To ask for your most useless fact?

[NotChrisTarrant]

Rather importantly, I’ve been named Christmas Quiz Master 2019.

This is a ridiculous tradition in our family to have the most bonkers quiz, names go in the hat for Quiz Master and this year I lost won!

So can you please share the most useless piece of information /fact you know?

I will beat the bastards this year. It’s my year!

Last year my sister had a quiz which consisted of us having to name that tune.... after she played it on a bleeding recorder. It was terrible and fantastic - yes there was lots of wine.

Which pirate, in 1717, took seige of a merchant ship off the coast of Honduras - but left the terrified merchants entirely unharmed having stolen nothing but their hats; his crew having gotten drunk and thrown their own overboard, for larks, the night before? (Benjamin Hornigold.)

Who was on the throne immediately prior to Queen Victoria?

(William IV. Nobody ever seems to know).

What is the name of Debussy's only opera?

(Pelleas et Melisande).

I have neem QuizMistress a few times. I once had a "soaps" round. Everyone was surprised when I gave each team a plate which contained six bits of soap, cut off a whole tablet. They had to sniff them and say which brand of soap they were.

By the way, it was difficult to get the soaps to stay on their numbers. The numbers were underneath them so that they didn't get mixed up.

*been

The most useless but most interesting piece of information I know is that if you dig up all the worms from a field with a herd of cows in, they'd weigh more than the cows do.

I got a cracker of a fact off a colleague the other day!
The quarter days in England are on those specific dates because in the olden days no one had a calendar. So they made the rent etc due on particular religious festival days so that everyone knew when to pay.
Xmas day - Dec
Feast of annunciation - March
Midsummers day - June
Feast of Stephen - sept.

Caveat : we work in financial services so it’s probably a deadly dull fact, but I liked it!

The only two countries to have a SQUARE flag are Switzerland and the Vatican City.

What language do they speak in Patagonia, South America?

Welsh.

I love the name that tune on the recorder! I'm going to do that this year!

Kestrels need a headwind in order to be able to 'hover' and are known as the windhover in some areas. American kestrels are much smaller than the one we see in the UK.

The North and South Poles have different altitudes and the South Pole appears to be colder.
If you had a large enough magnet you could attract a £50 note.
Cockroaches are the most intelligent insect.
Only 10% of spiders spin webs.
Sharks are fish and can breath underwater but dolphins are mammals and therefore can't. They have to surface generally every 8-10 mins for air.

I'm sure I have more but it's hard to think on the spot...

There is apparently 29 places around the world called London.

It would take 605 farts to kill a person.

Only female mosquitoes bite.

Theres a jellyfish called Long Stingy Stringy Thingy.

The only flag in the world to not contain red, white or blue.. is Jamaica.

An ostriches eye is bigger than its brain.
An octopus has blue blood.
A pig is the only creature which cannot look up at the sky.
The longest one syllable word in the English language is Screeched.
A teaspoon of honey represents the life work of 12 bees.
Humans share 50% of their DNA with bananas.

The sex of a tuatara (a fascinating living fossil reptile living on small islands around New Zealand) is dependent on the temperature of its egg during incubation.

Warmer eggs tend to produce males and cooler eggs females. Eggs incubated at 21 degrees C have an equal chance of producing males or females. At 22 degrees C 80 per cent are likely to be males, while at 20 degrees C 80 per cent are likely to be females. At 18 degrees C they will all be female.

Love the soap idea. Could do the same with random herbs/spices found in the back of the cupboard. Bonus pint for country of origin.

Mine: what noise does a single tawny owl make?

Answer: it's either twit or twoooo. Not both together. The twit twooo is the sound of owls calling to each other. One says twit and the other replies twooo.

Every racehorse in the world has the same birthday. What is it?

1st April, no matter when they are foaled. It's how they decide how different ages race together.

95% of all throughbred racehorses in the world are descended from one stallion. What was his name? Clue if needed - he was not a thoroughbred.

The Darley Arabian.

"Alas poor Yorick! I knew him well" is wrong.

What is the actual quotation?

"Alas poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio."

The tongue is the only muscle in the body to only be connected at one end.

What is the only British sitcom without an opening theme tune?

Demidex mites live in you hair follicles eating dead skin cells. They only surface to defecate and have sex .

floffel Is it Porridge?

Fab some of these are fantastic and will make the quiz. The soap round is genius.

@Hippychickster it should be noted my sister can not play the recorder AT. ALL! But we did manage to name quite a few tunes

If you found a body of water big enough Saturn could float.
Goats from different countries can't understand each other.
The Greek national anthem has 158 verses.
The longest 1 syllable word in English is Screeched.
There are only 4 English words that end in Dous; tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
The word School comes from the Greek word for Free Time.
There are 336 dimples on a golf ball.
The dot over the I is called a tittle.
Cat's aren't mentioned in the bible.
There are 800 kernels of corn on the average cob, arranged in 16 separate rows.
Ostriches can be sexually attracted to humans and show gender preference.

t would take 605 farts to kill a person.

As in, if you farted 605 times, you would die? Or if you inhaled 605 farts?!

The painted line where the colours differs on the hull of a boat is called a plimsoll line. It is a marker of how much load a ship can take by weight. If you can’t see the line the ship is overloaded.