130 Fun Facts About Trivia Facts

Which food essentially never spoils when sealed, partly because it slowly makes its own hydrogen peroxide?

Honey keeps almost indefinitely when sealed: it holds too little water for microbes to grow, and an enzyme added by bees makes gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide, which hold bacteria back.

On which planet does a single day (one rotation) last longer than its year?

Venus takes about 243 Earth days to spin once but only about 225 to circle the Sun; it also spins backwards, so there the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east.

Which everyday fruit is radioactive enough to serve as an informal unit of radiation dose?

The 'banana equivalent dose' comes from naturally occurring potassium-40, and eating one is worth roughly 0.1 microsieverts.

The air around a lightning bolt heats to roughly what temperature?

A lightning channel heats the surrounding air to roughly 30,000 °C, about five times the temperature of the Sun's surface; the air's explosive expansion is what we hear as thunder.

What makes the Eiffel Tower's top lean up to 18 cm on a hot day?

Its sunlit iron expanding does it: the side facing the sun grows longer than the shaded side, so the top bends up to 18 cm away from the sun; the heat also makes the whole tower a little taller in summer.

Which microscopic animals have survived direct exposure to the vacuum of outer space?

Tardigrades, also called water bears, survived exposure to open space on the 2007 FOTON-M3 mission; they curl into a dried-out 'tun' state that shrugs off vacuum, radiation and near-absolute-zero cold.

Which planet is the only one in the Solar System less dense than water?

Saturn's average density is about 0.69 grams per cubic centimetre, below water's 1.0, so in a big enough bathtub it would in theory float; every other planet is denser than water.

Which planet's position was worked out mathematically before anyone had knowingly seen it?

Neptune's position was calculated by Urbain Le Verrier, and independently John Couch Adams, from wobbles in Uranus's orbit; Johann Galle found Neptune within a degree of Le Verrier's prediction in September 1846.

Which world orbits the Sun so slowly that it won't finish its first lap since discovery until 2178?

Pluto takes about 248 Earth years to circle the Sun, so when it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006 it had covered less than a third of one orbit since its discovery in 1930.

If all the gold ever mined were melted into a single cube, roughly how long would each side be?

All the gold ever mined would form a cube only about 22 metres on each side; gold is so dense, 19.3 tonnes per cubic metre, that the whole historic total fits comfortably inside a stadium.

Which famously slow mammal can hold its breath underwater for up to 40 minutes by slowing its heart?

Sloths can drop their already slow heart rate even further, which lets them stay underwater for up to 40 minutes; they are strong swimmers and cross rivers by paddling with their long arms.

What gives flamingos their pink colour?

Their food does it: flamingos hatch grey, then liver enzymes break down carotenoids from the algae and brine shrimp they eat into pigments that are laid down in the feathers and skin.

To stop themselves drifting out to sea while resting, sea otters anchor themselves with what?

Sea otters wrap themselves in strands of kelp before sleeping so they do not drift off; mothers also wrap their pups in kelp while diving for food, and the pup cries if it wakes alone.

Which bird's wing structure allows helicopter-like flight in any direction, including backwards and hovering?

Hummingbirds rotate their wings at the shoulder to generate lift on both the forward and backward stroke, which lets them hover and fly backwards; their wings beat up to about 80 times a second.

Which Mexican salamander can regrow lost limbs, gills and even parts of its brain?

The axolotl regrows limbs, gills and even parts of its brain, which has made it a laboratory favourite: it thrives in tanks worldwide yet is critically endangered in its only wild home, Mexico City's Lake Xochimilco.

Which crustacean's club strikes so fast that prey is hit twice, by the blow and then by collapsing bubbles?

The peacock mantis shrimp swings its club so fast that the water beside it flashes into vapour bubbles; their collapse lands a second blow just after the punch, enough to smash a snail's shell.

In which animal does the male carry the developing eggs and give birth?

Seahorse females deposit eggs in a brood pouch on the front of the male's tail; he fertilises and carries them for ten days to six weeks, depending on species, then gives birth to fully formed young.

Which animal has the longest known lifespan of any vertebrate, estimated at 272 years or more?

The Greenland shark is the longest-lived vertebrate known: radiocarbon dating of eye-lens proteins put the oldest sampled female at about 392 years, give or take 120, so at least 272.

Which birds have been shown to recognise and remember individual human faces?

Crows recognise and remember individual human faces: in John Marzluff's Seattle experiments, crows trapped by people wearing a 'dangerous' mask scolded that mask for years afterwards and taught others to do the same.

What colour is a polar bear's skin under its fur?

A polar bear's skin is black, which helps it absorb warmth; the fur only looks white because its transparent, hollow guard hairs scatter visible light.

Which birds cannot move their eyes at all and must turn their whole head instead?

Owls' eyes are fixed in bony tubes called sclerotic rings, so they cannot swivel them; instead extra neck vertebrae let an owl turn its head most of the way round.

Where are the taste receptors that a female butterfly drums against a leaf before laying her eggs?

On its feet: a female butterfly drums a leaf with her front feet and tastes the sap, checking that it will feed her caterpillars before she lays eggs on it.

Which university's teaching is first documented in 1096, making it older than the Aztec Empire?

Oxford was teaching by 1096 and grew fast after 1167, when Henry II barred English students from the University of Paris; the Aztec Triple Alliance was not formed until 1428.

Which famous fire destroyed over 13,000 houses yet has only a handful of officially recorded deaths?

The Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed about 13,200 houses, more than 80 churches and St Paul's Cathedral; only a few deaths were officially recorded, though some historians think poorer victims went uncounted.

According to legend, which Roman emperor planned to make his horse Incitatus a consul?

Caligula gave Incitatus a marble stall, an ivory manger and purple blankets, Suetonius writes, but the consulship was only ever a rumoured plan and never happened.

As a young man, Julius Caesar was kidnapped and held for ransom by whom?

Cilician pirates seized Caesar near the island of Pharmacusa; Plutarch says he joked he would return and crucify them, then did exactly that once the ransom was paid.

In 1698, Tsar Peter the Great introduced a tax on what?

Peter the Great's 1698 beard tax was part of his drive to make his empire look Western European; men who paid to keep their beards carried a copper or silver token as proof.

Woolly mammoths were still alive on an Arctic island when which of these was built?

The Great Pyramid of Giza went up about 4,500 years ago, while a last herd of woolly mammoths, cut off by rising seas on Wrangel Island off Siberia, survived until roughly 4,000 years ago.

In 1859, San Francisco resident Joshua Norton proclaimed himself what?

Joshua Norton declared himself Emperor of the United States in September 1859; San Francisco played along for two decades, restaurants took his own banknotes and some 10,000 people attended his 1880 funeral.

Which farm animal was the only casualty of the 1859 US-British standoff over the San Juan Islands?

A pig was the only casualty: American settler Lyman Cutlar shot it for rooting in his garden, and the quarrel over it drew British warships and US troops into what became known as the Pig War.

Vespasian's tax on what is said to have inspired the saying 'money does not stink'?

Urine collected from public toilets was valuable to tanners and launderers, and when his son objected, Vespasian held a coin to his nose.

In October 1814 a burst vat flooded the streets of St Giles, London, with what?

A vat of porter at the Horse Shoe Brewery burst on 17 October 1814, sending a wave of beer through the slums of St Giles that knocked down walls and killed eight people.

Which country spans eleven time zones, so the New Year arrives there eleven separate times?

Russia's eleven zones run from UTC+2 in Kaliningrad to UTC+12 in Kamchatka, so when Moscow sits down to lunch at noon it is already nine in the evening in the far east.

Which US state is, by longitude, both the westernmost and the easternmost?

Alaska's Aleutian Islands stretch across the 180th meridian into the Eastern Hemisphere, making it the easternmost as well as the westernmost state; it is also the northernmost.

Which European country was essentially free of mosquitoes until 2025?

Iceland was essentially mosquito-free until 16 October 2025, when an insect enthusiast in Kjós caught the first ones, the cold-hardy Culiseta annulata, on wine-soaked ribbons he had hung out as an insect trap.

Because Earth bulges at the equator, which mountain's summit lies farthest from Earth's centre?

Chimborazo, a 6,263-metre volcano in Ecuador, sits on the equatorial bulge, so its summit is about 2 km farther from Earth's centre than Everest's despite being roughly 2,600 metres lower.

At Point Nemo, the most remote spot in the ocean, the nearest humans are sometimes who?

Astronauts on the space station pass about 400 km overhead, while Point Nemo lies some 2,700 km from the nearest land, so at times they are the closest people to it.

Which is the smallest sovereign state by both area and population, with under 1,000 people?

Vatican City has fewer than 1,000 residents, and nobody is a citizen by birth: citizenship comes with a post there, such as cardinal or Swiss Guard, and usually ends when the job does.

Which continent is classed as a desert even though it holds most of the world's fresh water?

Antarctica counts as a desert because its interior gets only a few centimetres of snow a year, far below the 250 mm desert threshold; its water built up as ice over thousands of years.

Botanically, what is the peanut, which is not a true nut?

The peanut is a legume, in the same family as peas and beans; its pods develop underground, which is why Linnaeus named it Arachis hypogaea, 'under the earth'.

The cashew nut grows attached to the bottom of what?

A fleshy 'apple' is what each cashew nut hangs from: the cashew apple is a juicy accessory fruit in its own right, and in Goa its juice is fermented and distilled into the liquor feni.

What is missing from white chocolate that other chocolate contains?

White chocolate contains no cocoa solids, only cocoa butter, sugar and milk, which is why US regulators refused to call it chocolate until a standard was adopted in the 2000s.

Which staple of American Chinese restaurants most likely came from Japanese immigrants in California?

The fortune cookie most likely descends from a cracker made for generations near Kyoto: an 1878 Japanese print shows a baker making them, decades before the first American reports of fortune cookies.

John Pemberton's original 1886 cola recipe contained caffeine and which other stimulant?

Cocaine from coca-leaf extract was in John Pemberton's original 1886 Coca-Cola alongside caffeine from kola nuts, the two ingredients that gave the drink its name.

Which common kitchen spice contains myristicin, a compound that is toxic and psychoactive in large doses?

Nutmeg's myristicin makes a large dose a rough, risky high; the spice was once so prized that under the 1667 Treaty of Breda England gave up the tiny nutmeg island of Run and kept Manhattan.

Between 1912 and 1948, the Olympic Games awarded medals in which unexpected category?

Art competitions gave Olympic medals for architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture from 1912 to 1948; they were dropped because most entrants were professionals, at odds with the Games' amateur rule.

Which swimmer's 28 Olympic medals are the most won by any athlete?

Michael Phelps won 28 Olympic medals, 23 of them gold; he retired after the 2012 Games, then came back to win five more golds and a silver at Rio 2016.

The Tour de France leader's jersey is yellow most probably because of what?

The organising newspaper's paper colour is the likeliest reason: L'Auto was printed on yellow newsprint. The first wearer, Eugène Christophe in 1919, complained that spectators called him a canary.

Which astronaut hit two golf balls on the Moon during Apollo 14?

Alan Shepard smuggled a six-iron head that fitted onto a sample-scoop handle and, swinging one-handed in the stiff suit, hit two balls on 6 February 1971 during Apollo 14.

Why did the 1908 London Olympic marathon add the odd extra 385 yards?

The 1908 course ran 26 miles from Windsor Castle to the stadium, then a partial lap so runners would finish in front of the Royal Box; that odd total later became the standard marathon distance.

What did James Naismith nail up as the first ever basketball hoops in 1891?

Naismith nailed two peach baskets to the gym balcony at Springfield, Massachusetts, in December 1891; the baskets kept their bottoms at first, so the ball had to be fetched out after every score.

Which sport appeared at the Summer Olympics from 1900 to 1920 and was then dropped?

Tug of war was an Olympic event from 1900 to 1920; because a country could enter several clubs, three British police teams took gold, silver and bronze at London 1908.

Which creature was Grace Hopper's team's 'first actual case of bug' found in 1947?

A moth was found trapped in a relay of the Harvard Mark II in 1947; the operators taped it into the logbook, now at the Smithsonian, as a joke, because engineers already called faults 'bugs'.

Which video game giant began in 1889 as a maker of handmade hanafuda playing cards?

Nintendo was founded in Kyoto by Fusajiro Yamauchi to make hanafuda cards; before video games it tried other lines, running a taxi company and selling instant rice.

Which future phone giant began in 1865 as a wood-pulp mill beside a river?

Nokia began when Fredrik Idestam built a pulp mill on Finland's Tammerkoski rapids in 1865; the firm spent a century in paper, rubber and cables before phones made it about 4% of Finland's economy in 2000.

Bluetooth technology is named after whom?

A medieval Danish king: Harald 'Bluetooth' Gormsson united Denmark and Norway, as the standard was meant to unite devices, and the logo merges his initials in runes.

The world's first webcam, set up at Cambridge University in 1991, was pointed at what?

The Trojan Room coffee pot at Cambridge's computer lab was watched by a camera from 1991 so researchers could see whether it was empty before walking over; it went on the web in 1993.

Which online retailer was first incorporated in 1994 under the name Cadabra?

Amazon started life as Cadabra, Inc.; Jeff Bezos renamed it within months after a lawyer misheard the name as 'cadaver', choosing a word that would also sit near the top of alphabetical lists.

What colour was Oscar the Grouch during the first season of Sesame Street?

Oscar the Grouch was orange in Sesame Street's first season (1969) and turned green from season two, a change the show explained as the result of a holiday at Swamp Mushy Muddy.

What did Psycho (1960) show for the first time in a mainstream American film?

A flushing toilet: Marion flushes away a torn-up note, a shot that worried the censors because toilets were almost never seen in American films at the time, let alone one being flushed.

Which stock sound effect, first recorded for the 1951 film Distant Drums, has since been heard in hundreds of films?

The Wilhelm scream was recorded for a scene in which a soldier is dragged under by an alligator; it is named after Private Wilhelm, who lets it out when hit by an arrow in a 1953 western.

Wayne Allwine, Disney's Mickey voice for over 30 years, was married to the voice of whom?

Russi Taylor, the voice of Minnie Mouse from 1986, met Allwine at a recording session in 1988; they married in 1991 and stayed together until his death in 2009.

What is Barbie's full name, according to the 1960s Random House novels?

Barbara Millicent Roberts got her first name from Barbara Handler, whose mother Ruth created the doll after watching her give paper dolls grown-up roles; Ken shares his name with Barbara's brother.

Which Paul McCartney ballad began life with the placeholder title 'Scrambled Eggs'?

Yesterday came to McCartney in a dream; he spent about a month asking people whether he had copied the tune from somewhere, singing nonsense words about breakfast until the real lyric arrived.

Warner Chappell repaid $14 million in 2016 after losing its copyright claim to which song?

Warner/Chappell's claim to Happy Birthday to You collapsed in 2015 when a court found the 1935 copyright covered only a piano arrangement; the 2016 settlement repaid $14 million and placed the song in the public domain.

Which band failed a 1962 audition for Decca Records, which signed Brian Poole and the Tremeloes instead?

The Beatles auditioned for Decca on 1 January 1962 and were turned down, Brian Epstein reportedly being told guitar groups were on the way out; EMI's Parlophone label signed them within months.

Which Queen song's stacked vocal overdubs had to be bounced across eight generations of 24-track tape?

Bohemian Rhapsody was recorded in 1975; May, Mercury and Taylor reportedly sang their parts for ten to twelve hours a day to build its operatic wall of voices.

Which Dr Seuss book was written on a $50 bet that he could not use just 50 different words?

Green Eggs and Ham uses just 50 different words; editor Bennett Cerf made the bet after The Cat in the Hat got by on 236, and Seuss kept charts and checklists to stay inside the limit.

Which novelist has sold more than two billion books, making her the best-selling novelist of all time?

Agatha Christie's 66 detective novels have sold an estimated two billion copies; in 1926 she became a mystery herself, vanishing for eleven days until she was found at a Yorkshire spa hotel.

How often does Holmes say 'Elementary, my dear Watson' in Conan Doyle's sixty stories?

Holmes never says 'Elementary, my dear Watson' in the sixty stories; he says 'elementary' and 'my dear Watson' separately, and the full line turned up in newspapers and a P. G. Wodehouse serial from about 1909.

Which Gothic novel was begun by an 18-year-old after Lord Byron proposed a ghost-story contest in 1816?

Frankenstein began at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva, where the cold, stormy 'Year Without a Summer' that followed a volcanic eruption kept Byron's guests indoors reading and inventing ghost stories.

A 2014 study estimated the human nose can distinguish roughly how many different odours?

Bushdid and colleagues reported in Science in 2014 that humans can discriminate at least 1 trillion odours; the old textbook figure of 10,000 came from impressionistic 1920s work, though the new estimate has itself been challenged.

Which of these body parts can take up to 18 months to grow back completely?

A toenail grows only about 1.6 mm a month, roughly half a fingernail's pace, which is why a lost one takes so long to return; a fingernail is back within about six months.

Why does an adult have fewer bones than a newborn baby?

Many bones fuse together as a child grows: a newborn's 270 to 300 bony pieces merge into about 206, and the gaps between a baby's skull plates let the head flex on its way through the birth canal.

Christopher Cockerell tested the idea behind which vehicle using two empty tin cans and a stream of blown air?

The hovercraft began with one tin can nested inside another: Cockerell found that air blown through the gap formed a ring that trapped a cushion beneath it, and in 1959 his full-size craft crossed the English Channel.

Which vehicle's name is a clipped form of a Latin word meaning 'for all'?

Bus is short for omnibus, Latin for 'for all'; in one account the word caught on in 1820s Nantes, where coaches set off from outside a hatter named Omnés whose shop sign punned 'Omnes Omnibus'.

In 1840s Vienna, an ancestor of the Spirograph drawing toy was built to help prevent what?

Peter Hubert Desvignes, working in Vienna in the 1840s, built a machine that drew near-endless roulette patterns to defeat banknote forgery, since the curves were extremely hard to copy; Denys Fisher's Spirograph toy arrived in 1965.

The name of the block-stacking game Jenga means 'to build' in which language?

Jenga comes from the Swahili verb kujenga, 'to build'; creator Leslie Scott grew up speaking Swahili in Tanganyika, and her family's first blocks came from a sawmill in Takoradi, Ghana.

A 2015 study put the number of trees on Earth at roughly how many?

Thomas Crowther's 2015 study estimated about 3 trillion trees on Earth, more than seven times the earlier figure of 400 billion; it also found the total has fallen by almost half since human civilisation began.

Which reptiles colonised remote islands by floating across the open sea, surviving months without food or fresh water?

Tortoises are poor swimmers, but they are buoyant and can hold their heads above the water; that is how tortoises from South America drifted out to colonise the Galápagos.

Which Australian marsupial produces cube-shaped droppings and stacks them to mark its territory?

The wombat arranges its cubes to mark territory and attract mates, and the flat sides are thought to stop them rolling away. Explaining how its gut shapes them won a 2019 Ig Nobel Prize.

Which mythical creature is Scotland's national animal and appears on the British royal coat of arms?

Two unicorns held up the Scottish royal arms before 1603, and a unicorn still faces England's lion on the British coat of arms. Carved unicorns also decorate many old Scottish market crosses.

In 1932 the Australian Army sent soldiers armed with machine guns to cull which crop-eating birds?

Emus scattered too fast for the army's two Lewis guns, and the operation became known as the Great Emu War. It ended after about five weeks with little effect on the flocks.

American farmer Charles Osborne endured a 68-year bout of what, which began as he readied a hog for slaughter?

Hiccups gripped Charles Osborne from 1922 until 1990, an estimated 430 million of them, and stopped about a year before he died.

Mike, a Colorado chicken who toured US sideshows from 1945, lived 18 months without which body part?

Mike lost his head to a farmer's axe in 1945, but the blow left most of his brain stem intact and a clot stopped the bleeding. His home town of Fruita still holds a festival in his honour each May.

Which physicist was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952 but turned the ceremonial job down?

Albert Einstein received the offer from Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion after Israel's first president, Chaim Weizmann, died in November 1952.

In the Second World War, British intelligence hid silk escape maps inside sets of which board game?

Monopoly sets posted to prisoner-of-war camps by fake charities also hid a compass, a file and real money. Waddingtons got the job because it could print maps on silk.

Which gym machine entered English prisons in 1818 as a punishment for convicts doing hard labour?

The treadmill was brought into prisons by engineer William Cubitt, a miller's son, and worked like an endless staircase that convicts had to keep climbing.

In Strasbourg in 1518, up to 400 people were gripped for weeks by an unexplained urge to do what?

Dance was all they could do: the outbreak began in July 1518 when a woman known as Frau Troffea started in the street, and it did not fade until September.

Which sea creature has three hearts and blood that carries oxygen using copper rather than iron?

The octopus uses two of its three hearts purely to pump blood through its gills, while the third serves the rest of the body. Its copper-rich blood protein is called haemocyanin.

Which frozen treat did Frank Epperson say he invented aged 11 by leaving a drink outside overnight?

The Popsicle grew from a glass of powdered lemonade soda left on a porch with its mixing stick in 1905, by Epperson's account. He patented the idea in the 1920s.

British wartime propaganda said which vegetable gave pilots night vision, to hide the use of radar?

Carrots took the credit for night-time air victories that were really won with newly adopted radar, and the belief that they help people see in the dark outlived the war.

Which website's first sale, in 1995, was a broken laser pointer that went to a collector for $14.83?

eBay, then a hobby site called AuctionWeb, was so new that founder Pierre Omidyar wrote to check the buyer knew the pointer was broken. The buyer replied that he collected broken laser pointers.

Which country's flag of two stacked pennants is the world's only non-rectangular national flag?

Nepal's flag joins two pennons once flown by rival branches of its ruling dynasty, and it is also the only national flag that is taller than it is wide.

Which toy company has been called the world's number-one tyre manufacturer by quantity produced?

Lego earned the title in a 2006 report, when its factory was moulding about 306 million small rubber tyres a year for its vehicle sets.

Hawaiian pizza was first served by Greek-born cook Sam Panopoulos at his restaurant in which country?

Canada is the home of the Hawaiian pizza: Panopoulos created it at the Satellite Restaurant in Ontario in 1962 and named it after his brand of canned pineapple.

Which reference book was conceived after a 1951 shooting-party row over Europe's fastest game bird?

Guinness World Records was the idea of brewery boss Sir Hugh Beaver, who could find no book to settle whether the golden plover or the red grouse was faster. Twins Norris and Ross McWhirter compiled it.

In which US state does the 1830s London Bridge now stand, after a businessman bought it in 1968?

Arizona's Lake Havasu City got the bridge when developer Robert McCulloch shipped its granite facing stones from the Thames to draw visitors and home buyers to his new desert town.

Which horseshoe-shaped bone in the human neck is the only bone not joined directly to any other?

The hyoid is held in place only by muscles and ligaments just below the chin, and it helps the tongue move, which earned it the name tongue-bone.

Which island sultanate fought history's shortest recorded war, losing to Britain within 45 minutes?

Zanzibar's palace was set on fire in 1896 by a British naval bombardment that opened at 9:02 a.m., two minutes after an ultimatum expired, and the firing stopped within the hour.

Which human organ is the only internal one able to regrow to full size after most of it is removed?

The liver can regenerate after surgery or damage from toxins, a talent it shares with the livers of every vertebrate from humans to fish.

Which Star Wars character was performed by Frank Oz, the puppeteer behind Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear?

Yoda was both operated and voiced by Oz in The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, after George Lucas first approached Oz's boss, Jim Henson, about the part.

Which children's modelling toy was first made in 1930s Cincinnati as a cleaner for sooty wallpaper?

Play-Doh began as a compound for lifting coal residue off wallpaper and became a toy after nursery teacher Kay Zufall read that the cleaner could be used for art projects.

Sir Nils Olav, colonel-in-chief of Norway's King's Guard, is what kind of Edinburgh Zoo resident?

A penguin has held the post since the King's Guard adopted one on a visit to Edinburgh in 1972. The bird was knighted in 2008 with King Harald V's approval, before a parade of 130 guardsmen.

Which soft drink was created in wartime Germany because Coca-Cola syrup could no longer be imported?

Fanta was devised by Coca-Cola's German chief Max Keith from what he called the leftovers of leftovers, including whey and apple pomace.

Chemist Fredric Baur had part of his ashes buried in the packaging he designed for which snack brand?

Pringles come in a tube Baur designed, and when he died in 2008 his children placed some of his ashes in an Original-flavour can in his grave, as he had asked.

Which sweets were turned down for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial by their own maker, letting Reese's Pieces step in?

M&M's lost the 1982 part when their maker rejected Steven Spielberg's product placement offer, so Hershey's peanut butter candy went on screen instead.

Which US Founding Father invented a musical instrument of spinning glass bowls that Mozart wrote for?

Benjamin Franklin built his armonica in 1761 with 37 bowls on an iron spindle turned by a foot pedal, and named it after the Italian word for harmony.

Which North Atlantic sea is bounded by four ocean currents and is the only sea with no land boundary?

The Sargasso Sea is named after the brown Sargassum seaweed that floats across it, which Columbus feared would trap his ship in 1492.

Which bitter compound makes a glass of tonic water glow under ultraviolet light?

Quinine was first mixed with soda and sugar in British India to make the malaria preventive easier to swallow, which is how tonic water was born.

Jeanne Calment, who lived to 122, said that as a girl in Arles she met which painter?

Vincent van Gogh gave the teenage Calment a condescending look, she told reporters a century later, adding that she forgave him his bad manners.

Olympic gold medals carry only about six grams of gold plating and are mostly made of which metal?

Silver makes up at least 92.5% of an Olympic gold medal, with the gold plated on top. Winners last received solid gold medals at the 1912 Games.

France last executed a prisoner by which method in 1977, the year Star Wars reached cinemas?

The guillotine stayed France's standard method of execution until the death penalty was abolished in 1981, and its final use was on Hamida Djandoubi in Marseille.

Which power tool descends from a surgical saw pioneered in 1780s Scotland, partly to help with difficult births?

The chainsaw's ancestor was a fine serrated chain pulled between two wooden handles, used to cut cartilage and widen the pelvis during labour. Timber versions were patented only in the late 1800s.

A polar bear given to King Henry III in 1252 lived at which royal site, fishing in the Thames on a chain?

The Tower of London housed the royal menagerie, and the bear, a gift from Haakon IV of Norway, drew crowds of Londoners when it fished. The sheriffs paid fourpence a day for its upkeep.

Which soft metal has a melting point near 30 °C, low enough to turn liquid in a warm hand?

Gallium melts at 29.76 °C, a point so dependable that it serves as a temperature reference, and it is one of only four metals that are liquid at or near room temperature.

Horned Viking helmets are a modern myth first popularised by stagings of which composer's Norse operas?

Richard Wagner's Norse operas put horns and wings on Viking helmets in the 1800s, yet texts from the Viking Age itself mention helmets without ever mentioning horns.

Google's first Doodle, in 1998, told users its founders were away at which desert festival?

Burning Man drew Larry Page and Sergey Brin to the Nevada desert in 1998, and they altered the logo to warn users they would be absent if the servers crashed.

What name did Bell Labs engineers coin in the 1960s for the # key on a telephone keypad?

Octothorpe was coined when an eleventh and a twelfth key were added to the keypad and needed names. The octo- is the prefix for eight, but stories differ on where the thorpe came from.

Which snack is named after Ignacio Anaya, a maître d' who improvised it in the 1940s for US officers' wives?

Nachos carry Anaya's nickname, Nacho, a common short form of Ignacio. He made the first plate at the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.

Much of the wasabi paste sold in the West is really which cheaper root, mixed with mustard and green colouring?

Horseradish stands in because true wasabi is hard to cultivate and expensive, so packets labelled wasabi often contain no part of the wasabi plant at all.

Turritopsis dohrnii, nicknamed 'immortal' because it can revert to its juvenile form, is what kind of sea creature?

The jellyfish can turn back into a polyp when it is injured, sick or old, and in theory it can repeat the trick indefinitely.

Which artist did Paris police question in 1911 on suspicion of involvement in stealing the Mona Lisa?

Pablo Picasso was named by his friend, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who had been arrested first. The real thief was Vincenzo Peruggia, a Louvre worker who had helped build the painting's glass case.

Which Australian animal has fingerprints that are hard to tell from a human's even under a microscope?

The koala evolved prints of its own, as have other animals that climb and grasp, and one study found them hard to tell from ours even with an electron microscope.

Which country's calendar had a 30 February in 1712 while undoing a botched change of calendar systems?

Sweden began a gradual move to the Gregorian calendar by skipping the leap day of 1700, kept the next two leap days during the Great Northern War, then went back by adding a second leap day in 1712.

What is the name of the small dot written above a lowercase i or j in the Latin alphabet?

The tittle also turns up in the old expression 'jot and tittle', used when every small detail of something has received attention.

Tyrian purple, the costly dye of ancient royalty, was made from the mucus of which sea creatures?

Sea snails of the murex family were needed in their tens of thousands to make the dye, which is why wearing the colour signalled such high rank.

At the Cadaver Synod of 897, whose exhumed corpse was propped on a throne in Rome and put on trial?

A former pope, Formosus, was dug up on the orders of Pope Stephen VI, questioned through a deacon appointed to answer for him, and found guilty.

A pet parrot is said to have been removed from which US president's 1845 funeral for swearing loudly?

Andrew Jackson's grey parrot Poll cursed so loudly that it had to be carried out, or so a minister who attended as a boy recalled 76 years later.

Which African country has more surviving pyramids than Egypt, built as tombs for the rulers of ancient Nubia?

Sudan has more than 200 standing pyramids, the most of any country, raised as tombs for the kings and queens of Napata and Meroë.