The longest novel in the world as recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records is A
la recherché du temps perdu by Marcel Proust.
Within its pages are an estimated 9,609,000 characters, including spaces.
When classical music is played in restaurants, people spend more money on wine.
At his execution, Louis XVI was too fat to fit into the guillotine.
In 2012, the fifth-oldest tree in the world was burned down by a crystal-meth addict.
The smell of freshly cut grass is a plant distress call.
When you cut the grass it is actually crying out for help.
The second episode of the The Muppets was called 'Sex and Violence'.
Diamonds can actually boil!
They have an absolute boiling point of 4300 degrees Kelvin assuming particular atmospheric
conditions are met.
There are more than 915,000,000 ways to combine six standard Lego bricks.
The Boy Scouts' motto 'Be prepared' was originally followed by 'to die for your country'.
By 2019, there will be more Lego figures on Earth than people.
Scientists estimate that between 1986 and 2007, humankind has gathered 295 exabytes
of data in digital storage around the world.
That's 295 million terabytes!
But that's still less than 1% of the total information stored in human DNA.
The Royal Navy uses blasts of Britney Spears's 'Oops!
. . . I Did It Again' to scare off Somali pirates.
For Irish based surnames, the prefix “Mac” means “son of”, and the prefix “O'”
means “grandson of” or “descendant of”.
Rain following a dry spell is often accompanied by a pleasant smell that permeates the air.
That smell is known as “petrichor”, and it's believed to be caused by organic compounds.
The appropriate response to 'How are you?' in Luxembourgish is 'Tip-Top'.
Our modern word “ostracize”, which means to “exclude (someone) from a society or
group” according to the Oxford Dictionary, comes from the Ancient Greek practice of ostracism,
where Athenians could force another of their number into an “honorable exile” after
a majority vote.
This was often used by political rivals to literally remove their opponents from the
scene.