1,227 QI Facts To Blow Your Socks Off Read online

  though Phengaris rebeli

  strums its bottom like a guitar.

  Every year,

  Peruvians eat more than

  60 million guinea pigs.

  In Switzerland,

  it is illegal to keep

  just one guinea pig.

  98% of British homes

  have carpeted floors.

  In Italy, only 2% do.

  In Japan only 2% of adoptions are

  of children;

  98% are adult males

  aged 25 to 30.

  It’s unsafe for travellers to rely on

  ‘St Christopher’ any more:

  he lost his sainthood

  in 1969.

  10% of US electricity

  is made from

  dismantled Soviet atomic bombs.

  Until 1913, children in America

  could legally be sent

  by parcel post.

  There are 5.9 calories

  in the glue of a

  British postage stamp.

  All the batteries on Earth store

  just ten minutes

  of the world’s electricity needs.

  Ancient Greek democracy

  lasted for only

  185 years.

  The ancient Greeks

  had no word for religion.

  China

  is the world’s largest supplier of Bibles:

  one factory in Nanjing prints

  a million a month.

  The dialling code for Russia

  is 007.

  Collectively speaking, humans have spent

  longer playing World of Warcraft

  than they have existed

  as a species separate from chimpanzees

  (5.93 million years).

  Charette n.

  An intense flurry of activity

  to finish something

  by a deadline.

  Muntin n.

  The thin strip of wood or metal that

  divides the panes of glass in a window.

  Nikhedonia (n.)

  The pleasurable anticipation of success

  before any actual work

  has been done.

  Smout (n.)

  A small, unimportant

  Scottish person.

  John Cleese’s father’s surname

  was Cheese.

  Cleese grew up ten miles from Cheddar

  and his best friend at school

  was called Barney Butter.

  Digestive biscuits

  have no particular digestive qualities.

  In the USA it is illegal to sell them

  under that name.

  In 2010, the BBC spent

  nearly £230,000 on tea,

  but only £2,000 on biscuits.

  Caffeine is made of

  carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen:

  the same as cocaine, thalidomide,

  nylon, TNT and heroin.

  The same man

  invented heroin and aspirin

  in the same year:

  Felix Hoffman, 1897.

  Heroin

  was originally marketed

  as cough medicine.

  Worldwide sales of cocaine

  earn more than

  Microsoft, McDonald’s and Kellogg’s

  combined.

  More than 7,000 Americans die each year

  and 1,500,000 are injured

  as a result of doctors’

  bad handwriting.

  Fewer than 5%

  of blind or visually impaired people

  in the UK

  can read Braille.

  Attempting to swim the Channel

  from France has been illegal

  for 19 years.

  The water-flow of the Ganges

  is a state secret in India.

  In 2012, Apple Inc.

  had more cash

  in the bank

  than the US government.

  In 2012, 20% of the world’s

  top 20 snooker players

  were colour-blind.

  If you scaled a snooker ball up to

  the size of the Earth,

  it would have mountains

  three times higher

  than anything on the planet.

  In 1903, its first year of trading,

  Gillette sold just

  168 razor blades.

  The first advertising jingles

  were written down in newspapers;

  readers were expected

  to sing them themselves.

  There are more than three times

  as many PR people in America

  as there are journalists.

  The Nazis made it illegal

  on pain of death

  for apes to give

  the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute.

  All but one of the ravens

  at the Tower of London

  died from stress during the Blitz.

  British spies

  stopped using semen as invisible ink

  because it began to smell

  if it wasn’t fresh.

  Because Tonto means ‘stupid’ in Spanish,

  when The Lone Ranger was shown in

  Latin America, he was called Toro, ‘bull’.

  Florence Green,

  the last veteran of the First World War,

  died in February 2012. Asked what it was

  like to be 110, she replied,

  ‘Not much different to being 109.’

  On her 120th birthday,

  Jeanne Calment (1875–1997)

  the oldest person ever recorded,

  said, ‘I only have one wrinkle and

  I’m sitting on it.’

  The UK retail industry

  makes £250 million a year

  from gift cards that no one redeems.

  In the 12th century,

  the Danish army consisted of seven men.

  In the 17th century,

  the salary of the Governor of Barbados

  was paid in sugar.

  In the 18th century,

  the French navy buried their dead

  in the ship’s hold.

  In the 19th century,

  tobacco was used for ‘rectal inflation’:

  blowing smoke up the anus

  to resuscitate the drowned.

  Cardiff

  has more hours of sunlight

  than Milan.

  Glasgow

  is twinned with

  Nuremberg, Bethlehem and Havana.

  Toasters

  were banned in Havana

  until 2008.

  The Dyslexia Research Centre

  is in Reading.

  The technology behind smartphones

  relies on up to

  250,000 separate patents.

  The human brain

  takes in 11 million bits of

  information every second,

  but is only aware of 40.

  The water in a blue whale’s mouth

  weighs as much as its entire body.

  The ancient Romans

  discovered parrots could speak and

  taught them to say ‘Hail Caesar’.

  When they got bored with this,

  they took to eating them instead.

  The United States of America

  maintains a military presence in

  148 of the 192 United Nations countries.

  On average, every square mile

  of sea on the planet

  contains 46,000 pieces of rubbish.

  In 1251, Henry III was given

  a polar bear by the king of Norway.

  He kept it in the Tower of London,

  on a long chain so that it could

  swim in the Thames.

  The tadpoles of the South American

  paradoxical frog

  are larger than the frog itself.

  Historical Catholic clergy include:

  Bishop Boil,
Bishop Boom,

  Bishop Broccoli, Bishop Bolognese,

  Bishop Busti, Bishop Butt

  and Bishop Bishop.

  Kuku kaki kakak kakak ku kayak kuku kaki

  kakek kakek ku

  is an Indonesian tongue-twister meaning

  ‘My sister’s toenails

  look like my grandfather’s’.

  In the 2009 Formula One season,

  12% of Grand Prix drivers

  were called Sebastian.

  People in Victorian Britain

  who couldn’t afford chimney sweeps

  dropped live geese

  down their chimneys instead.

  You are three times more likely

  to die in a plane crash

  than you are to be eaten

  by a mountain lion.

  Gerbils can smell adrenaline

  and are installed in airport security areas

  to detect terrorists.

  If you drilled a tunnel

  straight through the Earth and jumped in,

  it would take you exactly

  42 minutes and 12 seconds

  to get to the other side.

  A medium-sized cumulus cloud

  weighs about the same

  as 80 elephants.

  Fred Baur (1918–2002),

  the designer of the Pringles can,

  had his ashes buried in one.

  Fred is Swedish for ‘peace’.

  Nobles present at the 18th-century

  battle of Bravalla between

  Sweden and Denmark included

  Hothbrodd the Furious,

  Thorulf the Thick, Birvil the Pale,

  Roldar Toe-Joint, Vati the Doubter,

  Od the Englishman, Alf the Proud and

  Frosti Bowl.

  The Queen of England

  is related to

  Vlad the Impaler.

  When customers visited

  the first supermarkets in the UK,

  they were afraid to pick up

  goods from the shelves

  in case they were told off.

  Women buy 80%

  of everything

  that is for sale.

  Between 1928 and 1948,

  12 Olympic medals were awarded

  for Town Planning.

  On a clear, moonless night

  the human eye can detect

  a match being struck

  50 miles away.

  In the US between 1983 and 2000,

  there were 568 plane crashes.

  51,207 of the 53,487

  people aboard

  got out alive:

  a survival rate of 96%.

  Harry Houdini could

  pick up pins with his eyelashes

  and thread a needle

  with his toes.

  The Sami people of northern Finland use

  a measure called Poronkusema:

  the distance a reindeer can walk

  before needing to urinate.

  The Inca measurement of time

  was based on

  how long it took to boil a potato.

  Potatoes were illegal in France

  between 1748 and 1772.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

  liked to eat fruit while

  it was still attached to the tree.

  Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree,

  the great Victorian actor-manager, once

  hailed a taxi and got in. Absorbed in his

  work, he sat silently reading in the back.

  When the cabbie eventually asked,

  ‘Where to, guv?’ Sir Herbert spluttered,

  ‘Do you really think I would give

  my address to the likes of you?’

  On average, most people

  have fewer friends

  than their friends have.

  This is known as the ‘friendship paradox’.

  Blissom vb

  To bleat with sexual desire.

  Eye-servant n.

  One who only works

  when the boss is watching.

  Hemipygic adj.

  Having only one buttock;

  half-arsed.

  Marmalise vb

  To give someone

  a thrashing.

  The modern world’s

  first international sporting fixture

  was a cricket match played in 1844

  between Canada and the USA.

  Canada won by 23 runs.

  Baseball – the name and the game – was

  invented in England in the 1750s.

  Baseball legend Babe Ruth

  always wore a cabbage leaf under his cap

  to keep his head cool. In South Korea,

  this is considered unsporting,

  unless the player has a doctor’s note.

  ‘Soccer’ is not an Americanism.

  It’s short for ‘Association Football’

  and was popularised by

  Charles Wreford-Brown, captain

  of the English national team 1894–5.

  James Naismith, a Canadian,

  invented basketball in Massachusetts

  in 1891. It was 21 years

  before it occurred to anyone

  to cut a hole in the bottom of the basket.

  Captain John Smith

  of Pocahontas fame

  was the first man

  to use the word

  ‘awning’.

  Aerosmith have made more money

  from Guitar Hero

  than from any of their albums.

  When Matt Smith became

  the 11th Doctor Who in 2010,

  UK bow-tie sales doubled in a month.

  98% of the 7 billion billion billion

  atoms in the human body

  are replaced every year.

  Mongolia’s largest airport

  is named after Genghis Khan.

  He had over 500 wives

  and a vast number of children:

  1 in 10 people in Central Asia today

  are his direct descendants.

  Anophthalmus hitleri is a blind beetle found

  only in five caves in Slovenia.

  Named after Hitler in 1933,

  it is now endangered due to

  collectors of Nazi memorabilia.

  Hitler’s home phone number

  was listed in Who’s Who until 1945.

  It was Berlin 11 6191.

  At least 99%

  of all the species that ever existed

  have left no trace in the fossil record.

  No scientific experiment

  has ever been done

  (or could be done)

  to prove that time exists.

  If you could fold

  a piece of paper 51 times,

  its thickness would exceed

  the distance from here to the Sun.

  Charles Blondin crossed Niagara Falls

  several times on a 1,000-foot tightrope:

  blindfolded, in a sack, on stilts,

  carrying a man on his back

  and cooking an omelette in the middle.

  Michael J. Fox’s

  middle name is

  Andrew.

  Emile Heskey’s

  middle name is

  Ivanhoe.

  David Frost’s

  middle name is

  Paradine.

  Richard Gere’s

  middle name is

  Tiffany.

  1 in 50 Americans

  executed for murder

  had the middle name ‘Wayne’.

  1 in 50 Scots

  are heroin addicts.

  1 in 50 Americans

  claim to have been abducted

  by aliens.

  1 in 50 words

  in the lyrics of the winning entries of

  the Eurovision Song Contest

  is ‘love’.

  More people go to church

  on Sunday in China

 
than in the whole of Europe.