How dogs tell the time
…why buses come in threes, how bubble wrap was meant to be wallpaper and other amazing facts in a mind-blowing new book from the QI quiz boffins
THE team behind the QI quiz show has been at it again, compiling a book of intriguing facts and incredible answers to some of life’s most headscratching questions . . .
The Abba museum in Stockholm has a piano that is linked to band member Benny Andersson’s home. Whenever he sits down to practise, it plays what he’s playing. You have to use an artificial Christmas tree for 20 years before it becomes more environmentally friendly than a locally sourced real one. The oldest-known artificial tree still in use was bought in 1886.
ANTS can count — in fact, they find their way home by counting their steps to a food source and back again. Scientists attached tiny stilts (made out of pig hair bristles) to a group of ants’ legs after they’d set off in search of food. They found the ants with extended legs overshot their nests on the return journey, revealing they have an internal pedometer to help them get around.
When in London, Queen Louise of Sweden (who was also the Duke of edinburgh’s aunt) always carried a card saying, ‘I am the Queen of Sweden’ in case she was hit by a bus. even DNA tests can’t tell twins apart — but dogs can, by smelling them.
UNTIL the FBI’s fingerprint database was digitalised in 2014, it was kept on 83 million cards.
DOGS may ‘tell the time’ by using their sense of smell: if a dog’s owner usually comes home at the same time every day, then the person’s scent levels around the house will be at their lowest point just before they return, which comes to mean the imminent arrival of their owner. There’S a light bulb at a fire station in California that has been illuminated since 1901. It took a brief break when it was moved between two different stations, but it holds the guinness World record for the longest-burning light bulb.
TO COPE with the increased demand for electricity around big televised events — for example when viewers jump up in an ad break to make a cup of tea, known as ‘TV pickup’ — the National Grid has a team dedicated to forecasting these surges, even following soap opera plot lines to plan for dramatic moments that might attract high viewing figures.
BUBBLE Wrap was invented in 1957 when its creators were trying to make a textured novelty wallpaper. They stuck two shower curtains together and ended up with a sheet of bubbly plastic. They hit on the idea of selling it to IBM, which had recently launched a new computer and needed a way of protecting it in transit. BuSeS often come in threes because of a phenomenon known as ‘bus bunching’: if a bus is delayed, by the time it reaches its next stop there will be more people than usual waiting. And thus takes longer letting everyone on, which means the bus will be even later at its next stop. There the same thing will have happened, and this will continue around the route. Meanwhile, the bus behind the delayed one will find its stops emptier (because the waiting passengers caught the earlier delayed bus), so it will gain on the first bus, and so on.
THE rock band Slade worried the song title Because I Love You looked a bit wet for their image — so they chose the more hard-hitting Coz I Luv You; words that might, according to lead singer Noddy Holder, be easily seen ‘on toilet walls in the Midlands’.
AN ELEPHANT’S trunk contains up to 40,000 muscles. By dilating its nostrils an elephant can increase the trunk’s volume by 64 per cent, which means they can suck up five litres of water in under two seconds. elephants can inhale air through their trunk at 336mph — faster than a Japanese bullet train.
ABOUT one person in five is a ‘high attractor type’ to mosquitoes, but your biteability depends on several factors. Mosquitoes land on people with Type-o blood twice as often as people with Type-A. They also prefer larger people who exhale carbon dioxide in greater quantities (which is why children often go unbitten, while their parents suffer), those who have been drinking and those wearing dark colours.
ASTRONAUTS on the International Space Station don’t bother with laundry — their dirty clothes are launched into space in a vessel which then burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
DOGS can suffer from a strained tail if they get too happy.
‘SATURDAY-night palsy’ is a limp wrist condition that can last for several weeks, and is caused by sleeping on a hard chair with one arm over the back. It is so called because it most commonly happens to people who are the worse for wear after a big night out.
THE two-and-a-half-hour final episode of M*A*S*H was watched by about 125 million Americans. When it finished, the 1 million New Yorkers flushing their toilets released an extra 6.7 million gallons of water into the city’s sewers.
SPEED cameras were invented by Dutch racing driver Maurice gatsonides to record his own lap times. he later sold his device — which measured how long it took him to travel between two wires and then calculated his speed — to the police. The cameras — known as ‘gatsos’ — are still in use, although the systems now use radars and lasers. ‘I am often caught by my own speed cameras’, he later said, ‘and find hefty fines on my doormat.’ A 2011 survey found that earworms, when a song gets stuck in your head, affect around 90 per cent of people at least once a week. It happens more often with songs that are upbeat and have more predictable elements. If your brain already has a lot to process, it might grab hold of a repetitive idea — or tune — and stick with it. Chewing gum or trying to solve anagrams can help ‘delete’ them, as they give your brain another repetitive thing to think about.
IN 2005, Christie’s and Sotheby’s held a rock, paper, scissors match to decide who would auction off a client’s $20 million art collection. Christie’s won with scissors.
WHILE airborne, frigate birds nap in 12-second chunks, which means they can stay on the wing for up to two months at a time.
FANS of Monty python’s graham Chapman, annoyed that he was not given an official plaque on the 20th anniversary of his death in 2009, erected one in his memory, which reads: ‘Jacob von hogflume, 1864–1909, inventor of time travel, lived here in 2189’.
IN 2011, researchers investigating the efficacy of cold calls made more than 6,000 of them and found that they got one appointment or referral for every 209 calls they made. Those calls represented 7.5 hours of work, so if a company sells a product with a high enough value and pays its callers a low enough salary, it does make financial sense.
COCKERELS crow so loudly that they have special ear canals which close off when they crow, so that they don’t deafen themselves. In 2020, following an incident on a bus, Transport For greater Manchester announced that live snakes are not acceptable face coverings.
A COUNTRY’S birth rate typically drops nine months after its football team does well in an international competition.