h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I wonder how much the person paid for it

$2,460,000 apparently. In 1964. They moved it to Lake Havasu, Arizona via Long beach, California.

That wouldn't buy a two bed flat in certain areas of London now

6 seconds I think it is you´re still supposed to be alive. Of course for some animals it can last an awful long time.

That 17 is wrong. Most of the figures you hear about animal disappearances are completely made up. And I did some calculations on how many that percentage was. I think I found it to be about 4 species per decade.

There is a book called Curious Facts, where you can find a lot of the same kind of things as you have written here.

The Thames Flood Barrier- I'm not a Londoner, or even Southern at all, but I am quite glad it's not actually been needed yet. It probably does go some way to preventing slight dampness, though. And yes it is a tourist attraction- the Flood Barrier Museum, where you can go and see what it would be like if London flooded. (Great, they put you in a small two-bedroom flat and fill it with water...)
I've heard that if London were really in danger of flooding, the circumstances would be such that the barrier wouldn't work. Don't they feel silly.
Now, a return to uselessnese:
Cinderella did not originally wear glass slippers. The French version by Perrault includes fur slippers; the words for 'fur' and 'glass' (latter is 'verre', former something quite like it) are so similar as to get mixed up in the translation.
Something Disney fans usually miss- most fairy tales are in fact completely horrible and grotesque.
Marie Antoinette did not, apparently, say 'Let them eat cake' when told that the poor had no bread. She probably wasn't as dim as that; it was attributed to her from a remark by a fictitious noblewoman. Remember they wanted to make her look bad.
The Druids couldn't have cut mistletoe with golden sickles- it's a tough plant, and gold is far too soft to tackle it.

I recall reading somewhere that Marie Antoinette got a raw deal, not because she didn't say it, but because she was stupid/naive and got misquoted. As I understand it she was told that the people could not make bread because they lacked x (x being some ingredient or other essential to the bread-making process which escapes me for the moment), and she said they should eat brioche, which is thought of as a cake, but is actually a bread which doesn't require whatever x is.

Whoever was asking about London Bridge, I'm a sort of Londoner, although I don't know why that should make me an authority on the subject, and I've been to London Bridge in Arizona. This was about 20 years ago, so it may have changed somewhat since then, but all I can remember seeing there is the bridge, the lake under said bridge, a double-decker bus, and a sort of fairground shooting range stall with a bizarre mid-Atlantic theme. In short, it was the middle of nowhere and reminded me of the opening scenes from Close Encounters.

Seems it has been busy on this thread today!

Thanks Mandragora and Zorpheus for the info on Mike the headless chicken.

On London Bridge - seems to me that I heard somewhere that the person who bought it thought they were actually buying Tower Bridge.

176645

Then there were those two inventive con-men who approached several rich idiots and 'sold' them the Great Pyramid, the Eiffel Tower and several other landmarks.
There is (I think he's still going) a man selling land on the moon, a deal also offered by Safeway supermarkets. £10 an acre and you get a map showing which bit you own. All this despite the assertion that the moon belongs to everyone- I think they're missing the point: I'd think the attraction would lie in being able to say you own moon land, and showing off your map, rather than legally claiming it to grow crops on or something. Until lunar colonisation becomes viable their claims shouldn't be a concern.

Darn
I was just coming here to post that same bit of useless information

The part about the people buying the Great Pyramid and the Eiffel Tower anyway
I have never heard of the guy who sells land on the moon.
That is something only stupid people would fall for.
Only somebody who is very stupid and very rich would actually fall for a trick where somebody sells them the Eiffel tower or the moon.
Buy the moon.

Every Haussman building in Paris is 33m tall.

The plural of opus is opera

The Washington Monument sinks an inch every year

Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard (executed wives of Henry VIII) were first cousins.

Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, also executed by Henry, was in her 70s when she died and it took over a dozen blows to separate her head from her body

Victor Lustig "sold" the Eiffel Tower to scrap dealers, by saying that the government wanted it out of the way. He made himself out as a city official and had many scrap iron dealers bid on the job to demolish it. He chose one of the suckers (Andre Poisson) and told him that he could have the job but he insinuated that he could only have the job if Andre gave him some money. Andre payed the bribe, cause that's how things get done in the government. Victor then tried to do the same scam again, but got caught.
He fled to America and started selling a "money duplicating machine", where if you put a bill in one end, turned some dials and wait 6 hours the machine would then spit out 2 identical bills.
He got arrested for counterfiting (not because of the machine, he actually started printing his own money), but excaped only to be caught again and sent to Alcatraz where he died of pneumonia.

Wow, talk about useless info..

Napoleon used to demonstrate his wealth by serving dinner on aluminium plates - it was so expensive to purify that it was more precious than gold.

John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, would go skinny dipping in the Potomac River every morning. One time a reporter forced him to grant her an interview. She sat on top of his clothes that were lying on the riverbank so that he couldn't get away from her or even get out of the water until he answered all of her questions.

a dozen blows just to get head separation! talk about a sore neck... eeeeeh!

About buying land on the moon- I was going to get some! I knew it couldn't possibly be true, legally binding or at all useful, but it was bizarre and amusing.
Executions- Mary, Queen of Scots was executed, not at the wishes of Elizabeth I, but those of her counsellors. She had lost most of her hair, and so when the headsman held up her head by the 'hair' it fell out of its wig and rolled away.
Does anyone else find this image really funny?
(Sorry I stole your post.)

Actually the guy who is selling moon pieces apparently also demands rent from NASA for the different stuff they have put up there.

Do they pay?
Somewhere in wherever it is NASA's based has a road called Skywalker Drive.