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

Months that begin on a Sunday, will always have a "Friday the 13th."

Months that begin on a Monday will always have a Saturday the 20th.

The thirteenth falls on a Friday marginally more often than on any other day of the week over the course of the 28 year cycle.

Some people will always feel compelled to change the subject line.

Ninjas, historically, didn't wear black. For nighttime operations, they wore dark blues, dark grays, and browns.

Although most people believe Napoleon was short, he was actually five feet six inches tall, an average height for a Frenchman in those days.

Potatoes weren't originally grown as food. They were grown for use as ornamental decorations

Just 20% of the Sahara is covered with sand. The rest is rocky.

Hitler was not a vegetarian, as it is widely claimed. He ate sausages for breakfast every day

There's no mention of Adam and Eve eating an apple in the Bible.

Statistically speaking, the job of pizza delivery driver is a more dangerous job than that of fire fighting.

Nero didn't fiddle while Rome burned. The fiddle hadn't been invented yet.

The word 'and' appears 46,277 times in the bible.

The apple was chosen as the "forbidden fruit" because it's colorful and juicy and delicious.

It was centuries before people realized the tomato /wasn't/ poisonous.

Tomatoes do not grow on trees, of knowledge or otherwise.

Tomatoes were first introduced into Italy around 1600. I'll bet the spaghetti tasted pretty dry before that ...

I think, to make this thread more coherent instead of a random bunch of unconnected facts, there should be rule that each new post should be linked in some way to the post that precedes it.

The previous post was about tomatoes, and I want to make a post about spiders.

Spiders probably eat tomatoes sometimes. Anyway the words "spider" and "spinster" both have a common root in English.

[That's a decent idea, but if I come across some new bizarre bit of trivia, I'm going to share it whether it fits continuity or not.]

Same here. Maybe another thread could be started? Would be an interesting challenge.

The word "quiz" was invented after Richard Daly set himself the 'interesting challenge' of making a nonsense word known throughout the city of Dublin within 48 hrs.

Quiz's is an acceptable plural of quiz because the apostrophe indicates that the 'z' and 'e' are missing.

Quiz rhymes with whiz...


The desire to micturate begins when the volume in the bladder (human) reaches around 400ml or just over one standard American can of pisswater.

I don't know what micturate means, but I think I can guess from the context.

In the UK if you want to change your surname all you have to do is let it be known that henceforth your new surname is whatever it is. However, you're stuck with your first name. I suppose you can change it through deed poll.

[Could start a new thread, but what would we call it? Useless facts linked together? Hmm, maybe. But how would you decide which thread to post your posts to?]

The very first American soldier to set foot in Britain in WW2 was Private First Class Herbert H. Hencke.... a son of German immigrant parents...

Some guy, in an effort to be the smartest person, read the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica. The most useless fact he could recall is that a typical female oppossum has thirteen nipples. Twelve in a circle and one in the middle.

So that's ... lessee, about six useless facts, for the price of one.

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At the risk of posting something useful, that's an urban myth. According to Michael Quinion of Worldwide Words (http://www.worldwidewords.org), the word has been around since the late 1700s, but nobody knows its origin. The story of it being invented by Mr Daly is, in his opinion, best viewed through the bottom of a glass of something Irish.