THAT’S QUITE INTERESTING
GET ready to become the trivia king or queen of Christmas. The research team behind BBC2 quiz show QI have just published a new book full of their greatest facts and unusual statistics. From the nationality of specific Ikea produce to the truth behind man
■ One in four Americans didn’t read a book last year.
■ A book by George H. W. Bush’s dog spent 23 weeks on the US bestseller list.
■ The Speaker of the House of Commons has a cat called Order.
■ Cuttlefish have three hearts.
■ 35 tornadoes are reported in Britain each year.
■ In 1973, the entire Internet consisted of 43 computers.
■ iPhones in Venezuela cost the equivalent of £80,000 each.
■ Iceland has more volcanoes than footballers.
■ It is illegal to sell Stilton cheese made in the village of Stilton.
■ North Korea banned the disaster movie 2012 in case it jinxed the year 2012.
■ In French, Jaws became The Teeth of the Sea.
■ The spiders used in Spider-Man and Arachnophobia were social huntsman spiders and completely harmless.
■ In India, termites’ jaws were once used to close wounds.
■ Britons eat more onions than the French.
■ The average person has sex 5778 times in a lifetime.
■ Ostentation funk is a Brazilian musical genre that celebrates the middle-class lifestyle.
■ 40 per cent of working Britons have less than £100 in savings.
■ 1.7million Britons haven’t got a bank account.
■ The chief economist at the Bank of England has never owned a credit card.
■ The Pope doesn’t know how to use a computer.
■ Westminster Abbey has a cleric called Canon Ball.
■ The head of the UK police task force on knife crime is called Alfred Hitchcock.
■ The man who holds the British record for summiting Everest is a Mr K. Cool.
■ IKEA sofas have Swedish names, their rugs have Danish names and their beds have Norwegian names.
■ You can be blocked from getting a Swiss passport if your neighbours find you too annoying.
■ Horses competing in the Olympics have their own passports and fly business class.
■ A beer tap on an aeroplane would dispense only foam.
■ The world’s most popular beer is called Snow and is virtually unknown outside China.
■ The most common job in the UK is manager.
■ This year, the US Secret Service advertised for a “social media sarcasm spotter”.
■ In Sweden, you can buy toilet paper called Kräpp.
■ Post-it notes should be peeled with the sticky strip vertical, not horizontal.
■ Wrapping paper is 100 years old.
■ 1 in 100 Americans work for Walmart.
■ Only 4.2 per cent of Fortune 500 firm are run by women.
■ In World War II, it was illegal to post knitting patterns abroad in case they contained coded messages.
■ The first editorial assistant to work on the Oxford English Dictionary was sacked for industrial espionage.
■ Secret agents have to be trained to forget their advanced driving courses.
■ In World War I, battlefield observation stations were hidden inside trees.
■ The oak is the national tree of Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Serbia and the UK.
■ There are more trees on Earth than stars in Milky Way.
■ In 1946, two per
cent of UK households had a fridge.
■ Only four per cent of people who try to quit smoking without help succeed.
■ Five per cent of Chinese people have a passport.
■ Six million years ago, otters were bigger than leopards.
■ An analysis of eight million books published between 1776 and 2009 found that Britons were happiest in 1957.
■ More than 2400 nuclear bombs have been detonated since 1945.
■ 90 per cent of Vietnamese share just 14 surnames.
■ 90 per cent of lobsters escape from lobster traps.
■ The world’s heaviest aeroplane weighs as much as the statue Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.
■ Emma Martina Luigia Morano, the world’s oldest person when she died at 117, outlived 90 Italian governments.
■ In 2017, a Brazilian greatgrandmother discovered the figure of St Anthony that she’d prayed to for years was actually an elf from The Lord of the Rings.
■ 25 per cent of Americans think God decides who wins the Super Bowl.
■ The Romans used urine to clean their teeth.
■ Most of the white sand in the Caribbean is made of parrotfish droppings.
■ Kangaroos keep cool by licking their forearms.
■ The French air force have a squad of golden eagles, trained to hunt down drones.
■ From 1974 to 1992, a third of all tennis Grand Slams were won by Swedish men; today, there are none in the top 150.
■ In the Australian outback, there is a road used for testing supercars that has no speed limit.
■ Potholes in roads in 19th-century Argentina were filled with sheep’s heads.
■ An oyster thief in 19th-century London called Dando would eat dozens of oysters, then abscond without paying.
■ Wig-snatching was a common crime in 18th-century England.
■ In 2014, German police issued a fine to a one-armed cyclist for cycling with one arm.
■ The Olympic Village for the 1980 Winter Games in Upstate New York is now a prison.
■ A third of the 8.5million dogs in Britain are obese.
■ The largest cruise ships have a greater population than the City of London.
■ Prince Charles wants to reduce grey squirrel numbers by feeding them contraceptives hidden in Nutella.
■ It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament in a suit of armour.
■ Children under three cant imagine the future.
■ Adults think about the future three times as often as the past.
■ Stephen Hawking predicts the human race has only 1000 years left on Earth.
● The QI Christmas Special, BBC1, Boxing Day, 10pm