Now that really is Quite Interesting: The answers to questions you thought you'd never ask

For nearly a decade, Stephen Fry has been serving up weekly portions of astonishing information in the popular BBC television quiz show QI.



And despite its name – QI stands for Quite Interesting – it provokes laughter, amazement, and, occasionally, plain disbelief.

Here, in a fascinating new book from the QI team, are the answers to the questions you never even thought to ask.

What's in a name: American actor Richard Gere carries a rather unusual middle-name - Tiffany

The Queen is the legal owner of one-sixth of the Earth’s land surface.

The ozone layer smells faintly of geraniums.

The average person walks the equivalent of three times around the world in a lifetime.

Forty-six per cent of American adults can’t read well enough to understand the label on their prescription medicine.

In his first year at Harrow, Winston Churchill was bottom of the whole school.

When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, one of the suspects was Picasso.

Under extreme high pressure, diamonds can be made from peanut butter.

Liechtenstein, the world’s sixth smallest country, is the world’s largest exporter of false teeth.

In 1811, nearly a quarter of all the women in Britain were named Mary.

Unexpected relation: Beyonce is an 8th cousin, four times removed, of Austrian composer Gustav Mahler

People in Victorian Britain who couldn’t afford chimney sweeps dropped live geese down their chimneys instead.

On average, every square mile of sea on the planet contains 46,000 pieces of rubbish.

Harry Houdini could pick up pins with his eyelashes and thread a needle with his toes.

The Inca measurement of time was based on how long it took to boil a potato.

When customers visited the first supermarkets in Britain, they were afraid to pick up goods from the shelves in case they were told off.

On a clear, moonless night the human eye can detect a match being struck 50 miles away.

Richard Gere’s middle name is Tiffany

Bugs bunny is not a rabbit but a hare

After two weeks of wear, a pair of jeans will have grown a 1,000-strong colony of bacteria on the front, 1,500-2,500 on the back and 10,000 on the crotch.

Each year, drug baron Pablo Escobar had to write off ten per cent of his cash holdings because of rats nibbling away at his huge stash of bank notes.

In 2010, the Catholic Church had an income of $97 billion.

The French for ‘paperclip’ is trombone.

In 2010, Ghana banned the sale of second-hand underpants.

The Icelandic phone book is ordered by first name.

Jimmy Carter once sent a jacket to the dry-cleaner’s with the nuclear detonation codes still in the pocket.

The Vatican City has the highest crime rate in the world. Though the resident population is only just over 800, more than 600 crimes are committed there each year.

Two-and-a-half million Mills & Boon novels were pulped and added to the tarmac of the M6 toll motorway to make it more absorbent.

Strange: Selling second-hand underwear is banned in Ghana and giving a snake antacids will make them explode due to their acidic stomachs

In 2005, the 54 billionaires in Britain paid only £14.7 million in income tax between them. Of this, £9 million came from James Dyson.

More than 90 per cent of all the blackcurrants grown in Britain go into Ribena.

It costs more to make the cardboard box that Shredded Wheat comes in than it does to make the cereal itself.

The American secret service tried to spike Hitler’s carrots with female hormones to change him into a woman.

Ants can survive in a microwave: they are small enough to dodge the rays.

In 17th Century Venice, women’s shoes could have heels more than 12in high.

Gee: Bugs Bunny is not a rabbit, but a hare

The sun’s core is so hot that a piece of it the size of a pinhead would give off enough heat to kill a person 160 kilometres (99 miles) away.

In 1987, American Airlines saved $40,000 by removing an olive from each salad in First Class.

One hundred thousand mobile phones are dropped down the lavatory in Britain every year, and 50,000 get run over.

The national anthem of Bangladesh includes the line: ‘The fragrance from your mango groves makes me wild with joy.’

People all over the world are walking ten per cent faster than they did a decade ago.

A 2011 study by Nobel Economics laureate Daniel Kahneman of 25 top Wall Street traders found that they were no more consistently successful than a chimpanzee tossing a coin.

Until 1857, it was legal for British husbands to sell their wives. The going rate was £3,000 (£223,000 in today’s money).

King Herod’s first wife was called Doris.

Victorian guidebooks advised women to put pins in their mouths to avoid being kissed in the dark when trains went through tunnels.

The Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul has only five per cent of the country’s population but provides 70 per cent of its fashion models.

Manchester United is the most hated brand in Britain and the seventh most hated in the world.

When Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba, he ordered all Monopoly sets to be destroyed.

The French mathematician Descartes had a theory that monkeys and apes were able to talk – but kept quiet in case they were asked to do any work.



Olivia Newton-John was president of the Isle of Man Basking Shark Society.

None of the best-known English swear words is of Anglo-Saxon origin.

Areodjarekput is an Inuit word meaning ‘to exchange wives for a few days only’.

The first commercial chewing gum appeared in 1871, after Thomas Adams had failed to make car tyres from the same ingredients.

Beyonce is an 8th cousin, four times removed, of Gustav Mahler.

Gone: One hundred thousand mobile phones are dropped down the lavatory in Britain every year, and 50,000 get run over

There are enough diamonds in existence to give everyone on the planet a cupful.

If your stomach acid got on to your skin it would burn a hole in it.

The French for ‘window-shopping’ is faire du leche-vitrines or ‘window-licking’.

Despite playing the Fonz for ten years in the sitcom Happy Days, Henry Winkler never learned to ride a motorcycle.

The great book of answers: 1,227 QI Facts to Blow Your Socks Off

At Ronnie Barker’s memorial service in Westminster Abbey in 2006, four candles were carried instead of the usual two.

Chess, ludo and snakes and ladders were all invented in ancient India. Snakes and ladders was called Moksha Patam – ‘the path to liberation’.

As soon as Lord Byron left England for the last time in 1816, his creditors entered his home and repossessed everything he owned, right down to his tame squirrel.

Powerful acids in snakes’ stomachs mean they will explode if given Alka-Seltzer

Twenty per cent of all road accidents in Sweden involve and elk

The dialling code for Russia is 007

Sudan has more pyramids than Egypt

If all the salt in the sea were spread evenly over the land, it would be 500ft thick.

Women buy 80 per cent of everything that is for sale.

Two-thirds of the world’s population has never seen snow.

The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 was the loudest sound in recorded history. It was heard 3,000 miles away in Mauritius.

If you have a pizza with radius z and thickness a, its volume is pi*z*z*a.

Venus rotates so slowly on its axis that its day is longer than its year.