1,227 QI Facts to Blow Your Socks Off (8 page)

The Finnish word for pedant,

pilkunnussija
,

translates literally as

‘comma fucker’.

When he died in 1891, John Davey,

a schoolmaster of Zennor, Cornwall,

was the only person in the world

that spoke Cornish.

He had kept the language alive

by talking to his cat.

The first Olympian

disqualified for banned substances

was Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall of Sweden.

In the 1968 Mexico Games,

he had two beers

to calm his nerves

before the pistol shooting.

The first recorded incidence of air rage

involved a passenger in First Class

who shat on the food trolley

after being refused another drink.

More than a third

of the world’s 43,794 airports

are in the USA.

The world’s largest cattle station,

Anna Creek Station in South Australia,

is larger than the state of Israel.

All ten species

of the most venomous snakes in the world

live in Australia.

Powerful acids

in snakes’ stomachs

mean they will explode

if given Alka-Seltzer.

The cost of fighting

a libel action in the UK

is 140 times greater

than the European average.

After the battle of Waterloo,

the Marquis of Anglesey

had his leg amputated.

It was buried

with full military honours

in a nearby garden.

Folk healers in the Andes

diagnose patients with guinea pigs,

which apparently squeak

when close to the source of the problem.

In 2003, six monkeys were funded

by the Arts Council of England

to see how long it would take them

to type the works of Shakespeare.

After six months, they had failed

to produce a single word of English,

broken the computer

and used the keyboard as a lavatory.

In 2001, seven Chilean poets held a reading

in the baboon enclosure of Santiago Zoo

to demonstrate that baboons

are more receptive to poetry

than the average Chilean.

By 2020, the number of men

of marriageable age in China

will outnumber the women

by 30 million.

Leo Tolstoy’s wife

wrote out the drafts of

War and Peace
for him,

in longhand,

six times.

Zeus had five wives.

One of them was his aunt,

another was his elder sister

and a 3rd one he ate.

In 1672, an angry mob of Dutchmen

killed and ate their prime minister.

Half of the world’s

black pepper

is produced

in Vietnam.

Feeding canaries

red peppers

turns them

orange.

The name

Canary Islands

comes from the Latin for

‘Isle of Dogs’.

Cat originally meant ‘dog’.

The word comes from

the Latin
catulus
,

a small dog or puppy.

White rhinos

and black rhinos

are the same

colour.

Highways

in the western USA

are based on the

migratory routes

of bison.

The Alpine salamander’s pregnancy

can last for over three years.

Dragonflies

flap their wings

in a figure-of-eight motion.

In Bali, dragonflies are eaten with

coconut milk, ginger, garlic, shallots –

or just plain-grilled and crispy.

Salvador Dalí

was terrified of grasshoppers.

As a schoolboy, he threw such violent fits

of hysteria that his teacher forbade them

to be mentioned in class.

Kali is the Hindu goddess of

death, violence, sexuality

and

motherly love.

The name Mali

means ‘hippopotamus’

in Bamanankan,

the main language

of the country.

The Nigerian navy has four warships

whose names all mean ‘hippopotamus’

but in different local languages:

NNS
Erinomi
(hippo in Yoruba), NNS

Enyimiri
(hippo in Igbo), NNS
Dorina

(hippo in Hausa) and NNS
Otobo
(hippo in

Idoma, Ijaw, Igbani and Kalabari).

Over the years, the Royal Navy’s fleet

has included HMS
Seagull
, HMS
Keith
,

HMS
Tortoise
, HMS
Wensleydale
and

HMS
Cockchafer
.

A baby cockroach is called a ‘nymph’.

When Escoffier was head chef at the

Carlton Hotel in London, he got his

English clientele to eat frogs’ legs by

slipping them on to the menu as

Nymphs of the Dawn.

As a young man in London in 1914,

Ho Chi Minh

worked for Escoffier

as a trainee pastry chef.

The South American revolutionary

Simón Bolívar

was, at various times, president of

Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru

and Venezuela.

Venezuela

is Spanish for

‘Little Venice’.

In 17th-century Venice,

women’s high-heeled shoes

could be more than

12 inches tall.

Beckets
n.

The little loops for a belt

on a pair of trousers

or a raincoat.

Callypygian
adj.

Having

beautiful buttocks.

Misophonia
n.

Irrational rage and terror

caused by the sound

of people eating.

Sciapodous
adj.

Having feet

large enough

to be used as umbrellas.

The composer Arnold Schoenberg was

superstitious about the number 13.

As 7+6=13 he feared he would die aged 76.

And he did: on Friday 13th July,

at 13 minutes to midnight.

William Herschel, discoverer of Uranus,

lived to be 84 – the same number of years

that Uranus takes to orbit the Sun.

Asked by a priest, ‘Do you forgive your

enemies?’ the dying Spanish general

Ramón Blanco y Erenas (1833–1906)

answered, ‘No. I don’t have any enemies.

I’ve had them all shot.’

In 2007, a Bosnian called Amir Vehabovic

faked his own death to see

how many people would go to his funeral.

Only his mother turned up.

Baby koalas are weaned on their

mother’s excrement. It is consumed

directly from their mother’s bottom

in the form of ‘soup’.

In Antigua, lizard soup in considered

an effective cure for asthma –

provided the patient

isn’t told what’s in it.

The world’s largest known crocodile

and the world’s smallest man

are from the same island

in the Philippines.

The Aztecs sacrificed

1% of their population every year,

or about 250,000 people.

They also sacrificed eagles, jaguars,

butterflies and hummingbirds.

Hummingbirds

have 2,000 meals a day

and hibernate every night.

Seahorses

are the only fish with a neck

and the only family of animals

where the male

gives birth.

Crocodiles have no lips

and can hold their

breath for an hour.

The Cornish for ‘breath’

is
anal
.

Whenever the king of Swaziland

rises from his seat,

he must be greeted

with cheers and gasps

of astonished admiration.

In 1875, the king of Fiji

brought back measles

from a state visit to Australia

and wiped out

a quarter of his own people.

Queen Elizabeth I often drank

two pints of strong beer

for breakfast.

After weekend house parties at

Sandringham, King Edward VII

insisted on weighing his guests

to make sure they had eaten well.

Lithuanian men

are 200 times more likely

to kill themselves

than Jamaican men are.

Nigeria makes

more movies every year

than the US.

Only three members of the United

Nations have failed to ratify the

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child:

South Sudan, Somalia and the USA.

Only three places in the world

have ever changed from

driving on the right

to driving on the left:

East Timor (1975), Okinawa (1978)

and Samoa (2009).

Iceland was once called ‘Butterland’

because the grass was so rich

it seemed to drip butter.

After Switzerland, the world’s

largest per capita gold reserves

are held by Lebanon.

There are more than 35 places

called Lebanon in the USA and at least

38 Springfields.
The Simpsons
is based in

Springfield, Oregon.

This was kept quiet so viewers

would think it was

their own local Springfield.

Boots fitted with springs

were forbidden by

the original Queensberry Rules

for boxing.

Victor Hugo’s
Les Misérables

has a sentence that is 823 words long,

separated by 93 commas and

51 semicolons.

When
Les Misérables
was first published

in 1862, Hugo sent a snappish telegram

to his publisher to ask how it was selling.

The whole thing read, ‘?’

The publisher’s reply was effusive, ‘!’

Ernest Hemingway’s mother was so

ashamed of his novel
The Sun Also Rises

that, when it was scheduled for discussion

at her book club, she refused to go.

Within 200 yards of the flat in Islington

where George Orwell had the idea for
1984
,

there are now 32 CCTV cameras.

In 2008, an MI6 officer

appeared on
The One Show.

Halfway through,

his moustache fell off.

Hitler’s press secretary didn’t approve

of his moustache. ‘Stop worrying about it,’

said the Führer. ‘If it’s not in fashion now,

it will be soon, because I’m wearing one.’

The shortest war ever fought was between

Britain and Zanzibar on 27th August 1896.

Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.

When Rameses II’s mummified body

was shipped to France in 1974,

it was issued with a passport.

The mummy’s occupation was given as

‘King (deceased)’.

Barbara Cartland wrote over 600 books.

She dictated them to her secretary

between one o’clock and half past three

in the afternoon, lying on a sofa

with a white fur rug and

a hot-water bottle.

Barbara

is Latin for

‘strange woman’.

Barbara Windsor

is 4 feet 11 inches tall: the same height as

Joan of Arc and Queen Victoria.

In the 1930s, British women working

for Directory Enquiries were required

to be at least 5 feet 3 inches tall

so they could reach the

top of the switchboard.

Charles Dickens

invented 959 named characters.

Before deciding on the name Tiny Tim,

he considered Small Sam, Little Larry

and Puny Pete.

Dickens’ shortlist

for Martin Chuzzlewit’s surname

included Sweetledew, Chuzzletoe,

Sweetleback and

Sweetlewag.

John Steinbeck

used 300 pencils

to write his novel
East of Eden
.