by John Lloyd
Boots fitted with springs
were forbidden by
the original Queensberry Rules
for boxing.
Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables
has a sentence that is 823 words long,
separated by 93 commas and
51 semicolons.
When Les Misérables was first published
in 1862, Hugo sent a snappish telegram
to his publisher to ask how it was selling.
The whole thing read, ‘?’
The publisher’s reply was effusive, ‘!’
Ernest Hemingway’s mother was so
ashamed of his novel The Sun Also Rises
that, when it was scheduled for discussion
at her book club, she refused to go.
Within 200 yards of the flat in Islington
where George Orwell had the idea for 1984,
there are now 32 CCTV cameras.
In 2008, an MI6 officer
appeared on The One Show.
Halfway through,
his moustache fell off.
Hitler’s press secretary didn’t approve
of his moustache. ‘Stop worrying about it,’
said the Führer. ‘If it’s not in fashion now,
it will be soon, because I’m wearing one.’
The shortest war ever fought was between
Britain and Zanzibar on 27th August 1896.
Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.
When Rameses II’s mummified body
was shipped to France in 1974,
it was issued with a passport.
The mummy’s occupation was given as
‘King (deceased)’.
Barbara Cartland wrote over 600 books.
She dictated them to her secretary
between one o’clock and half past three
in the afternoon, lying on a sofa
with a white fur rug and
a hot-water bottle.
Barbara
is Latin for
‘strange woman’.
Barbara Windsor
is 4 feet 11 inches tall: the same height as
Joan of Arc and Queen Victoria.
In the 1930s, British women working
for Directory Enquiries were required
to be at least 5 feet 3 inches tall
so they could reach the
top of the switchboard.
Charles Dickens
invented 959 named characters.
Before deciding on the name Tiny Tim,
he considered Small Sam, Little Larry
and Puny Pete.
Dickens’ shortlist
for Martin Chuzzlewit’s surname
included Sweetledew, Chuzzletoe,
Sweetleback and
Sweetlewag.
John Steinbeck
used 300 pencils
to write his novel East of Eden.
The word pencil
comes from a Latin word meaning
‘small penis’.
When trying out a new pen,
97% of people
write their own name.
90% of everything
written in English
uses just 1,000 words.
20% of all road accidents
in Sweden
involve an elk.
12% of all the Coca-Cola
in America
is drunk at breakfast.
Gongoozler n.
One who stares for a long time
at things happening on a canal.
Gossypiboma n.
A surgical sponge
accidentally left inside
a patient’s body.
Jentacular adj.
Breakfasty; breakfastish;
of, or relating to, breakfast.
Meupareunia n.
Sexual activity enjoyed
by only one of the participants.
Gorillas
can be put on the pill.
The German for ‘contraceptive’ is
Schwangerschaftsverhütungsmittel.
By the time you’ve finished saying it,
it’s too late.
On 20th August 1949,
time appeared to stand still
for several minutes,
when hundreds of starlings roosted
on the long hand
of Big Ben.
The correct adjective
to describe a thrush is
turdoid.
If a silkworm
is exposed to pure carbon dioxide,
it crawls around aimlessly,
apparently trying to remember
what it’s supposed to be doing.
Eskimos use refrigerators
to stop their food from freezing.
The Sun’s core is so hot that
a piece of it the size of a pinhead
would give off enough heat
to kill a person 160 kilometres away.
Every living thing can be anaesthetised,
even plants. Despite their successful use
since the mid-19th century,
no one really understands
how anaesthetics work.
A trained typist’s fingers
cover about 16 miles a day.
Every US president with a beard
has been Republican.
The Bible
is the most shoplifted book
in the USA.
The world’s biggest frog
is bigger than
the world’s smallest antelope.
The dik-dik is a miniature antelope
that can go for months
without water
but dies after a week
without salt.
One third of all the salt produced in the US
is used to melt ice on roads.
British geologists have discovered
more of the world’s oil
than the geologists
of all the other nations
put together.
After being annexed
by the British Empire,
the sarong-clad Burmese
referred to their new overlords as
‘The Trouser People’.
Towards the end of each afternoon,
Sir Philip Sassoon (1888–1939)
hauled down the Union Jack
that flew over his house
in case the colours
clashed with
the sunset.
Half of Napoleon’s army
at the battle of Eylau – 30,000 men –
were burglars.
The penalty for adultery in ancient Greece
involved hammering a radish
into the adulterer’s bottom with a mallet.
Radishes were a lot longer
and pointier in those days.
An octopus can ooze through an opening
no bigger than its own eyeball.
Humans and elephants
are the only animals
with chins.
Sir Charles Isham,
a vegetarian spiritualist,
introduced garden gnomes
to England in 1847.
He hoped that they would attract
real gnomes to his garden.
Until the late 15th century,
the word ‘girl’ just meant a child.
Boys were referred to as ‘knave girls’
and female children were ‘gay girls’.
The use of the English word ‘gay’
to mean homosexual
is older than the use of the term
‘homosexual’ to mean gay.
The Serpentine in London was the first
man-made pond in the world
designed to look
as if it wasn’t
man-made.
Albanian has 27 words
for different kinds of moustache
and 30 for eyebrows.
In the 9th century,
Ireland was called ‘Scotia’ and
Scotland was known as ‘Albania’.
Six ten-billionths of the Sun is gold.
If the 1,200,000,000,000,000 tonnes of it
could be extracted,
there would be enough to gild Scotland
to the depth of half a mile.
Beavers have transparent eyelids so they
can see underwater with their eyes shut.
The Old Testament book of Leviticus
forbids the eating of cuckoos, ferrets,
camels, swans, crabs, frogs, chameleons,
eels, hares, snails, lizards, moles, ravens,
ospreys, vultures, lobsters, owls, storks,
herons, bats, ravens, pelicans, lapwings,
prawns and eagles.
1,000 baby eagles were eaten at
the Archbishop of York’s
enthronement feast in 1466.
Zeppo Marx, the youngest of the
Marx Brothers, designed the clamping
device that held the atom bombs in place
before they were dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Oprah is ‘Harpo’ backwards.
Oprah Winfrey’s real name is Orpah
(after the sister of Ruth in the Bible)
but no one could say or spell it properly
so she eventually gave up
correcting them.
The flowers of the coffee bush
smell like jasmine.
Jasmine is a member of the olive family.
Marie is a member of the Osmond family.
Her first name is Olive.
In 1987, American Airlines saved $40,000
by removing an olive
from each salad
in First Class.
In an average year in Britain,
trousers cause
twice as many accidents
as chainsaws.
100,000 mobile phones
are dropped down the loo
in Britain every year,
and 50,000
get run over.
People are 1% shorter
in the evening
than they are
in the morning.
The Metropolitan Police
employs 39% more people
than the Royal Navy.
Cranberries bounce when ripe:
another name for them is ‘bounceberries’.
One that bounces seven times
is in perfect condition to eat.
Horripilation
is another word
for getting goosebumps.
The technical word
for a French kiss is
cataglottism.
Cockshut
is another word for twilight –
the time of day when chickens
are put to bed.
If all the time our eyes
are shut when blinking
is added together,
we spend 1.2 years
of our waking lives
in pitch darkness.
Every time a woodpecker’s beak
hits a tree, its head is subject to
1,000 times the force of gravity.
The smallest trees in the world
are the dwarf willows of Greenland.
They are two inches tall.
The world’s smallest test tube
has a diameter
10,000 times narrower
than a human hair.
Antarctic islands include
Disappointment Island, Fabulous Island,
Desolation Island, Monumental Island,
Inexpressible Island, Pourquoi Pas Island,
Shag Island, Circumcision Island and
Shoe Island.
In 2008, Usain Bolt
set the world record for the 100 metres
with one shoelace undone.
Every electron in the universe
knows about the state of
every other electron.
Honeybees
always know where the Sun is,
even if it’s
on the other side of the world.
The national anthem of Bangladesh
includes the lines:
‘The fragrance from your mango groves
Makes me wild with joy.’
One in three men in Britain
of Bangladeshi origin
works as a waiter.
Towels are a central part
of the culture in Belarus,
even appearing on the country’s flag.
At a traditional Belarusian wedding,
the bride walks to the church
dragging a towel.
13% of Belarus
is swamp.
In 2011, a 61-year-old woman
gave birth to her own grandson.
The baby was conceived with an egg
donated by her 35-year-old daughter.
The American Psychiatric Association
listed homosexuality
as a mental illness
until 1973.
Sudan is the only country
that still has crucifixion
as an official form
of capital punishment.
By the age of 18,
the average American child
will have seen 200,000
murders on television.
In German,
a Turnbeutelvergesser
is a boy who’s too weedy
for school sport and ‘forgets’
to bring his gym bag.
Schattenparker
is German for someone
who parks his car in the shade.
Depp
means ‘twit’
in German.
Thud!
the Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett,
is published in Germany as
Klonk!
The Basque word
for ‘cold’ is
hotz.
The Russian word
for ‘sock’ is pronounced
‘no sock’.
If you say the letters S.O.C.K.S
aloud in English, you will find yourself
pronouncing the Spanish for
‘it is what it is’
almost perfectly.
If you forget the tilde (~)
over an N when asking
how old someone is in Spanish,
you will end up asking them
how many anuses they have.
When Montenegro became
independent from Yugoslavia,
its Internet domain name went from being
.yu to .me
The Irish word leis (pronounced ‘lesh’)
has four different meanings.
Bhí leis leis leis leis means
‘His thigh was naked also’.
A bourdaloue was a gravy-boat-like
receptacle that ladies would squeeze
between their thighs
if they needed to urinate at court
in Georgian England.
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and
Donald Rumsfeld
all have slime-mold beetles
named after them.
Since 1700, new beetle species
have been discovered
at the rate of
one every six hours.
The short-circuit beetle is so named
because it eats the lead covering
of telephone cables.
Cartwrightia cartwrighti is a scarab beetle
described by Oscar L. Cartwright.
As you are not supposed to name
a species after yourself,
he claimed to have named it
after his brother.
Deathwatch beetles
attract mates
by repeatedly banging
their heads on the floor.
During his first teaching job in 1925,
Evelyn Waugh set out
to drown himself at sea,
but turned back
after being stung by a jellyfish.
The Irish name for jellyfish is
