The fastest speed recorded for hitting a golf ball is 310 kph (194 mph), the average speed for your everyday hacker is about 200 kph (or 125 mph).

Parliament has only ever been in session outside of London three times, twice in Oxford and once in Leicester.

There are only 2 cathedrals in Britain that have 3 spires; Truro and Lichfield.

A size 3 egg has to weigh between 60 and 65 grams.

The image of Father Christmas in Red and white was created by Coca-Cola in 1931 for an advertising campaign. Prior to this it was traditional for Father Christmas to be dressed in green.

The name Santa Claus is derived from St. Nicholas who lived from 270-310AD, and was the bishop of Myra (modern day Finike) in Turkey. His Saints day is actually December 6th.

Christmas crackers were invented around 1876 by Tom Smith, a baker of wedding cakes from Clerkenwell in London. It was invented from the French habit of wrapping sugared almonds in twists of paper as gifts.

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.

The first team to win the League Championship 3 times in a row was Huddersfield Town in the 1920’s, who for the first 2 of the 3 years were managed by Herbert Chapman, who then went on to manage Arsenal, who in the early 1930’s became the second team to achieve this feat. Herbert Chapman retired before the start of their 3 championship winning seasons.

All polar bears are left-handed.

Butterflies taste with their feet. (Can you imagine? How carefully would people walk around if we were the same?)

Everton are the only team in the football league whose name does not come from a location where the club is from.

The month of May takes it’s name from one of the daughters of the Roman God, Atlas.

Winnie the Pooh’s real name is Edward Bear.

Alaska became the USA’s 49th state in 1959. It was originally purchased from Russia for $7.2 million in 1867.

Arsenal have been in the top flight continuously since the end of World War 1, when they were elected to the 1st division, despite finishing 6th in Division 2 the season before the war started.

Only once has there been more than one Queen of England in succession. And then there were three in Succession. Lady Jane Grey was queen for 9 days in 1553, and was usurped by Mary 1, who was in turn usurped by Elizabeth 1 in 1558, who died without issue in 1603.

Millipedes, despite the suggestion of their name do not have 1000 feet. In fact there are over 10,000 species of Millipede, that range from having just 24 feet, all the way up to having 750 feet.

If you were to put the tallest habitable building in the UK (Canary Wharf) on top of the 2nd tallest mountain in the world (K2) and stood on top, the top of Mount Everest would still be 5 foot above the top of your head (Based on being 6ft tall).

The title Mayor of Leicester dates back to 1209, and was made in to the post of Lord Mayor in 1927, and to date there have been more mayors called William (86) than any other name.

In cricket an appeal for a catch or LBW decision has to made immediately following the ball has been bowled and played at. This was not always the case, and the law was changed following this incident. In 1879 during a game the last ball of the day hit the pads of the batsman, and no appeal was made, over supper that evening the batsman remarked to WG Grace (one of the opponents) that the ball had hit him on the pads and he was stood directly in front of the stumps. As soon as the next morning’s play started WG Grace shouted “Howzat” and the batsman was given out.

The way roads are built and laid today is based on the principle set down by John Loudon Macadam in 1816. The camber of the road was added to allow draining, and the stones used for the 3 layers had to be broken into a certain size. This was originally done by testing whether the stone could fit in the labourer’s mouth, if it couldn’t it was too big, this was until one day whilst inspecting the surface John noticed a number of extremely large rocks on the surface, when he asked why they were there, he was pointed to an extremely large labourer who in turn opened a large toothless mouth and proceeded to fit some large rocks in it. From this point on, a 2 inch ring was provided to test the size of rocks. This way of making roads is still used though somewhat refined and is known as the macadamised system.

Snails are hermaphrodites, and produce both eggs and sperm, but cannot fertilise their own eggs, they have to swap sperm with another snail before they can lay their eggs.

Since the league was started in 1888, only one non-league team has won the FA cup – Tottenham Hotspur in 1901 when they were members of the Southern League.

For his part in the gunpowder plot Guy Fawkes was Hung, Drawn and Quartered, and not burnt.

Thomas Cook was a 19th century Puritan teetotaller who organised the first ever “package trip” – a train from Leicester to Loughborough for people to attend a lecture on the evils of demon drink. This was so successful that further excursions were arranged and the Travel agents we know today was formed.

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden. The conversion to right-hand was done on a weekday at 5pm. All traffic stopped as people switched sides. This time and day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize that *this* was the day of the changeover.

In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again, Sam."

The international telephone dialling code for Antarctica is 672.

The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.

The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 calibre machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."

The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."

Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village".

Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson.

"More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.

The term, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is from Ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye gouging." Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified was to poke someone's eye out.

A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second..

The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.

Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.

The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from and old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

An ostrich's eye is bigger that it's brain.

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds

The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.

The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

The only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.

The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means, "The king is dead".

Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.

Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."

In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.

An animal epidemic is called an epizootic.

Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants.

The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.

Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.

All porcupines float in water.

Hang On Sloopy is the official rock song of Ohio.

Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of "Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom."

Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.

If you bring a racoon's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $.10 from the town.

The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.

Non-dairy creamer is flammable.

Texas is also the only state that is allowed to fly its state flag at the same height as the U.S. flag.

Pamela Anderson Lee is Canada's Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on the centennial anniversary of Canada's independence.

On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament Building is an American flag

The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

When opossums are playing 'possum, they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror.

All of the clocks in the movie Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20

The average ear of corn has eight-hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rows

All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill

Charlie Brown's father was a barber

Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously

Ingrown toenails are hereditary

Almonds are members of the peach family

The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe

The maximum weight for a golf ball is 1.62 oz

In Mel Brooks' 'Silent Movie,' mime Marcel Marceau is the only person who has a speaking role

Pulp Fiction cost $8 million to make - $5 million going to actors' salaries

A full seven percent of the entire Irish barley crop goes to the production of Guinness beer

Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery

Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy

Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer

When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home, the stadium becomes the state's third largest city

Duelling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors

The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its A Wonderful Life"

Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down but only 6 people were injured

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older

Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth...and whose shame created the expression for ignominy, "His name is Mudd."

The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.

Charles Lindbergh took only four sandwiches with him on his famous transatlantic flight.

Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.

An adult dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds

A quarter has 119 grooves around the edge

Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox

Virginia Woolf wrote all her books standing

The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.

A donkey will sink in quicksand but a mule won't

The average garden variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head

Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed, and continue living

Alexander the Great was an epileptic

The name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz."

Horses and Rabbits cannot vomit

The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world

The male gypsy moth can "smell" the virgin female gypsy moth from 1.8 miles away

The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.

The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets

It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth. Then the frog uses its forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.

Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.

Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.

The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself.

The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows."

101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan (Wendy) are the only two Disney cartoon features with both parents that are present and don't die throughout the movie.

A whale's penis is called a dork.

Twelve or more cows are known as a "flink."

A group of frogs is called an army.

Elephants are the only animals in the world that can't jump.

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.

Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been overmixing the soap formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Customers wrote and told how much they loved that it floated, and it has floated ever since.

A group of rhinos is called a crash.

Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.

A group of kangaroos is called a mob.

White Out (Tippex for the non yanks) was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith (Formerly of the Monkees)

A group of larks is called exaltation

More food is thrown out each day in the United States than is needed to feed its hungry . . . by McDonalds.

In Denver, Colorado It is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door neighbour.

The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.

In California, it's against the law to use your dirty underwear as a dust rag.

Among the Abipone people of Paraguay, individuals who abstain from alcohol are thought to be "cowardly, degenerate and stupid."

On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.

A snail can sleep for three years. (so can the chemist!)

Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

In 1992, Frank Perkins of Los Angeles made an attempt on the world flagpole-sitting record. Suffering from the flu he came down eight hours short of the 400 day record, his sponsor had gone bust, his girlfriend had left him and his phone and electricity had been cut off.

The world's termites outweigh the world's humans 10 to 1.

The first elevator, called the Flying Chair, was erected in King Louis XV's private apartments in the Palace of Versailles in 1743. It gave him ready access to his mistress, Madame de Chateauroux, on the floor above. The Flying Chair was operated by weights.

A group of ravens is called a murder.

Africa has 11 official languages

A group of officers is called a mess.

Physicist Murray Gell-Mann named the sub-atomic particles known as quarks for a random line in James Joyce, "Three quarks for Muster Mark!"

"Three dog night" (attributed to Australian Aborigines) came about because on especially cold nights these nomadic people needed three dogs (dingo's, actually) to keep from freezing.

A group of larks is called an exaltation.

A group of whales is called a pod.

Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.

Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an Oscar with "Midnight Cowboy." Her entire role lasted only six minutes.

The average slug has 27,000 teeth

A slug has a maximum speed of 0.0007 miles per hour.

A slug can stretch itself to eleven times its body length.

The Eurythmics only had 10 top 10 hits, but every one of them charted in a different position, meaning that they had hits that charted at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10!

The most by a male is only 16.

The most recorded female orgasms in an hour is 134.

Jonny Wilkinson's grandfather played for Norwich City

The most golf balls stacked on top of each other without the aid of adhesive is 9 by Don Athey in 1998.

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.
Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.
Now it gets really weird.
Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln.
Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.
John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald! , who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.
Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.
Lincoln was shot at the theatre named 'Ford.'
Kennedy was shot in a car called 'Lincoln' made by 'Ford.'
Lincoln was shot in a theatre and his assassin ran and hid in a warehouse.
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin ran and hid in a theatre.
Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.
And here's the kicker...
A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was in Marilyn Monroe.

In 1863, Robert Lincoln, son of the president, was saved from death when he was pulled from the path of a train by Edwin Booth. Two year’s later the hero’s brother John Wilkes Booth shot and killed Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington.

A blue whale's tongue weighs more than an elephant

Armadillos are the only animals besides humans that can get leprosy

There are more Barbie dolls in Italy than there are Canadians in Canada

The average life of a taste bud is 10 days.

The human eye has more than two million working parts and blinks some 4.2 million times per year

The human nose can differentiate between 10,000 smells and odours

Lightning bolts generate temperatures five times hotter than the 6,000 C heat found on the sun.

A bolt of lightning can strike earth with a force as great as 100 million volts.

Lightning strikes out planet 100 times a second

The first ever Greyhound race in this country took place at Belle Vue in Manchester in 1926.

The letter "J" does not yet appear anywhere within the periodic table of the elements.

The Benin national football team are known as the Squirrels. (That'll explain why they're crap at football)

Over 2500 left-handed people a year are killed using products made for right-handed people

Rice is grown on more than 10 percent of the earth's arable surface

During 1520 to 1630 there were over 30,000 werewolf trials in France

There are more per capita visits to a public library in Colombia than in any other country.

Colombia has more emeralds, frogs, birds, carnations and orchids than any other country

Colombia is the world's leading exporter of human bones.

Peregrine falcons are the fastest animals on the planet - or rather, above it. As they plunge towards their unsuspecting prey they have been logged at 124mph.

On land the ostrich reaches speeds up to 45mph.

The fastest land mammal is the cheetah, which runs at up to 62mph.

The fastest fish is the cosmopolitan sailfish, which has been measured swimming at 68 mph

The fastest recorded human being peaked at 27.89mph.

The girl on the BBC Test Card is now 45 years old.

The largest city in China is Shanghai, and with 4,500 skyscrapers the city is actually sinking 1.5cm per year under their collective weight!

You shed enough dead skin in a lifetime to fill eighteen sugar bags

The average human foot gives off half a cup of sweat every day

Ten percent of the Russian government's income comes from the sale of vodka

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour

The adult electric eel could power a house of about twelve hundred square feet

The average human body contains enough sulphur to kill all fleas on an average dog.

The average human body contains enough phosphorus to make 2,200 match heads

One third of all cancers are sun related

Someone once paid 1100 dollars at auction for George Washington's laundry bill

Mosquitoes' favourite colour is blue

A polar bear's kidneys are poisonous

Rhinoceros horn is made of hair, not bone.

The Hoover Dam was built to last 2,000 years: the concrete in it will not even be fully cured for another 500 years

It takes 45 seconds to ride the lift from the lobby to the 80th floor of the Empire State Building

565 feet of audio tape will produce a 60-minute cassette

Sunderland (population 280,000) is the biggest city in Europe that doesn't have a cinema

Seven percent of Americans eat at McDonalds every day

The US 7th Infantry Division led the invasion of Kiska, one of the Rat Islands off the coast of Alaska, in 1943. 21 troops were killed in the invasion - even though the Japanese had already fled, leaving the island completely deserted

More than 880,000 vessels have used the Panama Canal since its opening on August 15, 1914

In ASCII, the letters "B I L L G A T E S" add up to 666, the Number Of the Beast

The largest employer in the world is the Indian railway system, employing 1,646,704 people

The giraffe can clean its ears with its own tongue

No snakes are vegetarian

There can be over 17 million earthworms per acre of topsoil

Afghanistan, Andorra, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Czech Republic, Ethiopia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malawi, Mali, Moldova, Mongolia, Nepal, Niger, Paraguay, Rwanda, San Marino, Slovakia, Swaziland, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vatican City, Zambia and Zimbabwe are the world's 42 landlocked countries.

But only two countries are doubly landlocked: Uzbekistan and Liechtenstein.

The earth, for all its mountains and valleys, is proportionally as smooth as the average billiard ball

A scientist reckons that El Paso, Texas is so hot and humid that the 563,662 people who live there produce enough sweat to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every four hours, at a rate of 36 fluid ounces of perspiration per person per hour.

Sharks first appeared in fossil records more than 400 million years ago

The average life span of a shark is 25 years, but some can live to be 100

New teeth are constantly being formed in rows in a shark's jaw. Teeth are normally replaced every eight days, and some species can shed as many as 30,000 in a lifetime

Sharks can generate about six-and-a-half tonnes-per-square inch of biting force

Sharks have no bones. Their skeletons are made of cartilage

Despite being regarded as the quintessentially English hero, James Bond is half-Scottish (on his father's side) and half-Swiss (on his mother's side).

Teflon was accidentally created in 1938 by chemist Dr Roy J. Plunkett and his colleagues. It was used in the first atom bomb and was kept a military secret until after World War II.

The French philosopher Voltaire allegedly drank in excess of 50 cups of coffee each day.

There are five million, trillion, trillion bacteria on Earth

Mercury is our solar system's innermost planet and is an average of 57,910,000km from the sun during its elliptical orbit.

A year on Mercury lasts for a mere 88 Earth days (the time the little planet takes to make one full orbit of the sun). But because of unusually slow rotation, a day on Mercury passes only once every six months.

The planet has an equatorial radius of 2,439 km and is a third of the size of Earth. Only Pluto is smaller.

Temperatures vary between 450C and -184C.

Mercury is the solar systems' only planet other in the Earth to have a global magnetic field

Noted Edinburgh scholar Thomas Trotter wrote in 1813 wrote a treatise condemning alcohol and its damage to humanity - and was excommunicated by the Church...

Americans are shrinking. Recent research shows that the USA's average height is slowly decreasing, while Europeans are getting taller. The Dutch are particularly lofty, with the average male standing at more than 6ft - almost two inches above his counterpart on the other side of the Atlantic.

Ancient Egyptians often shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the deaths of their cats.

Libra, a set of scales, is the only inanimate symbol in the zodiac.

A racehorse's name must be no longer than 18 characters, including spaces.

Leonard "Mr Spock" Nimoy was the only actor to appear in every single episode of the original Star Trek series.

The name Canada comes from the Indian word "kanata", meaning "settlement" or "village".

A woodpecker can peck at about 20 times per second.

The giant squid has eyes larger than any other creature's. One specimen, found in Thimble Bay in Newfoundland, had mince pies 38cm in diameter.

The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses.

For each hour's sleep lost, your IQ drops by a point, according to the British Sleep Foundation.

In 1624, Pope Urban VIII threatened excommunication for anyone found taking snuff in church.

Storm troopers' ray guns of choice are called E-11 Trooper Rifles.

The screeching engine sound of the TIE Fighter spaceships is a drastically altered elephant bellow.

Chewbacca and his fellow Wookies are from the Kashyyyk star system.

"Girl" appears only once in the Bible.

The only word to consist of just two letters, each used three times each, is "deeded".

The only English word beginning with the letters "tm" is "tmesis", meaning the interpolation of a word or words between the parts of a compound word. For example: "abso-flipping-lutely".

"Checkmate" is a bastardisation of the Persian phrase "shah mat," meaning "the king is dead".

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