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Quite Interesting Facts #3
1,411 Quite Interesting Facts to Knock You Sideways
1,411 Quite Interesting Facts to Knock You Sideways is a gold mine of wide-ranging, eye-opening, brain-bursting nuggets of trivia that's impossible to put down, another "treasure trove of factoids" (National Public Radio, Weekend Edition).
Did you know?
Orchids can get jet lag
Lizards can't walk and breathe at the same time
Frank Sinatra took a shower 12 times a day
Ladybug orgasms last for 30 minutes
There are 177,147 ways to tie a tie
Traffic lights existed before cars
The soil in your garden is 2 million years old
Did you know?
Orchids can get jet lag
Lizards can't walk and breathe at the same time
Frank Sinatra took a shower 12 times a day
Ladybug orgasms last for 30 minutes
There are 177,147 ways to tie a tie
Traffic lights existed before cars
The soil in your garden is 2 million years old
400 pages, Hardcover
First published September 30, 2014
83 people are currently reading
477 people want to read
About the author
John Lloyd
227 books139 followersJohn Hardress Wilfred Lloyd is an English television and radio comedy producer and writer. His television work includes Not the Nine O'Clock News, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Spitting Image, Blackadder and QI. He is currently the presenter of BBC Radio 4's The Museum of Curiosity.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
December 13, 2019
This was a fun light read
October 22, 2015
Sideways? Over 1,400 times?? Well if you think that, Messrs Lloyd, John Mitchinson, and James Harkin—game ON! I poked through these allegedly sideways-knocking facts. I found that some are naughty (dildos are illegal in Texas), others are charmingly useless (One o’clock in the morning is the peak time for moth activity), and still others I just made up right now in my head (JFK was a champion collegiate javelin thrower). Many, like “None of an octopus’ limbs knows what any of the others are doing” are interesting, but are also simply commonsense, no? Hundreds of them, like “Thomas Edison invented the tattoo pen,” are merely interesting, not “knock you sideways.” But I read on and things started to get, well, exciting. For example, did you know that duck-billed platypuses do not have stomachs? That human teeth evolved from fish scales? That before the invention of refrigerators, Russians and Finns kept milk fresh by putting live frogs in it? And then—oh ho ho THEN we come to page 254. In spite of my rock-hard resolve to not be knocked sideways, I was knocked sideways hard and loudly. Yes, page 254 contained four verifiable, shockingly awesome facts, four schemingly and fiendishly devious facts, four facts so momentous as to knock me sideways—and then some. I can’t even tell you what these facts are for the sheer mighty weight of their factiness would hammer down on you like so many clouds turning into butter and falling all over everything in a great, savory heap that may well blot out humanity. To my nemeses Messrs Lloyd, Mitchinson, and Harkin: You win! And the absolute worst part is that all the book’s facts are verifiable through qi.com/1411; there one simply types “the relevant page number into the search box. Click on the online sources for a wide range of background material.” To burst wide the heart valves of librarians everywhere, there’s also an index. VERDICT: This is an ideal book for reluctant readers. And for the bathroom.
Find reviews of books for men at Books for Dudes, Books for Dudes, the online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal. Copyright Library Journal.
Find reviews of books for men at Books for Dudes, Books for Dudes, the online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal. Copyright Library Journal.
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November 21, 2015
This are super fast reads, which means I gobble them up... and then promptly forget most of the facts. But I still super enjoy reading stuff like this. Not sure most of the facts really "knocked me sideways" but it was fun all the same.
Favorite fact: 1 in 10 Americans think HTML is a sexually transmitted disease.
Favorite fact: 1 in 10 Americans think HTML is a sexually transmitted disease.
June 14, 2016
I should be the target audience for this type of book as I love trivia and arcane facts, but I must confess that this book left me cold.
Some interesting points, no sideways movement whatsoever. Hey ho.
Some interesting points, no sideways movement whatsoever. Hey ho.
June 12, 2016
Not sure who claimed that these facts were interesting. There are a few that are though but the rest are pointless and some are just dumb. To any lover of trivia and facts some of these were well known.
It appears the author did try to organize it so that facts on the same subject would be group together. It did not work really well and some pages would jump from subjects.
One thing that really bugged me was a fact on page 16. All the facts on the page covered alcohol and the third fact states that...
*The crew of the Marie Celeste left 1,700 barrels of alcohol behind them.
I think the authors should have made it known the alcohol was the nondrinkable kind. It makes me wonder how many more facts are lacking complete information.
They do have a website where you can enter a page number and it tells you where they got the fact so you can check each fact. I did check it out and some are links but others are just the name of a book and the author or a magazine name name and date. You would be better off googling the facts if you want more sources.
It appears the author did try to organize it so that facts on the same subject would be group together. It did not work really well and some pages would jump from subjects.
One thing that really bugged me was a fact on page 16. All the facts on the page covered alcohol and the third fact states that...
*The crew of the Marie Celeste left 1,700 barrels of alcohol behind them.
I think the authors should have made it known the alcohol was the nondrinkable kind. It makes me wonder how many more facts are lacking complete information.
They do have a website where you can enter a page number and it tells you where they got the fact so you can check each fact. I did check it out and some are links but others are just the name of a book and the author or a magazine name name and date. You would be better off googling the facts if you want more sources.
December 16, 2015
This book was so much fun! It was a quick and easy read packed full of some of the most obscure facts I've ever read. I will probably end up buying this book and the other two by these authors. There is also a link to their site where they link to all the documentation if you find any of the facts too impossible to believe.
April 19, 2015
Loved it. Up to the standard of its two predecessors. Look forward to the next volume!
August 20, 2020
Still refusing to admit that I'm addicted to QI in any way, shape or form...
It's my happy place :D
It's my happy place :D
December 31, 2020
This book is like cheese cake. Sometimes you become so consumed with the taste of the facts that you wish to dig up the source and story of the facts but forget to do so by enthralled by the enigma of the next fact and it goes on.
People’s interests differ individual to individual. Below I’m mentioning only those facts which seemed interesting or nerve wrecking to me. Many of these need further digging up as there are likely many pseudofacts in the book.
I’d request anyone reading this review to look up and satiate my quieries by enunciating the actual story/history if it is known to you.
On D-Day, J. D. Salinger fought with six chapters of The Catcher in the Rye in his backpack.
Charles Darwin let his children use the original manuscript of On the Origin of Species as drawing pape.
The biggest dam built by beavers is twice as long as the Hoover Dam.
There is enough concrete in the Hoover Dam to build a road across the US from coast to coast.
In 2003, Morocco offered Iraq 2,000 monkeys to help them detonate mines.
Human beings have as many brain cells in their stomachs as cats have in their brains.
The human nose can recognise over 1,000,000,000,000 different smells.
The smell of a man is as stressful to mice as a three-minute swim. The smell of women doesn’t bother them.
Female students in China outperform men to such an extent that some universities have introduced a male quota.
The more rivers an area has, the more languages will evolve there.
George Eyser, who won three golds, two silvers and a bronze at the 1904 Olympics, had a wooden leg. which event?
Coldplay used to be called Starfish.
There are more people living in mobile homes in the US than live in the whole of the Netherlands.
Reindeer have golden eyes in summer and blue eyes in winter.
There are about 294,000,000,000,000 leaves in the world; for every leaf there are 340 ants.
If the rest of the planet’s fresh water disappeared, there would be enough left in Lake Baikal to supply humanity for 50 years.
As soon as they find a rock to anchor themselves to, young sea squirts eat their own brains.
The world record holder of the longest accurate archery shot has no arms.
The Royal Navy uses blasts of Britney Spears’s ‘Oops! . . . I Did It Again’ to scare off Somali pirates.
At his execution, Louis XVI was too fat to fit into the guillotine.
In 1944, nine US airmen were shot down over Chichi Jima. Eight of them were executed (four of whom were also eaten) and one (George H. W. Bush) went on to become president.
Fighter pilots in stressful situations release such large amounts of hormones that they may ejaculate.
The Japanese sleep two hours a night less than the Chinese.
Blind people are four times more likely to have nightmares than sighted people. (What do they see?)
Sleeping on your stomach is the most likely position to produce erotic dreams.
There are 100,000 more bicycles in Amsterdam than there are people.
Bananas are used to make kimonos.
New Zealand has an official National Wizard.
The coastline of Norway is long enough to circle the planet 2½ times. (How?)
When the Arctic Monkeys formed, none of them could play a musical instrument. (wow, motivation)
Ernest Hemingway’s wife lost his entire life’s work by leaving it on a train.
During his lifetime Lewis Carroll wrote 98,721 letters.
People can recognise each other 90% of the time just from the way they walk.
To perfect Hercule Poirot’s walk, actor David Suchet clasped a coin between his buttocks.
Salamanders can hear with their lungs.
If you stood on the Martian equator at noon, it would feel like summer at your feet and winter at your head.
From 2000 bc to 1992 ad, astronomers discovered three new planets. In 2014, 700 were found in a single day. whow?
Seahorses beat their fins almost as fast as hummingbirds beat their wings.
The Milky Way gives birth to a new star every 50 days.
The closer a woman is to the equator, the more likely she is to give birth to a girl. (Why??)
Newborn babies of both sexes can produce milk.
Louis X and Charles VIII of France both died as a result of playing tennis.
Vultures can turn a dead body into a skeleton in under five hours.
Wherever a leaf is in the world, its internal temperature is always 21ºC.
Prisoners on Alcatraz always had hot showers so they didn’t get acclimatised to cold water and try to escape by swimming.
There are 20 million sea containers in the world.
During the Vietnam War, each US soldier took 40 amphetamine tablets a year.
The largest lizard in Australia can run as fast as Usain Bolt.
AKB48, Japan’s largest pop group, has 89 members.
Human teeth evolved from fish scales. (What’s and how’s the connection made?)
Without bats there would be no tequila. It’s made from the agave plant, which is pollinated by bats.
Tequila heated to 800ºC can be made into diamonds. (dig up the actual challenge which is not mentioned here)
Grapes are poisonous to dogs.
Avocados are toxic to horses.
Falling in love costs you, on average, two close friends.
In ancient Rome, fathers had the legal right to kill their children.
Before eating, Nikola Tesla, the ‘father of electricity’, polished each piece of cutlery with 18 napkins.
Hamsters can store half their own weight in food in their cheeks.
NASA estimates that the near-Earth asteroid, Eros, contains 20 billion tonnes
of gold.
3,079 chemical compounds have been identified in human urine.
Virtually all Koreans lack the gene that produces smelly armpits.
40 million tonnes of dust are blown from the Sahara to the Amazon every year.
Accents in Britain change noticeably every 25 miles.
The largest known prime number is 17 million digits long.
There are enough viruses on Earth to fill 150 Super Bowl stadiums.
In 1384, a 10-year-old Hungarian girl called Hedwig was crowned King of Poland. what’s the story/history behind?
Cleopatra’s Needle was 1,000 years old when Cleopatra was born.
Seven US Presidents were born in log cabins.
For the last three months of his life, US President James Garfield had to be fed everything through his anus.
The first armoured presidential car was a Cadillac that had previously belonged to Al Capone.
A man in China hired virtual assassins to kill his son’s World of Warcraft character so he’d stop playing.
In 19th-century Maryland, it was illegal to sell mineral water on a Sunday.
George Washington is worshipped as a god by Japanese Shinto priests in Hawaii. why??
The Persians invented horse-riding and trousers.
Google employees are encouraged to use a fifth of their time at work on their own non-Google projects.
Everyone has at least 50,000 thoughts a day but 95% of them are the same as the day before.
Dry cleaning was invented when someone knocked over a kerosene lamp and noticed it removed stains from their clothes.
People with higher incomes generally prefer their loo paper to unravel over the roll, while those with lower incomes prefer it to go under. why??
Jack Kerouac typed his novel On the Road on a 120-foot roll of paper in three weeks. which novel?
400 million gallons of raw sewage flow out of New York every year; the same as the volume of petrol Americans use every day.
Sweden is so good at recycling that they’ve run out of rubbish and import 80,000 tonnes a year from Norway.
Abraham Lincoln failed to get elected five times to Congress and the Senate before being elected president.
Five years before he won Wimbledon, Fred Perry was world table tennis champion.
Before he became president, Bashar al-Assad was head of the Syrian Computer Club.
To be appstracted is to be distracted by an app.
Hawaiian, Icelandic and Zulu have given more words to English than Welsh or Cornish.
Before humans reached Hawaii, the dominant animals there were giant ducks.
In the 1890s, Samoan cricket matches had teams of up to 150 a side and lasted for over a fortnight.
Despite producing milk, neither the platypus nor the echidna have nipples.
People are more likely to co-operate with you if you give them something warm to hold.
The clown Joseph Grimaldi was seen by 1 in 8 people in Victorian London.
Prince Charles runs his car on biofuel made from wine.
Only a fifth of the Sahara desert is sand.
At least a tenth of the population of Mauritania are slaves.
The Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Gárcia Márquez was married for 55 years. Every day his wife Mercedes put a yellow rose on his desk.
Winston Churchill was a druid.
Sylvester Stallone was so broke before his script for Rocky was accepted that he sold his dog for $25. A few weeks later, he bought it back for $15,000.
Pavarotti holds the world record for the most curtain calls: he bowed 165 times over the course of an hour.
The caffeine extracted from decaf coffee is sold to soft-drinks manufacturers.
The universe is expanding at 230 miles a second.
The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is twice the size of Europe.
The hole in a guillotine through which you stick your neck is called a lunette.
Human flesh tastes like pork but looks like beef.
You can burn 20% more fat by exercising in the morning on an empty stomach.
The human brain has enough memory to hold three million hours of television.
Ross from Friends celebrated his 29th birthday in three consecutive seasons.
Matt LeBlanc was down to his last $11 when he got the part of Joey in Friends.
Tutankhamun was the only ancient Egyptian who was mummified with an erect penis.
One in 20 couples argue so much on their wedding night they fail to consummate their marriage.
When Peter the Great found out his wife had had an affair, he had her lover’s head chopped off and presented to her in a jar.
It is illegal in Vancouver to build a new house with doorknobs. why ??
A chemical in ships’ paint causes female snails to grow penises and explode.
4% of the sand on Normandy beaches is made up of tiny metal particles from the D-Day landings.
Before fridges were invented, Russians and Finns kept their milk fresh by putting live frogs in it. what’s the secret?
The man who invented the water bed was unable to patent it because it had already appeared in science-fiction novels.
The first collection of poetry published by the three Brontë sisters sold fewer copies than it had authors.
Mouse sperm is bigger than elephant sperm.
The amniotic fluid in the human womb renews itself completely every three hours.
The Bloody Mary has been scientifically proven to be the best alcoholic drink to enjoy on an aeroplane.
It takes 700 grapes to make one bottle of wine.
It takes a million cloud droplets to make one raindrop.
Khaki is Urdu for ‘dust’.
J. R. R. Tolkien was rejected for a Nobel Prize in Literature on the grounds of his ‘poor storytelling’.
Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin adopted the ‘R. R.’ as a homage to Tolkien.
For inspiration, D. H. Lawrence liked to climb mulberry trees naked.
Every leech has 18 testicles and two ovaries.
A leech can take up to 200 days to digest a meal.
The largest sperm bank in the world does not accept donations from redheads because of ‘insufficient demand’.
It is illegal to take mineral water into Nigeria. why?
Queen Victoria had jewellery made out of her children’s milk teeth.
At 21, Mussolini was homeless and living under a bridge in Switzerland.
Waterloo Bridge is called the Ladies Bridge because it was mainly built by women.
Kissing was banned in England in 1439.
It takes five people to extract semen from a vulture.
you earn £20,250 a year, you’re one of the world’s richest 1%.
Aristotle advised Alexander the Great not to let his soldiers drink mint tea because it would make them think more of love than war.
Bacteria remain eternally young.
The lottery of the Zimbabwe Banking Corporation was won in 2000 by the president of Zimbabwe.
President Mugabe has been in power 50% longer than the lifetime of the average Zimbabwean.
Saddam Hussein’s regime destroyed 90% of Iraq’s marshes.
Members of the Yazidi religion of Iraq are forbidden to eat lettuce.
Nero ate leeks to improve his singing voice.
Edward II employed a ‘tumbler’ who fell off his horse to amuse the king for 20 shillings a time.
King Francis I of France hung the Mona Lisa in his bathroom.
The Japanese word tsundoku means buying books and not getting around to reading them. (yup they got a single word for us)
The first ever webcam was in the computer lab at Cambridge University. It was trained on the coffee pot in the corridor to save the scientists making pointless trips when it had run out.
A male cheetah can make a female ovulate by barking at her.
An elephant call can be heard anywhere within 100 square miles.
Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ slogan was inspired by the last words of a murderer.
The villains in Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the
Lambs are all based on the same man.
In Bolivia, llama droppings are used to purify water.
Fearing a German invasion, in 1940 Alan Turing converted his assets into silver ingots and buried them in Buckinghamshire. He spent the rest of his life failing
to find them.
Frank Sinatra took a shower 12 times a day.
Abraham Lincoln’s wife was an opium addict.
Cannibalism in the UK is legal.
People eat less in subdued lighting.
The International Space Station travels at five miles a second.
A day on the International Space Station is 1½ hours long.
Disney was sued by a biologist for defaming the character of hyenas in The Lion King.
Perfect coffee should consist of 17.42 units of water for every unit of coffee.
The longer a whisky is aged, the longer it takes for your body to get rid of the alcohol.
The average Belarusian drinks 17.5 litres of alcohol a year.
There are more species of plant on Cape Town’s Table Mountain than in the
whole of the UK.
Colonel Sanders’s career as a lawyer came to an end when he assaulted his client in court.
The Great Pyramid of Giza was built by 100,000 people working 10 hours a day for 20 years.
It is cheaper to send Scottish cod to China to be filleted and sent back again than to fillet the fish in Scotland.
The genome of wheat is five times larger than the human genome.
Elizabeth I invented gingerbread men.
Robert Louis Stevenson dreamt the plot of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
It took 17 takes for E. B. White to record the death scene for the audiobook of
Charlotte’s Web without breaking down.
Franz Kafka liked to exercise naked in front of the window.
All the ants in the world weigh about the same as all the people.
There are more stars in the universe than words have been spoken by all of the humans who have ever lived.
Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton invented underwater spectacles so he could read in the bath.
The Pentagon is successfully hacked 250,000 times a year, and unsuccessfully hacked 10 million times a day.
The Lord of the Rings holds the record for the greatest number of false feet used in a single movie: 60,000.
The cast of Riverdance have worn out 14,000 pairs of shoes.
In imperial Japan, high-born women peed standing-up so as not to crease their kimonos.
At Stalin’s funeral 500 people were trampled to death.
There are more libraries in Britain’s prisons than there are in its schools
The average Internet user goes online 34 times a day.
It’s a Wonderful Life won just one Oscar: for Technical Achievement in developing a new kind of artificial snow.
‘At sparrowsfart’ is slang for ‘very early in the morning’.
The largest molecule in nature is chromosome 1. All human beings have two of them, and each contains 10 billion atoms.
The California mite Paratarsotomus macropalpis can run 300 of its own body lengths per second: 20 times faster than a cheetah.
A cheetah can go from 0 to 40 mph in three strides.
385 million years ago, fish had fingers. Any proof ??
Four million years ago, rats in South America were the size of hippos.
Because the Pacific island of Guam has no sand, all the roads are made of coral.
95% of the underwater world is yet to be explored.
Emperor penguins can dive deeper than the height of the Empire State Building.
There is more water in the Earth’s core than in all of its oceans
If you hold your breath and put your face in cold water, your heart will immediately slow down by 25%.
The age boys reach puberty has dropped by 2½ months every decade since the mid-1700s.
A bite from a Russell’s pit viper can send the victim back through puberty.
1 in 10 Icelanders will publish a book at some time in their life.
The film of Gone with the Wind is banned in North Korea, but virtually every adult there has read the book.
The world’s oldest building is a Japanese hut built half a million years before the Great Pyramid. which hut is that?
During its lifetime, the International Space Station will be hit by 100,000 meteoroids.
There are 1,397 known asteroids capable of causing ‘major devastation’ if they hit the Earth.
The theoretical process of knocking a meteoroid off course with a nuclear explosion is called an ‘X-ray slap’.
Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit was made by a bra manufacturer.
Smaller animals experience time as passing more slowly. How was it found out?
Tipping the hat comes from the military salute, which in turn comes from men in armour lifting the visor to show their faces.
Emperor Hirohito’s final speech to the Japanese nation was the first time his subjects had ever heard his voice.
People’s interests differ individual to individual. Below I’m mentioning only those facts which seemed interesting or nerve wrecking to me. Many of these need further digging up as there are likely many pseudofacts in the book.
I’d request anyone reading this review to look up and satiate my quieries by enunciating the actual story/history if it is known to you.
On D-Day, J. D. Salinger fought with six chapters of The Catcher in the Rye in his backpack.
Charles Darwin let his children use the original manuscript of On the Origin of Species as drawing pape.
The biggest dam built by beavers is twice as long as the Hoover Dam.
There is enough concrete in the Hoover Dam to build a road across the US from coast to coast.
In 2003, Morocco offered Iraq 2,000 monkeys to help them detonate mines.
Human beings have as many brain cells in their stomachs as cats have in their brains.
The human nose can recognise over 1,000,000,000,000 different smells.
The smell of a man is as stressful to mice as a three-minute swim. The smell of women doesn’t bother them.
Female students in China outperform men to such an extent that some universities have introduced a male quota.
The more rivers an area has, the more languages will evolve there.
George Eyser, who won three golds, two silvers and a bronze at the 1904 Olympics, had a wooden leg. which event?
Coldplay used to be called Starfish.
There are more people living in mobile homes in the US than live in the whole of the Netherlands.
Reindeer have golden eyes in summer and blue eyes in winter.
There are about 294,000,000,000,000 leaves in the world; for every leaf there are 340 ants.
If the rest of the planet’s fresh water disappeared, there would be enough left in Lake Baikal to supply humanity for 50 years.
As soon as they find a rock to anchor themselves to, young sea squirts eat their own brains.
The world record holder of the longest accurate archery shot has no arms.
The Royal Navy uses blasts of Britney Spears’s ‘Oops! . . . I Did It Again’ to scare off Somali pirates.
At his execution, Louis XVI was too fat to fit into the guillotine.
In 1944, nine US airmen were shot down over Chichi Jima. Eight of them were executed (four of whom were also eaten) and one (George H. W. Bush) went on to become president.
Fighter pilots in stressful situations release such large amounts of hormones that they may ejaculate.
The Japanese sleep two hours a night less than the Chinese.
Blind people are four times more likely to have nightmares than sighted people. (What do they see?)
Sleeping on your stomach is the most likely position to produce erotic dreams.
There are 100,000 more bicycles in Amsterdam than there are people.
Bananas are used to make kimonos.
New Zealand has an official National Wizard.
The coastline of Norway is long enough to circle the planet 2½ times. (How?)
When the Arctic Monkeys formed, none of them could play a musical instrument. (wow, motivation)
Ernest Hemingway’s wife lost his entire life’s work by leaving it on a train.
During his lifetime Lewis Carroll wrote 98,721 letters.
People can recognise each other 90% of the time just from the way they walk.
To perfect Hercule Poirot’s walk, actor David Suchet clasped a coin between his buttocks.
Salamanders can hear with their lungs.
If you stood on the Martian equator at noon, it would feel like summer at your feet and winter at your head.
From 2000 bc to 1992 ad, astronomers discovered three new planets. In 2014, 700 were found in a single day. whow?
Seahorses beat their fins almost as fast as hummingbirds beat their wings.
The Milky Way gives birth to a new star every 50 days.
The closer a woman is to the equator, the more likely she is to give birth to a girl. (Why??)
Newborn babies of both sexes can produce milk.
Louis X and Charles VIII of France both died as a result of playing tennis.
Vultures can turn a dead body into a skeleton in under five hours.
Wherever a leaf is in the world, its internal temperature is always 21ºC.
Prisoners on Alcatraz always had hot showers so they didn’t get acclimatised to cold water and try to escape by swimming.
There are 20 million sea containers in the world.
During the Vietnam War, each US soldier took 40 amphetamine tablets a year.
The largest lizard in Australia can run as fast as Usain Bolt.
AKB48, Japan’s largest pop group, has 89 members.
Human teeth evolved from fish scales. (What’s and how’s the connection made?)
Without bats there would be no tequila. It’s made from the agave plant, which is pollinated by bats.
Tequila heated to 800ºC can be made into diamonds. (dig up the actual challenge which is not mentioned here)
Grapes are poisonous to dogs.
Avocados are toxic to horses.
Falling in love costs you, on average, two close friends.
In ancient Rome, fathers had the legal right to kill their children.
Before eating, Nikola Tesla, the ‘father of electricity’, polished each piece of cutlery with 18 napkins.
Hamsters can store half their own weight in food in their cheeks.
NASA estimates that the near-Earth asteroid, Eros, contains 20 billion tonnes
of gold.
3,079 chemical compounds have been identified in human urine.
Virtually all Koreans lack the gene that produces smelly armpits.
40 million tonnes of dust are blown from the Sahara to the Amazon every year.
Accents in Britain change noticeably every 25 miles.
The largest known prime number is 17 million digits long.
There are enough viruses on Earth to fill 150 Super Bowl stadiums.
In 1384, a 10-year-old Hungarian girl called Hedwig was crowned King of Poland. what’s the story/history behind?
Cleopatra’s Needle was 1,000 years old when Cleopatra was born.
Seven US Presidents were born in log cabins.
For the last three months of his life, US President James Garfield had to be fed everything through his anus.
The first armoured presidential car was a Cadillac that had previously belonged to Al Capone.
A man in China hired virtual assassins to kill his son’s World of Warcraft character so he’d stop playing.
In 19th-century Maryland, it was illegal to sell mineral water on a Sunday.
George Washington is worshipped as a god by Japanese Shinto priests in Hawaii. why??
The Persians invented horse-riding and trousers.
Google employees are encouraged to use a fifth of their time at work on their own non-Google projects.
Everyone has at least 50,000 thoughts a day but 95% of them are the same as the day before.
Dry cleaning was invented when someone knocked over a kerosene lamp and noticed it removed stains from their clothes.
People with higher incomes generally prefer their loo paper to unravel over the roll, while those with lower incomes prefer it to go under. why??
Jack Kerouac typed his novel On the Road on a 120-foot roll of paper in three weeks. which novel?
400 million gallons of raw sewage flow out of New York every year; the same as the volume of petrol Americans use every day.
Sweden is so good at recycling that they’ve run out of rubbish and import 80,000 tonnes a year from Norway.
Abraham Lincoln failed to get elected five times to Congress and the Senate before being elected president.
Five years before he won Wimbledon, Fred Perry was world table tennis champion.
Before he became president, Bashar al-Assad was head of the Syrian Computer Club.
To be appstracted is to be distracted by an app.
Hawaiian, Icelandic and Zulu have given more words to English than Welsh or Cornish.
Before humans reached Hawaii, the dominant animals there were giant ducks.
In the 1890s, Samoan cricket matches had teams of up to 150 a side and lasted for over a fortnight.
Despite producing milk, neither the platypus nor the echidna have nipples.
People are more likely to co-operate with you if you give them something warm to hold.
The clown Joseph Grimaldi was seen by 1 in 8 people in Victorian London.
Prince Charles runs his car on biofuel made from wine.
Only a fifth of the Sahara desert is sand.
At least a tenth of the population of Mauritania are slaves.
The Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Gárcia Márquez was married for 55 years. Every day his wife Mercedes put a yellow rose on his desk.
Winston Churchill was a druid.
Sylvester Stallone was so broke before his script for Rocky was accepted that he sold his dog for $25. A few weeks later, he bought it back for $15,000.
Pavarotti holds the world record for the most curtain calls: he bowed 165 times over the course of an hour.
The caffeine extracted from decaf coffee is sold to soft-drinks manufacturers.
The universe is expanding at 230 miles a second.
The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is twice the size of Europe.
The hole in a guillotine through which you stick your neck is called a lunette.
Human flesh tastes like pork but looks like beef.
You can burn 20% more fat by exercising in the morning on an empty stomach.
The human brain has enough memory to hold three million hours of television.
Ross from Friends celebrated his 29th birthday in three consecutive seasons.
Matt LeBlanc was down to his last $11 when he got the part of Joey in Friends.
Tutankhamun was the only ancient Egyptian who was mummified with an erect penis.
One in 20 couples argue so much on their wedding night they fail to consummate their marriage.
When Peter the Great found out his wife had had an affair, he had her lover’s head chopped off and presented to her in a jar.
It is illegal in Vancouver to build a new house with doorknobs. why ??
A chemical in ships’ paint causes female snails to grow penises and explode.
4% of the sand on Normandy beaches is made up of tiny metal particles from the D-Day landings.
Before fridges were invented, Russians and Finns kept their milk fresh by putting live frogs in it. what’s the secret?
The man who invented the water bed was unable to patent it because it had already appeared in science-fiction novels.
The first collection of poetry published by the three Brontë sisters sold fewer copies than it had authors.
Mouse sperm is bigger than elephant sperm.
The amniotic fluid in the human womb renews itself completely every three hours.
The Bloody Mary has been scientifically proven to be the best alcoholic drink to enjoy on an aeroplane.
It takes 700 grapes to make one bottle of wine.
It takes a million cloud droplets to make one raindrop.
Khaki is Urdu for ‘dust’.
J. R. R. Tolkien was rejected for a Nobel Prize in Literature on the grounds of his ‘poor storytelling’.
Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin adopted the ‘R. R.’ as a homage to Tolkien.
For inspiration, D. H. Lawrence liked to climb mulberry trees naked.
Every leech has 18 testicles and two ovaries.
A leech can take up to 200 days to digest a meal.
The largest sperm bank in the world does not accept donations from redheads because of ‘insufficient demand’.
It is illegal to take mineral water into Nigeria. why?
Queen Victoria had jewellery made out of her children’s milk teeth.
At 21, Mussolini was homeless and living under a bridge in Switzerland.
Waterloo Bridge is called the Ladies Bridge because it was mainly built by women.
Kissing was banned in England in 1439.
It takes five people to extract semen from a vulture.
you earn £20,250 a year, you’re one of the world’s richest 1%.
Aristotle advised Alexander the Great not to let his soldiers drink mint tea because it would make them think more of love than war.
Bacteria remain eternally young.
The lottery of the Zimbabwe Banking Corporation was won in 2000 by the president of Zimbabwe.
President Mugabe has been in power 50% longer than the lifetime of the average Zimbabwean.
Saddam Hussein’s regime destroyed 90% of Iraq’s marshes.
Members of the Yazidi religion of Iraq are forbidden to eat lettuce.
Nero ate leeks to improve his singing voice.
Edward II employed a ‘tumbler’ who fell off his horse to amuse the king for 20 shillings a time.
King Francis I of France hung the Mona Lisa in his bathroom.
The Japanese word tsundoku means buying books and not getting around to reading them. (yup they got a single word for us)
The first ever webcam was in the computer lab at Cambridge University. It was trained on the coffee pot in the corridor to save the scientists making pointless trips when it had run out.
A male cheetah can make a female ovulate by barking at her.
An elephant call can be heard anywhere within 100 square miles.
Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ slogan was inspired by the last words of a murderer.
The villains in Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the
Lambs are all based on the same man.
In Bolivia, llama droppings are used to purify water.
Fearing a German invasion, in 1940 Alan Turing converted his assets into silver ingots and buried them in Buckinghamshire. He spent the rest of his life failing
to find them.
Frank Sinatra took a shower 12 times a day.
Abraham Lincoln’s wife was an opium addict.
Cannibalism in the UK is legal.
People eat less in subdued lighting.
The International Space Station travels at five miles a second.
A day on the International Space Station is 1½ hours long.
Disney was sued by a biologist for defaming the character of hyenas in The Lion King.
Perfect coffee should consist of 17.42 units of water for every unit of coffee.
The longer a whisky is aged, the longer it takes for your body to get rid of the alcohol.
The average Belarusian drinks 17.5 litres of alcohol a year.
There are more species of plant on Cape Town’s Table Mountain than in the
whole of the UK.
Colonel Sanders’s career as a lawyer came to an end when he assaulted his client in court.
The Great Pyramid of Giza was built by 100,000 people working 10 hours a day for 20 years.
It is cheaper to send Scottish cod to China to be filleted and sent back again than to fillet the fish in Scotland.
The genome of wheat is five times larger than the human genome.
Elizabeth I invented gingerbread men.
Robert Louis Stevenson dreamt the plot of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
It took 17 takes for E. B. White to record the death scene for the audiobook of
Charlotte’s Web without breaking down.
Franz Kafka liked to exercise naked in front of the window.
All the ants in the world weigh about the same as all the people.
There are more stars in the universe than words have been spoken by all of the humans who have ever lived.
Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton invented underwater spectacles so he could read in the bath.
The Pentagon is successfully hacked 250,000 times a year, and unsuccessfully hacked 10 million times a day.
The Lord of the Rings holds the record for the greatest number of false feet used in a single movie: 60,000.
The cast of Riverdance have worn out 14,000 pairs of shoes.
In imperial Japan, high-born women peed standing-up so as not to crease their kimonos.
At Stalin’s funeral 500 people were trampled to death.
There are more libraries in Britain’s prisons than there are in its schools
The average Internet user goes online 34 times a day.
It’s a Wonderful Life won just one Oscar: for Technical Achievement in developing a new kind of artificial snow.
‘At sparrowsfart’ is slang for ‘very early in the morning’.
The largest molecule in nature is chromosome 1. All human beings have two of them, and each contains 10 billion atoms.
The California mite Paratarsotomus macropalpis can run 300 of its own body lengths per second: 20 times faster than a cheetah.
A cheetah can go from 0 to 40 mph in three strides.
385 million years ago, fish had fingers. Any proof ??
Four million years ago, rats in South America were the size of hippos.
Because the Pacific island of Guam has no sand, all the roads are made of coral.
95% of the underwater world is yet to be explored.
Emperor penguins can dive deeper than the height of the Empire State Building.
There is more water in the Earth’s core than in all of its oceans
If you hold your breath and put your face in cold water, your heart will immediately slow down by 25%.
The age boys reach puberty has dropped by 2½ months every decade since the mid-1700s.
A bite from a Russell’s pit viper can send the victim back through puberty.
1 in 10 Icelanders will publish a book at some time in their life.
The film of Gone with the Wind is banned in North Korea, but virtually every adult there has read the book.
The world’s oldest building is a Japanese hut built half a million years before the Great Pyramid. which hut is that?
During its lifetime, the International Space Station will be hit by 100,000 meteoroids.
There are 1,397 known asteroids capable of causing ‘major devastation’ if they hit the Earth.
The theoretical process of knocking a meteoroid off course with a nuclear explosion is called an ‘X-ray slap’.
Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit was made by a bra manufacturer.
Smaller animals experience time as passing more slowly. How was it found out?
Tipping the hat comes from the military salute, which in turn comes from men in armour lifting the visor to show their faces.
Emperor Hirohito’s final speech to the Japanese nation was the first time his subjects had ever heard his voice.
April 17, 2024
Anyone who knows me irl knows that I watch an Absurd amount of QI-
Waiting to start work? Watching QI. On a break? Watching QI. On the bus home? Watching QI. Reading? QI on in the background. Cleaning the house? QI on in the background. Over the last few years I’ve been an avid fan of this show, the rhythm and comedy of this show really makes me happy. I’m a naturally inquisitive person so I like knowing a little bit about everything, and I’m not a big fan of watching lots of films or series, so when I want a background noise or something short to occupy myself, QI does perfect.
I’ve read another book in this series a few years ago, I got that from the same charity as I got this book, today.
This book is quite old now, and not just because it was published a decade ago, but because the writers decided to put “facts” in there that change so often, this book probably would’ve been classed as outdated even a few months after publication. The first fact in the book being that there are 1,411 tigers in India… of all the cool scientific and historical facts you could’ve chosen which probably won’t be disproven or updated any time soon, you chose something as specific and current as that? As of 2024, there is almost 4,000 tigers in India. Yet the facts in this book about Henry VIII or reindeers or Mussolini remain true and interesting, so I’m not sure why they didn’t just stick with cool things like that, so the book has a longer shelf life.
Read this with Sandi Toksvig’s voice narrating it to me. Best reading experience
Waiting to start work? Watching QI. On a break? Watching QI. On the bus home? Watching QI. Reading? QI on in the background. Cleaning the house? QI on in the background. Over the last few years I’ve been an avid fan of this show, the rhythm and comedy of this show really makes me happy. I’m a naturally inquisitive person so I like knowing a little bit about everything, and I’m not a big fan of watching lots of films or series, so when I want a background noise or something short to occupy myself, QI does perfect.
I’ve read another book in this series a few years ago, I got that from the same charity as I got this book, today.
This book is quite old now, and not just because it was published a decade ago, but because the writers decided to put “facts” in there that change so often, this book probably would’ve been classed as outdated even a few months after publication. The first fact in the book being that there are 1,411 tigers in India… of all the cool scientific and historical facts you could’ve chosen which probably won’t be disproven or updated any time soon, you chose something as specific and current as that? As of 2024, there is almost 4,000 tigers in India. Yet the facts in this book about Henry VIII or reindeers or Mussolini remain true and interesting, so I’m not sure why they didn’t just stick with cool things like that, so the book has a longer shelf life.
Read this with Sandi Toksvig’s voice narrating it to me. Best reading experience
July 2, 2023
1,411 QI Facts To Knock You Sideways (2016) by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson is a nice compendium of oddball "facts." Many of the facts do appear to be facts; others, maybe not. The publisher's blurb says:
I noticed some questionble "facts" and did some searching of my own. The book has several "facts" that are claims about what a certain percentage of this or that group of people does. Presumably these are really claims about what some survey recorded some percentage of respondents saying at some time. That may or many not generalize to a whole nation - it depends on the quality of the study, and on whether the findings replicated in other studies.
1. "People are more likely to co-operate with you if you give them something warm to hold." I recognized this claim from a later book that debunks it, Science Fictions: The Epidemic of Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science. Excerpt:
2. Two facts that contradict each other:
"Lizards can't walk and breathe at the same time." and
"The largest lizard in Australia can run as fast as Usain Bolt.".
Presumably the second fact refers to the perentie, which is fast for a lizard and can run with endurance. According to the redoubtable David Attenborough, the perentie uses its muscular throat pouch like a bellows to pump air into its lungs as it runs, a trick not available to most lizards. Thus the first "fact" in this conflicting pair should qualify "Lizards" as "Most lizards" lest the reader mistakely conclude that no lizard can walk and breathe at the same time.
3. "According to England’s leading brain surgeon, it is more dangerous to wear a cycle helmet than not to wear one." Oh my. This one sounds right up there with the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers. To be fair, QI itself does not clearly endorse the claim of this unnamed surgeon as fact, but only reports that one surgeon makes the claim. Given that the world has a fair number of surgeons, the full scope of claims made by at least one of them is probably quite diverse and impressively daft. But I thought I would try tracking down this particular surgeon to see what he's smoking and whether his own thinking capacity has been affected by his concussion count. Given that QI.com as I currently see it is no help for tracking down references, I tried a general Web search and found a news article: Brain surgeon: There's no point wearing bicycle helmets. I don't know if that's the same surgeon that QI alludes to. That article gives no conclusive evidence for the surgeon's claim. Instead it only demonstrates that surgeons apparently don't have to be epidemiologists - that is, the sorts of people who understand things such as the design of experiments and the counterfactual conditional, and who might also realize that whataboutery is not an argument about the merits of a particular thing. That is, whataboutery doesn't tell you whether a particular thing is good or bad - it is only an observation about the inconsistency in society.
The good doctor appears to have no idea of what car-bike crashes are usually like. For example he cites a study (was it replicated? If not then it could very well be bunk) that supposedly found car drivers drive 3 inches closer on average to helmeted cyclists compared to unhelmeted cyclists (and is that drivers everywhere, under all circumstance, or does it vary based on other factors such as the time of day etc.) - from which the helmet-hater concludes, without any attempt at justification, that this will make helmeted cycling more dangerous on balance. I can only shake my head in wonder - has this fool never heard of SMIDSY? (Acronym for "Sorry mate, I didn't see you.") At least in anecdotal accounts of collisions, the car driver usually claims to have not seen the cyclist before hitting him or her. If true, then presumably the driver who didn't see the cyclist could not have made any decision on the basis of what the cyclist was wearing. Generally speaking, if the driver can see you, the driver will not hit you. I've noticed in my own cycling that my number of close calls with inattentive drivers seemed to drop dramatically after I began always wearing high-visibility clothing in daylight and using adequate bike lights at night. I even run my bike lights in daylight now for the same reason that motorcyclists do.
The article then includes the usual whataboutery (what about helmets for pedestrians? Or for motorists?). (Note the striking similarity with Trump's whataboutery as he struggles to explain away his classified document crimes - what about Hillary, Biden, and Pence? Didn't they also mishandle documents? They didn't mishandle documents in the same way that Trump did, but even if they had, that would have no bearing on Trump's case. You can't get away with a crime by noting that somebody else did. If justice worked that way we would have to release every criminal from prison until we could catch all the criminals.) We can consider helmet use in other contexts separately, on their own merits. They have nothing to do with helmets for cyclists. Most if not all societies take an inconsistent approach to risk anyway, so you can always point to some other group that suffers more or less risk at the moment. In the USA we have lax gun laws. Should Britain therefore relax its own gun laws? I hope that when Britons vote on whether to keep pace with America's mass shootings, they'll decide for themselves and not on the basis of America's appetite for risk. In general, safety stardards are constantly evolving. Back in the 1800s the prevailing rule seems to have been "anything goes." In sports such as hockey and American football, they started without helmets and gradually introduced them and improved them. And always over the strenuous objections of traditionalists.
Many people object to being told to wear helmets, or masks, or to get vaccinated. I wonder how these people cope with being told to wear trousers. I've lived all my life under a "trouser mandate" and I hadn't noticed many protests against it by freedom-lovers. Perhaps that's because people don't make up their minds on the basis of facts and evidence and merits, but rather on the basis of the habits they absorbed while growing up. If you grew up wearing trousers it doesn't seem like a huge burden to keep wearing them.
"If there are any facts you don't believe, or if you want to know more about them, all the sources can be found on qi.com."That may have been true in 2016, and seems to have been true for another reviewer who mentions checking the references, but now in July 2023 the QI.com site as I see it is a gibbering mess with no obvious link to any references, and not even a visible site search field. When I search the site with an external search engine, I don't find any references either.
I noticed some questionble "facts" and did some searching of my own. The book has several "facts" that are claims about what a certain percentage of this or that group of people does. Presumably these are really claims about what some survey recorded some percentage of respondents saying at some time. That may or many not generalize to a whole nation - it depends on the quality of the study, and on whether the findings replicated in other studies.
1. "People are more likely to co-operate with you if you give them something warm to hold." I recognized this claim from a later book that debunks it, Science Fictions: The Epidemic of Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science. Excerpt:
The cup claim – specifically, that after holding a hot drink, people judge others as more likeable, thus being metaphorically ‘warm’ towards them – came from a study with forty-one participants that has failed to replicate in much larger studies.This particular "fact" is one of many that got caught up in the replication crisis embroiling social psychology and some other fields of science.
2. Two facts that contradict each other:
"Lizards can't walk and breathe at the same time." and
"The largest lizard in Australia can run as fast as Usain Bolt.".
Presumably the second fact refers to the perentie, which is fast for a lizard and can run with endurance. According to the redoubtable David Attenborough, the perentie uses its muscular throat pouch like a bellows to pump air into its lungs as it runs, a trick not available to most lizards. Thus the first "fact" in this conflicting pair should qualify "Lizards" as "Most lizards" lest the reader mistakely conclude that no lizard can walk and breathe at the same time.
3. "According to England’s leading brain surgeon, it is more dangerous to wear a cycle helmet than not to wear one." Oh my. This one sounds right up there with the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers. To be fair, QI itself does not clearly endorse the claim of this unnamed surgeon as fact, but only reports that one surgeon makes the claim. Given that the world has a fair number of surgeons, the full scope of claims made by at least one of them is probably quite diverse and impressively daft. But I thought I would try tracking down this particular surgeon to see what he's smoking and whether his own thinking capacity has been affected by his concussion count. Given that QI.com as I currently see it is no help for tracking down references, I tried a general Web search and found a news article: Brain surgeon: There's no point wearing bicycle helmets. I don't know if that's the same surgeon that QI alludes to. That article gives no conclusive evidence for the surgeon's claim. Instead it only demonstrates that surgeons apparently don't have to be epidemiologists - that is, the sorts of people who understand things such as the design of experiments and the counterfactual conditional, and who might also realize that whataboutery is not an argument about the merits of a particular thing. That is, whataboutery doesn't tell you whether a particular thing is good or bad - it is only an observation about the inconsistency in society.
The good doctor appears to have no idea of what car-bike crashes are usually like. For example he cites a study (was it replicated? If not then it could very well be bunk) that supposedly found car drivers drive 3 inches closer on average to helmeted cyclists compared to unhelmeted cyclists (and is that drivers everywhere, under all circumstance, or does it vary based on other factors such as the time of day etc.) - from which the helmet-hater concludes, without any attempt at justification, that this will make helmeted cycling more dangerous on balance. I can only shake my head in wonder - has this fool never heard of SMIDSY? (Acronym for "Sorry mate, I didn't see you.") At least in anecdotal accounts of collisions, the car driver usually claims to have not seen the cyclist before hitting him or her. If true, then presumably the driver who didn't see the cyclist could not have made any decision on the basis of what the cyclist was wearing. Generally speaking, if the driver can see you, the driver will not hit you. I've noticed in my own cycling that my number of close calls with inattentive drivers seemed to drop dramatically after I began always wearing high-visibility clothing in daylight and using adequate bike lights at night. I even run my bike lights in daylight now for the same reason that motorcyclists do.
The article then includes the usual whataboutery (what about helmets for pedestrians? Or for motorists?). (Note the striking similarity with Trump's whataboutery as he struggles to explain away his classified document crimes - what about Hillary, Biden, and Pence? Didn't they also mishandle documents? They didn't mishandle documents in the same way that Trump did, but even if they had, that would have no bearing on Trump's case. You can't get away with a crime by noting that somebody else did. If justice worked that way we would have to release every criminal from prison until we could catch all the criminals.) We can consider helmet use in other contexts separately, on their own merits. They have nothing to do with helmets for cyclists. Most if not all societies take an inconsistent approach to risk anyway, so you can always point to some other group that suffers more or less risk at the moment. In the USA we have lax gun laws. Should Britain therefore relax its own gun laws? I hope that when Britons vote on whether to keep pace with America's mass shootings, they'll decide for themselves and not on the basis of America's appetite for risk. In general, safety stardards are constantly evolving. Back in the 1800s the prevailing rule seems to have been "anything goes." In sports such as hockey and American football, they started without helmets and gradually introduced them and improved them. And always over the strenuous objections of traditionalists.
Many people object to being told to wear helmets, or masks, or to get vaccinated. I wonder how these people cope with being told to wear trousers. I've lived all my life under a "trouser mandate" and I hadn't noticed many protests against it by freedom-lovers. Perhaps that's because people don't make up their minds on the basis of facts and evidence and merits, but rather on the basis of the habits they absorbed while growing up. If you grew up wearing trousers it doesn't seem like a huge burden to keep wearing them.
September 26, 2014
I love watching QI and have read the other books published so was looking forward to reading 1,411 QI Facts to Knock you Sideways. I was not disappointed! It is filled, as you would expect, with loads of facts some of which are really obscure and some which are a bit baffling.
I love general knowledge. I must have inherited that from my Dad who, for as long as I can remember comes up with the most random pieces of information that he has picked up over the years. This book has been a fantastic opportunity for me to improve my general knowledge.
The facts are all snappy so are easier to remember. Whilst not broken into chapters, they naturally seem to come bunched together under common themes so they flow brilliantly. I could almost consume the whole book in one sitting as I found it so fascinating, and had to make a concerted effort to step away, otherwise I knew I wouldn't properly digest and remember what I was reading.
I found it totally addictive, and have been looking for people to spout off my new found knowledge to since.
Some of the ones that I recall which made me chuckle include:
There is only one stop sign in the whole of Paris
Oasis are named after a leisure centre in Swindon
Whoopi Goldberg used to be a bricklayer
Hamsters blink one eye at a time
With 1,411 facts the range is very wide and it would be a great book to have hanging around the house which you could dip in and out of. I love the idea of giving this book as a present and have it earmarked to buy for my Dad this Christmas.
During the introduction the authors mention that one of the purposes of the book is to make us think and challenge our preconceptions. This certainly was the case for me. It has really got me thinking and made me look at some things differently.
The book is not highly academic and can appeal to all levels and ages from teens to older people.
I really enjoyed it and feel like I gained greater knowledge that I can now wow others with. this is definitely a book for all and would be a great gift. I can't wait for the next one.
Thank you to Faber and Faber who provided me with a copy in return for an honest review.
September 24, 2014
READ IN ENGLISH
Read all my reviews on http://urlphantomhive.booklikes.com
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!
Publication: October 2nd, 2014
I'm a huge fan of QI, let's start with that. I'm also a very big fan of these random facts that don't really matter but are still nice to learn. If you like these same things, I'm pretty sure you'll be happy with the new work the QI Elves have produced.
The book is basically a list with all 1411 (I'm just believing there are in fact 1411 facts in this book, I haven't actually counted). If you would check the background on these facts there's a site that will provide it for you (qi.com/1411) but as I'm writing this now the site isn't working (yet). I suppose it will be up once the book is published.
I read it almost in one go. It was very readable and I thought it was nice to see what they had associated (as there usually seemed to be some kind of association between one fact and the next one). But I can also imagine this could be a very nice toilet book (though I had an egalley and I don't know if the dimensions of the book will support that statement), or otherwise in the waiting room for the dentist or something like that. I think many people will enjoy reading (parts of) this book, and I'm going to look for copies of the earlier editions, even though they had less than 1411 facts...
Some of my favourites:
* 1 in 10 Americans thinks HTML is a STD
* The underpants the Brussels Mayor donated to the Brussels Underpants Museum were stolen in 2014 (There is an underpants museum?!)
Read all my reviews on http://urlphantomhive.booklikes.com
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!
Publication: October 2nd, 2014
I'm a huge fan of QI, let's start with that. I'm also a very big fan of these random facts that don't really matter but are still nice to learn. If you like these same things, I'm pretty sure you'll be happy with the new work the QI Elves have produced.
The book is basically a list with all 1411 (I'm just believing there are in fact 1411 facts in this book, I haven't actually counted). If you would check the background on these facts there's a site that will provide it for you (qi.com/1411) but as I'm writing this now the site isn't working (yet). I suppose it will be up once the book is published.
I read it almost in one go. It was very readable and I thought it was nice to see what they had associated (as there usually seemed to be some kind of association between one fact and the next one). But I can also imagine this could be a very nice toilet book (though I had an egalley and I don't know if the dimensions of the book will support that statement), or otherwise in the waiting room for the dentist or something like that. I think many people will enjoy reading (parts of) this book, and I'm going to look for copies of the earlier editions, even though they had less than 1411 facts...
Some of my favourites:
* 1 in 10 Americans thinks HTML is a STD
* The underpants the Brussels Mayor donated to the Brussels Underpants Museum were stolen in 2014 (There is an underpants museum?!)
August 31, 2021
I'm not a great fan of the programme, it feels too much like having to watch best mates, which you are not one of them, having a good time!
BUT, the books are brilliant, a catalogue of truly amazing facts, some appear unbelievable, but are true, and you can check them out via the QI website for the actual information source.
I read lots of these books late at night, just before slumber, they could keep you up longer - but you would be the better for it.
You will be quoting some of these facts for a long time. e.g. 16 million people in China live in caves and President Xi Jinping lived in cave when he was young!
Give one to a friend that is a member of Qanon for Christmas!
Ian M Pindar (The writing IMP)
BUT, the books are brilliant, a catalogue of truly amazing facts, some appear unbelievable, but are true, and you can check them out via the QI website for the actual information source.
I read lots of these books late at night, just before slumber, they could keep you up longer - but you would be the better for it.
You will be quoting some of these facts for a long time. e.g. 16 million people in China live in caves and President Xi Jinping lived in cave when he was young!
Give one to a friend that is a member of Qanon for Christmas!
Ian M Pindar (The writing IMP)
September 12, 2021
I didn't enjoy this book as much as the last, but there's still plenty of interesting facts to read about. These books are far more entertaining when read with other people, which I didn't have as much of an opportunity to do this time. It's still not bad by any means; the facts just didn't cater to my interests as well as the last one.
January 27, 2015
Shoddy cash in: hastily and cheaply thrown together. I know for certain that several of the "facts" are incorrect, and I am suspicious about a lot more. Some are interesting but I would have liked a lot more background detail. This was a present - I would never have bought it myself. Avoid.
May 10, 2017
This is a fun, little book to pick up for short periods of time and read a few pages. It contains lots of interesting facts from all fields, geographic areas, and subjects. There's something for everyone!
April 21, 2018
A book full of unusual / interesting facts.
I was surprised by some of the facts stated in this book – some of which could have done with a date associated with them (for example those related to a person that has recently died).
If you enjoy lists of odd facts then this book is worth a look.
I was surprised by some of the facts stated in this book – some of which could have done with a date associated with them (for example those related to a person that has recently died).
If you enjoy lists of odd facts then this book is worth a look.
March 13, 2017
A fun kind of read with lots of quirky facts. Some make you wonder if they are really true. It covers an wide variety of topics with a bias toward the U.K. as it where the authors are from.
May 15, 2017
Really interesting. One drawback, there are so many facts, I forgot most of them before I finished the book.
January 18, 2018
I love a good fact just as much as the rest of us and this certainly has a lot of quirky, unusual facts that not everybody would know.
January 23, 2018
Very entertaining if you like odd facts like I do!
September 16, 2018
I was knocked 79 degrees - pretty much sideways.
May 3, 2019
Totally cool general info, funny and quirky. Please sir, may I have some more?
January 25, 2020
Good fun. Interesting and sometimes astonishing facts
January 25, 2020
A great collection to commit to memory
February 15, 2021
Does what it says on the tin. Quite fun.
February 18, 2022
More of the excellent same.
May 16, 2022
A great selection of facts
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