Encyclopedia of Trivia

Beavers can cut down a 6in diameter tree in three minutes - faster than a human with an axe. 

Before John Logie Baird demonstrated his television in 1926, he had set up an unsuccessful jam factory in Trinidad

November 25, 2012 was the first day since 1960 that there was no reported murder or manslaughter in New York City.

The Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope had strict rules for writing. He'd wake at 5 am and aim to write 250 words every 15 minutes for three hours, before going off to his job at the Post Office.

Anthony Trollope

Trinidad and Tobago is the only country whose capital city is named after another country. Port of Spain.

The Guinness world record for the most puppies ever delivered in one litter belongs to Tia, a Neapolitan mastiff living in England. On November 24, 2009, she gave birth to 24 puppies. The pups were delivered by Cesarean section, but one was stillborn and three others died in the first week. Tia was owned by Damian Ward and Anne Kellegher of Manea, Cambridgeshire.

The Ténéré Tree was a solitary acacia that was located in the Sahara Desert in northeast Niger. It was once considered the most isolated tree on Earth - the only one for over 400 kilometers (250 mi). It died when a drunk truck driver hit it in 1973.

Tree of Ténéré (1961)

In AD 100 there were around 25,000 Christians. In AD 310 up to 20 million Christians.

Charles Dickens was the first to use towel as a verb rather than a noun in 1865. He wrote in Our Mutual Friend, II. iii. iv. 25, "I mean to apron it and towel it."

Chipmunks in captivity are said to sleep for an average of about 15 hours a day.

Introduced in 1966, the Toyota Corolla was the first mass-market car to have a radio fitted as standard.

The lowest scoring game in the NBA was played on November 22, 1950. The Fort Wayne Pistons (later the Detroit Pistons) defeated the Minneapolis Lakers (later the Los Angeles Lakers) 19-18.

In 2012, British supermarket Sainsbury's discovered that reducing the size of a toilet paper tube from 123mm to 112mm would allow more rolls in each truck, taking 500 trucks off the road and reducing carbon emissions by 140 tonnes.

Pixiebay

Charles VIII of France wore shoes with a square tip like a duck's beak to hide the fact that one of his feet had six toes.

With well over 5,000 public toilets, Beijing claims to have more than any other capital city.

The word "tripe" comes from an 14th Century French term for guts and entrails. It has been used as a term of abuse for anything worthless since the 16th century.

Tripe in an Italian market

The earliest identified use of the word toothbrush in English was in the autobiography of Anthony Wood who wrote in 1690 that he had bought a toothbrush from J. Barret.

A court in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan declared accused terrorist Osama bin Laden "a man without a sin" on November 20, 1998 in regard to the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

Sake is the national beverage in Japan. It is often served there with special ceremony – gently warmed in a small earthenware or porcelain bottle called a tokkuri, and sipped from a small porcelain cup called a sakazuki.

A serving set of sake cups

Pope Urban VII gave the first smoking ban in 1590 when he threatened to excommunicate anyone who "took tobacco in the porchway of or inside a church, whether it be by chewing it, smoking it with a pipe, or sniffing it in powdered form through the nose."

Socialite Paris Hilton claimed in 2017 to have invented the selfie with Britney Spears on November 19, 2006. "11 years ago today, Me and Britney invented the selfie!” Hilton wrote on November 19, 2017. People quickly shut her down with various examples of others who got there before her.

The 13th century Chinese used Chow Chows to pull dog sleds, and this was remarked upon by Marco Polo.

Chow Chow

The addition of milk, much improving chocolate as a drink, was a London innovation in the early 1700s.

The chewing gum Juicy Fruit has ten calories. This is approximately the same as a bite of whole wheat bread.

By Unaipon - I (Unaipon)

17th century Italian biologist Francesco Redi found that tortoise's brains are so small and irrelevant that when he surgically removed them, they could continue to live for up to six months. When he entirely decapitated one, it still lived for 23 days.

The Polish composer Frédéric Chopin once fought a duel. Such was the stress for him that he fainted before he could fire a shot.

Shridhar Chillal did not cut the fingernails on his left hand between 1952 and 2018. They were measured in Prune City, Maharashtra, India, on November 17, 2014 and found to have a cumulative length of 909.6 cm (358.1 in). He is recognized by Guinness World Records as the person to have had the longest fingernails on a single hand ever.

There is a full description of a chariot race in Homer's Iliad, which is dated about the 9th or 8th century BC.  

During one of his attacks of madness, Charles VI of France became convinced that he was made of glass.

The first book to be printed in English was William Caxton's translation of Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye in 1474.

Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt. 

Hershey's kisses

The Earth travels through space at 660,000 mph.

Robert Schumann wanted to become a piano virtuoso and built a mechanical device to strengthen his fourth finger. Unfortunately the device did more harm than good, and his fourth finger was so damaged that the German was forced to concentrate on composing.

Brazil's flag (see below) is decorated with an image of the night sky as it appeared over Rio de Janeiro on November 15, 1889, the day Brazil declared itself a federal republic.

In 2004, the United States Department of Agriculture classified batter-coated French fries as a vegetable.

India celebrates Children's Day on November 14th, exactly 9 months after Valentines Day.

It is said that between 1908 and 1965 Winston Churchill had a total of 42,000 bottles of his favorite champagne Pol Roget opened for him.

The world's largest peanut butter and jelly sandwich was assembled in Grand Saline, Texas on November 13, 2010. It was made in Grand Saline, Texas, weighed 1,342 pounds and contained 292 pounds of peanut butter, 340 pounds of grape jelly, and 710 pounds of bread.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, had a 57in (4ft 9in) chest when he first won the Mr. Universe Contest in 1967 aged 20.

As entrant to the 1974 Mr. Olympia competition at Madison Square Garden

At one point during World War II, the Nazis plotted to assassinate Winston Churchill with an exploding chocolate bar.

The film director Stanley Kubrick financed his early movies by playing illegal chess for money in New York parks.

The Sears Tower, an 108-story, 1,451-foot skyscraper in Chicago was completed in 1973. It surpassed the World Trade Center towers in New York to become the tallest building in the world, a title it held for nearly 25 years. The Sears Tower contains enough steel to build 50,000 automobiles.

Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower), Chicago.

Margaret Evans became the first mother to give birth on an aircraft flight in 1929. She named the baby Airlene.

The heaviest pear in history was 6 lbs 8 oz (2.948 kg). It was an atago pear grown by JA Aichi Toyota Nashi Bukai from Japan. He presented it at the JA Aichi Toyota main office in Toyota, Aichi, Japan on November 11, 2011.

The loudest known "grunt" at Wimbledon came from Maria Sharapova during the 2009 tennis tournament, recorded at about 105 decibels – the equivalent of standing three feet from a motorcycle.

The Ancient Chinese were aware of the Roman Empire and even attempted to make contact around 97AD.

On November 10, 1958, the merchant Harry Winston donated the Hope Diamond, the "most famous diamond in the world", to the Smithsonian Institution. The diamond was sent to the Smithsonian through U.S. Mail in a box wrapped in brown paper as simple registered mail with $2.44 postage.

You can't see them, but every tortoise has ribs, a collar bone, and a spine inside its shell.

Pixiebay

Around seven per cent of the potatoes grown in the USA end up in french fries bags sold by McDonald’s.

November 9, 2013 (09/01/03) was the last date until March 1, 2105 (01/03/05) with three consecutive odd numbers, which come in ascending order counting upwards from one.

The hair of wild boar was often used to make toothbrush bristles until the 1930s. The brushes were popular because the bristles were soft. However, this was not the best material for oral hygiene because the hairs dried slowly and usually held bacteria.

Source of picture http://madeupinbritain.uk/Toothbrush

The actress and dancer Josephine Baker had a cheetah named Chiquita, which she took for walks on a lead with a diamond-studded collar.

Louis Armstrong introduced scat when recording "Heebie Jeebies" in 1926 after he dropped the sheet music.

When You Dish Upon a Star, the fifth episode of The Simpsons' tenth season, originally aired in the United States on November 8, 1998. The show lampooned 20th Century Fox as a division of The Walt Disney Company. Nineteen years later, Disney indeed made a deal to purchase the studio from Rupert Murdoch.

A chipmunk's cheeks can expand to three times the size of its head.

The first recorded use of the word "calypso" in Trinidad was in 1900.

The world’s tallest church building is the 161m (528ft) Ulm Minster in Germany.  

Ulm Minster, aerial view (2014) Armin Appel Wikipedia

Harry S. Truman held both the highest (at 91%) and tied for the lowest (at 22%) approval ratings since Gallup started compiling them in 1937.

Emily and Seth Peterson, who live in West Barnstable, Massachusetts, welcomed their twin baby boys in the early hours of November 6, 2016. Samuel was born first, at 1:39 am, followed by his brother Ronan who entered this world 31 minutes later just as daylight saving time had ended. So even though Ronan was born 31 minutes after Samuel, he officially was born at 1:10 am — 29 minutes before his older brother.

Bill Clinton excelled as a saxophone player in high school, even earning first chair in an Arkansas state band of students.

Neil Armstrong's moon boots are still floating around in space.

The first successful operation to remove a cataract was performed at London's Zoological Gardens on a grizzly bear on November 5, 1850. Cataracts were removed from both eyes.

A baboon called Jackie became a private in the South African army in World War I. After the war, Jackie was given the rank of corporal.

The burning on November 5th of an effigy of Guy Fawkes, known as a "guy," led to the use of the word "guy" as a term for "a person of grotesque appearance". In the 20th century, guy" gradually replaced "fellow," "bloke," "chap" and other such words.

In 1975, Marion Stokes, a Philadelphia woman purchased a Betamax magnetic videotape recorder. From the outset of the Iran Hostage Crisis on November 4, 1979, she began taping whatever was on television and didn't stop until her death in 2012. The 71,000 VHS and Betamax tapes she made are the most complete collection preserving this era of TV.

The fastest moving object hit by a player in any sport is the badminton shuttlecock with speeds reached of 112 mph.

If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end due to the rate of reproduction.

The most prolific mother in recorded history was Valentina Vassilyeva, wife of an 18th century Russian peasant. She gave birth to 69 children from 27 pregnancies between 1725 and 1765. They comprised 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets.

France's Just Fontaine, holds the record for the most goals scored in a single World Cup; all his 13 goals were scored in the 1958 tournament.

Suits of armor in the Tower of London were studied by US designers of astronaut wear.

Carmen Fasanella registered as a taxicab owner and driver in Princeton, New Jersey in 1921. Fasanella retired on November 2, 1989 after 68 years and 243 days of service.

The EdgeWalk on Toronto's CN Tower — a precipitously high walkway open to the elements from which brave visitors can lean out held only by a safety lead — is 356 meters (1168 feet) above the ground.

The Edgewalk By Sergiu Dumitriu

Following his successful campaign in Dacia (approx. modern day Romania), the Roman emperor Trajan held a three-month victory celebration in AD 107 during which 11,000 slaves and criminals were killed in gladiatorial contests.

Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.

In 16th century England chimneys were a status symbol. Burghley House in Lincolnshire has 76. 

The front of Burghley House By Anthony Masi from UK

Chilies were being eaten in Central and South America as long ago as 7,000 BC, which gives them claims to be the world’s oldest condiment.

At a fair, merry-go-rounds usually turn clockwise. Carousels usually turn counter-clockwise.

On October 31, 2002 AS Adema beat SO I'Emyrne 149-0 breaking the world record for the highest scoreline in an Association football match. SO l'Emyrne intentionally lost the game against their arch-rivals AS Adema in protest over refereeing decisions that had gone against them during a four-team playoff tournament. This led them to scoring a torrent of own goals as a protest.

Humans have about the same number of hair follicles as a chimpanzee has.

The human tongue has more than 10,000 taste buds that replace themselves every 10 days.

 

The name Chicago is derived from a Fox Indian term for 'place of the skunk.'

The Anglo-Chinese School in Singapore holds the record for the most number of people in a musical chairs game, which took place in 1989. 8,238 students, teachers and assorted other people took part in the event.

The term sardine was first used in English during the early 15th century and probably came from the Italian island of Sardinia, around which sardines were once abundant.

When the Skylab space station burned up in Earth's atmosphere in 1979, the government of Western Australia fined NASA $400 for littering. It was eventually paid in 2009.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth but our nose and ears continue to get bigger.

Of the 6.8 billion people on the earth, only 3.5 billion of them use a toothbrush.

The world's first known tourist guide was published in 330 AD. The Itinerarium Burdigalense, or ‘Bordeaux Itinerary', explained where pilgrims could find water supplies and where they could change horses and donkeys on their long voyage to the Holy Land.

Lee Jang Rim, the South Korean founder of the Dami Mission church predicted the world would end on October 28, 1992, but used donations from his followers to purchase bonds that did not mature until after that date.

By the end of his life, the composer Richard Wagner had become a vegetarian after becoming convinced that eating meat instead of vegetables corrupted the blood.

The tallest building in the world in 1885 was The Home Insurance Company in Chicago. It was nine stories tall.

The Home Insurance Building

At 13 letters, Liechtenstein is the country with the longest one-word common name in English.

Foot, goose and tooth are the only common English words in which “oo” changes to “ee” for their plurals.

The woodpecker lives on insects obtained from crevices in the bark of trees or extracted from the wood by drilling with the beak and impaling them on the long tongue. It can peck on average twenty times per second.

Add caption

America's first large pasta factory was built in Brooklyn, New York in 1848 by a Frenchman who would spread out his spaghetti strands on the roof to dry in the sunshine.

The Roman emperor Claudius was the last person known to have been able to read Etruscan. His first wife was Etruscan.

Sophia is a humanoid robot developed by Hong Kong-based company Hanson Robotics. On October 25, 2017 Sophia was granted Saudi Arabian citizenship, becoming the first robot ever to have a nationality.

The famous Russian composer Aleksandr Borodin was also a respected chemistry professor in St. Petersburg.

An hour-long, 8-mile-high tornado could produce nearly enough electricity from wind to power 20 American households for a year.

At an elevation of roughly 11,975 ft (3,650 m) above sea level, the Bolivian capital city La Paz is the highest capital city in the world.

The French novelist George Sand ate her breakfast from the same bowl as her cat Minou.

There are 1 billion people on Earth addicted to tobacco—it is linked to 11% of deaths in males and 6% of deaths in females every year.

The name of the German city of Hamburg comes from the first permanent building on the site, a castle called Hammaburg which Charlemagne ordered to be constructed in AD 808.

Hamburg in 1150, a 19th-century visualization.

King Charles II of England adored dogs - each of his dogs had its own special cushion.

Charcoal has been used for drawing since prehistoric times when pieces of charred wood were used.

The Titanic actually started off having enough lifeboats – they removed a bunch to make the ship look less cluttered.

Titanic's wooden lifeboats in New York Harbor following the disaster.

In 1948, the oldest tightrope walker William Ivy Baldwin celebrated his 82nd birthday by crossing a 319 ft-long high-wire suspended across Eldorado Canyon in Colorado.

At the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures on October 21, 1983, the length of a metre was redefined as the distance light travels in vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

At one stage during the Hundred Years War, the King of France obtained a cease-fire to enable him to make a pilgrimage to see Saint Thomas Becket's tomb at Canterbury Cathedral.

The former spot of the shrine of Thomas Becket, By ABrocke

Cattle branding was practiced 4,000 years ago. Old tomb paintings show Egyptians branding their fat, spotted cattle around 2700 BC.

Boomerangs were found in King Tutankhamen's tomb in excellent condition. Some of them were capped with gold.

The word tomato comes from the Aztec "tomatl", meaning "plump thing with a navel".

Pixibay

In 1892 there was a terrible famine in Russia and the author Leo Tolstoy set up 370 kitchens feeding 16,000 daily. He personally raised 141,000 roubles (including half a million dollars from the USA).

After a chase, a cheetah needs half an hour to catch its breath before it can eat. 

By Malene Thyssen

Henry J Heinz started making baked beans in 1895. He advertised them as “oven-baked beans in a pork and tomato sauce.”

Leo Tolstoy's original text for War And Peace in Russian and French contains about 460,000 words. The English translation has about 560,000.

The War of the Stray Dog was a conflict between Greece and Bulgaria between October 18 and 25, 1925 that killed a total of 171 people. It began when a Greek soldier accidentally crossed the border chasing his runaway dog. There was a short invasion of Bulgaria by Greece near the border town of Petrich, after the shooting of the soldier by Bulgarian troops. The incident ended after a decision of the League of Nations.

Tokyo (see below) is the world's most populated metropolitan area with 39 million residents, 50% more people than any other urban area and a $2.5 trillion economy - larger than that of any other city.

The first ever single-subject food book that was ever printed, 1477's Summa Lacticiniorum was on the subject of cheese.

The most painful insect sting is from a bullet ant. The pain is equal to being shot, hence the name of the insect.

22 mm long Bullet ant  By © Hans Hillewaert

The first musical stage performance seen in the US was a ballad opera called Flora produced in Charleston in 1735.

The house where Geoffrey Chaucer was born is now covered by the arrival platform of London's Cannon Street Station.

A 10-year-old Hungarian girl called Jadwiga was crowned King of Poland on October 16, 1384. Her title either reflected the Polish lords' attempt to hinder her future husband from adopting the same title without further act or only emphasized that she was a queen regnant. She reigned for 15 years until her death on July 17, 1399.

Jadwiga as imagined by Bacciarelli

Despite his blindness, the musician Ray Charles was a chess-playing fanatic who was known to set up games between concerts.

American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.

The first use of google as a verb on television was on October 15, 2002. In the fourth episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's final season, the character Willow turns to the eponymous slayer and asks, “Have you googled her yet?”

Reverend Robert Shields died on October 15, 2007. Shields was a former minister and high school English teacher who lived in Dayton, Washington, USA. His 37.5-million-word diary, the world’s longest, chronicled every five minutes of his life from 1972 until a stroke disabled him in 1997.

The Reverend Robert Shields with his diary

J.R.R Tolkien was a practical joker. In later life, he enjoyed handing shop assistants his false teeth among a handful of change.

The rips that tear through a rubber balloon when it is popped travel faster than the speed of sound in rubber.

The island of Tobago got its name from its resemblance to a cigar-shaped tobacco pipe (tavaco) used by local natives.

Zambia is the only country to have entered an Olympics as one country (Northern Rhodesia) and left the games as another. Zambia declared independence on the last day of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

The term 'Beatlemania' was used by the Daily Mirror in the aftermath of a successful appearance by The Beatles on Sunday Night At The London Palladium on October 13, 1963, which was seen by an estimated 15 million television viewers in the UK.

Joseph C. Gayetty of New York City invented the first factory-produced toilet paper in 1857.  Advertising it  as "Gayetty's Medicated Paper," it was sold in packs of 500 pieces at 50 cents a pack.

J.R.R.Tolkien typed the 1,200-page manuscript of The Lord of the Rings trilogy with two fingers.

"Three Blind Mice" is thought to refer to a trio of Protestant bishops Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Radley, and The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who were all burnt at the stake during Bloody Mary’s reign. Critics suggest that the blindness in the title refers to their religious beliefs. The nursery rhyme was first published in London on October 12, 1609.

The perfect slice of toast should be cooked for precisely 216 seconds, according to a mathematical formula devised by a team of British researchers.

Pixiebay

It is illegal for children in Tokyo to make a noise when playing — the legal decibel level city-wide is the same as a library's.

Donald A. Gorske ate his 26,000th Big Mac on October 11, 2012. He has consumed more Big Macs than anyone in the world. Gorske has eaten at one of their outlets (nearly) every single day since May 17, 1972.

There is a massive system of tunnels under the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World called "Utilidors."

A utility tunnel in Walt Disney World Wikipedia

The Chinese used baking soda or chalk as toothpaste in medieval times.

Since 2006, October 10 has been recognized as Tom Cruise Day in Japan, honoring the fact that he's visited the country more than any other Western actor.

The Statue of Liberty has a "Morton's Toe"—her second toe is longer than her big toe. The Ancient Greeks thought a Morton's Toe was the pinnacle of beauty.

Statue of Liberty's Morton's Toe

A tiger's tongue is so coarse, it can lick flesh down to the bone. If it licked your hand it would draw blood.

It was The Beatles that popularized longer hair for men for the first time in many decades in the 1960s with their bowl haircuts. Their hairstyle was created on October 9, 1961 during a trip to Paris by Jürgen Vollmer after Jean Marair's style in the 1960 Jean Cocteau movie Le Testament d’Orphee.

McCartney, Harrison and Lennon in 1964 By Omroepvereniging

The Aztec Indians in Central America used animal blood mixed with cement as a mortar for their buildings.

A 2015 survey found that 94% of people in Thailand are religious, making it the most religious country in the world— China is the least with 7%. About 93.5% of the Thai population follow the Buddhist religion.

On the morning of October 8, 1997, Cornell students, faculty and staff strolling by McGraw Tower noted an unusual sight: a 60 pound pumpkin impaled on the spire 173 feet (52.7 meters) up. To this day, no one is really sure how this was accomplished without anyone noticing. Below is the pumpkin atop the tower, as seen by a surprised alumnus, November 21, 1997.

By User:Wasted Time  Wikipedia

'Funk' was originally a Tudor word for the stale smell of tobacco smoke.

A good swimmer, the first Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne had a marble pool at his Aachen palace and even as an old man beat young men in races.

The world’s largest chocolate bar was made by Thorntons plc (UK) in Alfreton, Derbyshire, England on October 7, 2011. It measured 4.0 m (13 ft 1.48 in) by 4.0 m (13 ft 1.48 in) by 0.35 m (1 ft 1.78 in) and weighed 5,792 kilograms (nearly six tons). The ingredients were sugar, dried whole milk powder, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, butter oil, emulsifier.

Activated charcoal made from coconut shells is the odor absorbing agent in odor- eating shoe liners.

Fashionable Ancient Greek women dyed their parasols in the colors of their favorite chariot teams.

If one wanted to make the trip from the U.S. East Coast to the West Coast by steamboat, one needed to be prepared for a long journey. The SS California's first voyage left New York Harbor on October 6, 1848, making the trip to San Francisco, California via Cape Horn in four months, 21 days.

The Siberian tiger is the largest member of the cat family. Only about 500 remain in the wild. In 1995, the zoo on the English island of The Isle of Wight had to give special training to its Siberian tigers as it was the first time they had ever seen snow.

Siberian tiger Pixiebay

A car tire rotates 32,000,000 times in its average lifetime.

Unanimous verdicts were required in Great Britain court cases until the Criminal Justice Act 1967. The first majority verdict was reached by a British jury on October 5, 1967. They found a wrestler who occasionally went by the name ‘the Terrible Turk’ guilty of stealing a handbag.

Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world. Pound for pound, saffron is more expensive than gold.

Persian saffron

The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility, a novella about an ‘unsinkable' ocean liner called Titan that crashed into an iceberg and sank without enough lifeboats was written by Morgan Robertson in 1898 — 14 years before the Titanic sank.

George Washington ordered a brief ceasefire during the Revolutionary War's Battle of Germantown on October 4, 1777. The truce was arranged to return a lost terrier to its owner, Sir William Howe, a British general. The dog was found wandering the battlefield and was fed and cleaned before being returned to Howe.

A Swedish team of mathematicians calculated there are 177,147 different ways to tie a tie.

Benjamin Franklin invented the rocking chair.

Queen Victoria became the first British monarch to be captured on moving film on October 3, 1896 when she was shown taking a pony-and-trap ride at Balmoral Castle. during a visit by Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. The invitation to film this event went to John Downey, the son of the court photographer, William Downey, who had first photographed Queen Victoria in the 1860s.

A bottle of champagne at room temperature contains about 49 million bubbles. 

When she was young the French fashion designer Gabrielle Chanel was a cabaret singer, which was when she acquired the name "Coco."

Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published on October 2, 1902. Beatrix Potter was one of the first writers to realize merchandising power, producing her own Peter Rabbit doll, registered at the Patent Office, in 1903, making him the oldest licensed literary character in the world.

Peter Rabbit eating radishes, from The Tale of Peter Rabbit

During the Middle Ages chairs were few in number and people sat on stones or benches.  

Blackboard chalk is not real chalk. It is really plaster of Paris, but often people call it "chalk".

In Catholic Europe in 1582, the month of October had only 21 days. When countries changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, the days from 5-14 October were omitted.

Tanggula Railway Station, located at 5,068 m (16,627 ft) in Tibet, is the highest railway station in the world.

Tanggula railway station building By Yaohua2000, Wikipedia

At high noon on October 1, 2004, Ecuadorians synchronized their watches simultaneously to combat the chronic lateness that was costing their economy $2.5 Billion per year.

The name "Texas" comes from "tejas", a Native American word meaning "friends" or "allies".

The chaffinch's lifespan is usually only 3 years, The maximum recorded age is 15 years and 6 months for one in Switzerland.

Chaffinch Pixabay

Whilst at Downing Street, Margaret Thatcher had a pet cat called Wilberforce whom she doted on. She even bought him back a tin of sardines after a visit to Moscow.

Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary entry for September 29, 1662 "...and then on to the King’s Theatre, where we saw Midsummer Night's Dream, which I had never seen before nor shall ever see again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life."

French artist Post-Impressionist Cézanne was criticized for his painting style, but taught his pet parrot to say “Paul Cézanne is a great painter.”

Paul Cézanne self-portrait 1879-1882

The world's smallest thermometer, which is 20,000 times smaller than a hair, is made of DNA, and is used to see temperature changes in cells.

Private Henry Tandey, a British soldier serving near the French village of Marcoing, reportedly encountered a wounded German soldier on September 28, 1918, and declined to shoot him. In doing so, he spared the life of 29-year-old Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler.

Adolf Hitler as a soldier during World War I

"Briton” comes from the Celtic word “Pretani”, a tribal name meaning “the painted ones” or “the tattooed" people used by the Celtic tribe, the Brythons.

The most-visited presidential grave is John F. Kennedy's in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

On September 27, 2013 the actor George Clooney gave 14 of his close friends $1 million each as a surprise gift. The actor also paid their taxes for the year.

Despite 'centipede' meaning '100 feet,' a centipede has never been discovered with 100 legs. The closest, a species found in 1999, has 96 legs.

Lithobius forficatus Wikipedia

In Guayaquil Ecuador, there is a statue in honor of the poet, Jose Olemedo. It is really a statue of Lord Byron.

The heaviest dog on record is an Old English Mastiff from London named Zorba, who was bred by Mrs I Prosser on September 26, 1981. He weighed 343 pounds and measured 8 feet and 3 in. from nose to tail. When the record was set in 1989, Zorba was aged eight.

In 1979, Japan offered new British prime minister Margaret Thatcher 20 "karate ladies" for protection at an economic summit. She declined.

The highest concentration of redheads worldwide is in Scotland with 13%, followed by Ireland with 10%.

A biscuit taken from the Titanic before her ill-fated maiden voyage fetched £3,525 at an auction in London on September 25, 2001. It was taken from a party held on the Titanic in Southampton by Captain Morris Harvey-Clarke, before it sailed in April 1912.  The Spillers and Bakers pilot biscuit – a type of cracker made from flour and water – was described in the catalog as “in almost perfect condition with signs of moulding”.

In 1977 Mrs. James Duck of Memphis became history's fastest mother. Her triplets were born naturally in under two minutes.

Leonardo Da Vinci created a forced air central heating system for a castle in Milan in the late 15th century.

On September 24, 1989, the French Health Education committee launched a campaign for healthier breakfast, suggesting bacon and eggs.

The Scottish terrier was developed in Scotland in the mid-1800s as a vermin catcher and watchdog. It was originally called Aberdeen terrier.

Scottish terrier By Walescot

The largest cemetery in the world is Wadi as-Salam in Najaf, Iraq. It covers an area of 1,486 acres.

Centipedes try to defend and protect themselves against attackers by producing a sticky and smelly substance.

The first portable calculator, the Canon Pocketronic, was placed on sale in Japan in 1970, and were soon marketed around the world. It was designed around three MOS circuits and could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Selling for less than $400, the Pocketronic had no traditional display; numerical output was on thermal paper tape.

More electrical impulses are generated in one day by a single human brain cell than by all the phones in the world.

The first mention of a "basset" dog appeared in La Venerie, a 1585 illustrated hunting text by Jacques du Fouilloux.

Early Basset (from La Venerie) http://www.basset.no

Texas accounts for 7.4 per cent of the land area of the USA. It was 8.8 per cent until Alaska became a state in 1959. 

The Nazis banned and burned the book Bambi because it was by a Jewish author.

Astrologer Girolamo Cardono predicted his death on September 21, 1576. When he felt fine for most of the day, he decided to make his prediction come true by killing himself.

Gerolamo Cardano

John Wayne was born Marion Morrison. His first acting jobs were bit parts in which he was credited as Duke Morrison. "Duke" was a nickname derived from the name of a beloved childhood pet, a huge Airedale Terrier

A "devil's advocate" is a person sanctioned by the Vatican to argue against the canonization of a potential new saint by pointing out their flaws and critically evaluating their miracles. The antitheist writer Christopher Hitchens served as a devil's advocate for Mother Teresa.

When Alfred Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate, he borrowed the same suit to wear to the palace that William Wordsworth wore on his appointment to the same post seven years before.

Alfred Tennyson, portrait by P Kramer

The ostrich egg yolk is the biggest single cell in the world.

Queen Elizabeth II used her handbag to communicate. If she placed it on the table, it meant she wanted to leave the event in five or so minutes. Holding her bag to the side was a sign that she wanted to move on and a lady-in-waiting would rush to her side.

The first traffic wardens in the UK hit the London streets on September 19, 1960 and had the power to issue £2 fines. The first ticket issued was slapped on a Ford Popular belonging to Dr Thomas Creighton, who was answering an emergency call at a West End hotel  to help a heart attack victim and had illegally parked. The ticket was subsequently cancelled after a public outcry.

The popular tequila-based cocktail called the Margarita was named after the Hollywood film star Rita Hayworth. (Her real name was Margarita Carmen Cansino).

Margarita cocktail

In 1979 Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She refused the conventional ceremonial banquet given to laureates, and announced that she planned to give the $192,000 prize away to build more relief centers for lepers and the destitute.

More than five hundred people live and work in Windsor Castle, making it the largest inhabited castle in the world.

Windsor Castle

There are more than 10 trillion living cells in the human body.

Airlines are said to buy 50 per cent of the world's stock of caviar for their first-class passengers.

The American Constitution has 4,543 words and takes a half hour to read, making it far longer than the Declaration of Independence, which takes ten minutes to read.

Page 1 of the constitution

Olean, New York was the first city in the US to install video cameras along its main business street in September 1968.

The 26th Cavalry Regiment (Philippine Scouts) was part of U.S. Army Forces Far East's Philippine Department, during World War II. The last US Cavalry regiment to engage in horse mounted warfare they once repulsed a Japanese Tank Assault at Binalonan, Pangasinan.

A beaver can cut down a 6in diameter tree in three minutes - faster than a human with a an axe.

Famous jazz musician Miles Davis started out as a teenager playing bebop with the saxophonist giant Charlie Parker.

The name of Moby Dick was inspired by a real albino whale called Mocha Dick which reputedly killed 30 sailors before being killed in 1838.

With 2,221 individual recording credits as of September 15, 2015, Ron Carter is the most recorded jazz bassist in history.

The queen termite has the longest life span of any insect in the world, living up to 50 years old, producing at times an egg every two seconds.

Mature queen termite surrounded by workers soldiers. http://www.scienceimage.csiro.au

Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

There are 1 billion cattle in the world — 200,000,000 of those cattle are in India, where the slaughter of cows is largely illegal.

American Jeremy Harper counted aloud every number up to a million, live on the Internet. He spoke for 16 hours a day, completing the marathon after 89 days on September 14, 2007. Harper did not leave his apartment or shave until he finished.

The cauliflower is a member of the same vegetable family as broccoli, kale, brussels sprouts and cabbage. The name cauliflower means “cabbage flower."

The first known use of the word selfie in print appeared in an Australian internet forum on September 13, 2002. Australian student Nathan Hope posted a picture of his split lip after a drunken party stating. “Sorry about the focus, it was a selfie."

By Stewart Nimmo - part of the West Coast Wikipedian at Large project

Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke was the one-time world record holder for the fastest drinking of a yard (2.5 pints) of beer. In 1955 he drunk a yard of beer in under 11 seconds.

A mature oak tree can have as many as 400,000 caterpillars living it.

Domestic cats purr at about 26 cycles per second, which is around the same frequency as an idling diesel engine.

Castanets were developed from the ancient Roman crotalum, which consisted of two rounded hollows of ebony.

The term “catholic” (a Greek word meaning “universal”) was used in the early 2nd century for the first time in a letter of Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch. to the Smyrnaeans. He was also the first Christian writer to stress the Virgin Birth.

During the September 11 attacks, Fox News began running a news ticker on the bottom of the screen to keep up with the flow of information that day. The ticker has remained in continuous use ever since.

In the 1999 movie The Matrix, Neo's passport expires on September 11, 2001.

Eighty per cent per cent of all avocados in shops are descended from one tree grown by a postman and amateur horticulturist Rudolph Hass in 1926. The tree eventually died of root rot and was cut down on September 11, 2002 at the ripe old age of 76.

A businessman Moti Shniberg tried to trademark the term "September 11, 2001," on that very day, as the Twin Towers and Pentagon were still smoldering.

In 1886 Theodore Roosevelt's horse, Hempstead, beat the world equine record for high jumping, clearing 6ft 8 in.

Just like human fingerprints, a zebra's stripe pattern is unique to the individual.

Zebra Pixiebay

'Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott' is an anagram of 'Novel by a Scottish writer.'

On September 9, 1947, a failure in an early computer at Harvard University was traced to a moth trapped in a relay. This is said to be the origin of programming errors being called "bugs". Actually the term "bug" had long been used for inexplicable engineering defects but the Harvard moth was the first bug caused by a real bug.

King George VI of the United Kingdom was an outstanding tennis player. Before he became the British monarch, he played at Wimbledon in the Men's Doubles with Louis Greig in 1926 (see below), losing in the first round.

According to research by Matt Stiles at The Daily Viz compiled from births between 1994 to 2014, September 9 is the most common birthday in the USA.

Jimmy Carter has had the longest retirement of any former US President. He eclipsed Herbert Hoover's record of 31 years 7 months 16 days on September 8, 2012.

Jimmy Carter

The name of Zimbabwe comes from the ancient ruined city of Great Zimbabwe. It means “great house of stones” in the local Chishona language. 

The concept of zero as a digit in the decimal place value notation was developed in India, The earliest text to use a decimal place-value system, including a zero, was the Lokavibhāga, a Jain text from the mid fifth century.

The longest tightrope crossing by bicycle is 485m (1,591 ft) and was achieved by Swiss stuntman Freddy Nock in Erlenbach, Switzerland, on September 7, 2015.

Even when taking dinosaurs into account, the modern day blue whale is the largest animal to have ever lived.

Adult blue whale

Queen Elizabeth I of England sanctioned a law in 1571 obliging everybody over the age of seven to wear a a "cap of wool knit" on Sundays and holidays. This was to help out England's ailing wool trade. Non cap wearers were fined 3s 4d for each day of neglect. It was repealed in 1597 as unworkable.

The first modern lock gates were installed on a canal in Milan in 1500. They were likely designed by Leonardo da Vinci.

The world's first ever permanent color photograph, taken by Thomas Sutton for James Clerk Maxwell's pioneering 1861 demonstration of color photography, was of a tartan ribbon (see below). 

In May 2016, Pizza Hut delivered a pepperoni pizza to the top of Kilimanjaro. This was the world’s highest ever pizza delivery and celebrated Tanzania becoming the 100th country with a Pizza Hut restaurant.

Facial hair doesn't "stop growing", but rather each follicle has a limited lifespan. People who can grow longer beards have follicles that survive for longer before falling out.

The first frame-by-frame animated cartoon film was Fantasmagorie in 1908. 

The world’s first office computer was built in 1951 in the UK for the catering company behind Lyons' chain of tea shops. It's first task was to calculate the cost of the company's deliveries.

In the 1962 football World Cup, the Chilean team ate Swiss cheese before beating Switzerland, spaghetti before beating Italy, and drank vodka before beating the USSR. Then they drank coffee before their match against Brazil but lost. 

View from the Window at Le Gras is the oldest known photograph of a real world scene. French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce produced it using a camera obscura in 1826.

Enhanced version of Niépce's View from the Window at Le Gras (1826 or 1827)

The diamond is the only gemstone composed of just one chemical element, carbon.

A gongoozler, is someone who stares for a long time at things happening on a canal. 

There are more wild camels in Australia than in any other country. 

The earliest surviving illustration of artillery is a drawing of a crude form of cannon in an English manuscript dated 1327.

King Charles II personally fought the 1666 Great Fire of London. He lifted buckets of water and threw money to reward people who stayed to fight the flames.

Ernest Hemingway was a Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy during World War I. 

Hemingway in uniform in Milan, 1918.

George W. Bush gave up drinking alcohol on his 40th birthday after his wife Laura threatened to leave him.

The first coffee shop, called Kiva Han, opened in Constantinople in the early sixteenth century.

The intercontinental airline service made its debut in 1927. The flight by Imperial Airways was from London to Cairo. 

Calcium has been known since the first century, when the ancient Romans were known to make lime from calcium oxide.

After the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, radio station XFM banned certain songs that might upset people. Banned tunes included "Drive" by The Cars, "Airbag" by Radiohead and anything by the Crash Test Dummies.

Leonardo da Vinci designed a man-shaped robot that looked like a knight in around 1495.  

Model of Leonardo's robot with inner workings.

In 2000 Al Capone's toenail clippers were sold for £5,000 at an auction in San Francisco.

Bulgaria was founded in 681AD. It is the oldest European country that hasn't changed its name since it was first established.

Toronto-born Sean Shannon achieved The Guinness World Record for fastest talker when he read the famous Hamlet 'to be, or not to be' soliloquy at a rate of 655 words per minute on August 30, 1995.

Although 227 minutes long, the 1962 Lawrence of Arabia film has no women in speaking roles. It is reportedly the longest movie not to have any dialog spoken by a female.

In 1955, the admission for an adult ticket to Disneyland cost $1, just double the price of a movie ticket. 

The Palace of Parliament in Bucharest, Romania ranks as the biggest office building in Europe. 

The Palace of the Parliament

James Buchanan (1791-1868) was the only unwed president of the United States. His niece served as White House hostess.

The first international cricket match took place as early as August 28, 1841 when 18 members of the New York club travelled to Toronto to play a Canadian "eleven." They played for a stake of $250 a side, and in front of a decent crowd, the American's won by ten wickets.

The world’s longest domestic cat, a grey tabby Maine Coon called Stewie, from the American state of Nevada. Stewie was measured at 123 cm (48.5 in) on August 28, 2010 and died in 2013. He also held the record for the longest cat tail, at 41cm (16.5in).

The legendary Victorian preacher Charles Spurgeon was so popular that Queen Victoria once donned a disguise so she could sneak into one of his services and hear what he had to say.

The shortest run for a West End play in London was a 1888 production of Lord Lytton's 1838 melodrama The Lady of Lyons. The audience was asked to leave after waiting for an hour because nobody could raise the safety curtain. The play was cancelled after that fiasco.

The 10,000 year old Pesse canoe, the world's oldest known boat, was found in a Dutch peat bog. Measuring 298 centimeters (117 in) long and 44 centimeters (17 in) wide, it was carved from a pine log, possibly using antlers as tools.

The Pesse canoe By http://museaindrenthe.nl/collectie/object/

Ancient⸒Greeks⸒and, Romans, hadn’t⸒figured⸒out⸒the⸒concept⸒of⸒spaces⸒so⸒they⸒wrote⸒like⸒this⸒instead. It was Irish monks who invented spacing between written words.

Mother Teresa was banned by the Albanian communist regime from returning from India to her home country. It was only in her late 70s she able to return to the land of her parents.

Miami Beach pharmacist Benjamin Green invented the first suntan cream by cooking cocoa butter in a granite coffee pot on his wife's stove, and then testing the batch on his own head. His invention was introduced as Coppertone Suntan Cream in 1944.

Wikipedia

During the first Super Bowl in 1967, NBC was still showing commercials when the second half kicked off. The officials asked the Packers to kick off again.

Beethoven used to pour cold water over his head to stimulate his brain before sitting down to compose.

The Sequoia tree was discovered in Redwood National Park on August 25, 2006 by Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor, and is thought to be the world's tallest living organism.

Brazil is the longest country in the world, and spans approximately 2800 miles (4,400 kms) from north to south via land.

The extra air in potato chip bags that we whine about, really serves a purpose. It's Nitrogen and it preserves the freshness of the chips, prevents combustion, and creates sufficient cushioning during the shipping process.

Despite its impressive size, the buzzard is not a major predator, preferring a diet of carrion and earthworms.

Buzzard

Ten books on a shelf can be arranged in 3,628,800 different ways

Serial killer Rodney Alcala, who is believed to have murdered up to 130 people, was born on August 23, 1943. In the midst of his three-year killing spree in California between 1977 and 1979, Alcala was featured a contestant on The Dating Game, and was picked by the bachelorette. She never followed up on the date because she found him "creepy".

When Tabasco Sauce first hit the shelves in 1868, the price, when adjusted for inflation, of a single bottle was a massive $17.

William Henry "Boss" Hoover, the founder of the Hoover company, was a Sunday school teacher for 50 years.

In 1976 President Gerald Ford signed a bill posthumously making George Washington a 6-star general, the highest ever U.S. military rank. By law, no United States officer is allowed to outrank George Washington. 

Johnny Cash fought for the rights of Native Americans. In 1964, coming off the chart success of his previous album I Walk The Line, he recorded the LP Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian. Radio stations refused to play any of the record. In retaliation, Cash bought a full-page advert that appeared in the August 22, 1964 issue of Billboard magazine asking: "Where are your guts?"

Sweden is a nation of islands - 221,800 of them. More than 100,000 of them are located in lakes or rivers.

In 1925 there were 24,564,574 cars in the world of which 21,094, 980 could be found in the US.

The earliest reference to a ‘bacon sandwich’ listed in the Oxford English Dictionary was by George Orwell in 1931 and the first mention of a ‘bacon' sarnie’ was in the Daily Express on August 21, 1986.

There are about 60,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) of blood vessels in each body. Laid end to end, they'd stretch around the world over two times.

There are about 37 million sandwich combinations available on the Subway menu.

The first recorded use of the word bongo for a pair of Cuban drums played with the fingers was in 1920.

Although white wine can be produced from both red and white grapes, red wine can only be made from red grapes.

The world longest flight by distance between two major airports is Singapore Airlines flight from Singapore to New York. It can fly either of two completely opposite directions (over the Atlantic or over the Pacific) depending on winds and weather.

The tallest building in the world in 1885 was The Home Insurance Company in Chicago. It was nine stories tall.

Exterior of the Home Insurance Building

The crew of Apollo 11 who put the first man on the moon had the same initials as the first men on earth. Armstrong : Adam, Aldrin : Abel, Collins : Cain.

Adidas acquired in 1952 its signature 3-stripe logo from a Finnish athletic footwear brand named Karhu Sports for two bottles of whiskey and the equivalent of 1600 euros.

The peacock flounder fish is so skilled at camouflage that it can imitate a chessboard if rested on top of it.

Dublin passed a local by-law on August 18, 1946 forbidding taxi drivers from sleeping on the roof of their cabs.

The first commercial compact disc was produced at the Polydor Pressing Operations plant in Langenhagen near Hannover, Germany on August 17, 1982. It was a recording from 1979 of Claudio Arrau performing Chopin waltzes. Arrau was invited to the Langenhagen plant to press the start button.

The average weight of a human brain is about three pounds, which is about 2% of your body weight.

The first ever packaged branded product to be sold in England was Dr Robert James Fever-Powder, which was introduced in 1746.

The Beatles fired their original drummer Pete Best in favor of Ringo Starr on August 16, 1962. Afterwards, Best formed a new band and released the album: Best of the Beatles, a play on his own name. This led to disappointment from fans who bought the album without reading the track listing.

The rhododendron is named from the Ancient Greek for ‘rose’ and ‘tree.’

On August 16, 2013, Google went down for five minutes and in that time, the global internet traffic dropped by 40%.

The Bakossi people of Cameroon believe their ancestor Ngoe built an ark to save his family and animals from a flood.

John Evans of Britain managed to balance an incredible 275 glasses of beer on his head at the Haifa Beer Festival in Israel on August 15, 2013.

As a symbol of unity during the Third Crusade, Phillip II of France and Richard I of England slept in the same bed.

The most overdue book in the world was borrowed from the Sidney Sussex College library in Cambridge, Massachusetts and returned 288 years later.

Cologne Cathedral is the largest cathedral in northern Europe. Built in the Gothic style, construction was began in 1248 on the site of an older church and completed, 632 years later on August 14, 1880. It was the tallest structure in the world until 1884, after which it was overtaken by the Washington Monument.

The cathedral from the south by Velvet. Wikipedia

The wives of two Beatles attended the same college. Paul McCartney's first wife, Linda, and John Lennon's second, Yoko, both went to Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York.

Recycling dates back to Plato who in the 4th cent BC wrote about the importance of making the most of waste products.

Indra Sabha (1932) is the Bollywood movie with the most number of songs - a whopping 72.

As a youth, Otto Von Bismarck was an indefatigable duelist. He was known as the mad Junker.

Woodrow Wilson obtained a Ph.D. in history and political science at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Wilson was the only US President to hold a doctorate degree, making him the highest educated head of state in American history.

In 1895 Ernest Hogan composed several popular songs in a new musical genre, which he named ragtime. The term is actually derived from his hometown Shake Rag, a district in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Humphrey Bogart played chess by mail with GIs during World War II.

One cumulonimbus cloud (storm cloud) can hold enough water for 500,000 baths.

Chefs used 145,000 eggs to make the world’s largest omelette, cooked in the town of Ferreira do Zezere in Portugal on August 11, 2012. Using 880 lb of oil, 220 lb of butter and a pan 10 metres in diameter, the dish took six hours to cook — with 55 chefs using gigantic flat scrapers to keep the mix moving.

A baboon called "Jackie" became a private in the South African army in World War I.

During the Middle Ages, Oxford University had rules that forbade students from bringing bows and arrows to class.

The first modern rationing system was introduced in Germany in 1914 during the First World War.  

First World War German government propaganda poster describing rationing

Silent movie actress Clara Bow failed in the talkies mostly because of her thick Brooklyn accent.

For more Trivia Of The Days click here

On August 9, 2010, JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater quit his job in dramatic style. Irked by the behavior of a rude passenger, Slater announced his resignation over the PA system upon landing at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. He then grabbed two beers from a beverage cart and exited by deploying the plane’s emergency slide. 

Crew cuts originated from the hairstyle enjoyed by US college rower teams in the 1930s.

Author Jack Kerouac sporting a G.I. crew cut in 1943

A diesel engine can also be made to run on vegetable oil made from old cooking oil. This type of fuel is called biodiesel. This is not a new idea. Rudolf Diesel demonstrated his diesel engine in the 1900 Exposition Universelle (World's Fair) using peanut oil fuel.

In 1973, Mao Zedong told Henry Kissinger that China had an excess of females and offered the U.S. 10 million Chinese women.

Cacti are native to the Americas, the only exception being the Rhipsalis baccifera, found in Africa and Sri Lanka.

Rhipsalis baccifera By Frank Vincentz Wikipedia

The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile national monuments in the United States.

The world’s first revolving door was the Van Kannel Revolving Storm Door, patented on August 7, 1888 by Theophilus van Kannel of Philadelphia. Van Kannel came up with idea for revolving doors because he hated opening doors for women.

The South American Goliath bird-eater tarantula (Theraphosa blondi) is the largest spider in the world with a 10-inch or more leg span,  a body length of up to 11.9 cm (4.7 in) and can weigh up to 175 g (6.2 oz).

The Goliath birdeater by Sheri (Bellatrix on Flickr)

The name of HAL, the shipboard computer in 2001: a Space Odyssey, is simply an acronym made of IBM's preceding letters.

On August 6, 1964 American researcher Donald Currey had a bristlecone pine tree known as Prometheus cut down in the Wheeler Bristlecone Pine Grove at Great Basin National Park near Baker, Nevada, only to find that it was the oldest known non-clonal organism ever discovered at the time, with the age of 4,862 years.

The world's first swimming pool was The Great Bath at Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistan. Built in 2500BC, it was lined with bricks covered in a tar-like sealant.

The Great Bath By Saqib Qayyum - Own work

Emily Bronte had a cat called Tiger who played at her feet while she wrote Wuthering Heights.

Heavyweight boxer Tony 'Two Ton' Galento accepted a bet and fought an octopus with boxing gloves on its tentacles on August 5, 1946. The fight was declared a draw.

Russia's Big Diomede island and the U.S.'s Little Diomede island in the Bering Strait are only 2 miles apart.

King George V of the UK was an avid stamp collector. At the time of his death in 1936, King George's stamp collection was so large that it had its own room in Buckingham Palace.

Hans Christian Andersen was a psychiatrist's nightmare and he was particularly neurotic about dying. The Dane suffered from the conviction that he would be buried alive and he used to carry a piece of paper with him that he would prop by his bedside each night, in case he should pass away during the hours of darkness. It read "I only appear to be dead."

All Golden Retrievers come from Nous, a Wavy-coated Retriever and Belle, a Tweed Water Spaniel, bred together in Scotland in 1868.

A Golden Retriever

Half of a cup of figs will give you just as much calcium as half a cup of milk.

A motorist in San Francisco was nearly killed on August 3, 2015 when a corroded lamp post suddenly toppled and crashed onto his car within inches of his head. The corrosion was caused by dogs and people urinating on it.

Newborn babies can instinctively swim for the first four months or so of their lives. But this reflex is lost and has to be re-taught.

The indentation in a brick is called a frog, no one is really sure why.

DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleicacid.

49-year-old Stuart Kettell rolled a Brussels sprout to the top of the 1,085 metres (3,560 ft) tall Mount Snowdon in Wales using only his nose, to raise money for Macmillan Cancer support. It took him four days, completing the feat on August 2, 2014.

The Roman Emperor Augustus was very superstitious about putting his left shoe on before the right.

Hanover, Germany-born King George I was the last king of Great Britain who could not speak English. He spoke to his Prime Minister Robert Walpole in Latin.

The advent of the music video was marked by the debut on August 1, 1981 of Music Television (MTV), a 24-hour music video channel. MTV (Music Television) made its debut at 12:01 a.m. on August 1, 1981 The first music-video shown on the rock-video cable channel was, appropriately, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles.

The U.S. Congress passed a tax on long distance phone calls to pay for the Spanish-American War in 1898. The war ended four months later, but the tax remained in place for over 100 years.

John Wayne smoked six packs of cigarettes a day.

A power grid failure in northern and eastern India on July 31, 2012 left twenty states in the country without electricity. The blackout was the largest power outage in history, affecting over 620 million people, about 9% of the world population or half of India's population. 

The first mention of a "basset" dog appeared in La Venerie, a 1585 illustrated hunting text by Jacques du Fouilloux.

Table Tennis was banned in the Soviet Union between 1930 and 1950, because it was thought to carry a serious risk of eye damage.

Peruvian alpaca wool comes in 22 natural colors, the most of any wool-producing animal.

By Foto:Damast User Damast on sv.wikipedia

The taco predates the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico. Archaeologists believe that early Mexicans may have feasted on ground corn meal folded around fish caught in the country's lake region.

The Swedes executed Scottish-born adventurer Alexander Blackwell on July 29, 1747 for meddling with their line of succession. Blackwell's last words, “I’m sorry for the mistake but this is the first time I’ve been beheaded,” were spoken after he laid his head on the wrong side of the chopping block and was corrected by the executioner.

Today, July 29th, is National Lipstick Day. Did you know fish scales are used in lipstick to make it shimmer and reflect light? 

A claquer was a professional applauder who was hired by French theaters and opera houses in the 1800s.

On July 28, 1996, a man’s body washed up on a trawler in the UK seas. There was no identification on the body except a 25-year-old Rolex Oyster on his wrist. As Rolex maintains such meticulous service records, they were able to ID the victim and ultimately the murderer.

The bumps on raspberries are called "drupelets."

The first commercial product manufactured in the US and exported to Europe was a glass bottle made in Jamestown in 1608.

The longest continuous dramatic performance was 23 hr 33 min 54 sec achieved by the 27 O'Clock Players in New Jersey, USA, on July 27, 2010. They performed The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco, a play written in a continuous loop and said to be totally pointless and plotless. 

The Wright brothers based the design of their first self propelled plane on the way buzzards spread their wings.

The Smithsonian says more patents have been issued for mousetraps than any other device.

In ancient Greece women didn't start counting their age until their wedding day, rather than the actual day they were born. They believed the wedding date was the real start of a woman's life.

Calling ground beef a 'burger’ dates from the invention of mechanical meat grinders in the 1860s.

Betel, a sort of chewing gum, is chewed by about 60% of men in Myanmar and almost 25% of the women.

Chuck Berry had a degree in cosmetology from the Gibbs Beauty College.

Fifty years before women were allowed to enrol into medical school, Margaret Ann Bulkley dressed as a man to study medicine and become her alter-ego, Dr James Barry. She obtained a medical degree from the University of Edinburgh Medical School, then served first in Cape Town, South Africa and subsequently in many parts of the British Empire. It was only when she died from dysentery on July 25, 1865 that her secret was exposed after 46 years working as an army doctor.

Photograph of Dr James Barry; approx late 1840s

Harriet Beecher Stowe rewrote Uncle Tom's Cabin when she had dementia in her later years. She imagined that she was engaged in the original composition, and for several hours every day she penned long passages of the book almost exactly word for word..

Gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded for the first time at the 1904 Olympics

When Jesse Owens won the 200-meter dash at the Berlin Olympics, while his teammate, Mack Robinson, finished second. Mack's little brother, Jackie, later would break the color barrier in major-league baseball. 

The Emperor Nero won seven Olympic titles in total, including for acting, probably by bribing the judges.

The modern recurve bow used in the Olympic archery competition is based on a design from 1500 BC.

William Austin Burt was awarded a patent for the typographer, the first practical typewriting machine on July 23, 1829. It used a dial instead of keys to select each character. As innovative as it was, even in Burt's hands, the machine was slower than handwriting.

Burt demonstrating his typographer

The Greek philosopher Aristotle sponsored a boxer at the Ancient Greek Olympics.

One of the founders of sleep research, Eugene Aserinsky, died on July 22, 1998 in a car crash after falling asleep at the wheel.

All of Mr. Rogers' cardigan sweaters worn on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood were knitted by his mother.

In 1979 starlings were in such large numbers in London that they stopped Big Ben by landing on the hands.

The first chocolate bar was created by JS Fry Sons of Bristol, England in 1847.

Silent reading is actually a recent phenomenon. Only the most skilled readers of the Middle Ages could read silently.

Miss Auras, by John Lavery, depicts a woman reading a book

The singer of the song "Wuthering Heights," Kate Bush, shares the same birthday as Emily Bronte, the author of the original Wuthering Heights novel.

The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.

"Budgerigar” is a version of the Aboriginal for ‘good bird’.

Budgerigar

Until 1986, if you worked for the American brewing company Anheuser-Busch, you could drink as much beer as you liked during the work day.

The first regularly scheduled in-flight movie, By Love Possessed, was shown for the first time on a TWA flight to first class passengers on July 19, 1961.

The 10,000 year old Pesse canoe, the world's oldest known boat, was found in a Dutch peat bog.

The Pesse canoe By http://museaindrenthe.nl/

An average men's match at Wimbledon takes two-and-a-half hours during which the ball is in play for only 20 minutes.

You blink about 84,000,000 times a year.

The Ancient Greeks revered radishes and made gold replicas of them to be offered to the god Apollo.

Radishes

In the United States, 1,712 surnames cover 50% of the population, and about 1% of the population has the surname Smith.

A 10-year-old Hungarian girl called Jadwiga was crowned King of Poland on October 16, 1384. Her title either reflected the Polish lords' attempt to hinder her future husband from adopting the same title without further act or only emphasized that she was a queen regnant. She reigned for 15 years until her death on July 17, 1399.

Lucy Slowe was the first the first African-American woman to win a major sports title. She won the national title of the American Tennis Association's first tournament in 1917. 

Red is the last color to go when people lose their eyesight. Red is also the first color to return when they regain it.

Before joining the rock band Queen, their guitarist Brian May studied Astrophysics at Imperial College. He completed his dissertation in 2007.

Mao Zedong enjoyed swimming. On July 16, 1966 the 72-year-old Chinese leader chose to join 5,000 other swimmers in Wuhan’s 11th annual Cross-Yangtze Competition. He allegedly swam 10 miles (16 km) in just over an hour from the Wuhan Bridge over the Yangtze to prove his fitness and to prove himself invincible.

Boomerangs were found in King Tutankhamen's tomb in excellent condition. Some of them were capped with gold.

In a May 2015 interview, Pope Francis said he has not watched television since July 15, 1990.

The reason the portrait of Winston Churchill looks grumpy on the £5 banknote, is because the photographer had just snatched the cigar out of Churchill's mouth.

Before whistles were introduced, ice hockey referees used a cowbell. They had to switch to whistles when fans started bringing their own cowbells to disrupt game play.

On July 14, 2000, the French celebrated the first Bastille day of the new millennium with the world's largest ever picnic. It ran intermittently along the 600 miles of the Méridien Vert, a line that passes through 337 villages and towns.

France's Just Fontaine, holds the record for the most goals scored in a single World Cup; all his 13 goals were scored in the 1958 tournament. 

England’s first coffee shop was opened by a Turkish Jew named Jacob at Oxford University in 1650.

The Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg suffered from Triskaidekaphobia, which is the fear of the number 13. As 7+6=13 he feared he would die aged 76. And he did: Schoenberg passed away in Los Angeles on Friday, July 13, 1951, at 13 minutes to midnight.

The first public radio broadcast took place in early 1910 when opera was transmitted to several receivers in New York City. 

A black hole the size of a hydrogen atom would exert a pull from 2,000 feet away.

Scottish soldier Captain Robert Barclay-Allardice, (1779-1854) once walked 1000 miles in 1000 consecutive hours. His remarkable walking feat was performed at Newmarket between June 1 and July 12, 1809, during which he walked 1 mile (1.6 km) in each of 1000 successive hours, to win an initial wager of 1000 guineas.

Before the 1920s, surfboards were at least 100 pounds (45 kgs) and up to 16 feet 4.88 meters) long.

The British Army's first radar system, the Gun Laying radar, used up the nation's entire stockpile of chicken wire.

The world record for fasting is held by a 456 pound (207 kg) man who was able to survive due to his excess fat. Starting in June 1965, Scotsman Angus Barbieri fasted for 382 days consuming only  tea, coffee, sparkling water and vitamins  He ended his fast on July 11, 1966, when he reached his goal weight of 180 pounds (82 kg).

Kraftwerk's Ralf Hutter recorded the passing cars for the band's 1974 song "Autobahn" by dangling a mike out of his Volkswagen window. 

George W. Bush collects autographed baseballs and owned over 250.

Eric Clapton was expelled from Kingston College of Art because he was playing the guitar in class.

The most times to unholster and holster a gun in one minute is 44 and was achieved by Will Roberts in Calico, California, on July 10, 2014.

The size of a polo field is 300 by 160 yards (270 by 150 m), the largest playing field in sports.

The oldest known pet cat was found in a 9500-year-old grave in Cyprus.

Swedish pentathlete Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall was the first athlete to be disqualified at the Olympics for drug use after he drank two beers before his shooting event at the 1968 Summer Olympics to calm his nerves. His disqualification followed the introduction of anti-doping regulations by the International Olympic Committee the previous year.

Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall

The average height of an NBA basketball player is 6 foot 7 inches (2.007 metres).

On July 8, 1941 the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney along with the rest of her squadron attempted to shoot down the planet Venus thinking it was a high altitude bomber. Venus managed to survive the engagement.

The Ancient Egyptians made at least 24 varieties of wine. Its importance was indicated by the fact that while most gods were only worshipped locally, Sesmu - the god of wine - was worshipped throughout the country.

Grape cultivation, winemaking, and commerce in ancient Egypt c. 1500 BC

Kim Jong-il became supreme leader of North Korea on July 8, 1994 after the death of his father, Kim il-sung. A big film fan, he had a collection of 20,000 movies in a private movie theater beneath a Pyongyang bunker. He wrote a 300-page book called On the Art of the Cinema that every filmmaker in North Korea was forced to read.

Chocolate was a novelty during the 1700s in England. To be eaten it was “stewed for hours,” deprived of “cocoa butter,” “reboiled with milk and flavouring,” and, just before serving, thickened with eggs.

USA's first ever television show was broadcast by NBC/RCA on July 7, 1936. It was seen by only a few hundred people who had access to the new television. The first ever program featured newsreel items, as well as a variety show of sorts, which included female dancers performing a water lily dance, a fashion show and some comic bits.

The chocolate bar Snickers, which is manufactured at the M&M/Mars plant alongside Metra’s Elgin-to-Chicago Milwaukee West Line tracks, was named after the Mars family’s favorite horse.

The dollar was unanimously chosen as the official currency for the United States on July 6, 1785. In the 1700’s, you could sell a fresh deerskin of a buck for one dollar – hence, the term “buck.”

An adult male polar bear typically weighs around 351kg (775lb) or the weight of about five men.

In Switzerland, rabies was virtually eliminated after scientists placed chicken heads laced with live attenuated vaccine in the Swiss Alps, which the foxes (the main carriers of the virus) ate and therefore immunized themselves.

The game of backgammon was first played over 5000 years ago.

Due to its acute sense of smell, the bloodhound is the only animal whose evidence is admissible in an American court. 

Bloodhound

The phrase "jet lag" was once called "boat lag", back before airplanes existed.

The usual date of The Earth’s aphelion, when its orbit takes it furthest from the Sun, is July 4.

The Alaskan town of Glacier View doesn’t get dark enough for fireworks on Independence Day. Instead, they drive cars off a cliff.

The artichoke belongs to the sunflower family.

Today, 60 per cent of the world's buttons are made in one Chinese town, Qiaotou, which churns out 15 billion buttons a year. In addition, Qiaotou makes 80 percent of the world's zippers.

President Woodrow Wilson kept a flock of sheep on the White House lawn. He sold the wool and gave the money to the Red Cross.

Up to the age of about 6 months babies can breathe and swallow at the same time.

The surrounding trees at Bleinheim Palace are planted in groups to represent the Battle of Bleinheim.

Early developments in radio were called 'wireless telegraphy', which is why the radio used to be called the wireless.

Family listening to the first broadcasts around 1920 with a crystal receiver.

Former UK prime minister Tony Blair sung and played guitar in a band called Ugly Rumours while at university.

Nike's first "Just Do It" advertisement debuted on July 1, 1988. Nike ad agency executive Dan Wieden credits the inspiration for the slogan as being the last words spoken by convicted murderer Gary Gilmore before being shot to death by a firing squad in Utah in 1977.

The 1789 discovery of uranium in the mineral pitchblende is credited to German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth. Uranium was named by Klaporth after the newly discovered planet Uranus.

The actress Pamela Anderson was the first baby born on July 1, 1967, Canada’s 100th birthday. She was referred to in the press as Canada’s “Centennial Baby.”

The record for most trees planted in 24 hrs by an individual is held by Canadian Antoine Moses who planted 23,060 trees in one July day in Alberta in 2021.That's an average of planting a new tree every 3.5 seconds!

The supernova SN 1006 first appeared in the constellation Lupus and was widely seen on Earth beginning in 1006. It was, in terms of apparent magnitude, the brightest stellar event in recorded history, exceeding roughly 16 times the brightness of Venus.

George Washington had only one tooth in his mouth by the time he was inaugurated in 1789. He contacted a leading dentist in Philadelphia who produced state of art dentures made from exotic and lasting material: hippopotamus ivory.

The word “biscuit” comes from "bis coctus," twice baked. They were originally ships’ rations for Roman sailors.

The first tennis rackets, strung with sheep gut, appeared in the 15th century. Before players used their hands.

Abraham Lincoln was the only US president who was also a licensed bartender.

Both Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel went blind after eye operations by charlatan surgeon John Taylor. Taylor was one of the most flamboyant quacks of his age, travelling from town to town in a coach decorated with pictures of eyeballs.

The stick that returns to the thrower was first described in detail and recorded as a "boumarang" in 1822. It'd now known as boomerang.

Stephen Hawking tried to lure time travelers to his house by throwing a party on June 28, 2009, then sending out invitations later. Nobody showed up.

France is the country most reliant on nuclear power generating 71% of the country's total electricity, a larger percent than any other nation. It turned to nuclear in response to the 1973 oil crisis. The situation was summarized in a slogan, "In France, we do not have oil, but we have ideas."

When George II of Great Britain and his forces defeated the French in Dettingen, Bavaria on June 27, 1743 during the War of the Austrian Succession it was the last time that a British monarch personally led his troops into battle.

George II at the Battle of Dettingen  by John Wootton

The yen currency was officially adopted by the Meiji government in an Act signed on June 27, 1871. The Yen's name comes from the Japanese word "えん (en)," which literally means "round."

On June 26, 1862, Joseph Wells, cricketer father of the noted author H.G. Wells became the first bowler to take four wickets in four balls in county cricket.

Miami Beach pharmacist Benjamin Green invented the first suntan cream by cooking cocoa butter in a granite coffee pot on his wife's stove, and then testing the batch on his own head. His invention was introduced as Coppertone Suntan Cream in 1944.

Original Coppertone ad

The first ballpoint pens went on sale in 1945 at Gimbels department stores for $12.95.

The oldest extant soccer ball, circa 1540, was made of two oblong pieces of crudely-sewn leather. It was found stuffed behind paneling in the Stirling Castle bedroom of Bloody Queen Mary.

Because the eyes of a rabbit are positioned on the side of its head, they can see behind them without turning around.

By JJ Harrison (https://www.jjharrison.com.au/)

David I, who was the king of Scotland 1124-1153, gave tax rebates to subjects with good table manners

The name Chicago is derived from a Fox Indian term for 'place of the skunk'.

The longest journey by skateboard was 12,159 km (7,555 miles). New Zealander Rob Thomson started his journey in Leysin, Switzerland on June 24, 2007 and finished it in Shanghai, China, on September 28, 2008.

Sliding bookcases were used in the United States during Prohibition to hide secret rooms or spaces containing liquor.

Gamal Abdel Nasser became President of Egypt on June 23, 1956. He was elected by 99.9 per cent of the electorate, helped by the fact that he was the only candidate. Nasser held the post until his death in 1970.

The combination of strawberries and cream was first created by Thomas Wolsey in the court of King Henry VIII.

A similar game to basketball was played by the Olmecs in Mexico in 1000BC.

Superman's origin was inspired by the biblical story of Moses, whose parents abandoned him as a baby to save his life.

Tama was a female calico cat who gained fame for being a station master and operating officer at Kishi Railway Station on the Kishigawa Line in Kinokawa, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan. She died aged 16 on June 22, 2015.

Tama

Osama Bin Laden was a keen footballer in his youth, playing center forward and he supported the English club Arsenal.

The giraffe's blood pressure is two or three times that of a healthy man and may be the highest in the world.

The Romans called Australia ‘Terra Australis Incognita’ – ‘unknown land of the South’.

Everywhere above the Arctic Circle has 24 hours of sunlight on the day of the summer solstice

Over 87 million cards are sent each year on Father's Day, making it the fourth most popular day for sending cards.

Congo the Chimpanzee (1954-1964) was known for his "lyrical abstract impressionist" paintings. On June 20, 2005, Congo's paintings were included in an auction at Bonhams alongside works by Renoir and Warhol. American collector Howard Hong purchased three of Congo's works for over $26,000. One of Congo's paintings is below.

 The term "decibel" used to denote noise volume is named after Alexander Graham Bell.

A pint of milk in a supermarket can contain milk from over a thousand different cows.

A stag beetle lives underground for five years before emerging to mate for a few weeks, then die.

Golden stag beetle By fir0002flagstaffotos [at] gmail.comCanon 20D

Beirut was named the top place to visit by The New York Times in 2009.

Ancient Egyptian doctors had their patients eat seeds from a poppy to relieve pain.

The Nike "swoosh" logo was created in 1971 by a graphic design student Carolyn Davidson and was purchased by Blue Ribbon for $35. The intention was to convey motion in its design. it was first used by Nike on June 18, 1971.

Astronomer is an anagram of moon starer.

The word “dude” was coined by Oscar Wilde and his friends as a hybrid of duds” (slang for clothes) and “attitude”.

The American War of Independence's Battle of Bunker Hill between the Colonists and British was fought on June 17, 1775 outside of Boston. Thousands of Bostonians sat on rooftops, in trees, on church steeples, and in the rigging of ships in the harbor to watch the American revolutionaries battle the British.

The Battle of Bunker Hill, by Howard Pyle, 1897

Iceland has the highest number of writers, books published, and books read per capita than any other country, with one in ten Icelanders expected to publish a book.

When a flaming object fell on a picnic table in Mississauga, Ontario on June 16, 1979, it drew worldwide attention and speculation as to its true nature. It was eventually revealed that the object, described as a flat, dark green rock with a diameter of 8 inches was a Frisbee thrown by the neighbor as a prank.

Vladimir Putin walks with his right arm held immobile and left arm swinging due to his KGB training - keeping his gun arm close.

A strawberry isn't a berry but a banana is.

Wind is essential for trees to reach maturity. The stress from wind allows trees to grow stronger, and without wind, a tree will eventually collapse under its own weight.

The bidet got its name from a French word meaning ‘pony’ as it looks like an undersized horse.

Bidet

The French actress Sarah Bernhardt collected chairs. She filled all the homes she lived in with them.

In the 1500s baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, Then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"

One acre (4047 square meters) of wheat can produce enough bread to feed a family of four people for about ten years. 

Wheat field

The comic actress Lucille Ball was stricken by rheumatoid arthritis early in her career and spent 2 years re-learning how to walk.

Up to June 13, 1920, parents had used the US postal service to post their children in order to save rail fares. On that date, sending children by Parcel Post was officially forbidden with the ruling that children are not "bees and bugs", the only postable livestock.

George Washington was naturally a redhead and did not wear a wig. Instead, he powdered his hair, which was naturally long and lustrous, to make it white.

George Washington

In 1784, Yorkshire locksmith Joseph Bramah devised a ‘pick-proof lock’ offering a prize for the first to open it. American locksmith Alfred Charles Hobbs finally opened it 67 years later and received a prize of 200 Guineas — just over £20,000 or $28,5000 today.

The first perfect game in baseball history was achieved by John Lee Richmond on June 12, 1880. Before the game against Cleveland, Worcester Worcesters pitcher Richmond was up all night taking part in college graduation events, and went to bed at 6:30 AM. He caught the 11:30 AM train for Worcester and then pitched a perfect game in the afternoon contest to beat Cleveland, 1–0. 

The Japanese ‘Peace Bell’ at the United Nations headquarters, New York, was cast in 1952 from coins presented by 64 countries.

The Japanese Peace Bell by Rodsan18 at English Wikipedia.

No cat can both purr and roar. Some big cats such as lions and tigers cannot purr, but instead roar.

The first popular superhero was Mandrake the Magician. The syndicated newspaper comic strip, created by Lee Falk, began publication on June 11, 1934. Superman arrived four years later.

The red beetroot was considered by the Ancient Greeks to be medicinal, whilst its juice was used as a hair dye. 

Red beetroot

The word 'beggar' is derived from Flemish priest Lambert le Bègue (d c1187) who helped homeless widows and orphans.

Alexander the Great ordered his armorers to make helmets much larger than those worn by his troops. These were left for the enemy to find in the hope that they would be afraid to fight the "giant" soldiers.

The world's longest pizza was created at the Los Angeles Convention Center in California in January 2023. The creators managed to achieve a total length of 1,930.39 m (6,333 ft 3.60 in). The enormous pizza comprised 13,653 lbs (6,193 kg) of dough, 4,948 lbs (2244 kg) of tomato sauce, over 8,800 lbs (3991 kg) of cheese, and around 630,496 pepperoni slices.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry were both in Afghanistan at the same time, before they met. Meghan was doing a USO tour with other celebrities for the U.S. troops while Harry was stationed in the Middle East.

The author George Sand opened a puppet theater in Nohant in 1847, showing plays written by her son.

When playing with female puppies, male puppies will often let them win, even if they have a physical advantage.

The plural of “computer mouse” has long been disputed. Some say “mice”, some say “mouses”.

On June 8, 1948 in Saskatchewan, Canada a farmer named Cecil George Harris was pinned under his tractor. He used his pocket knife to scratch the words "In case I die in this mess, I leave all to the wife. Cecil Geo Harris" onto the fender. Harris did die and the message was accepted in court. It has served as a precedent ever since for cases of holographic wills.

Enrico Caruso's 1902 version of "Vesti la giubba" from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci was the first sound recording to sell a million copies.

The "ice cream" you see in ice cream adverts is often mashed potatoes because they will not melt during production.

Dogs have about 100 different facial expressions, most of them made with the ears.

The Great Pyramid of Giza was built by 100,000 people working 10 hours a day for 23 years.

The Great Pyramid of Giza By Nina;

Leo Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim took longer than planned to complete West Side Story because every Thursday they downed pens to solve fiendishly difficult crosswords from the BBC magazine The Listener.

The first household detergent, Persil, went on sale in Dusseldorf, Germany on June 6, 1907. In addition to soap, it contained both sodium PERborate and sodium SILcate, hence PERSIL.

The longest ever beard was that of the Norwegian Hans Langseth. It measured 17ft 6in when he died in Iowa, in 1927. 

Hans Langseth

The fighting on D Day was so intense that 4% of the sand on Normandy beaches today is made up of shrapnel from D-Day that has broken down.

An acre of corn is as beneficial to the environment as an acre of forest trees. Both have large leaf areas that absorb lots of carbon dioxide and release oxygen during the entire summer period.

Meryl Streep originally applied to Law School but slept in on the morning of her interview and took it as a sign she was destined for other things.

1979 photograph by Jack Mitchell

The asterisk derives from the 2,000 year-old character used by Aristarchus of Samothrace called the asteriskos.

On June 4, 1986, professional wrestler Kerry Von Erich was in a motorcycle accident that nearly ended his life. Doctors were unable to save his right foot, eventually amputating it. He continued wrestling while secretly wearing a prosthetic - even showering in his boots so no one would know. Erich's injury wasn't public knowledge until his death from suicide seven years later.

Each dolphin has his own unique vocal whistle. Because each whistle is unique, dolphins are able to call to each other by mimicking the whistle of a dolphin they want to communicate with. It's the equivalent of calling each other by name. 

In the later part of his life, George III of the UK suffered from recurrent, and eventually permanent, mental illness. Once when driving through Windsor Great Park, George commanded his carriage driver to stop. The king walked over to an oak tree, shook hands with one of its branches and talked to it for several minutes believing he was conversing with the king of Prussia.

As a result of BBC's anti product placement policy, Ray Davies of The Kinks was forced to make a round-trip flight from New York to London and back on June 3, 1970. He interrupted the band's American tour to change "Coca-Cola" to "cherry cola" in his recording of "Lola" in order to prevent a ban on the song.

Strawberries are the only fruit with seeds on the outside of their skin. There are about 200 dry, yellow seeds on each berry.

Pixiebay

Beijing is considered to the bicycle capital of the world as it has many parking lots dedicated to bikes alone. About 400 million of the world’s one billion bicycles are in China.

Nestlé, under the brand name Libby's, produces 85% of the world's canned pumpkin at their plant in Morton, Illinois.

The so-called Battle of Santiago took place during the World Cup on June 2, 1962. The football match between hosts Chile and Italy became so violent that police were called onto the field by English referee Ken Aston to escort players who had been sent off.

The King of France obtained a ceasefire during the Hundred Years War so he could visit Saint Thomas Becket's tomb at Canterbury.

The first recorded theft of a motor car occurred in Paris on June 1, 1896, when a Peugeot belonging to Baron de Zuylen was stolen by his mechanic.

The giant panda is the only species of bear that does not move its ears to pick up sound. 

By J. Patrick Fischer - Wikipedia Commons

Marilyn Monroe had a higher IQ (163) than that of Albert Einstein (160).

In Thailand, it was considered a capital offense punishable by death if someone touched the queen. On May 31, 1880, Sunanda Kumariratana, first wife of King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) of Siam (now Thailand) drowned when her royal boat capsized on the way to the Palace. The many witnesses to the accident did not dare to touch the queen while she was drowning.

The record for widest tornado recorded was broken on May 31, 2013 by the 2.6 mile-wide (4.2 km) wedge tornado (rated EF3) that hit El Reno, Oklahoma.

The members of Led Zeppelin gave their drummer John Bonham a Harley Davidson for his 25th birthday on May 31, 1973. He promptly rode the motorcycle up and down the hallways of his hotel, causing thousands of dollars in damage. The next day, he wrote a check for the damages and said "Oh, and keep the bike."

Manchester United football club have never lost a Premier League game at Old Trafford when leading at half-time. This is an impressive streak dating back to May 1984.

Spanish military engineer and physicist Emilio Herrera Linares designed and built a full-pressure space suit "escafandra estratonáutica" in 1935, which was to have been used in a stratospheric balloon flight planned for early 1936.

Space suit designed by military engineer Emilio Herrera Linares for stratospheric balloon

The medium of exchange for many of the ancients was barley. It was replaced by metal coins around 625BC in Greece.

Spanish ultrarunner Ricardo Abad holds the world record for running a marathon every day for 607 consecutive days. He started on October 1, 2010 and finished on May 29, 2012. Abad ran all these marathons alongside working 8 hour shifts in a factory.

London-born engineer Alan Blumlein (1903-1942) invented stereo sound recording in 1931, after getting frustrated that the sound from a single speaker at the cinema did not match the action on screen.

The Cincinnati Red Stockings, baseball's first all-professional team, won 130 games in a row between 1869 and 1870.

In the 1950s, the Egyptian Secret Service had their spy in London buy all of the James Bond books so they could analyze British espionage methods believing it was based on reality.

The world record for pancake eating was broken by competitive eater Matt Stonie at the World Pancake Eating Championship, held in Chico, California on May 28, 2016, when he shoved down 113 silver-dollar pancakes in eight minutes.

Salvador Dali once arrived to an art exhibition in a limousine filled with turnips.

French Jesuit priest and grammarian Dominique Bouhours died on May 27, 1702. His last words were "I am about to - or I am going to - die: either expression is correct."

The sperm whale makes a series of clicking noises that can reach as high as 230 decibels making it the loudest animal in the world.

The Golden Gate Bridge's two main cables are long enough to circle the world at the equator more than three times.

In 1783 the best chess player of his age, Frenchman François-André Danican played and won three chess games simultaneously while blindfolded. Witnesses signed affidavits since they doubted future generations would believe such a feat was possible.

Soviet weightlifter Vasily Alekseyev set 80 world records between 1970 and 1977 more than any other athlete in any sport.

The Sami people of northern Finland use a measure called Poronkusema: the distance a reindeer can walk before needing to urinate.

Mahatma Gandhi temporarily lost one of his most prized possessions on May 25, 1947 when a thief took the five shilling watch which for 25 years had dangled from his loincloth. The thief is believed to have mingled with crowds which mobbed the leader of the Indian independence movement at Kanpur railway station on his way to Delhi. The thief felt remorse and returned it six months later.

Holstein cow Blosom was the tallest cow ever standing at 190 centimeters, or just a little over 6.2 feet. Blosom passed away on May 25, 2015 from an irreparable leg injury.

Oscar-winning actress Geena Davis came 24th in the US women's archery championship in 1999.

Drilling began on May 24 1970 on the Kola Peninsula in Russia, of the Kola Superdeep Borehole. It eventually reached 12,262 metres (40,230 ft), making it the deepest hole ever drilled and the deepest artificial point on Earth. The Kola Borehole has been abandoned since 2006 and only a small metal wield covers the hole.

Wendy's is named after founder Dave Thomas' daughter, Melinda—she couldn't pronounce Rs and Ls as a kid, calling herself “Wenda.”

 

The oldest examples of glass are Egyptian beads dating from 12,000 BC

Fleming Koch and Nina Tolgard, both of Denmark, were married on May 23, 1988 in the world's first underwater wedding ceremony, which took place in Mauritius.

A Carmelite monk, Père Sebastian Jean Truchet, invented the ear trumpet.

James J. Ritty, owner of a tavern in Dayton, Ohio, invented the cash register in 1879 to stop employee theft.

Arthur Conan Doyle was obsessed with skiing long before it became an established pursuit. He was among the pioneers in making skiing, originally a Norwegian form of travel, into an international sport, and is credited with making it popular in Switzerland.

The Tokyo Skytree, which opened to the public on May 22, 2012, is the tallest tower in the world standing 634 meters (2,080 ft) tall. A broadcasting, restaurant and observation tower in Sumida, it is the third tallest (man-made) structure on Earth, after after the Merdeka 118 (678.9 m or 2,227 ft) and the Burj Khalifa (829.8 m or 2,722 ft)

Pilots aren't allowed beards due to the shape of an oxygen mask.

On May 21, 1898, the first car bumper was fitted. The bumper was fitted to a prototype vehicle at the Imperial Wesseldorf wagon factory in Moravia (now Czech Republic). The car set off on a test drive to Vienna and the bumper fell off after less than ten miles.

Duffel bags are named after a town of Duffel, Belgium, where they were first made.

US military-issued duffel bags. By Bahamut0013

Jonathan Davis, lead singer for the nu metal group Korn, played in his high school bagpipe band.

The first Band-Aid adhesive bandages were 3 ins (7.6 cms) wide and 18 ins (45.7 cms) long. People cut off as much as they needed.

The father of English hymnody Isaac Watts was only 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall with a large head, but was known for his generosity, humanity and godliness. One lady turned down his matrimonial proposal by saying, "I like the jewel but not the setting."

Isaac Watts

The English new wave band Duran Duran got their name from an astronaut in the 1968 Jane Fonda movie Barbarella

When a farmer was injured by a fallen tree branch in 2003, an eastern grey kangaroo which had been hand-reared, named Lulu saved his life by alerting his family members to his location. She received the RSPCA Australia National Animal Valour Award on May 19, 2004.

On May 19, 1999 when Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was released into theaters, an estimated 2.2 million full time employees missed work in America to watch the Star Wars movie. it cost the US an estimated $293 million dollars from loss of productivity.

The earliest known bank was the Egibi Bank of Neuchanezar in Babylon, which was established in 575BC.

There are around 35,000 museums in the United States has more museums, a greater number than the combined total of Starbucks and McDonald's locations.

The Prague astronomical clock was first installed in 1410, making it the oldest one in the world still working.

The Prague astronomical clock By Krzysiu "Jarzyna" Szymański

Bacteria can live for centuries, as evidenced by the discovery of bacteria from the ancient Egyptian tombs.

10,000 London school pupils went on strike on May 17, 1972 to march against caning, detention, uniforms and "headmaster dictatorships." Abandoning lessons to march on County Hall, the government thought it so serious MI5 and the Special Branch were involved to spy on "school activists."

The largest egg on record weighed 5 lb 11.36 oz (2.589 kg) and was laid by an ostrich at a farm owned by Kerstin and Gunnar Sahlin in Borlänge, Sweden, on May 17, 2008.

The inventor of the ATM, John Shepherd-Barron, was lying in the bath when he came up with the idea of a cash dispenser.

The Academy Award was rumored to have gotten its nickname of Oscar for its resemblance to a film librarian’s Uncle Oscar.

Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabel became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest on May 16. 1975. Tabel was also the first woman to ascend all Seven Summits by climbing the highest peak on every continent.

The English philosopher Jeremy Bentham owned a cat called Langbourne whom he fed on macaroni.

Before Johann Gutenberg started upon his printing press in the 1450s, there were about 30,000 books in Europe.

Snow beer is the best-selling beer brand in the world despite mainly being sold only in China.

Max Verstappen became the youngest driver to win a Formula One race by winning the Spanish Grand Prix on May 15, 2016 aged 18 years and 228 days.

The human eye can detect more shades of green than any other color.

On May 14, 2008 there were 5,586 companies with over 200 years of history across 41 countries. More than 3,000 of those were in Japan and 837 in Germany.

The word 'bagel' comes from the Yiddish word 'beygal,' which itself is from the German 'beugel,' meaning 'ring.' 

Three Montreal-style bagels: one poppy and two sesame bagels

Scottish engineer James Watt, best known for his steam engine invented a mechanized method of copying manuscripts, the copying press, in the late 18th century. It became a commercial success and was widely used in offices even into the twentieth century.

The first place where a barcode was scanned was a packet of Wrigley’s chewing gum sold in June 1974 in Troy, Ohio.

The capture of the Tripolitan city of Derna on May 13, 1805 was the first time the United States flag was raised in victory on foreign soil. The capturing of the city ended the First Barbary War.

William Eaton leading the attack on Derna

The word mile comes from the largest unit of land measure used by the Romans, the "milia passuum" meaning 1,000 paces. The Roman army, marching through uncharted territory, used to place a stick in the ground every 1,000 paces (where each pace was 2 steps).

During the early 1850s, Florence Nightingale had a pet owl called "Athena" who she carried in her apron pocket.

The RMS Olympic, sister ship to the Titanic, rammed a U-Boat and sunk it on May 12, 1918, making it the only merchant ship in World War I to have sunk an enemy vessel.

Among the treasures found at Ur is a board laid out for a game of backgammon dating back to about 2500BC.

The waltz developed from the Bavarian country dance called the ländler. It was first introduced to English ballrooms on May 11, 1812. Most observers considered the waltz disgusting and immoral due to the physical contact involved. The Victorian Ladies' Pocket Book of Etiquette devoted ten pages into denouncing the dance.

Barcelona FC’s Camp Nou is currently the largest stadium in Europe with a seating capacity of 99,354.

Oh-Barcelona.com from Barcelona, Spain - The Camp Nou Stadium

General Ulysses Grant believed that onions would prevent dysentery and other physical ailments amongst his Union Civil War soldiers. He wired the following message to the War Department on May 11, 1864: "I will not move my army without onions." In response the U.S. government immediately sent three trainloads of onions to the front.

The word “barbecue” comes from a word Arawak Indians in Haiti used. It first appeared in print in 1653. 

Wrestling was so popular in Ancient Greece that, just as nowadays we may invite a friend for a round of golf or a game of bowls, Greeks asked each other to go wrestling together.

The 2015 and 2018 world champion of French Scrabble can't speak a word of French. New Zealander Nigel Richards managed to memorize the whole French Scrabble dictionary.

When Carter Wilkerson tweeted Wendy's asking how many retweets he needed for a year of free chicken nuggets, Wendy's replied with "18 Million". He accepted the challenge and tweeted "HELP ME PLEASE. A MAN NEEDS HIS NUGGS ." The tweet prompted the hashtag #NuggsForCarter. He collected nearly 3.5 million retweets in a little over a month, becoming on May 9, 2017, the most-retweeted of all time, at which point Wendy's gave him a year of free nuggets. It still is the second most retweeted tweet in the English language

On May 9, 2012, tennis player Samuel Groth of Australia served an ace recorded at 263 km/h (163.4 mph) during an ATP Challenger event in Busan, South Korea. The serve came during Groth's second-round match against Uladzimir Ignatik (Belarus). It's the fastest ever recorded serve.

You cannot snore and dream at the same time.People normally snore when in deep sleep and at the same time we dream when sleeping soundly but still snoring and dreams do not go hand in hand.

The collective noun for starlings is a murmuration. The name may come from the sound their wings make when a vast cloud of them sweeps through the skies. 

The Löwenmensch figurine a lion-headed figurine from the Swabian Alps in Germany is the oldest known statue in the world,, dating to 30,000-40,000 years ago. 

Löwenmensch By Thilo Par

George Washington caught smallpox during a trip to Barbados in 1760. As a result he was permanently scarred.

On May 7, 1988, the U.S. city of Boston held the world's first convention for people who said they had been abducted by aliens.

Starbucks uses round tables to make solo coffee drinkers feel less alone.

Thailand's capital city is actually named Krung Thep ("city of angels"). Foreigners persist on calling it Bangkok.

An Irish suffragette named Mary Maloney followed Winston Churchill around for a week ringing a very large bell every time he tried to speak. Her most famous “interruption” was on May 6, 1908 while Churchill was campaigning in Dundee, Scotland.

 
Sigmund Freud never learned how to read a railway timetable and was almost always accompanied on journeys in case he got lost. Often it was his sister-in-law Minna accompanying him as his wife Martha disliked travelling.

Sigmund Freud by Max Halberstadt, c. 1921

The Solar System can never come into perfect alignment. The last time the eight major planets appeared even in the same part of the sky was over 1,000 years ago, in the year AD 949, and they won’t manage it again until May 6, 2492.

NASA believes the value of minerals on the asteroid belt exceeds USD 600,000,000,000,000,000,000. 

Washington state has more glaciers than the other 47 contiguous states combined. 

Glacier Peak, Washington

Mary Lies was the first woman to be issued a US patent. She was granted on May 5, 1809 a patent for the rights to a technique for weaving straw with silk and thread to make bonnets.

The at-sign symbol, @, wasn't originally used the way we use it today. In a mercantile document sent by Florentine Francesco Lapi from Seville to Rome on May 4, 1536, @ was used to denote a unit of measure – an amphora (clay jar) of wine, which is equivalent to about 1/13th of a barrel.

The shortest US president on record was James Madison, who was 5 feet 4 inches tall (1.63 meters) and weighed less than 100 lbs (45 kgs).   

James Madison By James Sharples (1751/52-1811)

In the 19th century cures for baldness were made from bear's grease, beef marrow, onion juice, butter and flower water.

In Italy, spaghetti is usually eaten only with a fork, or with a fork and a spoon. Many Italians see using a knife to eat spaghetti as bad manners, except to prepare them for small children.

Raja Harishchandra, the first full-length Indian feature film, was released on May 3, 1913. With a storyline based on the legend of Raja Harishchandra, it marked the beginning of the Indian film industry.

The human brain is about 85% water.

The Greek orator Demosthenes was an ancient stammerer who is said to have cured himself by learning to speak with pebbles in his mouth.

The lower left side of Sylvester Stallone's face has been paralyzed from birth resulting in his slurred speech. Stallone's facial paralysis was the result of a doctor misusing tongs during his birth, severing the nerves in the newborn's lower left cheek 

Sylvester Stallone in 2012 By Georges Biard

A ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber.

The first cooked meals on a scheduled flight were introduced on May 1, 1927 by Imperial Airways. Their London to Paris 'Silver Wing' service included a steward, a four-course luncheon and drinks from a bar.

The world's largest sports stadium is in North Korea's capital Pyongyang. The Rungrado 1st of May Stadium, also known as the May Day Stadium, was completed on May 1, 1989 with a capacity said to be 150,000.

The 100th Anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-sung. By Nicor

Toy balloons were invented by English scientist Michael Faraday in 1824. He used balloons to store gases.

The first televised FA Cup Final took place on April 30, 1938 between Huddersfield Town and Preston North End. Preston won 1-0 thanks to a penalty dispatched by George Mutch in the last minute of extra time. More people - 93,000 - saw the game at Wembley than on TV, as there were fewer than 10,000 sets in Britain.

The South American Goliath birdeater is the world's largest spider, according to Guinness World Records, with leg spans of 11 inches (28 cms) and bodies nearly 5 inches (13 cms) long. The spider can weigh more than 6 oz. (170 grams) — about as much as a young puppy.

The word 'zipper' was introduced by Goodrich's 1925 rubber galoshes called "Zipper Boots". The abbreviation zip was also first recorded in 1925.

In 2004, the United States Department of Agriculture classified batter-coated French fries as a vegetable.

A baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox set the all-time low attendance mark for Major League Baseball on April 29, 2015. Zero fans were in attendance for the game, as the stadium was officially closed to the public due to the 2015 Baltimore protests.

This first modern UK police force was founded in 1829 by Robert Peel. That's why the Brits call them 'Bobbies'.

Georges Bouton was the nominal winner of the 'world's first motor race' on April 28, 1887, when he drove his first four-seater steam quadricycle, two kilometers from Neuilly Bridge to the Bois de Boulogne. He was the only entrant.

Badgers are very clean-living and will not defecate in their setts but have communal latrines elsewhere.

Henry J Heinz started making baked beans in 1895. He advertised them as “oven-baked beans in a pork and tomato sauce.”

South African officials built in 1999 a special polling station in the remote Drakensberg mountain area where there was only one registered voter. Sure enough, he stayed home and didn't vote.

When Geraldine Apponyi married King Zog of Albania on April 27, 1938 she became the first American woman to become a queen.

The French freethinker Voltaire once prophesied that in "another century and there will not be a Bible on Earth." Ironically a century after his death his home was occupied by the Geneva Bible Society.

The cocoa plant was considered to be so precious by the Aztecs that they sometimes used it as money. 

Test pilot Tim Ferguson landed a Jaguar fighter jet aircraft on the M55 motorway in Lancashire, England on April 26, 1975, shortly before it was opened to the public, to demonstrate the jet’s abilities.

A newborn baby has around 300 bones. Many of these fuse together to leave an adult’s 206.

At the temperature -20°C or below Emperor Penguins form a huddle to stay warm. The temperature inside the huddle sometimes gets so hot (37°C) that some penguins come out and eat ice to cool off a bit.

Sherlock Holmes Baffled was the first film to feature Conan Doyle's fictional detective. It was a 30-second silent spoof released in the US on April 25, 1900. Sherlock Holmes has been depicted on screen over 255 times, a world record for the most portrayed literary human character in film and TV.

Other than humans, only armadillos and squirrels can contract leprosy.

American Chad Fell holds the record for "Largest Hands-free Bubblegum Bubble" at 20.0 inches (50.8 cm) achieved on April 24, 2004. He blew the bubble at the Double Springs High School, Winston County, Alabama, USA.

Flying squirrels cannot really fly but can spread flaps of skin between their limbs to become effective gliders over distances up to 300 feet.

A flying squirrel gliding. By Angie spuc

The Russian composer Alexander Borodin was one of the foremost chemists of his time. He was especially noted for his work on aldehydes.

A badminton shuttlecock can easily reach speeds of 180 km/h (112 mph) during a match.

William Shakespeare used over 30,000 words in his plays, many which he invented himself. He introduced some 3,000 words into the English language including "accommodation", "assassination", "obscene" and "submerged.” As a comparison, an educated 20th century person has a vocabulary of 15,000 words and the King James Bible has a vocabulary of 8000 words.

Among the 135,000 birthday presents Shirley Temple received for her ninth birthday on April 23, 1937 was a prize Jersey calf from schoolchildren in Oregon.

Vladimir Lenin owned nine Rolls Royces including the world's only one to be adapted with skis at the front for snow-driving.

'Miss Dromedary,' a beauty contest for camels, was first held in Saudi Arabia on April 22, 1995. Emir Sultan ibn Mohammad ibn Saud al-Kebir donated the $500,000 prize money.

The original of the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist was a young pickpocket whose trial Charles Dickens attended in his journalist days and whose sentence of 7 years transportation he regretfully recorded.

The Circus Maximus was arguably the largest structure in ancient Rome, with the capacity to seat 250,000 people according to Pliny (roughly a quarter of Rome's population at the time).

Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) was given her first corgi as an 18th-birthday gift on April 21, 1944. She named her Susan and adored her pet corgi so much that she took her on honeymoon. 

The punishment for serving bad beer in ancient Babylon was drowning.

The largest simultaneous broadcast of a TV drama series was achieved by Game Of Thrones, when its second episode of season five was shown in 173 different territories on April 20, 2015.

The Madre de Deus, built in Lisbon, Portugal in 1589 was the largest ship in the world in her time. The carrack was 165 feet (50 meters) in length, had 47 feet (14 meters) of beam and could carry 900 tons of cargo. It had 7 decks, 32 guns plus other arms and 600 to 700 crew members.

The arrival of the Great Carrack 'Madre de Dios' at Dartmouth Harbour,

Adolf Hitler esteemed Clark Gable above all other actors, and during the war offered a sizable reward to anyone who could capture and return Gable unscathed to him.

The English word “word” was first used in 725 AD. 

Chocolate manufacturers currently use 40 percent of the world’s almonds. 

Goodfield's Dipped Treats Double Dipped Almond

Garlic was used as an antibiotic during World War II.

On the 20:45 news bulletin on Good Friday, April 18, 1930, the BBC Radio reported, "There is no news." Instead, they played piano music for the rest of the 15-minute segment. The wireless service then returned to broadcasting from the Queen's Hall in Langham Place, London, where the Wagner opera Parsifal was being performed.

Banshee is a steel roller coaster located at Kings Island amusement park in Mason, Ohio. Designed and built by Bolliger Mabillard, it opened on April 18, 2014. The roller coaster features 4,124 feet (1,257 m) of track making it the longest inverted roller coaster.

Crosswords were so popular among U.S. commuters in the 1920s that the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad provided dictionaries for passengers.

The first periodical called a magazine was the Gentleman's Magazine launched by Edward Cave in January 1731. In an age of lousy yellow journalism, the punchy periodical featured stories about fire-eating as well as essays by a young upstart named Samuel Johnson.

By Timothy Hughes Rare & Early Newspapers - http://www.rarenewspapers.com, Wikipedia

Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

The fastest time to eat a jam doughnut with no hands and without licking the lips is 11.41 seconds. The record was achieved by Philip Joseph Santoro in San Francisco, California, on April 17, 2014.

A giant Oreo cookie weighing 73.4 kg (161 lb 13 oz) was produced on April 16, 2018. Baked in Manama, Bahrain, the supersize snack was made with the real dough and cream used in regular-sized Oreos. With a normal Oreo weighing 11.3 g, this it was 6,495 times bigger than what you find in a standard packet.

The modern flip-flop descends from the Japanese zōri, which became popular in the decade after World War II when American soldiers brought them back home.

After D-Day, flying ace Johnnie Johnson organized a supply run of Spitfires with barrels of beer slung under each wing to bring the "necessities of life" to pilots on front-line airfields in Normandy.

Irish Titanic passenger Jeremiah Burke sent a good bye message in a bottle during the sinking. It subsequently washed up near his home, where his handwriting was recognized by his mother.

The Northwestern most point in the contiguous U.S. is Cape Flattery on Washington's Olympic Peninsula.

The view to the north from Cape Flattery By Dicklyon

The kilt was part of Assyrian soldiers' uniform.

In South Korea, there is a day called Black Day (April 14), where single people eat noodles to lament their loneliness. This is in opposition to Valentine's Day and White Day, the days for couples.

In 1998 Nestlé trademarked the tubular packaging of Smarties. It later sued Masterfoods Denmark who marketed M&Ms in a similar package. The Danish Supreme Court ruled that a basic geometrical shape couldn't be trademarked and the trademark should be removed.

The average cumulus cloud weighs about 1.1 million pounds, which is the same as 100 elephants

The word "OXYPHENBUTAZONE" is theoretically the highest possible scoring word in Scrabble, netting 1778 Points. It has never been played.

“Old Bet” the first elephant ever seen in America arrived from Bengal zoo on April 13, 1796 and was exhibited in New York. She was known for her ability to draw corks from bottles using only her trunk.

Aspirin was the first drug sold in water-soluble tablets.

The Stanford Daily reported on April 12, 1928 that Mathias Blau of Chicago convinced his wife to have all her teeth pulled. He then refused to buy her dentures because it was "cheaper to feed her soup than solid food." Mrs Blau took him to court and her husband was told to get her two new sets of teeth and at least a beef steak a week.

Cats have fewer taste buds than humans and are the only mammals that can't taste sweetness.

Astronauts don't do laundry but rather eject their clothes into space to burn up in the atmosphere.

In April 1970, the crew of NASA's Apollo 13 mission swung during their spaceflight around the far side of the moon. This put them 248,655 miles (400,171 km) away from Earth, the furthest that humans have ever been from their home planet.

Archie Thompson set the world record for goals scored by a footballer in an international match with 13 on April 11, 2001, as Australia played American Samoa in Coffs Harbour in a qualifier for the 2002 World Cup. Australia won 31-0.

People normally snore when in deep sleep and at the same time we dream when sleeping soundly but we do not snore and dream at the same time.

Turtle gender depends on sand temperature while the egg is incubating. Warmer temperatures produce female hatchlings, while cooler temperatures produce male hatchlings.

At the age of 96 years and 222 days, South African Mohr Keet achieved the record for the oldest bungee jumper. The plunging pensioner jumped 216m (708ft) off a bridge on April 10, 2010.

The rock guitarist Eric Clapton was brought up by his maternal grandparents and he believed that his mother was actually his sister.

Apple Computer Company's, Apple 1 went on sale in 1976. It retailed for a bizarrely priced $666.66.

The mathematics master of Harrow predicted to the Mathematical Association in a speech on April 9, 1953 that by 2003, schoolchildren would be working out sums on calculating machines and there would be no multiplication tables. He said: "Each maths room will have its calculating machine, and the child on duty for the day will do any calculating needed."

A strand of spider silk long enough to encircle the whole Earth would weigh just over a pound. An inch-thick rope of spider's silk can withstand up to 140,000 pounds of pressure.

Pixiebay

The town of Romney, West Virginia, changed hands between Union and Confederate forces 56 times during the American Civil War.

A London watchmaker received the first patent for a fire escape on April 8, 1766. It consisted of a wicker basket on a pulley and a chain.

Samsung accidentally issued 2,000 employees shares of stock worth US$100,000,000,000 for 37 minutes on April 8, 2018 before realizing the error. 16 employees sold the shares which the company gave them despite receiving warnings from the company. The employees who sold their shares could have gotten US$9,000,000 each.

The record surface speed on the moon is 10.56 mph (17 km/h). It was set with the lunar rover.

Apollo 15 – Commander David Scott drives the Rover near the LM Falcon

Cosmetics businesswoman Elizabeth Arden hated spectacles so much she wouldn’t employ anyone who wore them.

The city of Augusta, Georgia was named after Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (1719-1772), mother of King George III.

Alexander Bogdanov was a Russian physician who experimented with blood transfusion to gain eternal youth. He died on April 7, 1928 after injecting himself with blood from a student infected with malaria and tuberculosis, who also may have been the wrong blood type.

Today, 95% of the vanilla flavoring is done in chemical laboratories. The pure (man-made) form of the flavoring is artificially flavored with vanillin derived from lignin, a natural polymer found in wood, instead of vanilla fruits.

The soil on Mars is perfect for growing asparagus.

Donkeys have incredible memories and can recognize other donkeys they knew as long as 25 years ago. 

Pixiebay

The Earth travels through space at 660,000 mph (1,062,167 km/h).

A status referendum was held in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands on April 6, 1984. All 261 registered voters participated in the vote, with 88% voting for integration with Australia. The referendum has been described as the "smallest act of self-determination ever conducted."

On April 6, 1928 the authorities in Rome banned handshaking on grounds of hygiene and suggested people instead use the ‘Roman Salute’ — a symbol of fascism. Prior to COVID, the United States and Brazil are the only major countries where firm handshakes are expected in business settings.

Benito Mussolini and Hitler, Mussolini giving the Roman salute

Zambia is the only country to have entered an Olympics as one country (Northern Rhodesia) and left the games as another. Zambia declared independence on the last day of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, was worth $25 billion when he died on April 5, 1992, but still insisted on having $5 haircuts (leaving no tip).

The Tour de France was first dreamed up by sports journalist Henri Desgrange to promote his newspaper L'Auto. The plan worked. Before the first race started in 1903 it sold 25,000 copies. Five years later it had surpassed the 250,000 mark.

A businessman Moti Shniberg tried to trademark the term "September 11, 2001." on that very day, when the Twin Towers and Pentagon were still smoldering.

The Eiffel Tower (see below) in Paris is 934ft high, plus a 79ft of antenna. It was the world’s tallest man-made structure for 41 years. It was surpassed by the Chrysler Building in New York City in 1930.

By Benh LIEU SONG - File:Tour_Eiffel_Wikimedia_Commons.jpg,

Colgate in Argentine Spanish translates directly to the imperative command of "hang yourself."

Nikola Tesla predicted the modern cell phone in 1926. He said in the January 30, 1926 issue of Collier's magazine: “We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but...we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face... a man will be able to carry one in his pocket.”

The Osborne 1 often stakes a claim as the first laptop. Released on April 3, 1981 by Osborne Computer Corporation, it weighed 10.7 kg (23.5 lb), cost $1,795, and ran the CP/M 2.2 operating system. However, the computer looked more like a sewing machine than today's sleek apparatuses.

Marlon Brando loved ice cream. In the 1980s, Brando was routinely spotted at a Beverly Hills ice cream parlor buying five gallon containers of ice cream- which he would eat all himself.

In February 1976, Elvis Presley — who had a vast collection of police badges — was made a reserve Memphis policeman.

Vatican City has the only ATM machines with Latin instructions.

The record for the loudest purring cat is held by Merlin, a 13-year-old rescue kitty from Torquay, Devon in England. During the filming of the Channel 5 TV show, Cats Make You Laugh Out Loud 2 on April 2, 2015, with a Guinness World Records adjudicator on hand to verify, Merlin registered a purr measuring 67.8 decibels, beating the previous record of 67.68 decibels set in 2011 by Smokey – another British cat.

Kate Bush was the first woman to top the UK charts with a self-written song when "Wuthering Heights" reached #1 in 1978.

On April Fool's Day 1998, Burger King published an advertisement for "Left-Handed Whopper". The condiments of this whopper were supposed to be rotated 180 degrees, as to avoid spilling out toppings from the right side of the burger. It was said to be the "ultimate 'Have-it-your-way' for lefties"

In the Middle Ages a unicorn became seen as a symbol of purity and grace, which could only be captured or tamed by a virgin. Medieval apothecaries sold “unicorn horn”, also known as “alicorn”, for its medicinal properties.

Fresco by Domenichino of a maiden taming a unicorn, c. 1604–05 (Palazzo Farnese, Rome)

On April 1, 1987 Steven M Newman became the first man to walk solo around our planet Earth. The 15,000-mile trek took him four years and untold pairs of shoes to complete.

At Oxford University Lewis Carroll was diagnosed as an epileptic, then a considerable social stigma to bear.

Walt Disney's first cartoon star was a rabbit. Walt Disney Studios created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but after a disagreement over rights with Universal Studios, the film distributor, Disney refused a pay cut and created Mickey Mouse.

Enrico Caruso practiced in the bath, while accompanied by a pianist in a nearby room. He took two baths a day.

Walter Rothschild, who once housed one of the largest natural history collections in the world, had a famed zebra carriage. He once he drove it to Buckingham Palace to demonstrate the tame character of zebras to the public.

Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs Robinson" was originally called "Mrs Roosevelt," after Eleanor Roosevelt.

Cash register receipts are coated with obesogens, chemicals that (when touched) can make you fat.

A Yale study found that Crayola crayons are the third most recognizable scent, behind coffee and peanut butter.

There have been six sinkings in the history of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. On March 31, 1921, both boats sank and the 73rd Boat Race had to be held again on 1st April.

In 1920, Uruguay passed a law making dueling legal in order to permit a duel between a policeman and a newspaper editor. For the next 72 years, until 1992, dueling was legal in Uruguay as long as the participants had official permission.

Brad Pitt had $325 in his pocket when he moved to LA in 1986. He slept on the sofa of singer Melissa Etheridge.

Bobby socks were ankle-length socks commonly worn by teenage girls in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. 'Bobby' here denotes the length of the socks, as if cut short or 'bobbed.'

Bobby socks By Shaun Dunphy from Lindfield, UK

The ancient Romans made soap from animal fat and wood ashes. These early soaps were used only for medical purposes.

The poet Walt Whitman volunteered as a nurse during the American Civil War. He wrote countless letters on behalf of soldiers, some of whom were illiterate or were dying, back home to their loved ones.

Seeking a more structured way to play with toy soldiers, H.G. Wells wrote in 1913, Little Wars, which provided simple rules for miniature wargaming. It is recognized today as the first recreational wargame and Wells is regarded by gamers and hobbyists as "the Father of Miniature Wargaming."

First edition (publ. Frank Palmer, UK)

The solar energy received by the Earth in just one hour delivers enough energy to power the world's energy demands for a year.

In Eclogues 3 93 the Roman poet Virgil wrote "Latet anguus inherba" which means "a snake is lurking in the grass" thus originating the phrase "snake in the grass".

At 655 m (2,100 ft) above sea level, Madrid is the highest capital of any European country. Below is a view of Madrid from the west, facing the Puerta de la Vega. Drawing by Anton van den Wyngaerde, 1562

All his life, the British military hero General James Wolfe was plagued by rheumatism and consumption. He used to suffer awful remedies proffered by his mother including "a cure" based on snails and garden worms steeped in beer.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word vegetarian was first used in 1842. The word should not be confused with the word "vegetable"; it is derived from the Latin "vegetus", meaning "whole, vigorous, active." 

Skunks do not enjoy getting sprayed by other skunks and merely tolerate their own scent. 

Striped skunks

A Data Scientist revealed that "Burn" is the most heavy metal word in the English language. The study was compiled by taking the frequency of a word appearing in lyrics and dividing them by the frequency of the same word as it appears in the Brown Corpus Manual.

When the United Nations was founded in 1945 there were 51 members. There are now 193.

The Iran Mall is the largest shopping mall in the world. Located near Chitgar Lake in northwestern Tehran, Iran, it has a total retail floor area of 1,950,000 square metres (21,000,000 sq ft). 

Iran  Mall overview By Anakarnia - Wikipedia

The first song that Kurt Cobain learned to play on the guitar was AC/DC's "Back In Black."

The French philosopher Voltaire was said to have drowned 40-50 cups of coffee daily. On his death bed he quipped "I am dying of 250,000 cups of coffee."

The collective noun for starlings is a murmuration. The name may come from the sound their wings make when a vast cloud of them sweeps through the skies.

Murmuration of starlings preparing to roost, in Scotland. By Walter Baxter

Words in songs are called lyrics because in ancient Greece poems used to be accompanied by a lyre.

The song "White Christmas" ended the Vietnam War in 1975 – it was used as the radio code signal for the evacuation of Vietnamese people who had assisted the US from Saigon.

Franz Schubert often slept with his spectacles on in case he got an idea for a song in the night and wanted to write it down.

Schubert's glasses

The oldest known song featuring a man talking to his girlfriend over the phone is "Hello! Ma Baby." It was written in 1899 by the songwriting team of Joseph E. Howard and Ida Emerson when only 10% of the population had telephones.

The word orange (meaning the fruit) entered the English language around 1400 — but it wasn’t used as the name of a color until the 1540s. Before then, the English speaking world referred to the orange color as geoluhread, which literally translates to “yellow-red."

The Beatles played their first proper evening gig at Liverpool’s Cavern Club on March 21, 1961. They played there 292 times between 1961 and 1963, sharing just £5 a gig between them.

Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to the Solar System, being 4.37 light-years from the Sun. A car traveling 100 mph would take more than 29 million years to reach Alpha Centuri.

The SOS distress signal letters are simply a convenient and distinctive combination and are not an acronym, although they have been popularly held to stand for such phrases as "Save Our Ship," "Save Our Souls" or "Send Out Succour."

The coquí, a small frog which is endemic to Puerto Rico, is named after the sound of its mating call.

A Common Coqui

Former Roxy Music band member Brian Eno wrote the iconic Windows 95 start-up sound on a Mac.

Whenever we sleep in a new environment for the first time, the left side of the brain stays awake and the right ear, which is connected to the left side of the brain, remains more alert to unusual sounds.

Bart to the Future, the seventeenth episode of the eleventh season of The Simpsons, originally aired in the United States on March 19, 2000. The show mentions billionaire Donald Trump having been President of the United States at one time, sixteen years before Trump actually successfully run for the position.

Elephants and giraffes only sleep around 3-4 hours a day—the shortest known sleep time of any land mammal.  Giraffes can go for weeks without napping, needing 30 minutes to fully recharge.

A diesel engine can also be made to run on vegetable oil made from old cooking oil. This type of fuel is called biodiesel. This is not a new idea. Rudolf Diesel demonstrated his diesel engine in the 1900 Exposition Universelle (World's Fair) using peanut oil fuel.

According to Guinness World Records, the longest nose on a living person was that of the late Turk Mehmet Özyürek (1949 – 2023), which measured 8.8cm (3.46in) from the bridge to the tip. Mehmet Özyürek was officially confirmed as the record holder on March 18, 2010.

Mangoes and pistachios are in the same family as poison ivy.

The color green has been associated with Ireland since at least the 1640s, when the green harp flag was used by the Irish Catholic Confederation. Green ribbons and shamrocks have been worn on St Patrick's Day since at least the 1680s.

St. Patrick explained the doctrine of the Holy Trinity to the Irish people by showing people the shamrock. He used the three-leafed plant to illustrate the Christian teaching of three persons in one God. The shamrock has since become a central symbol for St Patrick's Day.

St. Patrick depicted with shamrock in stained glass window in St. Benin's Church, Kilbennan. By Andreas F. Borchert,

The reason drinking is so prevalent on Saint Patrick's Day is because St. Patrick died during Lent and to celebrate his life properly, restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol were lifted for the day.

The giant panda spends around 55% of its life collecting, preparing and eating bamboo. After 14 hours of eating bamboo, a panda has only digested 17% of it. 

U2 was first called "The Larry Mullen Band", but they later switched their name to "Feedback" after the awful noise they made in early rehearsals. After becoming "The Hype" for a short period of time, the band finally changed their name to "U2" 

U2 performing at the US Festival in May 1983 By James LaMantia

The most used hashtag in 24 hours on Twitter was #TwitterBestFandom, with 60,055,339 uses from March 16-17, 2019. #TwitterBestFandom was used as a tool to allow the general public to vote in the 14th Annual Soompi Awards. (Soompi is an English-language website providing coverage of Korean pop culture).

If the Colosseum was built today, it would cost around  39 million euros - the equivalent of almost 43 million dollars.

In medieval times the area of the present-day Slovakia was characterized by the construction of numerous stone castles. Today, Slovakia has the highest number of castles per person in the world, with 180 castles in a population of 5.4 million.

Bojnice Castle By Peter1170

When moving at top speed sloths manage about 13ft (4 meters) per minute. It takes a sloth a whole month to travel one mile on the ground.

The physicist Stephen Hawking died early in the morning of March 14, 2018. Having been born on January 8, the date of Galileo's death, he passed away on the date of Albert Einstein's birth.

Pringles originated in 1969 when Proctor and Gamble applied their technology for producing soap to potato chips.

Pringles By Glane23 - Wikipedia

Cliquot Club Ginger Ale was the first canned soft drink. It was introduced in America in 1938.

Velcro was invented by Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral. He was inspired by the adhesiveness of the burdock burrs that had got attached to his socks, jacket and his dog's fur after a walk in the Alps.

The oldest known socks were found in Egypt and date back to between the years 250 and 420. They were knitted socks that were excavated from the city of Oxyrhynchus on the River Nile. The split toes were designed for use with sandals.

The earliest known surviving pair of socks, found in Egypt. By David Jackson

The human body has enough fat for seven bars of soap.

More than two thirds of the female members of Congress and 80% of women business owners in the US were once Girl Scouts. This is an impressive ration  considering eight percent of all women in the U.S. were Girl Scouts at some point. 

History's fattest cat died at age 10 years and four months in Cairns, Australia on March 12, 1986. The neutered male house cat named Himmy was 38 inches long and weighed 46.8 pounds (21.3 kilograms) at his death. The owner Thomas Vyse had to transport Himmy in a wheelbarrow.

The average fully detached American home has about two tonnes of earthworms crawling through the soil in its yard.

Thieves stole an entire 22 tonne, 82 foot metal bridge overnight on March 11, 2013 in the Golcuk district of the Turkish province of Kocaeli.

The biggest religious building in the world is a Hindu Temple, Angkor Wat, located in Cambodia. The Angkor Wat features on the flag of Cambodia (see below), the only actual building to feature on any national flag. 

When you get a kidney transplant they usually leave your original kidneys in your body and put the third one lower in your pelvic area.

Dublin, Ireland, is home to The National Leprechaun Museum, a museum dedicated to leprechauns. It has operated on 1 Jervis Street since March 10, 2010.

The coldest object in our solar system is not Pluto, it's Triton, one of Neptune's moons. Its surface temperature is at least 35.6 K (−237.6 °C), while Pluto's average equilibrium temperature is 44 K (−229 °C).

Artist's impression of Triton,  By ESO/L. Calçada

Super Mario is named after real-life businessman Mario Segale, who was renting out a warehouse to Nintendo. After Nintendo fell far behind on rent, Segale did not evict them but gave them a second chance to come up with the money. Nintendo succeeded and named their main character after him.

There are more Barbie dolls in Italy than there are Canadians in Canada.

The Romans didn't wear trousers because it was seen as uncivilized and only Barbarians wore pants.

Germanic trousers of the 4th century. By PBullenwächter

WNBT-TV (now WNBC-TV), in New York, broadcast the first local color television commercial on March 9, 1954. The ad was for Castro Decorators of New York City.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

The Sun is by far the largest entity in the solar system containing 99.8% of its total mass. The Earth could fit on the sun one million times over.

During the First World War, US soldiers called their coffee “a cup of George”.

The rooster on the Kellogg's Corn Flakes box is called Cornelius. They chose a rooster because the word ceiliog, Welsh for cockerel, sounds a bit like Kellogg.

In China and Japan, it is considered polite to slurp your soup. It means your meal is too good to be graceful.

It would take approximately 3,155,524,416 Cheerios to circle the Earth at the equator.

Oreos are vegan-friendly since the cream doesn’t contain any dairy products. Because the Oreo filling contains no dairy, the FDA didn't allow it to be called 'cream'. Therefore, it was named 'creme' instead.

A snail moving at its top speed of two inches a minute would finish a marathon in just over 18 months.

Pixiebay

The large bodied and strong Greek philosopher Socrates once walked 117 miles (188 kms) from Athens to Olympia to see the Olympics.

The world record for cockroaches eaten is 36 in a minute by retired English rat catcher Ken Edwards on March 5, 2001.

The most snow ever to fall in one day was at Capracotta, a small town in Italy, on March 5, 2015 — 256 cm (8.34 feet) of snow fell in about 18 hours.

French actress Sarah Bernhardt bought a coffin at the age of 15, in which sometimes she slept.

When James K. Polk's presidential term ended on March 4, 1849, a Sunday, his successor, Zachary Taylor, an Episcopalian, refused to take the presidential oath of office on the Sabbath. This led to a curious situation in which the United States was "without" a president for a day.

An Indian man holds the record for the longest growing mustache. According to Guinness World Records, Ram Singh Chauhan has a mustache that spans as 4.29m (14ft) long.) It was measured on the set of the Italian TV show Lo Show dei Record in Rome on March 4, 2010. He has been growing his facial hair since his youth.

An Indonesian prison announced in 2015 a plan to use crocodiles as guards for death row drug convicts.

In Denmark on Shrove Tuesday, children traditionally hit a 'shrove barrel' until it breaks and scatters candy across the floor.

The basic recipe of eggs, milk and flour for pancakes has been found in English cookbooks from 1439.

About 1.4 million people attend Mardi Gras in New Orleans every year, but the population for the rest of the year is just over 384,000.

UPS drivers don't take the shortest routes. Instead it uses route optimization software which optimizes each route by eliminating left-hand turns whenever possible. As result, UPS claims it save nearly $100,000,000 a year in fuel costs.

The full name of The Boy Bands Have Won, the 13th studio album by British music group Chumbawamba released on March 3, 2008 contains 865 characters. It holds the Guinness World Record for the longest album title.  See picture below for its full title.

Wikipedia

Humans can only see about 4% of the matter in the Universe. The rest (about 23%) is made up of invisible matter (called Dark Matter) and a mysterious form of energy (73%) known as Dark Energy.

People don't sneeze when they are asleep because the nerves involved in the sneeze reflex are also resting.

When Lawrence Anthony, known as "The Elephant Whisperer", died on March 2, 2012, a herd of elephants arrived at his house in South Africa to mourn him. Although the elephants were not alerted to the event, they travelled to his house and stood around for two days, and then dispersed.

Most snowflakes have six sides because the molecules that make them up are hexagon-shaped.

Prince Charles became the first member of the Royal Family to become a blood donor on March 1, 1985. Nurses confirmed his blood was red, not blue.

At 6.95 meters (22.8 ft) in length, the reticulated python is the longest snake in the world. It can be found in South Asia.

Reticulated python By Mariluna,

In 2014 a British sniper in Afghanistan killed six insurgents with a single bullet after hitting the trigger switch of a suicide bomber whose device then exploded.

Julius Caesar introduced the first leap year around 46 B.C., but his Julian calendar had only one rule: Any year evenly divisible by four would be a leap year..

It is acceptable for a woman to propose to a man on February 29th. The custom has been attributed to St. Bridget, who is said to have complained to St. Patrick about women having to wait for men to propose marriage. Patrick supposedly gave women one day to propose.

Karin Henriksen of Norway gave birth to children on February 29 in 1960, 1964 and 1968, and Louise Estes of Provo, Utah, gave birth on February 29 in 2004, 2008 and 2012.

George Washington had only one tooth in his mouth by the time he was inaugurated in 1789. He contacted a leading dentist in Philadelphia who produced state of art dentures made from exotic and lasting material: hippopotamus ivory.

The giraffe has no vocal cords. They communicate by vibrating the air around its neck, producing a deep, spooky humming noise, almost like tantric chanting.

The church used to allow chocolate to be drunk during Lent and society ladies had the drink served during sermons.

In 1252, King Haakon IV of Norway sent a polar bear to London as a present to King Henry III. It was the first polar bear seen in Britain.

The concept of the Pokémon universe, in both the video games and the general fictional world of Pokémon, stems from the hobby of insect collecting, a pastime which Pokémon executive director Satoshi Tajiri enjoyed as a child.

A mature oak tree can have as many as 400,000 caterpillars living in it.

Queen Victoria had an operation for a somewhat undignified abscess in the area of her royal armpit in 1871. Unfortunately the carbolic acid disinfectant was accidentally squirted into the still awake royal highnesses' face. She was not amused! 

The Geographic South Pole is marked by a stake in the ice alongside a small sign; these are repositioned each year in a ceremony on New Year's Day to compensate for the movement of the ice.

The Ceremonial South Pole as of February 2008.

It is believed The Queen of Sheba loved pistachios. In fact, she demanded that the entire region’s pistachio harvest be set aside for her.

African farmers attach chilies to fences to keep elephants away from their crops. Elephants hate the smell of chilli. 

The Venus Flytrap is only native to one area of the world; the coastal bogs of North and South Carolina in the United States. Specifically they are only found within a 100-kilometer (60 mi) radius of Wilmington, North Carolina.

Jules Verne made amazing predictions of scientific advances in the 20th century in his 19th cent novels. The French novelist predicted cars, automatic trains, electric lights and fax machines. He also prophesied Americans would be the first to fly to the Moon.

The most curtain calls taken in a single performance by an opera singer is 165, by Luciano Pavarotti at the Deutsche Opera in Berlin on February 24, 1988, after singing the part of Nemorino in Donizetti's comic opera L’Elisir D’Amore. The audience’s applause lasted one hour and seven minutes.

Mike Tyson had been arrested 38 times by the age of 13. He said he was bullied as a "pudgy kid" who spoke with a lisp, causing him to turn to crime and drugs. He learned boxing at reform school, and by 20 was the WBC heavyweight champion.  

Tyson in the ring at Las Vegas in October 2006. By Octal@Flickr

Hillary Clinton won a Grammy in 1997 for Best Spoken Word Album for the audio version of her book It Takes a Village.

When London held a Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition in 1972, a taxi driver was reported to have taken a man to Tooting Common by mistake.

The Alligator Snapping Turtle of North America has a tongue that bears resemblance to a worm. This enables the turtle to lure fish into its mouth.  

Mark Twain (yes, that Mark Twain) invented and patented the bra-strap clasp.

Chilies were being eaten in Central and South America as long ago as 7,000 BC, which gives them claims to be the world’s oldest condiment.

The largest known specimen of colossal squid was captured on February 22, 2007 by a New Zealand fishing vessel off the coast of Antarctica. That individual weighed 495 kilograms (1,091 lb) and measured around 10 metres (33 ft). This specimen is the largest invertebrate ever found.

Lexicographer Noah Webster is credited for introducing such distinctive American spellings as "color," for British "colour." However many of his changes never stuck such as medicine=medicin, ache=ake, soup=soop, tongue=tung, women=wimmen, & weather=wether.

The largest cashew tree in the world was planted by a fisherman in Brazil. It now financially supports 1500 people.

German polyglot Emil Krebs (1867 - 1930) mastered 68 languages in speech and writing - including Mandarin and all those spoken in today’s European Union - and studied 120 other languages. His private library contained the Bible in 61 different languages.

Emil Krebs

The most complex language to voice is !Xóõ, spoken mostly in Botswana—it has 112 distinct sounds, while English has about 40. About 70 per cent of words in !Xoo (including !Xoo itself) begin with one of 83 types of click.

On February 20, 1990, a garden snail named Verne completed a 31-cm (12.2-in) course at West Middle School in Plymouth, Michigan, USA, in a world record 2 min 13 sec at 0.233 cm/sec (0.09 in/sec).

Ned Flanders' last name comes from Flanders Street. in Portland, Oregon, the hometown of The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening.

Beethoven was fond of coffee. The German composer required precisely 60 beans to make a cup of his favorite hot drink.

Top ice cream tasters take out tongue insurance. John Harrison of US firm Dreyer's insured his for $1 million.

The area of the brain devoted to smell in dogs is 40 per cent larger than humans. 

The average person glances at their smartphone 150 times a day.

Pedro Lascuráin was President of Mexico for 45 minutes on February 18, 1913; this is the shortest term to date of any person as president of any country.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 1559 painting The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (see below) includes one of the first known images of waffles.

Elm Farm Ollie was the first cow to fly in an airplane. The milk she produced during an air-trip on February 18, 1930 was dropped by parachute over the city of St Louis.

Ten years after John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of television in 1926 in London there were only 100 TVs in the world.

Ted Hastings set the Guinness world record for "Most T-Shirts Worn at Once"  in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, on February 17, 2019. He wore 260 shirts ranging from medium up to 20X to raise money for a school playground.

There are more possible outcomes to a 40-move chess game then there are atoms in the known universe.

Marlon Brando was notorious for refusing to memorize his lines. Sometimes other actors had his lines taped to their bodies.

A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use the word "reggae."

A female mouse can begin having babies at two months of age.

The Roman emperor Caligula's favorite horse, Incitatus, was housed in a marble stall and had a gold drinking goblet, furniture & slaves. 

The first structure to be called a skyscraper was the 138-foot (42 m) tall, ten-story Home Insurance Company Building in Chicago, which opened in 1885 and was demolished 47 years later in 1931. romance.

The Home Insurance Building

Researchers reported in 2012 in the journal Neurology that about 3.6 percent of U.S. adults had walked in their sleep at least once in the previous 12 months One percent experienced at least two episodes of sleepwalking per month.

The world’s first Valentine message is believed to have been sent by Margery Brews of Norfolk, to her fiancé John Paston in 1477. She addressed it to "my right wellbelovyd voluntyne".

Ekkachai and Laksana Tiranarat kissed for 58 hours 35 minutes 58 seconds between February 12-14 2013 at an event in Pattaya, Thailand. This smashed the record for the world's longest kiss, which had been 31 hours, 30 minutes and 30 seconds.

A group of embittered singles worked together to buy up all the odd-numbered cinema seats for a Valentine's Day screening of Beijing Love Story, at the Shanghai Xintiandi cinema on February 14, 2014. They thus forced couples to sit apart while watching the sappy big-budget romance.

American writer William S. Burroughs is credited with coining the phrase, 'heavy metal.' He used it in his 1961 novel The Soft Machine, describing his character Uranian Willy as "the Heavy Metal Kid."

Border collies are considered the most intelligent breed of dog, in front of poodles and German Shepherds.

Border Collie Pixiebay

Not one of the 500 references to Geoffrey Chaucer written in his lifetime refers to him as a poet.

Britain's first flushing public toilet for women opened near the Strand in London on February 11, 1852. Only 82 females used it in the first twelve months.

Big Bird is the main protagonist of Sesame Street. He is meant to be an 8'2" golden condor and the puppeteer inside of Big Bird must wear platform shoes in order to reach his beak.

Big Bird at Sesame Place. https://www.flickr.com/photos/evelynishere

Mozart wrote numerous pieces for the clarinet. He thought its tone was the closest in quality to the human voice.

On February 10, 2017, the U.S. Court of International Trade officially ruled that the Snuggie is a blanket, not a garment.

The national dish of Vanuatu,  a group of islands in the South Pacific, is a root vegetable cake called 'laplap'. It comprises vegetable paste, coconut milk and meat cooked in a banana leaf.

Laplap. By Ronoleo -  Wikipedia

The cash machines in the Vatican City are the only ones in the world that offer Latin as a language display option.

In ancient times non-meat eaters were generally known as Pythagoreans or adhering to the "Pythagorean System". The word "vegetarian" to describe non-meat eaters wasn't coined until the 19th century.

Samuel J. Seymour, the last surviving witness of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, lived long enough to be interviewed on national television on February 9, 1956.

The top of some of the mountains in the South American country of Colombia are so cold that you can ski over the equator.

President Warren Harding installed the White House’s first radio on February 8, 1922. At the time, radio was the hottest technology around.

With seating width at only about 14 inches per person, The Colosseum in Ancient Rome had a maximum capacity of 50,000 people.

Pollice Verso (Thumbs Down) by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1872

All but one of the astronauts who walked on the Moon had been boy scouts.

The water droplets in a medium-sized cumulus cloud, the ones that look like cotton wool on a sunny day, weigh as much as 80 elephants.

By Kr-val - Own work, Wikipedia

Nylon is made from coal and petroleum. 

The average life span of an umbrella is one-and-a-half years.

Donald Trump has a star on Hollywood's Walk Of Fame awarded in 2007 for hosting The Apprentice from 2004-2015.

Golf is the only sport to have been played on the moon. Apollo 14 Astronaut Alan Shepard stashed away a makeshift six-iron inside his spacecraft and on February 6, 1971, he hit two golf balls on the lunar surface. His first shot was a mis-hit and only went a few feet, but the second went, as he put it, "miles and miles and miles."

The American jazzman Dizzy Gillespie was known for playing a ‘bent’ trumpet. It started after two dancers fell on it, bending the bell upwards, and Dizzy liked the change in tone that resulted.

When his first published book was slated by critic Jean Lorrain, the writer Marcel Proust challenged him to a duel. On February 5, 1897 they fired pistols from 120 paces but both missed.

Construction of Cologne Cathedral was completed on August 14, 1880, 632 years after it had begun. For the next four years, it was the tallest structure in the world.

The cathedral from the south by Velvet - Own work

The word "slalom" is from the Morgedal/Seljord dialect of Norwegian slalåm: "sla," meaning slightly inclining hillside, and "låm," meaning track after skis.

Will Wright was inspired to create The Sims by the 1991 Oakland firestorm. He lost his home in the fire, and wanted to create a game that emulated his experience of rebuilding his life in the aftermath. The video game was first released on February 4, 2000.

The belief that all raw vegetables are healthier is a misconception. Some vegetables have nutritional content which only gets unlocked when cooked. Cooked asparagus, cabbage, carrots, mushrooms, peppers and spinach are healthier than their raw counterparts. 

President Martin Van Buren was the only US president to speak English as a second language. His first language was Dutch.

The lowest ever temperature in North America was recorded in Snag, Yukon, Canada on February 3, 1948 at −63.0 °C (−81.4 °F).

Madagascar and Indonesia currently produce two-thirds of the world's supply of vanilla between them.

Vanilla cultivation

There's a maximum height that water can be sucked up a straw: 10 meters (34 feet). At this height, a perfect vacuum is created at the top of the straw, and water will begin boiling spontaneously

Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote about 750 poems in total including an elegy to his broken shaving pot.

In 1956, the English composer Malcolm Arnold wrote his A Grand, Grand Overture for 3 Vacuum Cleaners, 1 Floor Polisher, 4 Rifles and Orchestra. He dedicated it to former US President Herbert Hoover.

Madonna became the first person in 2003 to receive Razzle awards for Worst Actress (Swept Away), Worst Supporting Artist (Die Another Day) and Worst Screen Couple (Swept Away).

Drinking milk used to be considered a luxury by the ancient Greeks and by the Romans.

King William III of England suffered from an irritating asthmatic cough. He was badly affected by the dank London river air and he disliked Whitehall Palace, his home in London. He therefore purchased Kensington Palace, which was further away from the Thames. 

Kensington Palace south front, engraved by Jan Kip, 1724

Since Hindus don't eat beef, the McDonald's in New Delhi makes its burgers with mutton.

When the French Navy officially ceased using Morse Code on January 31, 1997, the final message they transmitted was "Calling all. This is our last cry before our eternal silence."

Duffel bags are named after a town of Duffel, Belgium, where the bags were first made.

US military-issued duffel bags By Bahamut0013

"Typewriter" is one of the longest common words that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard along with "proprietor", "perpetuity" and "repertoire". The longest top-row word of all is "rupturewort" (a plant used to treat hernias).

Nikola Tesla predicted the modern cell phone in 1926. He said in the January 30, 1926 issue of Collier's magazine: “We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but...we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face... a man will be able to carry one in his pocket.”

The harmless Whale Shark holds the title of largest fish, with the record being a 59 footer captured in Thailand in 1919.

Whale shark Pixibay

The female Victorian aristocracy in Britain would change their clothes at least four times a day.

During the Cold War, MI5 planned to use gerbils at airports to help detect terrorists and secret agents.

The original idea behind Marge Simpson's blue beehive hairstyle in The Simpsons was to conceal large bunny ears. The gag was intended to be revealed in the final episode of the first series, but they weren't expecting the show to last for so long.

In the 1950s Jonas Salk declined to patent his polio vaccine. "There is no patent," he said. "Could you patent the sun?"

The world's largest snowflakes were reported to have been during a snowstorm at Fort Keogh, Montana on January 28, 1887. They were 15 inches (38 cm) wide and 8 inches (20 cm) thick.

Canterbury Tales author Geoffrey Chaucer was captured by the French during the 100 Years War. King Edward III paid £16 for his ransom.

Geoffrey Chaucer (17th cent)

Ancient Greek brides and grooms were known to use cheesecake as a wedding cake.

Once a giant clam picks a spot to live on a reef, it does not move for the rest of its life

The first nationally broadcast radio soap opera was Clara, Lu, and Em, which aired on the NBC Blue Network at 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time on January 27, 1931. The storylines centered on three women who lived in a small-town duplex and the programs were sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive.

In the 19th century clerks stood up to do their work.

The British Board of Film Classification was forced to on January 25 and 26, 2016 to watch a ten-hour film of paint drying on the wall before it could give it an age rating. The film was not censored; it was rated as a "U" (Universal) with "no material likely to offend or harm".

The planet Uranus has a peculiar magnetic field, whose axis is tilted at 60° to its axis of spin, and is displaced about one third of the way from the planet's center to its surface. According to one astronomer, "Uranus is a geometric mess."

Uranus pictured as a featureless disc by Voyager 2 in 1986

During World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, population 75,000, used one seventh of all US electricity to process uranium for the atomic bomb.

John Faulkner, the world’s oldest jockey, rode his last race at the age of 74, a steeplechase in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England. He died on January 25, 1933 aged 104 having fathered 32 children.

Palov is the national dish of Uzbekistan. A main course typically made with rice, pieces of meat, and grated carrots and onions, legend has it that it was invented by the cooks of Alexander the Great.

Palov By Utilisateur:Atilin Wikipedia

U2's lead singer Bono is almost never seen in public without sunglasses, as he suffers from glaucoma and is sensitive to light.

Cheetahs were raced at London's Romford greyhound stadium in 1937.

The inside of a tornado is filled with blue lightning, and many little tornadoes. The air is smooth, not turbulent, but hard to breath.

A tornado near Anadarko, Oklahoma,

A chemical in toothpaste causes your bitter taste buds to overreact, causing food to taste funny after you brush your teeth.

On January 23, 1956, Cleveland forbade its under 18 citizens from dancing at rock and roll concerts, citing a municipal legal anomaly from 1931. Thirty years later, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was opened on the lakefront in Cleveland.

The Turks are so into their coffee that their word for ‘breakfast’ translates literally to ‘before coffee.’

Pixabay

Canada actually comes from the word 'Kanata', a Huron or Iroquois word for village, and Canada is a 'big village'.

Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam opened the first departure lounge for cattle on January 22, 1988. Food and drink were served to cows in transit.

Siberia covers 77 per cent of Russia. If Siberia were independent, it would be the largest country in the world.

In 1710 there were over 500 coffeehouses in London, occupying more premises than any other trade in the city.”

The largest doughnut ever made was an American-style jelly donut weighing 1.7 tons (3739 lbs.), which was 16 feet (4.9 m) in diameter and 16 inches (40.6 cm) high in the center. It was made in Utica, New York, USA on January 21, 1993.

"Buffalo Bill” Cody earned his nickname after shooting 4,280 bison in 17 months in 1867-8.

Uruguay is the only country whose name in English has the same letter three times in its first five.

The coldest temperature ever recorded in the contiguous United States was in Montana. On January 20, 1954, −70 °F or −56.7 °C was measured at a gold mining camp near Rogers Pass. The only colder temperature recorded in the entire United States was in Alaska in 1971.

John F Kennedy was inaugurated as president of the United States on a particularly cold day in Washington DC on January 20, 1961. Despite the frozen weather, he was the first American president to dispense with a hat reflecting the trend for more casual dress and going about one's business hatless.

Andrew Johnson was thought to be drunk when he was sworn in as vice president in March 1865

On January 19, 1994, children from a school in Hackney, East London were barred from seeing Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet because their headmistress, Jane Brown, claimed it was "too hetrosexual."

The second century AD Roman charioteer Gaius Appuleius Diocles was the highest paid sportsman of all time. His winnings reportedly totaled 35,863,120 sesterces, which is the equivalent today of about $15 billion. 

Gaius Appuleius Diocles. By Zemanta

The average color of the universe is a light beige. Scientists have christened the color “cosmic latte.”

The wedding of King Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York on January 18, 1486, saw the first recorded use of fireworks in Britain.

UPS uses brown uniforms and delivery trucks. The company trademarked the color so other delivery companies cannot use a brown logo.

2000s propane-fueled package car in Montreal By JasonVogel

Cockroaches can flatten themselves almost to the thinness of a piece of paper in order to slide into tiny cracks.

The chow chow originated in China more than 2,000 years ago and served as a draft, guard, hunting and flock dog.

Chow Chow Pixibay

Robert Falcon Scott took several footballs to the South Pole and a selection of board games.

The first American conversion to Christianity was a native Indian guide in 1540.

A bloodhound called Ludivine joined the Elkmont Half Marathon in Alabama on January 16, 2016, after her owner let her out to go pee. She ran the entire 13.1 miles and finished seventh.

The first flower grown in space, a zinnia, bloomed on January 16, 2016. It was grown in the Veggie plant growth facility on the International Space Station.

The Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich was fanatic about football. His daughter Galina recalled: "He not only knew every footballer's name by heart, but he also kept records to compare match results," especially of his team Zenith Leningrad.

Between January 14 and January 15, 1972, the temperature in Loma, Montana, swung from -54°F to 49°F, landing the record for the greatest temperature swing in 24 hours.

The Snickers chocolate bar was named after the Mars family’s favorite horse.

For Pope Francis’s visit in 2015, traffic police in Manila were issued with 2,000 nappies so they never had to leave their posts.

Sea turtles have a built-in GPS. They use the earth’s magnetic field to navigate their epic voyages.

Gary Turner from Lincolnshire, England, holds the world record for the stretchiest skin. He is able to stretch the skin of his belly to a length of 15.8cm (6.25in) due to an extreme form of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a rare disorder of the connective tissues.

Clay often contains some water because the water molecules stick to the tiny grains.

Fear of the number 13 is triskaidekaphobia. On Friday January 13, 2017, Finn Air's flight 666 left for HEL (Helsinki) at 13:00 on a 13-year-old aircraft. They arrived safely.

Before the introduction of the whistle in the early 1870s, soccer  referees waved a white handkerchief. 

The total length of the world’s coastline is around 217,490 miles, roughly the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

All In The Family first came on the air on January 12, 1971, It gave us the first toilet flush in sitcom history.

The Indus Valley civilization, at around 3000BC, sealed clay tablets with a unicorn emblem.

Unicorn seal of Indus Valley, Indian Museum By Royroydeb

Louis XIV of France had a coat with 123 diamond buttons on it.

Unemployment was so high in England in 1634 that Charles I compelled the demolition of a newly erected mechanical sawmill because it threw so many sawyers out of work.

The t-shirt first came into vogue in the 1940s when the US Navy introduced a limited cotton undershirt of this style. The American troops would often strip off to their underwear in the tropical heat.  

US Merchant Marine sailor in 1944

The oldest reference to a collapsible umbrella in written records dates to the year 21 AD, when Wang Mang had one designed for a ceremonial carriage.

Domestic cats purr at about 26 cycles per second, which is around the same frequency as an idling diesel engine.

J.R.R Tolkien served as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers during the First World War. He fought at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, but later got trench fever and returned home.

Tolkien 1916

Charles II became the first English King to go to the theatre when he attended an opera called The Siege of Rhodes.

The first public museum in America was established in Charleston in 1773.

On January 9, 1386, a sow was convicted by an ecclesiastical court of murdering a young child and hanged in Faliase, France. The executioner was paid ten sous and ten deniers for his efforts in dragging and then hanging the pig.

 

Illustration from Chambers Book of Days depicting a sow being tried for the murder of a child

On January 9, 1493, Christopher Columbus, sailing near the Dominican Republic, thought he saw three mermaids. They were "not as pretty as they are depicted, for somehow in the face they look like men." Most likely they were manatees, which are slow-moving aquatic mammals with human-like eyes, large faces and paddle-like tails.

Flirting in public has been illegal in New York since the state introduced a bill outlawing it on January 8, 1902.

The invention of typing correction fluid is credited to Bette Nesmith Graham. She was the mother of the late Monkees band member Mike Nesmith.

Liquid Paper products on display at The Women's Museum in Dallas, Texas

The first novel written on a typewriter is said to be Mark Twain's Adventures Of Tom Sawyer in 1876.

All adult rainbow trout are distinguished by a broad reddish stripe along the lateral line, from gills to the tail, which is most vivid in breeding males.

Typical adult rainbow trout

In 1589 The Roman Catholic cardinal Philip Howard was accused of treason having reputedly prayed for the success of the Spanish Armada. He was found guilty, but his life was spared as the courts decided that a prayer cannot be construed as treason.

Glenn Miller's mother worried about him playing the trombone so much. She said "Pop and I used to wonder if he'd ever amount to anything."

Truman Capote is believed to be the inspiration for the character "Dil" in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).

The Romans didn't wear trousers because it was seen as uncivilized and only Barbarians wore pants.

Germanic trousers of the 4th century. By PBullenwächter

The Manhattan Cocktail (whisky and sweet vermouth) was invented for a banquet hosted by Winston Churchill’s mother, Jennie Jerome.

According to Guinness World Records, the Machineel tree of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico is the world's most dangerous tree. Its sap can cause blisters or blindness. You can't eat it, touch it, or burn it without injury!

Machineel Tree by Daniel Lobo

The Scottish writer Robert Louis Stephenson dashed off his Treasure Island story in 1881 while on holiday in Braemar. He was kept indoors by the damp Scottish weather and started on the story partly to amuse his stepson, Lloyd.

Nelson Mandela's favorite dish was tripe. It was included on the menu for his 94th birthday.

Ukraine's national dish, a delicacy known as salo, is made of cured pork fat. 

Salo with pepper, closeup

The ukulele is said to have been invented in 1879 in Hawaii. People got the idea from small 4-stringed guitar-like instruments known as cavaquinhos brought to the island by Portuguese immigrants, mainly from Madeira and the Azores

Sheep have excellent memories for the faces of both other sheep and humans. Cambridge scientists in 2001 showed that a sheep can recall the faces of 50 other sheep for more than two years.

Apple Computer was incorporated as Apple Inc on January 3, 1977. Steve Jobs named the company "Apple" partially because he wanted it to appear in the phone book before Atari, his former workplace.

In the 1937 Disney animation Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, only one of the dwarfs doesn’t have a beard — Dopey. 

Walt Disney introducing the dwarfs in the trailer of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Hillary Clinton revealed in 2014 that she hasn't driven a car in 20 years.

Charles Lindbergh was selected as the first Time magazine "Man of the Year" (for 1927), appearing in its cover on January 2, 1928, and remains the youngest individual (age 25) to receive the designation.

The thresher shark was named for its thresher-like tail, which can be as long as its entire body. It uses its tail as a weapon to stun prey.

Small purple colored thresher caught at Pacifica Pier, California. By Paul E Ester

The Rotokas language of Papua New Guinea has a 12-letter alphabet, the world's smallest.

Samuel Pepys made a New Year resolution on New Year's Eve 1661 to "abstain from plays and wine." (It didn't work out.)

New Year is a way bigger deal than Christmas in Russia. In fact, gifts are exchanged there at midnight on New Year's, rather than on Christmas Day.

Nyepi is a day of silence celebrated every Balinese New Year. Security men walk the streets silencing everyone in order to fool evil spirits that all the people have left.

The DJ Carl Cox played the Millennium (1999 to 2000) on New Year's Eve twice, by performing in Sydney, Australia and again in Hawaii after flying back over the International Date Line.

The Time Square New Year's Eve Ball came about as a result of a ban on fireworks in 1907. For the first time that year, a ball was dropped in New York City's Times Square to signify the start of the New Year at midnight in 1908.

The 2008 ball (on display at Times Square Visitors Center)

On New Year's Eve 2014, 835 of 1000 police officers meant to be on duty in Rome phoned in sick.

The people of Samoa missed December 30, 2011. This was because the nation of Samoa observed the same time as the Samoa Time Zone until it moved across the International Date Line at the end of December 29, 2011 making it 24 hours (25 hours in summer) ahead of American Samoa. As a result, the date of December 30, 2011 was omitted in Samoa.

The 13th century Mongol Empire was the world’s largest continuous land empire of all time. The map below shows the boundary of the 13th-century Mongol Empire compared to today's Mongolia. The red area shows where the majority of Mongolian speakers reside today.

Grover Cleveland was the only US president who was also a hangman. When he was the sheriff of Erie County he hung 2 people.

Facebook is blue, Instagram is blue, Tumblr is blue, Twitter is blue. The color blue relieves stress.

Mark Twain first learned to ride a bicycle at age 55.

In Cleveland, Ohio, it is illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.

When a 15,000-gallon vinegar vat at the HP Sauce factory in Birmingham, England burst on December 28, 1956, houses were flooded as far as a quarter of a mile away. Nobody was injured but the smell lasted for weeks.

As a nun at Nevers, Saint Bernadette helped nurse wounded casualties of the Franco-Prussian war. 

Saint Bernadette in 1866,

Karl Marx once applied for a job as a railway clerk. He was rejected as his writing was so atrocious.

Studies have shown that classical music helps cows produce more milk.

The Egyptian boy king Tutankhamun is thought to have had a club foot and was buried with 130 staffs and walking sticks.

Wooden bust of the boy king, found in his tomb. Wikipedia

The words turtle, tortoise and terrapin are often used interchangeably but the general rule is to call them tortoises if land-based, turtles if river or sea-based, and terrapins if amphibian.

The "Good King Wenceslaus" of the carol was the 10th century Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia. Wenceslaus I took a vow of celibacy and spent much of his time in acts of piety, affairs of state and prayer. 

The name "Boxing Day" comes partly from the British custom for tradesmen to collect "Christmas boxes" of money or presents on the first weekday after Christmas as thanks for good service throughout the year.

Time magazine chose the personal computer as its Person Of The Year on December 26, 1982, the first non-human ever. Ironically, the writer of the story wrote it on a typewriter, since Time's newsroom would not get computers for another year.

Rudyard Kipling wrote the first ever King's message on Christmas Day 1932 for George V, an epic of 251 words. Just before the broadcast, the king fell through his wicker armchair. He exclaimed "God bless my soul!" and delivered his lines.

Under the rules of the Gregorian calendar, Christmas Eve falls less often on a Tuesday than any other day of the week, but Christmas Day is more often on a Tuesday than any other day except Thursday.

"Xmas" stems from Greece. The Greek "X" is a symbol for Christ.

Queen Charlotte, the German wife of George III erected Britain’s first Christmas tree at Windsor Castle on December 24, 1800 for a children's party. It was illuminated with wax candles and had sweets and small gifts hanging from the branches. The Christmas tree soon became wildly fashionable in high society, but it took 40 years for them to catch on with other classes in the UK.

The first published image of a Christmas tree (see below) was the frontispiece to Hermann Bokum's 1836 The Stranger's Gift.

In Japan, Christmas Eve is often celebrated more than Christmas Day. People don't spend Christmas with family (most people in Japan are Buddhist), but instead Christmas Eve is thought of as a romantic day, in which couples spend together and exchange presents.

The Illustrated London News published the first-ever Christmas supplement by a newspaper on December 23, 1848, with an illustration of the royal family by their Christmas tree at Windsor (see below).

Christmas trees are eaten by various zoo animals. According to Berlin Zoo, elephants eat 5 trees at a single sitting.

The use of the word Noel at Christmas derives from the French phrase "Les bonnes nouvelles" meaning "the good news."

The first Christmas tree decorated with electrical lights on it was put up by Edward Johnson, President of the Edison Electric Company, on December 22, 1882. At the time, many people mistrusted electricity and thought that dangerous vapors would seep into their homes through the lights and wires.

The use of turkey to mean a bad film or play comes from a 19th century American habit of serving bad turkeys between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Pixiebay

The song "White Christmas" ended the Vietnam War in 1975 – it was used as the radio code signal for the evacuation of Vietnamese people who had assisted the US from Saigon.

Posted by Ed Pearce at 05:00

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Labels: On This Day

2 comments:

1. 
   Graham Clayton26 October 2021 at 02:40

   The Amazing thing about Reverend Robert Shields' diary was that he typed out every entry!

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2. 
   Tiffany Tasting Food22 July 2024 at 19:20

   This was lovelyy to read

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