Here are 10 of my favourite facts to get you over awkward moments at dinner parties. I think the tradition is to preface them with ‘I read somewhere that…’
- The average time for which a share is now held is 11 seconds
- Florence Nightingale invented the pie chart, as a novel way to depict Crimean war statistics
- The M6 Toll is officially the most romantic road in Britain, being surfaced with 2.5m recycled Mills and Boons
- The dates 5-14 October 1582 do not exist due to the harmonisation of the Julian and Gregorian calendars
- Your own saliva will remove your own bloodstains
- You can solve Fermat’s Last Theorem by returning all the values to zero (OK, that one is mine, and of course 0 isn’t a positive integer…)
- Between them, China and Japan own 44% of US government debt
- The purchase of pay-per-view ‘adult films’ comprises 70% of hotel group in-room revenue
- The best way to get a third of the population to sneeze is to get them to look directly into the sun
- Jet is fossilised monkey-puzzle tree
