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

is known as the ‘friendship paradox’.
     

    Blissom
vb
    To bleat with sexual desire.
     
    Eye-servant
n.
    One who only works
    when the boss is watching.
     
    Hemipygic
adj.
    Having only one buttock;
    half-arsed.
     
    Marmalise
vb
    To give someone
    a thrashing.
     

    The modern world’s
    first international sporting fixture
    was a cricket match played in 1844
    between Canada and the USA.
    Canada won by 23 runs.
     
    Baseball – the name and the game – was
    invented in England in the 1750s.
     
    Baseball legend Babe Ruth
    always wore a cabbage leaf under his cap
    to keep his head cool. In South Korea,
    this is considered unsporting,
    unless the player has a doctor’s note.
     
    ‘Soccer’ is not an Americanism.
    It’s short for ‘Association Football’
    and was popularised by
    Charles Wreford-Brown, captain
    of the English national team 1894–5.
     

    James Naismith, a Canadian,
    invented basketball in Massachusetts
    in 1891. It was 21 years
    before it occurred to anyone
    to cut a hole in the bottom of the basket.
     
    Captain John Smith
    of Pocahontas fame
    was the first man
    to use the word
    ‘awning’.
     
    Aerosmith have made more money
    from
Guitar Hero
    than from any of their albums.
     
    When Matt Smith became
    the 11th Doctor Who in 2010,
    UK bow-tie sales doubled in a month.
     

    98% of the 7 billion billion billion
    atoms in the human body
    are replaced every year.
     
    Mongolia’s largest airport
    is named after Genghis Khan.
    He had over 500 wives
    and a vast number of children:
    1 in 10 people in Central Asia today
    are his direct descendants.
     
    Anophthalmus hitleri
is a blind beetle found
    only in five caves in Slovenia.
    Named after Hitler in 1933,
    it is now endangered due to
    collectors of Nazi memorabilia.
     
    Hitler’s home phone number
    was listed in
Who’s Who
until 1945.
    It was Berlin 11 6191.
     

    At least 99%
    of all the species that ever existed
    have left no trace in the fossil record.
     
    No scientific experiment
    has ever been done
    (or could be done)
    to prove that time exists.
     
    If you could fold
    a piece of paper 51 times,
    its thickness would exceed
    the distance from here to the Sun.
     
    Charles Blondin crossed Niagara Falls
    several times on a 1,000-foot tightrope:
    blindfolded, in a sack, on stilts,
    carrying a man on his back
    and cooking an omelette in the middle.
     

    Michael J. Fox’s
    middle name is
    Andrew.
     
    Emile Heskey’s
    middle name is
    Ivanhoe.
     
    David Frost’s
    middle name is
    Paradine.
     
    Richard Gere’s
    middle name is
    Tiffany.
     

    1 in 50 Americans
    executed for murder
    had the middle name ‘Wayne’.
     
    1 in 50 Scots
    are heroin addicts.
     
    1 in 50 Americans
    claim to have been abducted
    by aliens.
     
    1 in 50 words
    in the lyrics of the winning entries of
    the Eurovision Song Contest
    is ‘love’.
     

    More people go to church
    on Sunday in China
    than in the whole of Europe.
     
    The lead singer of Iron Maiden
    has a day job as a
    Boeing 757 pilot.
     
    A greetings card
    that can play ‘Happy Birthday’
    has more computing power
    than existed in the whole world in 1950.
     
    You are 14% more likely to die
    on your birthday
    than any other day.
     

    Oranges and lemons smell different
    due to chemically identical molecules
    that are mirror images of each other.
    An orange is really
    just a left-handed lemon.
     
    Moon dust
    smells like gunpowder.
     
    A typical microwave oven
    uses more electricity
    keeping its digital clock on standby
    than it does heating food.
     
    As it grows,
    sweetcorn makes a squeaking noise
    like two balloons
    rubbing against each other.
     

    Emissions from car exhausts
    are responsible for
    more deaths every year
    than road accidents.
     
    You can legally buy cannabis
    in the US, but only as birdseed:
    the feathers of birds that eat it
    acquire a particularly
    glossy sheen.
     
    Fidel Castro
    estimated that he saved
    ten working days a year
    by not bothering to shave.
     
    Wild Bill