1,227 qi facts

John Lloyd CBE is the creator of QI

and the man who devised The News Quiz
and To the Manor Born for radio and
Not the Nine O’Clock News, Spitting Image
and Blackadder for television.
His favourite page is 2.

John Mitchinson, QI’s Director of Research,

has been both bookseller and publisher
and looked after authors as diverse as
Haruki Murakami, The Beatles and
a woman who knitted with dog hair.
His favourite page is 306.

James Harkin, QI’s Senior Researcher,

has a maths and physics degree, a dark past
as an accountant for a chain of pubs and is
nicknamed ‘Turbo’ for his phenomenal work rate.
His favourite page is 38.

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 a quite interesting book

1,227 QI FACTS
to blow your socks off

Compiled by
John Lloyd, John Mitchinson
& James Harkin

with the QI Elves

Anne Miller, Andy Murray & Alex Bell

QI 1,227 (original).indd 3 28/09/2012 12:49

 First published in 2012
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London wc1b 3da

Typeset by Palindrome
Printed in England by CPI Group (UK) Ltd,
Croydon cr0 4yy

All rights reserved

© QI Ltd, 2012

The right of QI Ltd to be identified as author of this work

has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A CIP record for this book

is available from the British Library

isbn 978–0–571–29791–7

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

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 Contents

Introduction vii

1,227 Facts  1

Tasting Notes   309

Index 311

[v]

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 Asteroid
1,227
is called Geranium.

The ozone layer

smells faintly of
geraniums.

The centre of the galaxy

tastes like
raspberries.

The universe
is shaped
like a vuvuzela.

[1]

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 Light travels
18 million times faster
than rain.

The Queen is the legal owner

of one-sixth of the
Earth’s land surface.

The name of the first human being

in Norse mythology
is Ask.

Everybody expected
the Spanish Inquisition –
they were legally obliged
to give 30 days’ notice.

[2]

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 Octopuses
have three hearts.

Kangaroos
have three vaginas.

Three of Fidel Castro’s sons,

Alexis, Alexander and Alejandro,
are named
after Alexander the Great.

The opening lines of

Jerome K. Jerome’s
Three Men In A Boat are:
‘There were four of us.’

[3]

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 40% of the human race
did not survive
beyond its 1st birthday.

One in ten European babies

is conceived
in an IKEA bed.

The human heart

pumps enough blood in a lifetime
to fill three supertankers.

The word ‘time’

is the most commonly used
noun in English.

[4]

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 10% of all the photographs
in the world
were taken in the last 12 months.

Between 1838 and 1960,

more than half the photos taken
were of babies.

The words written on

Twitter every day
would fill
a 10-million-page book.

In 2008, a man in Ohio

was arrested for
having sex with a picnic table.

[5]

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 The average person walks
the equivalent of three times
around the world
in a lifetime.

The world’s population spends

500,000 hours a day
typing Internet security codes.

The first book ever printed in Oxford

had a misprint on the first page:
they got the date wrong.

For 100 years, the flag of the

tropical Turks and Caicos Islands
in the West Indies
mistakenly featured an igloo.

[6]

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 One third of Russians
believe that
the Sun revolves around the Earth.

46% of American adults

believe that the world
is less than 10,000 years old.

46% of American adults

can’t read well enough to understand
the label on their prescription medicine.

More than 50% of NASA employees

are dyslexic,
hired for their superior problem-solving
and spatial-awareness skills.

[7]

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 Beyoncé Knowles
is an 8th cousin, four times removed,
of Gustav Mahler.

Shostakovich
wrote his 8th Symphony
in a henhouse.

Argentina
is the 8th-largest country
with the 8th-largest Jewish population.

8th January 1835

is the only day in history
that the USA had no national debt.

[8]

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 Italy’s biggest business is the Mafia.
It turns over $178 billion a year
and accounts for 7% of GDP.

George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein

had their shoes hand-made
by the same Italian cobbler.

The designer of Saddam’s bunker

was the grandson of the woman
who built Hitler’s bunker.

Churchill’s secret bunker

was in Neasden.
It was so horrible
he only went there once.

[9]

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 In his first year at Harrow,
Winston Churchill was bottom
of the whole school.

The Irish poet Brendan Behan

became an alcoholic
at the age of eight.

Leonardo da Vinci
worked on the Mona Lisa for 15 years.
By the time he died in 1519,
he still didn’t consider it finished.

When the Mona Lisa was stolen

from the Louvre in 1911,
one of the suspects was Picasso.

[ 10 ]

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