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    The 23 Most Surprising Facts Learned From QI

    Hello, and welcome to QI, where fools rush in, and angels suddenly remember they have a prior engagement. Fact checkers can take it up with The BBC.

    1. Under extreme high pressure, diamonds can be made from peanut butter.

    2. Tintin is called Tantan in Japanese because Tintin is pronounced ‘Chin chin’ and means penis.

    3. People in Victorian Britain who couldn’t afford chimney sweeps dropped live geese down their chimneys instead.

    4. When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, one of the suspects was Picasso.

    5. The Ancient Greeks claimed the sky was bronze as they had no word for blue.

    6. The Queen is the legal owner of one-sixth of the Earth’s land surface.

    7. The shortest war ever fought was between Britain and Zanzibar on August 27, 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.

    8. Harry Houdini could pick up pins with his eyelashes and thread a needle with his toes.

    9. Thomas Edison’s last breath is held in a vial at the Henry Ford museum in Detroit.

    10. The word ‘time’ is the most commonly used noun in English.

    11. One in ten European babies is conceived in an IKEA bed.

    12. The human heart pumps enough blood in a lifetime to fill three supertankers.

    13. Jimmy Carter once sent a jacket to the cleaner’s with the nuclear detonation codes still in the pocket.

    14. After two weeks of wear, a pair of jeans will have grown a 1,000-strong colony of bacteria on the front, 1,500-2,500 on the back and 10,000 on the crotch.

    15. In 1811, nearly a quarter of all the women in Britain were named Mary.

    16. In his first year at Harrow, Winston Churchill was bottom of the whole school.

    17. The average person walks the equivalent of three times around the world in a lifetime.

    18. The American secret service tried to spike Hitler’s carrots with female hormones to change him into a woman.

    19. Manchester United is the most hated brand in Britain and the seventh most hated in the world.

    20. The French mathematician Descartes had a theory that monkeys and apes were able to talk – but kept quiet in case they were asked to do any work.

    21. Ants can survive in a microwave: they are small enough to dodge the rays.

    22. It costs more to make the cardboard box that Shredded Wheat comes in than it does to make the cereal itself.

    23. AND THIS!