1,234 QI Facts To Leave You Speechless

Page 1, Position 1: The Big Bang was quieter than a Motörhead concert.: https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/how-loud-was-the-big-bang/"http://ultimateclassicrock.com/metallica-loudest-band/
Page 1, Position 2: The astronomer who coined the term ‘Big Bang’ didn’t believe in it.: Simon Mitton, Fred Hoyle: A Life in Science
Page 1, Position 3: The scientist who analysed the plutonium for the first atomic bomb was called Mr Doom.: http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/11/7529111/doom-of-los-alamos
Page 1, Position 4: The president of the World Chess Federation believes that, unless we play more chess, the world will be destroyed by aliens.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/11026510/Garry-Kasparov-loses-battle-for-control-of-world-chess-to-alien-abductee.html
Page 2, Position 1: The world champion of French Scrabble doesn’t speak French.: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jul/21/new-french-scrabble-champion-nigel-richards-doesnt-speak-french
Page 2, Position 2: There are 19 languages on Earth with only one speaker left.: Delayed Gratification Quarterly, Issue 13
Page 2, Position 3: There are at least 17 types of ice, but only one exists outside the laboratory.: http://nautil.us/issue/25/water/five-things-we-still-dont-know-about-water
Page 2, Position 4: Firefighters add a ‘wetting agent’ to make their water even wetter.: http://www.reposip.unicamp.br/xmlui/handle/REPOSIP/67003
Page 3, Position 1: It takes 50 glasses of water to grow the oranges to make one glass of orange juice.: http://www.concentrate.org.uk/index.php?page=30
Page 3, Position 2: Orange skin caused by eating too many carrots is called carotenemia.: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1104368-overview
Page 3, Position 3: If you plant an apple pip, the new tree will bear apples that are completely different to the one the pip came from.: http://treesandshrubs.about.com/od/propagation/f/applesfromseed.htm
Page 3, Position 4: Some mushrooms have 28,000 sexes.: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150202-six-bizarre-things-about-fungi
Page 4, Position 1: Magic mushrooms grow in the gardens of Buckingham Palace.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11289221/Magic-mushrooms-found-at-Buckingham-Palace.html
Page 4, Position 2: When the Queen gave birth to Prince Charles, Prince Philip was playing squash.: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/a-strange-life-profile-of-prince-philip-1563268.html
Page 4, Position 3: Table tennis was banned in the USSR from 1930 to 1950 on the grounds that it was harmful to people’s eyes.: http://www.timeout.com/newyork/things-to-do/table-tennis-guide-london-2012-olympic-games
Page 4, Position 4: Wearing white at Wimbledon began as a way of hiding the fact that women sweat.: http://uk.businessinsider.com/why-do-the-players-at-wimbledon-wear-white-2015-6?r=US&IR=T
Page 5, Position 1: The British men most likely to wear pink boxer shorts live in London.: http://uk.businessinsider.com/john-lewis-stats-on-pink-socks-and-longjohns-2014-10?r=US&IR=T
Page 5, Position 2: The average British nurse eats six free chocolates a day.: http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7198
Page 5, Position 3: The ‘Radio Nurse’ was the first baby monitor. It came with a matching transmitter called the ‘Guardian Ear’.: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/02/07/zenith_s_radio_nurse_designed_by_isamu_noguchi_was_the_world_s_first_baby.html
Page 5, Position 4: The founder of the Daily Mail was convinced that Belgians were poisoning his ice cream.: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jul/14/rupert-murdoch-northcliffe-maxwell
Page 6, Position 1: In 19th-century London, fake ice cream was made from mashed turnip.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judith-flanders-/dickens-london_b_5585764.html?utm_hp_ref=books
Page 6, Position 2: In 2014, a Birmingham woman phoned 999 because her ice cream didn’t have enough sprinkles on it.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-27687763
Page 6, Position 3: To test what happens if someone sits on their phone, Samsung has a robot shaped like a bottom.: http://gadgetshow.channel5.com/news/meet-bot-bot-samsung-designs-robo-bum-stress-test-galaxy-note-4
Page 6, Position 4: Between 2003 and 2015, 9,000 Americans lost fingers in snowblower accidents.: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/27/people-keep-sticking-their-hands-in-snowblowers-without-turning-them-off-first-data-show/
Page 7, Position 1: Two-thirds of all the people killed by volcanoes lived in Indonesia.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-s-deadliest-volcanoes-are-identified/
Page 7, Position 2: Most Indonesians speak Indonesian as a second language.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Indonesia
Page 7, Position 3: Kim Jong-un is the only person in North Korea called Kim Jong-un.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/03/kim-jong-un-north-korea-name-ban
Page 7, Position 4: The pseudonyms of Benjamin Franklin included Silence Dogood, Anthony Afterwit, Alice Addertongue, Harry Meanwell, Martha Careful, Busy Body and Richard Saunders.: http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/l3_wit_name.html
Page 8, Position 1: The four most common first names among New York City taxi drivers are Mohammad, Mohammed, Muhammad and Mohamed.: http://vizual-statistix.tumblr.com/post/107987401281/using-a-list-of-the-52-131-active-medallion-taxi
Page 8, Position 2: Not a single car was sold by Buzz Aldrin in the six months he worked as a car salesman on his return from the Moon.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/5779145/Buzz-Aldrin-the-dark-times-that-followed-that-historic-flight.html
Page 8, Position 3: Neil Armstrong once sued his barber for selling a lock of his hair.: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/8062442/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/astronauts-hair-sparks-legal-hubbub/
Page 8, Position 4: In May 2014, the Moon had faster broadband than most of rural Britain.: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/the-moon-has-faster-broadband-than-some-parts-of-the-uk-9443498.html
Page 9, Position 1: More people work for the Chinese government monitoring the Internet than serve in its armed forces.: http://qz.com/132590/china-has-more-internet-monitors-than-active-army-personnel/
Page 9, Position 2: There are four million songs on Spotify that have never been played.: http://gizmodo.com/more-than-4-million-spotify-songs-have-never-been-playe-1444955615
Page 9, Position 3: In 2009, 92% of songs in the Billboard Top 100 had ‘reproductive themes’.: http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP09390416.pdf
Page 9, Position 4: At any given time, 50% of ‘sexters’ are lying about what they are doing.: http://www.livescience.com/47281-most-interesting-science-news-articles-of-the-week.html
Page 10, Position 1: On average, people are two inches shorter and 20% poorer than they claim to be online.: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in-online-dating/
Page 10, Position 2: Half of your anecdotes are stolen from someone else.: http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/05/some-of-your-best-anecdotes-are-probably-stolen.html
Page 10, Position 3: A blue whale can swallow half a million calories in a single mouthful.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2010/12/09/blue-whales-can-eat-half-a-million-calories-in-a-single-mouthful/
Page 10, Position 4: The world champion jockey Laffit Pincay Jr kept his weight down by eating half a peanut for lunch.: http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1999-12-04/sports/9912040105_1_pincay-stakes-victories-mounts
Page 11, Position 1: In 1923, jockey Frank Hayes won a race despite being dead.: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-deceased-jockey-to-win-a-race/
Page 11, Position 2: In 1937 at Romford dog track you could watch cheetah racing.: http://www.harringayonline.com/group/historyofharringay/forum/topics/cheetah-racing-at-harringay
Page 11, Position 3: Kaiser Wilhelm II loved riding so much he sat at his desk astride a saddle. He said it helped him think more clearly.: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1521
Page 11, Position 4: Sir Walter Scott’s salt cellar was made from a neck bone belonging to King Charles I.: The Guinness Book of Records, 1988
Page 12, Position 1: Albert Einstein’s eyeballs are in a safety deposit box in New York.: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/einsteins-brain-arrives-in-london-after-odd-journey/
Page 12, Position 2: A newborn baby can’t see the expression on your face if you’re more than 12 inches away.: http://www.parenting.com/article/what-your-baby-knows-about-you
Page 12, Position 3: Blue whales don’t know they’re blue. They can only see in black and white.: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/youre-eye-to-eye-with-a-whale-in-the-ocean-what-does-it-see/274448/
Page 12, Position 4: Composer Eric Satie only ate white food.: http://music.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/0003_satie/satie.shtml
Page 13, Position 1: For 42,000 years, humans used cow’s milk to paint with before anyone thought to drink it.: http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2015/06/30/new-study-shows-south-africans-using-milk-based-paint-49000-years-ago
Page 13, Position 2: A glass of cow’s milk has twice as much solid content as a tomato.: http://www.metrohmsiam.com/foodlab/FL_18/FL18_D22IA004_Application_Note_Soluble_Solids_in_Tomatoes.pdf
Page 13, Position 3: Female kangaroos can produce full-fat and skimmed milk simultaneously.: http://ansci.illinois.edu/static/ansc438/Lactation/marsupials.html
Page 13, Position 4: Dolphin’s milk is as thick as toothpaste.: http://www.whalefacts.org/how-do-dolphins-reproduce/
Page 14, Position 1: Chalk is made from algae.: http://all-geo.org/erratics/2011/05/chalk-is-weird/
Page 14, Position 2: Birmingham University sits on top of a mile of fake coal mine.: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/campus-curiosities-17-tunnels/199679.article
Page 14, Position 3: The M96 is a fake motorway used for firefighting practice.: http://www.fireservicecollege.ac.uk/our-training/our-incident-ground/the-fire-service-college-motorway/
Page 14, Position 4: The world’s first road built exclusively for cars is now a cycle path.: http://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/worlds-first-automobile-only-road-is-now-a-bike-path/
Page 15, Position 1: In the late 19th century, women cyclists were warned they might get ‘bicycle face’, giving them a jutting chin and bulging eyes.: http://www.vox.com/2014/7/8/5880931/the-19th-century-health-scare-that-told-women-to-worry-about-bicycle
Page 15, Position 2: In 1849, ‘running amok’ was an officially recognised medical condition.: http://www.avclub.com/article/run-amok-wiki-wormholes-look-well-running-amok-220515
Page 15, Position 3: In 1495, the Spanish mixed lepers’ blood with wine to give to the French.: Chris Holmes, Spores, Plagues and History: The Story of Anthrax
Page 15, Position 4: In the 16th century, it was thought that sitting in cow dung cured diarrhoea.: http://www.medhistorian.com/2015/03/whats-old-is-new-again-medicines-blast.html
Page 16, Position 1: The first-ever fire engine was called the ‘Sucking Worm’.: http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=3101411&partId=1
Page 16, Position 2: In 1900, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle caught fire during a cricket match at Lord’s. The ball hit a box of matches in his pocket.: http://www.cricketcountry.com/articles/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-set-on-fire-while-batting-at-lords-280878
Page 16, Position 3: In 2011, two Iranian football players were suspended for celebratory bottom-patting.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/51141/why-do-athletes-slap-each-others%E2%80%99-butts
Page 16, Position 4: In 2010, Iran banned mullet haircuts.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/7873621/Iran-government-issues-style-guide-for-mens-hair.html
Page 17, Position 1: The Danish for ‘mullet’ is Bundesligahår, meaning ‘the hair of a German football player’.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanism_(linguistics)
Page 17, Position 2: Until 1912, goalkeepers were allowed to handle the ball anywhere in their own half.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Richmond_Roose
Page 17, Position 3: Until 1882, baseball umpires could confer with the crowd if they weren’t sure whether a catch had been made.: http://www4.stat.ncsu.edu/~reiland/baseball.html
Page 17, Position 4: The first mini golf course was invented for women who weren’t allowed to play real golf.: http://hamandeggerfiles.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/himalayas-putting-course-at-st-andrews.html
Page 18, Position 1: In his 27-year reign, Pope John Paul II took more than 100 skiing and mountain-climbing holidays.: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0700418.htm
Page 18, Position 2: The Pope is not allowed to be an organ donor because his body ‘belongs to the whole Church’.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/the-pope/8303510/The-Pope-is-an-organ-donor-but-his-body-parts-cannot-be-donated.html
Page 18, Position 3: No one in the UK dies of natural causes.: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCEQFjAAahUKEwjCmfqe4efIAhWH0xoKHchaA6U&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.manchester.gov.uk%2Fdownload%2Fdownloads%2Fid%2F6147%2Fdeath_certification_-_guidance_for_doctors_certifying_cause_of_death.pdf&usg=AFQjCNF9GYRwr06mH1xGCffegfR5ntkNSQ&sig2=zzooMaZ2Xc6D9LqwY-LNuw
Page 18, Position 4: Baths kill more people than terrorists.: London Review of Books 25 September 2014
Page 19, Position 1: Americans wash their hands 800 billion times a year.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/12/131213-washing-hands-hot-water-wastes-energy-health/
Page 19, Position 2: Newborn Spartan boys were immediately washed in wine.: http://www.sikyon.com/sparta/agogi_eg.html
Page 19, Position 3: Newborn babies can recognise the theme tune from their mother’s favourite soap opera.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2480644/Babies-remember-music-heard-womb-months-born.html
Page 19, Position 4: Alex Salmond once appeared in a Bollywood soap opera.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/alex-salmond-really-play-ghost-5152736
Page 20, Position 1: In 2014, more bets were placed on who killed Lucy Beale in EastEnders than on the Champions League final.: https://betting.betfair.com/specials/soaps/who-killed-lucy-nation-in-betting-frenzy-as-killer-is-revealed-200215-272.html?rfr=798967&mpch=ads
Page 20, Position 2: The winning goal in the first-ever World Cup final was scored by a one-armed man.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/fact/q_a_h_ctor_castro_1930s_disabled_football_star.shtml
Page 20, Position 3: Neanderthals took care of their old and disabled.: New Scientist 19 July 2014
Page 20, Position 4: Early humans first caught bedbugs from sharing caves with bats.: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/science/in-bedbugs-scientists-see-a-model-of-evolution.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1
Page 21, Position 1: During the Second World War, 15,000 people lived in caves in Kent.: http://www.teachingtimes.com/articles/chislehurst-caves.htm
Page 21, Position 2: 15,000 years ago, cannibalism was practised in Somerset.: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/human-origins/humans-in-britain/goughs-cave-cannibalism/index.html
Page 21, Position 3: The world’s first powered flight took place in Chard, Somerset, in 1848.: http://www.chardmuseum.co.uk/Powered_Flight/
Page 21, Position 4: The Wright brothers only flew together once. Their father forbade it in case they crashed.: T. A. Heppenheimer, The Wright Brothers: First Flight and the Invention of the Airplane
Page 22, Position 1: Immediately after the Wright brothers’ first flight, a gust of wind flipped their plane over and broke it.: http://airandspace.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?object=nasm_A19610048000
Page 22, Position 2: The wind coming from the centre of the Milky Way is travelling at two million mph.: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2015/03/full/
Page 22, Position 3: At 60 mph, most of the noise a car makes comes from contact with the road, not from the engine.: New Scientist 30 August 2014
Page 22, Position 4: The M25 was so popular when it opened that people from Norfolk booked bus rides around it.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/10752876/M25-the-road-you-love-to-hate.html
Page 23, Position 1: In 2011, a pensioner spent 30 hours driving around the M25 after missing his turning.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/8956844/Lost-pensioner-Dennis-Leighton-spends-30-hours-driving-around-M25.html
Page 23, Position 2: In 1992, a group of French youths removing graffiti from a cave accidentally erased a painting of a bison that was 15,000 years old.: http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/22/world/french-youths-clean-a-cave-and-damage-prehistoric-art.html
Page 23, Position 3: Medical error is the third-largest killer of patients in US hospitals.: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/medical-mistakes
Page 23, Position 4: Newspapers correct fewer than 2% of their mistakes.: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2007/08/reign_of_error.html
Page 24, Position 1: Until 1922, you could listen to the news by telephone.: https://thetimestream.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/historical-oddities-the-telephone-newspaper/
Page 24, Position 2: The oldest person in history was born the year Alexander Graham Bell made the first sound transmission and died the year that Puff Daddy had his UK No. 1 hit ‘I’ll Be Missing You’.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment
Page 24, Position 3: The world’s oldest land animal is a 183-year-old giant tortoise called Jonathan. When Queen Victoria came to the throne, he was five years old.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26543021
Page 24, Position 4: In 2008, the National Toy Hall of Fame gave its ‘Oldest Toy’ award to the stick.: http://www.toyhalloffame.org/toys/stick
Page 25, Position 1: The ancient Greeks played with yo-yos.: Stephen G. Miller, Ancient Greek Athletics
Page 25, Position 2: Twister was originally called ‘King’s Footsie’.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/29152/sex-box-twisted-history-twister
Page 25, Position 3: The Chinese for shuffling Mah Jong tiles translates as the ‘twittering of the sparrows’.: http://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Mah-Jong.htm
Page 25, Position 4: Verbs in the Archi language of southern Russia can take 1,502,839 possible forms.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archi_language
Page 26, Position 1: In 2001, Saudi Arabia banned Pokémon for ‘promoting Zionism’.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1243307.stm
Page 26, Position 2: Saudi Arabia imports camels from Australia.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2038834.stm
Page 26, Position 3: Building on sand illegally exported from Malaysia and Indonesia, Singapore has expanded by 20% since the 1960s.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/singapore/7221987/Singapore-accused-of-launching-Sand-Wars.html
Page 26, Position 4: Since the 1930s, American turkeys have more than doubled in size.: http://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2005/11_15_2005.asp
Page 27, Position 1: When male turkeys see female turkeys, they blush.: http://www.naturerocks.org/six-surprising-facts-about-turkeys.xml
Page 27, Position 2: In the Middle Ages, strapping a live chicken to the body was thought to cure plague.: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/themes/publichealth/blackdeath.aspx
Page 27, Position 3: Soldiers in Iraq deployed live chickens to warn of possible chemical attacks. This was known as Operation Kuwaiti Field Chicken (KFC).: http://www.upc-online.org/alerts/021903ChickenDefense.htm
Page 27, Position 4: The last McDonald’s burger in Iceland was sold in 2009, but it can still be watched decomposing on a webcam.: http://bushostelreykjavik.com/last-mcdonalds-in-iceland
Page 28, Position 1: The Icelandic word for ‘pager’ translates as ‘thief of the peace’.: http://www.whygoiceland.com/icelandic-language
Page 28, Position 2: The Icelandic word for ‘computer’ translates as ‘number prophetess’.: http://www.whygoiceland.com/icelandic-language
Page 28, Position 3: Arthur Schoebius, inventor of the Enigma machine, also invented an electric pillow.: Ari-Ben Menahem, Historical Encyclopaedia of Natural and Mathematical Sciences
Page 28, Position 4: The first search engine was called Archie and was built in 1989 by a man who hasn’t owned a computer since 1983.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/01/alan-emtage-search-engine_n_2994090.html
Page 29, Position 1: In 2010, the US military built a supercomputer out of 1,760 PlayStation 3s.: http://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html
Page 29, Position 2: After winning the US quiz show Jeopardy, the IBM supercomputer ‘Watson’ went back to work in healthcare.: New Scientist 4 October 2014
Page 29, Position 3: Mary Shelley kept Percy Shelley’s heart wrapped in a poem for 30 years after his death.: http://www.neatorama.com/2013/10/02/The-Heart-Cherished-by-Frankensteins-Maker/
Page 29, Position 4: In 2008, the 18th-century German poet Friedrich Schiller was sent two reminders to pay his TV licence.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7648021.stm
Page 30, Position 1: Abraham Lincoln was a licensed bartender.: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=191&dat=19800212&id=SRYuAAAAIBAJ&sjid=oC4DAAAAIBAJ&pg=4654,2554563
Page 30, Position 2: Rod Stewart lost his job as a wallpaper designer because he was colour-blind.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kD42uR1vYNYC&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=%22earning+a+few+quid+by+measuring+out+plots+and+marking+them+off+with+string%22&source=bl&ots=KsxG5d_LkJ&sig=lfqTGN_j-mg1hg48VZ632Lu6JTE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAmoVChMIqvL9q9ngyAIVBvEUCh3q9g6v#v=onepage&q=%22earning%20a%20few%20quid%20by%20measuring%20out%20plots%20and%20marking%20them%20off%20with%20string%22&f=false
Page 30, Position 3: Vladimir Putin’s grandfather worked as a chef for Stalin and Lenin, and Rasputin.: BBC History February 2015
Page 30, Position 4: Oliver Twist was modelled on Butch Cassidy’s grandfather.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_Cassidy#Ancestry_and_early_life
Page 31, Position 1: Davros from Doctor Who and Professor Yaffle from Bagpuss were both based on the philosopher Bertrand Russell.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagpuss
Page 31, Position 2: The translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone into ancient Greek is the longest ancient Greek text produced since ad 3.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_in_translation
Page 31, Position 3: The doctor who administered enemas to ancient Egyptian pharaohs was called the ‘shepherd of the royal anus’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-eJuBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT239&lpg=PT239&dq=neru+pehut+â€˜shepherd+of+the+anusâ€™.&source=bl&ots=DP7iNLwSdn&sig=eQft74fiXLQvXhzmtErmIIdEl6k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAmoVChMIypap97mMxgIVTO0UCh3lFgDe#v=onepage&q=neru%20pehut%20â€˜shepherd%20of%20the%20anusâ€™.&f=false
Page 31, Position 4: Box jellyfish have 64 anuses.: http://thaiboxjellyfish.blogspot.com/2010/06/weird-wonderful-and-wobbly-box.html
Page 32, Position 1: Battery hens were invented by the ancient Romans.: http://www.academia.edu/436589/Roman_Agriculture
Page 32, Position 2: In ancient Sumeria, the laws of civilisation and the universe were called ‘meh’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LsHS1oyxViMC&pg=PA33&dq=sumerian+laws+meh&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YstmVe6ZM6P17Aa8tYAQ&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=sumerian%20laws%20meh&f=false
Page 32, Position 3: It’s against the law in the US to own golden eagle feathers.: https://www.fws.gov/eaglerepository/factsheets/PossessionOfEagleFeathersFactSheet.pdf
Page 32, Position 4: In 2014, a man in the Italian town of Bra was arrested for stealing bras.: http://www.thestar.com/news/2014/06/23/man_arrested_for_stealing_bras_in_bra_italy.html
Page 33, Position 1: In Thailand, the National Office of Buddhism has a hotline for complaints about unruly monks.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/19/monks-bad-behaviour-hotline-thai-buddhist-authorities
Page 33, Position 2: The blast furnace, the @ sign, pretzels and genetics were all invented by monks.: http://www.livescience.com/7537-monk-peas-changed-world.html"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2535830/Fashionable-celebrity-diets-actually-invented-MONKS-Middle-Ages-expert-claims.html"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1244364/Made-monks-drunks-Why-Buckfast-wine-unholy-brew.html"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-25335960"http://stephanspretzels.ie/about/"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/23/at-sign-history-monks_n_3795706.html"http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2010/06/22/a-short-history-of/
Page 33, Position 3: In the 15th century, a biting epidemic swept through the nunneries of Germany, Holland and Rome.: http://www.csicop.org/si/show/mass_delusions_and_hysterias_highlights_from_the_past_millennium/
Page 33, Position 4: Gorillas are vegetarians but their bite is twice as powerful as a lion’s.: http://www.enkivillage.com/what-animal-has-the-strongest-bite.html
Page 34, Position 1: Frankenstein’s monster was a vegetarian.: The Vegetarian, Winter 2014
Page 34, Position 2: 8 out of 10 UK vegetarians will end up eating meat.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/04/vegetarian-phase_n_6270584.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Page 34, Position 3: Finnish budget meatballs have so little meat in them they have had to be renamed ‘balls’.: http://www.thejournal.ie/meatballs-no-meat-finland-1984898-Mar2015/
Page 34, Position 4: The average supermarket contains enough food to keep you alive for 55 years, or 63 years if you don’t mind eating pet food.: Lewis Dartnell, The Knowledge How to Rebuild our World from Scratch
Page 35, Position 1: At least 18 species of spider catch and eat fish.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/06/140618-spiders-fish-predator-ecology-water-weird-science/
Page 35, Position 2: The world’s largest spider weighs as much as seven bags of crisps.: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-spider
Page 35, Position 3: Filmgoers eat 55% more popcorn watching a sad film than a comedy.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2978876/How-watching-sad-films-makes-FAT-Viewers-eat-twice-junk-food-weepy-movie-comedy.html
Page 35, Position 4: In Chile, popcorn is called cabritas, or ‘little goats’, because of the way it jumps in the pan.: http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/12-side-effects-living-chile/
Page 36, Position 1: One billion chicken wings, five million pounds of pretzels and four million pounds of popcorn are eaten on Super Bowl Sunday.: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/01/30/super-bowl-xlix-a-huge-energy-source-for-america/
Page 36, Position 2: Guantanamo Bay has a gift shop.: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/magazine/souvenirs-from-the-guantanamo-bay-gift-shops.html?_r=0
Page 36, Position 3: Almost half of American adults think that dinosaurs and humans coexisted.: http://ncse.com/rncse/30/3/americans-scientific-knowledge-beliefs-human-evolution-year-
Page 36, Position 4: There is one divorce in the US every 36 seconds.: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/video/heartbreak-hustle-923
Page 37, Position 1: People are more likely to believe in global warming if you ask them in a room containing a dead plant.: The Human Zoo, BBC Radio 4
Page 37, Position 2: Talking to someone while holding a warm cup of coffee makes you more likely to think of them as a warm person.: New Scientist 20 June 2015
Page 37, Position 3: You’re more likely to catch a cold by holding hands with someone than by kissing them.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2954908/You-catch-cold-kissing-half-reject-kiss-new-partner-ill-despite-virus-spread-mucus-not-saliva.html
Page 37, Position 4: People who earn over £75,000 a year are more likely to believe that stress at work is causing their hair to fall out.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/11073592/How-a-bigger-salary-could-cause-hair-loss.html
Page 38, Position 1: According to Fijian tradition, the larger a woman’s hair, the more beautiful she is.: http://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/magazine/314104/closer-look-hair
Page 38, Position 2: After the Chinese Manchu dynasty conquered the Han people, they made all the males wear pigtails.: http://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/magazine/314104/closer-look-hair
Page 38, Position 3: The hairs on a raspberry are its female parts.: New Scientist 18 October 2014
Page 38, Position 4: Glow-worms are female fireflies.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly
Page 39, Position 1: A female butterfly has a second stomach attached to her vagina.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/inkfish/2015/05/28/butterflies-have-an-extra-stomach-attached-to-their-vaginas/#.VWwrjVxVhHx
Page 39, Position 2: The horn of the dung beetle Onthophagus raffrayi is more than twice the length of its body.: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/magazine/the-astonishing-weaponry-of-dung-beetles.html?ref=science&_r=1
Page 39, Position 3: A colossal squid swallows through its brain.: http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/live-webcast-colossal-squid-dissection
Page 39, Position 4: The movements of octopuses have no rhythm.: http://www.livescience.com/50511-octopus-movement-no-rhythm.html
Page 40, Position 1: When people sing together in a choir, their heartbeats synchronise.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23230411
Page 40, Position 2: The man with the world’s deepest voice can make sounds that only elephants can hear.: http://www.medicaldaily.com/man-worlds-deepest-voice-hits-notes-only-elephants-can-hear-242157
Page 40, Position 3: The worse a male ring-tailed lemur smells, the more offspring he will have.: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/ring-tailed-lemur/
Page 40, Position 4: Male scorpionflies use their penises to swat away spiders.: Jules Howard, Sex on Earth A Celebration of Animal Reproduction
Page 41, Position 1: More than 300 species of spider pretend to be ants.: http://news.discovery.com/animals/insects/more-than-300-spiders-pretend-to-be-ants-141115.htm
Page 41, Position 2: Agatha Christie was still speaking to imaginary friends well into her seventies.: New Scientist 20 September 2014
Page 41, Position 3: Danish people rate Santa Claus as more friendly and more reliable than most doctors.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2014/12/09/santa-claus-doctors-found-equally-reliable-despite-one-imaginary
Page 41, Position 4: Kurt Cobain addressed his suicide note to his imaginary friend, Boddah.: New Scientist 20 September 2014
Page 42, Position 1: Kurt Cobain’s first band was called Fecal Matter.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Cobain
Page 42, Position 2: The faeces of Americans are a much less diverse ecosystem for bacteria than those of Papua New Guineans.: http://www.livescience.com/50512-poop-bacteria-microbiome-lifestyle.html
Page 42, Position 3: There are more bacteria on Earth than there are stars in the known universe.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af5qUxl1ktI
Page 42, Position 4: There are more bacteria in your armpit than there are people in the world.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RIFyqLXdVw
Page 43, Position 1: Dogs can smell floating whale poo from a mile away.: http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Poop-sniffing-dog-may-help-save-whales-all-over-the-world-208443271.html
Page 43, Position 2: Camels can open and close their nostrils.: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/bactrian-camel/
Page 43, Position 3: Astronauts’ eyes get flatter in space.: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/mar/13/nasa-astronauts-eyeballs-deformed-space
Page 43, Position 4: Bees have five eyes.: http://www.bbka.org.uk/learn/general_information/biology__interesting_facts
Page 44, Position 1: Mumps is five times as contagious as Ebola.: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/10/02/352983774/no-seriously-how-contagious-is-ebola
Page 44, Position 2: 5% of Ethiopian epauletted fruit bats have the Ebola virus.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-hunt-for-ebola-81684905/?all&no-ist
Page 44, Position 3: In the US in 2014, there were ten times as many cases of measles as there were for the entire decade 2001–10.: http://www.livescience.com/49637-measles-cases-us-vaccination.html
Page 44, Position 4: A third of all the computers in the world contain at least one virus.: http://www.scotsman.com/computer-viruses-1-1810973
Page 45, Position 1: Uzbekistan shuts down the Internet during the nation’s standardised annual university entrance exam, and disables all text messaging.: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/before-a-high-stakes-standardized-test-uzbekistan-shut-the-whole-countrys-internet-down/375556/
Page 45, Position 2: In the 1850s, the entrance exam for the Royal Navy involved writing out the Lord’s Prayer and jumping over a chair naked.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ulB3AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA252&lpg=PA252&dq=entrance+exam+for+the+Royal+Navy+jumping+over+a+chair,+naked&source=bl&ots=hD0PCFqwmO&sig=FkgZIoGTvB9QWN4RJsPqhAaZXXQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAmoVChMI3LqDgsiMxgIVBe0UCh2y-wB6
Page 45, Position 3: In 1853, the Venus de Milo was put on trial for nudity in Germany.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bunHURgi7FcC&pg=PA635&lpg=PA635&dq=Mannheim,+%22venus+de+milo%22+1853&source=bl&ots=buocXj12YZ&sig=inR4F26K_Rc4TehBhIygxmP5cNg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XBXmVKALxZHsBqC7gOAB&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Mannheim%2C%20%22venus%20de%20milo%22%201853&f=false
Page 45, Position 4: In 2012, a law banning nudity in San Francisco was proposed by a politician called Scott Wiener.: http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2012/11/20/the-wiener-directive-banning-nudity-in-san-francisco/
Page 46, Position 1: From 1784 to 1830, the Tory MP for Devon was called John Bastard.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pollexfen_Bastard
Page 46, Position 2: The world’s biggest drilling machine is called Bertha.: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a11265/the-worlds-largest-tunnel-boring-machine-must-be-saved-17201135/
Page 46, Position 3: The 192nd most powerful supercomputer in the world is called Gordon.: http://old.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=32873&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60
Page 46, Position 4: There are 299 places in Iran called Mohammadabad.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammadabad,_Iran
Page 47, Position 1: There are craters on Mars called Bristol, Corby, Crewe, Tooting and Woking.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_craters_on_Mars
Page 47, Position 2: Mars is more accurately mapped than Alaska.: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/alaskas-outdated-maps-make-flying-a-peril-but-a-high-tech-fix-is-slowly-gaining-ground/2014/10/14/bc2e601e-4fd4-11e4-8c24-487e92bc997b_story.html?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost
Page 47, Position 3: Thanks to the US military, the most accurately mapped country in the world is Afghanistan.: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/alaskas-outdated-maps-make-flying-a-peril-but-a-high-tech-fix-is-slowly-gaining-ground/2014/10/14/bc2e601e-4fd4-11e4-8c24-487e92bc997b_story.html?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost
Page 47, Position 4: In 2010, the British Army parachuted spy dogs into Afghanistan to flush out insurgents.: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/nov/08/sas-dogs-parachute-taliban-afghanistan
Page 48, Position 1: The first cow to fly in an aeroplane was Elm Farm Ollie in 1930. Her handler milked her and parachuted cartons of milk down to spectators below.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=N4AbBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT14&dq=elm+farm+ollie&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-w13VYvQCoKw7AaT2IPIAQ&ved=0CD0Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=elm%20farm%20ollie&f=false
Page 48, Position 2: D. H. Lawrence had a cow called Susan.: Paul Poplawski, D.H. Lawrence: A Reference Companion
Page 48, Position 3: Cows only have bottom teeth.: http://www.moomilk.com/faq/1-cow-faqs/12-do-cows-have-special-teeth-for-eating-grass
Page 48, Position 4: Cows make friends and get sad when they are separated from them.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2011124/Cows-best-friends-stressed-separated.html
Page 49, Position 1: One in 10 Britons say they have no close friends.: The Week 16 August 2014
Page 49, Position 2: Most Britons tell 10 lies a week.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11230110/Lies-have-become-an-accepted-part-of-British-life-poll-reveals.html
Page 49, Position 3: A third of Britons say they neither ‘love’ nor ‘hate’ Marmite.: https://yougov.co.uk/news/2011/09/23/love-it-hate-it-its-official/
Page 49, Position 4: The British have the best teeth of any Western country.: http://www.economist.com/node/15060097
Page 50, Position 1: Every team in North America’s National Ice Hockey league has a team dentist.: http://old.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=32904&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15
Page 50, Position 2: Between 2003 and 2008, the lost-property office of Madame Tussauds collected 123 pairs of false teeth and one false leg.: https://www.madametussauds.com/SiteImages/Assets/9/Madame%20Tussauds%20Quirky%20Facts%2008.pdf
Page 50, Position 3: 97% of the world’s tigers have been lost over the past century.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29418983?ocid=socialflow_twitter
Page 50, Position 4: Kaiser Wilhelm II lost a valuable arms contract by slapping the king of Bulgaria on the bottom.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_I_of_Bulgaria
Page 51, Position 1: The word ‘sovereign’ is from the Latin superanus, meaning ‘highest one’.: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sovereign
Page 51, Position 2: The first-ever children’s picture book was in Latin and had instructions for beer brewing and winemaking.: https://archive.org/details/johamoscommeniio00come
Page 51, Position 3: The most-borrowed book from the Houses of Parliament library is called How Parliament Works.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/alevel-textbook-alain-andertons-economics-most-popular-book-at-bank-of-england-10128471.html?icn=puff-1
Page 51, Position 4: The 1981 Crosby by-election included a real candidate called Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bimlim-bus-stop-F’tang-F’tangOle-Biscuitbarrel.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_Night_Special
Page 52, Position 1: Ian Fleming said ‘James Bond’ was the dullest name he’d ever heard.: http://mentalfloss.com/uk/history/26737/meet-the-real-james-bond
Page 52, Position 2: Lord Lucan was once asked to audition for James Bond.: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/apr/17/jamesbond.danielcraig
Page 52, Position 3: Only 2% of actors earn more than £20,000 a year.: http://www.theatrebubble.com/2014/06/more-than-75-of-actors-earn-less-than-5k-per-year/
Page 52, Position 4: Speeding fines in Finland reflect the offender’s earnings. In 2002, a Nokia executive doing 75 kph in a 50 kph zone was fined €116,000.: http://www.etatrust.org.uk/2015/03/roads-finns-and-fines/
Page 53, Position 1: More people in the world have mobile phones than have flush toilets.: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=44452#.VL3E_nZkX9A
Page 53, Position 2: Harpo Marx kept a harp in his bathroom so he could practise while on the lavatory.: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/1926/03/harpo-marx-theater-music
Page 53, Position 3: ‘Jingle Bells’ was the first song played in space.: Victoria Robinson, Deep Space Jams
Page 53, Position 4: 9 out of 10 artificial Christmas trees are made in China.: http://blog.uniquelychristmastrees.co.uk/artificial-christmas-trees-made-with-love-in-china/
Page 54, Position 1: The average Father Christmas on Christmas cards appears to be two stone lighter than he was 10 years ago.: The Week 29 November 2014
Page 54, Position 2: The first commercial Christmas card featured a drawing of a toddler drinking a glass of wine.: http://www.victoriana.com/christmas/card1st-99.htm
Page 54, Position 3: In 2014, a brewer from Virginia made a beer from 35-million-year-old yeast. It was described as tasting ‘Belgian’.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2595312/Now-thats-vintage-Brewers-make-beer-yeast-extracted-35-million-year-old-whale-FOSSIL.html
Page 54, Position 4: Scottish economist Ronald MacDonald invented the Behavioural Equilibrium Exchange Rate, known by the acronym ‘BEER’.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_MacDonald_(economist)
Page 55, Position 1: In Japan, McDonald’s is pronounced makudonarudo.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5SyO330_Zo
Page 55, Position 2: There is a city in Japan called Obama.: https://www1.city.obama.fukui.jp/english/
Page 55, Position 3: In Japan, bushusuru (‘to Bush’) means ‘to vomit’ after George Bush Sr vomited in the Japanese PM’s lap in 1992.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush_vomiting_incident
Page 55, Position 4: Japan is home to 5.52 million vending machines.: http://presurfer.blogspot.com/2015/01/why-vending-machines-are-so-popular-in.html
Page 56, Position 1: The Infantograph, a machine that predicts what a couple’s baby will look like, was invented by Dr Seuss.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IjvHQsCn_pgC&pg=PA115&lpg=PA115&dq=Infantograph+seuss&source=bl&ots=Zp-geNNYR-&sig=fttEwRKetKci2Hq-uNn0j_ByDiE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-9LgU9vSEae30QW_l4H4CA&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAQ
Page 56, Position 2: Irresistibubble, the strapline for Aero, was coined by Salman Rushdie.: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/11/salman-rushdie-hiding-comedy-routine
Page 56, Position 3: Before he invented television, John Logie Baird invented the Baird Undersock to combat trench foot.: http://www.scran.ac.uk/packs/exhibitions/learning_materials/webs/40/baird_socks.htm
Page 56, Position 4: Glitter was invented by accident by a cattle rancher from New Jersey.: http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-makes-glitter-sparkle
Page 57, Position 1: Manet’s son Leon may in fact have been his half-brother because his wife Suzanne had an affair with his father.: http://old.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=32853&view=next
Page 57, Position 2: Francis and Mary Huntrodd were both born on 19 September 1600. They got married on their birthday and died on 19 September 1680, within five hours of each other.: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/39532/39532-h/39532-h.htm
Page 57, Position 3: Leonard ‘Live Forever’ Jones was an American politician who claimed he’d achieved immortality through clean living. He died in 1868, aged 71.: http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/ever-after
Page 57, Position 4: No US president has ever died in May.: http://old.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=33593&view=next
Page 58, Position 1: There are more porn sites hosted in the US than there are people in the US.: http://www.statista.com/chart/1383/top-10-adult-website-host-countries/
Page 58, Position 2: There are more people on America’s ‘suspected terrorist’ list than live in the whole of Estonia.: https://news.yahoo.com/us-terrorist-database-growing-rapid-rate-223303875.html
Page 58, Position 3: Americans eat 350 slices of pizza every second.: http://theweek.com/articles/483784/americas-pizza-obsession-by-numbers
Page 58, Position 4: The atmosphere of Venus is so hot it would cook a pizza in seven seconds.: Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Death By Black Hole
Page 59, Position 1: In 2013, after six months monitoring two suspected Chinese spy drones invading their airspace, the Indian army discovered they were Jupiter and Venus.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-23455128
Page 59, Position 2: In Florida in 2012, a woman called Crystal Methany was arrested for drug possession.: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/florida-woman-crystal-metheny-arrested-not-drugs-cops-article-1.1827168
Page 59, Position 3: In 2011, the Chinese military tried to pass off a scene from Top Gun as footage of its own air force.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/28/china-tv-news-top-gun
Page 59, Position 4: In 2010, a doctor in Blackpool spent £1,200 trying to win a giant cuddly toy at a hoopla stall.: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/may/26/fairground
Page 60, Position 1: The all-time fastest-selling Playmobil figure, issued in 2015, is Martin Luther, complete with quill pen and German Bible.: http://www.newsweek.com/martin-luther-playmobil-toy-sells-out-germany-following-record-breaking-demand-306329
Page 60, Position 2: The American version of Meccano is called Erector.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/christmas/3795784/Toy-stories-Combination-of-luck-and-skill-that-gave-birth-to-some-of-our-favourite-games.html
Page 60, Position 3: Pixar accidentally deleted Toy Story 2 halfway through making it.: http://mentalfloss.com/uk/entertainment/27204/how-one-line-of-text-nearly-killed-toy-story-2
Page 60, Position 4: Keira Knightley’s first name is a spelling mistake by her mother.: http://flavorwire.com/newswire/keira-knightleys-name-is-just-a-spelling-error/
Page 61, Position 1: Most US pop songs are written for people with a reading age of nine.: http://www.neatorama.com/2015/05/22/Study-Popular-Song-Lyrics-Are-Written-at-a-Third-Grade-Reading-LevelAnd-Are-Dropping/
Page 61, Position 2: The real name of the rapper Akon is Aliaune Damala Bouga Time Bongo Puru Nacka Lu Lu Lu Badara Akon Thiam.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akon
Page 61, Position 3: ‘Waterloo Sunset’, by the Kinks, was originally called ‘Liverpool Sunset’.: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/behind-the-song-1149222.html
Page 61, Position 4: The theme tune for Desert Island Discs was inspired by the view over Bognor Regis.: http://observer.theguardian.com/comment/story/0,6903,668806,00.html
Page 62, Position 1: The world’s oldest footprints outside Africa were found on a beach in Norfolk.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26025763
Page 62, Position 2: The world’s oldest spider’s web was found in amber in East Sussex.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/7925629.stm
Page 62, Position 3: The world’s most complete fossil of a Tyrannosaurus rex has its teeth wrapped round the most complete fossil of a triceratops.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2387727/Astonishing-fossil-immortalises-8-foot-dinosaurs-locked-mortal-combat-fetch-record-6-MILLION-auction.html
Page 62, Position 4: When the dinosaurs were alive, there were active volcanoes on the Moon.: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2015/01/volcanoes-on-the-moon-were-active-during-the-age-of-the-dinosaurs-todays-most-popular.html
Page 63, Position 1: A restaurant in Lanzarote cooks its food using the heat from a volcano.: http://www.treehugger.com/travel/lanzarote-restaurant-uses-heat-volcano-cook-food.html
Page 63, Position 2: The Shredded Wheat company once had a restaurant offering Shredded Wheat ice cream and roast turkey served with Shredded Wheat stuffing.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Perky
Page 63, Position 3: The Tlatelcomila cannibals of ancient Mexico ate human flesh with chilli sauce.: http://www.ottawasun.com/2015/05/21/ancient-cannibals-liked-their-meat-smothered-in-chilli-sauce-study
Page 63, Position 4: The American criminal known as ‘the Swiss Cheese Pervert’ for having sex covered in cheese is from Philadelphia.: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/06/19/swiss-cheese-pervert-sentenced--philadelphia/11003245/
Page 64, Position 1: Uncle Ben’s rice was invented in Britain by a German chemist.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Ben%27s_%28rice%29
Page 64, Position 2: Ninjas sent secret messages using coloured grains of rice.: http://www.ninjaencyclopedia.com/weapon/goshiki-mai.html
Page 64, Position 3: British war censors found James Joyce’s book Ulysses so difficult to read that they were convinced it was written in code.: The Economist 17 June 2014
Page 64, Position 4: The world’s most successful hacker was himself hacked and arrested because his password was his cat’s name plus ‘123’.: http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/security-it/chewy-123-fbis-mostwanted-cybercriminal-used-cats-name-as-password-20141115-11nan3.html
Page 65, Position 1: The underwater cable that powers the Internet in Southeast Asia is being eaten by sharks.: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/08/15/shark_attacks_threaten_google_s_undersea_internet_cables_video.html
Page 65, Position 2: One in six dolphins in the Bahamas have been bitten by a shark.: http://justingregg.com/one-out-of-every-six-dolphins-in-the-bahamas-has-been-bitten-by-a-shark/
Page 65, Position 3: The word ‘Godzilla’ means ‘Gorilla-Whale’.: http://spinoff.comicbookresources.com/2014/05/21/movie-legends-revealed-was-godzilla-originally-going-to-be-a-giant-octopus/
Page 65, Position 4: A crayfish can grow new brain cells from its blood cells.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26042-brain-regeneration-crayfish-turn-blood-into-neurons.html#.U_HkcBaNVZg
Page 66, Position 1: Penguins can’t taste fish.: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-genetic-evidence-loss-basic-penguins.html
Page 66, Position 2: Catfish hunt pigeons.: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0050840
Page 66, Position 3: Owls sunbathe.: British Wildlife Magazine, August 2014
Page 66, Position 4: Dolphins can’t sneeze.: BBC Focus Magazine, October 2014
Page 67, Position 1: Because there are 10 billion trillion nematode worms, the vast majority of animals don’t have legs.: BBC Focus Magazine, October 2014
Page 67, Position 2: The oldest known snake fossil had four feet.: http://www.livescience.com/51649-four-legged-snake-fossil.html
Page 67, Position 3: Some male spiders have special legs designed to hold females’ jaws open during sex so they don’t get eaten.: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/559817/spider/47811/Silk
Page 67, Position 4: Carib cannibals slit the legs of their victims and ate them stuffed with pimientos.: http://guidetocaribbeanvacations.com/history/caribs.htm
Page 68, Position 1: Before the invention of anaesthesia, amputating a leg took under a minute.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1045755/With-rusty-old-saw-like-Victorian-surgeon-amputate-leg-30-seconds-flat-One-snag--hadnt-invented-anaesthetic.html
Page 68, Position 2: Smokers are 16 times more likely to have a limb amputated than non-smokers.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-360870/Smoking-cost-arm-leg--literally.html
Page 68, Position 3: Pez dispensers are shaped like cigarette lighters because they were designed to help stop smoking.: http://www.pez.com/history/
Page 68, Position 4: Four of the six ‘Marlboro men’ have died of smoking-related diseases.: Delayed Gratification Quarterly, Issue 14
Page 69, Position 1: The music on the anti-piracy advert used on all DVDs was itself pirated.: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/01/29/3678851.htm
Page 69, Position 2: 10% of all the food stolen in Italy in 2006 was Parmesan.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/03/italy.barbaramcmahon1
Page 69, Position 3: 1.5 million trolleys are stolen from British supermarkets every year.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2335571/Fed-scourge-abandoned-supermarket-trolleys-New-app-lets-report-collected.html
Page 69, Position 4: You could fit all 3,561 Tesco stores in the UK into an area the size of the City of London.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1319718/Tesco-numbers-Employs-472-000-people-makes-6K-minute.html
Page 70, Position 1: The 65 square miles of northern France that are still uninhabitable after the First World War will take 300 years to make safe.: http://www.neatorama.com/2015/05/31/The-Forbidden-Zone-65-Square-Miles-of-France-Still-Uninhabitable-after-World-War-I/
Page 70, Position 2: In the last 500 years, a third of the floods in the southern Netherlands were created by humans as weapons of war.: http://www.heritagedaily.com/2015/06/floods-as-war-weapons/107441
Page 70, Position 3: All the American war dead on European soil were buried facing away from Germany, apart from George S. Patton, who is facing his troops.: http://media.clemson.edu/ia/programs/exchange-info/maastricht.pdf
Page 70, Position 4: Every hour, one US war veteran commits suicide.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dustin-demoss/veteran-suicide-rate_b_6417182.html
Page 71, Position 1: In the month after Marilyn Monroe killed herself, there was a 12% jump in the US suicide rate.: New Scientist 23 August 2014
Page 71, Position 2: At least one in 10 people in the Stone Age were murdered, compared to one in 100,000 today.: New Scientist 19 April 2014
Page 71, Position 3: Neanderthals hunted and ate pigeons.: New Scientist 16 August 2014
Page 71, Position 4: Bhutan has an official yeti hunter. He hasn’t found any (at least, not yeti).: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn583-mystery-beast.html#.VXFZGmRViko
Page 72, Position 1: In the early 2000s, Tonga’s finance minister was also its official court jester.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1582739.stm
Page 72, Position 2: The copreae were jesters in the Roman imperial court. Their name translates as the ‘Little Shits’.: Times Literary Suppliment, 15 August 2014
Page 72, Position 3: Roman slaves had their foreheads tattooed with the words ‘Stop me, I’m a runaway.’: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dKnFZa4LNjQC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=Roman+slaves+often+had+the+words+'Stop+me,+I'm+a+runaway'+tattooed+onto+their+foreheads.&source=bl&ots=y4qMy2RKxD&sig=y1uICAdFp3-X7hL403otO8astU0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDAQ6AEwA2oVChMIs7OIoqCPxgIVgm8UCh2fvgBa
Page 72, Position 4: There are more tattoos on British teachers than there are on members of the British armed services.: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/jul/20/tattoos
Page 73, Position 1: Henry III of France loved the game of cup-and-ball so much he set up schools to teach people how to play.: http://www.abc.net.au/abc3/myplace/narrowband/1818/toys.htm
Page 73, Position 2: Jack Nicholson once got detention at school every single day for a year.: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/interview--great-film-jack-now-lets-talk-about-you-jack-nicholson-1474720.html
Page 73, Position 3: US chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer was at school with Barbra Streisand. She had a crush on him.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer
Page 73, Position 4: According to North Korea’s official teachers’ manual, Kim Jong-un learnt to drive at the age of three.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/kim-jongun-learned-to-drive-at-age-three-north-korean-children-to-be-taught-10165694.html
Page 74, Position 1: In 2000, Ushers brewery in Trowbridge was dismantled and rebuilt in a cabbage patch in North Korea.: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/kim-jongale-how-did-ushers-brewery-of-trowbridge-end-up-in-north-korea-producing-pyongyangs-number-one-beer--and-what-did-it-take-to-set-up-a-taste-test-back-in-wiltshire-9268051.html
Page 74, Position 2: In the 1930s, England had 3,000 dedicated ginger-beer breweries.: http://www.worksopguardian.co.uk/news/local/ginger-beer-is-back-1-631550
Page 74, Position 3: In 1710, the boys of Winchester College rioted over inadequate beer rations.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/11469980/The-Old-Boys-the-Decline-and-Rise-of-the-Public-School-by-David-Turner.html
Page 74, Position 4: The state treasurer of Alabama is called Young Boozer.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Boozer
Page 75, Position 1: The largest poster ever produced features the president and prime minister of Turkey and is two-thirds the size of a football pitch.: http://news.videonews.us/turkey-erdogan-davutoglu-poster-breaks-guinness-record-2921040.html
Page 75, Position 2: US President James Garfield’s favourite meal was squirrel soup.: Sam Kean, The Tale of the Duelling Neurosurgeons
Page 75, Position 3: Teddy bears are named after President Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt.: http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/site/c.elKSIdOWIiJ8H/b.8684621/k.6632/Real_Teddy_Bear_Story.htm
Page 75, Position 4: Teddy Roosevelt’s sons Theodore and Kermit were the first Westerners to shoot a giant panda.: E. Elena Songster, A Natural Place for Nationalism
Page 76, Position 1: A sniper was originally someone who shot snipe.: The Oxford English Dictionary
Page 76, Position 2: Merry-go-rounds were originally a training device for knights.: http://www.holyokemerrygoround.org/history.html
Page 76, Position 3: The word ‘aquarium’ originally meant ‘a watering place for cattle’.: http://www.zsl.org/zsl-london-zoo/exhibits/the-history-of-the-aquarium
Page 76, Position 4: One of the names originally proposed for Neanderthals was Homo stupidus.: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/spelling.html
Page 77, Position 1: Humans have shorter attention spans than goldfish.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11607315/Humans-have-shorter-attention-span-than-goldfish-thanks-to-smartphones.html
Page 77, Position 2: The average woman deletes four selfies for every one she’s happy with.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3046315/Why-women-prefer-SIXTH-selfie-Ladies-delete-five-photos-settling-one-feel-comfortable-posting-online.html
Page 77, Position 3: The only person ever killed by a boa constrictor was an escapologist who got into a coffin with one.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VDIbbpl_ktgC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=%22killed+by+a+boa+constrictor%22&source=bl&ots=L6raqZKXU0&sig=E5theaiOePRdvB4uZUfbLO8sRMk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uhQ6VejGAdHjaMWWgcgK&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22killed%20by%20a%20boa%20constrictor%22&f=false
Page 77, Position 4: There are six billion kinds of knot.: http://www.math.uvic.ca/~rmjk/Knot-Just-Another-Math-Article.pdf
Page 78, Position 1: The only meteorite known to have hit a person is called the ‘Hodges Meteorite’: it slightly injured Mrs Ann Hodges in Alabama in 1954.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/02/130220-russia-meteorite-ann-hodges-science-space-hit/
Page 78, Position 2: Isaac Newton walked out of the only opera he ever attended.: New Scientist 23 August 2014
Page 78, Position 3: Alan Shepard, the only man to play golf on the Moon, missed the ball on his first attempt.: The Handy Science Answer Book. Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
Page 78, Position 4: The Ministry of Defence owns 15 golf courses.: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/defence/article4337459.ece
Page 79, Position 1: The US government spends £300,000 a year studying the body language of other countries’ leaders.: The Economist 30 January 2015
Page 79, Position 2: The British government in the 1830s spent £17,000 developing a working model of Charles Babbage’s computer – more than twice the cost of a warship at the time.: The Economist 25 October 2014
Page 79, Position 3: In 1910, France had more aeroplanes than Germany, Britain, Italy, Russia, Japan and the US combined.: Herman Knell, To Destroy a City: Strategic Bombing and its Human Consequences in World War II
Page 79, Position 4: The front between Islamic State and the Iraqi Kurds in 2015 was 50% longer than the Western Front in 1914.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/life-under-isis-as-long-as-its-enemies-remain-divided-the-militants-will-not-be-defeated-10120917.html
Page 80, Position 1: The US military is America’s largest purchaser of explosives; number two is Disney World.: http://www.empireonline.com/features/90-disney-facts/9.asp
Page 80, Position 2: After Disney released The Princess and the Frog, more than 50 children were hospitalised with salmonella after trying to kiss frogs.: http://metro.co.uk/2010/02/01/the-princess-and-the-frog-fans-fall-ill-after-copying-film-67331/
Page 80, Position 3: Walt Disney used to pack his testicles in ice to help improve his sperm count.: http://www.fwweekly.com/2010/07/22/walt-disney-big-jerk-or-super-big-jerk/
Page 80, Position 4: 96% of sperm cells are abnormal.: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/09/05/sperm-facts-male-fertility-semen_n_5771000.html
Page 81, Position 1: A whale’s sperm cell is about the same size as a human one.: http://www.harmlesslion.com/dolphins/rm_test.htm
Page 81, Position 2: Starfish breathe and smell through their feet.: http://www.vsf.cape.com/~jdale/science/science.htm
Page 81, Position 3: Sniffer dogs can be trained to find USB sticks.: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/police-dogs-trained-detect-sd-cards-usb-memory-sticks-portable-hard-drives-1510850
Page 81, Position 4: Bats’ throats contain the fastest muscles of any mammal.: http://sciencenordic.com/bats-have-fastest-muscles-all-mammals
Page 82, Position 1: After fights, Roman gladiators drank vinegar mixed with ash to help their bodies recover.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2801412/roman-gladiators-ate-vegetarian-diet-washed-sports-drink-plant-ashes-vinegar.html
Page 82, Position 2: Gladiators prepared for combat by covering themselves with marshmallow sap.: http://collegeofcuriosity.com/2-gladiators/
Page 82, Position 3: Three members of ITV’s Gladiators team were also in the film Gladiator.: http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/gladiators/31574/itvs-gladiators-where-are-they-now
Page 82, Position 4: The first pornographic movie came out in 1895, a few months after the first regular movie.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_the_United_States
Page 83, Position 1: The Big Parade (1925) was the first film to include a swear word. As it was a silent movie, the word ‘damn’ appeared on a dialogue card.: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015624/quotes
Page 83, Position 2: In The Exorcist, the sound effect of the girl’s neck ratcheting round was made by the director twisting his cracked leather wallet.: http://www.vulture.com/2013/10/30-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-exorcist-movies.html
Page 83, Position 3: Airplane! was released in Germany as The Unbelievable Journey in a Crazy Aeroplane.: http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/13782/50-movie-titles-that-got-lost-in-translation
Page 83, Position 4: The Italian for ‘break a leg’ is ‘in culo alla balena!’ – literally ‘into the arse of a whale!’: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/in_culo_alla_balena
Page 84, Position 1: The Arabic for ‘incubator’ literally translates as ‘chicken machine’.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-chicken-conquered-the-world-87583657/?no-ist=&page=2
Page 84, Position 2: When Fawlty Towers was broadcast in Spain, Manuel became an Italian named Paolo.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_(Fawlty_Towers)
Page 84, Position 3: The Roman poet Catullus claimed the Spanish used their morning urine as a mouthwash.: Leonard A Curchin, The Romanization of Central Spain
Page 84, Position 4: In 2015, Islamic State threatened 80 lashes for anyone caught watching Real Madrid play Barcelona.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-3012563/Islamic-State-militants-threatened-80-lashes-anybody-caught-watching-el-Clasico-game-product-decadent-West.html
Page 85, Position 1: The first version of football’s offside rule stated that players shouldn’t ‘loiter’ near the opposing goal.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_rules
Page 85, Position 2: In a game of football in 1280, a player was killed after running into another player’s dagger.: http://northeasthistorytour.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/ulghams-place-in-football-history.html
Page 85, Position 3: Before they got whistles, football referees waved a handkerchief.: When Saturday Comes, The Half Decent Football Book.
Page 85, Position 4: FIFA has 18 more members than the UN.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13616328
Page 86, Position 1: Until the FA banned women’s football in 1921, it was more popular than men’s.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30329606
Page 86, Position 2: There are fewer women on corporate boards in America than there are men named John.: http://www.themarysue.com/not-enough-women-board-members/
Page 86, Position 3: If your parents are happily married, your risk of divorce decreases by 14%.: http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1209784,00.html
Page 86, Position 4: Under medieval Welsh law women could divorce their husbands if they had bad breath.: Margaret Schaus, Women and Gender in Medieval Europe
Page 87, Position 1: On the streets of Mumbai, you can get your ears cleaned for 25 pence an ear.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18922248
Page 87, Position 2: When the telephone was invented, there were concerns it would create left-eared people.: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/in-1858-people-said-the-telegraph-was-too-fast-for-the-truth/375171/
Page 87, Position 3: In 1969, to protect them from noise elephants living near Heathrow were given ear muffs.: http://www.britishpathe.com/video/elephants-with-ear-muffs/query/69+81
Page 87, Position 4: An elephant’s sense of smell is so good it can distinguish between members of different African tribes.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3310923/Elephants-use-smell-to-identify-enemy-tribes.html
Page 88, Position 1: Dogs investigate bad smells with their right nostril and good smells with their left.: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/dog-spies/what-you-don-t-know-about-your-dog-s-nostrils/
Page 88, Position 2: The Navajo name for Adolf Hitler translates as ‘he who smells his moustache’.: http://www.defense.gov/specials/nativeamerican01/wwii.html
Page 88, Position 3: Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, smells like a mixture of petrol and farts.: http://www.iflscience.com/space/titan-smells-gasoline-and-farts
Page 88, Position 4: Moles smell in stereo.: http://news.discovery.com/animals/the-mole-smells-in-stereo-130205.htm
Page 89, Position 1: B&Q recalled its mole repellent from Northern Irish stores in 2008 after it was pointed out there are no moles in Ireland.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7335006.stm
Page 89, Position 2: Moles can dig at a rate equivalent to a man shifting 3,000 shovel-loads of earth an hour.: http://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Talpa_europaea/#fc3d7d8345e6df3ae8879bc051aa9612
Page 89, Position 3: Mankind has reached 20 billion miles beyond the Earth but only seven and a half miles inside it.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole
Page 89, Position 4: A gram of soil contains a million different species.: New Scientist 19 April 2014
Page 90, Position 1: Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber from Return of the Jedi spent two weeks in space on the shuttle Discovery in 2007.: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/behindscenes/Whatsgoingup.html
Page 90, Position 2: The International Space Station is the single most expensive object ever built.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/59662/15-out-world-facts-about-international-space-station
Page 90, Position 3: Three-quarters of astronauts take sleeping pills.: New Scientist 16 August 2014
Page 90, Position 4: South Korea shut down its entire space programme in 2014 when its only astronaut resigned.: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/entire-south-korean-space-programme-shuts-down-sole-astronaut-quits-1460988
Page 91, Position 1: The word ‘bull’ means ‘light bulb’ in North Korea and ‘testicle’ in South Korea.: http://listverse.com/2015/04/29/10-myths-and-misconceptions-about-world-languages/
Page 91, Position 2: At their current birth rate, there will be no South Koreans at all by 2750.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/southkorea/11054817/South-Koreans-will-be-extinct-by-2750.html
Page 91, Position 3: The rate of extinction for species in the 20th century was 100 times higher than it would have been without human impact.: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/19/humans-creating-sixth-great-extinction-of-animal-species-say-scientists
Page 91, Position 4: The iceberg that hit the Titanic was 3,000 years old; it formed when Tutankhamun was pharaoh.: http://www.wired.com/2012/04/titanic-iceberg-history/
Page 92, Position 1: Tutankhamun was the owner of all the ancient Egyptian socks that have survived.: André J. Veldmeijer, Tutankhamunâ€™s Footwear: Studies of Ancient Egyptian Footwear
Page 92, Position 2: The only carnivorous mouse in North America eats scorpions and howls at the Moon.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23072-zoologger-mouse-eats-scorpions-and-howls-at-the-moon.html
Page 92, Position 3: Sanskrit has 40 words for ‘mouse’, including ‘mushka’, which means both ‘little mouse’ and ‘testicle’.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mouse
Page 92, Position 4: Agatha Christie gave the rights to The Mousetrap to her grandson as a birthday present.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/7970312/Agatha-Christies-family-criticise-Wikipedia-for-revealing-Mousetrap-ending.html
Page 93, Position 1: Hercule Poirot was described by Agatha Christie as a ‘detestable, bombastic, tiresome, egocentric little creep’.: http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/arts-feature/9126162/murder-motive-and-moustachery/
Page 93, Position 2: Daniel Defoe once had a job harvesting musk from the anal glands of cats.: http://interestingliterature.com/2014/11/07/the-interesting-life-of-daniel-defoe/
Page 93, Position 3: T. S. Eliot wore pale-green make-up. Nobody knows why.: https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-316939160/t-s-eliot-s-green-face-powder-a-mystery-solved
Page 93, Position 4: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis once went to a party dressed as polar bears. It wasn’t a fancy-dress party.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7_hbAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT29&lpg=PT29&dq=tolkien+party+polar+bear&source=bl&ots=Q_k7pS6ArW&sig=84aE3uNiG0P4k3dX8HVaMGII0Aw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sPRPVMjPOsXcPbH7gYgH&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=tolkien%20party%20polar%20bear&f=false
Page 94, Position 1: If a mother polar bear fails to double her weight during pregnancy, the foetus is reabsorbed into her body.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-animal-is-the-best-mother-158591597
Page 94, Position 2: Aztec mothers who died in childbirth were regarded as highly as warriors who died in battle.: http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/aztec-life/giving-birth-was-fighting-a-battle
Page 94, Position 3: The chance of two expectant mothers with the same due date giving birth on the same day is one in 200.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31046144
Page 94, Position 4: Novercaphobia is the fear of stepmothers.: http://www.phobiasource.com/novercaphobia-fear-of-your-step-mother/
Page 95, Position 1: Mother cats stimulate their kittens to defecate by licking their bottoms.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=NfIE59BYRRYC&pg=PT280&lpg=PT280&dq=Cat+mothers+stimulate++licking+their+bottoms.&source=bl&ots=H4pLRFSGki&sig=-IE7Mq8wqTp0UID4P9HjH6m8fJs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAmoVChMI6O3V7s6PxgIVgZ4UCh20WgCX#v=onepage&q=Cat%20mothers%20stimulate%20%20licking%20their%20bottoms.&f=false
Page 95, Position 2: Being born in September increases your chance of getting into Oxford or Cambridge by 12%.: BBC Focus Magazine, October 2014
Page 95, Position 3: Stephen Hawking was born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo’s death.: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bphawk.html
Page 95, Position 4: Emily Brontë, who wrote Wuthering Heights, and Kate Bush, who sang ‘Wuthering Heights’, were both born on 30 July, 140 years apart.: http://lilacinmay.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/art-140-years-apart.html
Page 96, Position 1: One in 20 Twitter accounts is a non-human spam bot.: New Scientist 2 August 2014
Page 96, Position 2: Even if teleportation were possible, there is so much data in a human being that teleporting just one person would take 350,000 times longer than the age of the universe.: BBC Focus Magazine, September 2014
Page 96, Position 3: Saturn V, the tallest-ever space rocket, was taller than all but one of the trees on Earth.: BBC Focus Magazine, September 2014
Page 96, Position 4: Apollo 11’s fuel consumption was seven inches to the gallon.: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/28634/was-the-mileage-of-the-apollo-spaceships-7-inches-to-the-gallon-for-their-moon-f
Page 97, Position 1: The maximum length that a fly can grow to is two and a half inches.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20150614-the-biggest-flies-in-the-world
Page 97, Position 2: During the Second World War, people in Okinawa read at night using light from phosphorescent marine animals.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ypJYi6ByHzcC&pg=PA122&lpg=PA122&dq=okinawa+reading+phosphorescent+sea+creatures&source=bl&ots=IA74xZrACH&sig=WE0l_-8ZEPN7m35aE-YTWNhesC4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YjZOVNjuDqyQ7Ab7yoHgCw&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=okinawa%20reading%20phosphorescent%20sea%20creatures&f=false
Page 97, Position 3: In the last 200 years, the world’s oceans have absorbed more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide released by humans.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/oceans-could-lose-1-trillion-in-value-due-to-acidification/
Page 97, Position 4: There are at least a billion tons of ice on the Moon.: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/2014/10/21/interview-the-new-moon/
Page 98, Position 1: People sleep 20 minutes longer on nights when there is a full moon.: http://www.livescience.com/46890-most-interesting-science-news-articles-of-the-week.html
Page 98, Position 2: City skies are lighter on cloudy nights than on clear nights (even when there is a full moon) because the clouds reflect back the light pollution.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/light-pollution-puts-an-end-to-dark-and-stormy-night/
Page 98, Position 3: Moonshine alcohol is called ‘Crazy Mary’ in Brazil, ‘Kill me quick’ in Kenya and ‘Push me, I push you’ in Nigeria.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine_by_country
Page 98, Position 4: If you get a zebrafish drunk, other zebrafish will follow it around.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/inkfish/2014/05/19/drunk-fish-convince-sober-ones-to-follow-them-around/
Page 99, Position 1: Male mosquitofish have such large penises they can’t swim straight.: http://foundation.arts.ucsb.edu/~art7d/w13/silva/harrison_justin/scienceProject.html
Page 99, Position 2: The man with the longest penis on record is a data entry clerk from Manhattan.: http://www.salon.com/2014/08/13/id_go_out_in_public_wearing_tight_pants_to_shock_people_life_as_the_man_with_the_worlds_largest_penis/
Page 99, Position 3: From 1994 to 2000, Manhattan’s Twins restaurant was staffed entirely by identical twins.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/57406/twins-mid-90s-nyc-restaurant-staffed-entirely-identical-twins
Page 99, Position 4: The world record for the most people sat on one chair is 1,831.: http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2015/03/23/japan-city-sets-world-record-for-most-people-sitting-in-one-chair/
Page 100, Position 1: The first execution by electric chair in 1890 took eight minutes.: BBC History Magazine, August 2014
Page 100, Position 2: While St Lawrence was being executed on a red-hot griddle, he asked to be turned over as ‘one side was perfectly cooked’.: http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=366
Page 100, Position 3: St Simon and St James the Less were sawn to death.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cv7zCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=St+James+the+Less+sawn&source=bl&ots=fZPzl0-s2j&sig=pcRqRTHld8omRvtQt-YSGsRgWvU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAmoVChMIxNi2ut7gyAIVRQQaCh1crgyK#v=onepage&q=St%20James%20the%20Less%20sawn&f=false"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_sawing
Page 100, Position 4: As the hands of St Kevin were outstretched in prayer, a blackbird laid an egg in them, and he stayed in that position till it hatched.: http://www.luminarium.org/mythology/ireland/stkevin.htm
Page 101, Position 1: Magpies prefer blue items to shiny ones.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28797519
Page 101, Position 2: Rats dream about places they want to explore.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/06/26/rats-dream-places/
Page 101, Position 3: To stay alive, a hummingbird needs to eat 300 fruit flies a day.: Michael Bright, The frog with self-cleaning feet
Page 101, Position 4: An attempt to make the world’s biggest sandwich in Iran failed when the crowd ate it before it could be measured.: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-10-18/world-record-sandwich-iranians-eat-evidence/545616
Page 102, Position 1: There is a renewable-energy recruitment agency called Earth, Wind and Hire.: http://www.earthwindandhire.com/
Page 102, Position 2: One of the world’s biggest lift manufacturers is called Schindler’s Lifts.: http://www.schindler.com/com/internet/en/about-schindler.html
Page 102, Position 3: One of the crown jewels is called ‘The Pointless Sword of Mercy’ because it has its end cut off.: http://getasword.com/blog/1942-british-state-swords-crown-jewels-of-the-united-kingdom/
Page 102, Position 4: The pipe tobacco Baby’s Bottom was named for the smoothness of its taste.: http://www.gqtobaccos.com/pipe-tobaccos/dunhill-my-mixture-bb1938-babys-bottom/#.VTD0T5N1w4l
Page 103, Position 1: The most popular exhibit in the Smithsonian’s modernphysics collection is Einstein’s pipe.: http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_334905
Page 103, Position 2: Darts evolved from a game called ‘puff and dart’, which was played in pubs with a blowpipe.: http://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Darts.htm
Page 103, Position 3: During the Second World War, Canada tested killer darts on sheep dressed in military uniform.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8119653.stm
Page 103, Position 4: The last time an elephant took part in battle was in 1885, for Vietnam against France.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_elephant
Page 104, Position 1: During the Second World War, Japanese soldiers hid grenades inside coconuts and used them as weapons.: https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=t_ZPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=F1UDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6411,2444009&dq=coconut+japanese&hl=en
Page 104, Position 2: The first shot of the First World War was fired in Togo, West Africa.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30098000
Page 104, Position 3: Nigerian email scams were introduced to Nigeria by the British.: http://www.dailytrust.com.ng/weekly/index.php/notes-from-atlanta/10299-the-british-origins-of-nigerian-419-scams
Page 104, Position 4: When it rains heavily in the Sumatran rainforests, there is a corresponding drought in East Africa, 3,700 miles away.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140617092903.htm
Page 105, Position 1: The Hebrew name for the film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs translates as ‘It’s Raining Falafel’.: http://www.timesofisrael.com/hollywood-movie-titles-are-lost-in-translation/
Page 105, Position 2: J. M. Barrie nearly called Peter Pan ‘The Boy Who Hated Mothers’.: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/07/peter-pan-michael-newton
Page 105, Position 3: J. K. Rowling’s parents met at King’s Cross station.: http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/competition/2015/may/20/jk-rowling-harry-potter-kings-cross-competition
Page 105, Position 4: In 1899, Thomas and Alice Day named their newborn son Time Of.: http://home.bt.com/lifestyle/family/from-friendless-to-zebra-the-strangest-victorian-baby-names-11363962559885
Page 106, Position 1: In 1896, the 937th most popular name for a boy in the US was Josephine.: http://www.ssa.gov/
Page 106, Position 2: Linus Pauling’s sister was called Pauline.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling
Page 106, Position 3: If Napoleon’s sister Pauline got cold feet, she warmed them in the cleavage of one of her ladies-in-waiting.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29643065
Page 106, Position 4: In 1454, Philip the Good held a feast that included a lion chained to a pillar protecting a statue of a nude woman who served mulled wine from her right breast.: http://toisondor.byu.edu/perform/hurlbut.html
Page 107, Position 1: The earliest known feast consisted of 71 tortoises, roasted in their shells.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19376-tortoise-banquet-remains-of-the-oldest-feast-found.html#.VOXre7CsWMW
Page 107, Position 2: The first recorded soup dates from 10,000 bc, the first beer from 7,000 bc and the first tortillas from 6,000 bc.: http://www.foodtimeline.org
Page 107, Position 3: Sweet-and-sour sauce was eaten in medieval Britain.: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/pegge/samuel/forme_of_cury/chapter1.html
Page 107, Position 4: Condors sometimes eat so much they can’t take off.: https://www.nwf.org/Kids/Ranger-Rick/Animals/Birds/Vultures.aspx
Page 108, Position 1: Since 1972, Don Gorske from Wisconsin has eaten more than 26,000 Big Macs.: http://www.oddee.com/item_99342.aspx
Page 108, Position 2: McDonald’s used to sell bubble-gum-flavoured broccoli.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/11235527/McDonalds-nearly-served-your-kids-bubblegum-flavoured-broccoli.html
Page 108, Position 3: To digest baobab seeds, chimpanzees have to eat them, pick them out of their faeces and then eat them again.: Gerald E. Wickens, The Baobabs
Page 108, Position 4: Dog food is used to test lavatories because it has the same consistency as human faeces.: https://twitter.com/Lucy_Worsley/status/555703869033160704
Page 109, Position 1: Because dogs aren’t allowed at Selwyn College, Cambridge, the Master’s basset hound has been reclassified as ‘a very large cat’.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-28966001
Page 109, Position 2: John Adams, second president of the US, had a dog called Satan.: http://presidentialpetmuseum.com/pets/juno-satan-president-john-adams-dogs/
Page 109, Position 3: Speedy Gonzalez had a cousin called Slowpoke Rodriguez.: http://www.speedyscousin.com/
Page 109, Position 4: There have been Britons called Rhoda Turtle, Jesus Devilheart, Dick Thick and Willy Cockhead.: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Frogley-Cockhead-Crutch-Celebration-Oxfordshires-ebook/dp/B00TNT9V18
Page 110, Position 1: The NYPD’s crackdown on illegal cockfighting in 2014 was called ‘Operation Angry Birds’.: Delayed Gratification Quarterly, Issue 14
Page 110, Position 2: Policemen in Grenada wear their Twitter handles on their uniforms.: http://socialforthepeople.com/2013/06/30/police-in-granada-have-twitter-handles-on-their-uniforms-3-reasons-its-a-great-idea/
Page 110, Position 3: As punishment for misbehaviour, policemen in Thailand have to wear Hello Kitty armbands.: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/world/asia/07cnd-thai.html?_r=0
Page 110, Position 4: According to the company that created her, Hello Kitty isn’t a cat.: http://time.com/3197794/hello-kitty-not-a-cat/
Page 111, Position 1: Cats can recognise their owners’ voices but have evolved to ignore them.: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/cats-recognise-owners-voices-chose-ignore-evolution-525957
Page 111, Position 2: Every year, the Bank of England’s damaged and mutilated notes service receives claims of over £100,000 for banknotes eaten by pets.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7833505.stm
Page 111, Position 3: 83% of US pet owners refer to themselves as the animal’s ‘mom’ or ‘dad’.: http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2014/07/14/guest-post-how-our-pets-domesticated-us/
Page 111, Position 4: The UK spends five times as much on pet food as it does on baby food.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/11327761/Pet-humanisation-will-cost-Britons-7bn-this-year.html
Page 112, Position 1: Since we domesticated dogs, human brains have got smaller.: Matt Ridley, Nature via Nurture
Page 112, Position 2: The same part of your brain lights up when you hear the words ‘hammered the nail’ as it does when you actually hammer a nail.: New Scientist 18 October 2014
Page 112, Position 3: At the turn of the 20th century, animal brains were used to thicken milk.: Greg Jenner, A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Everyday Life
Page 112, Position 4: Donkey’s milk is the best natural substitute for human breast milk.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13208989
Page 113, Position 1: London milkmaids used to shout ‘mi-ow’ in the streets. It was short for ‘milk below’.: Deborah Valenze, Milk: A Local and Global History
Page 113, Position 2: The arrival of cats in North America led to the extinction of 40 species of dog.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3196270/So-s-dogs-hate-cats-Fossils-reveal-felines-drove-40-species-canines-extinction-arriving-North-America.html
Page 113, Position 3: Snake’s venom evolved from saliva.: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/01/26/biting-the-hand-that-feeds-the-evolution-of-snake-venom/
Page 113, Position 4: A boa constrictor monitors its victim’s heart, and stops squeezing when it stops beating.: Michael Bright, The frog with self-cleaning feet
Page 114, Position 1: The first female chief of the Cherokee Nation was called Wilma Mankiller.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilma_Mankiller
Page 114, Position 2: There are American politicians called Dick Swett, Frank Shmuck and Butch Otter.: http://www.frankschmuck.com/"https://www.congress.gov/member/dick-swett/S001113"http://www.otter4idaho.com/
Page 114, Position 3: More Americans think that Barack Obama is a Muslim than accept the theory of evolution.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2154923/Half-Americans-believe-creationism-just-15-percent-accept-evolution.html
Page 114, Position 4: The area of land seized from Native Americans by the US since 1776 is 25 times larger than the UK.: http://aeon.co/magazine/society/americans-must-not-forget-their-history-of-dispossession/
Page 115, Position 1: The most common job in America is truck driver.: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/truck-driving-may-be-america-s-most-popular-job--182859840.html
Page 115, Position 2: Until 1925, drivers going east–west in New York stopped on amber and drove on green, but drivers going north–south stopped on green and drove on amber.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/57267/why-does-red-mean-stop-and-green-mean-go
Page 115, Position 3: Since 1902, the New York Times has published at least five articles announcing the return of the monocle.: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/history-new-york-times-monocle.html
Page 115, Position 4: In 1952, the Great Smog of London was so bad that blind people led sighted people home from the train stations.: http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/almanac/arc2012/alm12dec.htm
Page 116, Position 1: Due to heavy snow in 1891, the 3 p.m. train service from Paddington to Plymouth left on 9 March and arrived on 13 March.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/in-the-bleak-mid-winter-snow-it-all-guide-193171
Page 116, Position 2: In 2014, not a single 07.29 a.m. Brighton–London Victoria train reached its destination on time.: http://www.carolinelucas.com/latest/caroline-rail-privatisation-has-flatly-failed
Page 116, Position 3: The hands of the clock on Bolivia’s congressional building move anticlockwise to encourage people to think creatively.: The Economist 28 June 2014
Page 116, Position 4: Scientists have performed brain surgery on cockroaches.: http://www.iflscience.com/brain/brain-brain-interface-allows-humans-control-cockroaches-their-minds
Page 117, Position 1: 80% of a cricket is edible, compared to 40% of a cow.: New Scientist 24 January 2014
Page 117, Position 2: 64% of the diet of cane toads is other cane toads.: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/aug/05/research.highereducation
Page 117, Position 3: Lemon ants taste of lemon.: http://www.vivatravelguides.com/south-america/ecuador/ecuador-articles/eating-lemon-ants-in-the-rain/
Page 117, Position 4: You have taste receptors in your anus.: http://www.businessinsider.com/taste-receptors-in-testes-and-fertility-2013-7?IR=T
Page 118, Position 1: Near the anus of the horseshoe bat is an extra pair of false nipples. The baby bats use them as handles to cling to.: Smither's Mammals of Southern Africa: A Guide
Page 118, Position 2: Bees can fly higher than Mount Everest.: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/02/04/bumblebees-can-fly-higher-than-mount-everest-scientists-find/
Page 118, Position 3: The world’s largest saw was used to cut through a mountain in Kazakhstan.: http://metro.co.uk/2015/01/27/this-is-the-biggest-saw-in-the-world-and-it-can-cut-through-mountains-5038735/
Page 118, Position 4: There are mountains in Antarctica called Nipple Peak, Dick Peaks and Mount Cocks.: http://www.geographic.org/geographic_names/antname.php?uni=10746&fid=antgeo_117
Page 119, Position 1: 16th-century fabric colours included Puke, Gooseturd, Dead Spaniard and Dying Monkey.: http://www.bucks-retinue.org.uk/index.php/guide-book/notes-on-making/medieval-colours
Page 119, Position 2: The word ‘donkey’ used to rhyme with ‘monkey’.: The Oxford English Dictionary
Page 119, Position 3: The word ‘fizzle’ once meant ‘to fart without making a noise’.: Mark Morton, Cupboard Love 2: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities
Page 119, Position 4: Fartplan is Danish for ‘timetable’.: http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2001/jan/21/familyholidays.family.norway
Page 120, Position 1: The longest-ever Viking longship was unearthed by accident during renovations of a Danish longship museum.: http://www.historyextra.com/news/longest-known-viking-ship-Roskilde-6-goes-display-exhibition-british-museum
Page 120, Position 2: The Vikings had a god and a goddess of skiing.: http://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/giants/skadi/
Page 120, Position 3: ‘Skull’, ‘slaughter’, ‘hell’, ‘weak’, ‘anger’ and ‘freckles’ are all words of Viking origin.: http://www.etymonline.com
Page 120, Position 4: The most common inscription found on Viking coins is ‘There is no god but Allah.’: http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/press/bp-magazine/observations/the-vikings-have-landed.html
Page 121, Position 1: Male coin spiders only have sex once. After mating, they chew off their own genitals.
Page 121, Position 2: To be soft enough to chew, the first-ever breakfast cereal had to be soaked in milk overnight.: http://www.mrbreakfast.com/cereal_detail.asp?id=174
Page 121, Position 3: Potatoes soaked in vinegar, soda water and biscuits were what Lord Byron lived on in his twenties. He weighed less than nine stone.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16351761
Page 121, Position 4: Kanye West hasn’t smiled in photographs since he noticed that people in old paintings don’t smile either.: http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/jan/27/-sp-kanye-west-on-the-real-reason-he-never-smiles-paparazzi
Page 122, Position 1: Your computer knows more about you than your friends and family do.: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1418680112
Page 122, Position 2: You are genetically more similar to your friends than to strangers.: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jul/19/genetics-dna-biology-data-selection-friends
Page 122, Position 3: The ‘like’ button on the Latin version of Facebook says mihi placet – ‘it pleases me’.: http://blogs.transparent.com/latin/the-latin-facebook-challenge-how-long-will-you-last/
Page 122, Position 4: The first item listed on eBay was a broken laser pointer.: http://ebay.about.com/od/ebaylifestyle/a/el_history.htm
Page 123, Position 1: Wikipedia has a page on ‘The Reliability of Wikipedia’.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia
Page 123, Position 2: The Wikipedia page for ‘pedant’ has been edited more than 500 times.: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pedant&offset=20061022014010&limit=250&action=history
Page 123, Position 3: Three times as many people follow Russell Brand on Twitter as all 650 British MPs combined.: The Week 14 February 2014
Page 123, Position 4: The banned website most often clicked by MPs in the Houses of Parliament is sexymp.co.uk.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/website-where-users-rate-mps-on-their-sexiness-was-the-most-viewed-banned-site-in-parliament-last-10356624.html
Page 124, Position 1: A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and Internet connections on Earth.: http://www.cnet.com/news/human-brain-has-more-switches-than-all-computers-on-earth/#ixzz15gKimfLp
Page 124, Position 2: A single human nose produces about a cupful of mucus a day.: Mick Oâ€™Hare, Do polar bears get lonely?
Page 124, Position 3: Over 7,000 species of plants and animals have been cultivated for human consumption, but just four crops – rice, wheat, corn and potatoes – make up two-thirds of everything we eat.: http://education.nationalgeographic.co.uk/encyclopedia/food-staple/
Page 124, Position 4: More fish are farmed every year than pigs, sheep, cows and chickens put together.: Times Literary Supplement 25 July 2014
Page 125, Position 1: The consumption of chickens in ancient Rome was restricted to one per person per meal.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iFSPK9dWqQgC&pg=PA125&lpg=PA125&dq=law+161+BC,++chicken+consumption+rome&source=bl&ots=CixZQ8EWOp&sig=tH6-W6eSPrslO74W-QJJ3lkn3ek&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEoQ6AEwB2oVChMIn-eIwPeRxgIVpRXbCh0SeABo#v=onepage&q=law%20161%20BC%2C%20%20chicken%20consumption%20rome&f=false
Page 125, Position 2: Nando’s is the world’s biggest buyer of South African art.: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6cd5bdbe-9afc-11e4-b651-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3Q1aJuWkB
Page 125, Position 3: The oldest human art is spray-painted graffiti from Indonesia.: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/humanitys-earliest-art-was-spray-painted-graffiti/381259/
Page 125, Position 4: In the Cook Islands, online business domains end in .co.ck: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ck
Page 126, Position 1: Penis worms can turn their mouths inside out and walk on their throats.: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/compiling-a-dentists-handbook-for-penis-worms
Page 126, Position 2: Tapeworms can cause epilepsy.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/bodyhorrors/2015/06/30/tapeworm-associated-epilepsy-rise/
Page 126, Position 3: Eating chocolate improves your memory, but only if you eat so much of it that it’s bad for your health.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26455-can-chocolate-boost-memory-only-in-insane-amounts.html#.VSZ3KYsbCi4
Page 126, Position 4: Smoky bacon Pringles, prawn cocktail Walkers and McCoy’s sizzling BBQ crisps are all suitable for vegans.: http://www.peta.org.uk/blog/44-accidentally-vegan-snack-foods/
Page 127, Position 1: The Yorkshire village of Fryup turned down a request by the animal-rights charity PETA to change its name to Vegan Fryup.: http://www.peta.org.uk/blog/unusual-request-north-yorkshire-hamlet/
Page 127, Position 2: There is a village in Russia where every single person knows how to tightrope walk.: http://theweek.com/captured/443906/tiny-russian-village-where-everyones-tightrope-walker
Page 127, Position 3: 23 villages in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region are entirely inhabited by men.: http://worldobserveronline.com/2013/03/01/from-russia-without-love-villages-remote-parts-siberia-revealed-no-women/
Page 127, Position 4: Chernobyl will be uninhabitable for at least 20,000 years.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/pictured-inside-chernobyl-exclusion-zone-5598288
Page 128, Position 1: The oldest known customer-service complaint letter was written on a clay tablet in 1750 bc.: http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/the-first-recorded-customer-service-complaint-from-1750-b-c.html
Page 128, Position 2: When the first sewing factories opened, seamstresses complained of ‘extreme genital excitement’ caused by the sewing machines.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uRJt7QqA7GEC&pg=PA299&lpg=PA299&dq=dishwashers+complained+invention&source=bl&ots=l5thNhfvfk&sig=kOH2vuY3nI9aL6IcWuz_KpOxsZE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=X0KEVOyUM-ip7AbthIHAAg#v=onepage&q=dishwashers%20complained%20invention&f=false
Page 128, Position 3: Disney ignored the complaint from Mary Poppins author P. L. Travers that the song ‘Let’s Go Fly a Kite’ should be ‘Let’s Go and Fly a Kite’.: The Secret Life of Mary Poppins: A Culture Show Special
Page 128, Position 4: I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! gets a letter of complaint every year from naturalist Chris Packham about the way they exploit animals.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/im-celebrity-2014-naturalist-chris-4606074
Page 129, Position 1: A tarantula hawk is neither a tarantula nor a hawk; it’s a giant wasp with the second most painful insect sting in the world.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantula_hawk
Page 129, Position 2: Queen bees lay eggs through their stings.: http://beespotter.mste.illinois.edu/topics/stings/
Page 129, Position 3: Cockroaches can hold their breath for 40 minutes.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cockroaches-accumulate-light-to-see-in-the-dark/
Page 129, Position 4: Dung beetles can bury 250 times their own weight in dung in a single evening.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IudQ92JKX5MC&pg=PT113&lpg=PT113&dq=Dung+beetles+can+bury+250+times+their+own+weight+in+dung+in+a+single&source=bl&ots=ZrvydhM615&sig=eS3ZfTfbzvawFngS7CeZtRk7O-s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDMQ6AEwA2oVChMIjcvE1uLayAIVx-caCh1zHgnk#v=onepage&q=Dung%20beetles%20can%20bury%20250%20times%20their%20own%20weight%20in%20dung%20in%20a%20single&f=false
Page 130, Position 1: The fastest bus in the world is powered by cow dung.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-32801974
Page 130, Position 2: The fastest sprinters have very symmetrical knees.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/symmetrical-knees-predict-sprinting-speed/
Page 130, Position 3: The best long-distance runners have very symmetrical nostrils.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/symmetrical-knees-predict-sprinting-speed/
Page 130, Position 4: The Yupno people of Papua New Guinea use their noses to point with instead of their fingers.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/09/02/the-point-of-pointing/
Page 131, Position 1: The tiny hairs in your nose are the last things to stop beating when you die.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128324.000-inside-of-nose-reveals-time-of-death.html#.VSTxNpTF-MU
Page 131, Position 2: The deaths of George I of England, Pope Paul II, Pope Clement VII, Frederick the Great, Maximilian I Archduke of Austria and Albert II of Germany were all due to melon overdose.: http://goo.gl/NkvAjG"http://goo.gl/bTBlPv"http://goo.gl/IsJu3X"http://goo.gl/6013Wk
Page 131, Position 3: Szechuan peppers make the lips vibrate.: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1770/20131680.short
Page 131, Position 4: A kiss on the lips can transfer 80 million bacteria into another person’s mouth in 10 seconds.: http://www.livescience.com/48771-kissing-microbiota-bacteria.html
Page 132, Position 1: There are 40 billion bacteria in one gram of faeces.: Times Literary Suppliment 11 July 2014
Page 132, Position 2: To make enough faeces to feed its larvae, a flea has to drink 30 times its own weight in blood.: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/techniques/fluorescence/gallery/humanflea.html
Page 132, Position 3: The black legs of Marabou storks usually appear white because they’re covered in excrement.: https://lettersfromnairobi.wordpress.com/tag/marabou-stork/
Page 132, Position 4: The 10,000 species of birds alive today make up less than 1% of all the bird species that have ever existed.: New Scientist 23 August 2014
Page 133, Position 1: A bird caused the Large Hadron Collider to be turned off in 2009 after it dropped a piece of baguette into it.: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/nov/06/cern-big-bang-goes-phut
Page 133, Position 2: The 65 billion neutrinos that pass every second through every square centimetre of your body were created 8.5 minutes ago in the centre of the Sun.: http://www.astronomynotes.com/starsun/s4.htm
Page 133, Position 3: No one knows why the centre of the Sun is not nearly as hot as its surface.: New Scientist 20 September 2014
Page 133, Position 4: The Sun rotates around its axis every 26 days but, because it’s made of gas, different bits rotate at different speeds.: http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=3428
Page 134, Position 1: The Sun is located in the Milky Way between the third and fourth arms of a cloud of stars known as the Local Fluff.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Interstellar_Cloud
Page 134, Position 2: The Milky Way is corrugated.: http://news.rpi.edu/content/2015/03/09/rippling-milky-way-may-be-much-larger-previously-estimated
Page 134, Position 3: Corrugated iron is not made from iron.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrugated_galvanised_iron
Page 134, Position 4: The Man in the Iron Mask’s mask wasn’t made of iron but velvet.: http://old.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=32513&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=150
Page 135, Position 1: The beard of the death mask of Tutankhamun broke off when a light bulb in the display case was being changed.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/22/tutankhamuns-beard-glued-back-on-say-egyptian-museum-conservators
Page 135, Position 2: Inês de Castro was proclaimed queen of Portugal in 1357, despite dying two years earlier.: http://www.theroyalarticles.com/articles/71/1/Ines-de-Castro-The-Queen-Who-Was-Crowned-After-Death/Page1.html
Page 135, Position 3: ‘Old person smell’ is caused by a molecule called 2-nonenal, which increases in your body as you age.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11286617
Page 135, Position 4: Penicillin was originally called ‘mould juice’.: http://www.abpischools.org.uk/page/modules/infectiousdiseases_timeline/timeline6.cfm?coSiteNavigation_allTopic=1
Page 136, Position 1: You can smell a flock of macaroni penguins from six miles away.: http://www.improbable.com/2014/08/20/the-smell-of-macaroni-part-2/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ImprobableResearch+%28Improbable+Research%29
Page 136, Position 2: The olive sea snake has light sensors in its tail so it can check that its whole body is hidden.: http://www.arkive.org/olive-brown-sea-snake/aipysurus-laevis/
Page 136, Position 3: Light detectors in frogs’ eyes are so sensitive that they can detect single photons of light.: http://phys.org/news/2015-01-light-sensitive-cells-frog-eyes-photons.html
Page 136, Position 4: The ancient Greek cure for cataracts was to pour hot broken glass into the eyes.: Nathan Belofsky, Strange Medicine
Page 137, Position 1: One in a thousand lightning bolts are invisible to the human eye.: Focus Magazine, July 2014
Page 137, Position 2: You are 100 times more likely to be struck by lightning standing under an oak than a beech.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2624646/Tristan-Gooleys-The-Walkers-Guide-Outdoor-Clues-Signs-book-850-navigation-tips.html#ixzz3IVMXrGZd
Page 137, Position 3: In the First World War, actor Basil Rathbone led covert missions disguised as a tree.: http://www.basilrathbone.net/biography/ww1.htm
Page 137, Position 4: In 1745, King Louis XV went to a ball dressed as a yew tree.: http://en.chateauversailles.fr/history/versailles-during-the-centuries/living-at-the-court/the-yew-tree-ball
Page 138, Position 1: The first Christmas tree in the Vatican went up in 1982.: http://www.romereports.com/pg159603-a-short-history-of-the-vatican-christmas-trees-en
Page 138, Position 2: In the 1670s, the Pope bought ‘St Peter’s Beard’ from highwayman Dick Dudley and kissed it, not knowing it was actually a prostitute’s pubic wig.: Capt Alexander Smith, A Complete History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highwaymen
Page 138, Position 3: Only humans kiss with tongues.: http://www.biomedcentral.com/presscenter/pressreleases/20141117
Page 138, Position 4: Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee both wore toupees.: http://www.britmovie.co.uk/forums/actors-actresses/93674-toupee-not-toupee-10.html
Page 139, Position 1: The place where Julius Caesar was murdered is now a cat sanctuary.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/torre-argentina-roman-cat-sanctuary
Page 139, Position 2: Caligula made it illegal on pain of death to mention a goat in his presence.: http://www.roman-empire.net/emperors/caligula.html
Page 139, Position 3: President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire banned all leopard-print hats, except for his own.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobutu_Sese_Seko
Page 139, Position 4: The Hawaiian for ‘certified’, hooiaioia, has eight consecutive vowels.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=vowel
Page 140, Position 1: Ulaia is an old Hawaiian word meaning ‘to live like a hermit because of disappointment’.: Harold Winfield Kent, Treasury of Hawaiian Words in One Hundred and One Categories
Page 140, Position 2: The world’s last surviving male northern white rhino lives under 24-hour armed guard.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02p8w7l
Page 140, Position 3: In 1958, the people of São Paulo voted a rhino named Cacareco onto the city council.: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,869297,00.html
Page 140, Position 4: The town of Dorset, Minnesota, elects its mayor by raffle.: http://hypervocal.com/politics/2014/16-year-old-kid-mayor-minnesota/
Page 141, Position 1: In 1995, Nelson Mandela was voted Santa Claus of the Year by the children of Greenland.: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-12-04/news/9512050017_1_mandela-greenland-prize-money
Page 141, Position 2: It’s more likely to snow in the UK at Easter than at Christmas.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-30519215
Page 141, Position 3: Before going on stage for public readings, Charles Dickens drank rum, sherry and a pint of champagne.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/charles-dickens/9724579/Ten-things-you-never-knew-about-Charles-Dickenss-A-Christmas-Carol.html
Page 141, Position 4: A Tale of Two Cities contains the first known reference to potato chips.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=chip
Page 142, Position 1: The glue that seals crisp packets is dried instantly using particle accelerators.: http://m.nautil.us/issue/14/mutation/10-reasons-why-you-cant-live-without-a-particle-accelerator
Page 142, Position 2: According to its website, WD-40 was once used by police to remove a naked burglar from an air-conditioning vent.: http://wd40.com/cool-stuff/history
Page 142, Position 3: In some parts of southern Africa, mosquito nets are mostly used for fishing.: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/world/africa/mosquito-nets-for-malaria-spawn-new-epidemic-overfishing.html?_r=0
Page 142, Position 4: The first dice were used to tell the future.: http://www.neatorama.com/2014/08/18/rollin-bones-the-history-of-dice/#!bGJX3J
Page 143, Position 1: The first bra was made from handkerchiefs.: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/11/the-first-bra-was-made-of-handkerchiefs/382283/
Page 143, Position 2: In 2007, eight-year-old twin boys from Ohio invented wedgie-proof underpants.: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/21599350/#.U_Im2vldXuN
Page 143, Position 3: Before paint tubes were invented, artists kept their paint in pigs’ bladders.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/never-underestimate-the-power-of-a-paint-tube
Page 143, Position 4: The first product sold by mail order was Welsh flannel.: http://cataloguedesigners.net/the-history-of-uk-mail-order-catalogues-part-1/
Page 144, Position 1: From 1700 until 1905, cows were tied to posts in St James’s Park and their milk sold ‘straight from the udder’.: Hannah Veltem, Beastly London
Page 144, Position 2: The offspring of a cow and a bison is called a ‘beefalo’.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beefalo
Page 144, Position 3: The largest diamond ever found comes from Brazil and is called ‘Sergio’.: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/diamonds-in-the-sky.html
Page 144, Position 4: The national anthem of Bosnia and Herzegovina is called ‘The National Anthem of Bosnia and Herzegovina’.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Anthem_of_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina
Page 145, Position 1: In 2004, Mexico fined a singer for stumbling over the words while singing the national anthem.: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2004-11-14-mexico-anthem_x.htm
Page 145, Position 2: Only 2% of Belgians know their national anthem.: http://www.economist.com/blogs/certainideasofeurope/2007/07/belgium_has_an_identity_crisis
Page 145, Position 3: Between 1910 and 1926, Portugal had 45 governments.: http://www.historytoday.com/douglas-wheeler/nightmare-republic-portugal-1910-1926
Page 145, Position 4: The Republic of Ireland didn’t have postcodes until 2015.: http://www.thejournal.ie/postcode-ireland-system-eircode-addresses-1437443-Apr2014/
Page 146, Position 1: In 2000, the Royal Mail withdrew its sponsorship of Postman Pat, on the grounds that he no longer fitted its corporate image.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1031114.stm
Page 146, Position 2: The 1908 London Olympics were sponsored by Oxo, Odol mouthwash and Indian Foot Powder.: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/where-were-the-olympic-brand-police-in-1908/
Page 146, Position 3: For the first 50 years of the ancient Greek Olympics, the only event was the 200-metre sprint.: Peter Jones, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the Ancient Greeks but Were Afraid to Ask
Page 146, Position 4: Due to quarantine laws, the equestrian events at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics took place in Stockholm.: History Today, October 2014
Page 147, Position 1: The 1900 Paris Olympics featured a 200m swimming race with obstacles.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swimming_at_the_1900_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Men's_200_metre_obstacle_event
Page 147, Position 2: Men’s underwater swimming at the 1900 Olympics was never held again due to ‘lack of spectator appeal’.: http://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1017267/underwater-swimming-featured-in-the-1900-olympics-in-paris-but-was-quickly-dropped-because-of-the-lack-of-spectator-appeal
Page 147, Position 3: The javelin competition at the 1900 Olympics was held in a public park. Competitors had to be careful not to hit anyone.: David Clay, Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936
Page 147, Position 4: The reigning Olympic tug-of-war champions are the City of London Police.: http://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/about-us/history/Pages/Olympic-Gold.aspx
Page 148, Position 1: For the Pope’s visit in 2015, traffic police in Manila were issued with 2,000 nappies so they never had to leave their posts.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2900168/Traffic-police-Manila-ordered-wear-NAPPIES-not-need-leave-post-major-events-Pope-s-upcoming-visit.html
Page 148, Position 2: Troops in Operation Desert Storm wore water-filled Pampers nappies on their heads to keep cool.: http://www.thespec.com/living-story/2146441-why-combat-soldiers-sometimes-wear-pantyhose/
Page 148, Position 3: In the First World War, only Romanian officers above the rank of major were authorised to wear eye shadow into battle.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-29033055
Page 148, Position 4: In the 1930s, a fashion craze for girls to wear monocles swept Liverpool.: Lancashire Evening Post 31 July 1930 (British Newspaper Archive)
Page 149, Position 1: Ralph Lauren was born Ralph Lifshitz.: http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/Oprah-Interviews-Ralph-Lauren/10
Page 149, Position 2: If Hitler’s father hadn’t changed his surname in 1877, the Third Reich would have been led by Adolf Schicklgruber.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Hitler
Page 149, Position 3: For marrying a Protestant, Josef Goebbels became the only Nazi to be excommunicated.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BG6Rc80E8toC&pg=PA118&lpg=PA118&dq=goebbels+excommunicated+married&source=bl&ots=3aqs5BJOjK&sig=5PnGs6m3GWLlflwyvBCqMapPKQE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hEYIVfbPBtDQ7AbKmYH4Cw&ved=0CCcQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=goebbels%20excommunicated%20married&f=false
Page 149, Position 4: In the 5th century ad, the Catholic Church excommunicated all mime artists.: Annette Lust, Greek Mimes to Marcel Marceau and Beyond
Page 150, Position 1: Ivan the Terrible once sewed an archbishop into a bearskin and had him hunted down by a pack of dogs.: http://academic.mu.edu/meissnerd/ivan-terrible.htm
Page 150, Position 2: Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, wasn’t called Catherine, wasn’t Russian and hated being called ‘the Great’.: Virginia Rounding, Catherine The Great: Love, Sex and Power
Page 150, Position 3: Peter the Great slept with a servant’s stomach for a pillow.: http://eng.1september.ru/article.php?ID=200802113
Page 150, Position 4: Hitler’s plan for Moscow was to level the city and turn it into an enormous lake.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IfHaDYVfGlgC&pg=PA89&lpg=PA89&dq=hitler+moscow+lake&source=bl&ots=Bul7SV6cR0&sig=VnLb8308URJwTnYlWErE3bVXPBc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VzzfVPqqHqKr7Aa6h4HACA&ved=0CFcQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=hitler%20moscow%20lake&f=false
Page 151, Position 1: The sixthbiggest river in the world is under the sea.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/7920006/Undersea-river-discovered-flowing-on-sea-bed.html
Page 151, Position 2: The longest canyon in the world is 50% longer than the Grand Canyon and buried under the ice in Greenland.: http://www.livescience.com/39289-greenland-longest-canyon-discovered.html
Page 151, Position 3: The world’s largest container ship can carry 900 million cans of baked beans – 60 beans for every person on Earth.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30696685
Page 151, Position 4: Scallops caught in Brittany are shipped to China for cleaning and then sent back to France to be cooked and eaten.: http://www.thelocal.fr/20141210/french-scallops-shipped-to-china-for-cleaning
Page 152, Position 1: In 2017, China will open the world’s first stadium dedicated to online gaming.: New Scientist 16 August 2014
Page 152, Position 2: Chongqing in China has a smartphone-only lane for pedestrians.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/sep/15/china-mobile-phone-lane-distracted-walking-pedestrians
Page 152, Position 3: 92% of the population of China is lactose intolerant.: http://www.visualnews.com/2012/11/15/sweden-loves-their-milk-map-of-milk-consumption/
Page 152, Position 4: Only 20% of people who think they’re allergic to penicillin actually are.: BBC Focus Magazine, August 2014
Page 153, Position 1: The first known case of ‘Climate Change Delusion’ took place in 2008, when a man refused to drink water as he felt guilty about ‘taking it from the Earth’.: https://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2008/07/patient-suffered-from-climate-change.html
Page 153, Position 2: The first occupational disease ever recorded in medical literature was ‘chimney sweep’s scrotum’.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_disease
Page 153, Position 3: In 19th-century Australia, it was thought that climbing inside a dead whale would cure rheumatism.: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/31/whale-bath
Page 153, Position 4: Kidney donors live longer than the average person.: http://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/how_to_become_a_donor/living_kidney_donation/questions_and_answers.asp
Page 154, Position 1: In 1800, the average age of an American was 16. Today, it’s 38.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hOKICoDuP0EC&pg=PA147&lpg=PA147&dq=In+1800,+the+average+age+of+an+American+was+16+years+old.&source=bl&ots=nDUW_Vf9mY&sig=G3zAg52UHW-PCAyDD-Jiunof7T4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDsQ6AEwBGoVChMIiaX3g-mTxgIVxSPbCh2sygVk#v=onepage&q=In%201800%2C%20the%20average%20age%20of%20an%20American%20was%2016%20years%20old.&f=false
Page 154, Position 2: When a country is in recession, life expectancy goes up.: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2012-02-22/the-worse-the-economy-gets-the-longer-people-live-peter-orszag
Page 154, Position 3: Finland is the world’s least fragile state.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_States_Index
Page 154, Position 4: The sauna at Helsinki airport is unisex, and clothing is optional.: http://article.wn.com/view/2014/06/24/Towels_optional_Finnair_to_open_unisex_sauna_in_new_airline_/
Page 155, Position 1: The first passenger flight lasted 23 minutes and flew at an altitude of 15 feet.: http://www.firstflightcentennial.org/the-first-commercial-flight/
Page 155, Position 2: In the first BBC radio news report, the news was read twice, once quickly and once slowly. Listeners were asked which they preferred.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/aboutbbcnews/spl/hi/history/noflash/html/1920s.stm
Page 155, Position 3: The first budgerigars sold in Europe cost as much as a house.: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d190351e-8561-11e4-ab4e-00144feabdc0.html
Page 155, Position 4: The first novel was Japanese and ended in mid-sentence.: http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/2014/03/04/12-books-that-end-mid-sentence/
Page 156, Position 1: The Japanese government’s official biography of Emperor Hirohito is 61 volumes long.: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/opinion/hirohito-string-puller-not-puppet.html?_r=0
Page 156, Position 2: During the Second World War, Churchill wore a specially designed onesie, which he called his ‘Siren Suit’.: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/nov/10/artsandhumanities.politics
Page 156, Position 3: The first Churchill Insurance mascot was a bulldog called Lucas who was sacked for refusing to hold a phone in his mouth.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/insurance/8609518/Want-a-comparethemarket-meerkat-Simples.html
Page 156, Position 4: Asda holds the copyright on bottom-slapping.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6592007.stm
Page 157, Position 1: In Old English, the word ‘ears’ meant ‘arse’.: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/culture/it-wasnt-all-nasty-brutish-and-short/2017639.article
Page 157, Position 2: In the 1800s, ducks were called ‘arsefeet’ because their feet are so close to their bottoms.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/58331/22-brilliant-old-nicknames-animals
Page 157, Position 3: People’s body temperature drops when they watch videos of other people putting their hands into cold water.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2906402/Feeling-cold-contagious-Watching-person-shiver-causes-body-temperature-plummet-study-finds.html
Page 157, Position 4: During the Cold War, the US tested supersonic ejector seats on bears.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2251548/Drugged-strapped-ejector-seat-BEARS-used-fighter-jet-test-pilots-Cold-War.html
Page 158, Position 1: In Switzerland, if you fail your driving test three times, you have to visit a psychologist to explain why.: https://www.justlanded.com/english/Switzerland/Switzerland-Guide/Travel-Leisure/Exchanging-your-driving-licence-in-Switzerland
Page 158, Position 2: In 1966, Mercedes introduced a car steered with a joystick.: http://old.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=32982&view=next
Page 158, Position 3: The first pram had a harness so it could be pulled by a dog or a goat.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/49280/brief-history-7-baby-basics
Page 158, Position 4: Sloths have more bones in their necks than giraffes.: http://www.livescience.com/10178-freak-nature-sloth-rib-cage-bones-neck.html
Page 159, Position 1: ‘Derbyshire neck’ was an 18th-century name for swollen thyroid glands.: http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2014/11/hooked-in-by-the-derby-neck/
Page 159, Position 2: ‘Token-suckers’ are people who steal New York City metro tokens.: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/08/nyregion/08TUNN.html
Page 159, Position 3: French pubic lice are known as papillons d’amour, ‘butterflies of love’.: http://www.definition-of.com/papillon+d'amour
Page 159, Position 4: A Shakespearean euphemism for infidelity is ‘groping for trout in a peculiar river’.: http://shakespeare.mit.edu/measure/measure.1.2.html
Page 160, Position 1: All of Shakespeare’s six known signatures are spelt differently and not one is spelt ‘William Shakespeare’.: http://politicworm.com/oxford-shakespeare/to-be-or-not-to-be-shakespeare/why-not-william/the-authorship-question-2/how-he-spelled-his-name/six-signatures/
Page 160, Position 2: The first recorded use of ‘pop’ as in ‘pop music’ was in a letter written by George Eliot in 1862.: http://laphamsquarterly.org/communication/charts-graphs/record
Page 160, Position 3: ‘Lolz’, ‘shizzle’, ‘bezzy’ and ‘emoji’ are all acceptable Scrabble words.: http://uk.businessinsider.com/twerking-emoji-and-newb-added-to-scrabble-2015-5?r=US&IR=T
Page 160, Position 4: The song ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas’ was written by Leon Trotsky’s nephew.: http://observer.theguardian.com/focus/story/0,6903,746576,00.html
Page 161, Position 1: Bananas emit antimatter.: http://www.wired.com/2013/02/could-you-build-a-banana-powered-generator/
Page 161, Position 2: Under a black light bananas glow blue.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081020093454.htm
Page 161, Position 3: You can’t make blue fireworks.: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=198781855
Page 161, Position 4: In ancient China, archers attached sparklers to their arrows.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uMwUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA89&lpg=PA89&dq=sparklers+china+arrows.&source=bl&ots=LhPn3mmpgs&sig=2ys8qAmXvUU37I83L5oU4gBTd5U&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAWoVChMIopifj-_ayAIVglAaCh3OBgyG#v=onepage&q=sparklers%20china%20arrows.&f=false
Page 162, Position 1: St Peter’s School, York, never celebrates Bonfire Night. Its most famous old boy is Guy Fawkes.: http://www.stpetersyork.org.uk/archives/guy_fawkes
Page 162, Position 2: Barack Obama’s mother’s name was Stanley. Her nickname at school was ‘Stan the man’.: David Maraniss, Barack Obama: The Making of the Man
Page 162, Position 3: Buzz Aldrin’s father was friends with Orville Wright.: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/apollo-11-launch-anniversary-history-bizarre-facts-about-moon-mission-1456805
Page 162, Position 4: Boeing test the Wi-Fi signal on their planes by filling the seats with sacks of potatoes.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20813441
Page 163, Position 1: The White House had no Wi-Fi until 2012.: http://www.nextgov.com/mobile/2012/03/white-house-might-finally-go-wireless/50878/
Page 163, Position 2: Thomas Jefferson kept sheep on the White House lawn. They were vicious and attacked anyone who went near them.: http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/30131
Page 163, Position 3: Theodore Roosevelt had a pet hyena.: http://www.nps.gov/thrb/learn/historyculture/the-roosevelt-pets.htm
Page 163, Position 4: Napoleon had a pet wombat.: http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/blogs/work-week-rossettis-wombat-seated-his-masters-lap-william-bell-scott
Page 164, Position 1: The Hawaiian pizza was invented by a Greek in Canada.: http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/07/14/14706791.html
Page 164, Position 2: There is an Indian women’s basketball player called Elizabeth Hilarious.: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/more-sports/others/Kerala-girls-MP-boys-triumph-in-Youth-National-Basketball-Championship-finals/articleshow/16845380.cms
Page 164, Position 3: Catherine of Aragon wasn’t present at any of her first three weddings.: http://www.historytoday.com/eric-ives/marrying-love-experience-edward-iv-and-henry-viii
Page 164, Position 4: Throughout the 19th century, between a third and a half of British brides were pregnant on their wedding day.: http://www.gwoodward.co.uk/guides/marriages.htm
Page 165, Position 1: A paraclausithyron is a love song performed outside the beloved’s front door.: The Economist 14 February 2014
Page 165, Position 2: ‘Mambo No. 5’ was the theme song for the 2000 Democratic Convention until someone noticed the line ‘A little bit of Monica in my life’.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mambo_No._5
Page 165, Position 3: Cats enjoy classical music but are much less interested in pop music.: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/article4398425.ece
Page 165, Position 4: When P. L. Travers went on Desert Island Discs, she didn’t pick any music at all but chose poetry instead.: The Secret Life of Mary Poppins: A Culture Show Special
Page 166, Position 1: Despite the line in the song ‘Fairytale of New York’, ‘the boys of the NYPD’ don’t have a choir.: http://www.irishmusicdaily.com/fairytale-of-new-york-video
Page 166, Position 2: The composer of ‘Jingle Bells’ also wrote the song ‘We Conquer or Die’.: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/james-pierpont-mn0000207949/biography
Page 166, Position 3: Marching in unison makes men more aggressive.: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/militarizing-police-marching-sync-may-increase-aggression-89472/
Page 166, Position 4: Counting money makes you feel less pain.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2013/05/24/money-cant-buy-you-love-but-it-can-reduce-your-pain/#.VMt6g4fA7uQ
Page 167, Position 1: Counting the rings in a mammoth’s tusks tells you its age.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1122_051122_mammoth.html
Page 167, Position 2: When hunting, humpback whales make a ‘tick tock’ sound that tells other whales it’s dinnertime.: http://www.futurity.org/whales-auditory-cues-feeding-830062/
Page 167, Position 3: English has more words for the noises dogs make than any other language.: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/nov/17/animal-noises-in-different-languages
Page 167, Position 4: Tapping a dashboard makes a pleasant noise because motor manufacturers discovered that one in four people do it when buying a new car.: New Scientist 30 August 2014
Page 168, Position 1: In 1999, Harley-Davidson tried to trademark the sound of their engines revving.: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2352/did-harley-davidson-patent-the-sound-of-its-motorcycles
Page 168, Position 2: People who can taste sounds have ‘lexical gustatory synaesthesia’.: http://blog.wellcome.ac.uk/2011/05/26/the-man-who-can-taste-sounds/
Page 168, Position 3: Hodor in Game of Thrones (who can only say his own name) suffers from ‘expressive aphasia’.: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/06/hodor-game-of-thrones-brain-speech
Page 168, Position 4: Admiral Nelson suffered from chronic seasickness.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-20662931
Page 169, Position 1: Every week, four ships sink somewhere in the world.: http://www.geotimes.org/oct04/NN_waves.html
Page 169, Position 2: 94% of the Earth’s oceans are in permanent pitch darkness.: http://deepseanews.com/2014/11/we-dont-know-the-ocean/
Page 169, Position 3: In the German resort of Travemünde, all sandcastles must be knocked down at the end of each day so nobody trips over them in the dark.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11028474/German-beaches-in-Schleswig-Holstein-ban-sandcastles.html
Page 169, Position 4: It takes about 200 tons of sand to build one detached house.: http://www.ejolt.org/2014/08/building-an-economy-on-quicksand/
Page 170, Position 1: The defence policy of New Zealand’s McGillicuddy Serious Party was to leave beer on all beaches to distract any invading army.: http://m.nzherald.co.nz/front-page-top-stories/news/article.cfm?c_id=698&objectid=11429599
Page 170, Position 2: William the Conqueror banned capital punishment; criminals had their eyes or testicles removed.: Mitchel P Roth, Eye for an Eye
Page 170, Position 3: In Saxon England, selling blood sausages was punishable by the loss of property, then being ‘severely purged’, ‘disgracefully shaved’ and exiled.: Martyn Brown, Microbiological Risk Assessment in Food Processing
Page 171, Position 1: In 1969, an Italian man was charged with selling ‘grated Parmesan cheese’ that turned out to be grated umbrella handles.: http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/features/humaninterest/grind-some-bones-to-make-your-bread-230166.html
Page 171, Position 2: In 2014, a man arrested in Lincoln for growing 28 cannabis plants in his garage was called Mr Hippy.: Fortean Times, February 2015
Page 171, Position 3: Children called Joseph, Cameron, William and Jake are naughtier than those called Jacob, Daniel, Thomas and James.: http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/new-study-shows-that-name-can-determine-if-youre-going-to-be-nice-or-naughty
Page 171, Position 4: Since Breaking Bad started, four times as many babies in the UK have been named Walter.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/most-popular-baby-names-2014-mohamed-tops-boys-list-while-frozens-elsa-enters-girls-top-100-9894635.html
Page 172, Position 1: Pippi Longstocking’s full name is Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim’s Daughter Longstocking.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pippi_Longstocking
Page 172, Position 2: Baristas in the Starbucks at the CIA’s headquarters don’t write the customers’ names on the cups.: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/at-cia-starbucks-even-the-baristas-are-covert/2014/09/27/5a04cd28-43f5-11e4-9a15-137aa0153527_story.html
Page 172, Position 3: A large latte contains more saturated fat than a cream doughnut.: New Scientist 2 August 2014
Page 172, Position 4: To replace energy after a workout, most sports supplements are no more effective than a burger.: http://www.medicaldaily.com/mcdonalds-muscle-recovery-fast-food-may-work-well-sport-drinks-and-meals-327980
Page 173, Position 1: Two tablespoons of dried basil contain the same amount of calcium as a glass of milk.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/calcium-food-sources_n_1451010.html
Page 173, Position 2: The last thing Charles II ate before he died was an ‘antidote’ containing ‘extracts of all the herbs and animals of the kingdom’.: http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/-Cures-kill-king-2080948/
Page 173, Position 3: One in eight people in the world go to bed hungry.: National Geographic Magazine November 2014
Page 173, Position 4: The more recently a judge has eaten, the more likely they are to grant parole.: http://www.economist.com/node/18557594
Page 174, Position 1: The first man to send a Valentine’s card was a Frenchman imprisoned in the Tower of London.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/sex/valentines-day/7187784/History-of-Valentines-Day.html
Page 174, Position 2: Some American jails now dress inmates in black and white jumpsuits because the TV show Orange Is the New Black has made the orange ones too cool.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2700097/Sheriff-overhauls-jails-uniforms-Orange-Is-The-New-Black.html
Page 174, Position 3: Prisoners in California can reduce their sentences by opting to fight forest fires.: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/08/postcard-prisoner-firefighter-camp
Page 174, Position 4: Denmark imports prisoners.: http://vorige.nrc.nl/international/article2246821.ece/Netherlands_to_close_prisons_for_lack_of_criminals
Page 175, Position 1: The time machine in Back to the Future was originally going to be a fridge; it was changed to a car in case it encouraged children to climb into fridges.: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088763/trivia
Page 175, Position 2: One working title for Toy Story was ‘Toyz in the Hood’.: http://www.blastr.com/2011/08/toy_story_was_almost_call.php
Page 175, Position 3: Robin Williams improvised so much of Aladdin it became ineligible for the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103639/trivia
Page 175, Position 4: Half of the world’s Californian condors were raised in captivity by glove puppets.: http://aeon.co/magazine/science/condors-bred-in-captivity-need-our-tough-love/
Page 176, Position 1: Jugglers in medieval Germany were not allowed to inherit property.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CikdpXS7DkQC&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=germany+jugglers+%22unlaw-worthy%22&source=bl&ots=ZUKgZS3MKu&sig=iW80S7A36eVjOwCognq2OhNbbOg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=CvntVPeAI8qI7AbK6IDQCA&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=germany%20jugglers%20%22unlaw-worthy%22&f=false
Page 176, Position 2: Until the reign of Henry VIII, kitchen assistants in the royal household worked naked.: http://www.hrp.org.uk/HamptonCourtPalace/stories/thetudorkitchens
Page 176, Position 3: Il y a une couille dans le potage (‘There is a testicle in the soup’) is French slang for ‘There is a major problem.’: https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/y_avoir_une_couille_dans_le_potage
Page 176, Position 4: The largest lake in Slovenia disappears every year.: https://sl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerknica
Page 177, Position 1: Ancient Sparta held a ‘Festival of the Naked Boys’ every year.: Herodotus, 6:67
Page 177, Position 2: The ancient Romans collected souvenir mugs.: http://classicalassociation.org/Blog/?p=25
Page 177, Position 3: The Minoans, not the Romans, invented the aqueduct.: http://www.ancient.eu/aqueduct/
Page 177, Position 4: The Greek for ‘It’s Greek to me’ translates as ‘This strikes me as Chinese.’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_to_me
Page 178, Position 1: The Chinese political faction known as the Gang of Four had six members.: S. Uhalley, A History of the Chinese Communist Party
Page 178, Position 2: 37 is the 12th prime number and 73 is the 21st prime number.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/73_(number)
Page 178, Position 3: 2015 is a palindrome in binary: 11111011111: http://mentalfloss.com/uk/language/26800/2015-the-last-binary-palindrome-year-we-ll-have-until-2047
Page 178, Position 4: Beethoven never learnt how to do multiplication.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KexJAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA743&lpg=PA743&dq=Beethoven+never+learned+how+to+multiply+numbers+together.&source=bl&ots=gofn8L-Z64&sig=lTuW0VGPpz5Spojhigu3k_xGOAc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDQQ6AEwA2oVChMIlvvo2PaTxgIVyMAUCh0kXAzV#v=onepage&q=Beethoven%20never%20learned%20how%20to%20multiply%20numbers%20together.&f=false
Page 179, Position 1: J. S. Bach always carried a dagger to protect himself from students.: http://www.classicfm.com/composers/bach/guides/when-bach-took-beating/
Page 179, Position 2: Sigmund Freud kept a porcupine on his desk as a reminder of the ‘prickliness’ of human relationships.: http://blog.wellcome.ac.uk/2014/11/21/image-of-the-week-freuds-porcupine/
Page 179, Position 3: Franz Kafka destroyed 90% of everything he wrote.: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/magazine/26kafka-t.html
Page 179, Position 4: Victor Hugo found writing so hard to get down to he asked his valet to lock up all his clothes and not give them back till he’d written something.: http://languor.us/victor-hugo-working-naked-story-myth-or-fact
Page 180, Position 1: Wearing a Superman T-shirt significantly boosts your self-confidence.: The Week 14 June 2014
Page 180, Position 2: Queen Victoria wore crotchless underwear.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/09/queen-victorias-crotchles_n_280486.html
Page 180, Position 3: Abraham Lincoln used to hide important documents in his stovepipe hat.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/history/abraham-lincolns-top-hat-the-inside-story-3764960/
Page 180, Position 4: James Joyce always kept a pair of doll’s knickers in his pocket.: http://www.newstatesman.com/life-and-society/2008/08/intimate-sex-wallace-famous
Page 181, Position 1: Signs saying ‘Beware of Pickpockets’ attract pickpockets.: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/26c2191c-dd64-11e4-975c-00144feab7de.html
Page 181, Position 2: Male kangaroos attract females by showing off their biceps.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/its-not-just-men-who-flex-their-biceps-at-womenkangaroos-do-too-18497936/
Page 181, Position 3: Kangaroos swim doggy-paddle.: http://www.awt.com.au/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2012/08/swimming.pdf
Page 181, Position 4: Due to flash floods, one of the biggest dangers in the desert is drowning.: http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/deserts/features/
Page 182, Position 1: Only 30% of the Sahara desert is sand.: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0778851.html
Page 182, Position 2: The word ‘scruples’ comes from the Latin scrupulus, a small sharp stone that got caught in your sandal.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=scruple
Page 182, Position 3: The most painful place to be stung by a bee is inside your nostril.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/03/the-worst-places-to-get-stung-by-a-bee-nostril-lip-penis/
Page 182, Position 4: Most honeybees in the US live in hives stored on flatbed trucks.: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/opinion/colony-collapse-are-bees-back-up-on-their-knees.html?_r=0
Page 183, Position 1: Ants’ nests can get infested by smaller ants.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solenopsis_molesta
Page 183, Position 2: Dragonflies can migrate 11,000 miles a year.: http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/02/13/rsbl.2011.1223.abstract
Page 183, Position 3: Insects in New York consume 60,000 hot dogs’ worth of discarded junk food each year.: http://news.ncsu.edu/2014/12/youngsteadt-eat-nyc/
Page 183, Position 4: Morbidly obese people who are too large for hospital MRI machines may have to get their scans done at the zoo.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2086306/Obese-patients-Zoo-scanners-used-large-fit-hospital-ones.html
Page 184, Position 1: Most of the fat lost when dieting is exhaled as carbon dioxide.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141216212047.htm
Page 184, Position 2: There is more toxic nitrogen dioxide in London’s Oxford Street than anywhere else in the world.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/oxford-street-is-the-most-polluted-place-in-the-world-say-scientists-9589276.html
Page 184, Position 3: In the 14th century, London had a higher murder rate than any US city today.: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/23/us/historical-study-of-homicide-and-cities-surprises-the-experts.html
Page 184, Position 4: A London by-law of 1351 prohibited boys from playing practical jokes on MPs.: Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England
Page 185, Position 1: In the 19th century, many main roads into London were paved with wood.: http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2015/01/10/the-time-when-londons-streets-were-paved-with-wood/
Page 185, Position 2: If a woodchuck could chuck wood, it would chuck 700 lb of wood per day.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_much_wood_would_a_woodchuck_chuck
Page 185, Position 3: ‘Limericks’ were originally ladies’ gloves made from chicken skin or calves’ foetuses.: https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/tag/limerick-glove/
Page 185, Position 4: Baby parking is Italian for crèche.: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/video/baby-parking-best-made-italy-161505965.html
Page 186, Position 1: Only 3% of children of atheist parents go on to join a religious faith, compared to 50% if both parents are religious.: New Scientist 3 May 2014
Page 186, Position 2: To treat his childhood asthma, Theodore Roosevelt’s doctor and parents encouraged him to smoke cigars.: Smithsonian Magazine, December 2014
Page 186, Position 3: In the 2001 general election, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party promised to reduce class sizes by ‘making the children stand closer together’.: Independent, 9 June 2001
Page 186, Position 4: In the 2005 general election, one candidate stood in 13 different constituencies.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/wales/4523583.stm
Page 187, Position 1: In 19th-century US elections, you had to cut your own ballot paper out of the newspaper.: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/10/13/rock-paper-scissors
Page 187, Position 2: The first newspaper in English was printed in Amsterdam.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_British_newspapers
Page 187, Position 3: London’s first telephone directory didn’t have any numbers in it.: Spectator, 13 December 2014
Page 187, Position 4: The first known genitals belonged to jawed vertebrates called Microbrachius dicki.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26407-oldest-genitals-found-went-out-of-fashion-for-eons.html#.VET6-ZPF9XI
Page 188, Position 1: There are 328 people in the US called Abcde.: http://www.neatorama.com/2014/12/31/There-Are-Over-300-People-Walking-Around-Named-Abcde/
Page 188, Position 2: Napoleon let the sons of the fallen in his army add the name Napoleon to their own.: The Times, 26 September 2014
Page 188, Position 3: During his campaign in Egypt, Napoleon sent the locals 64,000 pints of wine – but only after it had gone off.: The Times, 26 September 2014
Page 188, Position 4: At a food-safety conference in Baltimore in 2014, 100 attendees got food poisoning.: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/04/29/a_summit_of_food_safety_experts_leaves_100_ill_with_food_poisoning.html
Page 189, Position 1: After feeding near an M&M’s factory in 2012, French bees started producing blue and green honey.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19835847
Page 189, Position 2: The giant green sea anemone eats seabird chicks that fall from nearby cliffs.: http://cornerofthecabinet.com/2014/08/13/invertebrate-of-the-week-6-giant-green-sea-anemone-anthopleura-xanthogrammica/
Page 189, Position 3: Most adult cats are lactose intolerant.: http://pets.webmd.com/cats/guide/cats-and-dairy-get-the-facts
Page 189, Position 4: Wimbledon keeps its tennis balls at a temperature of exactly 20ºC.: https://www.wimbledondebentureholders.com/articles/many-balls-used-wimbledon/
Page 190, Position 1: The best time of the day for hand–eye co-ordination is 8 p.m.: New Scientist 4 October 2014
Page 190, Position 2: On New Year’s Eve 2014, 835 of the 1,000 police officers meant to be on duty in Rome phoned in sick.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/total-of-835-of-police-in-rome-called-in-sick-for-new-year-causing-very-serious-security-risk-9955446.html
Page 190, Position 3: US presidents Washington, Lincoln, Monroe, Jackson, Grant, Garfield, Theodore Roosevelt and Kennedy all suffered from malaria.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/52818/8-surprising-facts-about-malaria
Page 190, Position 4: A cyberchondriac is someone who scours the Internet looking for details of their illnesses.: The Economist 25 May 2014
Page 191, Position 1: The computer system of Britain’s police force is called the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System: HOLMES for short.: http://www.holmes2.com/holmes2/whatish2/
Page 191, Position 2: A fifth of the candidates in India’s 2014 general election faced criminal charges.: Delayed Gratification Quarterly magazine, Autumn 2014
Page 191, Position 3: The Yakuza crime syndicate of Japan has launched a website and theme tune to attract new members.: http://time.com/46477/japan-yakuza-website/
Page 191, Position 4: Butch Cassidy’s first crime was stealing a pair of jeans and a pie. He left an IOU, but the shopkeeper reported him anyway.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sKTgBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT22&lpg=PT22&dq=Butch+Cassidy's+first+crime+was+stealing+a+pair+of+jeans+and+a+pie.&source=bl&ots=SiVjR2wDuw&sig=DhJLqbRDPzEH3APPvrf-LcBg0Uk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=faGGVcrGAYLfU8j1vaAE&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Butch%20Cassidy's%20first%20crime%20was%20stealing%20a%20pair%20of%20jeans%20and%20a%20pie.&f=false
Page 192, Position 1: By law, all buses in Argentina must carry the words Las Malvinas son Argentinas: ‘The Falklands are Argentine.’: The Week 29 November 2014
Page 192, Position 2: The first London buses were so slow that operators provided free reading matter.: M.G. Lay, Ways of the World: A History of the Worldâ€™s Roads
Page 192, Position 3: The first mobile library was horse-drawn.: M.G. Lay, Ways of the World: A History of the Worldâ€™s Roads
Page 192, Position 4: The most-borrowed book from the Bank of England’s information centre is an A-level Economics textbook.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/alevel-textbook-alain-andertons-economics-most-popular-book-at-bank-of-england-10128471.html?icn=puff-1
Page 193, Position 1: The keys used to open the Bank of England’s gold vault are three feet long.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1079518/The-Big-Picture-This-vast-vault-gold-Bank-England-weather-credit-crunch.html
Page 193, Position 2: The world’s deepest gold mine is nearly three miles deep and could hold ten Empire State Buildings stacked on top of one another.: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304854804579236640793042718
Page 193, Position 3: The richest person in Asia is Mr Ka-shing.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30946005
Page 193, Position 4: When Stephen Hawking gave a lecture in Japan, he was asked not to mention the possible re-collapse of the universe in case it affected the stock market.: http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html
Page 194, Position 1: No one knows who invented Bitcoin.: http://www.businessinsider.com/did-shinichi-mochizuki-invent-bitcoin-2013-5?IR=T
Page 194, Position 2: Four of the six founders of PayPal built bombs at school.: The Economist, 20 September 2014
Page 194, Position 3: The surface area of the world of Minecraft is 9,258,235 times larger than that of Earth.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32051153"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23572742"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft
Page 194, Position 4: The opposite of extraterrestrial is intraterrestrial: life deep inside the earth.: http://www.wired.com/2015/01/microbiology-molybdenum-mine/
Page 195, Position 1: Eric Cantona was raised in a cave.: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-other-side-of-cantona-eric-cantona-has-become-the-most-exciting-footballer-in-england-the-fact-that-he-is-french-loves-poetry-and-philosophy-and-has-a-volatile-temperament-makes-him-the-most-intriguing-last-week-he-was-voted-players-player-of-the-year--while-under-suspension-1370669.html
Page 195, Position 2: You are three times more likely to be bitten by Luis Suárez if you play football against him than you are to be bitten by a snake in a year of living in Australia.: Delayed Gratification Quarterly, Issue 16
Page 195, Position 3: California ground squirrels kick sand into snakes’ faces.: Jo Stevens, Why Do Robins Have Red Breasts?
Page 195, Position 4: The face of the average man has 30,000 whiskers.: http://articles.latimes.com/1991-08-06/news/vw-644_1_facial-hair
Page 196, Position 1: Roald Dahl suffered from pogonophobia, an extreme hatred of beards.: http://interestingliterature.com/2014/09/13/five-fascinating-facts-about-roald-dahl/
Page 196, Position 2: Gillette’s five-bladed razor was a joke on the website The Onion a year before they got round to producing a real one.
Page 196, Position 3: The first-ever mobile-phone network could handle a maximum of three calls at the same time in any given city.: http://www.corp.att.com/attlabs/reputation/timeline/46mobile.html
Page 196, Position 4: The first-ever YouTube video was an 18-second clip called ‘Me at the Zoo’.: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-future-of-youtube
Page 197, Position 1: The single biggest expense in the LEGO Universe video game was hiring a team of moderators to detect if anyone had built Lego penises.: http://fusion.net/story/143218/lego-universe-had-a-huge-dong-detection-problem-says-former-developer/
Page 197, Position 2: The Colorado Rapids Major League Soccer team play their home games at ‘The Dick’.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick%27s_Sporting_Goods_Park
Page 197, Position 3: The first football match in Brazil had just 15 spectators: four family and friends and eleven tennis players who were there by accident.: Delayed Gratification Quarterly magazine, Autumn 2014
Page 197, Position 4: When Uruguay won the first World Cup in 1930, it wasn’t deemed important enough for it to be reported in The Times.: Tim Burford, Uruguay: The Bradt Travel Guide
Page 198, Position 1: BBC radio newsreaders in the 1920s always wore dinner jackets, even though no one could see them.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/aboutbbcnews/spl/hi/history/noflash/html/1930s.stm
Page 198, Position 2: The first BBC radio presenter with a northern accent was hired in the Second World War to make it harder for the Germans to produce fake news bulletins.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/yourvoice/accent2.shtml
Page 198, Position 3: If Scotland left the union, average annual rainfall in the UK would decrease by 8 inches.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/erin-baker/11092623/Repercussions-of-a-Scottish-Yes-vote.html
Page 198, Position 4: Between 1901 and 1960, there was a coup d’état in every independent country on Earth except Sweden, Switzerland, Britain and the US.: Foreign Affairs, 6 August 2014
Page 199, Position 1: In 1928, Liberia’s 15,000 registered voters elected Charles King president with a majority of 60,000.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_D._B._King
Page 199, Position 2: In 1835, US President Andrew Jackson beat off a would-be assassin with his cane.: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0108/8184.html
Page 199, Position 3: Wherever he goes, the US president has his food cooked by White House stewards to ensure it is safe to eat.: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2772/does-the-president-have-an-official-food-taster
Page 199, Position 4: George Osborne keeps a padlock on his office fridge.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11239835/Your-colleagues-most-annoying-habits.html
Page 200, Position 1: Winston Churchill enshrined the tea break into law.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=MGIkXyA1bUUC&pg=PA1057&lpg=PA1057&dq=churchill+%22tea+break%22&source=bl&ots=vcFhikWfUT&sig=S2G7dJLkFkeGs3K7d_ehSTaGFsw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=LoRaVP7nMs-u7AayjIH4Cg&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=226&f=false
Page 200, Position 2: Churchill, Admiral and Sheila’s Wheels are three meerkats who live at St Andrews Aquarium.: http://www.standrewsaquarium.co.uk/attractions/meerkats.aspx
Page 200, Position 3: A group of otters is called a romp.: https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Otter
Page 200, Position 4: A group of hyenas is called a cackle.: http://web.archive.org/web/20150320071411/http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/about/faqs/animals/names.htm
Page 201, Position 1: To deter foxes, the actor David Tennant urinates in his back garden.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYufQVt4-1E
Page 201, Position 2: In the Middle Ages, Scottish warriors used horse urine to dye their tunics yellow.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/5675615/Scots-fought-in-bright-yellow-war-shirts-not-Braveheart-kilts.html
Page 201, Position 3: King Harold didn’t die at the battle of Hastings from an arrow in his eye: he was hacked apart by four Norman knights.: http://www.academia.edu/15399636/_Redacting_Harold_Godwinson_in_William_of_Malmesbury_s_Gesta_Regum_and_the_Vita_Haroldi_pre-publication_draft_
Page 201, Position 4: At the battle of Dybbøl in 1864, the Prussian assault on the Danes was accompanied by a 300-man military orchestra playing a specially composed march.: Financial Times Weekend Life and Arts, 11 April 2015
Page 202, Position 1: There were more Scots in the army that defeated Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden than there were in his own army.: http://www.nam.ac.uk/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/britains-greatest-battles/culloden
Page 202, Position 2: Rawgabbit is Scots for one who speaks confidently on a subject about which they know absolutely nothing.: http://www.scotlandmag.com/magazine/issue67/12010575.html
Page 202, Position 3: One job application for an air traffic controller in the Scilly Isles was in Braille.: http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Air-traffic-controllers-apply-job-Braille/story-11752508-detail/story.html
Page 202, Position 4: It takes three million presses to wear out a button on an Xbox controller.: http://moviepilot.com/posts/2015/06/01/8-facts-about-xbox-you-probably-didn-t-know-3272577?lt_source=external,manual
Page 203, Position 1: The button was invented more than 1,000 years before the buttonhole.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttonhole
Page 203, Position 2: John Cage's composition 'Organ2/ASLSP' takes 639 years to play.: http://www.thelocal.de/20110905/37395
Page 203, Position 3: Orang-utans like playing on iPads, but gorillas don’t.: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/12/orangutans-play-with-ipads-love-it.html
Page 203, Position 4: When the iPod Shuffle was released, it came with a warning saying, ‘Do not eat.’: http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewer/0,3253,l=259715&a=259715&po=6,00.asp
Page 204, Position 1: Apple Inc. was founded on April Fool’s Day.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/11507451/Apple-celebrates-39th-year-on-April-1.html
Page 204, Position 2: April in England, despite its reputation, is usually the month with the lowest rainfall.: Nick Groom, The Seasons
Page 204, Position 3: In April and May, sparrows’ testicles increase a thousandfold in size.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8138105
Page 204, Position 4: Hippos can retract their testicles over a foot into their body to stop rivals from biting them.: http://theconversation.com/moving-testicles-frustrate-effort-to-calm-hippos-by-castration-21710
Page 205, Position 1: The longer a narwhal’s tusk, the bigger his testicles.: http://animals.io9.com/size-matters-narwhals-with-longer-tusks-have-bigger-te-1637869535
Page 205, Position 2: Queen Victoria owned two tricycles.: Wiebe E. Bijke, Of Bicycles, Bakelites and Bulbs: Towards a Theory of Sociotechnical Change
Page 205, Position 3: The first woman to cycle round the world learnt to ride a bike the day before she set off.: http://cycleseven.org/a-remarkable-woman
Page 205, Position 4: The first riders of the first loop-the-loop roller coaster in Paris were monkeys.: Jessica Kerwin Jenkins, All The Time In The World
Page 206, Position 1: When the waltz first arrived in London, it was called an ‘obscene display’ best confined to ‘prostitutes and adulteresses’ by The Times.: http://www.truthmagazine.com/archives/volume33/GOT033191.html
Page 206, Position 2: At times of peak fertility, women’s voices are higher pitched.: Michael Bright, The frog with self-cleaning feet
Page 206, Position 3: Sleep-deprived fruit flies take longer to learn things.: Jo Stevens, Why Do Robins Have Red Breasts?
Page 206, Position 4: Your brain cells shrink when you’re asleep.: Richard Wiseman, Night School
Page 207, Position 1: The first person to study sleepwalking was Lord Byron’s friend John Polidori. His recommended cures were beatings and the application of electricity.: Richard Wiseman, Night School
Page 207, Position 2: Queen Elizabeth I was wrapped in a red blanket to cure her smallpox.: http://historyweird.com/1307-treat-smallpox-colour-red/#sthash.pBY8QvNH.dpuf
Page 207, Position 3: King George IV had eight boxing champions as his pages for his coronation.: The Economist 19 December 2014
Page 207, Position 4: King Richard II’s chefs wrote a cookbook that included a recipe for porpoise porridge.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8108213.stm
Page 208, Position 1: The Royal Mint is a cashless workplace.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23327926
Page 208, Position 2: The first pair of Nike trainers was made in a waffle iron.: http://uk.businessinsider.com/nikes-first-running-shoes-were-made-in-a-waffle-iron-2015-7?r=US&IR=T
Page 208, Position 3: Kim Jong-un’s wife was a member of North Korea’s national cheerleading squad.: The Economist 6 September 2014
Page 208, Position 4: Robert Mugabe’s wife Grace received her PhD from the University of Zimbabwe two months after she enrolled.: http://ewn.co.za/2014/09/13/Grace-Mugabe-awarded-PhD-two-months-after-enrollment
Page 209, Position 1: Samuel Pepys bought his wife moisturiser made from puppies’ urine.: http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1664/03/08/
Page 209, Position 2: Red lipstick boosts waitresses’ tips from male customers, but not from female ones.: http://www.livescience.com/20243-waitress-tips-red-lipstick.html
Page 209, Position 3: Cheiloscopy is the study of lip-prints; they are as useful to police as fingerprints.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296377/
Page 209, Position 4: The fingernails of the middle fingers grow faster than the others.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2015/04/13/this-professor-measured-his-fingernail-growth-for-35-years-the-results-will-amaze-you/
Page 210, Position 1: The toenails of male terrapins are used to hold onto females during sex.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150619-basic-instincts-terrapins-turtles-animals-science/
Page 210, Position 2: When a list of all-time basketball greats was assembled in 1940, the average height was 5'10".: http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/the-history-of-dunking-in-basketball.html
Page 210, Position 3: By the end of her life, Queen Victoria’s bust measured seven inches more than her height.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1034349/Blooming-enormous-Queen-Victorias-50-inch-waist-knickers-uncovered.html
Page 210, Position 4: Fear of heights only begins six weeks after a baby learns to crawl.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929264.500-gocarting-babies-reveal-origin-of-fear-of-heights.html#.VIHqgmSsVpY
Page 211, Position 1: Maternal stress causes more adverse effects in male foetuses than in female ones.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19195-male-fetuses-ignore-their-stressedout-mothers.html#.VIDsdmRlA4R
Page 211, Position 2: The first home pregnancy test in the US included a vial of sheep’s blood.: http://history.nih.gov/exhibits/thinblueline/timeline.html
Page 211, Position 3: Online sales of baby equipment peak at 4 a.m.: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2787864/gamers-buy-playstations-midnight-women-buy-handbags-6am-john-lewis-reveals-uk-s-secret-shopping-habits.html
Page 211, Position 4: 80% of dreams are about normal things like washing up or being at work.: Richard Wiseman, Night School
Page 212, Position 1: 5.2% of men have kissed a monster in their dreams, 3.4% have had foreplay with an animal and 1.7% have had sex with an ‘object, plant or rock’.: Richard Wiseman, Night School
Page 212, Position 2: Dreams happening later in the night are usually more positive than earlier ones.: Richard Wiseman, Night School
Page 212, Position 3: The Chinese don’t ‘sleep like a log’, they ‘sleep like a dead pig’.: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sleep+like+a+log
Page 212, Position 4: The man who discovered rapid eye movement nearly called it ‘jerky eye movement’.: Richard Wiseman, Night School
Page 213, Position 1: Magic tricks used to be called ‘Hanky Panky’.: Jessica Kerwin Jenkins, All The Time In The World
Page 213, Position 2: Charioteers in ancient Rome were not allowed to hamper their opponents with magic spells.: http://www.ultimatehistoryproject.com/in-rome-all-was-fair-in-games-and-races.html
Page 213, Position 3: Early depictions of Jesus show him with a magic wand.: https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Depiction_of_Jesus
Page 213, Position 4: ‘Kerosene lamp bilong Jesus gone bugger-up’ is the expression used by the Koorie people of New South Wales to describe solar eclipses.: http://astro.ukho.gov.uk/eclipse/about.html
Page 214, Position 1: In the Senegalese version of Firefox, a ‘crash’ is a hookii, which means ‘a cow falling over but not dying’.: The Economist, 27 September 2014
Page 214, Position 2: The French for 1960s pop music is yé yé.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C3%A9-y%C3%A9
Page 214, Position 3: The French for ‘pie chart’ is un camembert.: http://www.wordreference.com/enfr/pie%20chart
Page 214, Position 4: Until the 1920s, Camembert was green.: http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2015/03/the-secret-history-of-cheese.html
Page 215, Position 1: In 16th-century Venice, it was the height of fashion for ladies to colour their nipples.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=S8bTzilz1BMC&pg=PA36&lpg=PA36&dq=pezzuola+di+Levante,&source=bl&ots=hyJ409npOu&sig=p8tk0ITfsmvHpXQzPM0FoSkqDu4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xbjDU9WXGO-10QXCzIAw&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=pezzuola%20di%20Levante%2C&f=false
Page 215, Position 2: Ladyboy gangs in Thailand apply sedatives to their nipples, knocking out unsuspecting men who suck them and can then be robbed while they’re asleep.: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/travel/news/2005-11-14-thai-transvestite-robbers_x.htm
Page 215, Position 3: Charlie Chaplin had sex with more than 2,000 women.: http://pagesix.com/2015/04/01/charlie-chaplin-divorce-papers-reveal-his-degrading-sexual-demands/
Page 215, Position 4: Male hedge sparrows have sex 100 times a day, but each time takes only a tenth of a second.: Jo Stevens, Why Do Robins Have Red Breasts?
Page 216, Position 1: Male honeybees die after sex; their genitals detach from their body with an audible ‘pop’.: Buzzword, Summer 2012
Page 216, Position 2: US slang terms for sex in the 19th century included ‘fandango de pokum’, ‘buttock-stirring’ and ‘being amongst the parsley’.: http://io9.com/three-timelines-of-slang-terms-for-having-sex-from-135-1608522982
Page 216, Position 3: 400 million years ago, mushrooms grew 24 feet tall.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/long-before-trees-overtook-the-land-earth-was-covered-by-giant-mushrooms-13709647/
Page 216, Position 4: An 11-ton mushroom found in Crystal Falls, Michigan, was the inspiration for the annual Humungus Fungus Festival.: http://humungusfungusfest.com/
Page 217, Position 1: Names for British fungi include the jelly ear, the bearded tooth, the weeping toothcrust, the slimy earthtongue, the foetid parachute and the hairy nuts disco.: http://www.plantlife.org.uk/uploads/documents/recommended-english-names-for-fungi.pdf
Page 217, Position 2: The inky cap mushroom is edible, but poisonous if mixed with alcohol.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprinopsis_atramentaria#Toxicity
Page 217, Position 3: Corona beer is never drunk with a slice of lime in Mexico.: http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/lime.asp
Page 217, Position 4: There is an Irish pub in Guantanamo Bay.: http://www.newsweek.com/2014/04/11/guantanamo-bay-most-ridiculous-place-earth-248095.html
Page 218, Position 1: Cuban emergency services use sniffer rabbits.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-24239202
Page 218, Position 2: KitKats in sweet-potato flavour are available in Japan.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/11560430/Anyone-for-a-potato-Kit-Kat-The-worlds-weirdest-chocolate-bars.html
Page 218, Position 3: Sweden has a ski-through McDonald’s.: http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/the-14-craziest-mcdonalds-around-the-world/story-fnkgdftz-1227032149605
Page 218, Position 4: The US is visited by more missionaries than any other country.: http://blog.oup.com/2015/02/missionaries-america/
Page 219, Position 1: Medical students in 18th-century Scotland could pay their tuition fees in corpses.: http://www.historickilmun.org/stories/a-grave-problem
Page 219, Position 2: In 18th-century England, ‘delivering a flying pasty’ was wrapping poo in paper and throwing it over a neighbour’s wall.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4YfsEgHLjboC&pg=PA781&dq=%22flying+pasty%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAGoVChMI3IXcxuiTxgIVEAbbCh3PBwQm#v=onepage&q=%22flying%20pasty%22&f=false
Page 219, Position 3: Modern sewage systems use more than 1,000 tons of water to move each ton of solid waste.: New Scientist, 2 August 2014
Page 219, Position 4: It takes 100 times as much water to make Coke cans and bottles as it does to make the Coca-Cola itself.: Daily Mail extract from 'Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism.'
Page 220, Position 1: 10% of all the water in ancient Rome went to the emperor.: Greg Jenner, A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Everyday Life
Page 220, Position 2: The Roman emperor Commodus renamed every month of the year after himself and rechristened Rome ‘Commodiana’.: Review of â€˜The Day Commodus Killed a Rhinoâ€™. Times Review, 7 February 2015
Page 220, Position 3: The Roman Empire was only the 17th biggest empire in history.: http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/25012-List-of-World-s-largest-empires
Page 220, Position 4: Types of Roman gladiator included essedarii, who rode chariots, laquearii, who had lassos, and andabata, who fought blindfold.: Ben Hubbard, Gladiators: From Spartacus to Spitfires
Page 221, Position 1: In flight, bats’ hearts beat 1,000 times a minute.: Jo Stevens, Why Do Robins Have Red Breasts?
Page 221, Position 2: Before they can take off, bees have to warm up their flight muscles.: Jo Stevens, Why Do Robins Have Red Breasts?
Page 221, Position 3: Early aerobatic display teams tied their biplanes together before taking off.: http://www.britishpathe.com/video/aerobatics-tied-together/query/BIPLANE+AEROBATICS
Page 221, Position 4: ‘To take off your considering cap’ was an 18th-century euphemism for being drunk.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/29753/ben-franklins-200-synonyms-drunk
Page 222, Position 1: The logo for the Royal New Zealand Air Force is the (flightless) kiwi.: http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/royal-new-zealand-air-force-ensign
Page 222, Position 2: The man who invented and flew the first airship held rehearsal dinner parties with 10-foot-high tables and chairs to simulate dining in mid-air.: http://www.thephtest.com/wings_madness.html
Page 222, Position 3: Doritos were invented at Disneyland.: http://www.ocweekly.com/2012-04-05/food/taco-usa-how-mexican-food-conquered-america-doritos-disneyland/full/
Page 222, Position 4: The sports bra was invented in the 1970s by sewing two jockstraps together.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/32382911
Page 223, Position 1: Bill Lear invented both the Lear Jet and the 8-track cartridge.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Lear
Page 223, Position 2: The selfie stick was invented in the 1920s.: http://listverse.com/2015/05/26/10-recent-inventions-that-arent-as-new-as-we-all-thought/
Page 223, Position 3: E-cigarettes were invented in 1963.: http://listverse.com/2015/05/26/10-recent-inventions-that-arent-as-new-as-we-all-thought/
Page 223, Position 4: The Inuit word tawakiqutiqarpiit means ‘do you have any tobacco for sale?’: New Scientist 18 October 2014
Page 224, Position 1: Ottoman emperor Murad the Cruel put 25,000 people to death for smoking.: Mitchel P Roth, Eye for an Eye
Page 224, Position 2: The punishment for smoking in 17th-century Russia was castration.: Mitchel P Roth, Eye for an Eye
Page 224, Position 3: Castration prevents male-pattern baldness, providing it is done before any hair is lost.: https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Castration
Page 224, Position 4: The male-pattern baldness of King Louis XIII meant French aristocrats wore wigs for 200 years.: https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/luciano-looking.html
Page 225, Position 1: For 200 years after tomatoes reached Europe, they were grown for purely ornamental reasons.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/arts-culture/why-the-tomato-was-feared-in-europe-for-more-than-200-years-863735/
Page 225, Position 2: Red tomatoes evolved as a result of a meteorite strike 60 million years ago.: http://phys.org/news/2012-06-red-tomatoes-meteorite.html
Page 225, Position 3: Eating a British-grown tomato is three times as bad for the environment as eating one grown in Spain.: BBC Focus Magazine, April 2015
Page 225, Position 4: Spain has more vineyards than France.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32480044
Page 226, Position 1: Oklahoma has more earthquakes than California.: http://www.npr.org/2015/04/23/401624166/oklahomans-feel-way-more-earthquakes-than-californians-now-they-know-why
Page 226, Position 2: On 28 August 2014, 1,187 earthquakes were recorded in Iceland – almost one a minute.: https://www.marketingsociety.com/the-clubroom/morning-papers-elen-lewis-38
Page 226, Position 3: Every public tweet is recorded in the Library of Congress.: http://uk.pcmag.com/web-sites-products/42388/feature/12-things-you-didnt-know-about-twitter-illustrated
Page 226, Position 4: Going to the library produces as much happiness as a £1,359 pay rise. Going to the gym is like losing £1,318.: http://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2014/apr/23/visiting-libraries-makes-us-happy
Page 227, Position 1: In the 18th century, ‘to vowel’ was to issue an IOU after losing at gambling.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/a-to-z-guide-to-street-slang-from-the-1700s-1601888
Page 227, Position 2: Dostoevsky wrote The Gambler to pay off his gambling debts.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_XhcAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA470&lpg=PA470&dq=Dostoevsky+wrote+his+novel+'The+Gambler'+in+order+to+pay+off+his+gambling+debts&source=bl&ots=oyNZ6weEJw&sig=chrAoEtcGt6mF644-cp9GhxfHoI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDQQ6AEwA2oVChMIk7iMouqTxgIVRrcUCh16awCG
Page 227, Position 3: The 1950 book How to Survive an Atomic Bomb recommended wearing a hat to shield you from the atomic flash.: Charles Strozier, Genocide, War and Human Survival
Page 227, Position 4: ‘Bang novel’ is the literal translation of the Danish for ‘thriller’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-TvaAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA486&dq=knald+bang&hl=en&sa=X&ei=X3-BVfn_J4jA7Abc1ICYBw&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=knald%20bang&f=false
Page 228, Position 1: Napoleon wrote a romantic novella aged 27, when he was already a successful general.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clisson_et_Eug%C3%A9nie
Page 228, Position 2: Before he wrote Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs was a pencil-sharpener salesman.: http://www.laterbloomer.com/edgar-rice-burroughs/
Page 228, Position 3: Roald Dahl was buried with a bottle of Burgundy, his snooker cues, a power saw and some chocolate.: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/arts-culture-news/essential-z-roald-dahl-7756198
Page 228, Position 4: Bela Lugosi was buried in the cape he wore in the movie Dracula.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kJZmiLAz6qMC&pg=PA523&dq=bela+lugosi+buried+cape&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Kst1VaeeJuHd7gb4qIKoCA&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=bela%20lugosi%20buried%20cape&f=false
Page 229, Position 1: Leonard Nimoy’s two autobiographies are called I Am Not Spock and I Am Spock.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Spock
Page 229, Position 2: Dolly Parton has a theme park called Dollywood.: http://www.dollywood.com/themepark/calendar
Page 229, Position 3: Mazes in Germany are called Irrgarten, or ‘error gardens’.: http://www.vocabulix.com/online/dictionary.jsp
Page 229, Position 4: Sheep in mazes tend to turn left.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2013/12/18/sheep-tend-left/
Page 230, Position 1: A volunteer shepherd is called a ‘lookerer’.: https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/content/leisure-and-libraries/parks-and-green-spaces/lookerers-volunteer-shepherds
Page 230, Position 2: Camel spiders move so fast they are called ‘Kalahari Ferraris’.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20150630-inside-the-jaws-of-camel-spiders
Page 230, Position 3: Boudoir is French for ‘pouting room’.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=boudoir
Page 230, Position 4: Danish law makes it illegal to desecrate the flags of foreign countries but legal to burn the Danish flag.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_desecration?1#Denmark
Page 231, Position 1: The Russian flag is planted at the North Pole, at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.: http://discovermagazine.com/2014/dec/23-20-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-north-pole
Page 231, Position 2: Floating in the world’s oceans are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150109-oceans-plastic-sea-trash-science-marine-debris/
Page 231, Position 3: The silverware on the Titanic included 100 pairs of grape scissors, 1,000 oyster forks and 2,000 egg spoons.: http://home.online.nl/john.vanderree/info.htm
Page 231, Position 4: The champagne in a 170-year-old bottle found on the Baltic seabed was described by wine experts as ‘sometimes cheesy’ with ‘elements of wet hair’.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27389-19thcentury-champagne-haul-shows-seabed-is-perfect-wine-cooler.html
Page 232, Position 1: In France a ‘champagne socialist’ is a ‘caviar lefty’.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauche_caviar
Page 232, Position 2: In France a ‘can of worms’ is a ‘basket of crabs’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=W7hDX6jB2_kC&pg=PA281&lpg=PA281&dq=France+a+â€˜can+of+wormsâ€™+is+a+â€˜basket+of+crabsâ€™.&source=bl&ots=RfpMyqkE-C&sig=l1-MGyV2cwii0aCPQK25SC2CuCo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAGoVChMIytWO8ODfyAIVQYIaCh2uwgdh#v=onepage&q=France%20a%20â€˜can%20of%20wormsâ€™%20is%20a%20â€˜basket%20of%20crabsâ€™.&f=false
Page 232, Position 3: The last public guillotining in France took place in 1939. The actor Christopher Lee was there to see it.: http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/last-public-execution-guillotine-france-1939/
Page 232, Position 4: A pig was hanged for sacrilege in France in 1394 for eating a communion wafer.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cbciAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA225&lpg=PA225&dq=A+pig+was+hanged+in+France+in+1394+for+sacrilege.+It+had+eaten+a+consecrated+wafer.&source=bl&ots=xVIszpXwWV&sig=kV5dPw95mjMelE8iewTah2cFn-I&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XuCHVZ-kPOi9ygOMw59w&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAg
Page 233, Position 1: 9 out of 10 onions are eaten in the country they were grown in.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30549150
Page 233, Position 2: Portugal is the only country in the world where all drugs are legal.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/portugal-decriminalised-drugs-14-years-ago-and-now-hardly-anyone-dies-from-overdosing-10301780.html
Page 233, Position 3: Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world with no national women’s football team.: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/opinion/Opinion+Saudis+deserve+yellow+card+women+rights/11160227/story.html
Page 233, Position 4: The only countries in the world that don’t have paternity leave as standard are Papua New Guinea and the US.: The Economist, 16 May 2015
Page 234, Position 1: Less than 1% of the shoes sold in America were made there.: http://www.seytlines.com/2015/07/is-labor-arbitrage-the-answer-or-a-new-problem-part-1/
Page 234, Position 2: Since 1970, the average female shoe size has increased from a four to a six.: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/why-our-feet-are-getting-bigger-9481529.html
Page 234, Position 3: Nike owns a patent on self-lacing trainers.: BBC Focus Magazine, June 2014
Page 234, Position 4: Prince Charles’s valet irons his shoelaces.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3015296/How-Charles-shoelaces-ironed-Queen-Mum-hit-gin-11am-Oh-Camilla-NEVER-wears-s-washing-machine-gossipy-royal-revelations-years.html
Page 235, Position 1: Prince Albert commissioned a corrugated-iron ballroom for Balmoral Castle.: http://www.chr.org.uk/Museums/albertopolis2.htm
Page 235, Position 2: The first credit card was made of cardboard.: http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-cards-history-1264.php
Page 235, Position 3: Replacement eyelids can be made from foreskins.: http://www.improbable.com/2015/03/15/cock-eyed-optimism-using-a-foreskin-to-repair-eyelids/
Page 235, Position 4: Noël Coward’s way to make a perfect martini was to fill a glass with gin and wave it in the general direction of Italy.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/instant-expert/10301819/Instant-Expert-How-to-make-a-perfect-martini.html
Page 236, Position 1: 60% of the alcohol in America is drunk by 10% of the people.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ten-percent-americans-drink-half-booze-180952857/?utm_source=twitter.com&no-ist
Page 236, Position 2: In the 18th century, Harvard University had three breweries on campus.: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/10/9/timeline-beer-at-harvard/
Page 236, Position 3: A sperm cell takes twice as long to mature as Heineken lager.: Financial Times Weekend magazine, 20 September 2014
Page 236, Position 4: Human cells contain all the necessary genes to make feathers.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/11/20/your-inner-feather/
Page 237, Position 1: Birds practise their songs quietly in private before they perform them in public.: Jo Stevens, Why Do Robins Have Red Breasts?
Page 237, Position 2: Baby elephants have milk tusks.: http://elephant.elehost.com/About_Elephants/Anatomy/Dentition/dentition.html
Page 237, Position 3: Baby turtles call to each other while they’re still in their shells so that they all hatch at the same time.: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/08/19/female-turtles-talk-to-their-hatchlings-scientists-discover/
Page 237, Position 4: The shell of an armadillo is so tough that bullets bounce off it.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-32306096
Page 238, Position 1: The largest military tank was made by Porsche for the Nazis.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O56OvuIQ7w
Page 238, Position 2: For six weeks in 1941, the crew of HMS Trident shared their submarine with a reindeer called Pollyanna.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/hampshire/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8386000/8386947.stm
Page 238, Position 3: After the Falklands War, the Argentinian surrender document was mislaid by the British for over a year.: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1915&dat=19830919&id=eu8gAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AHMFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2440,3602815&hl=en
Page 238, Position 4: Until the 1990s, Britain’s nuclear weapons were secured with bike locks.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7097101.stm
Page 239, Position 1: Britons are 16 times more likely to understand the rules of Quidditch than the rules of croquet.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3154515/Do-know-quaffles-Pirie-pokes-16-times-Britons-know-rules-Harry-Potter-game-Quidditch-compared-croquet.html
Page 239, Position 2: The House of Lords is the second-biggest legislative chamber in the world after the Chinese National People’s Congress.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11827358/The-House-of-Lords-is-full-of-sycophants-failed-MPs-and-political-donors.-Sack-them-all.html
Page 239, Position 3: The national anthem of Ukraine is called ‘Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet’.: The Economist, 20 September 2014
Page 239, Position 4: You cannot kill a sponge with your bare hands.: http://www.factfiend.com/cant-kill-sponge/
Page 240, Position 1: The hydraulic tools used by rescue workers to extract people trapped under heavy objects are called the Jaws of Life.: http://www.jawsoflife.com/
Page 240, Position 2: The word ‘cemetery’ is from the ancient Greek for dormitory.: http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2041313,00.html
Page 240, Position 3: The Latin for pizza is placenta compressa, or ‘compressed cake’.: http://www.culturaclasica.com/lingualatina/lexicon_latinum_morgan.pdf
Page 240, Position 4: The Museum of Bread Culture in Ulm, Germany, has a collection of over 18,000 objects, none of which is bread.: http://www.museum-brotkultur.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=77&Itemid=59
Page 241, Position 1: The Nazis celebrated Christmas with chocolate SS men and swastika-shaped tree lights.: http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article759164.ece
Page 241, Position 2: Mussolini was once employed by MI5.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/oct/13/benito-mussolini-recruited-mi5-italy
Page 241, Position 3: Abraham Lincoln was 6'4" tall and wore a seven-inch hat.: http://www.listland.com/10-strange-facts-about-president-abraham-lincoln/
Page 241, Position 4: President Grover Cleveland used to urinate out of the window of the Oval Office.: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/offbeat/strange-facts-about-american-presidents/ss-AA9jKfM
Page 242, Position 1: Johnny Cash was the first American to hear that Stalin had died. He was an air force radio operator.: Antonino Dâ€™Ambrosio, A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and The Making of Bitter Tears
Page 242, Position 2: To identify each other in the dark, soldiers in both world wars put bioluminescent fungi on their helmets.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-Nl65P8DPbYC&pg=PA122&lpg=PA122&dq=Soldiers+bioluminescent+fungi+to+their+helmets&source=bl&ots=48a3DJPYH4&sig=DVRaq_doTUR10RjKTRB0XHnxph4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=7Z2KVerPDseV7AbjvYKgCw&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Soldiers%20bioluminescent%20fungi%20to%20their%20helmets&f=false
Page 242, Position 3: The silent documentary The Battle of the Somme (1916) sold more tickets in British cinemas than Star Wars.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zc3dhyc
Page 242, Position 4: An early title for Star Wars was ‘Adventures of the Starkiller’.: Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe
Page 243, Position 1: Movie trailers are so named because they used to come after, or ‘trail’, the movie.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailer_(promotion)
Page 243, Position 2: The trailer for the longest-ever movie is 72 minutes long.: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jul/11/trailer-for-longest-film-ever-ambiance
Page 243, Position 3: In 2014, the longest-serving Girl Guide in the UK turned 106.: The Week, 25 October 2014
Page 243, Position 4: There are more Boy Scouts in Indonesia than in the rest of the world combined.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scouting#Membership
Page 244, Position 1: The word ‘hundred’ used to mean 120.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=hundred
Page 244, Position 2: The Turkish for ‘breakfast’ translates as ‘before coffee’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7xUafQwz2tkC&pg=PA568&lpg=PA568&dq=Turkish+word+for+%27breakfast%27+literally+translates+to+%27before+coffee%27&source=bl&ots=RS_9brw7U-&sig=2daQmmUkR2S5cV6y3hoAKclDqGE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=BsmKVYS_B6at7Abp7qbQDw&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Turkish%20word%20for%20'breakfast'%20literally%20translates%20to%20'before%20coffee'&f=false
Page 244, Position 3: There are 125 species of coffee plant but we only make coffee from six of them.: Scientific American Magazine, October 2014
Page 244, Position 4: More than half the world’s mountains have not yet been climbed.: Sunday Times, 7 December 2014
Page 245, Position 1: In 2006, volunteers removing litter from Ben Nevis found a piano near the summit.: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/may/19/martinwainwright.uknews2
Page 245, Position 2: Almost one in five Beatles songs mention the weather.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3151652/Pop-s-weather-obsessed-star-answer-blowing-wind.html
Page 245, Position 3: On 24 March 2015, the temperature in Antarctica was higher than in Madrid, Malta and Marrakesh.: http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2944&cm_ven=tw-jm
Page 245, Position 4: A third of the people living in Monaco are millionaires.: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101856833#.
Page 246, Position 1: The most money you can fit in a standard-sized briefcase is $780,000.: http://www.cockeyed.com/inside/million/million.html
Page 246, Position 2: 19% of Americans think they’re in the top 1% of earners.: http://www.salem-news.com/articles/july272009/american_money_dj_7-27-09.php
Page 246, Position 3: Men think they are much better at maths than they really are.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150623131712.htm
Page 246, Position 4: Women are more efficient than men at gathering mushrooms.: http://phys.org/news/2010-05-women-efficiently-men.html
Page 247, Position 1: In the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the entry for ‘woman’ read ‘the female of man’.: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1771.
Page 247, Position 2: Action Man’s actual name is Matthew Exler.: http://actionman.wikia.com/wiki/Action_Man_%28character%29
Page 247, Position 3: Graham Greene once entered a competition to parody his own writing style. He came second.: http://www.economist.com/node/16588054
Page 247, Position 4: A nanosecond is to a second what a second is to 32 years.: http://www.mit.edu/~spatrick/birthday.html
Page 248, Position 1: At one per second, counting all the brain’s synapses would take thirty million years.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=a1ueBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT78&dq=synapses+count+seconds+brain&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAWoVChMI6MOCks7nyAIVy1YUCh08Pgg7#v=onepage&q=synapses%20count%20seconds%20brain&f=false
Page 248, Position 2: For 50 million years, birds had snouts, not beaks.: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150512-bird-grows-face-of-dinosaur
Page 248, Position 3: Dinosaurs communicated by hissing.: http://www.livescience.com/32271-how-did-dinosaurs-communicate.html
Page 248, Position 4: Female buffaloes make decisions by voting.: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121114-election-day-animal-style
Page 249, Position 1: John Wayne loved wearing his Stetson so much he had the roof of his car raised.: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000053/bio
Page 249, Position 2: Levi’s jeans were originally called ‘waist overalls’.: http://www.levistrauss.com/our-story/
Page 249, Position 3: The first beach huts were called ‘bathing bungalows’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ebOgBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=%22bathing+bungalows%22&source=bl&ots=gcKLA5J7ie&sig=qZ6bqtBK_Me6J4Nwb4cypOoR994&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDQQ6AEwBGoVChMI6pKzgObfyAIVzNUUCh2sZAtJ#v=onepage&q=%22bathing%20bungalows%22&f=false
Page 249, Position 4: If Bilbo Baggins’s Hobbit hole were for sale in southern England, it would be on the market at £8.5 million.: http://boingboing.net/2015/06/26/bilbo-baggins-hobbit-house-w.html
Page 250, Position 1: If Tuvalu sold its embassy building in Wimbledon, it could pay off more than a tenth of its national debt.: The Economist, 25 October 2014
Page 250, Position 2: More than half of the world’s cash transactions are carried out to hide something from the authorities.: The Economist, 20 September 2014
Page 250, Position 3: People are more likely to lie in the afternoon than in the morning.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-are-more-moral-in-the-morning/?&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20140224
Page 250, Position 4: The answer to a True or False question is most likely to be true.: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140905-the-secret-to-acing-exams
Page 251, Position 1: 45% of people falsely claim to have been skydiving.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/revealed-the-most-common-lies-that-we-tell-to-impress-others-10113020.html
Page 251, Position 2: One in 20 people have hallucinated at some point in their life.: http://www.livescience.com/50999-hallucinations-delusions-common.html
Page 251, Position 3: 95% of people are immune to leprosy.: http://cmr.asm.org/content/19/2/338.full
Page 251, Position 4: One treatment for strychnine poisoning in the 19th century was to drink melted lard.: John Buckingham, Bitter Nemesis: The Intimate History of Strychnine.
Page 252, Position 1: The microbes living in your stomach suffer from jet lag.: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2014/10/17/even-the-bacteria-in-your-gut-get-jet-lag/
Page 252, Position 2: More insects are killed by cars in the UK each year than human beings have ever lived.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8630835/Two-trillion-insects-killed-on-Dutch-cars-every-year.html
Page 252, Position 3: Toyota sold 18.7 million cars from 2012 to 2014, but had to recall 20 million.: Delayed Gratification Quarterly Magazine, Autumn 2014
Page 252, Position 4: Vespas are banned from the centre of Rome.: The Week, 25 October 2014
Page 253, Position 1: In ancient Rome, bakers were forbidden from mixing with comedians.: http://kitchenboy.net/blog/ancient-bread-from-pompeii-fascinates/
Page 253, Position 2: Competitors in the Hong Kong ultramarathon run up and down the same stretch of road 25 times.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-31681299
Page 253, Position 3: The 1863 Derby had 32 false starts, delaying the start of the race by over an hour.: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/8819234 (The Times, 21st May 1863)
Page 253, Position 4: The world record for horse long jump is shorter than the world record for human long jump.: http://olympics.time.com/2012/07/16/really-strange-sports-that-are-longer-in-the-olympics/slide/horse-long-jump/
Page 254, Position 1: The longest word with all its letters in reverse alphabetical order is ‘spoonfeed’.: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-english-word-with-letters-arranged-in-reverse-alphabetical-order?fb_comment_id=826211640753232_934830319891363
Page 254, Position 2: The Bodleian Library in Oxford got its first Chinese book in 1604. It was 80 years before they found someone who could read it.: The Economist, 13 September 2014
Page 254, Position 3: To read all the books in the British Library at a rate of five a day would take 80,000 years.: https://lavenderfawn.wordpress.com/a-brief-history-of-the-british-library/
Page 254, Position 4: The autobiography of Colonel Sanders was called Life as I Know It Has Been Finger Lickin’ Good.: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Have-Known-Finger-Lickin/dp/0884190536
Page 255, Position 1: The man who first had the idea of using microwaves to cook food got a one-off payment of $2.: Independent, 25 October 2014
Page 255, Position 2: The first published version of ‘Old Mother Hubbard’ was dedicated to a Mr Bastard.: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/7232004
Page 255, Position 3: The first monorail was horse-drawn.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monorails_in_Russia
Page 255, Position 4: The first powered submarine was called the Resurgam, meaning ‘I will rise again’, but it sank almost immediately.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurgam
Page 256, Position 1: The first version of Hamlet was called ‘Amleth’ and has a happy ending.: http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/history/prehistory/amleth.html
Page 256, Position 2: Judi Dench first appeared on stage at the age of five. She played a snail.: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entertainment/?icid=gnavbarttg_rootentertainment&rpc=ttg
Page 256, Position 3: Children grow faster in spring.: http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/8_08Notes%20for%20Week%208.htm
Page 256, Position 4: Spring gets shorter by about 30 seconds every year.: http://www.livescience.com/50194-spring-equinox-shorter-season.html
Page 257, Position 1: Flowers get suntans.: http://www.futurity.org/flowers-plants-equator-834352/
Page 257, Position 2: Ants yawn and stretch their legs when they wake up.: http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/050/5/2/civilized_ant_spread_by_leminnes-d4q81vk.pdf
Page 257, Position 3: Spiders evolved 100 million years before flies.: Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging and Mating. Leslie Brunetta.
Page 257, Position 4: Ten midges make a swarm.: http://www.nature.com/news/only-ten-midges-needed-to-make-a-swarm-1.15716
Page 258, Position 1: More than a quarter of the world’s population regularly eat insects.: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/05/daily-chart-11
Page 258, Position 2: A recent scientific study has concluded that there are too many scientific studies.: http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/there-are-too-many-scientific-studies-says-scientific-study/
Page 258, Position 3: 182 billion emails are sent every day, 26 for every person on the planet.: http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Email-Statistics-Report-2013-2017-Executive-Summary.pdf
Page 258, Position 4: In the 1870s, North America had 144 official time zones.: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/invention-of-standard-time-feature/
Page 259, Position 1: In the time it takes to say ‘one hundred and thirty’, your vocal cords open and close 130 times.: Wonderpedia, April 2015
Page 259, Position 2: When you’re talking to someone face-to-face, your pupils dilate to match theirs.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26094-chimps-show-empathy-by-mimicking-pupil-size.html#.VCqc6StdVPc
Page 259, Position 3: The word ‘huh’ is understood in all known languages.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/everybody-almost-every-language-says-huh-huh-180949822/
Page 259, Position 4: The word ‘twerk’ has been in use since 1820.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-33265370
Page 260, Position 1: Until ad 837, Halloween was on 12 May.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/holydays/allsaints_1.shtml
Page 260, Position 2: Pancake Day was celebrated in the 17th century by ‘cock-throwing’ – beating a chicken to death with cudgels.: BBC History Magazine, February 2015
Page 260, Position 3: Until 1970, all pubs in Ireland closed on St Patrick’s Day.: http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/All-the-pubs-in-Ireland-used-to-be-closed-on-St-Patricks-Day.html
Page 260, Position 4: 88% of New Year’s resolutions fail.: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703478704574612052322122442
Page 261, Position 1: Poecilonym is a synonym for the word ‘synonym’.: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/poecilonym
Page 261, Position 2: Lachschlaganfall is the condition where a person laughs so much they fall unconscious.: http://thatwordsite.com/2013/08/lachschlaganfall/
Page 261, Position 3: In Old English, the word ‘thing’ meant ‘a parliament’.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=thing
Page 261, Position 4: The word ‘aficionado’ originally meant ‘a bullfighting fan’.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=aficionado
Page 262, Position 1: Cow bells make cows feel stressed.: The Times, 25 September 2014
Page 262, Position 2: The pouches in hamsters’ cheeks go all the way back to their hips.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2913482/What-cheek-X-ray-footage-shows-hamster-stuffing-face-pouches-nuts.html
Page 262, Position 3: Bats get erections in their tongues.: http://www.slate.com/blogs/wild_things/2013/10/31/bizarre_bat_behavior_oral_sex_pollinating_tequila_sharing_meals_drinking.html
Page 262, Position 4: Snails use mucus to seal their shells with a transparent ‘door’.: http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/09/03/218521175/how-to-build-little-doors-inside-your-shell-the-secrets-of-snail-carpentry
Page 263, Position 1: Scientists have discovered a species of algae that tastes like bacon.: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/17/tech/dulse-bacon-flavored-seaweed/
Page 263, Position 2: The portable machine gun was invented by Hiram Maxim, who also invented the mousetrap.: http://www.dartfordarchive.org.uk/technology/engin_maxim.shtml
Page 263, Position 3: In Toronto in 2008, mice chewed through wires in the ceiling of an animal shelter and killed nearly 100 cats.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7792475.stm
Page 263, Position 4: In 1901, Edith Wagner of New York married her Maltese cat.: The Bourbon News, 8 March 1901
Page 264, Position 1: Cerberus, the name of the three-headed dog that guarded Hell, is Sanskrit for ‘Spot’.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerberus
Page 264, Position 2: Dog food is tested on humans.: http://www.lbc.co.uk/does-a-human-taste-test-dog-food-46885
Page 264, Position 3: Wild boars wash their food.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3189559/Not-filthy-pigs-Wild-boars-WASH-food-cleaning-fruit-stream-turn-snouts-dirty-apples.html
Page 264, Position 4: A Siberian tit can store half a million seeds in a single winter.: Jo Stevens, Why Do Robins Have Red Breasts?
Page 265, Position 1: In severe solar storms, Earth loses 100 tons of its atmosphere into space.: http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/qa_sun.html#center
Page 265, Position 2: The dialling code for space is the same as the one for Texas.: http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2013/09/the-space-stations-phone-has-a-houston-area-code/
Page 265, Position 3: The number of American teenagers who consider themselves ‘very important’ increased from 12% in 1950 to 80% in 2010.: The Economist 25 May 2015
Page 265, Position 4: Twice as many American schoolgirls would rather be a celebrity’s PA than president of Harvard.: The Economist 25 May 2015
Page 266, Position 1: The Harvard–Yale boat race takes place on a river called the Thames.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard%E2%80%93Yale_Regatta
Page 266, Position 2: London, Ontario, is on a river called the Thames.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London,_Ontario
Page 266, Position 3: When Columbus travelled to America, he thought he was sailing uphill.: Greg Jenner, A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Everyday Life
Page 266, Position 4: The first bus in Britain to be powered by human excrement ran from Bristol to Bath on the Number 2 route.: http://news.sky.com/story/1445215/poo-bus-set-for-number-2-passenger-service
Page 267, Position 1: There is a river in Nicaragua called the Pis-Pis.: http://topics.time.com/nicaragua/articles/23/
Page 267, Position 2: There are 10,685 beaches in Australia.: http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/beach
Page 267, Position 3: People from South Sudan, Palestine, São Tomé and Príncipe, Myanmar or the Solomon Islands can travel visa-free to 28 countries. UK citizens can visit 147.: http://www.passportindex.org/index.php
Page 267, Position 4: MEXICO CITY' was a postal acronym in the Second World War meaning 'May Every Kiss [X] I Can Offer Carry Itself to You'.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3DQ71i3CfYEC&pg=PT594&lpg=PT594&dq=%22I+Can+Offer+Carry+Itself+to+You%22&source=bl&ots=LZzIKuzipo&sig=sYnKmFyexmUSjT99xMqsqlthXWw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAGoVChMI8LLlyuvfyAIVhtYUCh3wOwkr#v=onepage&q=%22I%20Can%20Offer%20Carry%20Itself%20to%20You%22&f=false
Page 268, Position 1: The number 88 is Morse code shorthand for ‘love and kisses’.: http://morsecode.scphillips.com/morse2.html
Page 268, Position 2: Morse code was expanded in 2004 to include ._ _._. meaning ‘@’.: http://cjonline.com/stories/021704/pag_morsecode.shtml#.VO270ih8ung
Page 268, Position 3: Makahakahaka is Hawaiian for ‘deep-set eyeballs’.: Mary Kuwena Pukui, Hawaiian Dictionary
Page 268, Position 4: No words in Esperanto are more than 12 letters long.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_words#Esperanto
Page 269, Position 1: In Norway, to change your surname to one that fewer than 200 people have you must ask permission from everyone who has that name.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/25034/8-countries-fascinating-baby-naming-laws
Page 269, Position 2: In Finland, reindeers’ antlers are covered with reflective paint so drivers can see them.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-26244339
Page 269, Position 3: Åland is the only region of Finland to have a single official language. It’s Swedish.: http://finland.fi/life-society/the-example-of-aland-autonomy-as-a-minority-protector/
Page 269, Position 4: Swiss cheese is losing its holes.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/smart-news/scientists-have-finally-figured-out-why-swiss-cheese-has-holes-180955450/
Page 270, Position 1: Jamaica, Colombia and Saint Lucia are the only countries in the world where your boss is more likely to be a woman than a man.: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/13/the-three-countries-where-your-boss-is-more-likely-to-be-a-woman/
Page 270, Position 2: Three times more men than women would pretend not to notice if a friend broke down in tears.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/92920.stm
Page 270, Position 3: Until 1964, women in France needed their husbands’ permission to start a business, get a passport or open a bank account.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2Ne5BgAAQBAJ&pg=PT312&lpg=PT312&dq=Until+1964,+a+woman+in+France+needed+her+husbandâ€™s+permission+to+start+a+business,+get+a+passport+or+open+a+bank+account.&source=bl&ots=UQeXethW04&sig=rJmCh7rNmORW_BA11MJh9a44G24&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3eWHVdO9GYXiUdv1g6gM&ved=0CDoQ6AEwBA
Page 270, Position 4: The revolving door was invented by a man who hated holding doors open for women.: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2013/11/07/revolving_doors_why_don_t_we_use_them_more.html
Page 271, Position 1: Twister was described as ‘sex in a box’ by rival manufacturers who tried to have it banned.: Independent, 25 October 2014
Page 271, Position 2: The meagre fish is so noisy during sex that it gives away its location to fishermen, who can then catch it.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/03/03/fish-smarts/
Page 271, Position 3: When National Geographic published its first wildlife photos in 1906, two board members resigned in disgust.: http://press.nationalgeographic.com/about-national-geographic/milestones/
Page 271, Position 4: All worm sex takes place in the ‘69’ position.: Jo Stevens, Why Do Robins Have Red Breasts?
Page 272, Position 1: The Bassian thrush farts when feeding; this startles worms into revealing their location.: http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/bookshelf/101910/extreme-birds-the-world-s-most-extraordinary-and-bizarre-birds
Page 272, Position 2: Pigeons don’t bob their heads if they are walking on a treadmill.: http://www.wired.com/2015/01/whats-birds-bob-heads-walk/
Page 272, Position 3: To prepare for China’s national day, 10,000 ceremonial pigeons have anal security checks.: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/china-10000-doves-undergo-anal-checks-suspicious-objects-before-tiananmen-square-release-1468047
Page 272, Position 4: In March 2014, an Australian python swallowed a chihuahua and found itself chained to a kennel.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/10697954/Snake-swallows-Australian-Chihuahua-dog.html
Page 273, Position 1: Ernest Hemingway hunted sharks with a machine gun.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1uFSAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT27&lpg=PT27&dq=Ernest+Hemingway+hunted+sharks+with+a+machine+gun.&source=bl&ots=sT62sXpnZc&sig=7RfeE9tkVFwmvAuwwMVQS_jbK08&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fJuKVY7POanU7Abuz5SwBw&ved=0CEsQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=Ernest%20Hemingway%20hunted%20sharks%20with%20a%20machine%20gun.&f=false
Page 273, Position 2: Nikola Tesla hated pearls so much that he refused to speak to women who wore them.: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-nikola-tesla/
Page 273, Position 3: Samantha Cameron was taught to play pool at university by rap star Tricky.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32592449
Page 273, Position 4: Alex Salmond changed his signature after the Queen told him off for his messy handwriting.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/11553789/I-changed-my-signature-after-the-Queen-commented-on-my-messy-handwriting-says-Alex-Salmond.html
Page 274, Position 1: Martin Luther King Jr got a C+ in Public Speaking.: http://borgenproject.org/10-facts-martin-luther-king-jr/
Page 274, Position 2: Bill Clinton learnt jujitsu before meeting Yasser Arafat in case he tried to hug him.: http://www.pri.org/stories/2013-09-24/iran-and-us-learn-how-flirt-diplomatically
Page 274, Position 3: Barbra Streisand had a shopping mall built for her exclusive use underneath her house.: http://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/photography/g1321/barbra-streisand-house-photos/
Page 274, Position 4: While playing Achilles in the movie Troy, Brad Pitt injured his Achilles tendon.: http://www.virginmedia.com/movies/features/weirdest-on-set-injuries.php?page=8
Page 275, Position 1: Jackie, the second Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lion, survived two train wrecks, an earthquake, a boat sinking, a studio explosion and a plane crash in the Arizona desert.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/31511/life-and-times-mgm-lion
Page 275, Position 2: For each lion cub that survives, a lioness will have mated 3,000 times.: http://www.livescience.com/27404-lion-facts.html
Page 275, Position 3: 85% of male insects engage in homosexual activity, but often by mistake.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/gay-insects-having-sex-accident-2482558
Page 275, Position 4: To flirt, haddocks hum.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/wildlife/8305798/Natures-strangest-seduction-techniques-revealed.html
Page 276, Position 1: Only 28% of people know when they’re being flirted with.: http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/how-to-know-if-someone-is-flirting-with-you-romance-relationships-communication
Page 276, Position 2: The ‘Mile High Club’ is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘an imaginary association of people’.: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/Mile-High-Club
Page 276, Position 3: There is a consultant urologist at Musgrove Park hospital in Taunton, Somerset, called Nicholas Burns-Cox.: http://www.musgroveparkhospital.nhs.uk/wards-and-departments/consultants/nick-burns-cox/
Page 276, Position 4: In hot weather, the Eiffel Tower grows by six inches.: http://www.livescience.com/29391-eiffel-tower.html
Page 277, Position 1: Almost all kangaroos are left-handed.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/new-study-finds-that-kangaroos-are-southpaws
Page 277, Position 2: The first animals with fingers had seven or eight on each hand.: BBC Focus Magazine, April 2015
Page 277, Position 3: Charles Darwin thought the menstrual cycle was evidence that early humans lived by the sea and synchronised their lives with the tides.: BBC Focus Magazine, April 2015
Page 277, Position 4: 9 out of 10 chimps look both ways when crossing the road.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27370#.VTTIc1boY0o
Page 278, Position 1: The DVLA has banned the number plate VA61ANA, but has allowed PEN15.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11625871/Banned-number-plates-revealed-VA61ANA-banned-but-PEN15-allowed.html
Page 278, Position 2: Until the 1960s, women were banned from wearing trousers in the Houses of Parliament.: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/may/10/redbox.houseofcommons
Page 278, Position 3: Women in 18th-century England who remarried but didn’t want to carry their debts over to the new marriage had to get married in the nude.: http://www.elfinspell.com/AndrewsSheet.html
Page 278, Position 4: The US nude-wedding industry is worth $440 million a year.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_wedding
Page 279, Position 1: There are nearly twice as many calories in human blood as in beer.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31906851
Page 279, Position 2: Ancient Sumerian beer was as thick as porridge and was drunk through a straw.: http://www.ancient.eu/article/223/https:/books.google.com.tw/books/#v=onepage&q=hittite%20pastries&f=false
Page 279, Position 3: To shave two seconds off the time it takes you to eat a pie in a pie-eating competition, drink cough syrup beforehand.: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/dec/15/wigan-world-pie-eating-contest
Page 279, Position 4: In 2015, the president of Belarus officially stated that ‘Belarusian sausage does not contain toilet paper.’: http://www.rferl.org/content/belarus-russia-food/26642326.html
Page 280, Position 1: In the 18th century, King George I declared all pigeon droppings to be property of the Crown.: http://www.farmersweekly.co.za/article.aspx?id=29174&h=Go-green!
Page 280, Position 2: The Duke of Edinburgh’s pet names for the Queen include ‘cabbage’ and ‘sausage’.: http://www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/2015061025706/prince-philip-birthday-facts-trivia/
Page 280, Position 3: The world record for the most sausages produced in one minute is 36.: https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/inverness/617090/sausage-record-smashed-by-inverness-butcher/
Page 280, Position 4: More than 150 billion animals are killed by humans every year.: http://www.adaptt.org/killcounter.html
Page 281, Position 1: The number of hospital deaths investigated by autopsy has fallen from 40% in 1960 to less than 1% today.: New Scientist 20 June 2015
Page 281, Position 2: Sumo wrestling referees traditionally carry a knife so if they make a bad decision they can kill themselves.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gy%C5%8Dji#Uniform
Page 281, Position 3: Professional boxing is banned in Cuba because the prize money is incompatible with Marxism.: The Economist 17 January 2015
Page 281, Position 4: Pigeon breeding and skinny jeans are both banned by ISIS.: http://www.syracuse.com/us-news/index.ssf/2015/04/isis_bans_skinny_jeans.html
Page 282, Position 1: In 2013, 46 girls born in the UK were named Isis.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-29060563
Page 282, Position 2: Barbie and Ken are named after the daughter and son of the couple who invented them.: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/29/arts/ruth-handler-whose-barbie-gave-dolls-curves-dies-at-85.html
Page 282, Position 3: There are more than 2,000 Americans named Santa.: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+many+Santas â€¨
Page 282, Position 4: All the 126 remaining kakapos have names.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kakapo
Page 283, Position 1: Pelé’s first name is Edson: he was named after Thomas Edison.: http://www.biography.com/people/pelÃ©-39221
Page 283, Position 2: Three-quarters of all the boys christened in England in the mid-13th century were named John, Thomas, Robert, Richard or William.: http://public.oed.com/aspects-of-english/shapers-of-english/personal-names-and-the-development-of-english/
Page 283, Position 3: Uranus was originally called George.: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/11apr_george/
Page 283, Position 4: The surnames of Bradley Cooper and Michael Fassbender both mean ‘barrel-maker’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lZ4CAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT12&lpg=PT12&dq=fassbender+barrels&source=bl&ots=NOvbbTBbHY&sig=v904gzqJqscgnl6aPvIFIqTMniE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=W3mKVeHYD8LV7gamurbABQ&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=fassbender%20barrels&f=false
Page 284, Position 1: Stephen King’s son is called Joe King.: http://metro.co.uk/2011/06/07/stephen-kings-son-joe-hill-shia-lebeouf-is-making-my-book-into-a-film-35959/
Page 284, Position 2: Grumpy Cat earns more than Gwyneth Paltrow.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11278333/Grumpy-cat-makes-owner-64-million.html
Page 284, Position 3: Mark Zuckerberg, Carlos Slim and Bill Gates are each worth more in billions of dollars than their age in years.: http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbespr/2014/03/03/forbes-releases-28th-annual-worlds-billionaires-issue/
Page 284, Position 4: When John Lennon appeared on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1975, he was paid in chocolate biscuits.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/biographyandmemoirreviews/11659671/John-Lennon-was-paid-in-chocolate-biscuits-10-things-we-learnt-from-Whispering-Bobs-memoirs.html
Page 285, Position 1: Hawaii consumes more Spam than the 49 other US states combined.: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/10/spam-turns-75-10-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-canned-meat/slide/guam-is-the-largest-consumer-of-spam/
Page 285, Position 2: In 29 US states, it is still legal to fire someone for being gay.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/30/fired-for-being-gay_n_6076492.html
Page 285, Position 3: In 1960, Denys Tucker was fired from his job at the Natural History Museum because he claimed to have seen the Loch Ness Monster.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/top-scientist-natural-history-museum-5547028
Page 285, Position 4: A Tyrannosaurus rex could outrun Mo Farah.: The Week 29 Dec 2012
Page 286, Position 1: When Usain Bolt ran the 100m at the 2012 London Olympics, his feet only touched the ground for two seconds.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-2186206/Usain-Bolt-wins-200m--London-2012-Olympics.html
Page 286, Position 2: Pro snooker player Bill Werbeniuk could only play when drunk, so was able to offset the cost of beer against his income tax.: The Week 29 Dec 2012
Page 286, Position 3: Glasgow City Council spends £10,000 every year removing traffic cones from the head of a statue of the Duke of Wellington.: http://metro.co.uk/2013/11/11/glasgow-to-spend-65000-to-end-duke-of-wellington-statue-cone-tradition-4182901/
Page 286, Position 4: State senators in Minnesota are not allowed to make eye contact with each other during debates.: http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/05/08/404991505/what-eye-contact-and-dogs-can-teach-us-about-civility-in-politics
Page 287, Position 1: In 2014, Italian parliamentary barbers had their annual salary cut from £106,000 to £77,000 as an austerity measure.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-29442059
Page 287, Position 2: In 2013, a construction company collecting rubble to repair a road destroyed a Mayan pyramid.: http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/14/world/americas/belize-mayan-pyramid-destroyed/
Page 287, Position 3: In 1963, George Harrison wrote to Beatles fans asking them to stop throwing sweets at him during concerts.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1181635/Why-George-Harrison-begged-young-fan-stop-throwing-Jelly-Babies-The-Beatles.html
Page 288, Position 1: In 1953, a new reservoir in New York flooded the town of Neversink.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/neversink
Page 288, Position 2: The first flashing lights on Broadway had an attendant sitting on a nearby roof to switch them on and off.: Jessica Kerwin Jenkins, All The Time In The World
Page 288, Position 3: In the early days of baseball, umpires sat behind the home plate in rocking chairs.: Dan Shlossberg, Baseball Gold: Mining Nuggets From Our National Pastime
Page 288, Position 4: Until the late 19th century, the age of consent in most US states was 10 years old.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_North_America
Page 289, Position 1: Most of the ‘carving’ at Mount Rushmore was done with dynamite.: http://www.nps.gov/moru/historyculture/index.htm
Page 289, Position 2: There are more pieces of the Berlin Wall spread around the world than there are left in Berlin.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/fall-of-the-berlin-wall-see-the-pieces-of-the-wall-spread-out-across-the-world-9847162.html
Page 289, Position 3: For 1.4 million years there was no improvement in the design of stone hand axes.: http://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/insight/tag/what-a-wonderful-world/
Page 289, Position 4: The ladders of the San Francisco fire department are made of wood.: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a15120/san-francisco-fire-department-wooden-ladders/
Page 290, Position 1: There’s as much iron in 16 pints of Guinness as there is in one pint of orange juice.: New Scientist 6 December 2014
Page 290, Position 2: Feeding oregano to cows reduces their methane emissions by almost half.: http://ecogeek.org/2010/09/oregano-reduces-cows-methane-emissions-by-40/
Page 290, Position 3: Excited guinea pigs perform little hops and leaps called ‘popcorning’.: http://t.co/3CP3MJKwF7
Page 290, Position 4: Airymouse is Cornish for ‘bat’.: http://www.historyextra.com/feature/top-10-historical-cornish-words
Page 291, Position 1: A mouse’s body grows six new hairs for each one plucked out.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11525367/Cure-for-thinning-hair-Scientists-find-plucking-stimulates-huge-growth.html
Page 291, Position 2: A whale’s nerves are three times more elastic than a human’s.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/04/giant-whales-have-super-stretchy-nerves/
Page 291, Position 3: Sloth sex takes under two minutes.: http://www.livescience.com/50861-animal-sex-sloths.html
Page 291, Position 4: Most ducks don’t quack.: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/charles-nevin-who-can-ever-replace-his-boyish-charisma-455517.html
Page 292, Position 1: Owls are 70 times less likely to hoot when it’s raining.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OUderEB-8UkC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=Owls+are+70+times+less+likely+to+hoot+when+itâ€™s+raining&source=bl&ots=5HUZt_U6Mt&sig=NXu5r3k9Pnw1Rqb32V8FeqYiKY0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAGoVChMIwbawi_bfyAIVh10UCh1IvAAQ
Page 292, Position 2: The Earth’s atmosphere contains more than 15 trillion tons of water.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth
Page 292, Position 3: Dissolving Viagra in water stops flowers wilting for up to a week.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1126921/
Page 292, Position 4: Sweat contains antibiotics.: http://discovermagazine.com/2015/july-aug/32-20-things-about-sweat
Page 293, Position 1: The word ‘nuppence’ means ‘no money’.: http://wordhistories.com/2015/03/24/nuppence-tuppence/
Page 293, Position 2: Poker player Archie Karas turned $50 into $40 million between 1992 and 1994, and lost it all in 1995.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_Karas
Page 293, Position 3: Americans put out $3 billion worth of food for birds every year.: http://www.wired.com/2015/05/give-break-bird-feeders/
Page 293, Position 4: Drunk birds slur their songs.: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2014/12/29/scientists-show-that-drunk-birds-slur-their-songs/
Page 294, Position 1: Swifts can sleep on the wing.: http://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/Amazing%20swift%20facts_tcm9-279347.pdf
Page 294, Position 2: Lisa is Russian for ‘fox’.: http://blogs.russianpod101.com/blog/2012/11/28/russian-word-of-the-day-fox-noun/
Page 294, Position 3: The president of Sinn Féin unwinds by trampolining naked with his dog.: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/republic-of-ireland/gerry-adams-trampolines-naked-with-his-dog-30992297.html
Page 294, Position 4: Professional dog walkers earn more than nurses.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/money/dog-walkers-earn-more-police-5761638
Page 295, Position 1: The scrotum water frog of Lake Titicaca is on the verge of extinction due to its use as an aphrodisiac.: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/perus-erection-vendors-are-driving-the-scrotum-frog-to-extinction â€¦
Page 295, Position 2: On Vanuatu, the native pigs develop both male and female sex organs and are used as currency.: http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/105825/view â€¦
Page 295, Position 3: A group of chimps in Zambia wear a blade of grass in their left ear as a fashion statement.: https://www.thedodo.com/for-the-first-time-chimpanzees-605888880.html
Page 295, Position 4: It’s illegal in New York City to take a selfie with a tiger.: http://bigcatrescue.org/big-cat-bans-enacted/
Page 296, Position 1: Polar bears eat dolphins and freeze the leftovers.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27697-polar-bear-caught-eating-dolphins-and-freezing-the-leftovers/
Page 296, Position 2: Orang-utans breastfeed their young for eight years.: http://animals.mom.me/orangutans-raising-young-7822.html
Page 296, Position 3: Each of an octopus’s 1,600 suckers has 10,000 taste receptors.: New Scientist 13 June 2015
Page 296, Position 4: In 2014, scientists named 18,000 new species.: https://theconversation.com/an-animal-that-could-rewrite-the-family-tree-one-of-the-top-new-species-of-2015-42179
Page 297, Position 1: In ancient Greece, evidence from slaves was only accepted in court if it was obtained by torture.: http://www.jstor.org/stable/270674
Page 297, Position 2: 53 of the 84 warrants issued for torture in British history were authorised by Queen Elizabeth I.: Mitchel P Roth, Eye for an Eye.
Page 297, Position 3: In the reign of Queen Mary, anyone caught living idly for three days was branded with ‘V’ for vagrant.: Mitchel P Roth, Eye for an Eye.
Page 297, Position 4: The Thuggees, a 19th-century Indian gang, killed at least a million people. Their favourite weapon was a handkerchief.: Mitchel P Roth, Eye for an Eye.
Page 298, Position 1: When the Roman emperor Heraclius entered battle, his soldiers would applaud to intimidate their enemies.: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/a-brief-history-of-applause-the-big-data-of-the-ancient-world/274014/
Page 298, Position 2: Ancient Chinese warriors showed off by juggling before battle.: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/douglas-mcpherson/15-facts-for-world-juggling-day_b_7294460.html
Page 298, Position 3: During the First World War, women giving out white feathers to ‘cowards’ often did so by mistake to soldiers who weren’t in uniform.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_feather
Page 298, Position 4: More than a quarter of new cars in the UK are white.: http://www.smmt.co.uk/2015/01/white-now-colour-choice-uk-car-buyers/
Page 299, Position 1: Children on long car journeys are more likely to grow up to be rich and successful if they sit in the middle seat.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11576226/Children-confined-to-the-middle-seat-on-car-journeys-grow-up-to-be-successful.html
Page 299, Position 2: The Mr Men were created by Roger Hargreaves after his son asked what a tickle looked like.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/10494033/The-Mr-Men-books-started-when-I-asked-dad-What-does-a-tickle-look-like.html
Page 299, Position 3: In the 1960s, Italian shops had a service called ‘the Smearing’ in which they would spread Nutella on any slice of bread brought to them by a child.: http://www.nutellausa.com/history3.htm
Page 299, Position 4: ‘Ebb’ and ‘Flow’ are two NASA satellites.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20761903
Page 300, Position 1: 3D printing means that NASA can email tools into space.: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-12/19/3d-printed-space-wrench
Page 300, Position 2: Tom Cruise helped design NASA’s website.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/tom-cruise-helped-nasa-redesign-5716324
Page 300, Position 3: James Cameron sold his Terminator script for $1.: http://www.blastr.com/2013-3-25/little-known-sci-fi-fact-homeless-james-cameron-sold-terminator-script-1
Page 300, Position 4: In the 19th century, you could be committed to an asylum for ‘novel-reading’.: http://www.appalachianhistory.net/2008/12/125-reasons-youll-get-sent-to-lunatic.html
Page 301, Position 1: In 1939, novelist John Buchan signed the declaration of war between Germany and Canada.: http://www.1890s.ca/PDFs/buchan_bio.pdf
Page 301, Position 2: Franz Kafka convinced his family that Einstein’s theory of relativity would cure his TB.: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/magazine/26kafka-t.html?_r=0
Page 301, Position 3: People with haemorrhoids are more than twice as likely to read on the loo as those who don’t.: http://www.livescience.com/45017-poop-health-misconceptions-truth.html
Page 301, Position 4: The smell of your farts is as unique as your fingerprints.: Gulp by Mary Roach
Page 302, Position 1: Eunuchs live 15 years longer than the average man.: The Week 29 December 2012
Page 302, Position 2: The poke-me-boy tree only grows on the Virgin Islands.: http://www.kew.org/science-conservation/plants-fungi/acacia-anegadensis-poke-me-boy
Page 302, Position 3: One in 10 Britons describe themselves as ‘very good lovers’.: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/sep/28/british-sex-survey-2014-nation-lost-sexual-swagger
Page 302, Position 4: A third of married Britons describe sex as ‘a chore’.: The Week 29 December 2012
Page 303, Position 1: Almost half of ASDA customers study other shoppers’ baskets to try to work out if they are single.: http://www.thegrocer.co.uk/companies/asda-dating-website-to-pair-up-singleton-shoppers/215585.article
Page 303, Position 2: After meeting their mistresses, ancient Egyptian husbands chewed garlic to hide any incriminating odours.: https://books.google.com.tw/books?id=qu97BwAAQBAJ&pg=PT59&dq=%27Tis+moral+sin+an+Onion+to+devour,+Each+clove+of+garlic+hath+a+sacred+power,+Religious+nation+sure,+and+best+abodes,+When+every+garden+is+o%27errun+with+gods!&hl=en&sa=X&ei=p3dYVYC9DYiJ8QWep4KYAg&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=snippet&q=incriminating&f=false
Page 303, Position 3: Smelling a happy person’s sweat can make you happier.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2015/04/21/want-to-feel-happier-just-smell-a-happy-persons-bo/#.VYqEtVboZ0s
Page 303, Position 4: Testosterone evolved from oestrogen.: http://discovermagazine.com/2015/june/25-20-things-you-didnt-know-about-testosterone
Page 304, Position 1: In the 16th century, women in labour were given ‘groaning’ beer to drink during and after the birth.: http://realbeer.com/library/archives/yankeebrew/93Sum/women.html
Page 304, Position 2: The Isle of Rhum used to be called the Isle of Rum. The ‘h’ was added by teetotal Victorians.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9PLZAUbrTK4C&pg=PT21&lpg=PT21&dq=rhum+tee-total+island&source=bl&ots=KVirZbgy35&sig=nD2aP9YOp8Kunxvce8bJpVmQkv0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FhOJVcwgiNlT8NiAKA&ved=0CDwQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=rhum%20tee-total%20island&f=false
Page 304, Position 3: The Museum of London has a whole drawer of codpieces that one embarrassed Victorian curator catalogued as ‘shoulder pads’.: The Times 15 January 2015
Page 304, Position 4: The average bra can support the weight of three bricks.: http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/nine-surprising-facts-about-breasts-you-probably-didn-t-know
Page 305, Position 1: Paper money in ancient China bore the inscription ‘All Counterfeiters Will Be Decapitated’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lL7rV9Z7qhkC&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25&dq=%22All+Counterfeiters+Will+Be+Decapitated%22&source=bl&ots=CV-tNgVKvp&sig=4sELHlYlvY4fS3U2AxuOYfWFqbo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDMQ6AEwA2oVChMI1seKrPzfyAIVB28UCh0aCAtt#v=onepage&q=%22All%20Counterfeiters%20Will%20Be%20Decapitated%22&f=false
Page 305, Position 2: Counterfeiters in medieval Russia were punished by having their coins melted and the molten metal poured down their throats.: Mitchel P Roth, Eye for an Eye
Page 305, Position 3: During the financial crisis of 1720, Parliament debated a resolution that bankers be sewn into sacks filled with poisonous snakes and thrown into the Thames.: http://www.newstatesman.com/business/2008/10/economic-nationalism-stateÂ
Page 305, Position 4: All swimmers leave traces of faecal matter in the water.: http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/hygiene/fast_facts.html
Page 306, Position 1: Two people die, somewhere on Earth, every second.: http://www.ecology.com/birth-death-rates/
Page 306, Position 2: Half of your friends are replaced every seven years.: http://www.livescience.com/5466-friends-replaced-7-years.html
Page 306, Position 3: A group of friends in Washington state have been playing a game of tag for more than 24 years.: http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323375204578269991660836834
Page 306, Position 4: The largest-ever game of musical chairs had 8,238 participants.: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-game-of-musical-chairs-single-venue
Page 307, Position 1: If you unravelled every Slinky ever sold, the wire would circle the Earth more than 171 times.: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/business/25james.html?_r=0
Page 307, Position 2: The Earth’s magnetic field is 100 times weaker than a fridge magnet.: http://EzineArticles.com/4737508
Page 307, Position 3: Smaller magnets mean children are swallowing five times as many as they did ten years ago.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/kids-eat-five-times-more-magnets-than-they-did-ten-years-ago-26790824/?no-ist
Page 307, Position 4: It is impossible to hum and whistle at the same time.: Jonathan Culpeper, English Language: Description, Variation and Context
Page 308, Position 1: Categories at the Good Funeral Awards include Cemetery of the Year, Embalmer of the Year and Gravedigger of the Year.: http://goodfuneralawards.co.uk
Page 308, Position 2: Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute puts the chances of humans becoming extinct by 2100 at 19%.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_catastrophic_risk
Page 308, Position 3: After President Eisenhower had a heart attack, his doctor prescribed a course of hugs with his wife Mamie.: http://www.nytimes.com/health/guides/test/arteriogram/news-and-features.html?page=2
Page 308, Position 4: The Celts thought that shooting pains in the body were caused by being shot with an arrow by an elf.: Michael Potegal, International Handbook of Anger.
Page 309, Position 1: The most popular song played at funerals in the UK is Monty Python’s ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’.: The Week 29 November, 2014
Page 309, Position 2: On the day he died, Martin Luther King Jr had a pillow fight.: http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1726656_1726689_1726242,00.html
Page 309, Position 3: A third of British adults sleep with a cuddly toy.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7947502/Third-of-adults-still-take-teddy-bear-to-bed.html
Page 309, Position 4: A recent poll has found that if you want someone to fancy you, QI is the TV programme you should claim to watch.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ariel/31421322