There are 1,411 tigers
left in India.
The Greek
for “left-handed”
also means “better.”
The “Heil Hitler” salute
is legal in Switzerland
as long as it’s an expression
of personal opinion.
Qatar is the only country
that begins with a Q, and
Iraq is the only country
that ends with one.
Dildos
are illegal in Texas.
Snake-charming
is illegal in India.
In New Zealand,
snakes of any kind
are illegal.
On D-Day,
J. D. Salinger fought
with six chapters of
The Catcher in the Rye
in his backpack.
Charles Darwin let his children
use the original manuscript
of On the Origin of Species
as drawing paper.
Charles Dickens’s family had
a cat, seven dogs, two ravens,
a canary called Dick, and
a pony called Newman Noggs.
had guinea pigs called
Admiral Dewey, Bishop Doane,
Dr. Johnson, Father O’Grady, and
Fighting Bob Evans,
and a small bear
called Jonathan Edwards.
Anton Chekhov
had a pet mongoose.
In 1849,
the Viceroy of Egypt
gave London Zoo a hippo
in exchange for a greyhound.
There are more
plastic flamingos
in the USA than
real flamingos.
Two-thirds
of the world’s polar bears
live in Canada.
When Canada
held a competition
to design its national flag,
more than 10% of the entries
featured a beaver.
The biggest dam
built by beavers
is twice as long
as the Hoover Dam.
The first motor insurance policy
issued by Lloyd’s of London
described the car as a
“ship navigating on land.”
The car
in the world’s first
fatal traffic accident
was moving at
4 mph.
6%
of drivers
deliberately swerve
to kill animals.
In 2007,
210,000 Americans
were injured by lawnmowers.
The lawnmower is
the most dangerous item
in the garden.
The second most dangerous
is the flowerpot.
When Edwin Beard Budding
invented the lawnmower,
he tested it at night
so no one would think
he was mad.
Using a gasoline-driven lawnmower
for one hour
produces as much air pollution
as a 100-mile car trip.
It is illegal in Chicago
for lawns to have weeds
more than ten inches tall.
Plants suffer from
sexually transmitted diseases.
Orchids can get
jet lag.
There is only one stop sign
in the whole of Paris.
The name sign for
the town of Lost
in Aberdeenshire
is the only one in Britain
that is welded to its pole.
Female strawberry poison frogs
have only one way of choosing
a male to mate with:
which one is closest.
In 2003,
Morocco offered Iraq
2,000 monkeys
to help them
detonate mines.
The Burmese sneezing monkey
sneezes uncontrollably
whenever it rains.
5% of cats
are allergic to humans.
If cats don’t encounter people
by the time they’re 10 weeks old,
they will always be scared of them.
Human beings
have as many brain cells
in their stomachs
as cats have in their brains.
A cat’s brain can store
1,000 times more data
than an iPad.
Camel urine
is as thick as syrup.
Whale milk
has the consistency
of toothpaste.
Toothpaste
is addictive for bears
but toxic to dogs.
The human nose
can recognize over
1,000,000,000,000
different smells.
You can tell
if a duck has bird flu
by smelling its droppings.
The smell of a man
is as stressful to mice
as a three-minute swim.
The smell of women
doesn’t bother them.
Until the First World War,
offices for women had
separate entrances and staircases,
for reasons of “morality.”
Women
weren’t allowed to serve
on Royal Navy submarines
until 2011.
Girls in the UK
have been getting
higher grades than boys
at school and university
for nearly a century.
outperform men
to such an extent that
some universities have
introduced a male quota.
There are enough
empty homes in China
for everyone in California
and Texas to have one each.
If they were countries,
the Chinese provinces of
Guangdong, Shandong,
Henan, Sichuan, and Jiangsu
would be among the
world’s 20 most populous.
China gets a new skyscraper
every five days.
More wine is drunk per head
in Vatican City
than in any other country on Earth.
The crew of the Marie Celeste
left 1,700 barrels of alcohol
behind them.
Between 1908 and 1965,
Winston Churchill drank
42,000 bottles of champagne.
In Beijing,
two million people
live underground.
In 1870,
two million rabbits
were killed every year in Australia,
all descended from just 24
released in 1859.
The soil in
your back garden is
two million years old.
When Harvard University
was founded,
Galileo was still alive.
Charles Darwin
and Abraham Lincoln were
born on the same day
in 1809.
In 1941,
there were only
11 democracies
in the world.
George H. W. Bush
is four years older
than sliced bread.
Yoko Ono
is exactly 21 years
older than Scientology.
Nobody knows
how old the
Grand Canyon is.
Shirley Temple
always had exactly
56 curls in her hair.
An acersecomic
is a person who
has never had a haircut.
Wealthy ancient Egyptians
slept with neck supports
rather than pillows
to preserve their hairstyles.
Two-thirds of parents
who sing their children to sleep
prefer pop music
to lullabies.
Nocturia
is the need to
get up in the night
and urinate.
One o’clock in the morning
is the peak time
for moth activity.
The greater wax moth
can hear sounds that are
more high-pitched than
any known animal
can make.
Humans
speak more languages
than there are species of mammal.
The more rivers an area has,
the more languages will
evolve there.
Black Americans and white Americans
have different versions of
American Sign Language.
The sign for the female sex 
represents the hand mirror
of the Roman goddess Venus.
The inventor of roller skates
first demonstrated them
by hurtling into a party
while playing the violin
and crashing into a huge mirror.
A cheetah
that sprints for
more than 30 seconds
can suffer brain damage.
Ladybugs
can fly
as fast as racehorses
can run.
When threatened,
a limpet can run away
at a speed of
two inches an hour.
The Chilean word
for “plumber”
is gasfiter.
Gavisti,
the Sanskrit word for “war,”
literally translates as
“desire for more cows.”
Greece is
the only country in the world
whose name contains
none of the letters
in the word “Olympiads.”
who won three golds,
two silvers, and a bronze
at the 1904 Olympics,
had a wooden leg.
Olympic medal-winners
live almost three years
longer than the rest of us.
Sports journalists were banned
from the first modern Olympics
as they were considered to be
professional sportspeople.
Michael Phelps
has won more Olympic golds
than India, Nigeria, North Korea,
Portugal, Taiwan, and Thailand
combined.
In wine-tasting,
a “cat-pee aroma” is
a compliment.
Tomcat urine
smells like
cheddar cheese.
Cheese is
the most shoplifted
food in the UK.
Americans eat
nine times more broccoli
than they did in 1970.
1 in 8 Americans
has worked at McDonald’s.
1 in 10 Americans
thinks HTML is
a sexually transmitted disease.
The original purpose
of the United Nations was
to win the Second World War.
The name “United Nations”
was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s idea.
He rushed to tell Winston Churchill,
who was towelling himself
stark naked in his bathroom.
When catering staff at the UN
went on strike in 2003,
$10,000 worth of food
and silverware
was stolen.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
celebrated his election by singing
“Ban Ki-moon Is Coming to Town”
to the tune of
“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”
“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”
was first sung in November 1934.
By Christmas, it had sold
400,000 copies.
You are more likely to
die over Christmas than at
any other time of year.
Jon Bon Jovi
used to make
Christmas decorations
for a living.
Edward Elgar
was the bandmaster
in a lunatic asylum.
Leo Fender
couldn’t play the guitar.
Rapper Ice-T’s
real name is
Tracy Lauren Marrow.
once refused permission
for his hit “Ring of Fire” to be
used in a commercial for
hemorrhoid cream.
The original advertisement
to recruit band members
for the Village People read,
“Macho types wanted:
must have mustache.”
Coldplay
used to be called
Starfish.
The band Oasis
is named after
an aquatics center
in Swindon, UK.
According to Julius Caesar,
the most civilized people in Britain
lived in Kent.
A 2011 opinion poll
found that 51% of Britons
want the reinstatement
of the death penalty.
1 in 5 of the
world’s security cameras
is in Britain.
The word “British”
is the most common word
used by people in the UK
searching the Internet for porn.
The annual awards ceremony
of the UK porn industry
is called the SHAFTAs.
Until 1910,
film studios didn’t credit actors
in case they asked for
more money.
Oscar Hammerstein II
is the only Oscar
ever to win
an Oscar.
Harvey Weinstein
has been thanked
12 times at the Oscars—
once more than God.
Nigeria is
the world’s third-largest
movie-producing country
but has only eight cinemas.
The appropriate response to
“How are you?”
in Luxembourgish
is “Tip-Top.”
The English word “squirrel”
is particularly difficult for
Germans to pronounce.
The most difficult
tongue twister in English is
“pad kid poured curd pulled cod.”
The eyes of a giant squid
are the size of
basketballs.
90% of all jellyfish
are smaller than
a human thumbnail.
Jellyfish
born on the
Columbia space shuttle
suffered from vertigo
when they returned to Earth.
René Descartes
had a fetish for
cross-eyed women.
Reindeer have
golden eyes
in summer
and blue eyes
in winter.
Rats get
more depressed
in summer than in winter.
In 2012,
the fifth-oldest tree in the world
was burned down by a
crystal-meth addict.
The second episode
of the The Muppets
was called “Sex and Violence.”
In some parts of Germany,
it is illegal to show
The Life of Brian
on Good Friday.
Sexmoan,
a small fishing town in the Philippines,
changed its name in 1991 to
Sasmuan.
The Lego company
was originally called
Billund Maskinsnedkeri.
By 2019, there will be
more Lego figures
on Earth than people.
There are about
294,000,000,000,000
leaves in the world;
for every leaf
there are 340 ants.
If you feed silkworms
mulberry leaves
sprayed with pink fabric dye,
they make pink silk.
Until the 19th century,
champagne was pink
and had no bubbles.
95% of the spiders
in your house have
never been outside.
The daddy longlegs
flosses after meals by
pulling each of its eight legs
through its jaws.
Frogs’ legs were eaten in Britain
for 7,000 years before
they were eaten
in France.
Lake Baikal in Russia
is a thousand times older
than any other lake on Earth.
If the rest of the planet’s
fresh water disappeared,
there would be enough
left in Lake Baikal
to supply humanity
for 50 years.
Modern humans
evolved 80,000 years
after javelins were invented.
The three Russian cosmonauts
whose spacecraft depressurized
just before re-entry in 1971 are the
only human beings to have died
outside the Earth’s atmosphere.
In space you can cry,
but your tears won’t fall;
they just puddle up
under your eye.
If all the salt in the oceans were
spread evenly over the land,
it would be 500 feet deep.
Whales’ vaginas
can be large enough
to walk through.
Gray whales
always mate in a threesome:
two males to one female.
Male squirrels
can perform fellatio
on themselves.
had a pet orangutan
that joined her for dinner
dressed in a white cotton blouse.
A salamander
can have its brain removed,
cut into slices, shuffled, minced,
put back in again, and
still function as normal.
As soon as they find
a rock to anchor themselves to,
young sea squirts
eat their own brains.
Two-thirds
of an octopus’s brain
is in its limbs.
The world-record holder
of the longest accurate
archery shot
has no arms.
In 1986, Michael Foot’s appointment
as chair of a disarmament committee
prompted the Times headline
“Foot Heads Arms Body.”
The body of the sea otter
has a pouch across the front
where it keeps rocks
to break open shellfish.
The volume of soy sauce
brewed in the Netherlands each year
is greater than that of all the gold
mined in human history.
In 2011, Australia minted
a giant “A$1 million” gold coin.
It weighed over a ton
and used gold worth
A$52 million.
In 1988, there were
600,000 illegal
gold prospectors
in Brazil.
“Dr. Seuss”
should be pronounced
“Dr. Zoice.”
The ancient Egyptian word for “cat”
was pronounced
“miaow.”
Lettuce was sacred to Min,
the ancient Egyptian god of fertility,
because it grew long and straight
and oozed a milky substance
when rubbed.
Ancient Greeks
declared their love for a woman
by throwing an apple at her.
To eat every
different variety of apple
at a rate of one a day
would take 20 years.
In 1976,
Ron Wayne,
co-founder of Apple,
sold his shares for $800;
today they would be worth
$35 billion.
Twister
was originally called
Pretzel.
The Boy Scouts’
motto “Be prepared”
was originally followed by
“to die for your country.”
Homer’s epics
were originally
set to music.
Drinking wine
before a meal
makes you eat 25% more.
Wine drinkers
pour 12% more wine
into a glass they’re holding
than one that’s sitting on the table.
“Response to Those who
Criticize Me for Spending Money
on Old Wine & Prostitutes”
is a lost work by Aristippus,
a disciple of Socrates.
Heraclitus attempted to cure
a serious illness by lying in
the sun covered in cow dung.
He died the following day.
An Egyptian cure for insanity
was to eat snake meatballs
under a full moon.
In the Himalayas,
the smoke from burning millipedes
is used to treat hemorrhoids.
Queen Elizabeth I
owned two “unicorn horns”
that were supposed to
purify water and cure sickness.
Eight million years ago,
guinea pigs were
the size of cows.
American cows
produce four times as much milk
as they did in 1942.
British fishermen
work 17 times harder
than they did in the 1880s,
to catch the same number of fish.
Franz Liszt
was the first musician
to have women’s underwear
thrown at him.
In 2014,
a pair of underpants
donated by the mayor of Brussels
was stolen from the
Brussels Underpants Museum.
The manager of the
England soccer team
collects mementos of the
assassination of JFK.
Hugo Chávez,
former president of Venezuela,
hosted the chat show Aló Presidente
every Sunday from 1999 to 2012.
Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow,
the president of Turkmenistan,
sacked 30 TV news staffers in 2008
after a cockroach was spotted
walking across the set
during a bulletin.
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
has released three pop-song albums
since becoming the
president of Indonesia.
Britney Spears’s “Oops! . . . I Did It Again”
to scare off Somali pirates.
94% of terrorist campaigns
fail to achieve a single one of
their strategic goals.
Saudi law defines atheists
as terrorists.
Saudi Arabia is considering
stopping execution by beheading
due to a shortage of
official swordsmen.
Oliver Cromwell was
dug up and beheaded
two years after his death.
In 1944, nine US airmen were
shot down over Chichi Jima.
Eight of them were executed
(four of whom were also eaten),
and one (George H. W. Bush)
went on to become president.
The Red Baron’s final word
was “kaput.”
More US Air Force pilots
are training to fly drones
than are training to fly planes.
Fighter pilots
in stressful situations
release such large amounts
of hormones that they
may ejaculate.
56% of British airline pilots admit
to having fallen asleep on the job,
and 29% say they’ve woken up
to find their copilot asleep.
The Japanese
sleep two hours
a night less than
the Chinese.
Blind people
are twice as likely to
smell things in their dreams
as sighted people.
Blind people
are four times more likely
to have nightmares
than sighted people.
Mao Zedong impersonator
was divorced by her husband, who
“got tired of feeling that he was
sleeping with the Chairman.”
Sleeping on your stomach
is the most likely position
to produce erotic dreams.
Duck-billed platypuses
do not have stomachs.
The eyes of the
celestial eye goldfish
really are bigger than
its stomach.
are at their biggest as an
adolescent and slowly
get smaller until
the age of 60.
Human brains
are 10% smaller
than they were
20,000 years ago.
Einstein’s brain was
smaller than average.
In 1939, the US Army
was smaller than the
armies of Portugal or Romania
and ranked 17th in the world;
by 1945, it numbered 8.3 million.
Alternative names proposed for
Canada in 1867 were Tuponia,
Borealia, Cabotia, Transatlantica,
Victorialand, and Superior.
When Canada’s Northwest Territories
were divided in two in 1999, people
voted to keep the old name.
The runner-up
was “Bob.”
For 500 years
from the 13th century,
70% of Englishmen were called
Robert, John, Thomas, Richard,
or William.
“Last shake o’ the bag”
was Victorian slang for
“youngest child.”
When having their photograph taken,
Victorians said “prunes”
rather than “cheese”
to make themselves
look more serious.
When Danes pose for photos,
they say “orange,” the Chinese say
“aubergine,” and the Germans
say “ant shit.”
Nachos
were invented by a man
named Nacho.
Men whose initials
have positive connotations,
like LOV or WIN,
live 4½ years longer
than those with negative ones,
like BAD or PIG.
In 1883, a man named Jack Ferry
crossed the English Channel
on a floating tricycle.
There are 100,000
more bicycles in Amsterdam
than there are people.
In 2009,
a search of Loch Ness
for the Loch Ness monster
located 100,000
golf balls.
At any one time
there are 100,000
ships at sea.
Bananas
are considered unlucky
on fishing boats.
In 1923,
the sheet music for
“Yes, We Have No Bananas”
sold 1,000 copies a day.
There are more than
1,000 species of banana.
We eat only one of them.
Bananas
are used to make
kimonos.
Queen Victoria
had a novelty bustle
with a music box that played
“God Save the Queen”
when she sat down.
The Masters in Lunacy
were Victorian officials who
investigated whether people
claiming to be insane
were faking it.
J. R. R. Tolkien’s son Michael
put down his father’s profession
as “Wizard.”
New Zealand
has an official
National Wizard.
The New Zealand badminton team
was nicknamed the “Black Cocks,”
but had to drop it after complaints.
New Zealand’s 90-Mile Beach
is 55 miles long.
The United States
doubled in size in 1983,
when the Reagan administration
expanded its coastal waters
from three to 200 nautical miles.
In 2011, scientists
re-measured Norway’s
beaches, islands, and fjords,
adding 11,000 miles
to its coastline.
The coastline of Norway
is long enough to
circle the planet
2½ times.
Iceland
has 25 puffins
for every person.
Men
outnumber
women
in Vatican City
by 17 to 1.
There are as many bacteria
in two servings of yogurt
as there are people on Earth.
Antarctica every year
would be enough to give
each person on Earth
1,360,000 ice cubes.
The technical name for
an ice-cream headache is
sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.
Hellenologophobia
is the fear of Greek terms.
A musophobist
is a person who
distrusts poetry.
Nelson Mandela’s favorite poem,
was written by the man who
inspired the character of
Long John Silver.
80% of pirates
caught by the
European Union’s
naval police
are released.
People who pirate music
also buy more legal music
than those who don’t.
Barry Manilow’s No. 1 hit
“I Write the Songs”
wasn’t written by
Barry Manilow.
The real
Maria von Trapp
wasn’t invited to the premiere
of The Sound of Music.
The Duke of Wellington
played cricket for
Ireland.
The current
Earl of Sandwich
runs a chain of
sandwich shops called
Earl of Sandwich.
different New York eatery
every day for 12 years,
you still wouldn’t have visited
all of the city’s restaurants.
November 25, 2012, was
the first day since 1960 that
there was no murder
or manslaughter in
New York City.
During its restoration in 1982,
the Statue of Liberty’s head
was accidentally installed
two feet off-center.
New buildings in New York
must have twice as many
women’s toilets as men’s.
The first sketch
for the design of the Mini
was drawn on a napkin
in Switzerland.
Switzerland monitors
its airspace around the clock
but only intercepts illegal flights
during office hours.
In 2006,
the most popular name for
cows in Switzerland
was Fiona.
The guts of
250,000 cows
were used to make
the balloon lining
for every Zeppelin.
The Spanish for
“when pigs fly” is
“when hens piss.”
In German,
things don’t
“sell like hot cakes,”
they “go like warm rolls.”
Pregnant women
are 42% more likely
to be in a car crash
but less likely to die
than men of the same age.
Only two countries
have not ratified
the UN Convention on
the Rights of the Child:
Somalia and the USA.
The USA, Papua New Guinea,
Swaziland, Liberia, and Lesotho
are the only countries without
mandatory maternity leave.
By the time they are eight,
children have forgotten
60% of what happened
before they were three.
In 1922,
Ernest Hemingway’s wife
lost his entire life’s work
by leaving it on a train.
In 1989, a Russian psychic
was run over by a train and killed
while attempting to prove
he could stop one using
the power of his mind.
have a superstition that will
not allow them to eat apricots,
allow apricots on board, or even
say the word “apricot.”
The crunch
of a potato chip or an apple
in your mouth
is a mini sonic boom.
Apple Inc.
didn’t invent the mouse.
They bought the rights
for $40,000.
Mice
can’t see
red light.
Herds of sheep
moved at night must have
a white light at the front
and a red light at the rear.
Coyotes in the USA
have learned how traffic lights work
so they can cross the road safely.
Traffic lights
were introduced
18 years before
the car was invented.
40% of
pedestrian-crossing buttons
in Manchester, England,
don’t work.
A group of pigeons
regularly boards
the London Underground
at Hammersmith and alights
at Ladbroke Grove.
The average London pigeon
has 1.6 feet.
In 1910,
the average Briton
sent 116 items by mail.
The longest letter
ever printed in the Times
was 11,071 words long.
Today, the whole letters page
carries only 2,000 words.
84% of writers to
the letters page of the Times
are men.
Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis
signed off letters to each other
with the word “bum.”
Chimpanzees
can identify each other
by looking at photographs
of their bottoms.
People can recognize
each other 90% of the time
just from the way they walk.
Lizards
can’t breathe and walk
at the same time.
Salamanders
can hear with their
lungs.
Lobsters
listen with their
legs.
The human brain
cannot feel pain.
When neuroscientist James Fallon
studied the brain scans of murderers
using his own scan as a control,
he discovered he was a psychopath.
John F. Kennedy’s brain
was removed during his autopsy
and is still missing.
Lee Harvey Oswald
still owes an overdue book—
The Shark and the Sardines
by Juan José Arévalo—
to the Dallas Public Library.
Cleopatra wrote a book
about makeup.
50,000 Korans
are buried in the
mountains of Pakistan,
each one in a white shroud.
13%
of Greek children have
dimpled cheeks.
85%
of the exhibits in
Peru’s Museum of Gold
are fakes.
90%
of the thermostats
in American offices
don’t work.
Whoopi Goldberg
used to be a bricklayer.
Jerry Springer
was born in Highgate
Tube station.
Phil Collins
divorced his second wife
by fax.
If you stood on the
Martian equator at noon,
it would feel like
summer at your feet
and winter at your head.
From 2000 BC to AD 1992,
astronomers discovered
three new planets.
In 2014, 700 were found
in a single day.
The notebooks of
US astronauts were
fireproofed with seaweed
from the Isle of Lewis.
were discovered in 1831,
the man who found them ran away,
terrified he’d interrupted
an assembly of elves.
Dublin is home to
Ireland’s National
Leprechaun Museum.
All the chickens’ eggs
produced in the world each year
would make an omelette
the size of Northern Ireland.
Hummingbirds lay eggs
the size of peas.
The Milky Way
gives birth to a new star
every 50 days.
Almost 1%
of American mothers
claim to have been virgins
when they gave birth.
The closer a woman
is to the equator,
the more likely she is to
give birth to a girl.
Flor de Guia cheese
from the Canary Islands
must only be made by women;
otherwise it is not considered
the genuine article.
Britons are
the most lactose-tolerant people
in the world.
“Cheesy”
originally meant
“excellent.”
“Bingo”
was first used as slang for
“brandy.”
Charlotte Brontë was
the first person to use the terms
“cottage-garden,” “raised eyebrow,”
“Now, now!,” “kitchen chair,”
and “Wild West.”
“Sexpert,” “cushty,” “freebie,”
“makeover,” “comfort zone,”
and “dream team”
all date from the 1920s.
After the first recorded
hurling match,
the losing team was
brutally murdered.
In 1920, Clarence Blethen
retired hurt from a baseball match
after biting himself on the bottom
with the false teeth he kept
in his back pocket.
Louis X and Charles VIII of France
both died as a result of
playing tennis.
King Harold’s body was identified
by the tattoo of his wife’s name
over his heart.
90% of the men in Paraguay
died in the War of the Triple Alliance.
From 1864 to 1870 they fought
Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina
simultaneously.
A refereeing decision
in a soccer match between
Argentina and Peru in 1964
led to a riot in which
300 fans were killed.
A fight between chameleons
is more likely to be started by
the one with brighter stripes.
William Buckland was expelled
from the shrine of St. Rosalia,
patron saint of Palermo, Sicily,
for pointing out that her bones
were actually those of a goat.
Vultures can turn
a dead body into a
skeleton in under
five hours.
A walrus’s
penis bone
is as long as a
human thigh bone.
The penis of the
Argonaut mollusk
snaps off during sex:
it can only mate
once.
Chinese eunuchs
kept their testicles in a jar
in the hope they will
reattach themselves
in the next world.
The world has
two earthquakes
every minute.
90% of people live
in the Northern Hemisphere.
Wherever
a leaf is in the world,
its internal temperature
is always 70°F.
When it gets too hot,
some cacti move underground
to cool down.
always had hot showers so
they didn’t get acclimatized
to cold water and try to
escape by swimming.
In Inuit languages,
the closest word to “freedom”
is annakpok, which means
“not caught.”
In the French Revolution,
prisoners were taken to the
guillotine on wagons used
to transport manure.
Scatomancy
is telling the future
by looking at turds.
Predicting the death
of Henry VIII was
punishable by death.
The bell rung to mark the death
of Ivan the Terrible’s son Dmitri
was tried for treason, found guilty,
and exiled to Siberia.
The drugs used
for a lethal injection in Texas
cost $83.
In 2013,
the Venezuelan government
accused the opposition of
hoarding toilet paper and
causing a national shortage.
12% of a
sloth’s energy
is used to climb
up and down trees
to go to the bathroom.
A single sloth
can be home to
980 different beetles.
There are 20 million
sea containers in the world.
The ships’ crews have no idea
what is in them.
The Just Missed It Club
was for people who almost
sailed on the Titanic.
Two weeks after it sank,
it had 118,337 members.
Jenny, the ship’s cat
on the Titanic, did not
survive the sinking.
the Houses of Parliament each year,
but the authorities won’t get a cat
because no one can be trusted
to look after it responsibly.
According to his wife, Mary,
Abraham Lincoln’s hobby
was cats.
Édouard Manet’s cat
was eaten during
the Siege of Paris in 1870.
Karl Lagerfeld’s cat has
two maids who write down
everything it does
in a special book.
69% of the cocaine
sold in the USA contains
de-worming medication.
During the Vietnam War,
each US soldier took 40
amphetamine tablets a year.
The phrase “pipe dream”
originates from the fantasies
induced by smoking opium.
Because of its Happy Meals,
McDonald’s is the world’s largest
distributor of toys.
The first McDonald’s
only sold hot dogs.
In 2002,
the US military developed
a sandwich that stays fresh
for three years.
Vegetarian sausages were
first patented in Britain in 1918,
by the future German chancellor
Konrad Adenauer.
If they don’t care
about something,
Germans say,
“It’s sausage to me.”
Rice Krispies
in Germany go
“Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!”
the Second World War,
US censors kept the news of
Germany’s unconditional surrender
secret from the public for 11 hours.
The Hindenburg airship
was almost named
the Hitler.
When the Hindenburg exploded,
62 of the 97 passengers survived.
80% of people who are
struck by lightning
survive.
The energy released by
a bolt of lightning is about
the same as that stored in
30 gallons of gasoline.
The energy needed
to manufacture a new car
is equivalent to
260 gallons of gasoline.
Forest fires
can be sparked by sunlight
magnified by water on
dried-out leaves.
Pee Cola
is a popular soft drink
in Ghana.
In China,
Burger King sells
PooPoo Smoothies.
The word for “carp”
in Montenegro
is krap.
The snow at the South Pole
reflects sound so well
you can hear people
talking a mile away.
The first snow goggles
were made of slices of
polished caribou antler.
Icebergs
make a crackling sound
known as “bergy seltzer.”
set off from Antarctica in 2000.
It was larger than Jamaica, and
parts of it still haven’t melted.
The world’s largest
and most complete
Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton
is called Sue.
Britain’s largest pig
is called Boris. He contains
enough pork to make
6,000 sausages.
The largest lizard
in Australia
can run as fast as
Usain Bolt.
Japan has twice as many
bank holidays as the UK,
including Greenery Day and
Respect for the Aged Day.
In 18th-century America,
Thanksgiving was celebrated
with a day of fasting and prayer.
In 2013,
Hanukkah and Thanksgiving
began on the same day.
The next time this will happen
will be in AD 79811.
According to
the Mayan calendar,
the next time the
“world is going to end”
is May 3, 7138.
There is a 12% chance
that a game of Monopoly
will go on indefinitely.
If you exposed
a diamond on a tanning bed,
it would eventually evaporate,
but you wouldn’t notice any change
for 10 billion years.
Stephen Hawking hosted a party
for time travelers from the future.
Nobody showed up.
Black holes
are not black.
Robins’ “red” breasts
are orange.
Ripe limes
are yellow.
Guinness
isn’t suitable
for vegetarians;
it contains traces
of fish bladder.
Human teeth
evolved from
fish scales.
Fish
don’t need to
learn how to swim
in schools.
stamping feet, and
making clicking sounds,
humans can learn to
echolocate like bats.
Species of bat include
the wrinkle-faced bat,
the thumbless bat,
the Antillean ghost-faced bat,
the flower-faced bat, and
the big-eared woolly bat.
Without bats
there would be no tequila.
It’s made from the agave plant,
which is pollinated by bats.
Tequila heated to 1,472°F
can be made into diamonds.
Grapples
are apples that
taste like grapes.
Grapes
are poisonous to
dogs.
Avocados
are toxic to
horses.
Falling in love
costs you, on average,
two close friends.
Valentine’s Day
is banned in
Iran, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia,
and Uzbekistan.
More than 5,000 Swedish men
have the first name Love.
The place where
Hitler killed himself
is now a children’s playground.
In ancient Rome,
fathers had the legal right
to kill their children.
In J. M. Barrie’s novel,
Peter Pan ruthlessly
“thinned out” the Lost Boys
when they got too old.
The population of Ireland
is still smaller than it was
before the Great Famine
of 1845.
The laborers who built
the Great Wall of China
were fed on sauerkraut.
Before eating,
Nikola Tesla,
the “father of electricity,”
polished each piece of cutlery
with 18 napkins.
Eating dogs
is legal in
44 US states.
2.8 million
American dogs
are on antidepressants.
Babies
can hear
dog whistles.
You can tell if
someone is yawning
from their eyes alone.
No one knows
why we yawn.
Hamsters blink
one eye at a time.
Tomato frogs
secrete a glue that
causes a predator’s lips
to stick together.
By the time they
leave high school,
American children
will have eaten 1,500
peanut-butter-and-jelly
sandwiches.
Alan Shepard took
a peanut to the Moon.
When he brought it back,
Steve McQueen tried to eat it.
Astronaut
Harrison Schmitt
is allergic to
the Moon.
Astronaut
John Young smuggled
a corned-beef sandwich
into space.
A third of British
office workers have
the same thing for
lunch every day.
Americans over 75
watch twice as much TV
as teenagers.
Americans
drink more wine
than the French.
A quarter
of all the vegetables
eaten in the USA are
french fries.
Corn, avocados,
cucumbers, peas,
beans, and peppers
are fruits, not
vegetables.
There is
a variety of carrot
beginning with every letter
of the alphabet
except X.
Unpopped
popcorn kernels
are called “old maids”
or “spinsters.”
A “singlewoman”
was medieval slang
for a prostitute.
88% of women
routinely wear shoes
that are too small
for their feet.
Our little toes
were much stronger
before shoes became
widespread.
In 1967,
Picoazá, Ecuador, elected
a brand of foot deodorant
as the town’s mayor.
New research shows that,
for luxury brands,
the ruder the sales staff,
the higher the sales.
Termites
like the smell
of newspaper ink.
An Atlantic salmon’s
sense of smell is 1,000 times
better than a dog’s.
There are
one billion dogs
in the world.
the human body makes
300 billion new cells,
three times as many as there are
galaxies in the universe.
NASA estimates that
the near-Earth asteroid Eros
contains 20 billion tons of gold.
The opening ceremony
of the Beijing Olympics
was the first time a billion people
have watched a sporting event.
At the 1932 Olympics,
the 3,000-meter steeplechase
was run over 3,400 meters
because an official lost count
of the number of laps.
The first man to swim
the whole length of Britain
grew a beard to protect his face
from jellyfish stings.
Each person in a swimming pool
leaves behind
between 8 and 20
teaspoonfuls of urine.
3,079
chemical compounds
have been identified
in human urine.
Virtually all Koreans
lack the gene that
produces smelly armpits.
The tobacco hornworm
uses its terrible breath
to fend off predators.
The first
commercial chewing gum
was made from
spruce-tree resin.
The mortality rate
of pop stars is 1.7 times
higher than the average.
1 in 9
Honduran men
will be murdered.
Boys in Bronze Age Russia
had to slay their own dogs
to prove they were ready
to become warriors.
88% of working adults
in sub-Saharan Africa
don’t have a bank account.
Charitable donations
of clothing to Africa
have led to the collapse
of its textile industry.
40 million tons of dust
are blown from the Sahara
to the Amazon every year.
The only desert
in Britain is
Dungeness Nature Reserve
in Kent.
Everyone on Palmerston Island,
in the middle of the Pacific,
speaks with a
Gloucestershire accent.
Accents in Britain
change noticeably
every 25 miles.
There are more
stretch limos in Glasgow
than in Los Angeles.
There are more
Catholics in Scotland
than in Northern Ireland.
In 2007, Scotland
spent $186,000 devising
a new national slogan.
The winning entry was
“Welcome to Scotland.”
6,000 papal medals were
withdrawn by the Vatican
after it was found they
read “Lesus” instead
of “Jesus.”
“Bird”
was originally spelled
brid.
“Empty”
was originally spelled
emty.
“Misspell”
is one of the most
commonly misspelled words
in the English language.
The word “twelve”
is worth 12 points
in Scrabble.
Moving
each letter of the word “yes”
16 places farther up the alphabet
produces the word oui.
The words “ace, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine, ten, jack, queen, king”
contain 52 letters.
The longest English word
with all its letters in
alphabetical order is “Aegilops,”
a flowering grass
whose name means
“an herb liked by goats.”
Both Google and Yahoo
use goats to
trim their lawns.
Goats
can’t cry.
Rats
can feel regret.
Being lonely is
as bad for your health as
smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
There are enough
viruses on Earth
to fill 150
Super Bowl stadiums.
The first Cannes Film Festival
closed after only one night,
due to the outbreak of
the Second World War.
In night-time power outages
during the Second World War,
people in Japan read books by
the light of phosphorescent
marine animals.
Some Japanese aircraft
in the Second World War
ran on pine-tree sap.
During the Second World War,
the Polish army recruited
a bear called Wojtek,
a name that means
“he who enjoys war.”
Offa’s Dyke
was built 200 years before
King Offa was born.
Cleopatra’s Needle
was 1,000 years old when
Cleopatra was born.
Seven US presidents
were born
in log cabins.
three months of his life,
President James Garfield
had to be fed everything
through his anus.
George H. W. Bush
wears socks with
his own face on them.
The first armored
presidential car was
a Cadillac that had
previously belonged
to Al Capone.
In 1924,
half the cars
in the world were
Fords.
In Sweden,
an Indian burn
is known as the
“thousand-needle prank.”
A man in China
hired virtual assassins
to kill his son’s
World of Warcraft character
so he’d stop playing.
In 2013,
police in the Maldives
arrested a coconut
on suspicion of vote-rigging.
In 2012,
the New Zealand government
took legal action to prevent
a couple calling their child
Anal.
In the Norwegian town
of Longyearbyen,
it is illegal to die.
In 17th-century Virginia,
missing three Sunday masses in a row
carried the death penalty.
In Singapore,
it’s illegal to
use a public lavatory
and not flush it.
A 1571 law stated that
all Englishmen must wear
knitted hats on Sundays.
In 2013, a judge in Michigan
found himself in contempt of court
when his mobile phone went off
during a trial.
“Trampoline” comes from
the Spanish for
“diving board.”
It is possible
to travel by zip wire
from Spain to Portugal.
For 14 years
during the Napoleonic wars,
the capital of Portugal was
Rio de Janeiro.
George Washington
is worshipped as a god
by Japanese Shinto priests
in Hawaii.
The Mayans
had a God of Cocoa.
8 out of 10 vegetarians
eventually go back to
eating meat.
1 in 6
of the world’s cows
lives in India.
India has more honor-roll students
than America has students in total.
A third of adults in India
play chess at least once a week.
the Ethiopian distance runner,
ran six miles to and from
school each day. He still runs
with a crook in his arm,
as if he’s carrying his books.
The Persians
invented horse-riding
and trousers.
Mozart kept
a fart diary.
1 in 6
Google searches
has never been
searched for before.
so vast it can’t be written down:
there’s not enough room
in the universe for
all the zeros.
Google employees
are encouraged to use
a fifth of their time at work
on their own non-Google projects.
Everyone has at least
50,000 thoughts a day but
95% of them are the same
as the day before.
Three-quarters of Britons
have a drawer at home
full of miscellaneous junk.
At the Vancouver Winter Olympics,
the medals were made from
recycled televisions and
computer circuit boards.
Azodicarbonamide
is a chemical compound that
makes things softer and bouncier,
including yoga mats, flip-flops, and
the buns in Big Macs.
Dry cleaning was invented when
someone knocked over a
kerosene lamp and noticed it
removed stains from their clothes.
It’s impossible
to set fire to a pool of gasoline
by throwing a lit cigarette into it.
Before granting the patent in 1891,
the US Patent Office
insisted on proof that the
Ouija board worked.
To save lives,
Volvo gave away the patent
for its seatbelt.
1 in 4 people
killed on British roads was
not wearing a seatbelt.
You are four times more likely
to drown in your bath
than you are to die
of food poisoning.
Japanese companies advertise on
packs of tissues given out free at
train stations, because the toilets
there often don’t have toilet paper.
People with higher incomes
generally prefer their toilet paper
to unravel over the roll,
while those with lower incomes
prefer it to go under.
In the Second World War,
British troops were issued with
three sheets of toilet paper a day;
American soldiers got 22.
According to the
India Book of Records,
the longest garland
made of cattle dung
was 1¼ miles long.
Modern fishing lines
can be up to
75 miles long.
The 3.4 million coins
in the longest-ever
line of coins stretched
for over 40 miles.
In the Great Depression,
old tires and fish skin
were used as money in the USA.
Two-thirds
of all $100 bills
are held outside the USA.
$1,200,000,000,000 of
US money is in circulation,
but nobody knows
where 85% of it is.
400 million gallons of raw sewage
flow out of New York every year,
the same as the volume of gasoline
Americans use every day.
Mexican households
generate 30% more rubbish
than American households.
Sweden is
so good at recycling
that it has run out of rubbish
and imports 80,000 tons a year
from Norway.
Pope Gregory I
declared rabbit fetuses
were marine animals
and could be eaten
during Lent.
Pope Francis I
used to work as a bouncer
in a Buenos Aires nightclub.
The Greek god Atlas
had an aunt
called Doris.
In 80% of
US presidential elections
the taller candidate has won.
The Somali word for “president”
also means “big head,”
and the candidate with
the biggest head
usually wins.
If a Hong Kong
election ends in a tie,
the candidates draw from a bag
of numbered Ping-Pong balls.
Before he became a spy,
John le Carré washed elephants
for the Swiss National Circus.
Before he became president,
Bashar al-Assad was head of
the Syrian Computer Club.
In 2013, a mobile-phone app
allowing Azerbaijanis to track
the presidential election reported
the president’s massive victory
24 hours before the polls opened.
The French equivalent
of LOL is MDR:
mort de rire—dead from laughing.
The 1989 article that proposed
the acronym “LOL”
also suggested using
H to mean “Huh?”
The word “huh” is understood
in all known languages.
When Columbus
“discovered” the New World,
there were at least 50 million people
living in the Americas.
Before humans reached Hawaii,
the dominant animals there
were giant ducks.
At the 1928 Olympics,
oarsman Henry Pearce stopped to let
a family of ducks cross his lane,
and went on to win the gold medal.
Russian rower Vyacheslav Ivanov
was so excited at winning gold that
he dropped his medal into the lake,
and it was never found.
Toshers were
men who earned a living by
searching London’s sewers
for lost valuables.
People in India
panning for gold in sewers
make four times the average wage.
“You have a turd in your teeth”
was a common insult in
17th-century England.
The House of Lords
has a rifle range
in the basement.
Membership of
the Conservative Party
has fallen by 97%
since the 1950s.
The surname Cameron
means “crooked nose.”
A “rough-and-tumble”
was originally a boxing bout
without any rules.
In the 1890s,
Samoan cricket matches
had teams of up to 150 a side
and lasted more than two weeks.
Clinton, Montana,
holds an annual testicle festival.
Known as Testy Fest, it includes
Ball Eating, Miss TestyFest,
Itty Bitty Titty, Mr. Fun Buns,
and Nicest Arms.
Despite producing milk,
neither the platypus nor the echidna
has nipples.
Humans
are the only primates
with permanent
breasts.
The largest
bra size is
48V.
Breast milk is
a laxative.
Women’s breast tissue
ages faster than the
rest of their
bodies.
Victorian slang
for breasts was
“Cupid’s kettledrums.”
Koalas
hug trees
to keep cool.
Spider silk
conducts heat
better than most metals.
Spiders
seem bigger
the more scared
you are.
Joseph Goebbels
was the same height
as Lindsay Lohan.
In the 1980s,
Hollywood planned
a version of Doctor Who
starring Michael Jackson
as the Doctor.
Doctor Who’s Daleks
were based on
the Nazis.
the town of Southend-on-Sea
scrapped its traffic-warden outfits
after it was pointed out they were
emblazoned with the letters SS.
The first time
Hitler and Mussolini met,
Mussolini described Hitler as a
“mad little clown.”
The clown
Joseph Grimaldi
was seen by 1 in 8 people
in Victorian London.
Charles Dickens’s son Francis
was a Canadian Mountie
for 12 years.
Pay toilets
were banned in Chicago
in 1974.
Skateboards
were banned in Norway
between 1978 and 1989.
In 1948,
a single law in Spain
banned blasphemy,
wood-chopping,
and keeping poultry.
King Archidamus of Sparta
was fined for marrying a short wife
because officials believed she
would give birth to “kinglets”
rather than kings.
The jockey Frankie Dettori
is four inches shorter
than rugby player Tom Youngs,
but only half his weight.
People eating in a
group of seven or more
eat twice as much as
people eating alone.
Whales can’t
taste anything
but salt.
Full-fat milk
contains only
3.5% fat.
A one-year-old baby
is 30% fat.
Over your life,
you take 850 million
breaths.
Potato aphids
will not have sex
if they detect a drop
in air pressure.
The “soul-sucking” wasp,
Ampulex dementor,
is named after the
Dementors in Harry Potter
because of the way it
paralyzes cockroaches.
parasitic worm
was found protruding
from the backside of a
25-million-year-old cockroach.
A nematode worm’s brain
is shaped like
a doughnut.
Penis worms
do not have heads
(or penises).
Beetles
don’t have
taste buds.
Ancient Egyptian bakers
who cheated their customers
were punished by having their ear
nailed to the door of the bakery.
The English word “dinner”
comes from the French word disner,
meaning “breakfast.”
In Hindi,
a chummery
is a house shared by
two or more bachelors.
In the Middle Ages,
the word “comical”
meant “epileptic.”
The longest bout of
hiccups lasted
67 years.
In the 15th century,
English “sweating sickness”
killed thousands of people
and then disappeared;
nobody knows what it was.
In Greece
between 1920 and 1983,
leprosy was
grounds for divorce.
In 2013,
the US Navy recorded
its first case of scurvy
since the Civil War.
In Nelson’s navy,
it took 2,000 mature oak trees
to build a 74-gun ship.
In spite of
“women and children first,”
men have been twice as likely
as women to survive
shipwrecks since 1852.
St. Lucia is the only
country in the world
named after a woman.
Rome
has 7,575 streets
named after men
but only 580 after
women.
The oldest person
in the world dies,
on average,
every eight months.
When asked what they want
to be when they grow up,
1 in 5 children under
the age of ten
says “rich.”
A quarter of
unmarried Japanese
30-year-olds
are still virgins.
The average
Japanese farmer
is 70 years old.
A common form of
public apology in Japan
is shaving one’s head.
Most Britons say “sorry”
almost two million times
in their lives.
in Argentina stated that
a player who had been fouled
could accept an apology
rather than involve the referee.
Argentinians
speak Spanish with
a strong Italian accent.
In Washington, DC,
the Slovakian and Slovenian
embassies meet once a month to
exchange wrongly addressed mail.
Slovenian men do
twice as much housework
as Italian men.
If Prince Charles
becomes king, he will be
the oldest monarch
ever crowned
in Britain.
Prince Charles
runs his car on biofuel
made from wine.
Wine can be “aged”
by passing it through
an electric field
for three minutes.
In 2014, a beer in Virginia
made with 35-million-year-old
fossilized yeast was said to
“taste Belgian.”
BEER
(the Behavioral Equilibrium
Exchange Rate)
was invented by a
Scottish economist named
Ronald MacDonald.
Abraham Lincoln
was a licensed bartender.
In 14th-century England,
children were
baptized in cider.
More than 80%
of American two-year-olds
have an online presence.
1 in 10 passwords
used on the Internet
is either “Password,”
“123456,” or “12345678.”
Alternative names
considered for Twitter were
FriendStalker and
Throbber.
85% of Twitter’s content
comes from
15% of users.
Half of all tweets
are pointless babble.
Only a fifth
of the Sahara desert
is sand.
At least a tenth
of the population of Mauritania
are slaves.
Mississippi
didn’t prohibit slavery
until 1995.
Two-thirds
of all bankruptcies in the USA
are caused by medical bills.
More than 80,000
bartenders in America
have university degrees.
As a nuclear-safety inspector,
Homer Simpson earns
$20,000 more than
the average American.
There is a French law
that stops people from
answering work emails
after 6 p.m.
Apple Inc.
is worth more than
Sweden, Poland, or Nigeria.
The founders of Hewlett-Packard
flipped a coin to decide
which of them would come first
in the company name.
A survey in Britain in 1943
found that the top tip for a
successful marriage was
“liking” your partner.
The Nobel Prize–winning novelist
Gabriel García Márquez
was married for 55 years.
Every day his wife, Mercedes, put
a yellow rose on his desk.
The first person
to go over Niagara Falls
in a barrel and survive was
a 63-year-old widow.
All New Mexico
whiptail lizards
are female.
The German phrase
Eierlegende Wollmilchsau,
literally, “egg-laying wool-milk-sow,”
describes a woman who
can do anything.
In Saudi Arabia,
it is illegal for women
to enter hospitals
unaccompanied by men.
The last English woman
tried for witchcraft
was convicted in 1944.
A quarter of
philosophers
believe in zombies.
Winston Churchill
was a druid.
Madonna
was sacked from
Dunkin’ Donuts for
squirting customers with jam.
Sylvester Stallone
was so broke before his
script for Rocky was accepted
that he sold his dog for $25.
A few weeks later, he bought it back
for $15,000.
Pavarotti holds the world record
for the most curtain calls:
he bowed 165 times
over the course
of an hour.
Regardless of household income,
children of authoritarian parents
are a third more likely to be obese.
1 in 3 children
can use a tablet
before they can speak.
Toddlers who
tell lies early on
are more likely to
do well later in life.
Humans
are born with a
sweet tooth.
The caffeine
extracted from decaf coffee
is sold to soft-drinks
manufacturers.
Sugary drinks
kill 180,000 people
a year.
East African
vampire spiders
drink human blood
by eating mosquitoes
that have just bitten humans.
A parking ticket
is issued in Britain
every four seconds.
The universe
is expanding
at 230 miles a second.
Clams can live
for more than
400 years.
Onychophagia
is the technical term
for biting your nails.
People with
a rare genetic disorder known as
“immigration delay disease”
have no fingerprints.
The expression
“the big C” as a
euphemism for cancer
was coined by John Wayne.
Most people in the 18th century
only had a proper wash
twice a year.
In the 19th century,
circumcision was used to treat
epilepsy, hernia, lunacy,
and paralysis.
“Manchester United
induced Addisonian crisis”
is a rare medical condition
involving heart palpitations
during Man United games.
The hole in the ozone layer
over Antarctica is
twice the size of Europe.
The hole in a guillotine
through which you stick your neck
is called a “lunette.”
The rules of golf
once provided that
if your ball hit your opponent,
he would lose the hole.
Bill Murray
was once pulled over
by the Swedish police
for driving a golf cart
under the influence of alcohol.
In a 1776 version
of the rules of golf,
any ball falling in human excrement
could be removed for
a one-stroke penalty.
Golfers can get
“golf ball liver”
from licking their balls.
the first man to represent England
at both cricket and soccer,
was killed by a cricket ball.
William Hotten,
who wrote the first dictionary
of English slang in 1859,
died after eating too many
pork chops.
Human flesh
tastes like pork
but looks like beef.
518-pound Les Price was made to buy
two tickets for his flight from
Ireland to England, only to find that
the seats weren’t in the same row.
You can burn 20% more fat
by exercising in the morning
on an empty stomach.
Taking the stairs
one step at a time
burns more calories than
taking them two at a time.
Having sex
uses the same number of
calories as there are
in one small
meringue.
Medieval English
surnames included
Crakpot, Halfenaked, Swetinbedde,
and Gyldenbollockes.
Viking names included
“desirous of beer,” “squat-wiggle,”
“lust-hostage,” “short penis,”
“able to fill a bay with fish by magic,”
“the man who mixes his drinks,” and
“the man without trousers.”
The Romans split France into
“Trousered Gaul” in the south
and “Hairy Gaul” in the north.
Leint is an old
northern word meaning
“to add urine to ale
to make it stronger.”
Leep
is a Hindi word meaning
“to wash with water
and cow dung.”
Logodiarrhea means
“talking too much.”
Ross from Friends
celebrated his 29th birthday
in three consecutive seasons.
Matt LeBlanc
was down to his last $11
when he got the part of
Joey in Friends.
In most countries,
the most popular
program on TV is
the weather forecast.
The 1960s US TV show
Lost in Space
was set in 1997.
Fewer people
have been in space
than climbed Mount Everest
last year.
For every 25 people
who have reached the summit
of Mount Everest,
one person
has died trying.
climbed Everest in 2006,
despite having no legs and
one of his prostheses snapping
in half at 21,000 feet.
Viagra
is a combination of
“virility” and “Niagara.”
Tutankhamun
was the only ancient Egyptian
who was mummified with
an erect penis.
Tutankhamun’s parents
were brother and sister.
all four grandparents.
This happens when
a pair of sisters marries
a pair of brothers.
1 in 5 marriages
in the world is
between first cousins.
1 in 20 couples argues
so much on their wedding night
they fail to consummate
their marriage.
George IV
got so drunk on his wedding night
he passed out on the floor
in front of the fireplace.
found out his wife had had an affair,
he had her lover’s head chopped off
and presented to her in a jar.
In 2013,
al-Qaeda apologized for
accidentally beheading
one of their own men.
More than twice as many people
were guillotined by the Nazis
as during the French Revolution.
The first violence
of the French Revolution
took place at a
luxury wallpaper factory.
Before having their chests cut open
and their hearts pulled out,
Aztec human-sacrifice victims
were given a cup of hot chocolate.
As well as humans,
the Aztecs sacrificed
wolves, turtles, snakes,
hummingbirds, woodpeckers,
and shellfish.
In 2002, Norwegian soccer player
Kenneth Kristensen signed for
third-division team Floey
and was paid his weight in shrimps.
Louis XIV ate 400 oysters
on his wedding night.
to swallow hot dogs,
the International Federation of
Competitive Eating
is studying black holes.
Slum dwellings
made up 20% of the houses
in London in 1949.
It is illegal in Vancouver
to build a new house
with doorknobs.
Brass doorknobs
disinfect themselves
in a process known as
the “oligodynamic effect.”
Bacteria live for only three hours
on Croatia’s currency, the kuna,
but for more than a day on the
Romanian leu.
It is as difficult
for a bacterium
to swim through water
as it is for a human
to swim through syrup.
The world’s oceans
contain 20 million billion
tons of chlorine.
A chemical in ships’ paint
causes female snails
to grow penises
and explode.
Half the world’s population
has a genetic mutation that
makes brussels sprouts
taste extremely nasty.
As a boy,
Roald Dahl taste-tested
new chocolate bars
for Cadbury’s.
People who try to
stop thinking about chocolate
eat more of it than
those who don’t.
1 in 5 kidneys
donated in the USA
is thrown away because a
suitable recipient can’t be found.
1 in 5 people in 2005
admitted to taking Derbisol
—a drug that doesn’t exist.
Wamblecropt
is a 17th-century word
for “indigestion.”
The Indian word
for “turkey” means
“Peruvian bird.”
In Greece,
the word for “turkey” means
“French bird.”
The Malaysian word
for “turkey” means
“Dutch chicken.”
The world’s largest water slide,
in Kansas City,
is taller than
Niagara Falls.
The dish of
the world’s largest
single-aperture radio telescope is
large enough to hold the contents
of 357 million boxes of cornflakes.
The world’s smallest ad
was stenciled onto
a bee’s knee.
Prunes
were served as aphrodisiacs
in Elizabethan brothels.
Marmalade
was an aphrodisiac
in 17th-century London.
Frog juice,
made by putting
frogs in a blender,
is an aphrodisiac in Peru.
In 1998,
a swarm of jellyfish
in New Zealand
killed 56,000 salmon
in half an hour.
The national bird of Peru
is the Andean
cock of the rock.
The scientific name
for a llama
is Lama glama.
Male llamas having sex
make a strange gargling noise
called an “orgle.”
The French word
for “sexting”
is textopornographique.
The French name for the
constellation Ursa Major is
Le Casserole.
The French
for “rehearsal”
is répétition.
In French episodes of
The Simpsons,
Homer’s catchphrase “D’oh!”
is dubbed as “T’oh!”
French names for trenches
in the First World War
included The Snail,
Place de L’Opéra,
and Headache.
Due to a computer error in 1989,
41,000 Parisians received letters
charging them with murder,
extortion, and prostitution
instead of traffic offenses.
In 2013, a PayPal computer error
briefly made a man in Pennsylvania
the richest person in the world.
Until he died in 2015,
the richest man in Italy
was the inventor
of Nutella.
The most common occupation
for the wife of a millionaire
is teacher.
Thomas Edison
invented
the tattoo pen.
The man who invented the
water bed was unable to patent it
because it had already appeared
in science-fiction novels.
Titanic was the first movie
made by James Cameron that
didn’t include any mention of
nuclear weapons.
India’s Mars probe cost less
than the movie Gravity.
The B-movie The Blob
is based on a real-life
police report
from 1950.
The movie Blade Runner was
based on a novel by Philip K. Dick.
Director Ridley Scott never
finished the book, and Dick
never saw the film.
The Domesday Book
wasn’t known as
the Domesday Book
for a hundred years
after it was written.
The Bible’s
Book of Esther
doesn’t mention God once.
There is no evidence
that Geoffrey Chaucer
ever visited Canterbury.
The first collection
of poetry published by
the three Brontë sisters
sold fewer copies
than it had authors.
Edgar Allan Poe
received only $9
for the publication of
“The Raven.”
Houdini
bought Edgar Allan Poe’s
writing desk.
J. M. Barrie founded
a celebrity cricket team with
Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells,
Jerome K. Jerome, G. K. Chesterton,
A. A. Milne, Rudyard Kipling,
and P. G. Wodehouse.
Cricket was allowed
under the Taliban,
but applause by the crowd
was banned.
Russell Brand’s
My Booky Wook is banned
from Guantanamo Bay.
Mouse sperm
is bigger than
elephant sperm.
The amniotic fluid
in the human womb
renews itself completely
every three hours.
The last entry in the
official Scrabble dictionary
is “zzz.”
the father of anesthesia,
first experimented on himself but
kept falling asleep before he could
describe the results.
To sleep for one night
in every bed in Las Vegas
would take 288 years.
The Bloody Mary has
been scientifically proved to be
the best alcoholic drink to
enjoy on an airplane.
Guglielmo Marconi,
the inventor of radio,
was the great-grandson
of the inventor of
Jameson’s Irish whiskey.
It takes a million
cloud droplets
to make one raindrop.
A planet called
HD 189733b,
63 light-years from Earth,
is lashed by rain
made of molten glass
and 4,000 mph winds.
The word “weather”
originally just meant
“wind.”
once known as the
wettest hills in the world,
are now having to import water.
Khaki
is Urdu for
“dust.”
Although Australia is
the driest inhabited continent,
Australians use more water
than anyone else.
The busiest polling station
in Australian elections
is in London.
J. R. R. Tolkien was rejected
for a Nobel Prize in Literature
on the grounds of his
“poor storytelling.”
Game of Thrones author
George R. R. Martin
adopted the “R. R.” as
a homage to Tolkien.
In 2012,
146 girls in the USA
were named Khaleesi.
Chinese fans of Sherlock call
Benedict Cumberbatch
and Martin Freeman
“Curly Fu” and “Peanut.”
The leader of the city council
in Brighton, England,
is called Jason Kitcat.
The original KitKat
was an 18th-century
mutton pie.
inventor of chocolate-chip cookies,
sold her idea to Nestlé in exchange
for a lifetime supply of chocolate.
Lava lamps
were invented by an accountant
whose hobby was making
underwater nudist films.
For inspiration,
D. H. Lawrence liked to climb
mulberry trees naked.
The world’s oldest living tree
was already 100 years old
when Stonehenge
was built.
Palm trees
are a type of grass.
A grasshopper
becomes more sociable
if you stroke its hind legs.
Removing
a fruit fly’s front legs
makes it bisexual.
Fruit flies
take their time
making difficult decisions.
After mating,
a pair of lovebugs
can stay stuck together,
even in flight,
for several days.
Male woodlice
can change sex,
but females can’t.
The largest-ever leech
was 18 inches long and
went by the name of
Grandma Moses.
There is a species of leech
that can survive 24 hours
in liquid nitrogen.
A leech can
take up to 200 days
to digest
a meal.
The Dutch Crown jewels
are made of fake pearls,
fish scales, and
colored foil.
The Pantone color chart
has 104 shades of gray.
Fifty Shades of Grey
was originally titled
Masters of the Universe.
were flesh-colored in case
spectators noticed and accused
players of cowardice.
According to England’s
leading brain surgeon,
it is more dangerous
to wear a cycle helmet
than not to wear one.
St. George
is the patron saint of
England, leprosy, and syphilis.
The largest sperm bank in the world
does not accept donations
from redheads because of
“insufficient demand.”
Fish
can yawn.
Elephants
tickle each other.
The technical term for
guffawing is
gargalesis.
Conversesjukan is Swedish for
foot problems caused by
wearing trendy sneakers.
It is illegal
to wear a bikini in Barcelona,
except on the beach.
Miniskirts
are illegal in Uganda.
NEPA,
the former Nigerian
electric power authority,
was popularly known as
“Never Electric Power Anytime.”
From 1934 to 1948,
the motto of the BBC was
Quaecunque, Latin for
“Whatever.”
The original
BBC license fee
cost the equivalent of
75¢.
Queen Victoria
had jewelry made out of
her children’s milk teeth.
The Romans used
powdered mouse brains
as toothpaste.
At the 2012 London Olympics,
55% of the athletes were found
to have tooth decay.
At the court of Louis XIV
women used lemons
to redden their lips.
The Romans
used lemons as
mothballs.
Casanova
used half a lemon
as an improvised
contraceptive.
Waterloo Bridge is
called the “Ladies Bridge”
because it was built
mainly by women.
Kissing was
banned in England
in 1439.
It takes five people
to extract semen
from a vulture.
In 1937,
ukuleles were banned in Japan
on the grounds that they
“weakened young people’s will.”
In 1816,
the Times warned its readers
that the waltz was
“a fatal contagion.”
In 1916,
New Jersey banned the Charleston
because it was thought to cause
broken shins.
Vaccinations
don’t work
on octopuses.
Hermit crabs
form gangs
to steal shells from
other hermit crabs.
In 2006,
the average bank heist
made just $4,330.
In 2000,
it cost $3 billion to
sequence a human genome.
By 2014, the cost had fallen
to under $1,000.
There are 65% more people
over 100 years old in the USA than
there were in 1980.
By 2050,
70% of people
will live in cities.
Alligators balance
twigs on their noses,
to lure birds looking for
nest-building materials.
Dogs with
ADHD make
the best sniffer dogs.
Only one dog
was ever registered as
a Japanese prisoner of war.
German and Russian troops agreed to
a cease-fire and joined forces to
fend off attacks by wolves.
To make them less conspicuous,
white horses in the British army
in the First World War were
dyed brown with food coloring.
Aristotle advised
Alexander the Great
not to let his soldiers drink mint tea
because it would make them
think more of love than war.
In the Hundred Years War,
dead soldiers had their
faces burned off with hot irons
to prevent identification.
A search for “singular coincidence”
in the British Newspaper Archive
brings up more than 10,000 articles.
On April 17, 2011,
Emmanuel Mutai
won the London Marathon.
The next day, Geoffrey Mutai
won the Boston Marathon.
The two men are not related.
In April 1971,
the headmaster of
a Japanese primary school
found a new species of salamander
in the school drains.
In 1899,
Dr. Horace Emmett revealed
that the secret of eternal youth
was injections of ground-up
squirrel testicles.
He died later that year.
The world’s shortest snake
is four inches long
and often mistaken
for an earthworm.
The curly part
of a corkscrew
is called the “worm.”
Humans are not at
the top of the food chain
but near the middle,
on a level with pigs
and anchovies.
Dorothy Parker
had a pet canary
she called Onan
because he spilled his
seed on the ground.
Salvador Dalí
had a pet anteater.
There are
1.6 million people
in Manhattan
and 1.2 billion ants.
The total amount of adrenaline
in half a million people
weighs 
of an ounce.
The richest 85 people in the world
have as much money as
the poorest 3.5 billion.
When Handel died,
he left the equivalent of $128,000
to build a monument to himself
in Westminster Abbey.
The amount of money you get
at the start of Monopoly ($1,500)
is the current average weekly rent
in central London.
In London SW3,
£100 would buy you
a piece of property
the size of a
credit card.
The Great Wall of China
was funded by a state lottery.
The lottery of the
Zimbabwe Banking Corporation
was won in 2000 by the
president of Zimbabwe.
President Mugabe has
been in power 50% longer
than the lifetime of
the average Zimbabwean.
Members of the
Yazidi religion of Iraq
are forbidden to
eat lettuce.
Varieties of lettuce include
Amish Deer Tongue,
Drunken Woman,
Midnight Ruffles, and
Red Leprechaun.
Nero
ate leeks
to improve his
singing voice.
King Francis I of France
hung the Mona Lisa
in his bathroom.
Queen Elizabeth II had a
special shelf installed in her car
so there was somewhere
to put her handbag.
King Olav V of Norway
preferred to travel
by public transport.
John Lennon and George Harrison
once took a bus across Liverpool
to visit a man who could
teach them the
chord B7.
Liverpudlians
buy three times as
many false eyelashes
as the national average.
In the 18th century,
people with facial scars
filled them in with lard
and painted them over
with white lead.
Two teaspoonfuls of Botox
are enough to kill
everyone in Britain.
The tastiest part of
a cooked hippopotamus
is its breasts.
Krispy Kreme doughnuts
make more money each year
than the world’s five smallest
countries combined.
Shemomedjamo
is a Georgian word meaning
“to eat past the point of fullness
because the food is so delicious.”
The Inuit word iktsuarpok
means “to keep going outside
to see if anyone’s coming.”
The Japanese word tsundoku
means buying books
and not getting around
to reading them.
Gurkentruppe
is German for “losers”:
literally, an
“army of cucumbers.”
The world’s first nudist colony,
founded in India in 1891, was called
the Fellowship of the Naked Trust.
The expression “flash mob”
was first used in 1832 and meant
a group of petty criminals.
Libya was the first country to
issue an arrest warrant
for Osama bin Laden.
The first-ever webcam
was in the computer lab
at Cambridge University.
It was trained on the
coffee pot in the corridor
to save the scientists from
making pointless trips
when it had run out.
Sunflower seeds
are actually fruits.
Fruits
are the ovaries
of plants.
In order to be
light enough to fly,
birds have
only one ovary.
Ramajit Raghav became
the world’s oldest father
at 96 years old.
At least 10%
of all the adult cheetahs
in the southern Serengeti
have the same mother.
A male cheetah
can make a female ovulate
by barking at her.
Elephants can tell different
human languages apart.
Elephants have
more muscles in their trunks
than adult humans have
in their entire body.
Over 80 international brands
feature the word “Maasai.”
Collectively worth billions,
none has sought permission
from the Maasai people.
Six streets in London
had their names changed
after murders took place there.
The villains in Psycho,
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
and The Silence of the Lambs
are all based on the same man.
In 2002, an American bomber
attempted to plant 18 bombs
that, when exploded,
would form a giant smiley face.
Head lice
will die if they don’t
eat six times a day.
Theodore Roosevelt
thought it was a shame
diplodocuses had died out:
he’d have liked to hunt one.
When a pope dies,
his seals are defaced and
his ring is split in two.
A popular way to cure impotence
in the 14th century
was to wear your trousers
on your head for 24 hours.
The Duke of Wellington
was kicked out of his club in 1814
for wearing trousers
instead of pantaloons.
“Extraordinary affair,”
said the Duke of Wellington
after his first Cabinet meeting.
“I gave them their orders and they
wanted to stay to discuss them . . .”
The Duke of Wellington’s horse,
Copenhagen, died from eating
too many sponge cakes, bath buns,
and chocolate creams.
Przewalski’s horses,
a rare, wild breed
native to Mongolia,
have never been domesticated.
The two pandas
in Edinburgh Zoo
eat $60,000 worth
of food a year.
Pandas defecate
50 times a day.
Polluted water
kills children at a rate
equivalent to a fully laden
jumbo jet crashing
every four hours.
Since 1948,
100 planes have
gone missing in flight
and never been recovered.
In the UK,
one child goes missing
every five minutes.
Fearing a German invasion,
in 1940 Alan Turing converted
his assets into silver ingots and
buried them in Buckinghamshire.
He spent the rest of his life
failing to find them.
80%
of all time capsules
have been lost.
11,000 keys are lost
on London’s subway trains
and buses every year.
Since the 1960s,
the cost of a subway ticket
in New York has
remained the same
as a slice of pizza.
Che pizza
is Italian for
“What a bore!”
Gift
is German for
“poison.”
The Queen
took her corgi, Susan,
on her honeymoon.
1 in 4 American dogs
is overweight.
People who kiss their dogs
have lower blood pressure
than those who don’t.
People who
believe in luck
are luckier than
those who don’t.
The chances
of finding a
four-leaf clover
are 10,000 to 1.
The most leaves
ever found on
a clover
is 12.
Months that
begin on a Sunday
will always have a
Friday the 13th.
Stan Laurel was
originally called Stan Jefferson.
He changed his name because
it had 13 letters in it.
Stan Laurel once
successfully cross-bred
a potato with an onion,
but he couldn’t persuade
anyone to eat one.
One-third of
British potatoes
are made into french fries.
Two-thirds of the
bagged salad sold in
British supermarkets
never gets eaten.
Nicknames for stinging nettles
include “the devil’s leaf”
and “naughty man’s plaything.”
Archibald Clark West,
the inventor of Doritos,
had them sprinkled
on his grave.
Plywood
was invented by
Alfred Nobel’s father.
Abraham Lincoln’s wife
was an opium addict.
In 2013,
nine babies born in the UK
were named
Cheese.
Lady cheese
is cheese made from
human breast milk.
Cannibalism
in the UK
is legal.
People eat less
in subdued lighting.
The record number
of live goldfish swallowed
at a single sitting
is 210.
The seventh
most common sentence
in The Hunger Games trilogy is
“I swallowed hard.”
The International Space Station
travels at five miles a second.
A day on the
International Space Station
is 1½ hours long.
The universe
is getting less blue
and more red.
When humans
first evolved on Earth,
there was water on Mars.
Craters on Mars
less than 37 miles in diameter
are named after towns on Earth
with populations under 100,000.
The first choice of a name for
Disney’s Hannah Montana
was Alexis Texas, but it
was already taken
by a porn star.
The name Chewbacca
is from saboka,
the Russian for “dog.”
Chewbacca’s voice
was created by combining
the sounds of a bear, a walrus,
a lion, and a badger.
Disney was sued
by a biologist for
defaming the character of hyenas
in The Lion King.
of Batman in Turkey
threatened to sue Warner Bros.
for not asking permission to use
the city’s name in the Batman movies.
To equip yourself
as a real-life Batman
would cost about
$300 million.
Christian Bale’s
father’s uncle’s cousin
was the Edwardian actress
Lily Langtry.
Clark Kent is two inches
shorter than Superman;
to finesse his secret identity
he compresses his spine.
first rose to prominence,
some members of the Royal Society
thought he was a dwarf in disguise.
Mozart’s sister
was also a musician,
who sometimes took top billing
as they toured Europe together.
As a child,
Mozart was terrified
of trumpets.
An ear trumpet
is technically known as
an “otacousticon.”
An ass-pipe
is a musical instrument
from the British Virgin Islands,
made from a car exhaust
and played like a tuba.
The izikhothane
are South African youths
who meet in car parks,
cover themselves in custard,
and burn wads of cash.
“Bitch the pot”
was 19th-century slang for
“pour the tea.”
Swedes
drink twice as much coffee
as Americans.
In 1820, the average American
drank half a pint of whisky
every day.
The longer a whisky is aged,
the longer it takes for your body
to get rid of the alcohol.
Belarus has the
same infant-mortality rate
as Birmingham, England.
Chemicals caused
female munitions workers
in the First World War to
give birth to yellow babies.
Bananas
have more trade
regulations
than AK-47s.
Five times as many
Cadbury’s Creme Eggs
are eaten in Britain every year
as there are people.
A kiwi’s egg is
so large it’s equivalent to
a human mother giving birth
to a six-year-old.
Dr. Seuss wrote
Green Eggs and Ham
to win a bet with his publisher
that he couldn’t write a book
using just 50 different words.
There are no mentions
of salad in the Bible.
You are more likely
to believe a statement
that is printed in bold.
Taking a photo of something
reduces your ability
to remember it.
A woman who is
bitten by a cat has
a 50% chance of
being diagnosed
with depression.
83% of pet owners
refer to themselves
as their pet’s
“mom” or “dad.”
More than 60% of
pandas born in captivity
die within a week.
In 2013,
160 sheep were stolen
from the Dorset village
of Wool.
In 1557,
Robert Calf
was mauled to death
by a cow.
Tupperware
was invented by a
chicken salesman.
There is a law firm
in Leeds called
Godloves Solicitors.
The real name of
the rapper Aloe Blacc is
Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins III.
“Yahoo”
is an acronym for
“Yet
Another
Hierarchical
Officious
Oracle.”
The last name of
Woody from Toy Story
is Pride.
Matt Groening’s mother
was called Marge Wiggum.
The 2003 world poker champion
who won $2.5 million
for a $39 entry fee
is called Chris Moneymaker.
a man called Morton Norbury
was killed after an argument
over who had the most
handsome mustache.
In the 19th century,
pious Spaniards grew mustaches
in the shape of a cross.
Abraham Lincoln
only had a beard for
the last five years of his life.
Charles Darwin
only grew his famous beard
in his mid-fifties to
relieve his eczema.
The prophet Muhammad
dyed his beard
with henna.
The Paris Exhibition of 1855
had a life-sized picture
of Queen Victoria
made of hair.
John Constable
was 39 when he sold
his first landscape painting.
The US Army
keeps Hitler’s watercolors in
a high-security warehouse
in Virginia.
“Mummy Brown” paint was
discontinued in the 1960s
when the supply of
Egyptian mummies ran out.
The ancient Egyptians
mummified beef ribs,
sliced duck, and goat meat
to eat in the afterlife.
The ancient Egyptians
invented the will
and the business handshake.
Ancient Egyptian lettuce
contained the same
active ingredient
as cocaine.
Old English medicines included
Allan’s Nipple Liniment,
Grimston’s Eye Snuff,
Miller’s Worm Plums, and
Italian Bosom Friend.
An eye-baby
is the tiny reflection of yourself
in someone else’s eye.
Reflectors on
pedestrians’ clothing are
a legal requirement in Estonia.
It is against the law
for anyone in Barbados
to wear camouflage.
Women called Eleanor
are 100 times more likely
to get into Oxford University
than women called Jade.
“Chopsticks”
was written by
a 16-year-old girl.
More than a million square feet
of forest are used every year
to make chopsticks.
to send Scottish cod to China
to be filleted and sent back again
than to fillet the fish
in Scotland.
Fewer than
five cod eggs in a million
survive to become fish.
Only 6 out of 22
crocodile species present
any danger to humans.
When Barack Obama visited
Australia’s Northern Territory,
he was given a $50,000
crocodile-attack insurance policy.
Male chess players
adopt riskier strategies when
playing against beautiful women.
Only 2,000 women
in the world buy
haute-couture dresses.
It takes 2,200
seamstresses
to make them.
In 13th-century France,
it was illegal to sew
more than 50 silver buttons
onto your clothes.
of Highland Dancing
says that under their kilts
Scotsmen should wear
dark underpants.
In 1320, Scotland
was excommunicated
by the pope.
There are eight million
Jehovah’s Witnesses on Earth,
but according to their teachings,
only 144,000 people will be
saved at the end of the world.
Lloyd’s of London
once offered reduced premiums
for missionary ships because
they had divine protection.
The world’s best-selling
genre of literature
is self-help books.
The most common sentence
in the Harry Potter books is
“Nothing happened.”
The five most common
first names of taxi drivers
in New York City are Md,
Mohammad, Mohammed,
Muhammad, and Mohamed.
The most commonly asked question
at Hanna-Barbera’s head office is
“What did Barney Rubble
do for a living?”
The first-ever comic strip
was published at the suggestion of
Wolfgang von Goethe.
The original Popeye
got his strength from
rubbing a magic hen.
Until 1916,
cocaine and heroin
could be bought
over the counter
at Harrods.
Potato chip bags
aren’t full of air;
they’re full of nitrogen.
Hula Hoops
are not kosher.
The Hebrew
for “usury” is
ribbit.
Male Darwin frogs
store their tadpoles
in their vocal sacs,
then cough up
fully formed frogs.
There is a drug
made from the saliva
of the Gila monster that
stops you from feeling hungry.
If you fire lasers
at the brain of a fly,
you can make it have sex
with a ball of wax.
2014 was
the International Year of
the Salamander,
the Family, the Secretary,
and the Spine.
In its first year,
the human brain
grows to 75%
of its full size.
Snails
can sleep for
three years.
The British army’s
Cyclist Corps
lasted four years.
Five baby girls
in the USA in 2012
were named
Cricket.
A baby porcupine
is called a “porcupette.”
The genome of wheat
is five times larger
than the human genome.
Before the
invention of electricity,
human beings slept
90 minutes longer
than they do now.
Elizabeth I
owned 3,000 dresses
and the world’s first
wire coat hanger.
Elizabeth I
invented
gingerbread men.
Robert Louis Stevenson
dreamed the plot of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
It took 17 takes
for E. B. White to
record the death scene for the
audiobook of Charlotte’s Web
without breaking down.
Hugh Hefner
has someone preselect
his potato chips so he
doesn’t have to eat
broken ones.
Franz Kafka
liked to exercise naked
in front of a window.
Snakes
don’t have eyelids.
Whales
get tan lines.
Ants
don’t have ears.
There are more stars
in the universe
than words have been spoken
by all of the humans
who have ever lived.
It would take
225 million years
to walk a light-year.
Swinging your arms
when walking
makes it 12% easier.
The London Underground
was originally intended
to terminate in Paris.
In 2014,
a single parking space
in London was sold
for $593,000.
Oxford Street in London
has the most polluted air
in the world.
The first T-shirt
was aimed at bachelors
who couldn’t sew on buttons.
Charles Darwin’s
cousin Francis Galton
invented underwater spectacles
so he could read in the bath.
After getting out of the bath,
the ancient Greeks
covered themselves
with olive oil.
Every year,
around 3,000 people
get bubonic plague.
Medical mistakes kill
enough Americans each week
to fill four 747s.
13 Americans
have died as a result of
laxative overdose.
stacked in $5 bills, it would reach
three-quarters of the way
to the Moon.
If Bill Gates gave his entire fortune
to the US government, it would
only cover the national deficit
for 15 days.
If you have no debts
and $15 in your pocket,
you are wealthier than
a quarter of Americans.
The Pentagon
is successfully hacked
250,000 times a year,
and unsuccessfully hacked
10 million times a day.
70% of the silent movies
made in America
have been lost.
The cross-eyed
silent-film comedian
Ben Turpin
had his eyes insured
against uncrossing.
None of an octopus’s limbs
knows what any of the
others are doing.
holds the record for the
greatest number of false feet
used in a single movie:
60,000.
The cast of
Riverdance
have worn out
14,000 pairs of shoes.
The Victoria and Albert Museum
has a 1,500-year-old pair of socks
designed to be worn with sandals.
The world’s first GPS shoes
are activated by clicking
the heels three times.
There are
177,147
ways to tie a tie.
In imperial Japan,
high-born women
peed standing up
so as not to crease
their kimonos.
Louis XIV
announced his engagement
from the lavatory.
Of the 142 million deaths
caused by an ideology
in the 20th century,
94 million were due
to communism.
Lenin
owned nine Rolls-Royces.
According to the International
Trade Union Confederation,
British workers have
fewer rights than
Albanians, Russians,
or Rwandans.
Members of the Mafia
are much less likely
to be psychopaths than
other Italian criminals.
Prison inmates in Chile
have better mental health
than the average American.
There are more libraries
in Britain’s prisons
than there are in its schools.
The annual cost to the UK economy
of re-offending by ex-prisoners
is equivalent to staging
the Olympics
every year.
In 19th-century Britain,
prisoners were let out for the day
if they paid a fee of £5
(equivalent to $444 today).
Australia’s first police force
was composed of the
best-behaved convicts.
In 1907,
Australian dancer Victor Goulet
had one of his Achilles tendons
replaced with a wallaby’s.
Crop circles in Australia
are caused by frenzied wallabies
who get high in the poppy fields
used to grow legal opium.
A peppier is a waiter
whose sole job is
to go around with a
pepper grinder.
The average
Internet user
goes online
34 times a day.
A group of hackers
once took down
Papa John’s website
because their pizza was late.
90% of Britons
eat pizza
at least once a week.
Until the 1940s,
fake snow in the movies
was made by painting
cornflakes white.
It’s a Wonderful Life
won just one Oscar:
for Technical Achievement
in developing a new kind
of artificial snow.
Frank Capra
had a lucky raven called Jimmy
who appeared in all his movies
between 1938 and 1946.
The lapwing has more names than
any other British bird, including
Pie-wipe, Chewit, Toppyup,
Peasiewheep, Tee-ick, Tee-ack,
Tee-o, Teewhup, Ticks Nicket,
Tieve’s Nacket, Wallock, Wallop,
Wallopie Wep, Horneywink,
Horny Wick, and Hornpie.
“At sparrowsfart”
is British slang for
“very early in the morning.”
The Anna’s hummingbird
chirps with its bottom.
The scientific name
for the milk thistle
is Silybum.
tiny sea snails called Bittium,
and a genus of even tinier ones
called Ittibittium.
The Gelae genus
of slime mold beetles includes
Gelae baen, Gelae belae,
Gelae donut, Gelae fish,
and Gelae rol.
There are chemicals called
“arsole,” “urantae,” “fucol,”
“dogcollarane,” “apatite,”
and “cummingtonite.”
The largest molecule in nature
is chromosome 1.
All human beings have two of them,
and each contains 10 billion atoms.
The California mite
Paratarsotomus macropalpis
can run 300 of its own
body lengths per second:
20 times faster than a cheetah.
A cheetah
can go from 0 to 40 mph
in three strides.
Lions
can get hairballs
the size of soccer balls.
Four million years ago,
rats in South America
were the size of hippos.
The world’s oldest rose bush
is 1,000 years old.
Apples, strawberries,
plums, and almonds
are all types of rose.
All tardigrades
live in water,
but none of them
can swim.
Because the Pacific island
of Guam has no sand,
all the roads are
made of coral.
Coral reefs
make up only 1%
of the ocean floor
but are home to 25%
of all ocean life.
If Mount Everest
stood on the bottom
of the Marianas Trench,
there would be over a mile
of water between its summit
and the surface of the sea.
Emperor penguins
can dive deeper
than the height of the
Empire State Building.
There is more water
in the Earth’s core
than in all of its oceans.
The floods in Australia
in 2010 and 2011 caused
world sea levels to drop
by a quarter of an inch.
If you removed the water
from every life form on Earth,
it would be enough to
cover the Isle of Man
to a depth of half a mile.
In the California gold rush,
water cost more than gold.
and put your face in cold water,
your heart will immediately
slow down by 25%.
Squirting cold water
into your left ear
will make you feel
less optimistic.
When a country
is in recession,
its life expectancy
goes up.
40% of humanity
lives in countries where
it’s illegal to be
homosexual.
A bite from a Russell’s pit viper
can send the victim
back through puberty.
Frogs find their way back
to their breeding grounds
by following the smell
of the pond’s algae.
Photographs of Algae,
published in 1845,
was the first book
ever to contain
photographs.
1 in 10 Icelanders
will publish a book
at some time in their life.
It’s illegal in Iceland
for parents to threaten children
with fictional characters.
In the French
Harry Potter books,
Voldemort’s middle name
is Elvis.
Blond soccer players
are 15% more likely
to score in penalty shootouts
than dark-haired ones.
Dolly Parton
once lost a Dolly Parton
look-alike competition
to a drag artist.
A leading comedian in Iran
was banned from acting
for eight years because
he looked too much
like the president.
Kim Jong-un,
Supreme Leader of North Korea,
is the world’s youngest
head of state.
The film
Gone with the Wind
is banned in North Korea,
but virtually every adult there
has read the book.
“Gangnam Style” has been watched
for four times more hours than
it took to build the Great Pyramid.
Cleopatra
lived closer
in time to the
Moon landings
than to the building
of the Great Pyramid.
The world’s oldest building
is a Japanese hut built
half a million years before
the Great Pyramid.
“Meh”
is the sound that
Japanese sheep make.
Sheep can
see behind themselves
without moving their heads.
One-third
of takeout lamb curries
contain meat
other than lamb.
The average Briton
passes 32 fast food outlets
between home and work.
More people in the world
recognize the McDonald’s symbol
than the Christian cross.
Usain Bolt
ate 1,000 chicken nuggets
during the Beijing Olympics
because he didn’t like
Chinese food.
Velociraptors
were the size of
large chickens.
On average, Britons will eat
1,126 chickens
in their lifetime.
There are 1,397
known asteroids capable of
causing “major devastation”
if they hit Earth.
The theoretical process of
knocking a meteoroid off course
with a nuclear explosion
is called an “X-ray slap.”
In 1958, the US Air Force
planned to detonate
a nuclear bomb on the Moon to
demonstrate US military supremacy.
The Moon has earthquakes
that last for up to 10 minutes.
Because it’s so dry and dense,
they make it vibrate
like a tuning fork.
The dark side of the Moon
is turquoise.
In China,
the Man in the Moon
is known as
the Toad in the Moon.
Polar bears
cannot be seen by using
night-vision
equipment.
Tortoises
can feel it
if you touch
their shells.
Only 1 in 1,000
leatherback turtles
survives to adulthood.
According to Catholic tradition,
the “Limbo of the Children”
is a nursery on the edge of Hell
for unbaptized infants.
70% of Americans
believe in the existence
of the devil.
Finnair
operates a daily flight
666 to HEL.
Neil Armstrong’s
boots are still
floating around
in space.
Humans spend
13% of their lives
not focusing on
anything in
particular.
44% of women prefer
reading Fifty Shades of Grey
to actually having sex.
up to four hours mating with a
dead female before realizing
something is wrong.
Ladybug orgasms
last for 30 minutes.
Smaller
animals
experience
time as
passing
more
slowly.
“Time Person of the Year”
contains the first, second, and third
most commonly used nouns
in English, in order.
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,
has towns called
Intercourse and Paradise.
It takes six minutes to get from
one to the other.
Michigan has towns called
Paradise and Hell
that are less than
300 miles apart.
The world’s most expensive
phone number is 666-6666.
It was sold in 2006
for $2.2 million.
There are more than
$150 million worth of 1-pence coins
in circulation in the UK.
In 2009,
Zimbabwe issued a
new range of banknotes,
from 1 cent up to
100 trillion dollars
($30 USD).
Singapore, Brunei, Palau,
Liechtenstein, and Taiwan
have no national debt at all.
The IKEA store
on Calle Me Falta un Tornillo
(“I’ve Got a Screw Loose Street”)
in Valladolid, Spain, is hard to find
because people keep stealing
the street signs.
Spanish police are called “smurfs”
because they wear pale-blue hats.
Tipping the hat
comes from the military salute,
which in turn comes from
men in armor lifting the visor
to show their faces.
The Queen Mother
once turned up unannounced
to watch a top-secret rehearsal
of her own funeral.
The ashes of
1 in 50 people
who are cremated
are never collected
by relatives.
Cremation causes
silicone breast implants
to explode.
Vikings who died in bed
rather than in battle
went to a special afterlife
where it was always foggy.
The oldest person in history
smoked for 96 years.
One-third of babies
born in Britain in 2013
are expected to live
for a century.
final speech to the Japanese nation
was the first time his subjects
had ever heard his voice.
Einstein’s last words
were spoken in German to a
nurse who didn’t speak German,
and they are lost for ever.
Bing Crosby’s
last words were
“That was a great
game of golf, fellers.”
The last words of
General John Sedgwick at
the Battle of Spotsylvania were
“They couldn’t hit an
elephant at this distance.”