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It was almost 2,300 years after the ancient Greeks suggested both the idea of, and the word for, atoms that they were actually proven to exist.

Bos Primigenius also known as the Cow

The ancient Greeks and Romans thought butter fit only for barbarians. Their words for butter, buturon and butyrum, mean cow-cheese.

There have been 12 Greek popes.

Greece invented democracy, but Greek women only got the vote in 1952.

Asbestos is Greek for ‘inextinguishable’. The Greeks occasionally wove handkerchiefs out of asbestos.

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The biblical statement ‘all flesh is grass’ (Isaiah 40:6) and (I Peter 1:24) is almost literally true. Grass is the staple diet of nearly all human beings. Wheat, rice, barley, millet and corn are all grasses, and cattle, sheep and goats (our main sources of meat) survive entirely on grass.

Federico García Lorca in 1914

Landslides carrying millions of tons of rubble can reach speeds of 100 mph, but leave the grass on the hill beneath them completely untouched. This is because air, trapped and compressed, acts as a cushion allowing the moving debris to travel a few inches above the ground.

An agelast is someone who never laughs. The word derives from Crassus Agelastus (the grandfather of the legendarily rich Crassus) who was said to have laughed only once in his life – on seeing an ass eating thistles.

From 1931 to 1941, all graduating candidates of the Japanese Naval Academy were asked the question ‘How would you carry out a surprise attack on Pearl Harbour?’

The career of Federico Garcia Lorca, the greatest Spanish writer of the 20th century, lasted just 19 years. He was killed during mass executions in Andalusia in the Spanish Civil War and is buried in an unmarked grave.

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The ghost of Archbishop Laud, beheaded in 1645, is said to haunt the library of St. John’s College, Oxford where apparently it plays football with its own head.

William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury

Golf balls were originally made of wood. Later, they were made from boiled feathers stuffed into stitched leather known as featheries. The modern (and cheaper) golf ball filled with gutta-percha was not developed till 1848.

A swarm of gnats is called a ghost.

The oldest golf club in the world is St Andrews, founded in 1552.

The word lemur means ghost. It was coined by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707-78) from the Latin, Lemures: the shades of the departed.

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The first record of golf in England is more than a hundred years older than its appearance in Scotland.

The execution of Auguste Vaillant in 1894

From 1871 to 1981, the title of the executioner of France was Monsieur de Paris, “Mister from Paris.” He was the only man certified to carry out executions in France, and was required to live in Paris.

Approximately 20 million golf balls are lost in water hazards on British golf courses every year.

The Tunisian born Hamida Djandoubi was the last person to be guillotined in France on the 10th of September 1977. Making him the last person to be executed by the modern Republic of France. The official execution method in the modern Republic of France had always been the guillotine.

King James II of Scotland (1430-60) made golf illegal on pain of death.

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A game very similar to golf was played in ancient China more than five hundred years before its first known mention in Scotland.

A Ferret

Goldfish are much more intelligent than they look and enjoy music.

Nobody knows where the word golf comes from.

The world record ferret legging (keeping a live ferret in your trousers) is 5 hours and 26 minutes.

Tish, the world’s oldest known goldfish, was 43. He was won at a funfair in Doncaster in 1956 and buried in a yoghurt pot in the garden of his owner in Thirsk, Yorkshire in 1999.

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Goldfish have perfectly good memories and are smart enough to be trained to swim through hoops.

Carassius Auratus Auratus or Common Goldfish

Most goldfish are not gold.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is estimated to have had an IQ of 185.

The ancient Greek word tragomaskalos means ‘with armpits smelling like a he-goat’.

According to tradition, Jimmu was the first emperor of Japan reigning between 711 BC and 585 BC. His father was the god Ugayafukiaezu, short for Amatsuhitaka-hiko’nakisatake-ugayafukiaezu-no-Mikoto.

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Woodland Aristocrat

‘The parallels with the British upper classes are striking: badgers are stubborn creatures of habit; some of their setts, and some of the paths or ‘runs’ that lead to them, are centuries old, handed down from generation to generation like stately homes. The largest sett ever found was a veritable Blenheim Palace with more than 130 entrances, fifty rooms and half a mile of tunnels. Seventy tons of earth had been moved to make it. Most setts house a group of up to twenty adult badgers, known as a ‘clan’, and they will spend half their lives inside it, fast asleep. [...]

Badgers can mate at any time of year, and sex can last for up to ninety minutes. The sow will mate with several different boars, holding all the fertilised eggs until she gives birth to a multi-fathered litter in early spring. [...]

The origin of the word ‘badger’ is uncertain, but the best guess is the French bêcher, meaning ‘to dig’. The French call them blaireau, a word they also use for ‘shaving-brush’, and ‘tourist’.’

- Lloyd. J., Mitchinson. J. 2007. The QI Book of Animals London, Great Britain: Faber and Faber (2009) p. 12-13

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The Giant Eland is the largest species of antelope – it weighs almost 2,000 lb. The smallest is the Royal Antelope, which weighs about 1/500th as much.

Taurotragus Derbianus Gigas or Giant Eland

The worst part in the world to fly in is Africa. In 2003, it generated only 3% of all the flights, but accounted for 28% of all the air crashes. Europe, by contrast, generated 30% of the flights but only 14.5% of the crashes.

The main exports of Ghana are gold and cocoa.

The Giant Hummingbird is so-called because it weighs three-quarters of an ounce.

The bioluminescent Giant Siphonophore can grow 40 metres (130 feet) long – almost twice as long as a blue whale – but its body is only as thick as a broomstick.

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Best Endowed of All Mammals

‘If the Nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) were human, its penis would be 4 feet long. [...] As a result, armadillos lead the world in research into the function of the mammalian penis. The members of dead armadillos are regularly harvested from road-kill – a job made easier by the fact that they are so gigantic.’

- Lloyd. J., Mitchinson. J. 2007. The QI Book of Animals London, Great Britain: Faber and Faber (2009) p. 10-11