Chapter 19

Just some more random stuff.

1. The probability of a blue lobster existing is widely touted as being one in two million. Bright blue lobsters are so-colored because of a genetic abnormality that causes them to produce more of a certain protein than others.

2. There’s only one letter that doesn’t appear in any American state name. There’s a Z in Arizona and an X in Texas, but no Q in any of them.

3. A book called ’A la recherche du temps perdu’ by Marcel Proust contains an estimated 9,609,000 characters, making it the longest book in the world. The title translates to “Remembrance of Things Past”.

4. Big Ben’s clock stopped at 10:07 p.m. on 27 May 2005, most likely due to an extremely hot temperature of 31.8 degrees Celsius.

5. There’s a fruit that tastes like chocolate pudding. (Can we get in on this?) Apparently, there’s a fruit native to Central and South America called black sapote that tastes like chocolate and sweet custard.

6. The Easter Island heads have bodies. Those iconic stone heads - you know the ones. In the 2010s, archaeologists found that two of the Pacific Island figures actually had torsos that measured as high as 33 feet.

7. M&Ms are named after the businessmen who created them. But what do the M’s stand for? Forrest Mars and Bruce Murrie, who apparently didn’t have the best relationship as Mars leveraged Murrie out of his 20% share of the business before it became the biggest-selling sweet in the US. Ouch.

8. Pigeons can tell the difference between Picasso and Monet. What?! A 1995 study shows that the birds can differentiate between the two artists.

9. The real name for a hashtag is an octothorpe. The ‘octo’ refers to the eight points in the symbol, but according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary the ‘thorpe’ part is a mystery. (Maybe I’m ‘old school, but I call it a ‘pound sign’.)

10. You can hear a blue whale’s heartbeat from over 2 miles away. Blue whales weigh an average of between 130,000 and 150,000kg, with their hearts weighing roughly 180kg.

11. There is actually a word for someone giving an opinion on something they know nothing about. A ‘ultracrepidarian’ is someone who voices thoughts beyond their expertise.

12. Ketchup was once sold as medicine. The condiment was prescribed and sold to people suffering with indigestion back in 1834.

13. The world’s longest walking distance is 14,000 miles. You can walk from Magadan in Russia to Cape Town in South Africa. It requires no flying or sailing - just bridges and open roads.

14. The moon has moonquakes. They happen due to tidal stresses connected to the distance between the moon and the Earth.

15. All the clocks in Pulp Fiction are set to 4.20. (Looks like we’re going to have to rewatch the film to find out.)

16. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain. This could be why the birds often run round in circles when trying to escape predators despite their fast-running speed.

17. A jiffy is an actual unit of time. It’s 1/100th of a second.

18. You can’t hum if you hold your nose. Hands up if you just tried it!

19. Vatican City is the smallest country in the world. It’s 120 times smaller than the island of Manhattan.

20. Japan has over 200 flavors of Kit Kats. They’re exclusively created for different regions, cities, and seasons. There are some tasty-sounding ones like banana, blueberry cheesecake and Oreo ice cream, as well as some very questionable ones like baked potato, melon and cheese, wasabi, and vegetable juice.