Random Fact Friday

For your amusement here are some random facts that I have in the dustier corners of my brain. Naturally I have no idea if they are true, I just know that I know these things, and now, so do you.

* Sweden consumes more ketchup per head than any other country in the world.

* Humans share 98% of the same DNA as a banana. I know some people who possibly share more than this.

* Banana fact two - you can't take bananas onto a boat in the Whitsunday islands as they are considered horribly unlucky.

*France is the only country where you can legally marry a dead person. (Why? why would you - and who?)

* A pregnant woman can take a pee anywhere she wants in Britain. The rest of us must cross our legs or risk arrest.

* You can pay approx £1.20 for a bottle of Evian water Evian is NAIVE spelt backwards...

* You would have to count from one to a thousand before you have reach a number with the letter A in it.

* More people are killed by coconuts than sharks. In Thailand, if you are hit by a coconut people won't help you because it is said that only evil people are hit by coconuts.

* It is against the law to die inside the houses of parliament. Would you care though as you would, presumably, be dead?

* Ants can survive for two weeks underwater

* There is a law in Chicago that forbids you from eating in a place that is on fire. How good is the food there that people stay eating when the place is burning up around them?

I know that there is other totally random stuff jumbled up in the odd sock drawer that is my head but I can't sort them out right now. This is my token effort at a spring clean for my brain!

Weird and pointless stuff.

My sister has just rung me to say that if the population of China were to walk past you one at a time, the line would NEVER END because the population is expanding so rapidly. This is a random fact. I'm not sure what I am supposed to do with it? Should I be happy to know this? horrified? Impressed that the chinese babies can apparently learn to walk so quickly?

Who works this stuff out though, and why? Seriously, could they not be doing better things with their time - like solving world poverty, working out how to make ladder proof tights or how to stop cats from succumbing to their inner thief?

So, having inflicted you with my sister's random factoid, here are some other odd things that I know and which are of no use to man or beast:

* The Spanish mined so much silver in Bolivia in the 19th century that they could have built a bridge of silver between South America and Spain and walked over it carrying more silver and probably wearing silver clothes.

* A chameleon's tongue is twice the length of its body.

* Carnivorous animals won't eat another animal that has been struck by lightning.

* The phrase 'rule of thumb' comes from an old english law that says you can't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

* Chimpanzees can recognise themselves in a mirror, but monkeys can't.

* Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

* Oscar Wilde's last words were "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do"

* Cockroaches can live for NINE DAYS after their head has been cut off.

There, that should do for now.