The Mega Book of Useless Information. Noel Botham
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• Leonardo da Vinci was the first person to suggest using contact lenses for vision, in 1508.
• Napoleon’s haemorrhoids contributed to his defeat at Waterloo, as they prevented him from surveying the battlefield on horseback.
• The lightest human adult ever was Lucia Xarate, from Mexico. At the age of 17, in 1889, she weighed 4lb 11oz (2.13kg).
• Isaac Newton’s only recorded utterance while he was a Member of Parliament was a request to open the window.
• Sixty per cent of men spit in public.
• Men who are exposed to a lot of toxic chemicals, high heat and unusual pressures, such as jet pilots and deep-sea divers, are more prone to father girls than boys.
• Cleopatra tested the efficacy of her poisons by giving them to slaves.
• Only about 30 per cent of teenage males consistently apply sun-protection lotion compared with 46 per cent of female teens.
• American showman P T Barnum had his obituary published before his death.
• Lawrence of Arabia’s ghost is said to be heard riding his motorbike near his house in Dorset, England, where he died in a motorbike accident.
• With 382,650 babies being born and 144,902 people dying, the world population increases by about 237,748 people a day.
• The spirit of silent-screen star Rudolph Valentino is said to haunt Paramount Studios in Hollywood, with the Sheik’s shimmering spectre seen floating among old garments in the costume department.
• Gioacchino Antonio Rossini covered himself with blankets when he composed, and could only find inspiration by getting profoundly drunk.
• Alcoholics are twice as likely to confess a drinking problem to a computer than to a doctor.
• Henry Ford was obsessed with soy-beans. He once wore a suit and tie made from soy-based material, served a 16-course meal made entirely from soy-beans, and ordered many Ford auto parts to be made from soy-derived plastic.
• Albert Einstein reportedly had a huge crush on film star Marilyn Monroe.
• People who eat fresh fruit daily have 24 per cent fewer heart attacks and 32 per cent fewer strokes than those that don’t.
• Marcel Proust worked in bed, and only in a soundproof room.
• King Charles VIII of France was obsessed with the idea of being poisoned. As his phobia grew, the monarch ate so little that he died of malnutrition.
• After the death of Alexander the Great, his remains were preserved in a huge crock of honey.
• In 1979, David Booth had a series of recurring nightmares about a plane crashing, and on 25 May 1979 his premonitions came true. Departing from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, a DC-10 flew half a mile then turned on its side and slammed into the ground, exploding on impact. All 272 people on board died. Booth’s dreams began on 16 May, and continued for seven nights. Having seen the name of the airline in his dreams, Booth went and told the airport authorities. They took note of what he’d said, but claimed they couldn’t just ground a whole airline, so flights went on as usual – and Booth’s nightmares came true.
• Albert Einstein was reluctant to sign autographs, and charged people a dollar before signing anything. He gave the dollars to charity.
• It’s been estimated that an opera singer burns an average of more than two calories per minute during a performance.
• Lady Diana Spencer was the first Englishwoman commoner in 300 years to marry an heir to the British throne.
• Elderly women are more likely to live alone than elderly men; 17 per cent of men 65 years or older are living alone, compared with 42 per cent of women the same age.
• As a boy, Charles Darwin was so enamoured with chemistry that his young friends nicknamed him ‘Gas’.
• Paul Cézanne was 56 years old when he had his first one-man exhibition.
• Julius Caesar and Dostoyevsky were epileptics.
• Napoleon suffered from ailurophobia, the fear of cats.
• Viscount Horatio Nelson chose to be buried in St Paul’s Cathedral in London rather than in the national shrine of Westminster Abbey because he had heard that Westminster was sinking into the Thames River.
• A fierce gust of wind blew 45-year-old Vittorio Luise’s car into a river near Naples, Italy, in 1983. He managed to break a window, climb out and swim to shore, where a tree blew over and killed him.
• Six per cent of motorists said they sometimes leave their keys in the ignition of their unattended car.
• Napoleon Bonaparte was always depicted with his hand inside his jacket because he suffered from ‘chronic nervous itching’ and often scratched his stomach sores until they bled.
• The younger of Albert Einstein’s two sons was a schizophrenic.
• More than 20 per cent of men and ten per cent of women say they’ve forgotten their wedding anniversary at least once.
• Catherine II of Russia kept her wigmaker in an iron cage in her bedroom for more than three years.
• One in three male motorists picks his nose while driving.
• The average housewife walks 10 miles (16km) a day around the house doing her chores. In addition, she walks nearly 4 miles (6km) and spends 25 hours a year making beds.
• Over 80 per cent of professional boxers have suffered brain damage.
• Emerson Moser, Crayola’s senior crayon maker, revealed upon his retirement that he was blue-green colour-blind and couldn’t see all the colours.
• Nearly half of all psychiatrists have been attacked by one of their patients.
• Xerxes, King of Persia, became so angry at the sea when it destroyed his two bridges of boats during a storm, he had his army beat it with sticks.
• The Marquis de Sade was only 5 ft 3 in (about 1.6m) tall.
• Using a fine pen and a microscope, James Zaharee printed Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address on a human hair less than 3 inches (8 cm) long.
• Men change their minds two to three times more than women. Women tend to take longer to make a decision, but once they do, they are more likely to stick to it.
• Believing that he could end his wife’s incessant nagging by giving her a good scare, Hungarian Jake Fen built an elaborate harness to make it look as if he had hanged himself. When his wife came home and saw him, she fainted. Hearing a disturbance, a neighbour came over and, finding what she thought were two corpses, seized the opportunity to loot the place. As she was leaving the room, her arms laden, the outraged and suspended Mr Fen kicked her stoutly on the backside. This so surprised the lady that she dropped dead of a heart attack. Happily, Mr Fen was acquitted of manslaughter and he and his wife were reconciled.
• About 25 per cent of all adolescent and adult males never use deodorant.
• Only one person walked from the church to the cemetery with Mozart’s coffin.
• Some publishers claim that science-fiction readers are better educated than the average book buyer.
• Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon. com, takes at least one snapshot a day to chronicle his life.
• Women comprise less than 2 per cent of the total death row population in America’s prisons.
• Martha Jane Burke, better known as Calamity Jane, was married 12 times.
• Telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell had an odd habit of drinking his soup through a glass straw.