Noel Botham - The Totally Awesome Book of Useless Information

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Noel Botham is chairman and founding member of the Useless Information Society. He and the rest of his team lurk mostly around London. He is the author of The Book of Useless Information, The Ultimate Book of Useless Information, The Best Book of Useless Information Ever, The Worlds Greatest Book of Useless Information, and The Amazing Book of Useless Information. ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR Travis Nichols is a writer, illustrator, Texan, and cartoonist living in New York. He is the author and illustrator of The Monster Doodle Book, Matthew Meets the Man, and other books for kids and post-kids. He enjoys meteorites and eating watermelon over the sink.

He can be found online at www.ilikeapplejuice.com. Happy Birthday to You is the most often sung song in America. A bumblebee beats its wings about 160 times a second. Sleeping Beauty slept for one hundred years. Queen Elizabeth I had more than two thousand dresses. More presidents have been born in the state of Virginia than any other state.

Sharks are the only fish that can blink with both eyes. Christopher Columbus had blond hair. A starfish doesnt have a brain. The oldest-known goldfish lived to forty-one years of age. Its name was Fred. The most money that can be lost in one turn in Monopoly is $5,070.

One in every four Americans has appeared on television. Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, wasnt a fan of raw carrots. An iguana can hold its breath for twenty-eight minutes. Crocodiles cannot stick their tongues out. President John Quincy Adams owned a pet alligator, which he kept in the East Room of the White House. A pig always sleeps on its side.

Scooby-Doos real first name is Scoobert. Shaggys real first name is Norville. Mosquitoes are more attracted to the color blue than any other color. Mickey Mouse was the first nonhuman to win an Oscar. There are 225 spaces on a Scrabble board. Bees must visit around five thousand flowers to make a spoonful of honey.

People in Iceland read more books per capita than any other people in the world. In the United States, 12,500 puppies are born every hour. Dalmatians are born pure white. Their spots dont begin to appear until after they are born. The longest Monopoly game ever played was 1,680 hours (seventy days). The longest Monopoly game in a bathtub was ninety-nine hours long.

Telephonophobia is the fear of telephones. Cats have four rows of whiskers. Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. Rats can tread water for three days without stopping. The tallest man on record was 8 feet, 11.1 inches tall. Venus and Uranus are the only planets that rotate clockwise.

The only insect that can turn its head is a praying mantis. The worlds longest name is Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorft Sr. The tallest mammal is the giraffe. The human brain stops growing at the age of eighteen. The worlds tallest mountains, the Himalayas, are growing about 2.4 inches taller every year. Termites eat through wood twice as fast when listening to rock music. Termites eat through wood twice as fast when listening to rock music.

The Bible is the most shoplifted book in America. Rhinos belong to the same family as horses and are thought to have inspired the myth of the unicorn. The gap between two upper front teeth is called diastema. The night vision of tigers is six times better than that of humans. A horologist measures time. A baby panda is smaller than a mouse when it is born.

Fingernails grow nearly four times faster than toenails. A foxs tail is called a brush. Your thumb is the same length as your nose. Spain literally means the land of rabbits. Identical twins do not have identical fingerprints. The killer whale is not actually a whale but is the largest member of the dolphin family.

The worlds largest shopping mall (by total area) is in China, but has been 99 percent vacant since opening. Some of its features are a canal with gondolas and an indoor-outdoor roller coaster. The average person blinks more than ten million times a year. A rat can last longer without water than a camel. The word karate means empty hand. To see at night as well as an owl, you would need eyeballs as big as grapefruits.

A sneeze travels out of your mouth at more than one hundred miles per hour. It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. The largest ever jack-o-lantern was carved from a 1,469-pound pumpkin on Halloween 2005. The most difficult tongue twister is The sixth sick Sheiks sixth sheeps sick. The ostrich has only two toes. The oldest word in the English language is town.

There are 450 hairs in an average eyebrow. Diet Coke was invented in 1982. I am is the shortest complete sentence in the English language. The faces on Mount Rushmore are sixty feet tall. They are of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. The most used letter in the English alphabet is E; Q is the least used.

In England in the 1880s, pants was considered a dirty word. Rats cant vomit. Men get hiccups more often than women do. No word in the English language rhymes with mouth, orange, silver, or purple. Women blink twice as often as men do. Lightning strikes the ground about six thousand times per minute.

November 19 is Have a Bad Day Day. The most commonly used word in English conversation is I. The largest school in the world is in the Philippines and has around twenty-five thousand students. Ronald Reagan was the oldest man to be elected president of the United States. Less than 2 percent of the water on Earth is fresh. Most spiders have eight eyes.

About one-tenth of the worlds surface is permanently covered in ice. Pearls melt in vinegar. Seven percent of Americans eat McDonalds every day. The worlds largest yo-yo is 1,625 pounds. In Indiana, there is a town named Santa Claus. Guinness World Records holds the record for the book most often stolen from public libraries.