50 Fun Facts About Hobbies

Which pursuit was dubbed the 'Hobby of Kings' in Renaissance times, when only the very wealthy could afford it?

Coin collecting has since been promoted from the Hobby of Kings to the 'King of Hobbies', as one of the oldest and most popular pastimes in the world.

Deltiology, ranked the world's third-largest collecting hobby behind stamps and money, is the collecting of what?

Postcards are what deltiologists collect, a name built on the Greek 'deltion', a small writing tablet, though it took twenty years to reach a dictionary.

In British birding slang, what is a birder called who travels long distances to tick off a rare bird?

Twitcher comes from the nervous behaviour of Howard Medhurst, a 1950s British birdwatcher; a twitcher who misses the bird has 'dipped out'.

Which GPS treasure hunt began on 3 May 2000, the day after the US stopped scrambling civilian satellite signals?

Geocaching's first cache was a black plastic bucket that Dave Ulmer part-buried in Beavercreek, Oregon, holding software, videos, books, money, a can of beans and a slingshot.

Pteridomania, a Victorian craze that put its motif on gravestones and christening gifts, was a fever for which plants?

Ferns were the obsession, and Charles Kingsley coined 'pteridomania' in 1855 while teasing that daughters everywhere had been 'seized' by it.

An arctophile, whose hobby's name shares its Greek root with the word 'Arctic', collects which toys?

Teddy bears are the arctophile's prize, and the toy itself is named after President Theodore Roosevelt, who loathed the nickname 'Teddy'.

What do vexillologists, whose discipline American scholar Whitney Smith named in 1957, study and collect?

Flags are vexillology's subject, the name fusing the Latin 'vexillum', a square banner carried by Roman cavalry, with the Greek '-logia'.

Oology, which a 1954 British Act of Parliament made impossible to practise legally, was the collecting of what?

Birds' eggs may be owned in the UK today only if taken before 1954 or under a scientific permit, and selling them is illegal whatever their age.

What did London cartographer John Spilsbury first produce around 1760, using a marquetry saw on a mounted map?

Jigsaw puzzles began as 'dissected maps' for teaching geography; royal governess Lady Charlotte Finch used them on the children of George III.

Max Park's 3.13-second solve at Pride in Long Beach in 2023 set a then world record for which puzzle?

Rubik's Cube speed-solving helped Park, who is autistic, develop his social and fine motor skills, and as of July 2026 he still held the 7×7 single and average records and the 6×6 single.

Which craft kit, devised by artist Dan Robbins for Max Klein's Detroit firm, has its archives at the Smithsonian?

Paint by number boxes promised 'a beautiful oil painting the first time you try', and a Massachusetts collector has since gathered over 6,000 finished works into a museum.

Which construction toy did Liverpool clerk Frank Hornby patent in 1901 under the name 'Mechanics Made Easy'?

Meccano parts were at first bought in from outside makers, until demand outran supply and Hornby opened his own factory in Duke Street, Liverpool.

Which hobby led Terry Herbert to the largest Anglo-Saxon gold hoard ever found, on a Staffordshire farm in July 2009?

Metal detecting paid off handsomely: Herbert and farmer Fred Johnson split the £3.285 million that two Midlands museums raised to buy the Staffordshire Hoard.

Which pastime did Sharon Burns and Tom Porter popularise in 1970s Britain, growing from 30 teams to 10,000 weekly?

Pub quiz nights appear in print as early as 1959, but the leagues Burns and Porter founded across southern England in 1976 made them a fixture of British life.

Which pastime was born in a New York hotel room in 1962, when Raiders part-owner Bill Winkenbach drew up its rules?

Fantasy football's first league, the GOPPPL, held its first draft at Winkenbach's Oakland home in August 1963 and was still running on its original scoring in 2015.

Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov was de facto curator of which collection at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology?

Butterflies obsessed Nabokov, who organised Harvard's collection as a research fellow in the 1940s and composed chess problems on the side.

Which book-sharing movement began in 2009 when Todd Bol built a model one-room schoolhouse in Hudson, Wisconsin?

Little Free Library boxes passed 150,000 registered worldwide, and Bol built the first as a tribute to his late mother, a teacher who loved books.

Which British hobby took off from 1942, when Ian Allan's 'ABC' booklets listed the Southern Railway's locomotives?

Trainspotting's devotees are also called anoraks in Britain and gunzels in Australia, while the ABC booklets began as a response to public requests for engine details.

Conchologists, whose hobby grew out of the Renaissance cabinets of curiosities, collect what?

Seashells are the whole of conchology, while its parent science, malacology, studies the living mollusc as a complete organism.

Which Japanese word, slang since the Meiji era, describes buying books and letting them pile up unread?

Tsundoku fuses 'tsunde-oku', to pile things up for later, with 'dokusho', reading books, so the guilty pile is built into the word itself.

What name did Philip Henry Gosse coin for the glass fish tank, after stocking London Zoo's first public one in 1853?

Aquarium welds Latin 'aqua' to '-arium', and Gosse's 1854 manual, The Aquarium, set off a Victorian craze for keeping sea creatures at home.

Gongoozlers, a word possibly from Lincolnshire dialect for staring, are people who enjoy watching what?

Canal boats are the gongoozler's spectacle, and the word also covers anyone who loves canal life without ever taking the tiller themselves.

Which term did Robert Stanley of the dealer Stanley Gibbons coin in 1970 to formalise the collecting of paper money?

Notaphily was a public-relations coinage meant to encourage a market the firm could serve, and banknote collecting only became a field of its own in the 1970s.

Which collectibles, issued from 1875 to stiffen packets, did Allen & Ginter print with actresses and boxers from 1879?

Cigarette cards from Allen & Ginter's 1879 sets also pictured baseball players, Native American chiefs, national flags and wild animals, and are counted among the very first cigarette cards.

Letterboxing, where walkers hunt hidden boxes and stamp a logbook, began in 1854 at Cranmere Pool on which moor?

Dartmoor guide James Perrott left a bottle for visiting cards at Cranmere Pool, and the moor now holds thousands of boxes, many within a short walk of the road.

Which seven-piece Chinese dissection puzzle reached Western audiences around 1815 and set off a craze across Europe?

Tangram sets had a second craze in Germany from 1891, when industrialist Friedrich Adolf Richter sold stone versions as 'The Anchor Puzzle'.

Which writing challenge, founded by Chris Baty in 1999 with 21 participants, set a 50,000-word target for November?

NaNoWriMo's nonprofit shut down in March 2025 citing financial struggles and 'community vitriol', while the November challenge carried on through community-run alternatives such as NaNo 2.0.

Fourteen enthusiasts were charged with espionage at a Greek air base open day in 2001 while pursuing which hobby?

Plane spotting at Kalamata looked like spying to Greek police; the twelve Britons and two Dutch faced up to 20 years in prison but were all acquitted on appeal a year later.

Which British firm made a promotional Ferguson tractor in 1949 and a Spitfire its first aircraft kit in 1953?

Airfix chose its name so it would come first alphabetically in trade directories; the 1953 Spitfire Mk I was followed by a 1/72-scale Mk IX in 1958.

Which model-railway scale, 1:87, is the world's most popular, though Britain still prefers the slightly larger OO?

HO gauge means 'half O', being half the size of the older O scale, and it runs on the same 16.5 mm track that British OO uses.

Which slot-car brand was unveiled to immediate acclaim at the Harrogate Toy Fair in January 1957?

Scalextric was born when Fred Francis added an electric motor to the clockwork 'Scalex' tin cars that Minimodels, the firm he had founded in 1947, had sold since 1952.

Bandai's plastic robot kits from which anime franchise sold 100 million units from 1980 to 1984?

Gundam kits had passed 300 million units by May 1999, and Bandai's Gunpla became a hobby across Japan and neighbouring Asian countries.

Which year's Lincoln cents were struck in zinc-coated steel, so the few copper ones made by mistake are prized rarities?

1943 copper cents fail the magnet test that the steel ones pass; a unique 1943 cent struck in tin, found in an Oregon yard around 1969, was only identified in 2019 when it too failed the magnet.

Which planted glass container descends from the Wardian case, first tested in 1833 by shipping British plants to Sydney?

Terrarium ancestors moved whole economies: Robert Fortune used Wardian cases in the 1840s to smuggle 20,000 tea plants out of China to found Assam's plantations.

Which pointed tool for making seed and bulb holes was first recorded in Roman times and has barely changed since?

Dibber, dibble and dibbler are all names for the same stick, which now comes straight, T-handled, L-shaped or built into a trowel.

Which cooking apple descends from pips that Mary Ann Brailsford planted in her Southwell garden in 1809?

Bramley's Seedling takes its name not from the girl but from Matthew Bramley, the local butcher who bought the cottage and its tree in 1846.

Munro baggers set out to climb every Scottish peak above what height, as listed by Sir Hugh Munro in 1891?

3,000 feet (914 m) is the bar, and the Scottish Mountaineering Club's list stood at 282 Munros and 226 Munro Tops as of December 2020.

In Highland fishing and deer stalking, what is the attendant who guides the sportsman called, from the Gaelic for 'lad'?

Ghillie work on rivers like the Spey dates the word to the late 16th century, from the Scottish Gaelic 'gille', a cognate of the Irish 'giolla'.

Which yarn weight is named after a Norfolk village that was a centre of yarn and cloth making in the 12th century?

Worsted yarn is combed so its long fibres lie parallel, which is why it knits up smoother and stronger than fuzzy woollen-spun wool.

Which knotting craft, long practised by sailors who bartered their work in port, may take its name from an Arabic word?

Macramé covered knife handles, bottles and parts of ships at sea, and the name may come from the Andalusian-Arabic 'makramiyya', a striped towel or fringe.

Which needlework piece, taught to girls from a young age as a sign of virtue, often bears its maker's name and date?

Sampler makers signed their work: the earliest dated English survivor, by Jane Bostocke, carries her name and the year 1598 and hangs in the V&A.

Which craft of coiling paper strips was practised by French and Italian nuns using the torn gilt edges of holy books?

Quilling takes its name from the bird-feather quills once used as slotted tools, and it spread in England after the first paper mills appeared around 1495.

Pysanky, decorated in wax-resist with a stylus called a kistka, are a traditional Easter craft of which country?

Ukraine counts the pysanka among its national symbols, and Ukrainian Canadians built a giant one in Vegreville, Alberta, then lobbied for commemorative pysanky coins.

Which hobby of searching the Thames foreshore at low tide needs a licence from the Port of London Authority?

Mudlarking was once a living: in the late 18th and 19th centuries London's mudlarks were mostly street children aged 8 to 15, or the robust elderly.

Which US state's Crater of Diamonds park lets amateur prospectors keep any gemstone they find, regardless of value?

Arkansas's park sits on an eroded volcanic pipe where the US Bureau of Mines dug 435 tons from the first 50 feet and had found only 32 diamonds by 1944.

Whose 1934 bird guide, its first printing of 2,000 sold out within a week, is called the first modern field guide?

Roger Tory Peterson's guide went through six editions, and his Peterson Identification System is prized for the clarity with which it marks field marks.

In British angling, what term covers freshwater species that are not salmonids, such as chub, barbel, roach and bream?

Coarse fish were what the gentry left to everyone else; they angled for salmon and trout and called those 'game fish'.

Which disc-and-peg puzzle did Édouard Lucas present in 1883 under the anagram name 'N. Claus de Siam'?

Tower of Hanoi legend has priests shifting 64 golden discs; at one move a second the job takes 585 billion years, about 42 times the age of the universe.

Which lightweight wood, 95% of it supplied by Ecuador, is the classic material for hobby model aircraft?

Balsa comes from Ochroma pyramidale, a deciduous tree that can shoot up 30 metres, and every grade is usable for airworthy control-line and radio-controlled models.

Which society, founded in 1905 at London's Pinoli's Restaurant, has the motto 'not apt to disclose secrets'?

The Magic Circle admitted only men until 1991, when more than 75% of members voted to let women join.