Free 1,227 QI Facts to Blow Your Socks Off by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson Page A

hedgehogs
    are called
    ‘hoglets’.
     

    In 19th-century Britain,
    ‘mock-turtle’ soup was often
    made from cow foetuses.
     
    Dogs can smell where electric current
    has been and human fingerprints
    that are a week old.
     
    Lord Byron’s mail often contained
    locks of hair from adoring female fans.
    Some of the clippings he sent them
    in return actually came from
    his pet Newfoundland dog,
    Boatswain.
     
    As soon as Lord Byron left England
    for the last time in 1816, his creditors
    entered his home and repossessed
    everything he owned, right down to his
    tame squirrel.
     

    In 1899, Dr Horace Emmett
    announced that the secret
    of eternal youth was injections
    of ground-up squirrel testicles.
    He died later the same year.
     
    Squirrels
    can remember the hiding places
    of up to 10,000 nuts.
     
    More than 10,000 seashells
    had to be crushed to make
    the purple dye to colour
    a single Roman toga.
     
    The Latin verb
    manicare
    means
    ‘to come in the morning’.
     

    In the novel that the film
Pinocchio
    was based on, Jiminy Cricket
    was brutally murdered and
    Pinocchio had his feet burned off and
    was hanged by villagers.
     
    Donald Duck’s
    voice started out
    as an attempt to do
    an impression
    of a lamb.
     
    Red Bull
    is illegal in Norway, Denmark,
    Uruguay and Iceland.
     
    Sitting Bull
    was originally called
    Jumping Badger.
     

    When Fidel Castro
    seized power in Cuba,
    he ordered all Monopoly sets
    to be destroyed.
     
    The human body grows fastest
    during its few first weeks in the womb.
    If it were to keep growing
    at the same rate for 50 years,
    it would be bigger than
    Mount Everest.
     
    To produce beef
    takes 16,000 times its own weight
    in water.
     
    The Turkish for ‘cannibal’
    is
yamyam
.
     

    On 30th June 1998, England lost to
    Argentina in a World Cup penalty
    shoot-out. On that day, and for two days
    afterwards, the number of heart attacks
    in England increased by 25%.
     
    The first violence of the French Revolution
    took place at a luxury wallpaper factory.
     
    In 1811, crimes punishable by death
    in Britain included sheep stealing,
    impersonating a Chelsea Pensioner,
    ‘strong evidence of malice’ in children
    aged 7–14, living with gypsies for a month
    and stealing cheese.
     
    In 2011,
    cheese was the
    most stolen food
    in the world.
     

    Buzz Aldrin’s
    mother’s maiden name
    was Moon.
     
    Fritinancy
    is the buzzing of insects.
     
    Most bees buzz in the key of A,
    unless they are tired,
    when they buzz in the key of E.
     
    British moths include
    the Uncertain, the Confused, the Magpie,
    the Lackey, the Drinker, the Streak,
    the Ruddy Highflyer, the Buff Arches,
    the Figure of Eighty, the Anomalous, the
    Dark Dagger, the Lettuce Shark,
    the Isabelline Tiger, the Waved Tabby
    and the Mother Shipton.
     

    The cake
    for the Queen Mother’s wedding
    in 1923 weighed
    half a ton.
     
    The three
    most searched-for individuals
    in the Nobel Peace Prize
    nomination database are
    Mahatma Gandhi, Joseph Stalin
    and Adolf Hitler.
     
    A
corpocracy
    is a society ruled by corporations;
    a
coprocracy
is one ruled by shits.
     
    The first mobile phones
    cost
£
2,000 each and
    had a battery life of
    about 20 minutes.
     

    The world’s first weather map,
    published in
The Times
on 1st April 1875,
    gave the weather for
    the
previous
day.
     
    During the First World War,
    explosions from the battle of the Somme
    could be heard on Hampstead Heath.
     
    Handschuhschneeballwerfer
is German slang
    for ‘coward’. It means someone who
    wears gloves to throw snowballs.
     
    Two French kings were killed by tennis:
    King Louis X (1289–1316) caught a
    fatal chill after one game and
    Charles VIII (1470–98) never recovered
    from a coma after another one. He had
    banged his head on the door lintel
    on the way into the match.
     

    Humans kill
    at least 100 million sharks a year,
    or about 11,000 an hour.
     
    Female aphids give birth
    to other live female aphids that are
    already pregnant with