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.

[WorraLiberty]

CharityConundrum really??

If I take anything away from this thread, it's going to be that

[highheelsandweathercocks]

Pirates wore eyepatches to be able to adjust quickly when going below deck. When they went below, they would move the patch to the other eye and use the one already accustomed to the dark.

What do giraffes and humans have in common?
Both have 7 bones in their neck.

If a quokka (cute marsupial from Rottenest Island near Perth, Australia) feels threatened, it will eject its baby from its pouch to save itself while the baby serves as a distraction (and snack) for the predator.

[highheelsandweathercocks]

Wombats also have really tough bum-bones so that if they are being chased, they can stop suddenly, often in their burrows, and whatever is chasing them will smash their head into their super-tough arse!

The pirate one has always been my favourite, but I think I have a new winner!

[NewName54321]

The number google is 10 to the power of 100, i.e. 1 followed by 100 zeros.

That's a googol. (TBF it took some doing to type it without autocorrect taking over).
A googolplex is 10 to the power of googol.

A Googlewhack is a two-word phrase entered into the Google search engine that only produces one result.

[CharityConundrum]

Graham's number is so big that if you wrote it down, it wouldn't fit into the observable universe. My kids have won a lot of 'what's the biggest number you can think of' competitions with that one!

[RainbowCake]

What state has over 3 million lakes but a population of less than 750,000?

Alaska.

I learnt this random fact today at work. I will state Geography is not my strong point at all so this may be common knowledge to others!

[makingmammaries]

Australian Shepherd dogs hail from the USA, not Australia

[houseofhungryboys]

Mr Rigsby's cat in the TV series Rising Damp was called Vienna 🐱

[NotChrisTarrant]

You’re all brilliant.

DH and I will be reading over these properly as we write the quiz and consider the best way to ask the questions.

[doublebarrellednurse]

Hippos can swallow a human whole but a whale can't

[MyGhastIsFlabbered]

What was the name of the dog that found the Jules Rimet trophy when it was stolen in 1966?

Pickles

[Shoobydoo123]

We did a quiz recently that had 10 packets of walkers crisps but with the flavour photoshopped out. One lady got 10/10 !

[Time4Change0]

If you threw a can of Coke and a can of Diet Coke in a bath.... the Diet Coke would flat and the Coke would sink.

[MyGhastIsFlabbered]

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Is the longest word in the OED but what is it?

It's a lung disease caused by breathing in microscopic particles of volcanic dust.

PS it's 45 letters long

[ChocoChunk1]

London Underground:

On deep level Tube lines, like the Victoria line, the wall before the tunnel at the front of the train is called a headwall. This is because when the trains had a guard, they had to put their head inside the train or they would lose it.

The wall to the rear of the Tube train is called the rear wall. (Duh!)

The first female Tube train driver was Hannah Dadds who began driving in 1978. She has a plaque in memory of her achievements at Upton Park station, East London, where she once worked.

When the fire alarms go off on the Tube there us an announcement playing saying "Will Inspector Sands please go to the operations room immediately". This is a fictional person. Up to the early 1990s the top station bod was called an Inspector, the Sands relates to the sand that was kept to put out fires (before fire extinguishers) and it's a way if not panicking the public if a fire has been discovered so that the station can be evacuated calmly.

I'm a tube worker.

[Permanantlypuzzled]

If a ship sailed due east from New York harbour which is the first country it would come to.?

Portugal.

The robins you see in winter are not the same ones you saw in summer.
The summer ones migrate south for the winter.
The winter ones migrate here from Scandinavia

[SeperatedSwans]

My 5 year old son taught me this one;

A t-rex tooth is about the same size as a banana.


He's turning in to Ross from friends, but I'm ok with that 😂

[Fluffypudcats]

What colour is the name Wispa on the wrapper (other chocolate is available!) or from this list of 32, name 3 of the 4 whose names are in yellow

[AfterSomeAdvice1234]

Collective nouns! What is the collective noun for flamingoes (flamboyance); ladybirds (lovely); rays (beam).

[AfterSomeAdvice1234]

The eight US states beginning with M - surprisingly difficult when on the spot in a quiz! Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Maine, Mississippi, Maryland, Massachusetts

[sequin2000]

Angels are never female in the Bible. 3 are named- Gabriel, Michael and Satan (fallen angel). The others have the pronoun 'he' not 'she'. Nativity plays need a rethink!!

[LizzieBananas]

Two about Rutland:

It has no McDonalds within its borders

It is only England’s smallest county at low tide. At high tide, the Isle of Wight is smaller...

[BlackCatsRule88]

If you have any travel / transportation / geography nerds, you could do a picture round with transit maps (minus stations) and people have to guess the city. If they are super geeky, then you take maps of a city with the outline, major roads, rivers, the sea, Etc marked and they have to identify them. Start with obvious ones like London, but the go Barcelona, New York, Vancouver, then harder!

[Ali1cedowntherabbithole]

Mr Rigsby's cat in the TV series Rising Damp was called Vienna

Means nothing to me.

[Lobsterquadrille2]

London Underground

There are three stations that contain all five vowels:
South Ealing
Mansion House
Heathrow Terminal Four

One station that contains a "z":
Belsize Park

One station that is an anagram of "big durex":
Uxbridge