The following is an excerpt from "1,227 Quite Interesting Facts" [W.W. Norton, $15.95], a collection of difficult to believe yet entirely true miscellanea, assembled by the creators of British quiz show, "QI."



1. One in ten European babies is conceived in an IKEA bed.

2. Alfred Kinsey, author of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948), had a collection of 5 million wasps and could insert a toothbrush into his penis, bristle-end first.

3. British spies stopped using semen as invisible ink because it began to smell if it wasn’t fresh.

4. A single sperm contains 37.5 MB of DNA information. One ejaculation represents a data transfer of 15,875 GB, equivalent to the combined capacity of 62 MacBook Pro laptops.

5. Male fruitflies rejected by females drink significantly more alcohol than those that have had a successful encounter.

6. A female ferret will die if she doesn't have sex for a year.

7. Seven Viagra tablets are sold every second.

8. The German for "contraceptive" is Schwangerschaftsverhütungsmittel. By the time you've finished saying it, it's too late.

9. The American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental illness until 1973.

10. The best-selling work of fiction of the 15th century was "The Tale of the Two Lovers," an erotic novel by the man who later became Pope Pius II.

11. A single human male produces enough sperm in two weeks to impregnate every fertile woman on the planet.

12. In 2008, archaeologists in Cyprus found a 7th-century curse inscribed on a lead tablet that said, "May your penis hurt when you make love." Nobody knows who made the curse, or why.

13. The founder of match.com, Gary Kremen, lost his girlfriend to a man she met on match.com.

14. Gymnophoria is the sense that someone is mentally undressing you.

15. A female chimpanzee in a fit of passion has the strength of six men.

16. At the 2012 London Olympics, which lasted for 17 days, the athletes were provided with 150,000 free condoms- approximately 15 each.

17. The "G-spot" was nearly called the Whipple Tickle- after Professor Beverley Whipple, who coined the expression that we know today.