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

Just remembered...

Coke (the drink) is the highest selling soft drink in every country in the world...

Except Scotland.

Maybe Cokes's just the big seller in all these countries because Irn Bru is hard to find outside of Scotland.

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Haven't read all the backlog, so you may have this one already but, Britain's shortest war was against Zanzibar in 1896 and lasted for thirty five minutes until the Zanzibar authorities realised the British had only come for a game of cricket.

Berwick-upon-Tweed was officially at war with Russia for 110 years. Because of its history of being shuffled about between England and Scotland, it got a separate mention in state documents. The Crimean War declaration included it but the Paris Treaty did not. In 1966 a Soviet official visited the town to make peace.

*at risk of giving out some useful info*

if your in a bind, you should be able to still pick up irn bru in the padonia station plaza in Cockeysville, MD USA...right on the corner of York and Padonia Roads....

sjees!

that really sounds very useful!

But totally useless if you live no where near MD USA, where ever that is.

sorry, state of maryland, united states of america.

Did you know that you are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider?

Elephants are the only animals that can't jump. (thankfully)

Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than for the US Treasury.

Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.

Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.

If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.

If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

Guinea pigs do in fact have tails. But they're useless.

well, otherwise it would have been useful information, no?

The same bit of information is true for hamsters.

I've been hit in the face with a champagne cork: ouch.

Elephants are also the only animals with four knees that bend the same way.

In ancient Egypt, Priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.

In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. (DON'T try this @ home!)

John Lennon's first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.

Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula" - and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size: "L.A."

Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.

Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.

Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.

Rhymes with orange. Quite a few words do depending on how you say orange. You could have strange, grange, range. Or fringe, binge, cringe ect. The only way you couldn't find a rhyme is if you insisted on rhyming both syllables.

And on that topic, how many syllables to words such as pail/pale, mail/male, tale/tail have? Visually they only have one, but most people pronounce them with two – pay-al, may-al, tay-al.

And PLEASE don't try it when you are driving

CR

I don't have any useless information at the moment

Andy, my preferred rhymes for orange are lozenge and scavenge .

How many syllables you put into words such as pail or mail depends on where you're from. Idealized pronunciation treats them as a single syllable, but it's not a rule anyone's obliged to comply with. In much of the southern USA, for example, some people seem happy to turn every phoneme into its own syllable.

By the way, have you thought about changing your name to Devil's advocaat instead?

And Bonobo Chimps - Though it's more often sexual politics

Bald men are more likely to get heart disease than their behaired peers. And replacement surgery doesn't reduce the chance.

Dante Gabriel Rosetti had a pet wombat called Topsy.