Fifty Banal Facts
Created | Updated May 13, 2006
1. The word 'banal' does not occur in the American Declaration of Independence.
2. Being born is dangerous, since most of the people who have been born are now dead.
3. Salvador Dali, Hitler, Alexander the Great, George Bush and Osama bin Laden all had a female parent.
4. There is no record of the word 'banal' having ever been spelled correctly by an earwig.
5. The word 'banal' looks very similar to the word 'canal', but is closer in the dictionary to the word 'beetroot'.
6. The French word for 'banal' is not 'Vergnugungsdampfer'.
7. The German word for 'pleasure-steamer' is not 'banal'.
8. In the UK, you are liable to be prosecuted if you park on a traffic warden.
9. The use of the word 'banal' is legal in Belgium.
10. Every time you mow your lawn, you either cause a slight perturbation in the local value of the acceleration due to gravity, or else you don’t.
11. The Icelandic marriage service may be conducted without any of the participants uttering the word 'banal'.
12. Almost all of the chairs ever made have legs that point in the same direction.
13. None of Beethoven's major works is commonly known as the 'Banal Symphony'.
14. Purchase of Mayfair in the game of Monopoly is not accepted as right to the property in Real Life.
15. No group with 'banal' in their name has ever won the Eurovision Song Contest.
16. The last fourteen dog-owning British Prime Ministers have called their pet something other than 'Banal'.
17. If you eat nothing but gravel you will become thin.
18. There is no village called 'Banal' anywhere along the length of the A34.
19. It is at least thirteen years since a Poet Laureate died of syphilis.
20. People who have used the word 'banal' in the last week tend to have a similar average blood temperature to people who haven't.
21. There is no known Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for ‘Sellotape’.
22. The organisation known as the Congress of Pencil-Sharpener Operatives of Greater Manchester does not exist.
23. If you write the word 'banal' repeatedly using a ball-point pen, it will eventually run out of ink.
24. People from Northumberland can still pronounce the word 'banal' when it is snowing.
25. If you shout the word 'banal' while buying children's clothes in the UK, you will not have to pay Value-Added Tax on your purchase.
26. The vast majority of books have pages that are joined together at only one edge.
27. This is the twenty-seventh in a list of facts, the majority of which contain the word 'banal'.
28. If a house-brick is placed in mid-air, it will soon or later begin to move towards the ground.
29. Admiral Lord Nelson did not give permission for the word 'banal' to be inscribed on his tombstone.
30. It might or might not be a coincidence that the word 'banal' can be phonetically rendered as 'Be-anal'.
31. ‘Singing in the Rain’ is not the national anthem of at least eighteen European countries.
32. The vast majority of the people of the earth have never heard the word 'banal' spoken on another planet.
33. I can’t see the television from here.
34. The word 'banal', written in capital letters using the right hand, has the same number of letters as the word 'teeth' written left-handed in lower case, provided that both are spelled correctly.
35. The word 'banal' shares a common property with every other word in the English language, namely that it does not contain four consecutive letter Qs.
36. ‘Cheese’, ‘wheeze’, ‘sleaze’ and ‘trees’ are all words that don’t rhyme with ‘piano’.
37. It is not possible to completely read an intact copy of the Oxford English Dictionary without coming across the words 'banal', 'desperation' and 'refractory'.
38. Things that are banal are not necessarily yellow.
39. Drinking a lot of beer may cause you to fall over, but not if you drink it while lying down.
40. 'Banal' does not rhyme with 'goat'.
41. If the word 'banal' is written between any other two words, it will be in the middle.
42. Everyone in the world who can play the euphonium is descended from a grandmother. Coincidence, or what?
43. It may be speculated that the word 'banal' went unspoken in Palestine throughout the entire of the 2nd Century AD.
44. If a penguin eats cheese, it will never say the word 'banal'.
45. At least one of my next-door neighbours has never represented Canada at ice hockey.
46. David Beckham does not yet have a tattoo including the word 'banal'.
47. You could paint the word 'banal' in bigger letters on a Blue Whale than on any other member of the Animal Kingdom.
48. No member of the British Royal Family has ever been on the losing side while playing for Crewe Alexandra in a Football League match in February.
49. The word 'banal' appears in this Entry more frequently than the word 'luncheon'.
50. If you’ve read this far, then you’ve never scaled a Himalayan peak in the nude while carrying a stuffed mongoose in a time of under forty-five minutes.
2. Being born is dangerous, since most of the people who have been born are now dead.
3. Salvador Dali, Hitler, Alexander the Great, George Bush and Osama bin Laden all had a female parent.
4. There is no record of the word 'banal' having ever been spelled correctly by an earwig.
5. The word 'banal' looks very similar to the word 'canal', but is closer in the dictionary to the word 'beetroot'.
6. The French word for 'banal' is not 'Vergnugungsdampfer'.
7. The German word for 'pleasure-steamer' is not 'banal'.
8. In the UK, you are liable to be prosecuted if you park on a traffic warden.
9. The use of the word 'banal' is legal in Belgium.
10. Every time you mow your lawn, you either cause a slight perturbation in the local value of the acceleration due to gravity, or else you don’t.
11. The Icelandic marriage service may be conducted without any of the participants uttering the word 'banal'.
12. Almost all of the chairs ever made have legs that point in the same direction.
13. None of Beethoven's major works is commonly known as the 'Banal Symphony'.
14. Purchase of Mayfair in the game of Monopoly is not accepted as right to the property in Real Life.
15. No group with 'banal' in their name has ever won the Eurovision Song Contest.
16. The last fourteen dog-owning British Prime Ministers have called their pet something other than 'Banal'.
17. If you eat nothing but gravel you will become thin.
18. There is no village called 'Banal' anywhere along the length of the A34.
19. It is at least thirteen years since a Poet Laureate died of syphilis.
20. People who have used the word 'banal' in the last week tend to have a similar average blood temperature to people who haven't.
21. There is no known Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for ‘Sellotape’.
22. The organisation known as the Congress of Pencil-Sharpener Operatives of Greater Manchester does not exist.
23. If you write the word 'banal' repeatedly using a ball-point pen, it will eventually run out of ink.
24. People from Northumberland can still pronounce the word 'banal' when it is snowing.
25. If you shout the word 'banal' while buying children's clothes in the UK, you will not have to pay Value-Added Tax on your purchase.
26. The vast majority of books have pages that are joined together at only one edge.
27. This is the twenty-seventh in a list of facts, the majority of which contain the word 'banal'.
28. If a house-brick is placed in mid-air, it will soon or later begin to move towards the ground.
29. Admiral Lord Nelson did not give permission for the word 'banal' to be inscribed on his tombstone.
30. It might or might not be a coincidence that the word 'banal' can be phonetically rendered as 'Be-anal'.
31. ‘Singing in the Rain’ is not the national anthem of at least eighteen European countries.
32. The vast majority of the people of the earth have never heard the word 'banal' spoken on another planet.
33. I can’t see the television from here.
34. The word 'banal', written in capital letters using the right hand, has the same number of letters as the word 'teeth' written left-handed in lower case, provided that both are spelled correctly.
35. The word 'banal' shares a common property with every other word in the English language, namely that it does not contain four consecutive letter Qs.
36. ‘Cheese’, ‘wheeze’, ‘sleaze’ and ‘trees’ are all words that don’t rhyme with ‘piano’.
37. It is not possible to completely read an intact copy of the Oxford English Dictionary without coming across the words 'banal', 'desperation' and 'refractory'.
38. Things that are banal are not necessarily yellow.
39. Drinking a lot of beer may cause you to fall over, but not if you drink it while lying down.
40. 'Banal' does not rhyme with 'goat'.
41. If the word 'banal' is written between any other two words, it will be in the middle.
42. Everyone in the world who can play the euphonium is descended from a grandmother. Coincidence, or what?
43. It may be speculated that the word 'banal' went unspoken in Palestine throughout the entire of the 2nd Century AD.
44. If a penguin eats cheese, it will never say the word 'banal'.
45. At least one of my next-door neighbours has never represented Canada at ice hockey.
46. David Beckham does not yet have a tattoo including the word 'banal'.
47. You could paint the word 'banal' in bigger letters on a Blue Whale than on any other member of the Animal Kingdom.
48. No member of the British Royal Family has ever been on the losing side while playing for Crewe Alexandra in a Football League match in February.
49. The word 'banal' appears in this Entry more frequently than the word 'luncheon'.
50. If you’ve read this far, then you’ve never scaled a Himalayan peak in the nude while carrying a stuffed mongoose in a time of under forty-five minutes.
