Free The World's Greatest Book of Useless Information by Noel Botham Page A

given the special treatment of being allowed a few days to ripen so the embalmers wouldn’t find them too attractive.
    On some mummies that have been unwrapped, the total length of the bandages has been about 1.5 miles.
    Tomb robbers believed that knocking off Egyptian sarcophagi’s noses would stall curses.
    A golden razor removed from King Tut’s tomb was still sharp enough to be used.
    IT’S GREEK TO ME
    The ruins of Troy are located in Turkey.
    In 290 B.C.E., Aristarchus was the first Greek astronomer to suggest that the sun was the center of the solar system.
    At the height of its power, in 400 B.C.E., the Greek city of Sparta had twenty-?five thousand citizens and five hundred thousand slaves.
    In ancient Greece, women counted their age from the date they were married.

ROMAN HOLIDAY
    High-?wire acts have been enjoyed since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Antique medals have been excavated from Greek islands depicting men ascending inclined cords and walking across ropes stretched between cliffs. The Greeks called these high-?wire performers neurobates or oribates. In the Roman city of Herculaneum, there is a fresco representing an aerialist high on a rope, dancing and playing a flute. Sometimes Roman tightrope walkers stretched cables between the tops of two neighboring hills and performed comic dances and pantomimes while crossing.
    Trivia is the Roman goddess of sorcery, hounds, and the crossroads.
    After the great fire of Rome in 64 C.E., the emperor Nero ostensibly decided to lay the blame on Christians residing in the city of Rome. He gathered them together, crucified them, covered them in pitch, and burned them. He walked around his gardens admiring the view.
    Ancient Romans believed that birds mated on February 14.
    Flamingo tongues were a common delicacy at Roman feasts.
    Hannibal had only one eye after losing the other to a disease he caught while attacking Rome.
    In ancient Rome, it was considered a sign of leadership to be born with a crooked nose.
    In ancient Rome, weasels were used to catch mice.
    It was decreed by law in the Roman Empire that all young maidens be fed rabbit meat because it would make them more beautiful and more willing.
    Julius Caesar tried to beef up the population of Rome by offering rewards to couples who had many children.
    Spartacus led the revolt of the Roman slaves and gladiators in 73 C.E.
    The Pantheon is the largest building from ancient Rome that survives intact.
    The Roman emperor Caligula made his horse a senator.
    The Roman emperor Commodos collected all the dwarfs, cripples, and freaks he could find and had them brought to the Colosseum, where they were ordered to fight each other to the death with meat cleavers.
    The saying “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye” is from ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was no eye gouging. Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified was to poke someone’s eyes out.
    All office-?seekers in the Roman Empire were obliged to wear a certain white toga for a period of one year before the election.

THE CHINA CLUB
    Slaves under the last emperors of China wore pigtails so they could be picked out quickly.
    The Chinese ideogram for trouble depicts two women living under one roof.
    The Chinese Nationalist Golf Association claims the game is of Chinese origin (ch’ui wan—the ball-?hitting game) from the third or second century B.C.E. There were official ordinances prohibiting a ball game with clubs in Belgium and Holland from 1360.
    The Chinese, in historic times, used marijuana only as a remedy for dysentery.
    The Great Wall of China, which is more than 4,000 miles long, took more than 1,700 years to build. There is enough stone in the Great Wall to build an eight-?foot wall encircling the globe at the equator.
    The world’s youngest parents were eight and nine and lived in China in 1910.

IN THEIR PRIME
    William Pitt, elected in 1783, was England’s youngest prime