1,227 QI Facts to Blow Your Socks Off Read Free

for ‘rectal inflation’:
    blowing smoke up the anus
    to resuscitate the drowned.
     

    Cardiff
    has more hours of sunlight
    than Milan.
     
    Glasgow
    is twinned with
    Nuremberg, Bethlehem and Havana.
     
    Toasters
    were banned in Havana
    until 2008.
     
    The Dyslexia Research Centre
    is in Reading.
     

    The technology behind smartphones
    relies on up to
    250,000 separate patents.
     
    The human brain
    takes in 11 million bits of
    information every second,
    but is only aware of 40.
     
    The water in a blue whale’s mouth
    weighs as much as its entire body.
     
    The ancient Romans
    discovered parrots could speak and
    taught them to say ‘Hail Caesar’.
    When they got bored with this,
    they took to eating them instead.
     

    The United States of America
    maintains a military presence in
    148 of the 192 United Nations countries.
     
    On average, every square mile
    of sea on the planet
    contains 46,000 pieces of rubbish.
     
    In 1251, Henry III was given
    a polar bear by the king of Norway.
    He kept it in the Tower of London,
    on a long chain so that it could
    swim in the Thames.
     
    The tadpoles of the South American
    paradoxical frog
    are larger than the frog itself.
     

    Historical Catholic clergy include:
    Bishop Boil, Bishop Boom,
    Bishop Broccoli, Bishop Bolognese,
    Bishop Busti, Bishop Butt
    and Bishop Bishop.
     
    Kuku kaki kakak kakak ku kayak kuku kaki
    kakek kakek ku
    is an Indonesian tongue-twister meaning
    ‘My sister’s toenails
    look like my grandfather’s’.
     
    In the 2009 Formula One season,
    12% of Grand Prix drivers
    were called Sebastian.
     
    People in Victorian Britain
    who couldn’t afford chimney sweeps
    dropped live geese
    down their chimneys instead.
     

    You are three times more likely
    to die in a plane crash
    than you are to be eaten
    by a mountain lion.
     
    Gerbils can smell adrenaline
    and are installed in airport security areas
    to detect terrorists.
     
    If you drilled a tunnel
    straight through the Earth and jumped in,
    it would take you exactly
    42 minutes and 12 seconds
    to get to the other side.
     
    A medium-sized cumulus cloud
    weighs about the same
    as 80 elephants.
     

    Fred Baur (1918–2002),
    the designer of the Pringles can,
    had his ashes buried in one.
     
    Fred
is Swedish for ‘peace’.
     
    Nobles present at the 18th-century
    battle of Bravalla between
    Sweden and Denmark included
    Hothbrodd the Furious,
    Thorulf the Thick, Birvil the Pale,
    Roldar Toe-Joint, Vati the Doubter,
    Od the Englishman, Alf the Proud and
    Frosti Bowl.
     
    The Queen of England
    is related to
    Vlad the Impaler.
     

    When customers visited
    the first supermarkets in the UK,
    they were afraid to pick up
    goods from the shelves
    in case they were told off.
     
    Women buy 80%
    of everything
    that is for sale.
     
    Between 1928 and 1948,
    12 Olympic medals were awarded
    for Town Planning.
     
    On a clear, moonless night
    the human eye can detect
    a match being struck
    50 miles away.
     

    In the US between 1983 and 2000,
    there were 568 plane crashes.
    51,207 of the 53,487
    people aboard
    got out alive:
    a survival rate of 96%.
     
    Harry Houdini could
    pick up pins with his eyelashes
    and thread a needle
    with his toes.
     
    The Sami people of northern Finland use
    a measure called
Poronkusema
:
    the distance a reindeer can walk
    before needing to urinate.
     
    The Inca measurement of time
    was based on
    how long it took to boil a potato.
     

    Potatoes were illegal in France
    between 1748 and 1772.
     
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
    liked to eat fruit while
    it was still attached to the tree.
     
    Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree,
    the great Victorian actor-manager, once
    hailed a taxi and got in. Absorbed in his
    work, he sat silently reading in the back.
    When the cabbie eventually asked,
    ‘Where to, guv?’ Sir Herbert spluttered,
    ‘Do you really think I would give
    my address to the likes of you?’
     
    On average, most people
    have fewer friends
    than their friends have.
    This