoms in the human body
are replaced every year.
Mongolia’s largest airport
is named after Genghis Khan.
He had over 500 wives
and a vast number of children:
1 in 10 people in Central Asia today
are his direct descendants.
Anophthalmus hitleri is a blind beetle found
only in five caves in Slovenia.
Named after Hitler in 1933,
it is now endangered due to
collectors of Nazi memorabilia.
Hitler’s home phone number
was listed in Who’s Who until 1945.
It was Berlin 11 6191.
At least 99%
of all the species that ever existed
have left no trace in the fossil record.
No scientific experiment
has ever been done
(or could be done)
to prove that time exists.
If you could fold
a piece of paper 51 times,
its thickness would exceed
the distance from here to the Sun.
Charles Blondin crossed Niagara Falls
several times on a 1,000-foot tightrope:
blindfolded, in a sack, on stilts,
carrying a man on his back
and cooking an omelette in the middle.
Michael J. Fox’s
middle name is
Andrew.
Emile Heskey’s
middle name is
Ivanhoe.
David Frost’s
middle name is
Paradine.
Richard Gere’s
middle name is
Tiffany.
1 in 50 Americans
executed for murder
had the middle name ‘Wayne’.
1 in 50 Scots
are heroin addicts.
1 in 50 Americans
claim to have been abducted
by aliens.
1 in 50 words
in the lyrics of the winning entries of
the Eurovision Song Contest
is ‘love’.
More people go to church
on Sunday in China
than in the whole of Europe.
