It's quicker - by about three hours - to read the Hobbit than watch Peter Jackson's movie trilogy. Age renders you less certain as to whether a badger or a baboon would win in a fight It's against the law in England and Wales to swallow and regurgitate goldfish, even if they survive, but it may be legal to do the same with an octopus. A porcupine can fight off a pride of lions. Los Angeles prison inmates have to pass a "gay-dar" test to stay in the safest wing In China, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are known as Curly Fu and Peanut. It is almost impossible to take a German-registered car into Japan There are more bicycles in Copenhagen than people. There is a brown bear living at the Chernobyl site. Yorkshire and Humberside are as red-headed as Ireland. Czech deer still avoid the Iron Curtain. In Oklahoma, the average marijuana joint costs the same as 2.41 bottles of Bud Light. It would cost £12.6 billion to issue every man, woman and child in the UK with an owl (and £69.3 billion if each was to get its own aviary). When given a date far in the future, William Hague can tell you off the top of his head which day of the week it will be. Hillary Clinton hasn't driven a car since 1996. The last British Prime Minister to regularly wear a wedding ring in public was Lady Thatcher. Dead passengers on British Airways flights used to be given sunglasses, a vodka and tonic and a copy of the Daily Mail to disguise them from other passengers. The Black Death improved public health in subsequent centuries, although no-one knows the exact reason Congo-Brazzaville has a peat bog the size of England. The dark side of the Moon is actually turquoise
