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The names Honda and Toyota derive from Japanese words for different kinds of rice field.

The longest palindrome in the Oxford English Dictionary is ‘tattarrattat’. James Joyce used it in Ulysses: ‘I knew his tattarrattat at the door.’

Each of us is surrounded by bacteria that are released from our bodies; everyone’s personal microbial cloud is unique.

An animal the size of an elephant could evolve to an animal the size of a sheep in 100,000 generations, but for an animal the size of a sheep to evolve to the size of an elephant would take 1.6 million generations.

The ancient Greeks had no word for religion.

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Bacteria are about as different from viruses as metronomes are from giraffes.

Every year, a thousand letters arrive in Jerusalem addressed to God.

Uranium is 40 times more common than silver and 500 times more common than gold.

The giant palm salamander can stick its tongue out 50 times faster than you can blink.

Every day, the human body makes 300 billion new cells, three times as many as there are galaxies in the universe.

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In 1995, the number of TV programmes in Britain watched by over 15 million people was 225. By 2004, this had fallen to six.

Biologists cannot agree on definitions for the words ‘species’, ‘organism’ or ‘life’.

Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo all mean ‘capital’, in their respective languages.

Dildos are illegal in Texas.

The amount of water on Earth is constant, and continually recycled over time: some of the water you drink, will have passed through a dinosaur.

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If all the salt in the sea were spread evenly over the land, it would be 500 feet thick.

Sweden makes biofuel from dead rabbits.

Nine species have been named after Barack Obama – more than any other US President.

Volkswagen has changed its official language from German to English.

Almost two-thirds of the 33,000 annual gun deaths in America are suicides.

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A “Bug” is an insect that has sucking mouth parts.

The oldest active synagogue in Europe is in Prague. It is called the Old New Synagogue.

Humans and elephants are the only animals with chins.

The Lord Ponsonby of Shulbede and Baron Soulsby of Swaffham Prior are actual titles in the English Peerage.

Australia was discovered by the Chinese. The Dutch were the first Europeans to discover it. William Dampier was the first Englishman to discover it.

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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.

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To repel attackers, the bombardier beetle shoots a noxious mixture of boiling chemicals out of its bottom in a series of rapid blasts.

The National Health Service is the world’s 4th-largest employer after the US Defense Department, the Chinese Red Army, and Walmart.

Palm trees are a type of grass.

The seventh most common sentence in The Hunger Games trilogy is “they swallowed hard”.

In 2015, a town in North Carolina rejected a solar farm because residents believed it would “suck up” sunlight and kill the local plants.

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There is a community in Ontario, Canada, called Moose Factory. It is located on Moose Factory Island, near the mouth of the Moose River.

Between 1934 and 1968, the Catholic censorship guidelines that had led to the Motion Picture Production Code forbade Hollywood films to show innuendo, infidelity, nudity, sexual hygiene, prostitution, homosexuality, drugs, interracial relations, white slavery, and ridicule of the clergy.

An excerpt of Sir Roger Moore’s Twitter account description once read 007. Saint. UNICEF Ambassador.

Over 25,000 people died on the First Day of the Somme.

In The Simpsons (Season 5, Episode 5) “Treehouse of Horror IV”, Homer Simpson is put on trial by the Devil. The jury consists of Benedict Arnold, Lizzy Borden, Richard Nixon, John Wilkes Booth, Blackbeard the Pirate, John Herbert Dillinger, and the starting line-up of the 1976 Philadelphia Flyers.

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