Home > Work > 1,411 QI Facts To Knock You Sideways
1 " J. M. Barrie founded a celebrity cricket team with Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, Jerome K. Jerome, G. K. Chesterton, A. A. Milne, Rudyard Kipling and P. G. Wodehouse. "
― John Lloyd , 1,411 QI Facts To Knock You Sideways
2 " René Descartes had a fetish for cross-eyed women. "
3 " From 1934 to 1948, the motto of the BBC was Quaecunque, Latin for ‘Whatever’. "
4 " Viking names included ‘desirous of beer’, ‘squat-wiggle’, ‘lust-hostage’, ‘short penis’, ‘able to fill a bay with fish by magic’, ‘the man who mixes his drinks’ and ‘the man without trousers’. "
5 " The lawnmower is the most dangerous item in the garden. The second most dangerous is the flowerpot. "
6 " Between 1908 and 1965, Winston Churchill drank 42,000 bottles of champagne. "
7 " The name ‘United Nations’ was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s idea. He rushed to tell Winston Churchill, who was towelling himself stark naked in his bathroom. "
8 " Information is fleeting. Human records are broken; new particles are discovered; fresh historical documents come to light. Dinosaurs turn out not to be giant grey iguanas after all, but multicoloured feathery proto-birds of all shapes and sizes. Right now, even the daddy of all facts, the Big Bang theory, is looking wobbly. "
9 " The first choice of a name for Disney’s Hannah Montana was Alexis Texas, but it was already taken by a porn star. "
10 " The Daleks were based on the Nazis. "
11 " If cats don’t encounter people by the time they’re 10 weeks old, they will always be scared of them. "
12 " Camel urine is as thick as syrup. "
13 " New-car smell is toxic to humans. "
14 " Dildos are illegal in Texas. "
15 " In 2013, the Venezuelan government accused the opposition of hoarding toilet paper and causing a national shortage. "
16 " 4% of the sand on Normandy beaches is made up of tiny metal particles from the D-Day landings. "
17 " Whales’ vaginas can be large enough to walk through. "
18 " The inventor of roller skates first demonstrated them by hurtling into a party while playing the violin and crashing into a huge mirror. "
