1,234 QI facts to leave you speechless

Quite Interesting Facts #4

by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, James Harkin

Forth book in an occasional series of odd, weird, and unusual facts unearthed for the television program "QI".
Previous books are:

1,227 QI Facts to blow your socks off
1,339 QI Facts to make your jaw drop
and
1,411 QI facts to knock you sideways.

Facts included in this edition include:

Flowers get suntans
Denmark imports prisoners
Bees can fly higher than Mount Everest
Martin Luther King got a C+ in Public Speaking
The Republic of Ireland didn't have postcodes until 2015
Mussolini was once employed by MI5
No one in the UK dies of 'Natural Causes'
and
Penguins can't taste fish.

Genres: Nonfiction, Trivia, Reference, Humor, Science

331 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

John 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.

Reviews

[Chris Steeden]

No review. There are four facts per page. Add a page number in the comments between 1 and 309 and I'll give you the best fact, in my opinion, on that page :-)

[Pamela Sue]

Grumpy cat made more money than Gwyneth Paltrow, who knew?

[Colleen]

On Sale Now
www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B0146T2DP0/r...

[Teresa]

Some of these facts are so hilarious and others are so strange they are unbelievable!
But two of my favorites were: "Going to the library produces as much happiness as a $2,045 pay rise. Going to the gym is like losing $1,983" and "a recent scientific study shows there are too many scientific studies."

[Abraham Ray]

Great book of random facts!

[Adrian J.]

My biggest problem with this is that many facts are presented in a misleading manner - and a handful are just poorly worded.

If you visit qi.com/1234 and enter a page number for this edition, you are presented with a (usually online) reference for each fact. If you read them, you will see that they have presented each fact in a provocative way - many aren't true once you read what's behind it. For example, they say "Rats dream about places they want to visit." but the reference they give says that the same neurons which activate in a rat's brain while sleeping sometimes activate when they visit a place they have seen before but not been to. They explicitly state that they do not and cannot know if the rat was dreaming about it.

It's really very annoying. I'd certainly check sources before quoting any facts from the book.

[Ian Pindar]

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)

[Boulder Boulderson]

I used to enjoy these books more than this one. It seems that the authors are so intent on brevity that meaning falls by the wayside. 45% of people, apparently, lie about skydiving. That's so vague as to be meaningless. There are links which purport to provide more information, but why not a book with 400 facts including a few more words about each one?

[Chelsea Duncan]

Lots of fun and entertaining and genuinely interesting facts in this book, as usual. Only one star less as a lot of the humour and the facts themselves seem to be written by and geared at adolescent men, I don't think I need to expound upon that. But overall very good and a great book to dip in and out of.

[Dan Stern]

These are very good books based on the research that goes into a very funny and informative television show of which you can watch entire episodes on the web or further your research on a dedicated website full of even more interesting facts.

[Hugh_Manatee]

It's hard to rate a book of facts. Is the question, did I enjoy these facts less than the previous book of facts? Is that on the quality of the facts or on me? I don't know for certain. This is a mostly enjoyable book full of mostly enjoyable facts.

[Universal Truth]

Some quite interesting facts to be had indeed. The only reason I deduct the star is because some of the "facts" or time dependent, meaning they're based on specific time periods, though they are presented as present day facts and also some of the statistical information is questionable. Stats are good, but I don't know if it's great to tout them around as more than what they are.

[Mommooshka]

Short facts about everything imaginable makes interesting reading in short snippets of available time. Perfect to pick up when you only have a short time to read.

[Dave Fellows]

4/5 stars. Very good, as standard!

[Alison]

I just love these books. So cool!

[Seadaz]

Enjoyed this book full of quirky facts. For some strange reason can’t rate it, if I could it would be 4 stars.

[Ollie]

The perfect poop book!

[Dominic Wade]

Very good

Interesting facts. Nice read. Learned quite a number of interesting things. Good for light reading while on your travels or commute.

[Nancy]

This is the type of book that should be right next to to the self check out for an impulse check out!

[Abigail Reilly]

Funny quick read of interesting facts! Does what it says on the tin!!

[John Naylor]

A lot of facts in an easily digestible format.
Not a book I would recommend to anyone unless they like facts. I would call it a toilet book. I learned a few things.

[Alison Woolford]

Facts, facts and more facts

What is not to like? These books keep me entertained and following the links to learn more about everything and anything.

[Jonny Brick]

Joy on every page. The man hours that go into such a book would be a QI fact in themselves.

[Rachael Hewison]

Another one for the toilet. It's a great little fact book, one to while away time spent on the loo. Not as good as previous ones in this collection but still a good little read.

[Sophie Crane]

Who can't help but love the weird and wonderful facts that the QI team finds out? This is a great book to dip into to expand your trivia and it makes a great gift for QI fans and fact fans alike.

[Hasan Asif]

70/100

[Chris]

I love this series. The facts are very interesting and i like the way they often blend into each other.

[Gary Whitfield]

As usual for this series of books, the format is predictable at 4 facts per page, with acknowledgements and an index in the back covering pages 313 to 331.

If a rather random (facts are loosely connected, generally to the preceding one and the following one. This creates a meandering journey through time and space connecting such diverse subjects as Buzz Aldrin's father being friends with Orville Wright moving on to the fact that Boeing test the Wi-Fi signal on their aircraft by filling the seats with sacks of potatoes, then following that with the fact that the White House had no Wi-Fi until 2012.) journey, it's all the more enjoyable for that. Who would want a compendium of these facts set out in alphabetical order, like some weird encyclopaedia. This is much more interesting and enjoyable as, unless you 'cheat' and use the index, you just never know what is coming up on the next page.

If you like the program "QI", this series of books will enable you to hold some of these Quite Interesting facts - if not in memory, at least in hand - to astound your friends with.

It's a good addition to the series, and a thoroughly enjoyable read.

[David Baird]

This is the first QI book I've read and although the "facts" are interesting I was left a little disappointed. There are a few facts which aren't fully explained. . like the oldest person ever.. it tells you what happened in the year they were born and died but leaves it to you to google things to find out the actual age of the person.

Not sure what I was expecting of this book but it didn't do it for me I'm afraid

[Ann Foley]

This was a fun read...

"Bhutan has an official yeti hunter. He hasn't found any (at least, not yeti)."

"The US military is America's largest purchaser of explosives; number two is Disney World."

"The first version of Hamlet was called 'Amleth' and has a happy ending."

"When Usain Bolt ran the 100 meter at the 2012 London Olympics, his feet only touched the ground for two seconds."