native Mexicans, went into battle with wooden swords so as not to kill their enemies.
• In 1821, stones fell on a house in Truro, Cornwall. So remarkable was the event that the local mayor visited the house, though he was unnerved by the rattling of the walls and roof due to the falling stones. Called in to help, the military was unable to determine the source of the stones, and five days later the fall was still going on.
• Belgium is the only country that has never imposed censorship laws on adult films.
• Freelance Dutch prostitutes have to charge sales tax, but can write off items such as condoms and beds.
• The average court fine for drunk driving in Denmark is one month’s salary if convicted.
• People in Sweden, Japan and Canada are more likely to know the population of the United States than Americans.
• About 10 per cent of the workforce in Egypt is under 12 years of age.
• The Netherlands is credited with having the most bikes in the world. One bike per person is the national average, with an estimated 16 million bicycles nationwide.
• On a summer’s evening in Edinburgh, 1849, there was a loud clap of thunder, after which a large and irregularly shaped mass of ice, estimated to be around 20ft (6m) in circumference, crashed to the ground near a farmhouse.
• The average worker in Japan reportedly takes only half of his or her earned holiday time each year.
• The Amazon’s flow is twelve times that of the Mississippi. The South American river disgorges as much water in a day as the Thames carries past London in a year.
• Georgia is the world’s top pecan producer.
• People in Siberia often buy milk frozen on a stick.
• The population of Colombia doubles every twenty-two years.
• Sweden is the biggest user of ketchup, spending £2.25 per person a year on it. Australia is the second highest user, spending £1.35 a year, and the United States and Canada are joint third, spending £1.22 a year. The ketchup expenditure of other countries per person is as follows: Germany £0.95, United Kingdom £0.90, Poland and Japan £0.77, France £0.65 and Russia £0.50
• Eighty per cent of the Australian population live in the cities along the coast.
• The most common name for a pub in Britain is ‘The Red Lion’.
• Among the shortest people in the world are the Mbuti Pygmies of the Congo River basin, where the men reach an average of 4ft 6in (1.36m) tall.
• In Tokyo, a bicycle is faster than a car for most trips of less than fifty minutes.
• The world’s longest escalator is in Ocean Park, Hong Kong. With a length of 745ft (227m), the escalator boasts a vertical rise of 377ft (115m).
• There is 1 mile (1.6km) of railroad track in Belgium for every 1.5 miles2 (3.8km2) of land.
• Fifty per cent of the adult Dutch population has never flown in a plane, and 28 per cent admits a fear of flying.
• The tallest sand dunes in the world are in the Sahara desert. The dunes have enough sand in them to bury the Great Pyramids of Egypt and the Eiffel Tower.
• Asia has the greatest number of working children, totalling 45 million. Africa is second, with 24 million.
• On some Pacific islands, shark teeth are used to make skin tattoos.
• The most-visited cemetery in the world is Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, in Paris. Established in 1805, it contains the tombs of over 1 million people, including: composer Chopin; singer Edith Piaf; writers Oscar Wilde, Molière, Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust and Gertrude Stein; artists David, Delacroix, Pissarro, Seurat and Modigliani; actors Sarah Bernhardt, Simone Signoret and Yves Montand; and dancer Isadora Duncan. The most-visited tomb is that of The Doors’ former lead singer, Jim Morrison.
• In Japan, some restaurants serve smaller portions to women, even though the charge is the same as for a man’s portion.
• The Japanese cremate 93 per cent of their dead, compared with Great Britain, at 67 per cent, and the United States, at just over 12 per cent.
• Approximately one-third of Greenland, the world’s largest island, is national park.
• Kulang, China, runs seven centres for recycled toothpicks. People bringing used toothpicks to the recycling centres are paid the equivalent of 35 cents per pound weight.
• Floor-cleaning products in Venezuela have ten times the pine fragrance of British floor-cleaners, as Venezuelan women won’t buy a weaker fragrance. They wet-mop their tile floors twice a day, leaving windows and doors open so the scent can waft out to the street and send the message that their houses are clean.
• Windsor Castle is home to the ghosts of King Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth I, King Charles I and King George III. Henry VIII is supposed to haunt the cloisters near the Deanery with ghostly groans and the sound of dragging footsteps.
• All education through to university level is free in the Eastern European nation of Azerbaijan.
• Canada is the largest importer of American cars.
• No one knows how many people live in Bhutan, a small independent kingdom on the slopes of the Himalayas. As of 1975, no census has ever been taken.
• On average, fifty-one cars a year overshoot and drive into the canals of Amsterdam.
• London cabbies estimate their average driving speed to be 9mph (14km/h) due to increasing traffic congestion.
• The area of Greater Tokyo – meaning the city, its port, Yokohama, and the suburban prefectures of Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa – contains less than 4 per cent of Japan’s land area, but fully one-quarter of its 123 million-plus people.
• Based on population, Chinese Mandarin is the most commonly spoken language in the world. Spanish follows second, with English third and Bengali fourth.
• At about 200 million years old, the Atlantic Ocean is the youngest of the world’s oceans.
• In Finland, the awards for best children’s fairy tales by children are held on 18 October, known as Satu’s Day. The international competition for children ages 7 to 13 has been held since 1993, and its rules are translated into five languages.
• Britain is roughly nine times more densely populated than America, with 588 people per mile2 (227 people per km2) as compared with America’s 65 people per mile2 (25 people per km2).
• In China there are 600 bicycles for every car.
• At London’s Drury Lane Theatre, there have been numerous sightings of a ghost described as a soft-green glow, or a handsome young man. During renovation to the theatre in the late 1970s, workers found a skeleton wearing the remnants of a grey riding coat and with a knife sticking out of its ribs. The deceased was found to be
