In 2002, Norwegian footballer Kenneth Kristensen signed for third-division team Floey and was paid his weight in shrimps.
The modern Spanish Navy is still called the Armada.
There are more Catholics in Scotland than in Northern Ireland.
A 2005 United States medical research project showed that 20% of interviewees admitted to taking Derbisol, a drug that does not exist.
The director and producer of the 1971 film Fiddler on the Roof was called Norman Jewison.
See other: Quite Interesting Facts
Macbeth [Soliloquy]
‘She should have died hererafter:
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.’
– Reed International Books Ltd. 1992. The Illustrated Stratford Shakespeare London, Great Britain: Chancellor Press (1996) p. 795
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Golf balls were originally made of wood.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.
See other: Quite Interesting Facts
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.
See other: Quite Interesting Facts
‘In the late 1960s, two elderly American tourists who had been touring Scotland reported that, in their travels, they had come to a Scottish town in which there was a great ruined cathedral. As they stood in the ruins, they saw a small boy and they asked him when the cathedral had been so badly damaged. He replied in the war. Their immediate interpretation, in the late 1960s, was that he must be referring to the Second World War which had ended only twenty years earlier. But then they thought that the ruins looked as if they had been in their dilapidated state for much longer than that, so they eventually discovered, had formally ended in 1745.
Brown (1998)’
– Yule, G. 1985. The Study of Language Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press (2010) p. 127
There are 47 species of feline, including lions, tigers, pumas, bobcats, ocelots, jaguars, leopards, cougars, cheetahs, lynxes and domestic cats.
James III and his wife Margaret of Denmark
Feathers are made of keratin – the same stuff that human hairs and nails, wool, horn, claws, tortoises’ shells, birds’ beaks, horses’ hooves and the scales of reptiles are made of.
January 30 is a moving day in history: in 1649, Charles I was beheaded for treason, outside the Banqueting Hall in the Palace of Whitehall, London; in 1948, Indian nationalist leader Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated by Hindu extremist Nathuram Godse in Delhi; and in 1972, British paratroops shot 13 people dead during a civil rights march in Londonderry – known as the Bloody Sunday.
Shrek is the Yiddish word for fear, alarm or dismay.
In 1468, Shetland and its neighbouring islands were pledged by Christian I of Norway to Scotland as a security for the payment of the dowry of his daughter Margaret who was betrothed to James III of Scotland. As the money was never paid by the Norwegian King, the connection with the crown of Scotland soured. In response, in 1471, the Northern Isles of Shetland and Orkney were annexed by the Crown of Scotland, a process confirmed by Parliament in 1472.
“Macademia. Sound like a Scottish university doesn’t it?”
– Jimmy Carr
Knowledge Guild 