1,227 QI Facts to Blow Your Socks Off (2 page)

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.