While our family doesn’t generally celebrate christmas these days I did get a present this year and it’s kept me occupied the last month or so
It’s a book called The Book of General Ignorance.
It is a book about urban legends and questions & answers, and makes for a great trivia book. Therefore it’s right down my street.
A lot of it is fairly waffly, so I’ve summarised some of the more interesting ones below (apologies for the excessive use of wikipedia links – it was just easier):

1. Henry VIII had 2 official marriages out of the general 6 he’s meant to have had
2. The human body has 4 nostrils (2 are hidden)
3. Antarctica is the driest, wettest and windiest place in the world
4. The largest living thing is a giant mushroom in Oregon
5. A blue whale’s throat is the diameter of a grapefruit
6. A chicken in 1945 lived for 2 years after having it’s head chopped off
7. A goldfish does not have a 2 second memory – according to research it is more like 2 months
8. Mosquitos have killed 45 billion people over the years from the 100+ fatal diseases they carry
9. The Bobak Marmott of Mongolia is largely responsible for all plagues (which have killed approx 1 billion people over the years)
10. Chameleons change colour based on emotion not the background
11. Polar bears are not left handed
12. Marco Polo was born Marko Pilíc in Korcula in modern day Croatia and he did not introduce Ice Cream and Spaghetti to Italy
13. Walter Raleigh did not introduce Potatoes or Tobacco to England/Ireland
14. Champagne was invented by the English – they shipped in flat wine from Champagne and added the “fizz” and started fermenting it by adding sugar
15. Seven prisoners were freed by the storming of the Bastille on 14th July 1789. They were 4 forgers, a sexual offender and 2 lunatics (one was english and thought he was Julius Caesar)
16. The Swiss eat their pet cats and dogs after they die – apparently as part of the recycling process. Some is turned into lard & cough medicine
17. The Nursery Rhyme Ring a Ring a rosie has nothing to do with the great plague. It dates from a 1790 Massachusetts rhyme about a girl name Josie.
18. There are at least 15 different states of matter
19. Glass is not a liquid – it is a solid, and the reason why church windows are thicker at the bottom is because medieval glaziers didn’t always cast a uniform sheet of glass and put the thicker end at the bottom
20. Silver is the best metal at conducting electricity and heat
21. The moon smells like gunpowder and the moondust feels like snow
22. The moon goes round the earth, but the earth also goes round the moon
23. There are an additional 6 satellites that could be considered moons of the earth
24. The average distance between asteroids in an asteroid belt is approx 1.25 million miles, so the chance of hitting one when flying through one is very small
25. Light travels at 300,000 km/s in a vacuum but when travelling through diamond it only travels at 130,000 km/s. The slowest speed it has been recorded at is 60 km/h when travelling through a block of sodium frozen at -272ªC
26. A centipede with 100 legs has never been found
27. A two-toed sloth has 3 toes on each foot, it is so named because it has 2 fingers on each hand. Two toed sloths are not related to three toed sloths
28. A European earwig has 2 penises
29. There are more tigers in captivity in the USA than in the wild combined – there are thought to be 12,000 owned by private owners. It is only illegal to own tigers in 19 US states.
30. The Shaftesbury memorial in Picadilly Circus is of Anteros, Eros’s younger brother (not of Eros as it is commonly signposted and referred to as)
31. Only 5 people were officially killed in the Great Fire of London
32. The Romans gave the thumbs up symbol at the end of a gladiator fight to signify the loser should be killed. They buried their thumb in their fist to indicate he should be saved
33. Most accused of witchcraft were acquitted or hanged – very few were burnt at the stake. Most were men.
34. The number of the beast is 616 – it was mistranslated from the original Book of Revelations until it was redone in 2005
35. The Universe is beige
36. Water is actually a faint shade of blue despite appearing colourless in small quantities
37. There is no word for blue in ancient greek
38. The Coriolis force is not the main influence on which way (clockwise or anticlockwise) water goes down the plughole – in fact it is going to be negligible
39. Camels carry fat in their humps and originally come from North America
40. Technically there are only 46 US states:
Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts are officially commonwealths.
In addition there are 2 commonwealths: Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands. They drew up their own constitutions declaring themselves commonwealths of the United States. Neither are US states, and are officially unincorported territories so not included in the 50 “US States”
41. George Washington’s false teeth were mostly made of hippopotamus ivory
42. Baseball was invented in England
43. Thomas Crapper as not the first to invent the flushing toilet however he was involved in the sewerage industry and holds 3 patents for water closet improvements.
44. Mozart’s middle name was not Amadeus. His full name was Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart.
45. The largest capital city is technically Honolulu, the capital of Hawaii. This is because the boundary of the city of Honoloulou is the county of Honolulu which consists of the entire stretch of the North Western Hawaiian islands which are 1500 miles long or 2127 square miles
46. The Largest man made structure is a rubbish dump on Staten Island called Fresh Kills. At 4.6 square miles in area, receiving 650 tons of rubbish a day until it was closed in 2001. It reached a height of 25m taller than the statue of liberty
47. We are still in an ice age – an ice age is defined as any period in earth history when there are polar ice caps
48. The inventor of the biro was called László Biró and from Hungary. However the first person to patent the ball point pen was John J. Loud, but he never exploited it
49. Chalk isn’t used to make blackboard chalk – it’s made of Gypsum (Calcium Sulphate as opposed to Calcium Carbonate)
50. Cockroaches are not the most likely creatures to survive a nuclear war. They may be able to live for a week without a head, but a fruit fly can sustain over 3 times the radiation and a parasitic wasp can take 9 times. The creature most likely to survive though is the bacterium Deinococcus Radiodurans
51. Violin strings have never been made of cat gut – they sometimes used sheep gut at least until the 1750’s (and maybe even today)
52. The greater the number of floor you climb before you throw a cat out the window, the more likely it is to survive. According to a US study that showed cats that fell out of buildings up to 7 stories were more likely to sustain injuries than those falling from higher floors.
53. Ostriches don’t bury their heads in the sand
54. Your fingernails and hair don’t continue to grow after you die – it’s because your body dehydrates tightening the skin that creates this illusion
55. Alcohol doesn’t kill brain cells, it just makes new cells grow less quickly due to the dehydration
56. James Bond’s favourite drink was not a Vodka Martini – it was bourbon which he consumes 58 glasses of in all the books whereas he only drinks 19 Vodka Martinis.
57. Jaffa Cakes are cakes (not biscuits) – a landmark legal case was involved, as under British law biscuits and cakes are not subject to VAT, but chocolate covered biscuits are (luxury item). The evidence to prove they were cakes was that Jaffa cakes go hard (like cakes) when they go stale. In contrast, biscuits go soft.
58. It doesn’t matter how close you sit to the tv you won’t damage your eyes
59. The more hours sleep you have at night the more likely you are to shorten your life. However, not sleeping enough will reduce your IQ, memory and reasoning ability
60. Half an hour of exercise 3-5 days a week is likely to be just as good a treatment for depression as the medication your doctor prescribes you as it reduces symptoms by 50% according to surveys
61. Hitler was not a Vegetarian though he probably should’ve been as he suffered from chronic flatulence – not eating meat would’ve helped this
62. The Spanish invented the concentration camp in cuba in 1895 several years before the British used them in the Boer Wars
63. The Hurricane aeroplane was more successful than the Spitfire in the battle of britain essentially winning the battle
64. 1 dog year is not equivalent to 7 human years. It’s a sliding scale that starts quickly and slows down in time. It also depends on the size and breed of dog.
65. There is no such animal as a panther – technically all large cats are panthers, but what is usually being referred to are black leopards/jaguars.
In the US they often mean a black puma – however none has ever been found
66. The banana plant is a herb and the banana is a berry
67. Botanically,Strawberries, Raspberries and Peaches are not berries – they are drupes – raspberries and strawberries are aggregated drupes.
68. Almonds are drupes, Peanuts are Peas (legumes), and Brazil nuts are seeds – none are nuts
69. Captain cook did not give his men limes to cure scurvy – he gave them sauerkraut. Lemons were given to sailors from 1795. By the 1850’s to save money limes were given to save money. Limes contain very little vitamin C, so scurvy came back with a vengeance.
70. Captain Cook did not discover Australia and he wasn’t the captain of the ship, he was a Lieutenant. British explorer William Dampier explored Australia in the 17th Century. Another contender is the 14th Century Chinese Admiral Zheng He
71. The Australian slang for an English man, POM (or pommy), is short for pomegranate because it rhymes with immigrant when said in an aussie accent
72. There were between 2 and 20 wise men or magi and at least one of them may have been a woman. This is according to the English church’s 2004 revision of the description of the Magi
73. Panama hats come from Ecuador. They were named so because they were given as standard issue to men digging the Panama Canal
74. St Patrick may be the patron saint of ireland but he is not irish – he was from somewhere around Pembrokeshire