his entire harem of women be drowned and replaced with a new one.
• Henry VII was the only British king to be crowned on the field of battle.
• Ludwig van Beethoven was once arrested for vagrancy.
• In 1759, Emmanuel Swedenborg, speaking to a reception full of local notables in Gothenburg, described in vivid detail the progress of a disastrous fire that was sweeping through Stockholm, 300 miles (483km) away. At six o’clock he told them the fire had just broken out; at eight he told them it had been extinguished only three doors from his home. Two days later, a messenger from Stockholm confirmed every detail.
• When Richard II died, in 1400, a hole was left in the side of his tomb so that people could touch his royal head. However, 376 years later, a schoolboy reportedly took advantage of this and stole his jawbone.
• Julius Caesar wore a laurel wreath to cover the onset of baldness.
• Blackbird, Chief of the Omaha Indians, was buried sitting on his favourite horse.
• Prime Minister William Gladstone, a man of strong Puritan impulses, kept a selection of whips in his cellar with which he regularly chastised himself.
• Irving Berlin composed 3,000 songs in his lifetime but couldn’t read music.
• China uses 45 billion chopsticks per year, using 25 million trees to make them.
• President Kaunda of Zambia once threatened to resign if his fellow countrymen didn’t stop drinking so much alcohol.
• The Winchester Mansion, in San José, California, was built by Sara Winchester, the widow of gun manufacturer William Winchester. She had been told by a psychic to build a house large enough to house the souls of all those who had been killed by Winchester guns. With stairways and doors that go nowhere, secret rooms and passages, and elevators that only go up one floor, some believe that Sara had the house built in a confusing way so that the spirits wouldn’t be able to find her and seek revenge. Obsessed with the number thirteen, every night at the stroke of midnight she would sit down to dinner at a table set for thirteen people, even though she was alone. The house also had thirteen bathrooms, stairways with thirteen steps and so on. Her superstitions meant that she would never give her workmen the day off, afraid that the day she stopped building she would die. One day, however, after many complaints, she finally gave her staff a day off – and that is the day she died.
• It is believed that Handel haunts his former London home. Many who have entered Handel’s bedroom, where he died in 1759, have reported seeing a tall, dark shape and sensing a strong smell of perfume. Roman Catholic priests have performed exorcisms in their bid to clear the house of all spirits before it becomes a museum that will be open to the public.
• There are more than 150 million sheep in Australia but only 17 million people, while in New Zealand there are only 4 million people compared with 70 million sheep.
• In Holland, you can be fined for not using a shopping basket at a grocery store.
• On every continent there is a city called Rome.
• The oldest inhabited city is Damascus, Syria.
• The first city in the world to have a population of more than 1 million was London, which today is the thirteenth most populated city.
• The Atlantic Ocean is saltier than the Pacific Ocean.
• Kilts are not native to Scotland. They originated in France.
• One-third of Taiwanese funeral processions include a stripper.
• It is illegal to own a red car in Shanghai, China.
• Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country.
• There is now a cash machine at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, which has a winter population of 200 people. It is the only ATM machine on the continent.
• Major earthquakes have hit Japan on 1 September AD 827, 1 September AD 859, 1 September 1185, 1 September 1649 and 1 September 1923.
• There are ninety-two known cases of nuclear bombs lost at sea.
• In Nepal, cow dung is used for medicinal purposes.
• All the Earth’s continents, except Antarctica, are wider at the north than at the south.
• There are no rental cars in Bermuda.
• The richest country in the world is Switzerland, while Mozambique is the poorest.
• Until 1920, Canada was planning on invading the United States.
• In 1956, only 8 per cent of British households had a refrigerator.
• In India, people are legally allowed to marry a dog.
• The Ancient Egyptians trained baboons to wait on tables.
• One day in 1892, residents of Paderborn, Germany, witnessed the appearance of an odd-looking yellow cloud. Out of it fell not only a fierce rain, but also mussels.
• Mount Everest is 1ft (30.5cm) higher today than it was a century ago, and is believed to be still growing.
• Greenland has more ice on it than Iceland does, while Iceland has more grass and trees than Greenland.
• The country of Tanzania has an island called Mafia.
• Panama is the only place in the world where someone can see the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean and set over the Atlantic.
• In Poland, a brewery developed a plumbing problem in which beer was accidentally pumped into the incoming water supply. It meant that residents of the town got free beer on tap for one day.
• The Kingdom of Tonga, in the South Pacific, once issued a stamp shaped like a banana.
• Japanese children can buy a toy in the shape of a small plastic atom bomb.
• Mount Athos, in northern Greece, calls itself an independent country and has a male-only population of about 4,000. No females of any kind, including animals, are allowed. There are twenty monasteries within a space of 20 miles (32km).
• In Cyprus, there is one cinema per every eight people.
• Two hundred and thirty people died when Moradabad, India, was bombed with giant balls of hail more than 2in (5cm) in diameter on 30 April 1888.
• A church steeple in Germany was struck by lightning and destroyed on 18 April 1599. The members of the church rebuilt it, but it was hit by lightning three more times between then and 1783, and rebuilt again and again. Every time it was hit, the date was 18 April.
• Monaco issued a postage stamp honouring Franklin D. Roosevelt, but the picture on the stamp showed six fingers on his left hand.
• The most common place name in Britain is Newton, which occurs 150 times.
• China has more
