YOUR SMALL TALK AT PARTIES

URING World War II, Foyle’s bookshop London bomb-proofed itself by vering the roof with copies of Hitler’s ein Kampf. NNERS of the Diagram Prize for the ddest Book Title of the Year include ving with Crazy Buttocks and oking with Poo. ARBARA Cartland insisted on cluding the title of every one of her 3 novels in her Who’s Who entry. HE library at Balmoral Castle is heated a two-bar electric fire. OLICE in America arrest 100 efighters per year for arson. AMES IV of Scotland paid people to him extract their teeth. OSTMAN Pat’s full name is Patrick fton. PETITION to change the name of Bell d, in the West Midlands, was branded bit silly” by Stephen Young, 72, of nge Lane, Worcester. OSTING a letter from London to inburgh in 1818 cost as much as the erage daily wage. THE designer of the Spitfire hated its name. He said: “It’s just the sort of bloody silly name they would choose.” BUMBLEBEES’ penises explode at the end of sex. SOME Scottish farmers use lasers to protect their livestock from eagles. ONE per cent of middle-aged honeybees work as undertakers. IN MEDIEVAL Scotland, the national drink was claret. IN ACCORDANCE with her wishes, Elizabeth Taylor, right, was late for her own funeral. THE population of Bangladesh is 114 per cent that of Russia’s but lives in an area 115 times smaller. IN 1926, Poland gave the US a 150th birthday card signed by 20 per cent of the population. PERSHITTIE is a 19th-century Scots word meaning “hard to please”. A GOAT with the rank of lance corporal in the British Army was demoted for inappropriate behaviour on the Queen’s birthday. THE first tickets for the Glastonbury Festival cost £1 and came with a free bottle of milk. TO BE counted as an island in 19th-century Scotland, a piece of land had to have enough pasture to support one sheep. THE Vatican uses milk from the Pope’s cows to paint its buildings. THE Pope has eight titles. None of them is “the Pope”. THE person who writes about legal marijuana for Forbes magazine is called Julie Weed. ONLY two land animals live entirely on seaweed – the North Ronaldsay sheep and the Galapagos marine iguana. SEA urchins wear dead hermit crabs as hats. THE earliest re-enactments of the American Civil War took place during the American Civil War. IN 2017, Glasgow was voted the most dangerous as well as the friendliest city in Scotland. THE world’s shortest international bridge connects Spain to Portugal and is 3.2 metres long. YOU can rent a toboggan to travel between the Portuguese towns of Funchal and Monte. MALE brown widow spiders prefer to mate with older females, even though they are more likely to be eaten by them afterwards. THE first advert on Channel 5 was for Chanel No5. HUMANS evolved eyebrows so they would look friendly to one another. IN THE 10 seasons of Friends, the six main characters drink 1154 cups of coffee. IN SEVENTEENTH century Japan, people put chillies in their socks to keep their toes warm. SPRINKLING black pepper into a load of laundry will stop it fading. CROWS can count to six. IN 2012, thieves in the Czech Republic stole an entire ski lift. STONEHENGE was built by the Welsh. CHINA’S Tomb-Sweeping Day is for tending relatives’ graves, and for young couples to have first dates. OIL Nationalisation Day is a public holiday in Iran. BARACK Obama wore the same dinner jacket at formal occasions for all eight years of his presidency. US president Calvin Coolidge made his sons wear tuxedos at dinner. AT the age of 69, author Victor Hugo had sex with 40 people in five months. IN 2017, employees at a Manchester call centre were punished by having a dead squid dropped on their faces. THE first Western eyewitness account of India described it as having ants the size of foxes.