Did you know

• Since 1982, a centenarian in the UK receives a telemessage from the Queen, but only on application from the Anniversaries Secretary at Buckingham Palace.
• Pliny the Elder and others believed that a giraffe was the result of a cross between a camel and a leopard.
• Women have been shown to be able to smell fear. Animals can smell the fear of each other but not of another species.
• Since Germany was only reunified in 1990, the Second World War only officially ended that year.
• The fruit fly has the largest sperm of any organism, with an uncoiled size of around 20 times its own length (5.8cm).
• The first creature to be sent into space was a fruit fly.
• Patriot, Gladiator, Dagger, Javelin, Archer, Arrow, White King, Excalibur and Merlin are all variants of parsnip.
• Challenger, Tornado, Typhoon, Mustang, Hurricane, Starquest, Buccaneer, Jetstream, Superstorm, and Cobra are all makes of caravan.
• Many riders competing in the 1904 Tour de France were disqualified because of receiving illegal tows from motor vehicles during night races. Maurice Garin was disqualified for taking a train through part of the route.
• The winner of the marathon at the 1904 Olympics, Frederick Lorz, went most of the way by car. Fourth place was awarded to a Cuban postman named Felix Carvajal, despite falling ill to apples he ate from an orchard en route. Len Tau, one of the first black African competitors in the Olympic Games, finished 9th despite being chased a mile or so off course by a large dog.
• Mr Chicken lived in 10 Downing Street, London, he was actually the last private resident.
• The commonest metal in the human body is calcium.
• Dermatoglyphics and uncopyrightable are the longest words in English language with no repetition of a letter.
• John Napier, inventor of the decimal point, kept a black cockerel which he used as a ploy to catch a thieving servant.
• The Queens handbag contains some money, a comb, a handkerchief, a small gold compact and some lipstick.
• The country with the highest suicide rate is Lithuania.
• Young Giant anteaters indulge in bluff charging. Their claws are sharp enough to eviscerate a human. Anteaters have sixteen-inch tongues, but mouths as narrow as a pencil. Dwarf anteaters are the size of squirrels and are a delicacy in parts of South America.
• Playwright Brendan Behan was asked to devise an advertising slogan for Guinness. He came up with Guinness makes you drunk. Guinness is good for you was actually written by Dorothy L. Sayers.
• The Ancient Greeks believed that otters killed crocodiles by running into their open mouths and eating their entrails.
• The Ancient Greeks used blackberries as a cure for piles.
• A centipede has between 30 and 382 legs. None has ever been found with 100 legs. It always has an even amount of legs. The highest amount of legs seen on a millipede is 710 on the South African millipede.
• In 1994, 35,000 Americans insured themselves against alien abduction.
• British bees died out after World War I – new bees were introduced from Mexico.
• During the Vietnam War, the US Military prevented wounded soldiers from swallowing their tongues by pinning the tongue to the cheek. More soldiers committed suicide after Vietnam than died in combat.
• Alsatians are forbidden from serving in the Spanish Army, as they have an IQ of 60, an IQ of 70 is the minimum required.
• The Goliath frog of Cameroon (the largest frog in the world) is mute.  The only frog to go ribbit is the Pacific Tree Frog, the species native to Hollywood and thus sampled for use on hundreds of movie soundtracks.
• Australia was discovered by the Chinese.
• Aborigines - the term comes from the Latin meaning from the origin and was first used to describe a pre-Roman people.
• The word Kangaroo means horse in the Begangi language of New South Wales.
• Tanzanias Hehe tribe got their name, because it was their war cry.
• In Swaziland, it is bad manners to shield your eyes with one hand and its forbidden to point at the kings hut. The speaker of the Swazi Parliament was sacked in June 2000, after he stole a cowpat belonging to the king, Mswati III.
• The word that takes up the most words to define in the Oxford English Dictionary is set.
• More people have been killed by ducks than by atomic bombs, as they were responsible for the 1918 outbreak of the Spanish flu.
• C. B. Fry held the world long jump record in 1913, could jump backwards on to a mantlepiece from a standing position without losing his balance, and after the first world war, was offered the throne of Albania, but turned it down.
• The phrase Survival of the fittest was coined by Herbert Spencer, inventor of the paper clip.
• The most dangerous creature in history is the mosquito, having killed half of the people on Earth.
• The first man to circumnavigate the globe was Juan Sebastián Elcano.
• Pigeons do not like going to the movies, because they see the world ten times slower than humans. To them, a film is a slow slide show. The pigeon is the bravest species of animal, having won more Dickin medals than any other. A kamikaze pigeon unit was set up to use pigeons in missiles.
• The ant has the largest brain in comparison to its body size.
• In Thailand, red ants are poured into open wounds, and they secrete an acid which acts as a pain killer and an antiseptic.
• The largest living thing on the Earth is the honey mushroom. The largest single honey mushroom covers more than 3.4 square miles.
• The Ancient Greeks claimed the sky was bronze as they had no word for blue.
• Urine used to be the third largest export from Newcastle in the UK after coal and beer – it was used as a dye.
• Crushed insects are used in food colouring, Red E120 (cochineal) is made from bugs. (the difference between bugs and beetles is that bugs have sucking mandibles).
• Blorenge, a town in Wales and Gorringe, a surname, both rhyme with the word orange, so that quashes that myth.
• The planet Mars is brown - Recent NASA images were tweaked using filters to make it appear red.
• There are no green mammals on the planet.
• The tongue of a woodpecker can extend to two thirds of its body-length, and has an ear at the end of it.
• Skin, the largest organ in the body, weighs 6 lbs and covers 18 square feet on average. A person will get through around 900 skins in a lifetime.
• Chang and Eng Bunker were Siamese twins. Chang was once convicted of general assault on a member of the audience during one of the twins variety acts. However, the judge in the case could not hold Eng in prison as well, so he set them both free.
• Statistically in the UK, one is more likely to be killed by an asteroid than by lightning.
• In World War II the American forces planned to equip Mexican free-tail bats with napalm-filled waistcoats so they could blow up Japanese towns. In testing, however, the wind changed and the bats instead flamed a US army base.
• Russian forces trained dogs with bombs attached to hide under tanks in order to blow them up.
• Technically there are only 46 states in the USA, because Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are commonwealths.
• During World War II, the only six Americans to lose their lives on home soil did so on a church picnic in Bly, Oregon. They were killed by Japanese fugos - balloon bombs.