The Mammoth Book of Useless Information. Noel Botham
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railway bridge in Scotland is a metre (33in) longer in summer than in winter, due to thermal expansion.
• In the Andes, time is often measured by how long it takes to smoke a cigarette.
• Until the 18th century, India produced almost all the world’s diamonds.
• The Earth’s magnetic field is not permanent.
• On 30 March 1867, Alaska was officially purchased from Russia for about 2 cents an acre. At the time, many politicians believed this purchase of ‘wasteland to be a costly folly’.
• During winter, the skating rinks in Moscow cover more than 2,690,980ft2 (250,000m2) of land.
• As the Pacific plate moves under its coast, the North Island of New Zealand is getting larger.
• Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.
• If you travel from east to west across the Soviet Union, you will cross seven time zones.
• Sahara means ‘desert’ in Arabic.
• On 15 January 1867, there was a severe frost in London, and over forty people died in Regent’s Park when the ice broke on the main lake and they fell into the freezing waters.
• The water in the Dead Sea is so salty that it is far easier to float than to drown in it.
• The state flag of Alaska was designed by a 13-year-old boy.
• Lightning strikes the Earth about 200 times a second.
• Very hard rain would pour down at the rate of about 20mph (32km/h).
• Discounting Australia, which is generally regarded as a continental land mass, the world’s largest island is Greenland.
• No rain has ever been recorded falling in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
• The background radiation in Aberdeen is twice that of the rest of Great Britain.
• About 2 million hydrogen atoms would be required to cover the full stop at the end of this sentence.
• The southernmost tip of Africa is not the Cape of Good Hope, but Cape Agulhas.
• During its lifetime, the Tower of London has had many roles, including that of a zoo.
• Two minor earthquakes occur every minute somewhere in the world.
• In the north of Norway, the sun shines constantly for about fourteen weeks each summer.
• The Polynesian country of Niue is a 65.6-mile2 (170km2) limestone rock emerging 197ft (60m) from the Pacific.
• Icelandic phone books are listed by the given name, not the surname.
• The United States, which accounts for 6 per cent of the population of the world, consumes nearly 60 per cent of the world’s resources.
• The world’s longest freshwater beach is located in Canada.
• Over the years, the Niagara Falls have moved more than 6.8 miles (11km) from their original site.
• The number of births in India each year is greater than the entire population of Australia.
• Yugoslavia is bordered by seven other countries.
• Greenland – so named to attract settlers – was discovered by Eric the Red in the 10th century.
• Within a few years of Columbus’s discovery of America, the Spaniards had killed 1.5 million Native Americans.
• Hawaii officially became a part of the USA on 14 June 1900.
• The fastest tectonic movement on Earth is 9.4in (240mm) per year, at the Tonga micro-plate near Samoa.
• If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
• The Earth is actually pear-shaped, the radius to the North Pole being 1.7in (44mm) longer than the South Pole radius.
• In 1908, the Moskva River in Russia rose 29ft 6in (9m), flooding 100 streets and 2,500 houses.
• South Africa produces two-thirds of the world’s gold.
• There is about 200 times more gold in the world’s oceans than has been mined in our entire history.
• One quarter of Russia is covered by forest.
• There is a rocking stone in Cornwall that, though it weighs many tons, can be rocked with ease.
• The volume of water in the Amazon is greater than the next eight largest rivers in the world combined.
• There is no point in England more than 75 miles (121km) from the ocean.
• England is smaller than New England.
• Nearly a quarter of the population of Poland was killed in World War II.
• There is a town in West Virginia called Looneyville.
• One of the greatest natural disasters of recent centuries occurred when an earthquake hit Tangshan, China, in 1976, killing three-quarters of a million people.
• New York was once called New Amsterdam.
• On Pitcairn Island, it is a criminal offence to shout ‘Ship ahoy!’ when there is, in fact, no ship in sight.
• The Dead Sea is actually an inland lake.
• There are 6 million trees in the Forest of Martyrs near Jerusalem, symbolising the Jewish death toll in World War II.
• Hawaii’s Mount Waialeale is the wettest place in the world – it rains about 90 per cent of the time, about 480in (12,192mm) per annum.
• Between 1075 and 1080, the Norman baron Eudo Dapifer built Colchester Castle around the podium of the Roman temple of Claudius, creating the largest Norman keep in Britain.
• In Tokyo, to buy a three-line classified ad in the newspaper costs £1,800 per day.
• Hawaiian lore teaches that the earth mother Papa mated with the sky father Wakea to give birth to the Hawaiian islands.
• There are many kremlins in the Soviet Union. ‘Kremlin’ simply means the centre of government, which can be applied to the government buildings in any town.
• The per capita use of soap in Great Britain is 40oz (1,134g) per year. In France, it is only 22.6oz (641g) per year.
• There is a monastery in Ethiopia that can be entered only by climbing up a rope dropped over the edge of a cliff.
• In Turkey, when someone is in mourning they wear purple clothing, not black.
• The desert country of Saudi Arabia must import sand from other countries. This is because the Saudi desert sand is not suitable for building construction.
• In Tibet, some women have special metal instruments with which to pick their noses.
• There is a chemical waste dump in the Soviet Union that is twice as big as the whole state of Vermont.
• Nights in the Tropics are warm because moist air retains heat well. Desert nights get cold rapidly because dry air does not hold heat to the same degree.
• The largest Gothic cathedral is not in Rome or Paris, but on Amsterdam Avenue in New York City: it is the Cathedral of St John the Divine.
• The smallest church in the world is in Kentucky. There is room inside for just three people.
• Only 8.5 per cent of all Alaskans are Eskimos.
• Reno, Nevada, is farther west than Los Angeles, California.
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