1,342 QI Facts To Leave You Flabbergasted

Page 1, Position 1: The most distant object in the universe is 13.42 billion light years away.: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2015/8/evolving-achievements-the-7-world-records-that-have-changed-significantly-since
Page 1, Position 2: To get to the nearest star at a tenth of the speed of light would take 42 years and need fuel weighing as much as the Sun.: http://www.universetoday.com/15403/how-long-would-it-take-to-travel-to-the-nearest-star/
Page 1, Position 3: The Sun gets 4 million tons lighter every second.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6mGGX6AGBTAC&pg=PA181&lpg=PA181&dq=The+Sun+gets+4+million+tons+lighter+every+second.&source=bl&ots=jP48M5PHIR&sig=ETfruoBgCzXq1of0iWiDxghG9i4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjv9JvCj_vOAhWBK8AKHdVlBFsQ6AEIOzAF#v=onepage&q=The%20Sun%20gets%204%20million%20tons%20lighter%20every%20second.&f=false
Page 1, Position 4: Ten-trillionths of your suntan comes from stars in galaxies beyond the Milky Way.: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811190751.htm
Page 2, Position 1: For a billion years, the only life on Earth was a kind of slime. Scientists call this period ‘the boring billion’.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229672-900-why-did-evolution-stall-during-the-boring-billion/
Page 2, Position 2: Scientists alive today outnumber all the scientists who ever lived up to 1980.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-living-in-a-new-renaissance/
Page 2, Position 3: Scientists watching paint dry in Surrey and Lyon in 2016 said the results were ‘exciting’.: http://www.surrey.ac.uk/mediacentre/press/2016/science-watching-paint-dry-nanotech-everyday-impact
Page 2, Position 4: To avoid exciting men, early bicycles for women had a ‘cherry screen’ to hide their ankles.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/wellbeing/diet/8419028/Bicycles-The-chains-that-set-women-free.html
Page 3, Position 1: No one knows why bicycles stay upright.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22730370-400-how-does-a-bicycle-stay-upright/
Page 3, Position 2: No one knows how much money is in circulation.: http://www.zyen.com/Presentations/Presentations/The%20Study%20Of%20Money%20May%20Be%20The%20Root%20Of%20Much%20Madness%20-%20Long%20Finance%20Conference%20-%202015.03.03%20v1.2.pdf
Page 3, Position 3: Economists can’t explain boom or bust.: http://www.zyen.com/Presentations/Presentations/The%20Study%20Of%20Money%20May%20Be%20The%20Root%20Of%20Much%20Madness%20-%20Long%20Finance%20Conference%20-%202015.03.03%20v1.2.pdf
Page 3, Position 4: No one knows why scientists don’t have tails.: http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=4555
Page 4, Position 1: The first scientifically named dinosaur bone was called Scrotum humanum because it looked like a giant pair of human testicles.: http://io9.gizmodo.com/5955550/the-first-scientific-name-ever-given-to-a-dinosaur-scrotum-humanum
Page 4, Position 2: The remains of a dinosaur named Aachenosaurus multidens turned out to be lumps of petrified wood.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-demise-of-a-wooden-dinosaur-83015356/?no-ist
Page 4, Position 3: Velociraptors were no bigger than turkeys.: http://www.livescience.com/23922-velociraptor-facts.html
Page 4, Position 4: Dinosaurs didn’t roar; they mumbled or cooed.: http://www.futurity.org/dinosaurs-closed-mouth-vocalization-1200502-2/
Page 5, Position 1: Sabre-toothed tigers never existed.: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/carnivora/sabretooth.html
Page 5, Position 2: Neanderthals are shown as slouching because the first one to be reconstructed happened to have arthritis.: http://discovermagazine.com/2013/dec/22-20-things-you-didnt-know-aboutneanderthals
Page 5, Position 3: The first Neanderthal skull discovered was thought to belong to a Cossack with rickets, the pain of which had furrowed his brow.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22630211.000-case-of-the-rickety-cossack-reveals-unease-about-our-fossil-past.html
Page 5, Position 4: In 2015, Spanish workers destroyed a 6,000-year-old Neolithic tomb, mistaking it for a broken picnic table. They replaced it with a ‘better’ picnic table.: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/27/435203455/ancient-tomb-in-spain-destroyed-and-replaced-with-a-picnic-table
Page 6, Position 1: When spun on a table, a US ‘Lincoln Memorial’ one-cent coin will land on tails 80% of the time.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/gamblers-take-note-the-odds-in-a-coin-flip-arent-quite-5050-145465423/?no-ist
Page 6, Position 2: The surface area of a cat, including each hair of its fur, is 100 times that of its skin and is enough to cover a ping-pong table.: http://www.news.gatech.edu/2015/11/09/hairy-situation-hair-increases-surface-area-animals-100-times
Page 6, Position 3: Ping-pong balls have been made larger to make the sport better for television.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sport/tennis/654102.stm
Page 6, Position 4: After EastEnders, so many kettles are turned on that Britain has to borrow power from France.: http://www.geek.com/news/tea-time-in-britain-causes-predictable-massive-surge-in-electricity-demand-1535023/
Page 7, Position 1: In France, Germany, Austria, Spain and the Netherlands they serve beer in McDonald’s.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/mcdonalds-euro-2016-austria-free-beer-vienna-ottakringer-brewery-a7083336.html
Page 7, Position 2: McNuggets come in four official shapes: bell, bone, boot and ball.: http://www.neatorama.com/2015/04/09/Why-McDonalds-Chicken-McNuggets-Come-in-Only-4-Shapes/
Page 7, Position 3: Slit-faced bats are the only mammals in the world with a T-shaped tail.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JKTeiqPBpM4C&pg=PA128&dq=%22slit-faced%22+tail+%22t-shaped%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjuv7WNn_3PAhUCKcAKHZ49CqUQ6AEIUjAJ#v=onepage&q=%22slit-faced%22%20tail%20%22t-shaped%22&f=false
Page 7, Position 4: Batman flies through the air so fast that landing would probably kill him.: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/16/batmans-superpowers-questioned-by-scientific-study-superman
Page 8, Position 1: A ‘batman’ was a unit of weight in the Ottoman Empire. Ben Affleck weighs about nine batmans.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_(unit) http://comicbook.com/blog/2013/08/25/ben-affleck-is-physically-the-best-choice-to-play-batman-in-a-movie-ever/
Page 8, Position 2: In the X-Men movies, the sound of Wolverine’s claws shooting out was made by tearing a turkey apart.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/75464/10-iconic-movie-sounds-and-how-they-were-made
Page 8, Position 3: In the Halloween movies, the killer wears a Captain Kirk mask, sprayed white.: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077651/trivia
Page 8, Position 4: In The Empire Strikes Back, the emperor had a man’s voice, a woman’s face and a chimpanzee’s eyes.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palpatine
Page 9, Position 1: In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the sound of the boulder that chased Indiana Jones was made by rolling a car down a gravel road.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/75464/10-iconic-movie-sounds-and-how-they-were-made
Page 9, Position 2: If every car in Monaco took to the roads at the same time, they wouldn’t all fit on.: The Economist Pocket World in Figures 2016
Page 9, Position 3: In 2009, the mayors of adjoining Parisian suburbs declared the same street as one-way, but in different directions.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6127669/Feuding-Paris-mayors-declare-street-one-way-in-opposite-directions.html
Page 9, Position 4: The bridge known as the ‘Gateway to Bolton’ is a one-way street leading away from Bolton.: http://9gag.com/gag/ao9RRYe/gateway-to-bolton
Page 10, Position 1: In 1845, a bridge collapsed in Great Yarmouth, killing 79 people watching a clown in a tub being pulled by geese.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-24240357
Page 10, Position 2: Mice sing like birds, but humans can’t hear them.: http://www.discovery.com/dscovrd/wildlife/mice-sing-like-birds-we-just-cant-hear-them/
Page 10, Position 3: The Elizabethans treated warts by cutting a mouse in half and applying it to the affected part.: http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/15-most-bizarre-medical-treatments-ever/2
Page 10, Position 4: Georgian women worried about mice getting into their wigs at night.: https://georgianera.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/sweet-dreams-meddlesome-mice-and-1770s-big-hair/
Page 11, Position 1: The hair of Twiggy’s waxwork at Madame Tussauds was dressed by Twiggy’s hairdresser.: http://www.newyork.com/articles/attractions/secrets-of-madame-tussauds-new-york-11698/
Page 11, Position 2: A hairdresser in Madrid cuts hair using a samurai sword and a blowtorch.: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/12/03/edward-scissorhands-hairdresser-swords_n_8710208.html
Page 11, Position 3: In 1942, an Italian hairdresser called ‘the Phantom Barber of Pascagoula’ broke into people’s houses and cut their hair.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/55316/strange-states-mississippis-phantom-barber-pascagoula
Page 11, Position 4: The people most likely to suffer injuries at work are hairdressers.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11949017/most-dangerous-jobs-britain.html
Page 12, Position 1: The Smithsonian Museum has a framed collection of locks of hair from the first 14 presidents.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/comb-through-framed-collection-presidential-hair-180958064/
Page 12, Position 2: Benjamin Franklin had a pulley system so he could lock his bedroom door from his bed.: http://www.biography.com/news/benjamin-franklin-inventions-electricity
Page 12, Position 3: Thomas Jefferson kept a flock of geese to supply quills for his pens.: https://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Winter07/lettersSide.cfm
Page 12, Position 4: Ronald Reagan was a stand-up comedian for two weeks.: http://lasvegassun.com/news/2004/jun/07/reagans-ties-long-strong-to-lv/
Page 13, Position 1: The US Senate has never formally endorsed the title ‘President’.: http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_forsyth_what_s_a_snollygoster_a_short_lesson_in_political_speak/transcript?language=en
Page 13, Position 2: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt pronounced their surnames differently.: http://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Blog/2013/January/21-How-do-you-pronounce-Roosevelt.aspx http://www.pronouncenames.com/pronounce/Franklin%20Roosevelt
Page 13, Position 3: Benjamin Franklin and John Adams once shared a room and couldn’t agree whether to open or shut the window. Franklin won by arguing until Adams fell asleep.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/54169/time-ben-franklin-and-john-adams-shared-bed
Page 13, Position 4: Paper towels in the White House are embossed with the Presidential Seal.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/what-are-the-bathrooms-like-at-the-white-house-9155249.html
Page 14, Position 1: Wasps were making paper long before humans existed.: http://www.academia.edu/8154479/A_new_paper_wasp_from_Late_Eocene_of_France_Hymenoptera_Vespidae_Polistinae_ http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_4.htm http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1052.htm
Page 14, Position 2: 80% of the €500 notes in Spain are used for criminal purposes.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/500-euro-bin-laden-banknote-removed-from-circulation-european-central-bank-ecb-a7013621.html
Page 14, Position 3: To carry $10 million in notes you’d need a minimum of seven and a half briefcases.: #The Economist# 5/3/2016
Page 14, Position 4: For a few months in 1993, Moldova’s official currency was the cupon.: http://banknoteworld.com/moldova
Page 15, Position 1: The word ‘Czech’ is Polish.: http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21697158-government-prefers-english-version-name-reminded-vaclav-havel-crawling http://www.omniglot.com/writing/czech.htm
Page 15, Position 2: The Czech phrase strcˇ prst skrz krk, meaning ‘thrust finger through neck’, contains no vowels.: http://www.archimedes-lab.org/numbers/Num1_69.html
Page 15, Position 3: There are more than 100 words in Hawaiian consisting entirely of vowels.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sUKFH6CE0fkC&q=hawaiian+language+guinness+book+of+records&dq=hawaiian+language+guinness+book+of+records&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sAyQVa6VAaKE7gbDm4KwDQ&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA
Page 15, Position 4: In ancient Hawaii, the nuts of the kukui tree were threaded on a string and lit. Each nut burned in sequence to form an early version of chaser lighting.: http://www.untamedscience.com/biodiversity/kukui-nut-tree/
Page 16, Position 1: Ancient Romans threw walnuts at the bride.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=avDXAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA497&lpg=PA497&dq=pliny+walnuts+scattered+over+brides&source=bl&ots=oU7hoAd9EZ&sig=h38YqpX_hmyLTIWc877xBBJxA8c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiE0JKn3_zKAhUCvRoKHXm7B5AQ6AEIIDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 16, Position 2: It takes five litres of water to grow a single almond.: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/oct/21/almond-milk-quite-good-for-you-very-bad-for-the-planet
Page 16, Position 3: Britain’s share of the cost of funding the Large Hadron Collider each year is the same amount of money as Britons spend on peanuts.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06qml0r#play
Page 16, Position 4: The cost of the extra fuel needed to carry a bag of peanuts on a plane for a year is £1.: 1
Page 17, Position 1: In 2015, a Singapore Airlines freight plane made an emergency landing after farting sheep triggered the smoke alarm.: http://avherald.com/h?article=48e6ef9c
Page 17, Position 2: Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, was an airline booking agent.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/11387748/Harper-Lee-a-timeline.html
Page 17, Position 3: Woody Allen writes his film scripts on a typewriter he bought in the 1950s.: http://www.openculture.com/2013/01/woody_allens_typewriter_scissor_and_stapler.html
Page 17, Position 4: On a QWERTY keyboard a typist’s fingers cover 20 miles a day; on a Dvorak keyboard it’s only one mile.: on a DVORAK keyboard it's only one mile.
Page 18, Position 1: Making all the chain mail for The Lord of the Rings wore the costume designers’ fingerprints away.: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/trivia
Page 18, Position 2: The chants of the orc army in The Lord of the Rings were made by a stadium full of New Zealand cricket fans.: http://www.ew.com/article/2002/03/15/dish-lotr-two-towers
Page 18, Position 3: The house where Bilbo Baggins lived in The Lord of the Rings is now occupied by sheep.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/7942834/Lord-of-the-Rings-sheep-take-over-The-Shire-on-New-Zealand-film-set.html
Page 18, Position 4: Alexander Graham Bell tried to breed sheep with extra nipples.: http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/07/17/science-vault-multinippled-she/
Page 19, Position 1: The longest human nipple hair was 17 centimetres long.: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-nipple-hair/
Page 19, Position 2: Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, thought chest hair would cease to exist in the future.: http://io9.gizmodo.com/more-weird-facts-you-probably-didnt-know-about-the-orig-1635546015
Page 19, Position 3: Hippocrates used a mixture of pigeon droppings, horseradish, cumin and beetroot to treat his hair loss, but it only made the rest of his hair fall out.: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/health/article1962081.ece
Page 19, Position 4: The Maori for ‘scissors’ is kutikuti.: http://maoridictionary.co.nz/word/3330
Page 20, Position 1: In Tanzania, a roundabout is a kipilefti.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hNqrAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT153&lpg=PT153&dq=In+Tanzania,+a+'roundabout'+is+kipilefti.&source=bl&ots=P7E2lwRTrF&sig=xLCQOsXmZ7eeYOr47_1p7dE1QiE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjGt46LhP3OAhVeF8AKHSBrDXIQ6AEIMTAD#v=onepage&q=In%20Tanzania%2C%20a%20'roundabout'%20is%20kipilefti.&f=false
Page 20, Position 2: The ‘van man’ was around before the invention of the van: he used to drive wagons.: #Oxford English Dictionary#
Page 20, Position 3: Invented in 1862, the anti-garrotting cravat shot spikes into the hands of anyone attempting to strangle the wearer.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PeYgDAAAQBAJ&q=cravat#v=snippet&q=cravat&f=false
Page 20, Position 4: The inventors of Silly String were trying to make a spray-on cast for broken bones.: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/dec/14/new-economics-foundation-social-value
Page 21, Position 1: Every day, skateboarding accidents land 176 American children in A&E.: https://consumer.healthday.com/kids-health-information-23/child-safety-news-587/skateboarding-mishaps-send-176-u-s-kids-to-ers-every-day-710195.html
Page 21, Position 2: At one A&E in Papua New Guinea, 1 in 40 patients have been hurt by a falling coconut.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6502774?dopt=Abstract
Page 21, Position 3: The last person to be killed by a single hailstone was a pizza delivery man in Fort Worth, Texas.: https://weather.com/storms/severe/news/hail-dangers-costs-20130403
Page 21, Position 4: To avoid being hit by space junk in 2014 the International Space Station (ISS) had to change orbit three times.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0656dbj
Page 22, Position 1: The wake-up call on the Mir space station made the same sound as the emergency alarm.: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/18/blast-off-why-has-astronaut-helen-sharman-been-written-out-of-history
Page 22, Position 2: NASA’s tallest astronaut exceeded their maximum height limit because he grew taller in space.: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/12/science/astronaut-grows-too-tall.html
Page 22, Position 3: In space, you can relieve a headache by urinating.: http://www.wired.com/2014/11/marsha-ivins/
Page 22, Position 4: When the waste disposal failed on the space shuttle Discovery, it developed a giant urine icicle.: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/science/space/28nasaw.html?_r=2&hp&oref=login
Page 23, Position 1: Because their faeces glow in the dark, lemmings always defecate underground.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20150513-these-animals-use-public-toilets
Page 23, Position 2: 10% of British train toilets flush directly onto the tracks.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30541015
Page 23, Position 3: Before trains had corridors, ticket inspectors had to clamber along the outside of the carriage.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cksaCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA124&lpg=PA124&dq=trains+corridors+%22ticket+inspectors%22+outside&source=bl&ots=PRdWYuYMvX&sig=oNJoqGRXkfQ9hvtVb3O0GHzR0gg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6ybrS8_fNAhXJDMAKHWfTBGYQ6AEIQDAG#v=onepage&q=trains%20corridors%20%22ticket%20inspectors%22%20outside&f=false
Page 23, Position 4: More than 20% of people commuting by train to London have to stand all the way.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/10199555/More-than-a-fifth-of-London-bound-commuters-forced-to-stand-on-overcrowded-trains.html
Page 24, Position 1: In the 40 minutes it takes the average commuter in the world to get to work, the ISS travels the distance from London to Australia.: http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/282-How-fast-does-the-Space-Station-travel-
Page 24, Position 2: In the time it takes to listen to The Proclaimers’ ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’, the ISS travels 500 miles, then 500 more.: https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/
Page 24, Position 3: News of the Battle of Trafalgar travelled the 1,100 miles to London in 17 days.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=i-PLg2PsNd4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=A+Farewell+to+Alms+by+Gregory+Clark&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiW0MDRgqXNAhVFXh4KHRZHDowQ6AEIJTAA#v=snippet&q=trafalgar&f=false
Page 24, Position 4: In the 17th century, Christmas turkeys walked from East Anglia to London in three months.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/happy-christmas-turkey-its-your-last-1526939.html
Page 25, Position 1: The Gombe War (1974–8) was fought in Tanzania between two communities of chimpanzees.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
Page 25, Position 2: In 1928, the US, the UK and Germany signed a treaty to end all war.: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/kbpact.htm
Page 25, Position 3: In the Second World War, the Allies used a ‘ghost army’ of inflatable tanks to trick the Germans.: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/ghost-army-the-inflatable-tanks-that-fooled-hitler/276137/y' of inflatable tanks to trick the Germans.
Page 25, Position 4: Stormtroopers from Star Wars Lego sets outnumber the planet’s real soldiers by 50 to 1.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35170829?ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook
Page 26, Position 1: The online encyclopaedia dedicated to Lego is called ‘Brickipedia’.: http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/LEGO_Wiki
Page 26, Position 2: Echolalia is the urge to imitate what someone has just said, in exactly the same voice.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZmQdBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA539&lpg=PA539&dq=Echolalia+%22Same+accent%22&source=bl&ots=Oc8IkhS07V&sig=EfCNX8Fqw2Zj7dOfjbKCeWxKk6M&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj23Zve7ffNAhVKDsAKHSVaAGMQ6AEIVzAI#v=onepage&q=Echolalia%20%22Same%20accent%22&f=false
Page 26, Position 3: A beauty contest held in Singapore in 1998 awarded 60% of the marks for knowledge of the Internet.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/155037.stm
Page 26, Position 4: Hundreds of victims of the Great Singapore Penis Panic of 1967 feared their penises were shrinking away; a dozen of the sufferers were women.: #The Great Singapore Penis Panic#, by Scott D. Mendelson
Page 27, Position 1: Men looking at pictures of two men and a woman produce more sperm than those looking at pictures of three women.: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/opinion-the-biggest-sperm-come-in-the-smallest-packages-and-other-odd-facts-about-male-sex-cells
Page 27, Position 2: Fruit-fly sperm are 20,000 times larger than porcupine sperm.: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/opinion-the-biggest-sperm-come-in-the-smallest-packages-and-other-odd-facts-about-male-sex-cells
Page 27, Position 3: The Pieza genus of fly has species called Pieza kake, Pieza pie, Pieza rhea and Pieza deresistans.: #The Naming of the Shrew# John Wright
Page 27, Position 4: Reducing the price of a pizza in France from €8 to €7.99 increases sales by 15%.: 8 to &euro
Page 28, Position 1: Pizza sales shot up in Colorado after the state legalised marijuana.: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/peyton-manning-credits-legal-colorado-pot-booming-papa-john-pizza-business-article-1.1944951rado saw their profits jump after the state legalised Marijuana.
Page 28, Position 2: In 1935, the mayor of New York banned the sale of artichokes to ruin a Mafia boss.: http://www.cuesa.org/food/artichokes
Page 28, Position 3: In 2010, the Great Sprout Drought increased the price per pound of Brussels sprouts in Britain almost to that of turkey.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-35051540
Page 28, Position 4: The oldest living turkey in Britain is called Dinner.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/britains-oldest-turkey-called-dinner-6954804
Page 29, Position 1: After noticing that she washed up bare-handed, Margaret Thatcher sent the Queen rubber gloves for Christmas.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/happy-christmas-turkey-its-your-last-1526939.html
Page 29, Position 2: The Queen’s advisers persuaded her not to allow the Loch Ness Monster to be named Elizabethia nessiae.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1380826/Queen-found-Thatcher-a-bit-of-a-frost-and-Wilson-absurd.html
Page 29, Position 3: The Queen was keen to accept an offer to be president of the George Formby Appreciation Society, but her advisers deemed it ‘inappropriate’.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/the-queen-wanted-to-be-president-of-the-george-formby-society-but-was-told-she-was-too-important-a7069051.html
Page 29, Position 4: The Queen owns a drive-thru McDonald’s in Slough.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2210334/Queen-owns-a-McDonalds.html
Page 30, Position 1: Because Chicken McNuggets are sold in sets of 6, 9 or 20, the largest number you can’t buy is 43.: #Number freak# by Derrick Niederman (Duckworth, 2012)
Page 30, Position 2: People who are good at maths are twice as likely to be sexually active in old age.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/10/how-maths-can-boost-your-sex-life--well-into-your-80s/
Page 30, Position 3: You eat more when your kitchen is messy.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/75520/study-says-we-eat-more-when-our-kitchens-are-messy
Page 30, Position 4: Nearly half the seafood bought in the US is thrown away.: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378015300340
Page 31, Position 1: More fish is eaten in China than in the following 10 countries combined.: http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v312/n4/full/scientificamerican0415-52.html?message=remove&WT.ec_id=SCIENTIFICAMERICAN-201504
Page 31, Position 2: 56 species of fish can be sold as ‘snapper’ in US restaurants.: http://www.livescience.com/51666-snapper-fish-can-be-56-different-species-names-matter-video.html
Page 31, Position 3: 50 species of microbe live inside your belly button.: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/after-two-years-scientists-still-cant-solve-belly-button-mystery-continue-navel-gazing/
Page 31, Position 4: There are at least half a million species of nematode worm yet to be discovered.: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/phyla/ecdysozoa/nematoda.html
Page 32, Position 1: A new fish discovered in Australia in 2015 was named ‘Blue Bastard’.: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/08/blue-bastard-newly-recognised-fish-is-blue-when-adult-and-a-bastard-to-catch
Page 32, Position 2: The largest land animal that ever lived was a dinosaur named Dreadnoughtus.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/introducing-dreadnoughtus-the-newly-discovered-biggest-dinosaur-ever-9711928.html
Page 32, Position 3: After Barack Obama visited Kenya in 2015, two women named their sons Air Force One.: http://www.kenyans.co.ke/news/newborn-babies-named-airforce-one-obama-and-other-obama-names
Page 32, Position 4: The main street in the capital of Kosovo is called Bill Clinton Boulevard.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kosovo-bill-clinton-statue
Page 33, Position 1: Bulgaria has a special agency that fires anti-hail rockets into the sky.: http://bnr.bg/en/post/100699574/executive-agency-hail-suppression-over-4000-anti-hail-rockets-launched-in-bulgaria-in-may-only
Page 33, Position 2: Finland has the highest density of metal bands in the world.: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/03/world-map-metal-band-population-density/329913/
Page 33, Position 3: The unhappiest country in the world is Burundi.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35824033
Page 33, Position 4: Indonesians are the world’s shortest people.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/maps-and-graphics/the-tallest-and-shortest-countries-in-the-world/
Page 34, Position 1: Pakistanis have the world’s gentlest handshakes.: #The Economist# 15.5.2015
Page 34, Position 2: The US government spent $7 million promoting literacy in Pakistan with an Urdu version of Sesame Street.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18329054
Page 34, Position 3: Big Bird, Bert and Ernie are the three highest-energy neutrinos.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25410-big-bird-space-neutrino-has-highest-energy-yet-seen/
Page 34, Position 4: The world’s firmest handshakes belong to the Swedes.: #The Economist# 15.5.2015
Page 35, Position 1: In 2016, the Swedish Tourist Association ran a phone line that you could call to talk to a random Swede.: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/09/world/europe/sweden-call-random-swede-number.html?_r=0
Page 35, Position 2: The UN’s official definition of a tourist is someone who stays in a country more than 24 hours but less than six months.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hVevHV-izi8C&pg=RA1-PR31&lpg=RA1-PR31&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 35, Position 3: The Longquan Buddhist temple in China has a robotic monk called Worthy Stupid Robot Monk designed to talk to tourists.: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/world/asia/china-robot-monk-temple.html?_r=0
Page 35, Position 4: Items in English on menus in China include Fried Swarm, The Smell of Urine Dry Noodles, Sauce on My Grandma and The Hand that Grasps the Cowboy Bone.: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/world/what-in-the-world/on-offer-in-china-fried-swarm-and-other-tasty-translations.html
Page 36, Position 1: Lifts in Singapore are fitted with urine detectors; if triggered, the lift stops and the police are called.: http://uk.businessinsider.com/absurd-laws-of-singapore-2012-6?r=US&IR=T
Page 36, Position 2: You are not allowed to travel in a lift with liquid nitrogen.: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/medicalschool/msa/safety/docs/lncop.pdf
Page 36, Position 3: Fear of lifts can be overcome by eating all your meals inside one.: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0005791673900086
Page 36, Position 4: Abibliophobia is the fear of running out of something to read.: http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/abibliophobia.html
Page 37, Position 1: Sciophobia is the irrational fear of shadows.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2m1UQI4QpVsC&pg=PT281&lpg=PT281&dq=Sciophobia+is+the+irrational+fear+of+shadows.&source=bl&ots=qMRDIrKVHQ&sig=ycpqHjZEuhr-o1_9_if6VK1tRdE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiV_YDfhf3OAhUaM8AKHdKtBYEQ6AEIRDAG#v=onepage&q=Sciophobia%20is%20the%20irrational%20fear%20of%20shadows.&f=false
Page 37, Position 2: Steve Jobs was scared of buttons.: http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/11/steve-jobss-button-phobia-has-shaped-the-modern-world/
Page 37, Position 3: MC Hammer doesn’t like hammers.: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/mc-hammer-not-actually-a-fan-of-hammers-a7047581.html
Page 37, Position 4: The Dalai Lama is frightened of caterpillars.: http://www.lionsroar.com/nothing-special-the-dalai-lama-in-berkeley-a-report-and-photos-from-steve-silberman/
Page 38, Position 1: Masked birch caterpillars use ‘anal drumming’ to find friends.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160404-caterpillars-science-animals-anal-communication/
Page 38, Position 2: People with more friends have a higher tolerance for pain.: http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-04-28-friends-better-morphine
Page 38, Position 3: In Japan, you can rent friends.: http://boingboing.net/2016/06/27/in-japan-you-can-rent-your-fr.html
Page 38, Position 4: Hans Christian Andersen wrecked his friendship with Charles Dickens by staying with him three weeks longer than planned.: https://goo.gl/7cWsQy
Page 39, Position 1: Charles Dickens’s father went into business with Butch Cassidy’s great-grandfather.: https://goo.gl/E3AUun
Page 39, Position 2: The detective agency that caught Butch Cassidy also worked for Coca-Cola.: https://goo.gl/Fkl7Ul
Page 39, Position 3: A can of Coke uses ingredients from all seven continents except Antarctica.: https://goo.gl/GxPuvc
Page 39, Position 4: Between 2005 and 2011, the number of visits to A&E in the US caused by energy drinks increased from under 2,000 to over 20,000.: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/how-much-caffeine-before-i-end-up-in-the-er/267129/
Page 40, Position 1: The world’s largest cruise ship has a bar where all the drinks are made by robots.: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/harmony-seas-water-slides-casinos-robot-bartenders-worlds-largest-cruise-ship-1560466
Page 40, Position 2: The teabag was invented 2,000 years after humans started drinking tea.: http://time.com/3996712/a-brief-history-of-the-tea-bag/ http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/01/26/464437173/worlds-oldest-tea-discovered-in-an-ancient-chinese-emperors-tomb
Page 40, Position 3: ‘Night starvation’ was a condition invented by Horlicks to sell more Horlicks.: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/01/26/464437173/worlds-oldest-tea-discovered-in-an-ancient-chinese-emperors-tomb
Page 40, Position 4: Popcorn was originally marketed as Nonpareil.: http://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/popcorn-history/
Page 41, Position 1: Noggin is a protein that forms the skull.: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2003/april16/skull.html
Page 41, Position 2: Bacteria have the smallest eyeballs in nature but the largest relative to their size.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/12147643/Scientists-accidentally-discover-worlds-smallest-and-oldest-eyeball.html
Page 41, Position 3: Bees know when it’s going to rain, so they put in extra work the day before.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2075606-honeybees-know-its-going-to-rain-so-work-more-before-it-starts/
Page 41, Position 4: 96% of people can tell the difference between the sound of hot and cold water being poured.: http://www.npr.org/2014/07/05/328842704/what-does-cold-sound-like
Page 42, Position 1: The Sandhill Rustic moth can stay underwater for an hour.: http://www.merseysidebiobank.org.uk/Literature/BurkmarThesisCompressed.pdf
Page 42, Position 2: Sand wasps fly backwards out of the nest to make sure they’ll remember what the way home looks like.: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-12/wasps-how-they-find-their-way-home/7160082
Page 42, Position 3: Some spiders disguise themselves as ants by pretending their two front legs are antennae.: https://theconversation.com/spiders-disguise-themselves-as-ants-to-hide-and-hunt-their-prey-33953
Page 42, Position 4: Male spider mites prefer their sexual partners to be dead.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25889815
Page 43, Position 1: Research containing mathematical formulae is taken more seriously even if the formulae are meaningless.: https://plus.maths.org/content/nonsense-maths-effect
Page 43, Position 2: 12 + 3 – 4 + 5 + 67 + 8 + 9 = 100: http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/top10facts/446492/Top-10-facts-about-numbers
Page 43, Position 3: 20% of British adults have forgotten how to calculate percentages.: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/07/a-fifth-of-uk-adults-have-forgotten-how-to-do-fractions-or-percentages-mathematics-english-science
Page 43, Position 4: 0111010001100101011001000110 1001011011110111010101110011 is the digitisation of the word ‘tedious’.: #The Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance# by Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna (Bloomsbury, 2016) p30
Page 44, Position 1: The mathematician Kurt Gödel lived on a diet of baby food, laxatives and butter.: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/02/28/time-bandits-2
Page 44, Position 2: ‘Nutter’ is a type of butter made from nuts.: Auto, J. #The Diner's Dictionary (2 ed.)#
Page 44, Position 3: The first commercial suppositories were coated in cocoa butter.: http://pskills.pharm.ku.edu/ios/html5/html5-compoundingvideos/html5-revised-lecture-video/Suppositories/Suppositories.pdf
Page 44, Position 4: Lamas in ancient Tibet were boiled in butter before being embalmed.: http://knowledgenuts.com/2016/03/11/the-surprisingly-religious-history-of-butter/
Page 45, Position 1: The Ewok language is a combination of Tibetan and Nepali.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rUMWR1U7EVEC&pg=PA61&dq=#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 45, Position 2: The British government advises against travel to Tatooine, the Tunisian town that inspired the Star Wars planet.: http://www.ibtimes.com/tunisian-town-inspired-star-wars-tatooine-being-used-isis-report-1859980
Page 45, Position 3: The actors who played R2-D2 and C-3PO hated each other.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/05/04/he-might-as-well-be-a-bucket-a-history-of-the-feud-between-antho/
Page 45, Position 4: To build a real Death Star would cost $850 million billion.: http://www.space.com/19246-death-star-white-house-petition-response.html
Page 46, Position 1: Venomous frogs kiss their predators to death.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/venomous-frogs-that-head-butt-poison-into-potential-predators-discovered-by-scientists-10444144.html
Page 46, Position 2: A single gram of poison from Bruno’s casque-headed frog is enough to kill 80 people or 300,000 mice.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22730341-300-zoologger-worlds-first-venomous-frog-has-the-kiss-of-death/
Page 46, Position 3: A dead gecko can stay stuck to the wall for half an hour.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/geckos-have-surprisingly-strong-death-grip-180953516/?no-ist
Page 46, Position 4: If an Etruscan shrew doesn’t eat for five hours, it starves to death.: http://noticing.co/on-size-and-metabolism/
Page 47, Position 1: Elephant shrews, despite weighing only a few ounces, are more closely related to elephants than to shrews.: https://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/SmallMammals/fact-seeshrew.cfm
Page 47, Position 2: Elephants use their trunks like leaf blowers to move food within reach.: http://www.discoverwildlife.com/animals/mammals/do-baby-elephants-suck-their-trunks
Page 47, Position 3: Baby elephants have to be taught how to use their trunks.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2015/11/24/study-reports-elephants-use-their-trunks-to-blow-their-food-within-reach-with-video-goodness/#.V2K4TrS4mS4
Page 47, Position 4: The last time elephants were used in battle was during the Iran–Iraq war, in 1987.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_elephant
Page 48, Position 1: Each archer at the Battle of Agincourt had three arrows in the air at any given moment.: https://next.ft.com/content/579d2a88-987e-11e5-95c7-d47aa298f769
Page 48, Position 2: The Battle of Bunker Hill in fact took place on Breed’s Hill.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-true-story-of-the-battle-of-bunker-hill-36721984/
Page 48, Position 3: The Battle of Waterloo didn’t take place in the village of Waterloo but in the nearby villages of Braine l’Alleud and Plancenoit.: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/napoleon-waterloo-anniversary/396278/
Page 48, Position 4: Napoleon had such painful piles at the Battle of Waterloo that he couldn’t sit on his horse.: https://goo.gl/1CG8Ms
Page 49, Position 1: Ulysses S. Grant’s favourite horses were called Egypt, Cincinnati and Jeff Davis.: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/cwp2003004802/PP/
Page 49, Position 2: Royal Navy ships’ names have included HMS Banterer, HMS Eclair, HMS Flirt, HMS Spanker and HMS Happy Entrance.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ship_names_of_the_Royal_Navy
Page 49, Position 3: Horatio Nelson’s pension continued to be paid until 1947.: https://goo.gl/Xh9RQz
Page 49, Position 4: The US Navy’s ‘navy blue’ uniform is not blue but black.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniforms_of_the_United_States_Navy http://www.navytimes.com/story/military/2015/10/09/sweeping-uniform-changes-emphasize-gender-neutrality/73602238/
Page 50, Position 1: The blue-banded bee head-bangs flowers 350 times a second to obtain pollen.: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-15/australian-blue-banded-bee-is-a-head-banger/7019074
Page 50, Position 2: Pollen sticks to bees by static electricity.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/02/21/bees-can-sense-the-electric-fields-of-flowers/
Page 50, Position 3: Flea, the bassist in the Red Hot Chili Peppers, keeps over 200,000 bees.: http://www.tmz.com/2015/08/16/flea-red-hot-chili-peppers-beekeeper/
Page 50, Position 4: The lifespan of a rock star is 25 years shorter than average.: http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/blogs/music_blog/bizarre-study-reveals-that-the-pop-music-scene-is-toxic/article_da58c2be-d8f0-11e4-a97d-df1dc6ac4e9e.html
Page 51, Position 1: Mick Jones, formerly of The Clash, is a first cousin of Tory MP Grant Shapps.: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/columnists/rebecca-tyrrel/rebecca-tyrrel-there-is-no-record-of-what-mick-jones-thinks-of-his-mp-cousins-squatter-plans-8092733.html
Page 51, Position 2: The average Briton has five first cousins, 28 second cousins, 175 third cousins, 1,570 fourth cousins and 17,300 fifth cousins.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/average-british-person-193000-living-5895798
Page 51, Position 3: The average Briton has 174,000 sixth cousins, enough to fill Wembley stadium twice over.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/average-british-person-193000-living-5895798
Page 51, Position 4: The average Briton has two cousins per square mile.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11719550/Is-that-stranger-opposite-you-a-distant-cousin.html
Page 52, Position 1: There is a one in 300 chance you will be related to a complete stranger.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11719550/Is-that-stranger-opposite-you-a-distant-cousin.html
Page 52, Position 2: In 16th-century Rome, there was a ban on more than two sisters from the same family joining the same convent.: #Nuns Behaving Badly# - Craig A Monson
Page 52, Position 3: Cloistered nuns can only leave their nunnery without permission in case of fire, leprosy or contagious illness.: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04060a.htm
Page 52, Position 4: In 1844, French nuns began meowing like cats, and only stopped when the army threatened to whip them.: http://news.discovery.com/history/history-mass-hysteria-120206.htm
Page 53, Position 1: In 1841, Robert Browning used the word ‘twat’ in his poem ‘Pippa Passes’, thinking it was an article of clothing for nuns.: http://news.discovery.com/history/history-mass-hysteria-120206.htm
Page 53, Position 2: Latin had about 800 obscene words; English has only about 20.: English has only about 20.
Page 53, Position 3: The ancient Romans told ‘Irish’ jokes about people from Thrace.: #The Week# - 19/7/2014
Page 53, Position 4: Ancient Roman women had no first names.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SixKvaKeDpoC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=serapio+nickname+nose&source=bl&ots=yqlQa7xu4i&sig=oDl_qw4caBu1y2S_dNdjibKAf-M&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQ0rCX9v7JAhWELhoKHUmxBJgQ6AEIPjAF#v=onepage&q=serapio%20nickname%20nose&f=
Page 54, Position 1: From 1850 to 1880, over 3,000 English women died after their skirts caught fire.: http://mashable.com/2015/06/21/crinolinemania-victorian-fashion/#ma0rg.lFakqL
Page 54, Position 2: The most dangerous household item in a fire is a fridge-freezer.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3183412/Could-fridge-burn-house-t-switch-packed-inflammable-insulation-toxic-gas-s-dangerous-appliance-all.html
Page 54, Position 3: Firefighters in Dubai use jet packs to tackle blazes in high-rise buildings.: http://www.zmescience.com/research/technology/firefighter-jetpack-21112015/
Page 54, Position 4: The town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, has been on fire since 1962.: http://uk.businessinsider.com/coal-mines-in-centralia-pennsylvania-have-been-burning-since-1962-2015-7?r=US&IR=T
Page 55, Position 1: The 1962 escape from Alcatraz is still under investigation by the US Marshals Service.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_1962_Alcatraz_escape
Page 55, Position 2: Before José ‘Pepe’ Mujica became president of Uruguay, he spent 14 years in prison, two of them locked in a horse trough.: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/27/jose-mujica-uruguay-maverick-president
Page 55, Position 3: If the US freed all its prisoners except murderers and rapists, it would still have more people in prison per head than Germany.: #The Economist# 28/06/2015
Page 55, Position 4: 1 in 6 of the world’s population bribe a police officer every year.: https://aeon.co/essays/game-theory-s-cure-for-corruption-make-us-all-cops
Page 56, Position 1: Because of a deal struck with the Mafia, the word ‘mafia’ was never used in The Godfather.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qTwURkWIfoAC&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25&dq=%22the+godfather%22+%22the+word+mafia%22+league&source=bl&ots=oXB4vUOd8h&sig=7MJT-8dXQsJTm-mcKHaXIlL4-T8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE4_qU9_fNAhXnJ8AKHZn4BZgQ6AEINTAE#v=onepage&q=%22the%20godfather%22%20%22the%20word%20mafia%22%20league&f=false
Page 56, Position 2: Half the world’s population has seen a Bond movie.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=x9-1QY5boUsC&pg=PA119&lpg=PA119#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 56, Position 3: Mice prefer watching violent mouse movies to erotic ones.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2077351-mice-watching-movies-on-ipods-prefer-action-to-mouse-erotica/
Page 56, Position 4: 4-year-old mice are much rarer than 100-year-old people.: http://www.ur.umich.edu/0304/Apr19_04/26.shtml
Page 57, Position 1: One of the longest domain names in the world is: iamtheproudownerofthelongestlongest longestdomainnameinthisworld.com: #Number freak# by Derrick Niederman (Duckworth, 2012)
Page 57, Position 2: The longest human pregnancy lasted a year and 10 days.: http://mom.me/pregnancy/8759-10-amazing-record-setting-moms/item/beulah-hunter-longest-pregnancy-ever
Page 57, Position 3: A million seconds is 11.6 days.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gVrE3ivu-YMC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 57, Position 4: A billion seconds is 32 years.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gVrE3ivu-YMC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 58, Position 1: 3.8 billion years ago, a day was less than 10 hours long.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=S4xDhVCxAQIC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=days+are+getting+longer+%22billion+years+ago%22&source=bl&ots=LDP66D5x6s&sig=3IW8qe-1lkjarbt8FZi6H7uXgt0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiFj7fSsPjNAhUpDsAKHTZKDHwQ6AEIQjAG#v=onepage&q=days%20are%20getting%20longer%20%22billion%20years%20ago%22&f=false
Page 58, Position 2: The Sex Pistols’ debut album is closer in time to the premiere of Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony than it is to today.: http://punk.wikia.com/wiki/The_Sex_Pistols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._3_(Rachmaninoff)
Page 58, Position 3: The last note of The Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’ is so high that only dogs can hear it.: http://www.gigwise.com/news/85705/paul-mccartney-reveals-secret-sound-for-dogs-hidden-on-sgt-pepper-album
Page 58, Position 4: Wrens can sing 36 notes a second.: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/winter-wren-little-bird-big-song/
Page 59, Position 1: Over its lifetime, an Arctic tern flies the equivalent of three trips to the Moon and back.: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/pole-to-pole-the-extraordinary-migration-of-the-arctic-tern-1864824.html.
Page 59, Position 2: Ancient murrelets are birds that migrate 16,000 miles from Canada to Japan and back for no good reason: conditions are identical in both places.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28018-bird-flies-16000-kilometre-pacific-circuit-for-no-clear-reason/
Page 59, Position 3: Anthropologists can track human migration by examining earwax.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/29620/determining-migratory-patterns-early-humans-earwax
Page 59, Position 4: There are only 140 cases in medical history of a man having more than two testicles.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24054439
Page 60, Position 1: The last two journalists to work in Fleet Street left in 2016.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36882573
Page 60, Position 2: Betteridge’s Law of Headlines states that a headline ending in a question mark can always be answered ‘No’.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
Page 60, Position 3: There is no evidence that the headline ‘Heavy Fog in Channel – Continent Cut Off’ ever ran in a British newspaper.: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fog-in-channel-brexiteers-isolated-from-britains-duty-to-save-europe-7pv5k6c9b
Page 60, Position 4: A 2013 study of Fox News’s climate-science reports found that 72% were misleading.: http://guardianlv.com/2014/04/global-warming-science-often-misreported/
Page 61, Position 1: When weather forecasting started, the ship-salvage industry tried to get it banned.: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/writers-in-the-storm
Page 61, Position 2: The world’s longest ship is 50% longer than the Shard is tall.: http://www.vesseltracking.net/seawise-giant/ http://www.lbc.co.uk/how-the-shard-compares-to-other-buildings-56805/album/how_does_the_shard_compare_to_other_buildings_/1769
Page 61, Position 3: London gets less rain than Rome, Venice or Nice.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=fYiAAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT62&lpg=PT62&dq=London+gets+less+rain+than+Rome,+Venice,+or+Nice.&source=bl&ots=gfxwftUHxl&sig=wU8ojp7Qd6hC2ETvXOt__Mtrwho&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi0pLe5-vfNAhVkBsAKHZN6BPMQ6AEINDAD#v=onepage&q=London%20gets%20less%20rain%20than%20Rome%2C%20Venice%2C%20or%20Nice.&f=false
Page 61, Position 4: Britons spend five months of their lives complaining about the weather.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/weather/11907137/Ice-breakers-Brits-spend-5-months-of-their-lives-talking-about-weather.html
Page 62, Position 1: Plothering is a Midlands word for a heavy downpour.: http://blog.joules.com/post/as-right-as-rain/
Page 62, Position 2: Sólarfrí is Icelandic for time off given to staff to enjoy good weather.: http://icelandmag.visir.is/article/10-words-and-phrases-icelandic-dont-exist-english
Page 62, Position 3: Physiggoomai is ancient Greek for a person who is aroused by garlic.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/7936824/Tartle-bufetak-kaelling-the-foreign-words-to-which-English-has-no-answer.html
Page 62, Position 4: French has no word for ‘shrug’.: #Collins Robert French Dictionary#
Page 63, Position 1: A sciolist is someone who knows less than they pretend.: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sciolist
Page 63, Position 2: To snudge is to stride around pretending to look busy.: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/oct/09/mark-forsyth-the-horologicon-top-10-lost-words
Page 63, Position 3: Sinapistic means ‘consisting of mustard’.: http://www.definition-of.com/sinapistic
Page 63, Position 4: Subrident means ‘smiling’.: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/subrident
Page 64, Position 1: One person produces enough urine in a lifetime to fill a swimming pool.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rMEAqTiOqnAC&pg=PA110&lpg=PA110&dq=urine+lifetime+swimming+pool&source=bl&ots=d-UKpVWyG3&sig=9pb6XGQDNca7GoyM36Bret8qXGg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj_hMDyou7PAhVGnRoKHaxHCeIQ6AEIPDAF#v=onepage&q=urine%20lifetime%20swimming%20pool&f=false
Page 64, Position 2: Before becoming a Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin considered becoming a swimming teacher.: http://www.britannica.com/biography/Benjamin-Franklin
Page 64, Position 3: In 1958, Chairman Mao invited Khrushchev to a swimming meeting, knowing that he couldn’t swim. Khrushchev had to wear armbands.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/khrushchev-in-water-wings-on-mao-humiliation-and-the-sino-soviet-split-80852370/?no-ist
Page 64, Position 4: There are Egyptian cave paintings of people doing breaststroke.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_swimming
Page 65, Position 1: The first man to swim the English Channel later toured a show where he floated in a tank for 128 hours.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Webb
Page 65, Position 2: The number of hours that Britons spent watching The One Show in 2015 is greater than the number of hours that have passed since humans first left Africa.: Calculation made by the QI Elves - #The One Show#, BBC1, 19/11/2015
Page 65, Position 3: During the launch of BBC2 in 1964, a kangaroo got stuck in a lift at Television Centre.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-27033129
Page 65, Position 4: For the Queen’s coronation in 1953, people dressed up as TV sets.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_KHnu2hWfbkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=For+the+Queen's+coronation+in+1953,+people+dressed+up+as+TV+sets+@katewilliamsme&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_rdi0j_3OAhUEDMAKHSVnAcoQuwUIHzAA#v=snippet&q=dressed&f=false
Page 66, Position 1: In 1940s Britain, children’s TV was shown from 5 to 6 p.m., then transmission stopped for an hour to encourage them to go to bed.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toddlers%27_Truce
Page 66, Position 2: After the introduction of colour TV, the number of people dreaming in black and white fell from 25% to 7%.: #Night School# - Richard Wiseman
Page 66, Position 3: Nightmares are more common if you sleep on your left-hand side.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sleeping-on-your-left-side-nightmares_us_5681579ce4b0b958f659ded1
Page 66, Position 4: When you sleep in a bed for the first time, half of your brain stays awake.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2085409-sleeping-away-from-home-half-your-brain-is-still-awake/
Page 67, Position 1: Women sleep half an hour longer than men.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2087231-women-sleep-half-an-hour-longer-than-men-phone-app-data-shows/
Page 67, Position 2: Netflix has created a pair of socks that pause the show you’re watching if you fall asleep.: http://makeit.netflix.com
Page 67, Position 3: 1 in 5 people wake up wearing fewer items of clothing than they went to bed in.: http://www.ergoflex.co.uk/blog/category/sleep-research/Unwashed-PJs-Bedtimes-Hidden-Hygiene-Horror
Page 67, Position 4: Follicle mites make the journey across a sleeping person’s face from nose to ear in six hours.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/08/31/everything-you-never-wanted-to-know-about-the-mites-that-eat-crawl-and-have-sex-on-your-face/#.V2Pim7S4mS4
Page 68, Position 1: The DNA in your facial mites can tell scientists where you came from.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/12/17/face-mites-family-heirlooms/
Page 68, Position 2: The first passport-holders had to provide written descriptions of themselves instead of photos. Nearly everyone described their noses as ‘average’.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/passports-were-once-considered-offensive-perhaps-they-still-are
Page 68, Position 3: To qualify for a Dutch passport, you have to watch a video showing beach nudity.: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11842116/ns/world_news-europe/t/film-exposes-immigrants-dutch-liberalism/#.V2KYzeaLQ0o
Page 68, Position 4: Godzilla was awarded Japanese citizenship in 2015.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-32987622
Page 69, Position 1: Prospective citizens of South Korea must sing the first four verses of the national anthem.: #Republic or Death# by Alex Marshall
Page 69, Position 2: In 2014, South Korea changed the key of its national anthem to make it easier to sing.: #Republic or Death# by Alex Marshall
Page 69, Position 3: Until 1857, all British passports were signed by the Foreign Secretary.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30988833
Page 69, Position 4: Until 1858, all British passports were written in French.: http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2006/nov/17/travelnews
Page 70, Position 1: In the 1880s, the French used half as much soap as the English.: #The Economist# 19/12/2015
Page 70, Position 2: In 19th-century France, it was a symbol of free thinking to hold a sausage-eating party on Good Friday.: http://blog.oup.com/2016/03/secularism-and-sausages-france
Page 70, Position 3: In 1955, America had a ‘Sausage Queen’ beauty contest.: https://ridiculouslyinteresting.com/2012/12/27/unusual-retro-beauty-contests/
Page 70, Position 4: The man who first described Botox was a German known as ‘Sausage’ Kerner.: http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-two-men-and-the-one-dinner-that-uncovered-the-cau-1731627965
Page 71, Position 1: Germans who urinate in the street are known as Wildpinkler.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11449700/Hamburg-fights-back-against-urination-on-streets-with-walls-that-pee-back.html
Page 71, Position 2: The best day to find money in the streets of New York City is 18 March: the day after St Patrick’s Day.: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/23/coin-drop
Page 71, Position 3: New York’s ants clean up the streets by eating the equivalent of 60,000 hot dogs every year.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ants-are-cleaning-up-the-streets-of-nyc/
Page 71, Position 4: In ‘Find the Lady’, the man who mixes up the cards is known as ‘the Tosser’.: https://www.pagat.com/misc/monte.html
Page 72, Position 1: If a flatworm can’t find another flatworm to mate with, it stabs itself in the head with its own penis.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/2015/06/30/flatworm-hypodermic-self-insemination-by-injecting-sperm-into-their-own-heads/
Page 72, Position 2: Male nematode worms have an extra pair of brain cells, which are thought to help them to remember to have sex.: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/10/14/male-nematodes-have-extra-brain-cells-to-make-them-sex-crazed/
Page 72, Position 3: Nematode worms use slugs as taxis to carry them around.: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/nematode-worms-use-slugs-like-taxis-to-ferry-them-around-the-garden-study-finds-10384208.html
Page 72, Position 4: The average Bentley driver owns eight cars.: http://www.autoblog.com/2014/10/05/average-bugatti-owner-84-cars-3-jets-1-yacht-report/
Page 73, Position 1: The average Bugatti driver owns 84 cars, three jets and a yacht.: http://www.autoblog.com/2014/10/05/average-bugatti-owner-84-cars-3-jets-1-yacht-report/
Page 73, Position 2: For the last 70 years, the average price of a small car has remained the same as the cost of 20,000 Mars Bars.: http://timharford.com/2009/06/does-inflation-reflect-the-size-of-mars-bars/
Page 73, Position 3: Driving a car to Mars would emit as much carbon as there is in all the trees in Edinburgh.: http://naturalcapitalscotland.com/article/edinburgh-sets-natural-capital-example/ http://www.universetoday.com/15462/how-far-are-the-planets-from-the-sun/
Page 73, Position 4: Overdrafts, digestive biscuits and the hypodermic syringe were all invented in Edinburgh.: http://www.mcvities.co.uk/about http://www.conventionscotland.com/cs/content/mediaassets/images/UPDATED%20Cities%20Quirky.pdf http://www.nls.uk/news/archive/2014/01/special-harry-potter-edition
Page 74, Position 1: The Bank of England was founded by a Scotsman in 1694.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Paterson_(banker)
Page 74, Position 2: The Bank of Scotland was founded by an Englishman in 1695.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Holland_(banker)
Page 74, Position 3: The first Nando’s opened in London in 1696.: https://goo.gl/7n5T59
Page 74, Position 4: More people live in London than in Scotland and Wales combined.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36526298
Page 75, Position 1: London has more trees than any capital city in Europe.: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/47-per-cent-of-london-is-green-space-is-it-time-for-our-capital-to-become-a-national-park-9756470.html
Page 75, Position 2: Every English elm is descended from a single tree imported by the Romans.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3959561.stm
Page 75, Position 3: It would take 300 years to catalogue all the tree species in the Amazon rainforest.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-36790714
Page 75, Position 4: The world has lost 3% of its forests since 1990.: http://www.heritagedaily.com/2015/09/world-has-lost-3-percent-of-its-forests-since-1990/108277
Page 76, Position 1: A 106-acre aspen forest in Utah is made up of a single 80,000-year-old tree.: http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/utah-aspen-grove-80000-years-old.html
Page 76, Position 2: No matter how large a tree is, it will break if the wind speed reaches 94 mph.: http://www.livescience.com/53622-why-trees-break-at-same-wind-speed.html
Page 76, Position 3: Trees sleep at night to rest their branches.: http://www.vox.com/2016/5/19/11700690/trees-sleep
Page 76, Position 4: Mags Thomson of Livingston, Scotland, has spent 21 years trying to visit all the branches of Wetherspoons.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34440109
Page 77, Position 1: Tony Blair was the first serving British prime minister to visit California.: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jul/28/worlddispatch.usa
Page 77, Position 2: The California gull is the state bird of Utah.: http://onlinelibrary.utah.gov/research/utah_symbols/bird.html
Page 77, Position 3: When Memphis, Tennessee, held a ‘Dinosaurs Live’ exhibition in 1992, visitors demanded refunds because the dinosaurs weren’t alive.: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=336&dat=19920909&id=RpEpAAAAIBAJ&sjid=44QDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2810,3689963&hl=en
Page 77, Position 4: Americans are 22 times more likely to be killed by a cow than by a shark.: http://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=13-P13-00005&segmentID=7
Page 78, Position 1: There are more gun shops in the US than Starbucks, McDonald’s and supermarkets put together.: http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/there-are-more-gun-shops-in-the-us-than-starbucks-mcdonalds-and-supermarkets-put-together--W1NPIvYg84b
Page 78, Position 2: Bosnia has one betting shop for every 1,000 people.: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/bosnia-struggles-to-improve-gaming-regulation-05-12-2016
Page 78, Position 3: Rats will gamble more if a win is accompanied by flashing lights and a fanfare.: http://news.ubc.ca/2016/01/20/flashing-lights-and-music-turn-rats-into-problem-gamblers/
Page 78, Position 4: A sloth’s top speed is six centimetres a second.: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20140916-the-truth-about-sloths
Page 79, Position 1: Shakespeare’s plays have seven times more roles for men than women.: http://blog.oup.com/2015/09/shakespeare-women-facts/
Page 79, Position 2: Britons apologise at least eight times a day.: http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/270938/Sorry-to-say-this-but-we-apologise-more-than-2-900-times-every-year
Page 79, Position 3: Chinese drivers are stuck in traffic jams for the equivalent of nine days a year.: http://gizmodo.com/heres-the-physics-behind-that-insane-chinese-traffic-ja-1735638335
Page 79, Position 4: People are 39% more likely to buy the brand of car their parents owned.: http://www.futurity.org/cars-brand-families-parents-777472/
Page 80, Position 1: In 8th-century England, it was a sin for a man to see his wife naked.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EUZ9yl8mgnIC&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=In+8th-century+England+it+was+a+sin+for+a+man+to+see+his+wife+naked.&source=bl&ots=O0laHZYkOI&sig=GwTWDOz179mkfkAjBDOuEL90o14&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwix84_2k_3OAhWHDMAKHf5RC-UQ6AEIITAB#v=onepage&q=In%208th-century%20England%20it%20was%20a%20sin%20for%20a%20man%20to%20see%20his%20wife%20naked.&f=false
Page 80, Position 2: In 1870, Windsor Baths were moved because naked men could be seen from Queen Victoria’s bedroom.: http://www.thamesweb.co.uk/windsor/windsorhistory/swimmingbaths/memorialbaths.html
Page 80, Position 3: A painting of a half-naked couple in a Sydney bathroom has been shared by more than a million people as the perfect depiction of modern marriage.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3619084/James-Needham-s-painting-wife-bathroom-highlights-realities-married-life.html
Page 80, Position 4: To take a bath with electricity running through it was a 19th-century cure for rheumatism.: http://notinthehistorybooks.com/post/122254958440/engineeringhistory-french-electric-bath-circa
Page 81, Position 1: According to a 2013 survey, 3% of Londoners regularly eat in the bath.: https://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/research-report-kiwi-allergy-survey.pdf
Page 81, Position 2: If the Earl of Sandwich had got the earldom he really wanted, we’d all be eating portsmouths.: http://www.open-sandwich.co.uk/town_history/sandwich_origin.htm
Page 81, Position 3: Restaurants in New Zealand that sell cooked locusts advertise them as ‘sky prawns’.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4032143.stm
Page 81, Position 4: The first-ever skywriting message was an advert which said ‘DAILY MAIL’.: http://qz.com/624271/one-man-rules-global-skywriting-and-he-wants-to-bring-color-to-the-heavens/
Page 82, Position 1: The Wright brothers had a joint bank account.: #London Review of Books# 10-9-2015
Page 82, Position 2: The UK’s national sperm bank has just nine donors.: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/31/britains-national-sperm-bank-wants-men-to-prove-their-manhood
Page 82, Position 3: In 2014, nine children in the US were named Chaos.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/number-of-us-babies-being-named-after-guns-on-the-increase-10479753.html
Page 82, Position 4: Himalayan Ascent, a Nepalese mountain-guide company, was founded by a climber called Sumit.: http://www.himalayanascent.com/about-us
Page 83, Position 1: The Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam has a urologist called Dik Kok.: #New Scientist#, 9 January 2016
Page 83, Position 2: The British judge whose report led to all cigarette packaging being green is Mr Justice Green.: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/22/big-tobacco-final-fight-cigarette-branding-uk
Page 83, Position 3: A man arrested in 2015 for trespassing at the Budweiser brewery in St Louis was called Bud Weisser.: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/bud-weisser-arrested-trespassing-budweiser-brewery-article-1.2455845
Page 83, Position 4: Once Brewed is a village in Northumberland also known as Twice Brewed.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Brewed
Page 84, Position 1: Bouth, a village in Cumbria, is not pronounced ‘Bowth’ or ‘Booth’ but ‘Both’.: This was a discovery by QI's producer Piers Fletcher
Page 84, Position 2: In 1876, a man was shot because of an argument over the correct way to pronounce ‘Newfoundland’.: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-strange-tale-of-the-man-who-was-shot-point-blank-for-mispronouncing-newfoundland-in-the-old-west
Page 84, Position 3: Labradors come from Newfoundland, not Labrador.: http://www.thelabradorsite.com/the-history-of-the-labrador-retriever/
Page 84, Position 4: The ‘California roll’ was invented in Canada, not California.: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/food-trends/meet-the-man-behind-the-california-roll/article4631256/
Page 85, Position 1: Oceanographers in California collect spray from whales’ blowholes using drones known as ‘snot bots’.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/snotbot-drone-aids-in-whale-research_us_55b12a0ee4b08f57d5d3ef15
Page 85, Position 2: Whales can suffocate if fish get stuck in their blowholes.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28542-two-whales-killed-by-sole-fish-stuck-in-their-blowholes/
Page 85, Position 3: Dolphins have blowhole sex.: http://www.aquaticmammalsjournal.org/share/AquaticMammalsIssueArchives/1994/Aquatic_Mammals_20_1/20-01_Renjun.pdf
Page 85, Position 4: Peacocks fake orgasm noises to trick peahens into thinking they’re more sexually active.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/26533415
Page 86, Position 1: Stick insects can be stuck together having sex for 79 days.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/stick-bugs-have-sex-for-two-months-straight-303967/?no-ist
Page 86, Position 2: Moths can remember the species of plant they first had sex on.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27100-moths-remember-their-first-time/
Page 86, Position 3: Plants are able to forget stressful experiences.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2078276-plants-have-evolved-forgetfulness-to-wipe-out-memory-of-stress/
Page 86, Position 4: The number of messages sent every two days via WhatsApp and Facebook exceeds the number of human beings who have ever lived.: http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/12/11415198/facebook-messenger-whatsapp-number-messages-vs-sms-f8-2016 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16870579
Page 87, Position 1: The numbers on a roulette wheel add up to 666.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roulette
Page 87, Position 2: It would take more than 65,000 tweets to write out Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu.: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-novel
Page 87, Position 3: Brazil has more mobile phones than people.: http://www.pri.org/stories/2011-03-29/brazil-more-cell-phones-people
Page 87, Position 4: In 2013, a Florida law accidentally banned computers.: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/09/tech/gaming-gadgets/florida-slot-machine-law/
Page 88, Position 1: You can’t write perfect French on French computer keyboards.: http://www.citylab.com/tech/2016/01/frances-computer-keyboards-are-a-mess/424833/
Page 88, Position 2: In 1861, only 2.5% of Italians could speak Italian.: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2015/09/most-italians-did-not-speak-italian-.html
Page 88, Position 3: 70% of Italians imagine that life is good in France, but only 43% of the French agree with them.: http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21695581-europeans-have-warped-views-their-neighboursand-themselves-green-eyed-continent
Page 88, Position 4: The term nom de plume is not French.: http://www.bartleby.com/116/105.html
Page 89, Position 1: The French rire dans sa barbe (‘to laugh in one’s beard’) means ‘to chuckle quietly about a past event’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VjEBAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA85&dq=The+French+rire+dans+sa+barbe&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj8jpTwlf3OAhXqAcAKHaWHA1QQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=The%20French%20rire%20dans%20sa%20barbe&f=false
Page 89, Position 2: The Croatian for ‘what goes around comes around’ is doc´e maca na vratanca – ‘the pussy cat will come to the tiny door’.: http://blog.ted.com/40-idioms-that-cant-be-translated-literally/comment-page-6/
Page 89, Position 3: The German for not seeing the blindingly obvious is Tomaten auf den Augen haben – ‘to have tomatoes on the eyes’.: http://blog.ted.com/40-idioms-that-cant-be-translated-literally/comment-page-6/
Page 89, Position 4: In Germany, it is illegal to wear a mask or take a pillow to a demonstration.: http://www.learnmoreworld.com/2016/05/top-10-weird-german-rules-and-laws.html
Page 90, Position 1: 17th-century Germans were banned from wearing very wide trousers.: http://www.historyextra.com/feature/beware-what-you-buy-goods-german-citizens-were-forbidden-consume
Page 90, Position 2: Monty Python’s Life of Brian was banned by several UK councils that didn’t have cinemas.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Life_of_Brian
Page 90, Position 3: Divorce was illegal in Ireland until 1997.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteenth_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_of_Ireland
Page 90, Position 4: In 1457, men with moustaches were banned from Dublin.: https://dralun.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/cant-stay-moustache-bans-on-facial-hair-in-medieval-ireland/
Page 91, Position 1: De befborstel is a moustache grown by Dutchmen to stimulate the clitoris.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mustache
Page 91, Position 2: The Ainu people of Japan wear wooden moustache lifters to keep their facial hair out of their food.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BqHiU-UX6OAC&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 91, Position 3: The world’s longest beard is 16 feet long and kept at the Smithsonian Museum.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/smithsonian-home-worlds-longest-beard-180953370/
Page 91, Position 4: The Kansas Barbed Wire Museum has 2,000 varieties of barbed wire.: http://www.rushcounty.org/barbedwiremuseum/bw2.html
Page 92, Position 1: The Pencil Sharpener Museum in Logan, Ohio, has 3,400 pencil sharpeners.: http://www.ohio.org/destination/logan/art-exhibitsexhibitions/paul-a-johnson-pencil-sharpener-museum
Page 92, Position 2: The Museo della Merda in Piacenza, Italy, is the world’s first museum dedicated to excrement.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3061566/Tiny-Italian-village-opens-Museum-S-t-dedicated-study-220-000-lbs-cow-excrement-architect-claims-smells-fresh-daisy.html
Page 92, Position 3: Proctologists in ancient Egypt were known as ‘shepherds of the anus’.: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/medicine/ancient-egyptian-medicine.php
Page 92, Position 4: Ancient Egyptians believed the purpose of the brain was to produce snot for the nose.: http://www.egypt.swan.ac.uk/index.php/collection/169-mummification
Page 93, Position 1: Cured pork inserted into the nostrils can stop nosebleeds.: http://www.medicaldaily.com/stop-nosebleeds-pork-strips-improbable-remedy-people-glanzmann-thrombasthenia-304042
Page 93, Position 2: 85% of people use only one nostril at a time.: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v402/n6757/full/402035a0.html
Page 93, Position 3: One nostril smells the world slightly differently to the other.: http://news.stanford.edu/pr/99/991103smell.html
Page 93, Position 4: Sea hares are molluscs that secrete a purple slime to block their predators’ sense of smell.: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/19/5-animals-with-stinky-defenses/
Page 94, Position 1: Puff adders can ‘switch off’ their own smell so predators can’t locate them.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/inkfish/2015/12/21/unsmellable-snake-camouflages-its-scent/#.VniR8OOyOkp
Page 94, Position 2: Orang-utans warn off predators by making kissing noises.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/wildlife/5971752/Orang-utans-blow-kisses-to-ward-off-predators.html
Page 94, Position 3: Fewer than half of modern cultures practise romantic kissing.: http://www.sapiens.org/culture/is-romantic-kissing-a-human-universal/
Page 94, Position 4: The highwayman Jerry Abershawe went to the gallows with a flower in his mouth.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Abershawe
Page 95, Position 1: ‘Hanging days’, when criminals were executed in Georgian London, were public holidays.: http://www.historyextra.com/blog/georgians/10-dangers-georgian-london
Page 95, Position 2: The head of the police in ancient Egypt was known as the ‘chief of the hitters’.: http://www.britannica.com/topic/police/The-history-of-policing-in-the-West#toc260917
Page 95, Position 3: British police officers are arrested for criminal behaviour at a rate of one a day.: http://boingboing.net/2015/09/26/1-in-40-london-cops-have-been.html
Page 95, Position 4: Cambodian traffic police pocket 70% of all the fines they collect.: http://time.com/3976259/cambodia-traffic-police-keep-fines-corruption/
Page 96, Position 1: The first recorded traffic casualty was a Roman pig run over by a chariot carrying an ornamental phallus.: https://romangreece.wordpress.com/tag/classical-archaeology/
Page 96, Position 2: The first police-car chase in the UK had a top speed of 15 mph.: Mark Mason, #Mail Obsession#
Page 96, Position 3: Russia has enough miles of road to go from the Earth to the Moon, circle it 15 times, and come back.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Russia
Page 96, Position 4: Vodka was banned in Russia between 1914 and 1925.: http://rbth.com/opinion/2014/08/15/sobering_effect_what_happened_when_russia_banned_booze_39045.html
Page 97, Position 1: Gin was voted ‘best drink of 1873’.: http://www.swlondoner.co.uk/gin-back-fashion-spoke-beefeater-master-distiller-world-gin-day/
Page 97, Position 2: In 2013, Heineken adverts inadvertently featured a 19th-century anti-alcohol crusader.: http://www.beveragedaily.com/Markets/We-hope-he-d-be-proud-Heineken-blunders-as-teetotal-Methodist-used-to-plug-Bulmers
Page 97, Position 3: John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, cured his overeating by poking a piece of wine-soaked bread up his nose.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/53330/17-bizarre-natural-remedies-1700s
Page 97, Position 4: Winston Churchill’s doctor prescribed eight double shots of alcohol per day.: http://metro.co.uk/2016/04/13/churchill-was-prescribed-lots-of-booze-by-his-doctor-and-its-not-fair-5813242/
Page 98, Position 1: Churchill was a US citizen.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorary_citizen_of_the_United_States
Page 98, Position 2: 12% of Americans think USB is a country in Europe.: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/one-in-10-americans-think-html-is-a-sexually-transmitted-disease-study-finds-9170597.html
Page 98, Position 3: 31% of Americans believe they have made contact with the dead.: http://www.livescience.com/51387-gun-ownership-rates-us.html
Page 98, Position 4: 1 in 3 adults in the US own at least one gun.: http://www.livescience.com/51387-gun-ownership-rates-us.html
Page 99, Position 1: Utah, Arizona, Indiana, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Alaska all have official state firearms.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-new-trend-in-state-symbols-guns
Page 99, Position 2: The largest university in Texas allows handguns on campus, but not water pistols.: http://www.chron.com/news/education/article/Texas-students-can-soon-bring-guns-to-dorm-room-6572147.php
Page 99, Position 3: After arms and drugs, the third most smuggled commodity is animals.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/wildlife-trafficking-149079896/?no-ist
Page 99, Position 4: The world’s slavery trade is worth $150 billion a year, more than the GDP of Hungary.: #New Scientist# 6th Feb 2016
Page 100, Position 1: More people work for Walmart than live in Slovenia.: http://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/06/23/the-worlds-biggest-employers-infographic/
Page 100, Position 2: Bolivia has had 190 coups or revolutions in its 191-year history.: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/bolivia.html?nav=el%20
Page 100, Position 3: There is only one psychiatrist in Liberia.: http://www.mghcgh.org/stories-from-the-field/psychiatry-in-liberia/
Page 100, Position 4: Liberia declared a state of emergency in 2009 when 80 towns and villages were invaded by caterpillars.: #The Week# 5 July 2014
Page 101, Position 1: The Very Hungry Caterpillar was originally called A Week with Willie Worm.: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-eric-carle24-2009apr24-story.html
Page 101, Position 2: The gum-leaf skeletoniser caterpillar of Australia wears a stack of its old moulted heads on its head.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/03/this-caterpillar-builds-a-protective-hat-from-old-heads/
Page 101, Position 3: When Donald Trump is in a bad mood, he wears a red hat.: http://theweek.com/speedreads/612758/tell-what-mood-donald-trump-based-color-hat
Page 101, Position 4: The English philosopher Herbert Spencer had an ‘angry suit’ which he wore when feeling irritable.: https://interestingliterature.com/2016/03/02/five-fascinating-facts-about-herbert-spencer/ https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xIsKdqNfVRoC&pg=PA322&lpg=PA322&dq=Herbert+Spencer+angry+suit&source=bl&ots=v2wBqi1faJ&sig=lAmxjqvxo0gZc_JBvUp9-NSj_yo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiivp3hh4bLAhWDzxQKHayODjwQ6AEIKzAD#v=onepage&q=Herbert%20Spencer%20angry%20suit&f=false
Page 102, Position 1: The phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ was coined by Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin.: http://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-biology#ref1114976 http://blog.oup.com/2015/05/word-evolution-etymology/
Page 102, Position 2: The repetition of a falsehood so often it becomes an urban legend is known as the Woozle Effect.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woozle_effect
Page 102, Position 3: WIMPs and WIMPZILLAs are theoretical particles made of theoretical ‘dark matter’.: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0005299
Page 102, Position 4: 46% of Americans feel a deep sense of wonder about the universe at least once a week.: http://licatholic.org/study-looks-at-religious-habits-of-americans/
Page 103, Position 1: Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, forgot her toothbrush and had to brush her teeth with her finger.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/first-woman-in-space-reveals-what-crucial-piece-of-kit-was-missing-on-her-1963-mission-10506688.html
Page 103, Position 2: Napoleon was born with teeth.: #Private Lives#, by Mark Bryant
Page 103, Position 3: Limpet teeth are made from the strongest biological material in nature.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31500883
Page 103, Position 4: When Monty Python toured the US and were asked to trash a hotel suite for publicity, Michael Palin obligingly went into the bathroom and broke a toothbrush.: Personal conversation between author and Michael Palin
Page 104, Position 1: Pythons kill not by suffocation, but by cutting off the blood supply and causing a heart attack.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150722-boa-constrictors-snakes-animals-science-kill/
Page 104, Position 2: A human heart beats five times as often in a lifetime as a giraffe’s.: http://gizmodo.com/5982977/how-many-heartbeats-does-each-species-get-in-a-lifetime
Page 104, Position 3: Fatal heart attacks can be caused by joy.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35710232
Page 104, Position 4: Having friendly neighbours reduces your chances of a heart attack by up to 70%.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/11041230/Friendly-neighbours-could-lower-the-risk-of-heart-attack-study-finds.html
Page 105, Position 1: In 1996, two neighbours in Devon spent a year hooting at owls, unaware they were actually hooting at each other.: http://www.express.co.uk/expressyourself/286313/The-best-of-the-worst
Page 105, Position 2: ‘The Copper-Penis Owl’ is the monster used in Hungary to scare children into behaving.: http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2011/10/21/the-copper-penis-owl-will-get-you/
Page 105, Position 3: Children in Hungary are told that eating carrots will help them whistle.: #How We Learn To Eat#, Bee Wilson
Page 105, Position 4: A mussel from Transylvania that lives in toilet U-bends is the UK’s most invasive species.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/poo-munching-alien-mussels-capable-7470021
Page 106, Position 1: A supplement made from mussels can reduce the pain in your muscles.: http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Research/Mussels-for-muscles-Green-lipped-mussel-extract-may-ease-muscle-damage-during-exercise
Page 106, Position 2: The muscles in the left ventricle of a giraffe’s heart are five times stronger than those in the right.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160213-animals-science-hearts-valentines-day-giraffes/
Page 106, Position 3: There are half as many giraffes as there were 15 years ago.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150625-giraffes-animals-science-conservation-africa-endangered/
Page 106, Position 4: The producer of Die Hard and The Matrix also invented the sport of Ultimate Frisbee.: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/movies/an-accidental-sportsman-in-hollywood.html?_r=0
Page 107, Position 1: The sound of the stabbing in the shower scene in Psycho was made using melons.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/75464/10-iconic-movie-sounds-and-how-they-were-made
Page 107, Position 2: Nobody knows why the Oscars are called the Oscars.: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/a-brief-history-of-the-oscars.html
Page 107, Position 3: Cary Grant and Clark Gable met once a year to exchange unwanted monogrammed Christmas gifts.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qAhtNiAl3YsC&pg=PA292&lpg=PA292&dq=clark+gable+cary+grant+monogrammed&source=bl&ots=1IGHQjUTlO&sig=0PLe5Z4iMQALWftwBpJAoUeaTMc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2_sePz_jOAhViJsAKHYGEBPoQ6AEIPzAJ#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 107, Position 4: Christmas-tree lights can interfere with your Wi-Fi.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-christmas-tree-lights-really-play-havoc-with-your-wi-fi/
Page 108, Position 1: Siberian Christmas trees get so cold they can turn to glass.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20141220-five-christmas-tree-secrets
Page 108, Position 2: Pine-tree needles are a good source of vitamins A and C.: http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=776
Page 108, Position 3: Pine-tree sap was used in the Second World War to fuel Japanese aircraft.: #History Today# Nov 2014
Page 108, Position 4: 85% of aircraft that crashed on British soil during the Second World War belonged to the Allies.: https://content.historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/military-aircraft-crash-sites/milaircsites.pdf/
Page 109, Position 1: Soldiers in the First World War were five times more likely to get venereal disease than trench foot.: http://www.historyextra.com/feature/sex-and-love/sex-and-first-world-war-tommies-who-visited-brothels
Page 109, Position 2: M&Ms were invented so American soldiers could eat chocolate without it melting in their hands.: http://www.history.com/news/hungry-history/the-wartime-origins-of-the-mm
Page 109, Position 3: In 2013, 70,000 tons more chocolate were consumed than the cocoa harvest produced.: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/11/Chocolate-shortage-2020-mars-barry-callebaut/382855/
Page 109, Position 4: Cocoa trees belong to the Sterculiaceae family, which is named after the Roman god of manure.: #New Scientist# 18 July 2015
Page 110, Position 1: Sgriob is Gaelic for ‘the itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whisky’.: #Mother Tongue# - Bill Bryson
Page 110, Position 2: Cravings for chocolate and alcohol can be controlled with injections of lizard saliva.: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120515165405.htm
Page 110, Position 3: Osteria Francescana, voted the world’s best restaurant in 2016, has a dish on the menu called ‘the crunchy part of the lasagna’.: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/cost-eat-10-best-restaurants-world/
Page 110, Position 4: Not supplying trays in cafeterias reduces food waste by 32%.: #National Georaphic# - Mar 2016
Page 111, Position 1: In 2016, Thailand’s Buddhist monks were put on a diet after a survey revealed almost half of them were obese.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/obesity-time-bomb-prompts-dieting-regime-for-thailand-s-buddhist-monks-a6937686.html
Page 111, Position 2: In 1087, William the Conqueror got too fat to ride his horse, so he went on an alcohol-only diet and died later that year.: http://www.latimes.com/tn-dpt-0510-all-about-food-20130507-story.html
Page 111, Position 3: You get 18% more drunk if you drink spirits with a diet mixer rather than a regular one.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/science-nature/pick-your-poison-a-diet-mixer-could-make-you-get-drunk-faster-12071641/
Page 111, Position 4: Hens given alcohol lay half as many eggs.: https://archive.org/stream/antialcoholmovem00gordrich/antialcoholmovem00gordrich_djvu.txt
Page 112, Position 1: Human beings produce 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more sperm than eggs.: Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'Animal Weapons'
Page 112, Position 2: The sperm of a male seed shrimp are three times bigger than he is.: http://www.livescience.com/45574-oldest-petrified-sperm-is-huge.html
Page 112, Position 3: The oldest known sperm is worm sperm.: #New Scientist# 18 July 2016
Page 112, Position 4: A newly discovered ‘100-suckered parasitic worm’ turned out to be the genitals of the blanket octopus.: #John Wright# - Naming of the Shrew
Page 113, Position 1: Gloomy octopuses are said to have ‘no personality’.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18640-hdtv-reveals-brainy-octopus-has-no-personality
Page 113, Position 2: Octopuses prefer HDTV to ordinary television.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8573000/8573449.stm
Page 113, Position 3: Squidward Tentacles in SpongeBob SquarePants has only six tentacles – which means he is neither a squid nor an octopus.: http://www.mtv.com/news/2098210/squidward-not-squid/
Page 113, Position 4: The most remote point on Earth is called Point Nemo.: http://www.redbull.com/uk/en/adventure/stories/1331714456471/point-nemo-most-remote-place-on-planet-earth
Page 114, Position 1: The hottest place on Earth lost the title it had held for 90 years in 2012, when it was found that the man making the original measurements didn’t know how to use a thermometer.: http://www.livescience.com/23156-new-world-hottest-temperature.html
Page 114, Position 2: The Sun is white (with a hint of turquoise), not yellow.: http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/25-silly-myths-about-earth-space-and-physics-that-drive-me-crazy/ar-BBqzn16?ocid=MSN_UK_NL_MO35
Page 114, Position 3: Man has probed 20 billion kilometres outwards from the Earth but only 12 into it.: http://www.space.com/17688-voyager-1.html http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/01/tech/mantle-earth-drill-mission/
Page 114, Position 4: Aboard the NASA probe sent to study Pluto were the ashes of the man who discovered it.: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/13/us/nasa-pluto-new-horizons-clyde-tombaugh-ashes/
Page 115, Position 1: Astronauts aboard the ISS change their underpants every four days.: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/livinginspace/Astronaut_Laundry.html
Page 115, Position 2: Astronauts wear belts to stop their trousers falling up.: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Astronauts-wear-belts-in-space
Page 115, Position 3: Astronauts have to sleep near fans so they don’t suffocate in their own exhaled breath.: https://www.quora.com/Do-astronauts-on-the-ISS-need-to-sleep-with-a-fan-on-or-in-some-way-have-moving-air-around-them
Page 115, Position 4: Astronauts drink their own recycled urine.: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast02nov_1/
Page 116, Position 1: In 2015, a whisky sent into space to mature was said to taste of antiseptic smoke, rubber and smoked fish.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-34168471
Page 116, Position 2: On Earth, moss grows in an unruly fashion, but in space it forms spirals.: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2002/16jul_firemoss/
Page 116, Position 3: If you grow romaine lettuce in space, it tastes like rocket.: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/10/nasa-astronauts-lettuce-vegetables-grown-space
Page 116, Position 4: There are 400,000 species of plants on Earth. 300,000 are safe to eat, but actually we only eat fewer than 200.: #New Scientist# 18 July 2015
Page 117, Position 1: In winter, garden birds need to eat a third of their own weight in food each day.: http://www.feedyourbirds.co.uk/bird-finder/getting-started
Page 117, Position 2: Paradisea apoda, the ‘legless bird of paradise’, is so named because the original specimen’s legs were cut off when it was being stuffed.: #The Naming of the Shrew#, John Wright
Page 117, Position 3: An Australian dentist has invented braces for birds with bent beaks.: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-27/university-of-queensland-gatton-treat-macaws-with-birdie-braces/5976648
Page 117, Position 4: A flock of red-billed queleas may consist of over 30 million birds.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=v9YlDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT20&lpg=PT20&dq=A+flock+of+red-billed+quelea+may+consist+of+over+30+million+birds.&source=bl&ots=x0qWui7KnK&sig=nQgNClQxiBWm3e-k8O8rfFD7aUg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjT4JXbnf3OAhVpCcAKHU8MD8AQ6AEIMzAE#v=onepage&q=A%20flock%20of%20red-billed%20quelea%20may%20consist%20of%20over%2030%20million%20birds.&f=false
Page 118, Position 1: Until the 1840s, rugby matches could have up to 300 players on the pitch at once.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=I4OCBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=rugby+300+players+on+the+pitch+at+once.&source=bl&ots=qId9U2dCrY&sig=QmIS0HddJKncO1VktTbTWJ-rH3Y&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiA4fX6oPjNAhWpBcAKHZMNAS8Q6AEIMTAD#v=onepage&q=rugby%20300%20players%20on%20the%20pitch%20at%20once.&f=false
Page 118, Position 2: Estádio Milton Corrêa, a football stadium in Brazil, has one goal in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere.: https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/whats-special-little-stadium-brazil-200310652.html
Page 118, Position 3: The British Ladies Football Club was founded in 1895 by Nettie Honeyball.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nettie_Honeyball
Page 118, Position 4: The first black female footballer was Carrie Boustead, a Scot who played in goal in the 1890s.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-18908465
Page 119, Position 1: In 2015, Welling United signed a promising young Chelsea player called Nortei Nortey.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/33862554
Page 119, Position 2: A scientific paper published in 2016 had over 2,000 authors, including 38 Wangs, 3 Dings, 3 Dongs, a Botti and a Brest.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26799652/
Page 119, Position 3: At least 200 medical papers quote Bob Dylan in their titles.: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/12/14/bob-dylan-references-in-medical-literature-have-grown-exponentially-since-1990/?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-national%3Ahomepage%2Fcard
Page 119, Position 4: Fraudulent scientific papers tend to contain more jargon.: http://news.stanford.edu/2015/11/16/fraud-science-papers-111615/
Page 120, Position 1: When walking, anxious people tend to veer to the left.: https://www.kent.ac.uk/news/society/8580/anxiety-can-impact-peoples-walking-direction
Page 120, Position 2: Penguins have a ‘slender walk’ where they pin their flippers back to wriggle through crowds.: http://www.zoopenguins.org/behaviors.html
Page 120, Position 3: Penguins prepare a warm spot on the ground to lay their eggs by excreting all over it.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/15-million-volunteers-discover-penguins-need-to-use-the-faeces-in-order-to-breed-10205199.html
Page 120, Position 4: Fat penguins fall over more often than thin ones.: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/feb/25/penguins-on-a-treadmill-study-shows-fat-ones-fall-over-more-often-than-slim-ones
Page 121, Position 1: New Zealand has more species of penguin than anywhere else.: http://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-animals/birds/birds-a-z/penguins/
Page 121, Position 2: Jackass penguins are named after their mating cry and are sometimes known as ‘beach donkeys’.: http://io9.gizmodo.com/why-do-so-many-penguins-sound-just-like-donkeys-at-las-1732843829
Page 121, Position 3: An 18th-century name for penguins was ‘arse-feet’.: http://haggardhawksblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/10-old-animal-nicknames.html
Page 121, Position 4: The feet of tree frogs are self-cleaning.: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110703132531.htm
Page 122, Position 1: For Spider-Man to climb buildings like a gecko would require size 89 feet.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/spider-man-would-need-size-7200767
Page 122, Position 2: Humans started wearing shoes 40,000 years ago.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/spider-man-would-need-size-7200767
Page 122, Position 3: Socrates had a disciple called Simon the Shoemaker.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates
Page 122, Position 4: Wellington boots were designed by Germans, named by an Irishman, manufactured by an American and first worn by French peasants.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/qi/8944718/QI-Quite-interesting-facts-about-rubber.html
Page 123, Position 1: Wearing your socks outside your shoes gives you a better grip in icy weather.: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/mar/09/improbable-research-icy-socks-over-shoes
Page 123, Position 2: The first water balloons were made out of socks.: http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2049243_2048654,00.html
Page 123, Position 3: The word ‘sock’ comes from the Latin soccus, meaning ‘shoe’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=GxGPLju4KEkC&pg=PA125&lpg=PA125&dq=soccus+etymology+sock&source=bl&ots=Xec9vWugph&sig=RoS6-oRZMR6W-hkvpEaI5bkziyU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBGoVChMIpbaEwMXpxwIV6inbCh2IHAVk#v=onepage&q=soccus%20etymology%20sock&f=true
Page 123, Position 4: The word ‘pants’ comes from a Greek word meaning ‘all-compassionate’.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pantaloons&allowed_in_frame=0
Page 124, Position 1: The word ‘sarcasm’ comes from an ancient Greek verb meaning ‘to tear flesh’.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sarcasm
Page 124, Position 2: The name Bryony comes from the Greek verb bruein, meaning ‘to be full to bursting’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3LM4CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA438&lpg=PA438&dq=bryony+means+full+bursting&source=bl&ots=YiwgsoW4N0&sig=e1K7ROxLEZ2oqyBc4epAoNtLSes&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi94tDipe7PAhWF1RoKHWy3BmkQ6AEIITAB#v=onepage&q=bryony%20means%20full%20bursting&f=false
Page 124, Position 3: Spartan elections were won by the candidate who got the loudest cheer.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Se3CBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA71&dq=Spartans+elections+cheering&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwin2YW-9r3NAhULB8AKHQLJANsQuwUIHzAA#v=onepage&q=Spartans%20elections%20cheering&f=false
Page 124, Position 4: The loudest word ever shouted was ‘Quiet!’ by a primary-school teacher from Northern Ireland.: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/worlds-loudest-shout-belongs-to-northern-ireland-teacher-28559417.html
Page 125, Position 1: In 2009, Jonathan Lee Riches served an injunction on Guinness World Records to stop them calling him the ‘world’s most litigious person’.: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/LegalCenter/story?id=7677327
Page 125, Position 2: The record for the world’s fastest steam train was set in 1938 and has never been broken.: http://www.historyextra.com/article/feature/8-facts-about-history-railways
Page 125, Position 3: When France’s TGV broke the world train-speed record, it had to apply the brakes for 10 miles before stopping.: http://www.trainhistory.net/train-facts/facts-about-trains/
Page 125, Position 4: Japanese railways have underpasses for turtles.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japanese-rail-workers-build-special-tunnels-to-save-turtles-from-train-deaths-a6757466.html
Page 126, Position 1: Tartle is an old Scottish word for the moment of panic when you’re about to introduce someone and realise you’ve forgotten their name.: http://www.scotsman.com/heritage/people-places/scottish-word-of-the-week-tartle-1-3819473
Page 126, Position 2: In 1963, 5,529 Nigels were born in England and Wales; in 2014, there were only 10.: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/11/nige-name-nigel-farage
Page 126, Position 3: Men called Nigel are twice as likely to vote for UKIP.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/people-called-nigel-are-twice-as-likely-to-vote-ukip-10169795.html
Page 126, Position 4: In a 2015 poll, 30% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats supported the bombing of Agrabah, the fictional city in Aladdin.: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/18/republican-voters-bomb-agrabah-disney-aladdin-donald-trump
Page 127, Position 1: Donald Trump’s father and grandmother both had the middle name Christ.: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/26/donald-trump-fred-trump-father-relationship-business-real-estate-art-of-deal
Page 127, Position 1: The 25th Amendment, allowing vice presidents to take over when the president is incapacitated, has been used only three times. In each case, the president was having a colonoscopy.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Page 127, Position 2: George H. W. Bush almost chose Clint Eastwood as his running mate.: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/clint-eastwood-chosen-george-h-w-bush-vice-president-1988-article-1.964613
Page 127, Position 3: The name Donald means ‘ruler of the world’.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Donald
Page 128, Position 1: The parchment scroll of the Land Tax Act of 1782 is a quarter of a mile long.: Mark Mason, #Mail Obsession#
Page 128, Position 2: The Virgin Mary appears more often in the Qur’an than in the Bible.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pYPnNN8oUHIC&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=Virgin+Mary+%22more+times%22+Qur%E2%80%99an+Bible+.&source=bl&ots=tbDTgivMBs&sig=aZ_v2opYUH-_rt9wNPfL79xR0FQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiYqZ-Jo_jNAhViJsAKHZLxC4cQ6AEIPDAF
Page 128, Position 3: To print a single Gutenberg Bible on vellum required the hides of 170 calves.: http://www.bl.uk/treasures/gutenberg/didyouknow.html
Page 128, Position 4: Parchment is made from the skin of sheep.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parchment
Page 129, Position 1: MPs have been told not to stroke the statues in Parliament for luck because Churchill and Thatcher are being worn away.: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/02/churchill-thatcher-statues-mps-touching
Page 129, Position 2: The first use of the word ‘twat’ in Parliament was in 1986, when Bill Cash MP described Field Marshal Lord Carver as a ‘boring old twat’.: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/apr/23/european-communities-amendment-bill
Page 129, Position 3: The second use of ‘twat’ in Parliament happened immediately afterwards, when another MP shouted: ‘He said twat!’: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/apr/23/european-communities-amendment-bill
Page 129, Position 4: According to Hansard, no MP has ever called another MP a ‘turd’.: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/search/turd
Page 130, Position 1: The man who patented the first elevator and the man who patented the first elevator brake were both called Otis.: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/elevator-inventor.html
Page 130, Position 2: A statue of Nikola Tesla in Silicon Valley provides free Wi-Fi.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/63299/nikola-tesla-may-be-dead-hes-still-providing-wi-fi-silicon-valley
Page 130, Position 3: The Statue of Liberty was designed as a Muslim woman guarding the Suez Canal.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/statue-liberty-was-originally-muslim-woman-180957377/?no-ist
Page 130, Position 4: For almost 40 years, Stockton-on-Tees honoured John Walker, the inventor of the friction match, with a statue of the wrong man.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/town-officials-note-john-walker-statue-commemorates-man-with-same-name-but-is-not-a-match-with-local-a6876821.html
Page 131, Position 1: The US government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provide specific guidance for Zombie Preparedness.: http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies.htm
Page 131, Position 2: Crohn’s disease was discovered and named by Marilyn Monroe’s doctor.: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-modern-guide-to-naming-diseases
Page 131, Position 3: Because of mad cow disease Desperate Dan stopped eating cow pie.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/387517.stm
Page 131, Position 4: Until 1899, the list of official diseases of the Royal College of Physicians included nostalgia.: #Strange Medicine# by Nathan Belofsky
Page 132, Position 1: 95% of people on Earth have at least one thing wrong with them.: #New Scientist# 13th June 2015
Page 132, Position 2: A group of unicorns is called a blessing.: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/blessing
Page 132, Position 3: ‘Unicorn Zombie Apocalypse’ comes with an official music video.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPXv392pc9k
Page 132, Position 4: 50% of Americans believe in at least one conspiracy theory.: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12084/abstract
Page 133, Position 1: In 2015, the Queen received a gift of £5,000 worth of horse semen.: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/queens-birthday-weirdest-gifts-queen-elizabeth-ii-has-ever-received_uk_570e6391e4b00ed33e06b9d7
Page 133, Position 2: In 1942, half of the US’s penicillin stocks were used on just one patient.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22730360-800-applied-minds-why-engineers-are-the-real-heroes/
Page 133, Position 3: According to at least two independent sets of research, man flu is real.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/health/man-flu-is-real-because-oestrogen-protects-women-from-the-influe/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/7505207/Man-flu-is-no-myth-as-scientists-prove-men-suffer-more-from-disease.html
Page 133, Position 4: In 1873, three-quarters of American horses caught flu.: http://mentalfloss.com/uk/health/30761/the-year-every-horse-in-america-caught-the-flu
Page 134, Position 1: All the photos shared on Snapchat in one hour would take 10 years to view.: http://uk.businessinsider.com/snapchat-photos-sent-per-second-2015-5
Page 134, Position 2: A champion racehorse from today would beat one from the early 1990s by seven lengths.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11693802/Racehorses-are-getting-faster-scientists-conclude.html
Page 134, Position 3: Victorian gentry ordered their horses to be shot after their deaths.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/uk/northernengland/722527/Northumberland-Castles-knight-in-shining-armour.html
Page 134, Position 4: ‘Twitter’ was a 19th-century word for an abscess on on a horse’s foot.: http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2015/07/when-life-gives-you-lemons/
Page 135, Position 1: The average Briton is bored for six hours a week.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5868721/Britons-bored-for-more-than-two-years-of-their-lives.html
Page 135, Position 2: People who use more emoji have more sex.: http://time.com/3694763/match-com-dating-survey-emoji-sex/
Page 135, Position 3: Emoji is the fastest-growing language in history.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/32793732/uks-fastest-growing-language-is-emoji
Page 135, Position 4: 72% of 18- to 25-year-olds find it easier to express their feelings with emoji rather than words.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/32793732/uks-fastest-growing-language-is-emoji
Page 136, Position 1: Lord Baden-Powell once wrote a letter to an autograph-hunter telling him not to become an autograph-hunter. It has since been sold to an autograph-hunter.: http://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/260540/Scout-chief-Robert-Baden-Powell-s-blunt-note-sells-for-900
Page 136, Position 2: One British child a day eats a washing-machine tablet in mistake for a sweet.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2828019/Children-eating-sweet-like-washing-tabs-one-child-day-receives-emergency-treatment-swallowing-liquid.html
Page 136, Position 3: The average Briton’s wardrobe contains 152 items, fewer than half of which are worn regularly.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3626566/Women-spend-six-months-deciding-wear-Study-finds-women-spend-17-minutes-day-trying-choose-outfit.html
Page 136, Position 4: One-third of Britons have written almost nothing by hand in the last six months.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2163175/Could-forget-WRITE-The-typical-adult-scribbled-hand-weeks.html
Page 137, Position 1: The video game Fallout 4 is set in a post-apocalyptic world where you get rewarded for returning library books.: http://www.bustle.com/articles/123234-video-game-fallout-4-has-players-returning-overdue-library-books-for-prizes
Page 137, Position 2: As a small boy, Roald Dahl made a pilgrimage to see Beatrix Potter. When he got there, all she said was: ‘Well, you’ve seen her. Now, buzz off!’: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/roald-dahl-told-buzz-off-2149840
Page 137, Position 3: The Oompa-Loompas were originally called Whipple-Scrumpets.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28980257
Page 137, Position 4: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is how the author Stieg Larsson imagined Pippi Longstocking as an adult.: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/weekinreview/23ryan.html?_r=0
Page 138, Position 1: People who drink black coffee are more likely to be psychopaths.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/psychopathic-people-are-more-likely-to-prefer-bitter-foods-according-to-new-study-a6688971.html
Page 138, Position 2: In his lifetime, Edgar Allan Poe’s best-selling book was a textbook about seashells.: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2015/12/14/edgar_allan_poe_s_textbook_on_seashells_was_his_only_bestseller.html
Page 138, Position 3: Ernest Hemingway held the world record for the most marlin caught in a single day.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cf1MDh4JQ-MC&pg=PA241&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 138, Position 4: Marcel Proust had opium for breakfast.: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/05/daily-rituals-creative-minds-mason-currey
Page 139, Position 1: It is illegal in Tajikistan to go out for a birthday meal.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/tajikistan/11825572/Tajikistan-man-fined-for-breaking-law-against-celebrating-birthdays-in-public.ht
Page 139, Position 2: Drinking coffee in the Ottoman Empire of the 17th century was punishable by death.: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/01/10/144988133/drink-coffee-off-with-your-head
Page 139, Position 3: The Venetians used biological warfare against the Ottomans by smearing plague pus on fezzes.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22830494-400-17th-century-plot-to-use-plague-hats-as-bioweapons-revealed/
Page 139, Position 4: The beehive hairdo was invented to fit under a fez.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1343664/Oh-beehive-Meet-woman-created-buzz-inventing-Sixties-hairdo.html
Page 140, Position 1: After the English Civil War, Quakers appeared naked in public to symbolise the shame of the Church of England.: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41946859?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Page 140, Position 2: In China, it’s illegal to reincarnate without filling in a government Reincarnation Application form.: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/commentary/2007/08/22/119365/Rendering-unto.htm
Page 140, Position 3: In 2011, Florida accidentally made sex illegal.: http://www.theguardian.com/law/shortcuts/2015/mar/11/drugs-prostitution-accidental-legislation
Page 140, Position 4: Until 1936, it was illegal for men in New York to be topless in public.: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1955&dat=19821003&id=HqVVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IUANAAAAIBAJ&pg=3956,2378350&hl=en
Page 141, Position 1: When George H. W. Bush arrived in the White House, he found a note from Ronald Reagan saying: ‘Don’t let the turkeys get you down.’: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-meltzer/the-presidents-greatest-s_b_807547.html
Page 141, Position 2: Keen nudists have included Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, Dr Seuss, Dame Helen Mirren and Billy Connolly.: http://flavorwire.com/265895/pop-culture-icons-who-are-also-occasional-nudists
Page 141, Position 3: America’s first streaker rose to become chief clerk of the Pension Bureau.: http://michigantoday.umich.edu/a8578/ http://web.archive.org/web/20110917133205/http:/bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=C000956 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaking
Page 141, Position 4: In July 1896, a man called George Bush was sent to prison for appearing naked in a first-class railway carriage.: http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000101/18960823/017/0002 Reynolds's Newspaper - Sunday 23 August 1896
Page 142, Position 1: The Royal Mail has calculated that it would cost £11,602.25 to send a letter to Mars.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/35008501
Page 142, Position 2: Ronald Reagan left a note on the White House lawn warning the squirrels to beware of George H. W. Bush’s dogs.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3800013.stm
Page 142, Position 3: ‘The Catman’ plagued Ronald Reagan with threatening letters and dozens of pictures of cats.: http://nypost.com/2014/04/12/inside-the-secret-plots-to-kill-the-president/
Page 142, Position 4: Abraham Lincoln received at least one threatening letter every day of his presidency.: http://blog.oup.com/2016/03/nineteenth-century-american-letter-writing/
Page 143, Position 1: Ducklings are capable of abstract thought.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2097527-meet-the-philosopher-ducklings-that-indulge-in-abstract-thought/
Page 143, Position 2: 75% of the Earth’s population has no postal address.: http://qz.com/705273/mongolia-is-changing-all-its-addresses-to-three-word-phrases/
Page 143, Position 3: The first woman to appear on a US postage stamp was Queen Isabella of Spain.: http://blog.oup.com/2016/03/nineteenth-century-american-letter-writing/
Page 143, Position 4: The second item sent by New York’s pneumatic-tube postal system was a live black cat.: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/that-time-people-sent-a-cat-through-the-mail-using-pneumatic-tubes/278629/
Page 144, Position 1: When the ancient Romans deployed lions against Germanic tribes, the tribesmen simply assumed they were large dogs.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=N2C6BAAAQBAJ&pg=PT158&lpg=PT158&dq=romans+germanic+lions+%27large+dogs%27.&source=bl&ots=ghszyVKgRa&sig=Jke51Ozwk3b5a2IB_5AL2CGlo2A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf74XPrPjNAhWGLsAKHWQTDE4Q6AEIJDAB#v=onepage&q=romans%20germanic%20lions%20'large%20dogs'.&f=false
Page 144, Position 2: Every year, British ducks are fed 3.5 million loaves of bread.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/dont-feed-bread-ducks-campaign-7550013
Page 144, Position 3: In the California Gold Rush, a slice of bread cost the equivalent of $25, or $50 if it was buttered.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gold-rush-california-was-much-more-expensive-todays-dot-com-boom-california-180956788/?no-ist
Page 144, Position 4: The ancient Romans had a special kind of bread to be eaten with oysters.: https://www.dovesfarm.co.uk/about/the-history-of-bread/the-history-of-bread-roman-bread-and-greek-bread/
Page 145, Position 1: A ‘sandwich’ in the US must legally be at least 35% cooked meat.: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/14/dining/field-guide-to-the-sandwich.html?_r=1
Page 145, Position 2: The first successful CPR was performed on a dog.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34351798
Page 145, Position 3: Lancashire is haunted by a ghostly dog called the ‘Radcliffe shag’.: http://www.strangehistory.net/2013/07/05/scooby-doo-shag-and-the-bleachworks/
Page 145, Position 4: 10% of vegetarian hot dogs in America contain meat.: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/26/health/vegetarian-hot-dogs-contain-meat-clear-foods-feat/
Page 146, Position 1: Americans eat 20% of their meals in cars.: http://news.stanford.edu/news/multi/features/food/eating.html
Page 146, Position 2: Commercially grown tomatoes have tripled in size since the 1970s.: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/whats-gone-wrong-with-our-tomatoes-2303944.html
Page 146, Position 3: In the mid-1980s, the National Giant Vegetable Championships had to move to a new venue because the pumpkins were getting too big to fit through the door.: http://www.giantveg.co.uk/index.php/en/features
Page 146, Position 4: The world’s heaviest pumpkin weighed the same as a Ford Fiesta.: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/heaviest-pumpkin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Fiesta
Page 147, Position 1: Cows produce five times as much saliva as milk.: http://www.milkproduction.com/Library/Scientific-articles/Animal-health/Digestive-Physiology-of-the-Cow/ http://www.dairymoos.com/how-much-milk-do-cows-give/
Page 147, Position 2: Cucumbers are sometimes sacrificed by the Nuer people of South Sudan as a substitute for cattle.: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1580783?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Page 147, Position 3: Every year, 250,000 Danes gather to watch cows being let out to pasture.: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/04/20/401020408/when-danish-cows-see-fresh-spring-pasture-they-jump-for-joy
Page 147, Position 4: Until the 1950s, the rural poor in Norway warmed their feet in cowpats.: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/abe0f6f6-8f0c-11e3-9cb0-00144feab7de.html#axzz4CtRBY16g
Page 148, Position 1: In 2000, Blockbuster Video turned down the chance to acquire a new video-streaming service called Netflix.: http://uk.businessinsider.com/blockbuster-ceo-passed-up-chance-to-buy-netflix-for-50-million-2015-7?r=US&IR=T
Page 148, Position 2: To stop their udders freezing Siberian cows wear bras.: http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/68437/VIDEO-Cows-wear-bras-to-keep-out-cold
Page 148, Position 3: Cartoon cows in 1930s Hollywood were not allowed udders.: http://cbldf.org/2014/10/the-decade-animated-udders-went-under-wraps/
Page 148, Position 4: ‘Cowabunga!’ was used by Snoopy long before the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Etymology/cowabunga
Page 149, Position 1: Pilots never say ‘Over and out’ because ‘over’ means ‘waiting to hear more’ and ‘out’ means ‘that’s the end of the conversation’.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedure_word#Over
Page 149, Position 2: The original Chill Pill was a pill that you took when you had a chill.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/need-a-chill-pill-heres-a-recipe-from-the-19th-century
Page 149, Position 3: In the 16th century, ‘to text’ meant ‘to quote texts’.: #Oxford English Dictionary#
Page 149, Position 4: In 1994, people said ‘marvellous’ 77 times as often as they do today.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11055412/Cheerio-pussy-cat-hi-there-awesome-English.html
Page 150, Position 1: ‘Dalmatian’ is from an ancient Illyrian word meaning ‘sheep’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=WJbd0m6YaFkC&pg=PA749&lpg=PA749&dq=Ancient+Illyrian+Delme&source=bl&ots=szb6l7KArg&sig=jE3L1JfrGGj2G41oH6Ky7RAx0Lc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj99o_f08rNAhWgF8AKHSO7AnIQ6AEIPzAF#v=onepage&q=Ancient%20Illyrian%20Delme&f=false
Page 150, Position 2: Anyone talking on an army radio should be careful not to use the word ‘repeat’ because it means ‘fire again’.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_discipline
Page 150, Position 3: In the Second World War, the group trying to ‘turn’ German spies was called the Twenty Committee, hence the ‘XX’ or ‘Double Cross’ Committee.: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2003/november14/doublecross.htm
Page 150, Position 4: Major Edwin Richardson, who ran the British War Dog School, was prepared to accept any dog as long as it didn’t have a ‘gaily carried tail’.: #Weird War One# by Peter Taylor
Page 151, Position 1: President Kennedy wanted the first three men on the Moon to be white, black and Asian.: http://boingboing.net/2015/09/01/interview-with-man-picked-by-k.html
Page 151, Position 2: America’s ‘National Hero Dog’ award was won in 2015 by a cat.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/33223978
Page 151, Position 3: Galeanthropy is the belief that you have become a cat.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PCkudR8AB6QC&dq=GALEANTHROPY+-+the+belief+that+you+have+become+a+cat.&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=GALEANTHROPY+
Page 151, Position 4: In 1954, the Soviet Union applied to join NATO.: http://www.nato.int/history/nato-history-did-you-know.html
Page 152, Position 1: NASA scientists working on Mars rovers work to a Mars day, not an Earth day.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3443769/
Page 152, Position 2: The first song played on the Moon was ‘Fly Me to the Moon’.: http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/18/magazine/on-q.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
Page 152, Position 3: In 1966, three years before the US put a man on the Moon, a spacecraft from the USSR reached Venus.: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1970-060A
Page 152, Position 4: On the anniversary of its landing on Mars, the Curiosity rover hummed ‘Happy Birthday’ to itself.: http://io9.gizmodo.com/happy-birthday-performed-on-another-planet-for-the-ve-1039693778
Page 153, Position 1: In the past 50 years, humanity has mined enough rock to fill the Grand Canyon to the brim.: http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050307/full/news050307-2.html
Page 153, Position 2: In 20 million years, Mars’s moon Phobos will have disintegrated into a ring around the planet.: http://www.nature.com/news/martian-moon-set-to-form-ring-around-red-planet-1.18852
Page 153, Position 3: The Earth seen from the Moon never seems to rise or set but just hangs in the sky.: http://www.universetoday.com/115235/what-does-earth-look-like-from-the-moon/
Page 153, Position 4: When a potential meteorite turns out to be just a rock, geologists call it a ‘meteorwrong’.: http://meteorites.wustl.edu/meteorwrongs/meteorwrongs.htm
Page 154, Position 1: Wythnos, the Welsh for ‘week’, means ‘eight nights’.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnight
Page 154, Position 2: ‘Rock ’n’ roll’ originally meant the waves of fervour in US gospel churches.: #Stranger than we can Imagine# - John Higgs
Page 154, Position 3: The Church of England has four and a half times as many buildings in the UK as Tesco.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/27/church-buildings-falling-congregations
Page 154, Position 4: ‘Noon’ used to be the ninth hour of the religious day and took place at 3 p.m.: http://blog.dictionary.com/noon/
Page 155, Position 1: There is no standard day on which to celebrate World Standards Day.: http://www.improbable.com/2015/10/24/when-are-world-standards-day-2/
Page 155, Position 2: In Anglo-Saxon times, the day began at sunset.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=day&allowed_in_frame=0
Page 155, Position 3: In Saudi Arabia, the first day of the week is Saturday.: https://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/guidelines/c11.html
Page 155, Position 4: In Ethiopia, the millennium fell on 12 September 2007.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6978629.stm
Page 156, Position 1: The only difference between fog and mist is visibility: if you can’t see more than 100 metres ahead, it’s fog, not mist.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mist
Page 156, Position 2: World Health Day and America’s National Beer Day are both on 7 April.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Beer_Day_(United_States) http://www.who.int/campaigns/world-health-day/2016/en/
Page 156, Position 3: The US celebrates National Cheeseburger Day on 18 September.: http://time.com/money/4039146/national-cheeseburger-day-free-deals/
Page 156, Position 4: In the 16th century, unwanted fat was called ‘fog’.: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/72391?rskey=Tcs5r4&result=2#eid
Page 157, Position 1: There is a butterfly species called Charis matic.: #The Naming of the Shrew#, John Wright
Page 157, Position 2: ‘Thunder-plump’ is an old Scottish word for a sudden heavy rain shower.: http://blog.joules.com/post/as-right-as-rain/
Page 157, Position 3: Wabsteid, cauldpress and stoor-sooker are recent Scots words for ‘website’, ‘fridge’ and ‘vacuum cleaner’.: http://www.scottisharts.org.uk/1/artsinscotland/scots/wordofthemonth/archive.aspx
Page 157, Position 4: Scatophagus argus is a fish whose Latin name means ‘many-eyed shit-eater’, so it’s politely called the ‘spotted scat’.: #The Naming of the Shrew#, John Wright
Page 158, Position 1: A collection of felt hats in the V&A Museum in London were made using mercury and are stored in special bags marked with a skull and crossbones.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=re4pCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=%22felt+hats%22+skull+crossbones+%22v%26a%22+museum&source=bl&ots=yrZQa6mgQX&sig=aVQog4gzKtTAY0PGTH4mEyuAgzo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQ8r7ZsfjNAhWKJcAKHbKlBmkQ6AEILDAA#v=onepage&q=%22felt%20hats%22%20skull%20crossbones%20%22v%26a%22%20museum&f=false
Page 158, Position 2: Han solo is the scientific name of a 450-million-year-old trilobite.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_(trilobite)
Page 158, Position 3: Most ‘Latin’ scientific names aren’t really Latin.: #The Naming of the Shrew#, John Wright
Page 158, Position 4: Half of all museum specimens are thought to be wrongly labelled.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11998634/Half-of-worlds-museum-specimens-are-wrongly-labelled-Oxford-University-finds.html
Page 159, Position 1: When the Moon is directly overhead, its gravity pulls on clouds and makes it rain less.: #New Scientist# 6th Feb 2016
Page 159, Position 2: The whale skeleton at the Natural History Museum in London is held together by papier mâché made from 80-year-old copies of the Kent Messenger.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/10/skeleton-of-blue-whale-at-natural-history-museum-was-held-by-new/
Page 159, Position 3: The world’s only Cornish-pasty museum is in Mexico.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8887155/Worlds-first-Cornish-pasty-museum-opens-in-Mexico.html
Page 159, Position 4: Mushrooms shoot spores into the air to make it rain.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2015/11/12/how-mushrooms-can-control-the-weather/#.V22Dks5Ging
Page 160, Position 1: In one hour, the Sun produces as much energy as the world’s population uses in a year.: #The Economist# June 28 2014
Page 160, Position 2: ‘Flisk’ is an old Gloucestershire word for a light shower.: #The Folklore of the Cotswolds# by June Lewis-Jones (The History Press, 2003)
Page 160, Position 3: Scientists can tell how much it rained two billion years ago.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20590198
Page 160, Position 4: The Sun is rained on by droplets of plasma the size of Ireland.: http://phys.org/news/2014-06-sun-coronal-great.html
Page 161, Position 1: There are 13,513 airports in the US, more than the next 12 countries put together.: CIA World Factbook
Page 161, Position 2: The energy used in a year by Britons charging their phones would be enough to power Birmingham and Bradford.: #The Week# 2nd July 2016
Page 161, Position 3: In 2011, a skydiver dropped an iPhone from 13,500 feet and it still worked.: http://gizmodo.com/5822384/this-iphone-survived-a-13500-foot-fall
Page 161, Position 4: There are only five full-time skywriters on Earth.: http://qz.com/624271/one-man-rules-global-skywriting-and-he-wants-to-bring-color-to-the-heavens/
Page 162, Position 1: Marlon Brando’s mother gave Henry Fonda acting lessons.: http://www.50states.com/facts/nebraska.htm#.Vmu_UXuGRFU
Page 162, Position 2: In 2013/14, only eight passengers used the railway station at Teesside Airport.: http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/teesside-airport-railway-station-keeps-7100341
Page 162, Position 3: The French for ‘airport novel’ is roman de gare, or ‘railway station novel’.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airport_novel
Page 162, Position 4: H. G. Wells was A. A. Milne’s maths teacher.: https://www.britannica.com/biography/A-A-Milne
Page 163, Position 1: Even before farming was invented, humans had killed over half the planet’s large mammals.: #BBC History# Oct 2014
Page 163, Position 2: Roald Dahl, Noël Coward, Greta Garbo, Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Harry Houdini and Christopher Lee all worked as spies.: http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/16-people-you-didn%E2%80%99t-know-were-spies/ss-BBqwMFU?ocid=MSN_UK_NL_MO35#image=1
Page 163, Position 3: Errol Flynn was a Nazi sympathiser and wrote letters to Hitler.: http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/16-people-you-didn%E2%80%99t-know-were-spies/ss-BBqwMFU?ocid=MSN_UK_NL_MO35#image=1
Page 163, Position 4: The average human being is significantly more dangerous than the average sociopath.: https://libertarianmoney.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/how-to-become-a-sociopath-in-one-easy-step/
Page 164, Position 1: The name of the kangaroo mouse, Microdipodops megacephalus, means ‘two small feet with a big head’.: #The Naming of the Shrew#, John Wright
Page 164, Position 2: There is no known case of an invasive species causing the extinction of a plant.: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160809122125.htm
Page 164, Position 3: Species that have disappeared from Britain in the last 200 years include the black-backed meadow ant, the short-haired bumblebee, the tawny earwig and the rooting puffball.: http://speciesrecoverytrust.org.uk/Images/LL/England's%20lost%20species.pdf
Page 164, Position 4: The Morro Bay kangaroo rat of California is probably extinct. It hasn’t been seen in the wild for 30 years, and the last one in captivity died in 1993.: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/cute-rodent-extinct/
Page 165, Position 1: Belgium is the world’s leading exporter of billiard balls.: http://www.expatica.com/be/about/country-facts/30-facts-about-Belgium_108729.html
Page 165, Position 2: Baby sabre-toothed cats had sabre baby teeth.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/02/saberkittens-were-double-fanged-for-11-months/
Page 165, Position 3: Slugs have approximately 27,000 teeth.: http://www.countryfile.com/countryside/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-slugs-and-snails
Page 165, Position 4: Britain has 230 slugs for every human.: http://www.somersetlive.co.uk/britain-s-wet-humid-summer-leads-slug-invasion/story-27817302-detail/story.html
Page 166, Position 1: Las Vegas hosts an awards ceremony for people who make awards.: http://awardspersonalization.org/DetailsPage/tabid/442/ArticleID/11/Awards-and-Personalization-Association-Presents-Annual-Honors.aspx
Page 166, Position 2: All the Cadbury’s Crunchies in Europe are made in Poland.: http://www.slideshare.net/CathKenny/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-cadbury-crunchie
Page 166, Position 3: More than 4,000 different varieties of potato are grown in Peru.: http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21699087-decade-long-quinoa-boom-gives-way-glut-supply-other-countries-grow
Page 166, Position 4: The US has an awards ceremony called ‘Potato Man of the Year’.: http://www.thepacker.com/topics/potato-man-year
Page 167, Position 1: Man Group, sponsors of the Booker Prize, were once responsible for supplying the Royal Navy’s rum ration.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Group
Page 167, Position 2: At the first modern Olympics in 1896, the medals for winners were silver.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1896_Summer_Olympics
Page 167, Position 3: Philip Noel-Baker MP is the only person ever to have been awarded both an Olympic medal (1920) and a Nobel Prize (1959).: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Noel-Baker,_Baron_Noel-Baker
Page 167, Position 4: Princess Diana won a prize at school for Best Kept Guinea Pig.: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/06/25/the-naked-and-the-dead
Page 168, Position 1: The wardrooms in Russian nuclear submarines are clad in stainless steel and have a sauna and a plunge pool.: #The Secret State# by Peter Hennessy (Penguin, 2003, revd. 2010) forwarded by Jason Hazeley.
Page 168, Position 2: During the Second World War, US Navy sailors were given detailed instructions on what to do if caught by a giant clam.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FEbzCCvIlTQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Eaten+by+a+Giant+Clam&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwibkOODg8jNAhVLBsAKHc3VDWYQuwUIKDAA#v=onepage&q=navy&f=false
Page 168, Position 3: The Royal Navy’s most advanced destroyer breaks if it sails into warm water.: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3e524984-2cc4-11e6-bf8d-26294ad519fc.html
Page 168, Position 4: The Royal Navy uses a version of Windows XP called ‘Windows for Submarines’.: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/16/trident-old-technology-brave-new-world-cyber-warfare
Page 169, Position 1: North Korea has eight Internet hosts; the US has 505 million.: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2184rank.html
Page 169, Position 2: The wardrooms in French nuclear submarines are done out in panelled wood and have a fish tank.: #The Secret State# by Peter Hennessy (Penguin, 2003, revd. 2010) forwarded by Jason Hazeley.
Page 169, Position 3: British nuclear submarines have their wardrooms fitted out with Formica, because it’s less of a fire risk.: #The Secret State# by Peter Hennessy (Penguin, 2003, revd. 2010) forwarded by Jason Hazeley.
Page 169, Position 4: North Korea has 10 times as many submarines as Britain.: http://www.shockpedia.com/29-most-powerful-armies-in-the-world/11/
Page 170, Position 1: Meerkats have competitive eating contests to establish dominance.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/welcome-meerkats-world-competitive-eating-180959217/
Page 170, Position 2: Marijuana is legal in North Korea.: http://www.destinationtips.com/destinations/asia/19-baffling-things-didnt-know-north-korea/?utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=19+Baffling+Facts+about+North+Korea+You+Won%27t+Be+-+57910706&utm_campaign=OUT+DST+18222+19-baffling-things-didnt-know-north-korea&utm_term=5385393
Page 170, Position 3: Marijuana has never been illegal in Uruguay.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/uruguay/10216201/A-guide-to-the-worlds-most-libertarian-countries.html
Page 170, Position 4: Smoking marijuana increases a person’s appetite by 40%.: http://facts.randomhistory.com/2008/12/02_nutrition.html
Page 171, Position 1: In the Middle Ages, people slept with cow dung at the foot of their bed to keep bugs away.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bWDDZKG8DOMC&pg=PT237&lpg=PT237&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 171, Position 2: Feral cats in Australia eat 75 million native animals every day.: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-13/greg-hunt-feral-cat-native-animals-fact-check/5858282
Page 171, Position 3: From 1840 to 1930, a pod of killer whales helped South Australian whalers kill baleen whales in return for being given their lips and tongues to eat.: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/the-legend-of-old-tom-and-the-gruesome-law-of-the-tongue
Page 171, Position 4: The excrement of sperm whales is worth up to $10,000 a pound.: http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-09-19/celebrity-nudists-the-stars-who-like-to-let-it-all-hang-out
Page 172, Position 1: Napoleon loved roast chicken and made sure his chefs had one on the spit at all hours.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/smart-news/napoleon-had-thing-rotisserie-chicken-180955649/
Page 172, Position 2: In the Middle Ages, bras were called ‘breastbags’.: http://www.historyextra.com/lingerie
Page 172, Position 3: A bra has been invented that doubles as a gas mask.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/6253064/Inventors-of-bra-that-turns-into-gas-mask-win-IgNobel-prize.html
Page 172, Position 4: A gas station owned by Harland Sanders was the site of the first KFC in 1930. Motorists were served fried chicken at his own dining-room table.: http://www.kfc.ca/our-story
Page 173, Position 1: Beaver tail tastes like roast beef.: https://www.americanhunter.org/articles/2011/5/31/americas-top-five-wild-game-meats
Page 173, Position 2: Meat from scared animals is tougher and less tasty.: http://atlasobscura.herokuapp.com/articles/why-scared-animals-taste-worse
Page 173, Position 3: The carnivorous harp sponge traps prey in the grille of its body, then dissolves it cell by cell.: http://www.wired.com/2014/06/absurd-creature-of-the-week-harp-sponge/
Page 173, Position 4: One bite from the lone star tick can make you allergic to red meat.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220102727.htm
Page 174, Position 1: Tap water in Windhoek, Namibia, tastes salty because 25% of it is recycled sewage.: #Scientific American# - July 2014
Page 174, Position 2: Jellyfish contain the same number of calories as green tea.: http://www.nature.com/news/the-secret-lives-of-jellyfish-1.19613
Page 174, Position 3: Antarctic silverfish are pink. They only turn silver when they die.: #New Scientist# 8/3/2014
Page 174, Position 4: Silverfish drink by sucking moist air in through their anus.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mLupCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA258&dq
Page 175, Position 1: The inventor of sociology also invented the Body Mass Index.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_Quetelet
Page 175, Position 2: After water, the most widely consumed food or drink on Earth is tea.: http://onward.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/28/the-worlds-top-drink/
Page 175, Position 3: In the Second World War, tea was moved out of London to keep it safe.: https://www.tea.co.uk/a-social-history#war
Page 175, Position 4: The ‘WD’ in WD40 stands for ‘Water Displacement’; the ‘40’ is there because the inventor took 40 goes to get it right.: http://wd40.com/cool-stuff/history
Page 176, Position 1: Grey squirrels can digest acorns; red squirrels can’t.: red squirrels can't.
Page 176, Position 2: You’re more likely to order dessert in a restaurant if your waiter is overweight.: http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/youre-far-more-likely-to-order-dessert-if-your-waiter-is-overweight--Wk4lK7Yjsg
Page 176, Position 3: At an all-you-can-eat restaurant, men who eat with women eat twice as much as men who dine with men.: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/11/18/men_eat_nearly_twice_as_much_pizza_when_they_re_eating_with_women.html
Page 176, Position 4: Voles eat 80% of their own weight every day.: http://noticing.co/on-size-and-metabolism/
Page 177, Position 1: Nuts in their shells don’t attract VAT but shelled nuts do.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34649495
Page 177, Position 2: The RSPB recommends sprinkling chilli on bird food to deter squirrels because birds can’t taste it but squirrels can.: http://www.rspb.org.uk/news/details.aspx?id=tcm:9-202877
Page 177, Position 3: Squirrels pretend to hide their nuts to fool potential thieves.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3322101/Cunning-squirrels-pretend-to-bury-their-food.html
Page 177, Position 4: Jays ‘weigh’ nuts in the shell by shaking them and listening to the noise they make.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3096672/That-s-nuts-Birds-weigh-food-tell-peanuts-rotten-without-opening-shell.htmlBrazil
Page 178, Position 1: The richest 1,000 people in Britain are twice as rich as they were 10 years ago.: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/rich-list-queen-slips-out-of-top-300-as-the-number-of-billionaires-in-britain-soars-10205219.html
Page 178, Position 2: VAT is payable on ornamental vegetables but not on culinary vegetables.: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-notice-70114-food/vat-notice-70114-food
Page 178, Position 3: In the 18th century, Britain had a tax on wallpaper.: www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/11550051/Beard-tax-A-history-of-t tax on wallpaper
Page 178, Position 4: From 1796–1847, the British responded to a tax on dog’s tails by cutting them off.: #Cox's Fragmenta#. Simon Murphy.
Page 179, Position 1: On New Year’s Eve, birds in the Netherlands fly much higher than normal to avoid the fireworks.: http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/07/09/beheco.arr102.full (
Page 179, Position 2: $1,000 invested in the cocaine trade in 2014 would have been worth $182,000 in 2015.: http://www.talkingdrugs.org/roberto-saviano-the-writer-wanted-dead-by-the-italian-mafia
Page 179, Position 3: It would cost £9 billion to buy one of everything for sale on Amazon.com.: 9 billion to buy one of everything for sale on Amazon.com.
Page 179, Position 4: After Christmas, Britons return £207 million worth of unwanted gifts.: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-3374668/Thank-lovely-Christmas-present-back.html
Page 180, Position 1: Babies can recognise and make all 150 sounds of the world’s 6,500 languages until they are nine months old.: https://www.verywell.com/how-do-children-learn-language-1449116
Page 180, Position 2: Police officers patrolling Istanbul on New Year’s Eve dress up as Santa to blend in.: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/plainclothes-police-to-dress-as-santa-during-new-years-celebrations-in-istanbul.aspx?pageID=238&nID=93217&NewsCatID=341
Page 180, Position 3: Translated into English, the five most common Turkish surnames are Brave, Rock, Iron, Falcon and Steel.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_common_surnames_in_Asia#Turkey
Page 180, Position 4: In 2012, no babies born in the UK were named Cecil, Willie, Bertha, Fanny, Gertrude, Gladys, Marjorie or Muriel.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2596522/Why-Norman-Doris-Hilda-threat-Names-placed-endangered-list.html
Page 181, Position 1: Right-handed marmosets are braver than left-handed marmosets.: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/24/how-sensitive-are-you-to-unpleasantness
Page 181, Position 2: Lithuania has an annual crawling race for babies.: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-lithuania-babies-race-idUSKCN0YN55D
Page 181, Position 3: Babies born in winter start crawling five weeks earlier than those born in summer.: http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/623122/?sc=swtn
Page 181, Position 4: Boys born in winter are more likely to be left-handed.: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140703102940.htm
Page 182, Position 1: In 2014, a panda called Ai Hin pretended to be pregnant to get her own room and more buns.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/giant-panda-in-china-fakes-pregnancy-to-receive-nicer-food-and-round-the-clock-care-9693743.html
Page 182, Position 2: Asthmatic otters can be taught to use inhalers.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11876800/Asthmatic-sea-otter-taught-to-use-inhaler.html
Page 182, Position 3: Baby rats are known as ‘kittens’.: http://www.nfrs.org/geninfo.html
Page 182, Position 4: There is an equivalent of Match.com for zoo animals.: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/13/match-com-for-animals/
Page 183, Position 1: Eas Fors waterfall on the Isle of Mull means ‘Waterfall Waterfall’ waterfall.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tautological_place_names
Page 183, Position 2: If the northern giant mouse lemur were scaled up to human size, its testicles would be as big as grapefruit.: http://www.livescience.com/51563-lemur-has-biggest-testes.html
Page 183, Position 3: The world’s smallest lemur and the world’s smallest chameleon live on the same island.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28030-newly-discovered-dwarf-lemurs-are-totally-unafraid-of-humans/
Page 183, Position 4: The word ‘Nile’ means ‘river’, so River Nile means ‘River River’.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Nile&allowed_in_frame=0
Page 184, Position 1: The highest point of Canada was only determined in 1992.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Logan
Page 184, Position 2: Torpenhow in Cumbria means ‘Hillhillhill’.: http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/05/04/hill-hill-hill-hill/
Page 184, Position 3: The Atlas Mountains, the Appalachians and the Scottish Highlands were once all part of the same mountain range.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Pangean_Mountains
Page 184, Position 4: Compasses don’t work on the highest mountain in Mauritania.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kediet_ej_Jill
Page 185, Position 1: The distance travelled by your blood every day is equivalent to half the Earth’s circumference.: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/heart/heartfacts.html
Page 185, Position 2: In 1787, the top of Mont Blanc was removed and is now in a museum in the Netherlands.: http://www.teylersmuseum.nl/nl/bezoek-het-museum/scholen-kinderen-en-groepen/scholen/basisonderwijs/programmas-basisonderwijs/naar-de-top-van-de-mont-blanc
Page 185, Position 3: When Edmund Hillary got to the top of Everest he celebrated by peeing.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1575208/Sir-Edmund-Hillary.html
Page 185, Position 4: The largest and most distant body of water so far discovered is 30 billion trillion miles away, with 140 trillion times more water than Earth.: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/universe20110722.html
Page 186, Position 1: The first London bus routes weren’t numbered but colour-coded.: #Move Along, Please# by Mark Mason
Page 186, Position 2: The volume of urine created by the world’s population in a year is almost identical to the UK’s annual water usage.: http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2011/Urine.asp
Page 186, Position 3: In 2006, the words ‘cyclists dismount’ on a road sign near Cardiff were mistranslated into Welsh as ‘bladder inflammation upset’.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7702913.stm
Page 186, Position 4: The time spent waiting for a bus feels shorter if you wait in an area full of trees.: http://nexus.umn.edu/papers/TRPerceptionsEnvironment.pdf
Page 187, Position 1: The Norwegian version of the Mr Men book Mr Bump is called Herr Dumpidump.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/new-generation-mr-men-meet-8624633
Page 187, Position 2: In the 1840s, London bus drivers had straps attached to their arms that you tugged when you wanted to get off.: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/research-guide-no-14-horse-buses-in-london.pdf
Page 187, Position 3: The Maori word for London is Ranana.: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/18965/rananalondon-sign
Page 187, Position 4: Texas is Norwegian slang for ‘crazy’.: http://www.neatorama.com/2015/10/21/In-Norwegian-Texas-Is-Slang-for-Crazy/
Page 188, Position 1: Project Orion was a plan to use nuclear weapons to power spacecraft.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
Page 188, Position 2: Every year, thousands of Norwegian children are sent to fake refugee camps so they can experience what it’s like.: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2015/s4448100.htm
Page 188, Position 3: Dr Seuss wrote a film that was banned because it predicted the Manhattan Project.: http://publicdomainreview.org/2015/03/25/ignorant-armies-private-snafu-goes-to-war/
Page 188, Position 4: In 1964, the US set off nuclear bombs under Mississippi.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/27089/mushroom-clouds-mississippi-little-known-history-nuclear-testing-american-south
Page 189, Position 1: It would take 136 billion sheets of A4 to print out the Internet.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-business/11565810/British-student-calculates-sheet-of-paper-needed-to-print-the-internet.html
Page 189, Position 2: It’s theoretically safe to swim in a pool used to store spent nuclear fuel, as long as you stay near the surface.: http://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
Page 189, Position 3: America’s nuclear weapons are still controlled by floppy discs.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-36385839
Page 189, Position 4: Space-time is a billion billion billion times stiffer than steel.: Marcus Chown #Relativity on Trial#, Focus magazine, Issue 288 December 2015 p40
Page 190, Position 1: The bristlemouth fish is the most common vertebrate on the planet.: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/30/science/bristlemouth-ocean-deep-sea-cyclothone.html?smid=tw-share&_r=2
Page 190, Position 2: Smartphone users touch their phone 2,617 times a day.: http://www.networkworld.com/article/3092446/smartphones/we-touch-our-phones-2617-times-a-day-says-study.html
Page 190, Position 3: Computers cannot generate random numbers.: http://engineering.mit.edu/ask/can-computer-generate-truly-random-number
Page 190, Position 4: Manta rays are the only fish that can recognise themselves in a mirror.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22930664-400-manta-rays-are-first-fish-to-recognise-themselves-in-a-mirror/?cmpid=NLC|NSNS|2016-2403-GLOB&utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNSAL
Page 191, Position 1: If a bald eagle loses a feather on one wing, it sheds the same feather on the other to maintain balance.: http://detroitzoo.org/animals/zoo-animals/bald-eagle/
Page 191, Position 2: The genitals of the male priapiumfish are under its chin.: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/get-on-your-bike-phallostethus-cuulong/
Page 191, Position 3: Starfish can regrow a whole new body from a single arm.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/inkfish/2015/06/19/starfish-ruin-an-experiment-and-reveal-a-superpower/#.V2vb4M5Ging
Page 191, Position 4: An injured moon jellyfish grows new tissue to remain symmetrical.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150615-jellyfish-symmetry-animals-science-oceans/
Page 192, Position 1: 1 in 3 children pretend to believe in Santa Claus to keep their parents happy.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/age-british-kids-stop-believing-7034592
Page 192, Position 2: Shuttlecocks used in professional badminton are made of feathers from the left wing of a goose. Feathers from the right wing make them spin the wrong way.: http://www.worldbadminton.com/commentary/shuttleConstruction.htm
Page 192, Position 3: It is illegal in the US to pick up and keep bird feathers.: http://craftingagreenworld.com/2015/05/29/found-feather-craft-illegal/
Page 192, Position 4: Orthodox Jewish couples abstain from sex on Christmas Eve. Rabbis used to advise them to pass the time tearing toilet paper instead.: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2009/12/holy_night.html
Page 193, Position 1: Jerome Bonaparte, the last of Napoleon’s descendants in America, died after tripping over his dog’s lead.: http://www.nysun.com/on-the-town/end-of-the-line/11007/
Page 193, Position 2: Christmas presents in Greece aren’t delivered by Father Christmas but by Saint Basil.: http://www.explorecrete.com/traditions/christmas-newyear.htm
Page 193, Position 3: Saint Philip Neri, ‘The Humorous Saint’, once shaved off half his beard and always wore a cushion on his head.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-james-martin-sj/the-saints-were-yes-funny_b_2057837.html
Page 193, Position 4: In 1567, the man with the world’s longest-ever beard broke his neck and died after tripping over it.: https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/incredibly-weird-deaths http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,794879-2,00.html
Page 194, Position 1: Charles Cruft also founded a cat show, but it didn’t catch on.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Cruft_(showman)
Page 194, Position 2: Dog-owners who pretend not to see their dog defecating are employing what sociologists call ‘strategic non-knowledge’.: http://www.streetkleen.co.uk/latest-news/natural-waste-canine-companions-and-the-lure-of-inattentively-pooping-in-public
Page 194, Position 3: Prince Rupert of the Rhine trained his dog to urinate when it heard the enemy’s name.: http://www.historyextra.com/feature/anne-boleyns-lapdog-john-quincy-adamss-alligator-famous-people-history-and-their-bizarre-pets
Page 194, Position 4: Dogs and cats are 25% more likely to get injured or sick during a full moon.: http://www.livescience.com/1696-full-moon-sends-dogs-cats-emergency-room.html?li_source=LI&li_medium=most-popular
Page 195, Position 1: The ability to emit light has evolved independently at least 50 times in the animal kingdom.: http://www.livescience.com/19318-bioluminescent-light-organisms.html
Page 195, Position 2: During the Second World War, it was illegal to feed milk to cats.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=z5FyYtsQSrsC&pg=PA222&lpg=PA222&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 195, Position 3: Ninjas used the dilation of a cat’s pupils to tell the time.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Fdxk3Mbe0ckC&pg=PA99&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 195, Position 4: There is no word for ‘time’ in any Aboriginal language.: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jan/09/history-society
Page 196, Position 1: The earliest known treatment for deafness was to fill the ears with a concoction of olive oil, red lead, ant’s eggs, bat’s wings and goat’s urine.: http://www.historytoday.com/alison-atkin/no-longer-deaf-past
Page 196, Position 2: Falling into a black hole would turn you into a hologram.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/06/25/black-hole-hologram/#.V2qblc5Ginh
Page 196, Position 3: A person who was invisible wouldn’t be able to see anything.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-problem-with-invisibility-is-the-blindness?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura&utm_campaign=06df18ba1e-Newsletter_3_14_20163_11_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_62ba9246c0-06df18ba1e-59773797&ct=t%28Newsletter_3_14_20163_11_2016%29&mc_cid=06df18ba1e&mc_eid=1968599da9
Page 196, Position 4: To cure blindness, ancient Egyptians poured mashed-up pig’s eye into the patient’s ear.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1569618/Ancient-Egypts-fantastic-and-weird-history.html
Page 197, Position 1: Nelson Mandela’s real first name was Rolihlahla, which means ‘trouble-maker’ in Xhosa.: #The Lives of the Famous and the Infamous; Everything You Need to Know About Everyone who Mattered by The Week# Foreword by Jeremy O'Grady (Ebury Press, 2014) p306
Page 197, Position 2: The first prosthesis, found on a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy, was a toe.: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/the-perfect-3-000-year-old-toe-a-brief-history-of-prosthetic-limbs/281653/
Page 197, Position 3: With their eyes shut, most people can’t tell which of their toes is being prodded.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/people-cant-tell-which-their-toes-being-touched-180956718/?no-ist
Page 197, Position 4: Anomia is the inability to remember names.: #Oxford English Dictionary#
Page 198, Position 1: Australian sheep have been bred so large that farmers can’t shear them.: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jun/10/supersized-sheep-are-too-big-to-shear-australian-livestock-expert-warns
Page 198, Position 2: Max Factor’s real name was Maksymilian Faktorowicz.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Factor,_Sr.
Page 198, Position 3: Names of 16th-century lipsticks include Ape’s Laugh, Smoked Ox and Dying Monkey.: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/07/27/ribbons-and-turpentine-a-brief-summary-of-lipstick
Page 198, Position 4: The world’s longest treadmill was built for wolves.: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/dog-spies/why-the-world-s-longest-treadmill-was-created-for-wolves/
Page 199, Position 1: The first English teacher in Japan was called Ranald MacDonald.: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2015/09/09/issues/macdonalds-first-english-school-japan-teachers-prison/#.V3Kot7S4mS4
Page 199, Position 2: The Big Sheep is the top tourist attraction in Devon.: http://www.thebigsheep.co.uk
Page 199, Position 3: Descartes believed that a drum made of sheep skin would stay quiet if struck at the same time as a drum made of wolf skin because, even in death, the sheep would be afraid of the wolf.: #History Today# https://goo.gl/JlRD5E
Page 199, Position 4: The first dog to play Lassie was called Pal.: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-true-tale-of-lassie-491874.html
Page 200, Position 1: The earliest known ice cream recipe recommends flavouring it with whale faeces.: http://www.techinsider.io/first-ice-cream-recipe-ambergris-sperm-whale-intestines-2015-8
Page 200, Position 2: The first ice cream on a stick was called the Jolly Boy Sucker.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sLSDQRV3XUMC&pg=PA56&lpg=PA56&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 200, Position 3: The third most popular ice cream van jingle is the Match of the Day theme.: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2013/jul/12/ice-cream-van-chimes-british-summer
Page 200, Position 4: Ice cream is solid, liquid and gas all at the same time.: http://gastropod.com/the-scoop-on-ice-cream/
Page 201, Position 1: Jeans were first worn by Genoan fishermen because they were easy to take off if they fell overboard.: http://varenne.tc.columbia.edu/class/common/blue_jeens.html
Page 201, Position 2: The earliest known book of manners advises: ‘Do not attack your enemy while he is squatting to defecate.’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_the_Civilized_Man
Page 201, Position 3: The ink from a lasered-off tattoo is later excreted by the wearer.: http://nerdist.com/how-do-lasers-remove-tattoos-by-helping-you-poop-them-out/
Page 201, Position 4: Gunmen in the Wild West didn’t wear holsters on their thighs, or call themselves ‘gunslingers’.: http://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2014/7/24/what-really-happened-in-the-wild-west-the-gunslinger-myth#.VRPFsmSsWMU=
Page 202, Position 1: New Zealand’s Ninety Mile Beach is 55 miles long.: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/1966/ninety-mile-beach
Page 202, Position 2: The ancient Romans considered wearing trousers the mark of a barbarian.: http://www.romanarmy.net/coldweather.shtml
Page 202, Position 3: When the Romans first arrived in Britain, they found the British uncouth because they had so many tattoos.: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/britannia/miscellanea/geography.html
Page 202, Position 4: The Maoris arrived in New Zealand in 1300.: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/10/23/3616026.htm
Page 203, Position 1: Tuberculosis was brought to North America by seals.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28871719
Page 203, Position 2: 1 in 100 Kiwis are allergic to kiwis.: https://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/research-report-kiwi-allergy-survey.pdf
Page 203, Position 3: Only 15% of the population of Qatar are Qatari.: #Editorial Intelligence# eiDigest 7.6.16
Page 203, Position 4: Fungi are responsible for more deaths than malaria and tuberculosis combined.: http://phys.org/news/2015-01-microbiologist-killer-fungi-threat.html#jCp
Page 204, Position 1: The first time aeroplanes were used by British police was in the search for Agatha Christie when she went missing in 1926.: #History Today# November 2015
Page 204, Position 2: There is an ethnic group in central India in which nobody ever suffers from back pain.: http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/06/08/412314701/lost-posture-why-indigenous-cultures-dont-have-back-pain
Page 204, Position 3: A group of giraffes is called a tower.: https://www.reference.com/pets-animals/call-group-giraffes-f543b79e584a1ee7
Page 204, Position 4: The maximum height for cabin crew in the first tiny Ryanair planes was 5' 2" – the same as the current minimum.: https://www.gocabincrew.com/getting-selected/what-is-the-minimum-height-for-cabin-crew/ http://corporate.ryanair.com/about-us/history-of-ryanair/
Page 205, Position 1: Evelyn Waugh’s first wife’s name was Evelyn. They were known as He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn.: http://evelynwaughsociety.org/about-evelyn-waugh/
Page 205, Position 2: Sherlock Holmes cases not written up by Watson include ‘A Full Account of Ricoletti of the Club Foot and his Abominable Wife’ and ‘The Politician, the Lighthouse and the Trained Cormorant’.: http://www.bestofsherlock.com/ref/untold.htm
Page 205, Position 3: Jack London, Hugh Walpole and P. G. Wodehouse were all published by Mills & Boon.: http://blog.oup.com/2015/12/jack-london-mills-boon-first-world-war/?
Page 205, Position 4: John le Carré’s father once seduced a woman on a night train by claiming to be John le Carré.: #London Review of Books# 3 Dec 2015
Page 206, Position 1: The Nazis didn’t call themselves Nazis because Nazi is German slang for ‘country bumpkin’.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8843158/Why-Hitler-hated-being-called-a-Nazi-and-whats-really-in-humble-pie-origins-of-words-and-phrases-revealed.html
Page 206, Position 2: Hitler wrote a sequel to Mein Kampf but never published it in case it affected the sales of the original.: http://theartofpolemics.com/2013/04/17/a-brief-inquiry-into-adolf-hitlers-zweites-buch/
Page 206, Position 3: Hitler’s sister-in-law Bridget wrote a memoir called My Brother-in-Law Adolf.: http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/Census-shows-Hitlers-half-brother-married-to-an-Irishwoman-lived-in-Liverpool.html
Page 206, Position 4: During the Second World War, the Allies considered dropping glue onto Nazi troops to make them stick to the ground.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/8701034/Revealed-sex-hormone-plan-to-feminise-Hitler.html
Page 207, Position 1: The town of Ypres in Belgium has a cat festival to commemorate their former sport of tossing cats from the bell tower.: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/world/what-in-the-world/belgium-cat-thrown-tower-ypres.html
Page 207, Position 2: British sailors in the Second World War wore tattoos of pigs and roosters to protect against drowning.: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/12/a-visual-guide-to-sailor-tattoos/250208/#slide11
Page 207, Position 3: In the first two years of the First World War, a soldier who broke a leg had an 80% chance of dying.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zs3wpv4
Page 207, Position 4: 901 British babies born in the First World War were christened Verdun, 71 were called Ypres and there were 15 Sommes.: http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/battle-babies/?utm_source=The%20National%20Archives&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6724312_FWW%20update%20February&dm_i=MAN,404IG,664505,EGQQE,1
Page 208, Position 1: American inventor Buckminster Fuller slept for just two hours a night.: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,774680,00.html
Page 208, Position 2: Until 1993, the location of the Post Office Tower was a national secret.: http://home.bt.com/news/world-news/october-8-1965-the-bt-tower-britains-tallest-building-opens-in-london-11364009269376
Page 208, Position 3: Gustav Eiffel didn’t design the Eiffel Tower.: http://www.history.com/topics/eiffel-tower
Page 208, Position 4: Newton’s Cradle was invented by French physicist Edme Mariotte.: http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~cross/PUBLICATIONS/59.%20NewtonsCradle.pdf
Page 209, Position 1: ‘Ruperts’ were dummy parachutists dropped as decoys on D-Day.: http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-students/ww2-history/d-day-june-6-1944.html?referrer=https://www.google.co.uk/
Page 209, Position 2: Thomas Edison and Henry Ford went on road trips together.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-americas-titans-industry-and-innovation-went-road-tripping-together-180957924/?no-ist
Page 209, Position 3: Leonardo da Vinci designed chairs made of cake, a giant whisk as tall as a giraffe, and a horse-powered nutcracker.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/when-davinci-was-a-wedding-planner?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20160718&bt_email=john_hardress_lloyd@hotmail.com&bt_ts=1468863922553
Page 209, Position 4: ‘Generator’ was a name Crimean politicians asked people to call their sons in 2015 to bring attention to the country’s power crisis.: http://bigstory.ap.org/cc177cf91f644f08bfdf0632940520d7
Page 210, Position 1: The anti-spam industry is worth more than the spam industry.: #Numeroids# by O'Brien & Weldon (BFP, 2008)
Page 210, Position 2: In 2013, 37 British babies were named Loki, after the Norse god of mischief.: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_413707.pdf
Page 210, Position 3: In 2013, Gary was a less popular baby name in the UK than either Loki or Thor.: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_413707.pdf
Page 210, Position 4: Bluetooth is named after Harald Bluetooth, the Viking king who united Norway and Denmark.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-is-bluetooth-called-bluetooth-hint-vikings-16270647/?no-ist
Page 211, Position 1: Emails in the Vatican are called inscriptio cursus electronici.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/9511929/Latin-rebirth-in-schools.html
Page 211, Position 2: Selfies kill more people than sharks.: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/photography/selfies-are-killing-more-people-than-shark-attacks-10512449.html
Page 211, Position 3: Young British adults rate an Internet connection as more important than daylight.: http://harpers.org/archive/2016/06/harpers-index-383/
Page 211, Position 4: The first email had to be printed out to be read.: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/what-comes-after-email/422625/
Page 212, Position 1: Catherine de’ Medici used poisoned gloves to kill her enemies.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-catherine-de-medici-made-gloves-laced-with-poison-fashionable
Page 212, Position 2: Hydrangea serratifolia means ‘with serrated leaves’. It actually has smooth leaves but the original sample had been nibbled.: #The Naming of the Shrew#, John Wright
Page 212, Position 3: Lichen aromaticus has no aroma but the original specimen arrived in a perfumed envelope.: #The Naming of the Shrew#, John Wright
Page 212, Position 4: In the 16th century, you could buy perfumed ‘sweet gloves’ to offset the fact that glove leather was softened by being steeped in dog poo.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-catherine-de-medici-made-gloves-laced-with-poison-fashionable
Page 213, Position 1: Scorpions can have 12 eyes.: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tt.html
Page 213, Position 2: The golden dart frog, the world’s most toxic amphibian, can’t produce poison if born in captivity.: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/amphibians/golden-poison-dart-frog/
Page 213, Position 3: The toxic ribs of Spanish ribbed newts burst out of their sides to stab predators.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8212000/8212623.stm
Page 213, Position 4: A gram of scorpion poison costs £415.: 415
Page 214, Position 1: In the 19th century, people with ‘cement delusion’ believed they were made of cement.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32625632
Page 214, Position 2: Antimatter costs £17 billion per gram.: 17 billion per gram.
Page 214, Position 3: There are 568 billionaires in China.: http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/financephotos/the-countries-with-the-most-billionaires-revealed/ss-BBqbyet?ocid=MSN_UK_NL_MO35#image=21
Page 214, Position 4: China used more cement between 2011 and 2013 than the US did in the entire 20th century.: #The Week# 26.12.15 (quoting The Times)
Page 215, Position 1: 10 million glasses of Guinness are sold every day.: https://www.guinness-storehouse.com/content/pdf/factsheets/factsheet_pdf_10.pdf
Page 215, Position 2: Charles VII of France thought he was made of glass and wrapped himself in blankets to prevent his buttocks shattering.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32625632
Page 215, Position 3: The carbon dioxide in a bottle of champagne would fill six bottles if stored at normal pressure.: http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/31/16255128-the-science-of-champagne-bubbles-up-again-for-new-years-eve
Page 215, Position 4: More Guinness is drunk in Nigeria than in Ireland.: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/aug/30/9
Page 216, Position 1: In 2014, US naturalist Paul Rosalie went on the TV show Eaten Alive to be swallowed by an anaconda, but bailed out the moment the snake attached its jaws to his helmet.: http://www.latinpost.com/articles/27351/20141208/viewers-peta-disappointed-discovery-channel-tv-show-eaten-alive-man.htm
Page 216, Position 2: The apostrophe after the letter ‘O’ in Irish names was added by the British, who thought it needed a link to the rest of the name. Many Irish speakers refuse to use it.: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=266&dat=20080228&id=afcrAAAAIBAJ&sjid=DG0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=5546,5601455&hl=en
Page 216, Position 3: The area round Dublin under British rule was called the Pale, hence the expression ‘beyond the pale’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7Vn_o5MQWeIC&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 216, Position 4: A ‘swearing consultant’ was hired for the BBC sitcom The Thick of It.: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/jun/30/tvandradio.broadcasting
Page 217, Position 1: One in every 900 men from American Samoa play in the National Football League.: http://www.forbes.com/sites/leighsteinberg/2015/05/21/how-can-tiny-samoa-dominate-the-nfl/#2715e4857a0b2c622eee1d48
Page 217, Position 2: The BBC’s most popular export is Keeping Up Appearances.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2016/sitcom-season
Page 217, Position 3: Nine of the top 10 highest-rated TV programmes in Portuguese history were football matches.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts#Portugal
Page 217, Position 4: F. Scott Fitzgerald invented the idea of offensive and defensive teams in American football.: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-football-genius-of-f-scott-fitzgerald-1414166403
Page 218, Position 1: Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, changed its name from Hot Springs to get the radio quiz show Truth or Consequences to record there.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_or_Consequences,_New_Mexico
Page 218, Position 2: The crowd at Seattle Seahawks games is so loud that the US Geological Survey uses the vibrations to calibrate its seismographs.: http://www.livescience.com/49407-seahawks-playoffs-earthquake-warning-system.html
Page 218, Position 3: US cities with teams that reach the Super Bowl suffer an 18% increase in deaths from flu.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/super-bowl-team-cities-see-more-flu-deaths/
Page 218, Position 4: No Creek, Kentucky, acquired its name after a surveyor was overheard saying, ‘Why, that’s no creek at all.’: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9htGAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT40&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 219, Position 1: 92% of pop songs that mention the Sun are in a major key.: http://www.metlink.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Brown_et_al-2015-Weather.pdf
Page 219, Position 2: Whorehouse Meadow in Oregon was renamed Naughty Girl Meadow in the 1960s but was changed back again by public demand.: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/534650.html
Page 219, Position 3: Yakutat, Alaska, is six times the size of the state of Rhode Island but only has a population of 662.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakutat,_Alaska
Page 219, Position 4: Yuma, Arizona, is the sunniest place in the world: on any given day there is a 90% chance of sunshine.: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160127-which-spot-on-earth-gets-the-most-sunlight
Page 220, Position 1: Until the 20th century, a hangover meant ‘unfinished business’.: #Oxford English Dictionary#
Page 220, Position 2: The 1956 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica described rock ’n’ roll as ‘insistent savagery’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=N82IBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT91&lpg=PT91&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 220, Position 3: Names of Japanese rock bands include Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, Mass of the Fermenting Dregs and Abingdon Boys School.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Japanese_alternative_rock_groups
Page 220, Position 4: A Japanese person who moves to America doubles their chances of fatal heart disease.: https://myheartsisters.org/2010/07/17/heart-disease-countries/
Page 221, Position 1: Harper Lee’s friends gave her a year’s wages for Christmas 1956 so she could take time off to finish To Kill a Mockingbird.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/12165334/To-Kill-a-Mockingbird-author-Harper-Lee-dies-aged-89-reports-say-latest-news-and-reaction.html
Page 221, Position 2: Drinking water hardly helps hangovers at all.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34072712
Page 221, Position 3: Every time Alfred Hitchcock drank a cup of tea, he smashed the teacup.: http://metro.co.uk/2015/08/04/15-things-you-may-not-know-about-alfred-hitchcock-5317037/
Page 221, Position 4: Hitchcock bought up all the copies of the novel Psycho so people wouldn’t find out the ending.: http://www.wired.com/2012/11/hitchcock-psycho/
Page 222, Position 1: Every evening at 10 p.m., it’s a tradition for Swedish students to open their windows and start screaming.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/12/flogsta-scream-sweden_n_2462868.html
Page 222, Position 2: Terry Pratchett had 10 honorary doctorates and was an honorary Brownie.: http://www.lookoutmountainbookstore.com/?page=shop/disp&pid=page_Gaiman
Page 222, Position 3: After he was knighted, Sir Terry Pratchett made his own sword out of meteorites.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/when-terry-pratchett-was-knighted-he-forged-his-own-sword-out-of-meteorite-10104321.html
Page 222, Position 4: Finnish students carry a doctoral sword to their graduation ceremony.: https://www.jyu.fi/en/academic-events/degrees-ceremony/instruct/doctoral-hats-and-sword
Page 223, Position 1: In Copenhagen, there are more bicycles than people.: http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/bicycle-culture/copenhageners-love-their-bikes/
Page 223, Position 2: The 1912 Stockholm Olympics was the last time the gold medals were made from pure gold.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_medal
Page 223, Position 3: If Sweden plays Denmark, it’s abbreviated to SWE–DEN; the remaining letters spell DEN–MARK.: the remaining letters spell DEN-MARK.
Page 223, Position 4: Though Denmark is the world’s least corrupt country, 12% of Danes know someone who’s taken a bribe.: http://qz.com/173397/lithuanians-and-romanians-are-more-than-six-times-as-likely-to-be-asked-for-bribes-than-the-eu-average/
Page 224, Position 1: Evel Knievel holds the world record for most bones broken in a lifetime (433).: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-broken-bones-in-a-lifetime/
Page 224, Position 2: The Tricycle Union was founded in 1882 to distance tricyclists from bicyclists, who were considered disgraceful.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IsbmwN8-m1cC&pg=PA57&lpg=PA57&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 224, Position 3: The first motorcycles were built in the 1860s and were powered by steam.: http://stanleymotorcarriage.com/SteamPacingBike/index.htm
Page 224, Position 4: When Evel Knievel starred in the 1977 film Viva Knievel! he used a stunt double.: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/VivaKnievel
Page 225, Position 1: During the Second World War, experts claimed to be able to identify pigeons with a German accent.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YC4cBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT83&lpg=PT83&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 225, Position 2: A Japanese motorcycle that runs on animal dung has a toilet-shaped seat.: http://metro.co.uk/2012/08/24/poo-powered-toto-motorcycle-toilet-bike-neo-kicking-up-a-stink-in-japan-549656/
Page 225, Position 3: In Japan, nightingale droppings are used as a face cream.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=R_JMDkNR8xgC&pg=PA13&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 225, Position 4: In 2008, Japan and Britain (without mentioning the war) officially celebrated 150 years of friendly relations.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/little-britain-how-the-rest-of-the-world-sees-us-2043190.html
Page 226, Position 1: When James Keir Hardie, Britain’s first socialist MP, arrived at Parliament in 1892, a police officer thought he was there to mend the roof.: #The Establishment# - Owen Jones
Page 226, Position 2: In 2013, a kestrel was arrested in Turkey on suspicion of spying for Israel.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2379871/Turkey-arrests-KESTREL-spying-Israel--releases-charge-X-ray-shows-did-contain-surveillance-equipment.html
Page 226, Position 3: It takes between 60 and 80 intelligence agents to monitor a single terrorist suspect round the clock.: #The Week# 26.12.15 (quoting The Economist)
Page 226, Position 4: The UK and Iran are the only countries in the world to have unelected clerics sitting in the legislature.: #The Establishment# - Owen Jones
Page 227, Position 1: People pour 9% more white wine into a glass than red.: http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/discoveries/dont-blame-yourself-pouring-too-much-wine
Page 227, Position 2: Between 2010 and 2015, British MPs drank 625,464 cans and bottles of Coke, and ate 659,470 chocolate bars.: http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21692923-mps-are-united-against-sugar-consumptionexcept-their-own-canteen-do-i-say-not-i-chew
Page 227, Position 3: Sir Kenelm Digby, inventor of the modern wine bottle, was a pirate whose father had tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=b76-BO5_CCYC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 227, Position 4: Drinking one glass of wine makes you more attractive; drinking a second undoes all the good work.: drinking a second undoes all the good work.
Page 228, Position 1: In 1946, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev became the chief designer of the Soviet missile programme. Six years earlier, he had been in a Gulag expecting to die.: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/mar/13/yuri-gagarin-first-space-korolev
Page 228, Position 2: You’d need to do 60 squats to offset the weight gain caused by a large glass of red wine.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/health/like-glass-wine-how-many-8061339
Page 228, Position 3: In 16th-century Italy, ‘corked’ wine was thought to have been spoiled by a witch’s urine.: http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2016/05/hints-of-cherry-and-witchs-urine-1400-ad-2.html
Page 228, Position 4: The Soviet 588th Night Bomber regiment was an all-female squadron known by the Germans as the ‘Night Witches’.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/flight-of-the-night-witches-wwii-s-all-female-fighting-force
Page 229, Position 1: Walruses suffer from dandruff.: http://yucky.discovery.com/flash/body/yuckystuff/dandruff/js.index.html
Page 229, Position 2: The original ‘flying saucers’, reported in 1947, were shaped like boomerangs.: http://www.livescience.com/33351-flying-saucers-turn-64-look-back-origins-ufos.html
Page 229, Position 3: UFOs in the Large Hadron Collider are ‘Unidentified Falling Objects’.: http://www.livescience.com/17207-ufos-disrupting-search-god-particle.html
Page 229, Position 4: In April 2016, the Large Hadron Collider was shut down after a weasel fell into it.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36173247
Page 230, Position 1: In the early 1700s, Lady Eleanor Glanville was declared insane because she liked collecting butterflies.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-34613505
Page 230, Position 2: Porcupines eat canoe paddles.: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/porcupine/
Page 230, Position 3: Balsa wood is mothproof.: http://www.kepu.com.cn/english/banna/trepalhyd/tre09.html
Page 230, Position 4: 85 million years before butterflies existed, there was another insect that looked and acted exactly like a butterfly.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/04/butterflies-forty-million-years-before-butterflies/
Page 231, Position 1: In 2014, two scientific journals accepted a nonsense paper from a made-up university co-authored by ‘Maggie Simpson’.: http://www.vox.com/2014/12/7/7339587/simpsons-science-paper
Page 231, Position 2: Both Saturn and Jupiter began as collections of pebbles.: http://www.heritagedaily.com/2015/08/scientists-think-planetary-pebbles-were-the-building-blocks-for-the-largest-planets/108123
Page 231, Position 3: Some archaeologists think the erection of Stonehenge was primarily a team-building exercise.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/10523016/Why-was-Stonehenge-built-The-eight-most-popular-theories.html
Page 231, Position 4: In 2015, a 10-year scientific study concluded that punching glass is dangerous.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4494506/
Page 232, Position 1: Malaysian athletes who win an Olympic gold medal are also awarded a solid gold bar.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/badminton/9454128/Gold-bar-dream-ends-for-Malaysias-Olympic-badminton-team-and-Lee-Chong-Wei-after-magnates-promise.html
Page 232, Position 2: A scientific paper looking into the spells of Harry Potter concluded they would need magic to work.: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/27/scientists-test-reality-of-harry-potter-magic-university-leicester-gillyweed-skele-gro
Page 232, Position 3: The more people believe in witchcraft, the less they tend to give to charity.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/witchcraft-economy-africa-a7023081.html
Page 232, Position 4: The Bank of England only owns two gold bars.: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/12/bank-of-england-app_n_3584746.html
Page 233, Position 1: As a penniless young actor in a tiny bedsit, Nigel Hawthorne survived mainly on sultanas.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1366346/Sir-Nigel-Hawthorne.html
Page 233, Position 2: US coins last 20 times as long as dollar bills.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4fTaCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT41&lpg=PT41#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 233, Position 3: A one-tiyin coin in Uzbekistan is worth one three-thousandth of 1p.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21572359
Page 233, Position 4: Ecstasy, cocaine and heroin are all more expensive than gold.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/18/the-most-valuable-substances-in-the-world-by-weight/heroin/
Page 234, Position 1: Dunnocks copulate 100 times a day, for a tenth of a second at a time.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunnock
Page 234, Position 2: Jimmy Stewart was a brigadier general in the US Air Force.: http://www.military.com/veteran-jobs/career-advice/military-transition/famous-veteran-jimmy-stewart.html
Page 234, Position 3: J. B. Priestley claimed George Bernard Shaw disliked the Grand Canyon because it was more important than he was.: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/behind-the-scenes-dramas-that-led-me-to-priestley-s-door-1-2471716
Page 234, Position 4: A peacock’s tail is 60% of its entire weight.: https://animalcorner.co.uk/animals/peafowl/
Page 235, Position 1: In China, it is illegal to post erotic banana videos online.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-36226141
Page 235, Position 2: Harris hawks stand on each other’s shoulders to get a better view.: https://www.desertmuseum.org/kids/oz/long-fact-sheets/Harris%20Hawk.php
Page 235, Position 3: Ravens get stoned by rubbing chewed-up ants on their feathers.: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1966.tb03890.x/full
Page 235, Position 4: Drugs are smuggled into prison by stuffing them into dead birds and hitting them over the fence with a tennis racket.: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/revealed-number-of-banned-items-thrown-into-london-prisons-up-by-more-than-400-per-cent-a3249746.html
Page 236, Position 1: A ‘nookie-bookie’ is a pimp or madam.: #Oxford English Dictionary#
Page 236, Position 2: Humans can be aroused by touching a robot’s genitals.: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/04/07/study_finds_touching_robot_private_parts_is_physiologically_arousing.html
Page 236, Position 3: 30% of objects left in hotel rooms are sex toys.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/sex-toys-account-massive-30-5897105
Page 236, Position 4: The happiest couples are those who have sex once a week.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/couples-who-have-sex-just-once-a-week-are-happiest/
Page 237, Position 1: South African cows wear reflective earrings at night to make them visible to drivers.: http://www.iol.co.za/motoring/industry-news/mec-moots-reflective-earrings-for-cows-2041766
Page 237, Position 2: Star Trek almost failed to get a commission because the pilot was too erotic.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZfMeCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT15&lpg=PT15&dq=star+trek+pilot+was+too+erotic.&source=bl&ots=jaOpnjvu8d&sig=7KdrUfEqPmpq9m33lMvNjI8t6kU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjFp_Kyxv3NAhXoBcAKHYlwDA8Q6AEIOzAF#v=onepage&q=star%20trek%20pilot%20was%20too%20erotic.&f=false
Page 237, Position 3: Former England rugby captain Phil Vickery is a qualified cattle inseminator.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Vickery_(rugby_union)
Page 237, Position 4: There are tunnels under New York that were once used to transport cattle to slaughterhouses.: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/05/23/_99_percent_invisible_by_roman_mars_do_underground_cow_tunnels_really_exist.html
Page 238, Position 1: Newborn babies have accents.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/11/091105-babies-cry-accents.html
Page 238, Position 2: In 2010, a Bulgarian councillor was sacked for milking virtual cows on the gaming app FarmVille during budget meetings.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/30/dimitar-kerin-fired-over-_n_518635.html
Page 238, Position 3: In the 18th century, people washed their faces and polished their shoes with asses’ milk.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eU8JAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 238, Position 4: The world’s heaviest newborn baby weighed 22 lb 8 oz.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-36387138
Page 239, Position 1: In the 2014 World Cup, Ecuadorean Enner Valencia was on the ground feigning injury four seconds after kick-off.: http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-world-rankings-of-flopping-1403660175
Page 239, Position 2: First-born children tend to be taller, fatter, more allergy-prone, more cautious and have a higher IQ than their younger siblings.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929330.700#.VH9Jihw0g59
Page 239, Position 3: Ukrainians are 13 times more likely to die of heart disease than the Japanese.: http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/coronary-heart-disease/by-country/
Page 239, Position 4: In the 1966 World Cup, the Brazilians drank so much coffee they were worried they would be banned for doping.: #The Economist# 1st July 2016
Page 240, Position 1: In 1947, English footballers’ salaries were capped at £12 a week.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/premier-league/8265851/How-footballers-wages-have-changed-over-the-years-in-numbers.html
Page 240, Position 2: Before penalty shoot-outs, Argentinian goalkeeper Sergio Goycochea would urinate on the pitch for good luck.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/arsenal/4805924/Top-10-Football-superstitions-to-rival-Arsenals-Kolo-Toure.html
Page 240, Position 3: To distinguish the two sides at the first US college football game in 1869, the home team wore turbans.: http://blog.press.princeton.edu/2015/08/25/ready-for-football-remembering-the-first-game-between-princeton-and-rutgers/
Page 240, Position 4: San Marino’s national football team has only ever won one match.: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/mar/16/san-marino-england-world-cup-2014
Page 241, Position 1: The word ‘anticipation’ once meant money paid as an advance on salary.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5n6lBwAAQBAJ&pg=PP1&dq#v=onepage&q=anticipation&f=false
Page 241, Position 2: An 18th-century tradesman or clerk took a year to earn what a prostitute could make in a month.: http://www.economist.com/node/14636924
Page 241, Position 3: More than a billion people in the modern world live on no more than $1 a day.: http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/briefingpapers/food/vitalstats.shtml
Page 241, Position 4: One in a million people have four kidneys, but most of them don’t know they do.: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2008/feb/19/health
Page 242, Position 1: The word ‘wow’ was popular in Scotland for 400 years before it caught on in the rest of the Englishspeaking world.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=wow
Page 242, Position 2: 1 in 16 of the words you encounter every day is ‘the’.: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2015/09/the-zipf-mystery.html
Page 242, Position 3: The word ‘ushers’ contains five pronouns: us, she, he, her and hers.: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/pronouns-personal-i-me-you-him-it-they-etc
Page 242, Position 4: ‘Hurkle-durkle’ is a Scottish word meaning to lounge around when you should be up and about.: http://haggardhawksblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/hurkle-durkle.html
Page 243, Position 1: The word ‘era’ is a solution in the New York Times crossword about 20 times a year.: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-plagiarism-scandal-is-unfolding-in-the-crossword-world/
Page 243, Position 2: Transposing ‘a’ for ‘z’, ‘b’ for ‘y’ and so on in the word ‘wizard’ produces ‘draziw’.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atbash
Page 243, Position 3: At the 2011 World Scrabble Championship, one player demanded another be strip-searched after a letter ‘G’ went missing.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/g-for-guilty-lost-letter-spells-trouble-at-world-scrabble-contest-2371616.html
Page 243, Position 4: Scrabble’s inventor assigned values to letters by counting their frequencies in the New York Times.: http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/gaming/2013/01/scrabble_tile_values_why_it_s_a_mistake_to_change_the_point_value_of_the.html
Page 244, Position 1: ‘Manhattan’ is from the Algonquian manahachtanienk, meaning ‘the place we all got drunk’.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenapehoking
Page 244, Position 2: The New York City Police Department has 1.2 million open arrest warrants.: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/theslice/new-york-broken-windows-arrest-warrants-begin-again?src=longreads
Page 244, Position 3: Pinball is illegal in Beacon, New York.: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Jackpot-Oakland-decriminalizing-pinball-machines-5565613.php
Page 244, Position 4: New York was originally called New Angoulême.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Angouleme
Page 245, Position 1: Einstein patented a fridge.: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/books/non_fiction/article1578254.ece.
Page 245, Position 2: 20% of licensed attorneys in the US have a drinking problem.: http://harpers.org/archive/2016/06/harpers-index-383/
Page 245, Position 3: Ancient Egyptians had slaves who cooled their wine with fans.: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/books/non_fiction/article1578254.ece
Page 245, Position 4: The first domestic fridge was invented by a monk to chill the monastery wine.: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/books/non_fiction/article1578254.ece.
Page 246, Position 1: Saturn’s moons have volcanoes that erupt ice.: http://www.space.com/10486-ice-volcano-saturn-moon-titan.html
Page 246, Position 2: Yoda was based on Einstein.: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/02/08/stuart_freeborn_designed_yoda_based_on_himself_who_else_looks_like_their.html
Page 246, Position 3: When Einstein solved the problem of Mercury’s orbit, he had heart palpitations and couldn’t work for three days.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151104-newton-einstein-gravity-vulcan-planets-mercury-astronomy-theory-of-relativity-ngbooktalk/
Page 246, Position 4: Neptune was discovered within an hour of astronomers starting to look for it.: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Urbain-Jean-Joseph-Le-Verrier
Page 247, Position 1: NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building is so big it has its own weather.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/vehicle-assembly-building
Page 247, Position 2: In the last 20 years, amateur stargazers have discovered more comets than all the astronomers in history combined.: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/09/sungrazer_project_finds_its_3_000th_comet_soho_s_lasco_instrument_finds.html
Page 247, Position 3: Anyone can submit a name for a new planet.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/10248166/Public-granted-permission-to-name-planets-and-moons.html
Page 247, Position 4: In the 19th century, there were multiple sightings of a non-existent planet called Vulcan.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151104-newton-einstein-gravity-vulcan-planets-mercury-astronomy-theory-of-relativity-ngbooktalk/
Page 248, Position 1: In 1783, the eruption of an Icelandic volcano caused a deadly fog in Britain that killed 20,000 people.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8624791.stm
Page 248, Position 2: Apollo 13 nearly crashed on take-off but a second malfunction fixed the first malfunction.: http://www.universetoday.com/62362/13-things-that-saved-apollo-13-part-1-timing/
Page 248, Position 3: Because its terrain is so similar to the Moon, Apollo astronauts trained in Iceland.: http://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2015/07/26/apollo_astronauts_visit_iceland/
Page 248, Position 4: Beer was illegal in Iceland until 1989.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31622038
Page 249, Position 1: The 7th time park ranger Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning happened shortly after the 22nd time he’d had to fight off a bear with his stick.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Sullivan#Seven_strikes
Page 249, Position 2: In 1874, plans were drawn up to take corpses from all over Europe and cremate them in Vesuvius.: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A04EED71F3FE73BBC4E52DFBF66838D669FDE
Page 249, Position 3: A taxidermist in Inverness-shire makes sporrans from roadkill.: http://www.scotsman.com/news/scots-designer-who-turns-roadkill-into-sporrans-to-die-for-1-819822
Page 249, Position 4: 121 bell-ringers were killed by lightning in Germany between 1750 and 1783, due to a belief that church bells drove away storms.: http://upvoted.com/2015/10/22/why-being-a-medieval-bell-ringer-was-one-of-the-worst-jobs-in-history/
Page 250, Position 1: You can be allergic to your own sweat.: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/150784/20160417/woman-allergic-to-own-sweat-tears-signs-symptoms-treatment-for-cholinergic-urticaria.htm
Page 250, Position 2: Florida has more bear-hunters than bears.: http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/wildlife/permits-for-bear-hunting-in-danger-of-outnumbering-actual-bears/2240282
Page 250, Position 3: More people are killed by teddy bears than by grizzly bears.: http://www.childinjurylawyerblog.com/2010/03/are_teddy_bears_more_likely_to.html
Page 250, Position 4: A ‘bugbear’ was a hobgoblin in the shape of a bear.: oed.com
Page 251, Position 1: Families in Timbuktu descended from the Moors expelled from Granada in 1492 still have the keys to their former homes.: #In the Glow of the Phantom Palace: Travels from Granada to Timbuktu# - Michael Jacobs
Page 251, Position 2: The man who discovered why we sweat did so by getting into a sauna with a dog, a steak and an egg.: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/experiments-and-observations-in-a-heated-room-1774/
Page 251, Position 3: The man who discovered the source of the Nile accidentally shot himself with a rifle while climbing over a stile.: #BBC History# Sep 2014
Page 251, Position 4: The first westerner to attempt to find Timbuktu died after trying to cure an attack of vomiting by drinking sulphuric acid.: http://strangeco.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-search-for-timbuktu.html
Page 252, Position 1: Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is an invented word meaning ‘the fear of long words’.: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia
Page 252, Position 2: The name Timbuktu comes from a word meaning ‘woman with a sticking-out belly button’.: http://www.exploretimbuktu.com/culture/culture/orgines_tbt.html https://www.britannica.com/place/Timbuktu-Mali
Page 252, Position 3: Mexico Tenochtitlan, the name of the Aztecs’ capital, means ‘Navel of the Universe’.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/may/23/mexico I'm Not Hanging Noodles On Your Ears. Jag Bhalla.
Page 252, Position 4: There is a species of leech that lives in the rectums of hippopotamuses.: http://www.wired.com/2015/08/absurd-creature-of-the-week-hippo-butt-leech-placobdelloides-jaegerskioeldi/
Page 253, Position 1: A wedding of 100 guests at 10 tables has 65 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion seating possibilities.: #The Mathematics of Love#, Hannah Fry
Page 253, Position 2: The longest word in Bulgarian means ‘do not perform actions against the constitution’.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_words#Bulgarian
Page 253, Position 3: ‘Semantic satiation’ is repeating a word so often it sounds like nonsense.: http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/10/repeating-a-word-until-it-loses-meaning-a-thing.html
Page 253, Position 4: The word ‘bride’ is from an ancient root meaning ‘to brew or make broth’.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=bride&searchmode=none
Page 254, Position 1: Fish-scaled geckos escape predators by literally jumping out of their skins.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28409-lizard-literally-jumps-out-of-its-skin-to-escape-predators-jaws/
Page 254, Position 2: From 1489 to 1493, Leonardo da Vinci was a wedding planner.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/when-davinci-was-a-wedding-planner
Page 254, Position 3: When women ovulate, their faces get slightly redder, but most men don’t notice.: http://www.livescience.com/51395-sign-women-ovulating-face.html
Page 254, Position 4: The thinnest skin on the human body is on the eyelids.: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tt.html
Page 255, Position 1: The smallest shark is less than 10 inches long and glows in the dark.: http://www.sdnhm.org/kids/sharks/faq.html
Page 255, Position 2: The Palmato gecko drinks water off its own eyeballs.: https://www.lonelyplanet.com/namibia/namib-naukluft-park/travel-tips-and-articles/life-as-youve-never-known-it-namibias-most-exotic-creatures
Page 255, Position 3: Sharks don’t drink at all; they absorb seawater through their gills.: http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/water-h2o-life/life-in-water/surviving-in-salt-water/
Page 255, Position 4: Female sharks can store sperm in their bodies for four years before using it.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/long-term-sperm-shark-gives-birth-4-years-after-contact-with-male/
Page 256, Position 1: Mexico has a festival where Nativity scenes are carved out of radishes; in 2014, they used 12 tons of them.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/festivals-and-events/The-weirdest-Christmas-traditions/
Page 256, Position 2: Cockroaches can see in the dark.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cockroaches-accumulate-light-to-see-in-the-dark/
Page 256, Position 3: Frogs can make their skin darker to match their surroundings, but it takes about two hours.: http://www.ipcc.ie/a-to-z-peatlands/frogs/
Page 256, Position 4: Murderous frogs featured on Victorian Christmas cards, along with children being boiled in teapots and mice riding lobsters.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-34988154?ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook
Page 257, Position 1: Wonderpedia magazine was pulled from airport shops after it ran an article on how to build weapons from things available in airports.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2575313/Magazine-showing-build-bomb-wait-flight-pulled-shelves-UK-airports.html
Page 257, Position 2: In 1494, Piero de’ Medici commissioned Michelangelo to sculpt him a snowman.: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/04/gauguin-bonnard-lost-paintings-michelangelo-snowman
Page 257, Position 3: The fake snow in The Wizard of Oz and White Christmas was made of asbestos.: http://www.mesothelioma.com/asbestos-exposure/products/fake-snow/
Page 257, Position 4: London City Airport confiscates 150 souvenir snow globes from passengers every year.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3585091/London-City-Airport-reveals-unusual-items-confiscated-passengers.html
Page 258, Position 1: Algeria’s national anthem includes the line ‘Oh France, the day of reckoning is at hand.’: #Republic or Death# - Alex Marshall
Page 258, Position 2: Flights from JFK Airport in New York are sometimes delayed so that turtles can be moved off the runways.: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/30/turtle-chaos-delays-flights-jfk
Page 258, Position 3: Vancouver Airport has a bathroom for dogs.: http://www.akc.org/news/airports-install-pet-bathrooms-to-ease-dog-travel/
Page 258, Position 4: Vanuatu’s national anthem is ‘Yumi! Yumi! Yumi!’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumi,_Yumi,_Yumi
Page 259, Position 1: It is illegal in Japan to make a human pyramid more than five tiers high.: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/02/09/national/human-pyramid-guidelines-to-be-drafted-for-japanese-schools/#.V9LbvTu4mS4
Page 259, Position 2: Western Sahara’s national anthem urges its people to ‘cut off the head of the invader’.: #Republic or Death# - Alex Marshall
Page 259, Position 3: From 1919 to 1948, Korea’s national anthem was sung to the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-25402099
Page 259, Position 4: Japanese department stores play ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to tell shoppers it’s closing time.: http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-06-19/why-do-japanese-stores-play-auld-lang-syne-when-they-close-answer-wont-shock-or
Page 260, Position 1: The weight of Greenland’s ice sheet has made the country bowl-shaped.: http://water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycleice.html
Page 260, Position 2: By the end of the 19th century, most Samurai had desk jobs.: https://www.tofugu.com/japan/bushido/
Page 260, Position 3: 46% of Japan’s population hide when someone rings the doorbell.: http://www.japantoday.com/category/lifestyle/view/almost-half-of-japanese-people-hide-when-doorbell-rings-survey
Page 260, Position 4: A gram of silver can be extruded into a wire over a mile long.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=j-Xu07p3cKwC&pg=PA396&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 261, Position 1: When it gets hot, bees squirt water at each other.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2098161-bees-spew-water-at-their-hive-mates-when-the-temperature-rises/
Page 261, Position 2: Nitrogen tri-iodide is so volatile that it will explode if a mosquito lands on it.: http://boingboing.net/2015/08/28/nitrogen-triiodide-so-volat.html
Page 261, Position 3: An ‘Insect of the Month’ calendar wouldn’t have to repeat a species for more than 80,000 years.: https://www.ted.com/talks/marlene_zuk_what_we_learn_from_insects_kinky_sex_lives/transcript?language=en
Page 261, Position 4: British wasps eat 14 million kilos of British insects every year.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/10/catch-the-first-wasp-to-avoid-an-attack-by-whole-swarm-scientist/
Page 262, Position 1: The world’s first robot pizza-delivery service opened in Brisbane in 2016.: http://qz.com/642666/dominos-has-announced-the-worlds-first-pizza-delivery-robot/
Page 262, Position 2: The bombardier beetle defends itself by shooting a noxious mixture of boiling chemicals out of its bottom.: http://www.wired.com/2014/05/absurd-creature-of-the-week-bombardier-beetle/
Page 262, Position 3: Only 10% of dung beetles roll dung.: http://www.improbable.com/2015/04/25/cant-get-enough-of-the-poo/
Page 262, Position 4: The world’s first flying subterranean insect was discovered in Croatia in 2016.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/worlds-first-flying-cavedwelling-insect-discovered-in-one-of-the-worlds-deepest-caves
Page 263, Position 1: The World Health Organization’s guidelines for avoiding Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) include not drinking camel urine.: http://www.who.int/csr/don/06-june-2015-mers-korea/en/
Page 263, Position 2: The first use of the word ‘snowmageddon’ was in a press release that went on to apologise for using it.: http://www.wired.com/2008/12/snowmaggedon-en/
Page 263, Position 3: The world’s first tornado forecast took place in 1948.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/until-1950-us-weathermen-were-forbidden-from-talking-about-tornados?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura&utm_campaign=4b908673ed-Newsletter_12_12_20162_11_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_62ba9246c0-4b908673ed-59773797&ct=t%28Newsletter_12_12_20162_11_2016%29&mc_cid=4b908673ed&mc_eid=1968599da9
Page 263, Position 4: US weather forecasters were forbidden to mention tornadoes between 1887 and 1950.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/until-1950-us-weathermen-were-forbidden-from-talking-about-tornados?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura&utm_campaign=4b908673ed-Newsletter_12_12_20162_11_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_62ba9246c0-4b908673ed-59773797&ct=t%28Newsletter_12_12_20162_11_2016%29&mc_cid=4b908673ed&mc_eid=1968599da9
Page 264, Position 1: In Venezuela, condoms cost more than $20 each.: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-04/the-755-condom-is-the-latest-indignity-in-venezuela
Page 264, Position 2: The froth from a camel’s mouth was once used as a contraceptive.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uRJt7QqA7GEC&pg=PA261&lpg=PA261&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 264, Position 3: Ancient Egyptians used onion juice as a contraceptive.: http://www.doctorsreview.com/history/contraception-silly-sensational/
Page 264, Position 4: In ancient Japan, condoms were made from tortoise shells or animal horns.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DAc2vqmcjTYC&pg=PA122&dq
Page 265, Position 1: In the First World War, nicknames for tanks included land creepers, whippets, wibble-wobbles and willies.: #Weird War One# by Peter Taylor
Page 265, Position 2: Google searches for ‘How to put on a condom’ peak at 10.28 p.m.: http://www.today.com/money/google-results-reveal-when-what-we-search-t30476
Page 265, Position 3: Retired Google engineer Chade-Meng Tan had the official job title ‘Jolly Good Fellow (Which nobody can deny)’.: http://uk.businessinsider.com/google-jolly-good-fellow-chade-meng-tan-2015-9
Page 265, Position 4: Lord Byron’s nickname for William Wordsworth was William Turdsworth.: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/27/lord-byron-letters-sothebys-auction
Page 266, Position 1: 750,000 tons of cigarette butts are dropped on the ground around the world each year.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229750-200-time-to-kick-cigarette-butts-theyre-toxic-trash/
Page 266, Position 2: The first tank ever built was called Little Willie.: #Weird War One# by Peter Taylor
Page 266, Position 3: Tanks are exempt from London’s congestion charge.: http://www.gocompare.com/covered/2011/02/heavy-metal-could-a-road-legal-tank-be-the-perfect-vehicle-for-the-age-of-austerity/
Page 266, Position 4: NASCAR driver Dick Trickle drilled a hole in his helmet so he could smoke while driving.: http://www.sbnation.com/longform/2013/7/30/4567960/dick-trickle-suicide-nascar-profile
Page 267, Position 1: The ‘Badlands’ of the Queensland outback is the second-hottest place on the planet.: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/photos/10-of-the-hottest-places-on-earth/australias-badlands
Page 267, Position 2: Mount Etna sometimes blows smoke rings.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/131114-mount-etna-blows-smoke-rings-volcano-italy-science/
Page 267, Position 3: The ‘Door to Hell’ is a crater in Turkmenistan which has been burning for more than 40 years.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/giant-hole-ground-has-been-fire-more-40-years-180951247/?no-ist
Page 267, Position 4: Colonel Sanders’s first restaurant was in Hell’s Half Acre, Kentucky.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-devilishly-detailed-map-of-the-most-hellish-places-in-america?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura&utm_campaign=37faf3f962-Newsletter_4_28_20164_27_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_62ba9246c0-37faf3f962-59773797&ct=t%28Newsletter_4_28_20164_27_2016%29&mc_cid=37faf3f962&mc_eid=1968599da9
Page 268, Position 1: The town of Spa in Belgium is where the word ‘spa’ comes from.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spa
Page 268, Position 2: Australians take four days off work each year due to heat stress.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27458-severe-heat-costs-the-australian-economy-us6-2-billion-a-year/
Page 268, Position 3: There’s an Australian wasp with the scientific name Aha ha.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aha_ha
Page 268, Position 4: Towns in Australia are plagued by a tumbleweed called Hairy Panic.: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/18/fast-growing-tumbleweed-called-hairy-panic-blows-into-australian-city
Page 269, Position 1: Babies in Laos are fed rice that has been pre-chewed by their mothers. It’s called ‘kiss-feeding’.: #How We Learn To Eat#, Bee Wilson
Page 269, Position 2: In the 12th century, Kaifeng, the capital of China, was home to a million people.: #The Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance# by Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna (Bloomsbury, 2016) p11
Page 269, Position 3: The Great Wall of China was held together with sticky rice.: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/great-wall-china-series-overlapping-fortifications-held-together-sticky-rice-1477350
Page 269, Position 4: Chinese children are three inches taller than they were 40 years ago.: http://www.china.org.cn/china/2016-06/09/content_38634148.htm
Page 270, Position 1: In the movie Predator, the monster’s blood was made from the inside of a glow-stick mixed with KY Jelly.: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093773/trivia
Page 270, Position 2: Baby bats babble before they learn to communicate properly.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/baby-bats-babble-through-childhood-like-we-do
Page 270, Position 3: Female vampire bats regurgitate blood to feed hungry neighbours.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151117-vampire-bats-blood-food-science-animals/
Page 270, Position 4: Watching horror films makes your blood thicken.: http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/627647/Horror-movies-scary-curdle-blood
Page 271, Position 1: In 1831, protestors in Merthyr Tydfil first raised the red flag as a symbol of resistance.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qps14mSlghcC&pg=PA431&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 271, Position 2: The film Poltergeist used real human skeletons as props, because they were cheaper than plastic ones.: http://tv.ark.com/transcript/the_e!_true_hollywood_story-(curse_of_the_poltergeist)/6834/EP/Friday_October_30_2009/103068/
Page 271, Position 3: ‘Morgue hotels’ in Japan store bodies in their own air-conditioned rooms until a space at a crematorium becomes available.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/29/japans-corpse-hotels-upset-some-of-the-neighbours/
Page 271, Position 4: In 2016, protestors in South Korea created a march made entirely of holograms.: http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/02/24/467957260/ghost-protest-in-seoul-uses-holograms-not-people
Page 272, Position 1: In 2015, a rare Greek papyrus containing the Gospel of John was discovered on eBay.: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/books/greek-new-testament-papyrus-is-discovered-on-ebay.html?_r=0
Page 272, Position 2: In 1511, protestors in Brussels demonstrated against the government by filling the city with dozens of pornographic snowmen.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/winters-effigies-the-deviant-history-of-the-snowman
Page 272, Position 3: Men who watch a lot of porn have smaller-than-average brains.: http://www.livescience.com/46006-can-porn-shrink-brain.html
Page 272, Position 4: Ancient Egyptian mummies were given fake penises so they could have sex after death.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=j_xiMN3rBhoC&pg=PT87&dq=Ancient+Egyptian+mummies+were+given+fake+penises+so+they+could+have+sex+after+death.&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjRv5S_1ILPAhVILsAKHeruCcoQuwUIIjAB#v=onepage&q=Ancient%20Egyptian%20mummies%20were%20given%20fake%20penises%20so%20they%20could%20have%20sex%20after%20death.&f=false
Page 273, Position 1: The most common time for people to misspell ‘Facebook’ as ‘Facbook’ is 3:08 a.m.: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/google-searches-time-of-day
Page 273, Position 2: At the Lost Property Office in ancient Jerusalem, people shouted about the thing they’d lost, in the hope somebody else might have found it.: http://www.livescience.com/52039-ancient-jerusalem-podium-unearthed.html
Page 273, Position 3: Kent Police no longer accept lost property; instead they direct enquiries to Twitter or Facebook.: instead they direct enquiries to Twitter or Facebook.
Page 273, Position 4: Over 50% of people on Facebook use ‘haha’ if something’s funny; only 1.9% use ‘lol’.: #New Scientist# August 15 2015
Page 274, Position 1: The westernmost point of the island of Misima in Papua New Guinea is called ‘Cape Ebola’.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pgZtaB-qOmYC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=%22Cape+ebola%22+misima&source=bl&ots=E5f71NgNzw&sig=BVL93EFd9p7nlkdMPQSuGK8OGVM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rd1sVPb4FbiJsQTj1IGQDQ&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22Cape%20ebola%22%20misima&f=false
Page 274, Position 2: In 2008, Chile issued 1.5 million 50-peso coins from ‘Chiie’. It was a year before anyone noticed.: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2010/feb/12/is-it-chiie-or-chile-mint-issues-bad-coins/
Page 274, Position 3: In 1992, the president of Sri Lanka changed the country’s name to Shri Lanka for good luck. He was assassinated the following year.: #The Economist# 17.10.2016
Page 274, Position 4: The remote Russian island Яя (Ya Ya) was discovered in 2013 by a cargo helicopter. The crew shouted ‘Я, я!’ – ‘Me, me!’ (‘I saw it first, I saw it first!’) – and the name stuck.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaya_Island
Page 275, Position 1: Red velvet cake was invented by a food-colouring manufacturer to sell red food dye.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adams_Extract
Page 275, Position 2: The only inhabitants of Big Major Cay island, the Bahamas, are feral pigs.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Beach
Page 275, Position 3: During the mating season, crabs on Christmas Island outnumber humans by 20,000 to 1.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2855889/Parting-red-sea-Spectacular-moment-120-million-crimson-coloured-crabs-emerge-jungle-head-warm-waters-Indian-Ocean.html#ixzz3Vhmzik9n
Page 275, Position 4: Boxing Day in Scotland used to be called ‘Sweetie Scone Day’.: http://www.northcountyscots.com/Newsletters/NCS12.11.pdf
Page 276, Position 1: Pugs were the official dogs of the House of Orange.: http://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/pug/detail/#history
Page 276, Position 2: Shoppers are more likely to buy a banana if it matches the Pantone colour 12-0752 known as ‘Buttercup’.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=17op5NDsZBMC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=Pantone+color+12-0752+bananas&source=bl&ots=J1XAY7bs3d&sig=k-
Page 276, Position 3: Insect droppings are turning the Taj Mahal green.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/24/insect-poo-turning-the-taj-mahal-green
Page 276, Position 4: Homer describes honey as being green, sheep as being violet and Hector’s hair as dark blue.: http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/02/10/one-wine-two-wine-red-wine-blue-wine/
Page 277, Position 1: When Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition got stuck in the ice in 1915, they had to use the Encyclopaedia Britannica as toilet paper, but the ship’s doctor saved the entry on scurvy.: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-times/ernest-shackleton-used-encyclopedias-as-toilet-paper-in-antarctic/news-story/7d79f691fc6fb95d6b5a1cb034319939
Page 277, Position 2: Short-legged dogs were bred so that owners on foot could keep up with them on hunts.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-the-point-of-a-pugand-19-other-dog-breeds?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura&utm_campaign=93e455c74b-Newsletter_10_16_201510_15_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_62ba9246c0-93e455c74b-59773797&ct=t%28Newsletter_10_16_201510_15_2015%29&mc_cid=93e455c74b&mc_eid=1968599da9
Page 277, Position 3: Dogfish are called dogfish because they like to hunt in packs.: http://web.uconn.edu/seagrant/publications/magazines/wracklines/springsummer11/sharks.pdf
Page 277, Position 4: Ernest Shackleton had dogs called Slobbers, Saint, Satan, Painful, Swanker, Fluffy, Bummer and Bob.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zfgpBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=Hackenschmidt,+Slobbers,+Saint,+Satan,+Painful,+Swanker,+Chirgwin,+Fluffy,+Bummer+and+Bob.&source=bl&ots=xHmwE4JSzg&sig=RJ0t7rkImcYpA_9fU17zNsIivZQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAWoVChMI0Pbfz52SyQIVjGsUCh0C7wH6#v=onepage&q=Hackenschmidt%2C%20Slobbers%2C%20Saint%2C%20Satan%2C%20Painful%2C%20Swanker%2C%20Chirgwin%2C%20Fluffy%2C%20Bummer%20and%20Bob.&f=false
Page 278, Position 1: Alexander Fleming’s neighbours foiled a burglary at his house and were rewarded with some of his special mould.: http://www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/news/memorabilia/alexander-flemings-penicillin-mould-valued-at-9-000/19617.page
Page 278, Position 2: Woody Harrelson’s father was a door-to-door Encyclopaedia Britannica salesman before becoming a contract killer.: #The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue#, by Francis Grose.
Page 278, Position 3: Scurryfunge is the hurried tidying of a house after seeing someone about to arrive at your door.: https://www.englishrules.com/2007/favorite-forgotten-words/
Page 278, Position 4: Neidbau is German for a building constructed for the sole purpose of annoying a neighbour.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Jztkfu72eW4C&pg=PA177&dq=neidbau+german&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiur93gvs3NAhVhIcAKHY14DgcQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=neidbau%20german&f=false
Page 279, Position 1: Dolphins can’t smell anything at all.: https://www.behance.net/gallery/14492773/Evolution-Book http://www.dolphin-institute.org/resource_guide/dolphin_perception.htm
Page 279, Position 2: A smellfungus is someone who always manages to find fault.: http://www.alphadictionary.com/goodword/word/smellfungus
Page 279, Position 3: Deodorant makes men smell more manly, but it doesn’t work for men who are already manly.: http://www.health.com/sex/deodorant-makes-men-smell-manlier
Page 279, Position 4: Ants can smell the difference between friends and foes.: http://www.livescience.com/51843-ants-can-outsniff-humans.html
Page 280, Position 1: In the 18th and 19th century, nightgowns were worn in the daytime.: http://blog.fidmmuseum.org/museum/2010/08/nightgowns.html
Page 280, Position 2: The four-eyed fish has split pupils so it can see above and below the water at the same time.: http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/blog/articles/weird-fish-of-the-week-four-eyed-fish
Page 280, Position 3: African tigerfish are the only fish known to leap out of the water and pluck birds out of the air.: http://www.popsci.com/article/science/african-fish-can-catch-and-eat-flying-birds
Page 280, Position 4: Parrotfish coat themselves in protective mucous pyjamas at night and eat them for breakfast each morning.: http://www.wired.com/2014/08/absurd-creature-of-the-week-parrotfish/
Page 281, Position 1: Uhtceare is an Old English word for lying awake before dawn and worrying.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/53027/10-old-english-words-you-need-be-using
Page 281, Position 2: In mid-20th-century America, a negligee was a shroud for a corpse.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=negligee&allowed_in_frame=0
Page 281, Position 3: Nobody knows why we sleep.: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2009/08/26/why_we_sleep_is_a_mystery
Page 281, Position 4: Eosophobia is a dread of the dawn.: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/eosophobia
Page 282, Position 1: French queens gave birth in public to prove the baby was theirs.: http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2015/06/childbirth-as-a-spectator-sport.html
Page 282, Position 2: Rammist is being irritable after waking up too early.: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/rammist
Page 282, Position 3: Your brain is at its biggest in the morning and gradually shrinks as the day goes on.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2015/06/08/brain-bigger-in-the-morning/
Page 282, Position 4: An embryo has 200 billion neurons in its brain, but loses half of them before it is born.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5RlDm8d_2AsC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=fetal+brain+neurons+%22200+billion%22&source=bl&ots=BJ0aOMBmHl&sig=idzfyn7VIy6bqbizC36moRgDNDc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGhczvsMPOAhWJC8AKHam1AckQ6AEIKDAB#v=onepage&q=fetal%20brain%20neurons%20%22200%20billion%22&f=false
Page 283, Position 1: When the New York Jets played at Wembley in 2015, they brought their own toilet paper as they thought the British stuff was too thin.: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/sports/football/jets-head-to-london-with-a-detailed-game-plan-and-thats-just-for-their-laundry.html?_r=1
Page 283, Position 2: Women at the court of Louis XVI drew blue veins on their necks and shoulders to emphasise their noble birth.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Fa0WAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA246&lpg=PA246&dq=louis+xvi+women+blue+veins&source=bl&ots=Ju6GHfHNEq&sig=d3JKe2y6EjTyxSn8c1Wcai6xoD4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwit3omE5srNAhXqKMAKHWsFBkwQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=louis%20xvi%20women%20blue%20veins&f=false
Page 283, Position 3: In 1764, the Palace of Versailles was described as a cesspool of dead cats, urine, excrement, slaughtered pigs, standing water and mosquitoes.: http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/froth-and-folly-nobility-and-perfumery-at-the-court-of-versailles/
Page 283, Position 4: The world’s most expensive toilet paper is £825,000 a roll; it’s hand-delivered with a bottle of champagne.: http://www.toiletpaper.com.au/24-carat-gold-toilet-paper-1-roll/
Page 284, Position 1: There is a holy theme park in Buenos Aires where nuns get in free.: http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2012/apr/05/easter-religious-theme-park-buenos-aires
Page 284, Position 2: Dogs relieving themselves on streetlights can corrode them to the point of collapse.: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Dog-Urine-Contributes-lamp-post-corroded-downtown-san-diego-326839961.html
Page 284, Position 3: People who desperately need a pee tell more convincing lies.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28199-the-lies-we-tell-are-more-convincing-when-we-need-to-pee/
Page 284, Position 4: In 1630, 1 in 7 people in Bologna were nuns.: #Nuns Behaving Badly# - Craig A Monson
Page 285, Position 1: One of the founding members of the New York Stock Exchange was a man called Preserved Fish.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preserved_Fish
Page 285, Position 2: In the 1960s and ’70s, nuns’ urine was used by pharmaceutical companies to make fertility drugs.: http://healthland.time.com/2010/09/13/the-strange-world-of-drug-origins-nuns-urine-yew-trees-and-rooster-combs/
Page 285, Position 3: Sticklebacks lose the ability to urinate when building their nests.: http://io9.com/though-this-fish-cant-pee-it-can-be-used-to-test-for-d-1729965846
Page 285, Position 4: Fishing snakes don’t fish and no one knows how they got the name.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/151221-fishing-snakes-animals-science-reptiles-south-america/
Page 286, Position 1: Over the last 10 years, the market for burial plots has outperformed the overall UK property market by three to one.: http://www.ted.com/talks/alison_killing_what_happens_when_a_city_runs_out_of_room_for_its_dead/transcript?language=en
Page 286, Position 2: In March 2003, the Ocean Journey aquarium in Denver, Colorado, was bought by a seafood restaurant.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Aquarium,_Denver
Page 286, Position 3: Whales mourn their dead.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/whales-death-grief-animals-science/
Page 286, Position 4: Shakespeare’s skull is missing from his grave.: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-shakespeare-idUSKCN0WQ192
Page 287, Position 1: Broccoli used to be known as the ‘five green fingers of Jupiter’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZfSmSmC0WhMC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 287, Position 2: The death adder was originally the deaf adder because it never ran away from humans.: http://www.livescience.com/54227-adder-facts.html
Page 287, Position 3: In China, it is bad luck to give clocks as presents because in Chinese ‘giving a clock’ sounds like ‘going to a funeral’.: http://www.chinahighlights.com/festivals/things-not-give-chinese-new-year.htm
Page 287, Position 4: The first US alarm clock, patented in 1787, only rang at 4 a.m.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/new-hampshire-history-and-heritage-176227100/?no-ist
Page 288, Position 1: In 1943, the crew of a Halifax bomber downed in the Atlantic survived 11 days in a dinghy by catching fish with their underpants.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12197009/Incredible-story-of-how-six-WW2-airmen-survived-at-sea-by-using-their-underpants-as-a-fishing-net.html
Page 288, Position 2: In 1862, Prince William of Denmark became king of Greece after a referendum in which he got six votes.: http://gutenberg.us/articles/Greek_head_of_state_referendum,_1862
Page 288, Position 3: A lobster can squirt urine seven times the length of its body.: http://jezebel.com/lobsters-have-the-craziest-sex-youve-never-heard-of-an-1758129911
Page 288, Position 4: In 1325, Bologna went to war with Modena over a stolen bucket.: #Stupid History#. Leland Gregory.
Page 289, Position 1: Ravens will dig up and rebury food if they were seen hiding it by a bird they consider untrustworthy.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=She5BwAAQBAJ&pg=PA86&lpg=PA86&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 289, Position 2: In 2011, a man was stopped at Los Angeles Airport after his four checked-in bags were found to be full of water containing 240 live fish.: http://blog.tsa.gov/2012/01/tsa-top-10-good-catches-of-2011.html
Page 289, Position 3: In 2005, there were plans to make a 50-foot-tall robot of Michael Jackson that would roam the Nevada desert.: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/aug/20/michael-jackson-robot-las-vegas
Page 289, Position 4: Michael Jackson regularly made prank calls to Russell Crowe.: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/29/the-trials-of-russell-crowe-pranked-by-jacko-goaded-by-paparazzi-threatened-by-al-qaida
Page 290, Position 1: On 1 July 1937, a Mrs Beard became the first person to dial 999.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18520121
Page 290, Position 2: Woodpeckers have a third eyelid which stops their eyes popping out when drilling into wood.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/30731/why-dont-woodpeckers-get-brain-damage
Page 290, Position 3: In the 1890s, Eugene Schieffelin set out to introduce every bird mentioned by Shakespeare into North America. The US is now overrun by 200 million starlings.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/call-of-the-reviled/
Page 290, Position 4: Bearded tits don’t have beards and aren’t tits.: http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/placestovisit/leightonmoss/b/leightonmoss-blog/archive/2014/04/25/bearded-tits-are-just-brilliant.aspx
Page 291, Position 1: When food is scarce, baby pea aphids climb onto their mother’s back and suck her blood.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24513-zoologger-baby-vampire-aphids-drink-parents-blood.html#.Und7WnC8Cy4?
Page 291, Position 2: Early 999 calls set off a klaxon and a flashing red light to make sure operators knew an emergency call was coming in.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18520121
Page 291, Position 3: The oldest surviving telephone directory is from New Haven, Connecticut, in 1878. It listed the names of all the people with phones but not their numbers.: http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/books-manuscripts/the-telephone-directory-volume-1-number-1-5084352-details.aspx
Page 291, Position 4: A quarter of worker ants never actually do any work.: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/most-worker-ants-are-slackers
Page 292, Position 1: The space shuttle did 0–100 mph in 8 seconds, the same as a 1968 Ford GT.: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/basics/launch.html http://www.insiderauto.net/id2655-1968-ford-gt40-mk1-gulf.html
Page 292, Position 2: The beaded lacewing stuns its prey by farting on it.: http://www.wired.com/2015/06/silent-deadly-fatal-farts-immobilize-prey/
Page 292, Position 3: The sea squirt is the only animal that eats its own brain.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-brainless-life-of-the-sea-squirt?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura&utm_campaign=43c39c7c68-Newsletter_3_18_20163_17_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_62ba9246c0-43c39c7c68-59773797&ct=t%28Newsletter_3_18_20163_17_2016%29&mc_cid=43c39c7c68&mc_eid=1968599da9
Page 292, Position 4: Messages travel through the brain faster than an F1 racing car.: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/whoami/findoutmore/yourbrain/howdoesyourbrainwork/howdoesyournervoussystemwork/whatarenerveimpulses
Page 293, Position 1: Killington, Smuggler’s Notch, Suicide Six and Mad River Glen are ski resorts in Vermont.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont
Page 293, Position 2: On 9 October 2013, NASA’s Juno spacecraft travelled round the Earth at 50 times the speed of a bullet.: http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/wsk/kurth-bio.html http://www.space.com/23139-juno-jupiter-spacecraft-earth-flyby.html
Page 293, Position 3: The bullet was invented thousands of years before the gun.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet
Page 293, Position 4: In 17th-century Vermont, it was illegal to go to church without a gun.: http://www.claytoncramer.com/popular/PraiseTheLordAndPassTheAmmunition.PDF
Page 294, Position 1: The boiling point of lithium in degrees Celsius is 1,342.: http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/3/lithium
Page 294, Position 2: Scots has 421 words for snow.: http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_424233_en.html
Page 294, Position 3: The ground beneath the Antarctic ice is hotter than under 99% of the rest of the planet.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/high-heat-measured-under-antarctica-could-support-substantial-life/
Page 294, Position 4: Anders Celsius’s scale originally had the freezing point of water at 100 degrees and the boiling point at zero.: #Naming of the Shrew#, John Wright
Page 295, Position 1: The original Humpty Dumpty was a drink made by boiling ale with brandy.: #Oxford English Dictionary#
Page 295, Position 2: In 2015, Professor Colin Raston won an Ig Nobel prize for unboiling an egg.: http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/09/chemistry-ig-nobel-2015-unboiled-egg
Page 295, Position 3: In the 18th century, chickens were known as ‘cacklers’ and eggs were ‘cackling farts’.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vUgMWQv0CywC&pg=PT31&lpg=PT31&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 295, Position 4: Until the 20th century, ‘yolk’ was often written (and pronounced) ‘yelk’.: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yelk
Page 296, Position 1: Yellow mealworms eat Styrofoam.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/scientists-find-ultimate-weapon-fight-6826695
Page 296, Position 2: The earliest woodcut of Jack and Jill showed two boys called Jack and Gill.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_and_Jill_(nursery_rhyme)#
Page 296, Position 3: Only female hops are used to make beer.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11974928/London-bar-to-sell-worlds-first-transgender-beer-brewed-from-hermaphrodite-hops.html
Page 296, Position 4: Male crucifix toads glue themselves to females during sex.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifix_toad
Page 297, Position 1: 100 Americans die each year by choking on pen lids.: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/why-do-bic-pens-have-a-hole-in-their-lid-to-stop-choking-a6856061.html
Page 297, Position 2: Chewing can help stop earworms.: https://www.reading.ac.uk/news-and-events/releases/PR631000.aspx
Page 297, Position 3: Bubblegum was once prescribed as a remedy for polio.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ddNgjwUVF5QC&pg=PA108&lpg=PA108&dq=Bubblegum+polio&source=bl&ots=wTQ1_Z6ybF&sig=O2rlTgUvtZ__3_66SX7JOKtfFvs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwipnK2Gzu7PAhUHHxoKHUwlBM8Q6AEIJTAC#v=onepage&q=Bubblegum%20polio&f=false
Page 297, Position 4: The placebo effect accounts for up to 60% of a painkiller’s effectiveness.: http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/6/218/218ra5.short
Page 298, Position 1: In France, Homer Simpson says ‘T’oh’; in Spain, he says ‘Ouch!’: http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/50-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-simpsons
Page 298, Position 2: The lives of Cher, Elizabeth Taylor and Ronald Reagan were all saved by the Heimlich manoeuvre.: https://newrepublic.com/article/119132/profile-henry-heimlich-creator-anti-choking-maneuver
Page 298, Position 3: When Reagan became president in 1981, he had all the solar panels removed from the White House.: #Stranger than we can Imagine# - John Higgs
Page 298, Position 4: ‘D’oh!’ is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘expressing frustration at the realisation that things have turned out badly or not as planned’.: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/249869?rskey=RY9rkB&result=2&isAdvanced=false#eid
Page 299, Position 1: The land that once connected Great Britain to continental Europe was called Doggerland.: http://nationalgeographic.org/maps/doggerland/
Page 299, Position 2: A ‘natural’ used to mean an ‘idiot’.: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/125332?rskey=qGgAWL&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid
Page 299, Position 3: ‘A rumbling stomach’ is actually a rumbling of the small intestine.: https://www.waterstones.com/book/gut/giulia-enders/david-shaw/9781925228601
Page 299, Position 4: The phrase ‘No Man’s Land’ was first used in the Domesday Book.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34319540
Page 300, Position 1: In 1931, both Hitler and Churchill were hit by cars.: http://www.winstonchurchill.org/support?catid=0&id=1464
Page 300, Position 2: Never Never Land was an old name for the sparsely populated parts of Australia.: https://goo.gl/t5GBn0
Page 300, Position 3: Narnia (now called Narni) is a real place in Italy. C. S. Lewis saw the name on an old Roman map.: http://www.italymagazine.com/italy/places/real-life-narnia-inspired-author
Page 300, Position 4: After their first meeting, C. S. Lewis wrote of J. R. R. Tolkien: ‘No harm in him, only needs a smack or so.’: http://www.theplaceofthelion.com/excerpt.pdf
Page 301, Position 1: Snakes hear with their jawbones.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/A8A0FD9F-9AB0-7EDA-0EFCDBFB6244702B/
Page 301, Position 2: US boxer Daniel Caruso was psyching himself up for a match by punching himself in the face when he broke his own nose and was ruled unfit to compete.: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/news-of-the-weird/Content?oid=880193
Page 301, Position 3: Backpfeifengesicht is German for a ‘face that needs hitting’.: https://theconversation.com/why-the-german-language-has-so-many-great-words-55554
Page 301, Position 4: Sneezes can travel up to 200 feet.: http://www.slate.com/articles/video/video/2014/04/mit_sneeze_study_new_research_shows_sneezes_can_travel_up_to_200_feet.html
Page 302, Position 1: Cauliflowers grow so fast you can hear them doing it.: http://www.lincolnshireecho.co.uk/Mysterious-creaking-noises-Lincolnshire-growing/story-26773269-detail/story.html
Page 302, Position 2: A balloon’s pop is caused by the rubber shrinking faster than the speed of sound.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18324553-100-bursting-balloons-break-sound-barrier/
Page 302, Position 3: The equipment for the 2016 Rolling Stones concert in Havana filled 61 sea containers and a Boeing 747.: http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/03/25/stones-roll-into-havana-for-free-gig.html?via=newsletter&source=CSAMedition
Page 302, Position 4: Hummingbirds ‘sing’ with their tail feathers.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/09/08/hummingbirds-dive-to-sing-with-their-tails/#.V3OhVOsrLnA
Page 303, Position 1: Napoleon had 50 identical beaver-skin hats.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-3111441/So-really-defeated-Napoleon-British-pluck-PILES-story-France-s-greatest-national-hero.html
Page 303, Position 2: Cicadas can ‘switch off’ their ears to avoid being deafened by their own singing.: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1876&dat=19700728&id=nH0sAAAAIBAJ&sjid=wMwEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7465,4416231&hl=en
Page 303, Position 3: New Forest cicadas are inaudible to humans, so nobody knows if there are any left in the UK.: http://www.newforestcicada.info/
Page 303, Position 4: The only wild beavers in the UK live on the River Otter.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-36386263
Page 304, Position 1: Charlotte Brontë’s school report said she ‘writes indifferently’ and ‘knows nothing of grammar, geography, history or accomplishments’.: http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/school-report-on-the-bront-sisters#
Page 304, Position 2: Genghis Khan’s earliest known ancestor was a woman called Alan the Fair.: https://goo.gl/XNqqpk
Page 304, Position 3: Nell Gwyn’s name for Charles II was Charles III because she’d already had two lovers called Charles.: http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/birth-nell-gwynne
Page 304, Position 4: Charles Dickens helped stop P. T. Barnum from moving Shakespeare’s house, brick by brick, to New York.: http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/shakespeares-birthplace-barnum-brian-conley-9663050
Page 305, Position 1: The illustrator of the first-ever nursery-rhyme book was later sued for selling porn.: http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/tommy-thumbs-pretty-song-book
Page 305, Position 2: In the seven years Wordsworth was Poet Laureate, he didn’t write a single line of poetry.: http://www.biographyonline.net/poets/william-wordsworth.html
Page 305, Position 3: Pope John Paul II drew his own comic books.: https://www.amazon.com/Life-Pope-John-comic-Issue/dp/B000XSXN5I
Page 305, Position 4: Retired characters from the Beano include Little Dead-Eye Dick, Cocky Dick, Sticky Willie, Wandering Willie, and Polly Wolly Doodle and her Great Big Poodle.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Beano_comic_strips
Page 306, Position 1: Pope Innocent VIII was nicknamed ‘The Honest’ because he was the first pope to admit he had illegitimate children.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JhszdEXB2EwC&pg=PA143&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 306, Position 2: In 2016, ‘porn’ was briefly overtaken by ‘Brexit’ as the most searched-for term on the Internet.: http://www.inquisitr.com/3306997/pokemon-go-porn-searches-for-app-outnumber-those-looking-for-porn-online/
Page 306, Position 3: In the 1960s, Internet was the brand name for a transistor radio.: http://www.markhillpublishing.com/the-internet-transistor-radio/
Page 306, Position 4: Pope Francis has never used the Internet and hasn’t watched TV since 1990.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/150807-Robert-Draper-Pope-Francis-Video-Interview/
Page 307, Position 1: The Russians have landed 10 times as many probes on Venus as NASA.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observations_and_explorations_of_Venus
Page 307, Position 2: Pope John II was the first pope to change his name. He was originally called Mercurius after the pagan god Mercury.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_II
Page 307, Position 3: Mercury is shrinking.: http://www.space.com/25102-planet-mercury-shrinking-fast.html
Page 307, Position 4: Russian rocket boosters are blessed by an Orthodox priest before they are ignited.: http://metro.co.uk/2015/12/15/some-odd-traditions-surround-astronaut-tim-peakes-voyage-to-space-5566059/
Page 308, Position 1: The oldest known dialect of Spanish is spoken in the US state of New Mexico.: https://lujan.house.gov/3rd-district
Page 308, Position 2: Earth has eight times as many trees as scientists previously thought.: http://www.newsweek.com/3-trillion-trees-earth-eight-times-what-we-previously-thought-cut-down-half-368361
Page 308, Position 3: Four times as many Lebanese live outside Lebanon as inside it.: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21573584-business-people-lebanon-fare-better-abroad-home-tale-two-traders
Page 308, Position 4: There are more native Spanish speakers in the US than in Spain.: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/29/us-second-biggest-spanish-speaking-country
Page 309, Position 1: Canada only gained independence from Britain in 1982.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s
Page 309, Position 2: Caliche is Latin American Spanish for a crust of whitewash that flakes off a wall.: #Collins Spanish Dictionary#
Page 309, Position 3: 41% of Americans support the idea of building a wall along the Canadian border.: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-09-24/oh-canada-four-in-ten-americans-want-wall-on-northern-border
Page 309, Position 4: 38% of the US is north of the southernmost point of Canada.: http://www.prooffreader.com/2013/11/canada-strong-and-free-but-maybe-not-as.html
Page 310, Position 1: The blood of the Antarctic notothenioid fish contains antifreeze.: http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/antarctica/ideas/fish.html
Page 310, Position 2: The 1976 Montreal Olympics is the only one in history where the host country failed to win a single gold medal.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_at_the_1976_Summer_Olympics
Page 310, Position 3: The coldest temperature ever recorded in Canada is –63ºC, the same as the average temperature on Mars.: http://www.space.com/16907-what-is-the-temperature-of-mars.html
Page 310, Position 4: In 2015, cold homes caused the deaths of 9,000 Britons.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35862763
Page 311, Position 1: Iggy Pop has a cockatoo called Biggy Pop.: http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/iggy-pop-has-a-pet-bird-called-biggy-pop-and-its-absolutely-adorable
Page 311, Position 2: The film Frozen took 3 million hours to complete.: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2294629/trivia
Page 311, Position 3: Frozen food was invented by Clarence Birdseye, after watching the Inuit in Canada catch and freeze fish.: https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/frozenfood.html
Page 311, Position 4: The actor who plays Captain Birdseye suffers from seasickness.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/30/new-captain-birdseye-suffers-from-seasickness/
Page 312, Position 1: Butchers in ancient Egypt wore high heels to keep blood off their feet.: https://people.rit.edu/~mrw1001/320/project2/history.html
Page 312, Position 2: Baron Rothschild tried to impress Napoleon III by by disguising his parrots as pheasants. When shot, they would cry, ‘Vive l’empereur!’: http://www.pressreader.com/uk/scottish-daily-mail/20150908/281913066885189/TextView
Page 312, Position 3: The Greeks painted eyes on the bottom of glasses to make it look like the drinker was wearing a mask.: https://emajartjournal.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/andrew.pdf
Page 312, Position 4: There are more mask shops in Venice than butchers or greengrocers.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/italy/venice/10618698/Venice-carnival-guide.html
Page 313, Position 1: The man who set the record time for swimming the Panama Canal in 1959 was declared an honorary ship.: https://archive.org/stream/panamacanalrevieaug16pana/panamacanalrevieaug16pana_djvu.txt
Page 313, Position 2: 1 in 5 women cut the labels off their clothes to hide the size.: https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2016/sep/04/minimum-bmi-checks-uk-models-womens-equality-party
Page 313, Position 3: The owner of Zara is one of the two richest people in the world.: http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/financephotos/the-countries-with-the-most-billionaires-revealed/ss-BBqbyet?ocid=MSN_UK_NL_MO35#image=4
Page 313, Position 4: A set of four car tyres, encrusted with gold and diamonds, broke the world record when they were sold in 2016 for $600,000.: http://mashable.com/2016/06/16/worlds-most-expensive-tyres/?utm_cid=mash-com-Tw-main-link#xD3hOAVWDqq8
Page 314, Position 1: Captain Scott’s Antarctic expedition team hated the taste of seal, so they overcooked it, inadvertently destroying all its vitamin C.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwone/south_approaches_01.shtml
Page 314, Position 2: The ancient Egyptians built the first Suez Canal in the 6th century bc.: http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1257.htm
Page 314, Position 3: Canals have plugs.: http://www.worksopguardian.co.uk/news/local/memories-of-pulling-the-plug-on-canal-1-624620
Page 314, Position 4: Baby sharks are called pups.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2390000/Hammerhead-shark-stuns-fisherman-giving-birth-litter-pups-hauled-packed-Florida-beach.html
Page 315, Position 1: People who regularly eat chocolate are slightly thinner than those who don’t.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17511011
Page 315, Position 2: Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition found a stowaway onboard who was allowed to stay on condition he’d be the first to be eaten in an emergency.: https://goo.gl/HP8Zon
Page 315, Position 3: Some germs thrive on soap dispensers because they like to eat soap.: http://aem.asm.org/content/77/9/2898.full
Page 315, Position 4: The first ATM was based on a chocolate-bar dispenser.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6230194.stm
Page 316, Position 1: The Colosseum has banned people dressed as Roman centurions.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/smart-news/rome-just-banned-centurions-180957410/
Page 316, Position 2: Obese people see objects as 10% further away than those of average weight.: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/feb/14/for-obese-people-distances-really-do-look-further-study-finds
Page 316, Position 3: Lesbians earn more than straight women.: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21692938-lesbians-tend-earn-more-heterosexual-women-girl-power
Page 316, Position 4: Only seven women in the world may wear white to meet the Pope.: http://www.people.com/people/package/article/0,,20395222_20980303,00.html
Page 317, Position 1: Do You Trust Your Wife? was a 1950s US TV game show sponsored by a tobacco company. It made one contestant change her star sign from Cancer to Aries.: https://goo.gl/uOBJuY
Page 317, Position 2: The names Linda, Alice, Lauren and Elaine are banned in Saudi Arabia.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/is-your-name-now-banned-in-saudi-arabia-9192298.html
Page 317, Position 3: It is illegal for a wife to take her husband’s name in Quebec, but obligatory in Japan.: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/16/japanese-court-rules-married-women-cannot-keep-their-surnames http://time.com/3940094/maiden-married-names-countries/
Page 317, Position 4: In 12th-century Ireland, same-sex marriages were performed in church.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2142905/Civil-partnership-medieval-style-In-days-sex-marriage-Christian-rite.html?utm_source=StandFirm&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=link
Page 318, Position 1: 31% of American teenagers think they’ll be famous one day.: http://www.teenvogue.com/story/celebrity-fame-obsession
Page 318, Position 2: Camel cigarettes sponsored a 1940s TV news show called The Camel News Caravan. No one was allowed to be shown smoking a cigar except Winston Churchill.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=snwnEXJvVZkC&pg=PA178&lpg=PA178&dq=camel+news+caravan+first&source=bl&ots=Z_GGsuLlXm&sig=99u8VcQXhpTFd8yQ2A4sikrzNdM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjGqr38sP_KAhWBBBoKHRlXDekQ6AEISjAL#v=onepage&q=churchill&f=false
Page 318, Position 3: Churchill looks grumpy on the £5 note because the photographer who took the picture had just removed his cigar.: 5 note because the photographer who took the picture had just removed his cigar.
Page 318, Position 4: More British teenagers smoke e-cigarettes than ordinary cigarettes.: https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/infographics/teens-e-cigarettes
Page 319, Position 1: Books containing the word ‘wine’ and the names of foreign pets are banned in Iran.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-bans-use-of-the-word-wine-and-foreign-animal-names-in-books-a6822461.html
Page 319, Position 2: Three of the top 10 Amazon best-sellers in the US in 2015 were colouring books for adults.: http://harpers.org/archive/2016/06/harpers-index-383/
Page 319, Position 3: Harvard has a library of rare colours.: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3058058/the-harvard-vault-that-protects-the-worlds-rarest-colors
Page 319, Position 4: There’s a bookshop in Tokyo that only stocks one book at a time.: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/23/japanese-bookshop-stocks-only-one-book-at-a-time
Page 320, Position 1: The BBC’s first outside broadcast was a duet between a cellist and a nightingale.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-22711460
Page 320, Position 2: ‘Stereotype’ and ‘cliché’ were both originally printing terms.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=stereotype http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cliche&allowed_in_frame=0
Page 320, Position 3: The tune to ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ was written by Mendelssohn to commemorate the invention of the printing press.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rsO9147YgV4C&pg=PA68&dq=hark+the+herald+angels+sing+printing+press&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGh9-XgM3NAhVKLsAKHbnPBsMQ6AEIMDAC#v=onepage&q=hark%20the%20herald%20angels%20sing%20printing%20press&f=false
Page 320, Position 4: The tune of ‘God Save the Queen’ was once the best-known tune in the world and the national anthem for 20 countries.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XX2sAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA338&dq=god+save+the+king+best+known+tune+20+countries&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=god%20save%20the%20king%20best%20known%20tune%2020%20countries&f=false
Page 321, Position 1: According to anthropologist Kate Fox, England’s national catchphrase is ‘Typical!’: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11145104/Typical-theres-a-word-to-sum-up-the-English.html
Page 321, Position 2: Nightingales frequently break EU health and safety regulations on noise pollution.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4964-urban-nightingales-songs-are-illegally-loud/
Page 321, Position 3: In 2016, the Swiss city of Lausanne banned silent discos for being too noisy.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-35501473
Page 321, Position 4: In 1936, Leicester was the second-richest city in Europe.: http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21698271-there-are-lessons-learn-city-much-football-club-foxes-and-tigers
Page 322, Position 1: The king of the Belgians is automatically godfather to all the seventh sons in his country.: http://deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws.english/News/1.2600731
Page 322, Position 2: Obsolete English words dropped by the Oxford English Dictionary include ‘growlery’ (a room to growl in), ‘brabble’ (to quarrel) and ‘cassette-player’.: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2011/08/19/concise_oxford_english_dictionary_what_words_got_dropped_to_make.html
Page 322, Position 3: Clatterfart, blabberer, bablatrice and nimble-chops all mean ‘chatterbox’.: #Oxford English Dictionary#
Page 322, Position 4: A ‘gossip’ was originally a ‘god-sibling’ or godparent.: https://goo.gl/gwYacS
Page 323, Position 1: Carlsberg gave Niels Bohr a house with free beer on tap as a thank-you for winning the Nobel Prize in physics.: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/11/28/for-winning-the-nobel-prize-niels-bohr-got-a-house-with-free-beer/#25095cdb4fb7
Page 323, Position 2: The Belgian city of Bruges has an underground beer pipeline.: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/15/travel/bruges-beer-pipeline/
Page 323, Position 3: The Rarámuri of Mexico christen their babies with beer.: http://anthronow.com/print/beer-through-the-ages-the-role-of-beer-in-shaping-our-past-and-current-worlds
Page 323, Position 4: Venezuela is running out of beer.: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/31/480126445/venezuela-is-running-out-of-beer-amid-severe-economic-crisis
Page 324, Position 1: When rock ’n’ roll music was banned by the USSR in the 1950s, Russians pressed bootleg copies onto discarded X-rays and called it ‘bone music’.: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jan/29/bone-music-soviet-bootleg-records-pressed-on-xrays
Page 324, Position 2: In 1855, James Harrison, a Scot living in Australia, patented a beer cooler that was the size of a house.: http://www.scotlandnow.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/man-who-cooled-world-forgotten-6261944
Page 324, Position 3: Wilhelm Röntgen refused to patent the X-ray machine he’d invented so that everyone could benefit from it.: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200111/history.cfm
Page 324, Position 4: A new musical instrument was invented and a new concert hall built for the premiere of Wagner’s Ring cycle.: #The Economist# 25 June 2016
Page 325, Position 1: Mike Rowe’s domain name MikeRoweSoft.com caused a legal dispute with Microsoft.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3429485.stm
Page 325, Position 2: The first full-length porn movie filmed by drones was called Drone Boning.: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-first-drone-shot-porn-is-beautiful-nsfw
Page 325, Position 3: Mark Twain invented and patented the bra-strap clasp.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/30/mark-twain-trivia_n_6220484.html
Page 325, Position 4: Microsoft was founded closer in time to the invention of the ballpoint pen than to today.: http://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/01/bob-dylan-and-the-illusion-of-modern-times/
Page 326, Position 1: Painting a male barn owl’s chest a darker colour makes him more desirable to females.: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848
Page 326, Position 2: The legal concept of negligence was established in 1932, when a woman found a snail in her ginger beer.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8367223.stm
Page 326, Position 3: The 18th-century dentist Pierre Fauchard recommended using urine as a mouthwash.: https://www.bda.org/dentists/policy-campaigns/research/bda-policy/consultation/education-workforce/2011/pierre-fauchard-father-of-modern-dentistry
Page 326, Position 4: The 18th-century painter Johan Zoffany was shipwrecked in the Andaman Islands and ate a sailor.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/9119353/Johan-Zoffany-The-lovable-artist-who-ate-a-sailor.html
Page 327, Position 1: It’s against the law to bring potato seeds into the UK.: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/531618/Bringing_fruit__veg_and_plants_into_the_UK_leaflet.pdf
Page 327, Position 2: Great reed warblers spend winter practising their summer songs.: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2075638-europes-song-birds-perfect-their-tunes-when-wintering-in-africa/
Page 327, Position 3: Racing pigeons speed up when flying through polluted air.: http://www.livescience.com/53418-pollution-makes-pigeons-faster.html
Page 327, Position 4: By eating and excreting doves, a single cougar can plant 94,000 seeds a year.: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-one-cougar-can-plant-94000-seeds-a-year?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura&utm_campaign=5e86c4b93a-Newsletter_4_21_20164_20_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_62ba9246c0-5e86c4b93a-59773797&ct=t%28Newsletter_4_21_20164_20_2016%29&mc_cid=5e86c4b93a&mc_eid=1968599da9
Page 328, Position 1: In the Second World War, the Bank of England’s canteen was moved to the vault.: http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20160419-the-city-with-248-billion-beneath-its-pavement
Page 328, Position 2: There are over 700 British cheeses, but most Britons can only name four.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/must-cheddar-study-finds-most-6820191
Page 328, Position 3: Shropshire Blue cheese was invented in Inverness.: http://www.cheese.com/shropshire-blue/
Page 328, Position 4: You can buy bonds backed by Parmesan cheese.: http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-italy-bonds-parmesan-idUKKCN0VB1QZ
Page 329, Position 1: Manchester United has spent more money on players in the last three years than Leicester City has in the 132 years since it was founded.: http://www.skysports.com/football/news/12038/10268088/martin-tylers-leicester-stats-numbers-behind-fairytale-premier-league-title
Page 329, Position 2: MasterCard’s New York headquarters are on Purchase Street.: https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/about-mastercard/who-we-are/global-locations.html
Page 329, Position 3: A 2015 study found that banks give better deals on loans immediately after a robbery.: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21664151-after-armed-robberies-banks-give-out-loans-better-terms-crime-and-leniency
Page 329, Position 4: The most expensive transfer fee in British women’s football was for a fifth of what Wayne Rooney earns in a single week.: https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-5a6b-Womens-Football-Kirby-not-worried-about-record-transfer-fee#.V45FsZMrJEI
Page 330, Position 1: JFK once wrote a letter to his mother asking her not to contact Nikita Khrushchev without his permission.: http://archiveblog.jfklibrary.org/2013/05/a-mothers-day-tale-rose-kennedys-signature-collection/
Page 330, Position 2: The first performance-enhancing drug used in baseball was pulverised guinea-pig testicles.: https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/throwback-thursday-crushed-testicles-and-the-birth-of-sports-doping
Page 330, Position 3: The owners of Leicester City FC also own the world champion elephant polo team.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2016/04/09/how-leicester-city-owners-laid-down-template-for-premier-league/
Page 330, Position 4: The king of Thailand offered elephants as a gift to President Lincoln, but he declined.: http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/lincoln-rejects-the-king-of.html?
Page 331, Position 1: At Queen Victoria’s coronation they accidentally missed out a page of the ceremony and had to call her back.: http://martinmeenagh.blogspot.co.uk/2009_01_01_archive.html
Page 331, Position 2: Until the assassination of JFK, it was not a federal crime to to murder a US president.: http://crimeinthesuites.com/why-is-an-assault-on-congress-member-a-federal-crime/
Page 331, Position 3: In 1954, President Eisenhower’s motorcade gave a lift to two hitch-hikers.: http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/that-time-eisenhowers-presidential-motorcade-picked-up-1758787476
Page 331, Position 4: President Obama is the only person outside HBO allowed to watch advance screenings of Game of Thrones.: http://www.gq.com/story/advance-game-of-thrones-season-6-obama
Page 332, Position 2: Queen Victoria’s first name was Alexandrina.: http://www.regencyhistory.net/2013/10/the-christening-of-queen-victoria-24.html
Page 332, Position 3: Names of other European monarchs include Alfonso the Slobberer, Albert with the Pigtail, and Ivaylo the Cabbage.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/58623/60-historys-strangest-royal-epithets
Page 332, Position 4: Krill smells like boiled cabbage.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8844000/8844443.stm
Page 333, Position 1: According to the British Medical Journal, farting on a Petri dish from 5 cm away only results in bacterial growth if the farter is naked.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1121900/
Page 333, Position 2: Each person is surrounded by their own unique cloud of bacteria.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/11883473/People-emit-a-germ-cloud-of-bacteria-as-unique-as-a-fingerprint-study-finds.html
Page 333, Position 3: Bacteria invented the wheel.: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/bacterial-wheels-imaged-first-time
Page 333, Position 4: Cave paintings of horses often have five legs; when lit by fire, this creates the illusion of movement.: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xYhPAAAAMAAJ&q=horses+cave+five+legs&dq=horses+cave+five+legs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKy5exjsvNAhXlLsAKHacWB3AQ6AEIHDAA
Page 334, Position 1: Kubla Khan’s niece agreed to marry any man who beat her at wrestling, but demanded payment in horses if she were to win. She died unmarried with 100,000 horses.: http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/wrestler-princess
Page 334, Position 2: The deaths of two-thirds of people in the world go unrecorded.: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/news/7999/
Page 334, Position 3: According to Isaac Newton, the world will end in 2060.: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/the-world-will-end-in-2060-according-to-newton-7254673.html
Page 334, Position 4: The last census in Lebanon took place in 1932.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Lebanon
Page 335, Position 1: The last words of Franklin D. Roosevelt were: ‘I have a terrific headache.’: http://mentalfloss.com/article/51449/last-words-and-final-moments-38-presidents
Page 335, Position 2: When Henrik Ibsen’s nurse told him he was looking better, he said, ‘On the contrary,’ and died the next day.: http://www.phrases.org.uk/quotes/last-words/henrik-ibsen.html
Page 335, Position 3: According to psychics, the best place in Britain to contact the dead is Eastbourne.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/britains-most-psychic-towns-revealed-6821489
Page 335, Position 4: Art is older than humanity.: http://www.nature.com/news/homo-erectus-made-world-s-oldest-doodle-500-000-years-ago-1.16477
Page 336, Position 1: Since the first crew left for the ISS on 31 October 2000, there has not been a single day when the entire human race has been on Earth.: http://www.universetoday.com/38125/how-long-have-humans-been-on-earth/
Page 336, Position 2: In the last 50 years, insects’ footsteps have become quieter.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151006-nature-sounds-science-animals-music/ http://www.anantaraelephantpolo.com/news/king-power-clinches-royal-cup-in-nail-biting-final-at-elephant-polo-2016.html
Page 336, Position 3: The Lord of the Rings ends in the year: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=aWZzLPhY4o0C&q=1342#v=snippet&q=1342&f=false