132 Fun Facts About Funny

In 1932 the Australian military went to war against which animal, and lost?

Emus beat the army: soldiers with Lewis guns were sent to cull the birds in Western Australia's Wheatbelt, but the flocks scattered and the commander compared them to tanks.

Which Mexican general lost a leg fighting the French in the 1838 Pastry War and had it buried with military honours?

Santa Anna lost Veracruz to the French yet came home a hero, and the wound helped him win back the standing he had lost over Texas.

Which tiny country abolished its army in 1868, two years after its soldiers saw no fighting in the Austro-Prussian War?

Liechtenstein's contingent only guarded the Stelvio Pass for Austria, and once its parliament stopped paying for the soldiers, Prince Johann II abolished the army.

Tsar Peter the Great of Russia introduced a tax on what?

Beards had to be paid for because Peter wanted Russians to look like Western Europeans; payers carried a copper token as proof, and the tax lasted until 1772.

In January 1943 the US government briefly banned the sale of what?

Sliced bread went off sale in January 1943 as a wartime saving, but the ban proved unpopular, drawing a reader's letter to the New York Times, and was lifted that March.

Astronomer Tycho Brahe lost part of his nose in a duel sparked by an argument over what?

Tycho argued over who was the better mathematician, or over a formula in some tellings, and tests reported in 2012 showed his famous 'silver' nose was really brass.

The first man across the line in the 1904 Olympic marathon was disqualified because he had done what?

Fred Lorz hitched a ride in a car after cramps struck at nine miles, waving to runners as he passed; he called it a joke, but officials banned him.

Trainers kept 1904 Olympic marathon winner Thomas Hicks going with brandy, egg whites and what?

Strychnine, a rat poison that acts as a stimulant in small doses, kept him moving, but he hallucinated and his trainers had to carry him over the line.

Which sport did Alan Shepard play on the Moon during Apollo 14?

Golf on the Moon took a Wilson six-iron head fitted to a sample-scoop handle; swinging one-handed in a stiff suit, Shepard hit two balls in 1971.

The World Bog Snorkelling Championship is held each August in which country?

Wales hosts it in a peat bog near Llanwrtyd Wells: two lengths of a trench using flipper power only, since conventional strokes are banned.

The sport of wife-carrying, which has its own world championship, began in which country?

Finland's village of Sonkajärvi hosts the championship, which is said to recall 19th-century brigands who carried off women or heavy sacks.

Toe wrestling was invented at a Staffordshire pub in the 1970s by people who wanted what?

They wanted a sport Britain could dominate, yet a visitor from overseas took the title in only the contest's second year.

At the annual Cooper's Hill event in Gloucestershire, competitors hurl themselves down a steep hill chasing what?

A wheel of cheese, a 7-9lb Double Gloucester, races down a slope so steep the first person over the line wins it, though the cheese usually outruns everyone.

Which event was part of every Summer Olympics from 1900 to 1920?

Tug of war counted as Olympic athletics then, but the IOC dropped it after 1920 while trimming the programme, and it has never returned.

How did Eric 'the Eel' Moussambani win his 2000 Olympic swimming heat?

Both rivals were disqualified for false starts, so he swam alone and finished in 1:52.72, the slowest time in Olympic history, having taught himself in a hotel pool.

Why did cricket's last timeless Test end in a draw?

The visitors had to catch their ship home, so England walked off at 654 for 5, just 42 runs short of their 696 target.

An Olympic 'gold' medal is actually made mostly of which metal?

IOC rules require at least 92.5 percent silver plated with just 6 grams of gold, so its metal was worth around $494 in 2010.

Wombats are the only known animals to produce droppings of what shape?

Cubes are thought to stay put when wombats pile droppings on rocks and logs to mark territory; the study of how they form won a 2019 Ig Nobel Prize.

What do sea otters keep in the loose skin pouch under each foreleg?

Food and a favourite rock go in the pouches: the otter carries prey up from a dive, then cracks shells against the rock on its chest.

Mike, a Colorado chicken, became famous in 1945 for living 18 months after what happened to him?

He was beheaded by an axe that spared enough of his brain stem to keep him alive, and his hometown of Fruita, Colorado, later began a yearly festival for him.

When the first preserved platypus reached Europe in 1799, scientists suspected it was what?

A fake sewn together from other animals was the fear, since it had come via the Indian Ocean, where sailors were suspected of stitching hybrid creatures as pranks.

How often does a three-toed sloth climb down from its tree to use the toilet?

About once a week a three-toed sloth climbs down to relieve itself on the ground, a risky trip because it moves slowly there and predators can reach it.

What was the favourite drink of Wojtek, the bear drafted into the Polish Army in WWII?

Beer was his favourite, and Wojtek, enlisted with a name, rank and number so he could travel with the unit, is said to have carried shells at Monte Cassino.

What kind of animal was Stubbs, the long-serving honorary mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska?

A cat: Stubbs drew tourists to a town with no human mayor, lived to 20, and left one of his owners' kittens lined up as a possible successor.

In Switzerland it is illegal to keep just one of which pet?

Guinea pigs are social animals, so Swiss animal welfare law treats keeping one without a companion as harmful to its well-being.

The bird we call a turkey got its English name because of a mix-up with which other bird?

The name first referred to guineafowl, an African bird imported to Europe via Turkey; the French instead named the American bird after India.

Botanically speaking, which of these fruits counts as a berry?

Cucumber is a pepo, a firm-rinded type of berry, and by the same botanical rule bananas and tomatoes count as berries too.

The 'banana equivalent dose' is an informal unit used to explain what?

Radiation exposure from one banana's naturally radioactive potassium-40 is so tiny that safety experts use it to put small doses in perspective.

When William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781, what did he want to call it?

George's Star honoured his patron, King George III, but astronomers abroad balked, and Johann Bode's suggestion, Uranus, won out instead.

Physicist Andre Geim won a 2000 Ig Nobel Prize for which feat?

Levitating a frog with magnets earned him and Michael Berry that prize, and ten years later Geim won a real Nobel Prize in Physics for graphene.

The word 'muscle' comes from a Latin word meaning what?

Latin musculus means 'little mouse', a diminutive of mus; the Romans thought a flexing biceps looked like a mouse moving under the skin.

Point Nemo in the South Pacific is so remote that the nearest humans are sometimes who?

Astronauts on the space station can be the closest people to Point Nemo, and its remoteness is why falling satellites are steered into the waters around it.

On the 1965 Gemini 3 flight, what did John Young carry into orbit in his spacesuit pocket?

A corned beef sandwich, and NASA officials were unamused afterwards because floating crumbs could have damaged the spacecraft's systems.

Why are Kinder Surprise eggs banned in the United States?

A ban on toys in sweets is the reason: US food law treats sweets with embedded non-food objects as adulterated, so border officers seize the eggs.

Hawaiian pizza, topped with pineapple and ham, was invented in which country?

Canada is where Greek-born Sam Panopoulos first topped a pizza with pineapple, at his Chatham, Ontario restaurant in 1962, and Iceland's president later said he would ban it if he could.

The Caesar salad was invented in which city?

Tijuana, not Rome: Caesar Cardini ran a restaurant there for Americans escaping Prohibition, and his daughter said he improvised the salad from leftovers during a July 4 rush.

Fortune cookies served in Chinese restaurants most likely originated with immigrants from which country?

Japan is the likeliest origin: bakeries near Kyoto still hand-make similar fortune crackers, and Chinese-owned firms probably took over when Japanese-American bakers were interned in World War II.

Kopi luwak, one of the world's most expensive coffees, is made from beans that have been what?

Eaten and passed by a civet, the beans are gathered from its droppings, and investigations have found many civets caged and force-fed to supply 'wild' coffee.

The durian fruit is banned on Singapore's public transport for what reason?

Its smell is so strong that many hotels bar durians too, and Thai breeders have even developed nearly odourless varieties.

In which city did pharmacist John Pemberton launch Coca-Cola in 1886 as a temperance 'brain tonic'?

Atlanta had just gone dry, so Pemberton turned his coca-wine tonic into a non-alcoholic syrup of coca leaves, kola nuts and sugar.

Which toy was first sold in the 1930s as a wallpaper cleaner?

Play-Doh began as a putty for cleaning wallpaper, and it became a toy after teachers found children loved modelling with it.

The Slinky was invented after a naval engineer watched what happen?

Richard James watched a torsion spring fall off a shelf and 'walk' end over end in 1943, spent a year finding the right steel, and sold the first 400 Slinkys in 90 minutes at Gimbels in 1945.

The Frisbee got its name from a Connecticut company that made what?

Pies from the Frisbie Pie Company came in tins that New England college students tossed for fun, so Wham-O renamed its Pluto Platter after them.

Which video game company was founded in 1889 to make playing cards?

Nintendo made hanafuda cards in Kyoto, and printing Disney characters on its cards later helped turn a gambler's tool into a family product.

The world's first webcam, set up at Cambridge University in 1991, was pointed at what?

A coffee pot: researchers put a camera on it so they could check it wasn't empty before walking over, and once online it became one of the early web's most famous sights.

What was the first item ever sold on eBay?

A broken laser pointer was the first sale on AuctionWeb, Pierre Omidyar's 1995 side project, and the tale that he built it to trade Pez dispensers was mostly publicity.

Amazon was founded in 1994 under which original name?

Cadabra was the name Bezos incorporated in July 1994, but he renamed the online bookstore Amazon after a lawyer misheard it as 'cadaver'.

The Guinness Book of Records was created in the 1950s to settle what?

Arguments in pubs were the target: after a row over Europe's fastest game bird that no reference book could settle, Guinness boss Sir Hugh Beaver commissioned the book.

Which mobile phone giant began in 1865 as a riverside paper mill?

Nokia took its name from the riverside town of Fredrik Idestam's second mill, made rubber boots and cables before phones, and later sold its phone business to Microsoft.

Which electronics giant began in 1938 as a small business trading in dried fish?

Samsung, started by Lee Byung-chul, traded dried fish and produce; in 1993, fed up with shoddy goods, his son Lee Kun-hee told staff to change everything except their wives and kids.

What did Ferruccio Lamborghini manufacture before he built supercars to rival Ferrari?

Tractors built from surplus military vehicles came first, and partly because his own Ferrari gave him mechanical trouble, Ferruccio started a rival sports-car company.

In 1947 operators of the Harvard Mark II computer traced a fault to what, and taped it into the logbook?

A moth was taped into the log on 9 September 1947 as the 'First actual case of bug being found', though engineers had called glitches bugs since Thomas Edison's day.

The first YouTube video, from April 2005, shows Jawed Karim standing in front of what?

Elephants at a zoo in San Diego stand behind Jawed Karim as he admires their 'really, really, really long' trunks, and the zoo later said it was honoured to host YouTube's first video.

The word 'spam' for junk email comes from a sketch by which comedy troupe?

Monty Python's 1970 café sketch has nearly every menu item containing Spam while a chorus of Vikings drowns out conversation by chanting the word, hence 'spam' for messages that crowd out everything else.

The word 'nerd' first appeared in print in 1950, in a children's book by which author?

Dr. Seuss put it in If I Ran the Zoo, where Gerald McGrew plans to collect 'a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too'.

'Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo' is famous for being what?

A grammatically correct English sentence, it plays on Buffalo the city, the animal and the verb, and it can be stretched to any number of buffalos.

The 85-letter place name Taumatawhakatangihanga... belongs to a hill in which country?

The Māori name, on a hill in New Zealand's Hawke's Bay, commemorates the explorer Tamatea playing his flute for a loved one; 92- and 105-letter versions also exist.

The 58-character name Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch was invented as what?

A publicity stunt for the railway station is the usual account, with syllables said to have been added to lure tourists.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis was coined in 1935 by the president of which kind of group?

A puzzle-solvers' league: Everett Smith, president of the National Puzzlers' League, coined it intending to create the longest word in English.

Which book won a bet to use only 50 different words?

Green Eggs and Ham came from a $50 bet by the author's publisher, and though readers hunt for hidden meanings, the author said the bet was its only meaning.

What single item did William Shakespeare leave his wife Anne Hathaway in his will?

His second-best bed has been read as a slight, but wills of the day commonly ranked goods as 'best' and 'second-best', so the wording was ordinary.

Bir Tawil, a patch of desert between Egypt and Sudan, is unusual because it is what?

Bir Tawil is claimed by neither country because each side's preferred border hands it to the other; claiming it would mean giving up the far more valuable Halaib Triangle.

In 2019 Bielefeld, Germany, offered one million euros for incontrovertible proof of what?

That the city is fictional is the joke of a 1994 Usenet post that even Angela Merkel alluded to, and the city's marketing team offered the prize to play along.

The New Mexico town of Truth or Consequences renamed itself in 1950 after what?

A radio quiz show host, Ralph Edwards, went looking for a town that would take his show's name, and Hot Springs, New Mexico, took the name in 1950.

What happened to Agloe, New York, a town mapmakers invented to catch copycats?

A business there took the name, so when the mapmakers accused Rand McNally of copying, the rival could argue that Agloe now existed.

Mister Splashy Pants, the name that won a 2007 Greenpeace online naming poll, belonged to what?

A humpback whale tagged for Greenpeace's Great Whale Trail; after one voter gamed the poll, the extra votes were thrown out, yet the joke name still won easily.

In 2004, Cookie Monster revealed that before he ate his first cookie, his name was what?

Sid was his name before that first cookie, he revealed, and later Sesame Street had him teach children that cookies are 'a sometimes food'.

What is Barbie's full name?

Barbara Millicent Roberts is her full name, and the doll was inspired by Barbara, daughter of Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler.

When Mr. Potato Head launched in 1952, what did children have to supply themselves?

The kit was just pushpin parts; complaints about rotting vegetables and new safety rules led to a plastic potato body in 1964.

The mechanical shark in Jaws was nicknamed Bruce by the crew, after whom?

Steven Spielberg's lawyer lent his first name to the mechanical sharks, which malfunctioned so often that Spielberg kept the shark hidden for much of the film.

Which sweet's maker turned down a starring role in ET the Extra-Terrestrial, letting Reese's Pieces take it?

M&M's maker Mars said no, so Hershey's Reese's Pieces lured the alien instead, and their sales soared once the film came out.

When Elvis Presley met President Nixon at the White House in 1970, what did he ask for?

A federal narcotics badge was his aim: Elvis wrote offering to help fight drug culture, since hippies did not see him as the enemy.

Before his soft-spoken TV painting career, Bob Ross spent 20 years in what job?

An Air Force sergeant stationed in Alaska, Ross took his first painting class at a USO club there and began selling Alaskan landscapes before he ever reached TV.

John Cage's 1952 composition 4′33″ instructs the performers to do what for its three movements?

Not play their instruments is the instruction for all three movements, because Cage held that all sound is music, so the room's ambient noise becomes the piece.

Until a 2015 court ruling, a music publisher was collecting licence fees on which song?

Happy Birthday to You earned Warner/Chappell royalties for decades until a 2015 federal ruling found that its copyright covered only a piano arrangement, not the song itself.

Which city's 1518 'dancing plague' saw dozens of people dance for days on end?

A woman usually named as Frau Troffea started it in a Strasbourg street, and instead of stopping the dancing, the authorities first encouraged more of it.

Which bath toys spilled into the Pacific from a container ship in 1992 and famously washed up worldwide?

Rubber ducks, along with beavers, turtles and frogs, rode the waves to Alaska and beyond, and oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer used where they landed to map ocean currents.

Oulu's annual Air Guitar Championships state their purpose as promoting what?

World peace is the official aim: the organisers say wars would end, climate change stop and all bad things vanish if everyone played air guitar.

A 1919 wave that tore through Boston's North End at 35 mph was made of what?

A 50-foot tank holding about 2.3 million gallons of molasses burst on 15 January 1919, killing 21 people; residents claimed the North End smelled sweet on hot days for decades afterwards.

In 1962 a girls' school in Tanganyika had to close because of an outbreak of what?

Laughing fits spread from three girls through the school and on to nearby villages, and closing the school only carried the outbreak further.

Britain fought Spain from 1739 in a war named after which body part of a sea captain?

Captain Robert Jenkins claimed Spanish coastguards had sliced off his ear when they boarded his ship in 1731; MPs used the tale to whip up war fever, and the 1739 conflict became the War of Jenkins' Ear.

Which secondary title did San Francisco's self-declared Emperor Norton add to his reign?

Joshua Norton proclaimed himself 'Emperor of these United States' in 1859 after going bankrupt and later styled himself 'Protector of Mexico' as well; San Franciscans played along until his death in 1880.

In 1970, Oregon highway officials tried to clear a dead sperm whale from a beach at Florence using what?

Dynamite did the job far too well, hurling whale flesh up to 240 metres away. Officials had assumed the pieces would be small enough for scavengers to eat.

Which mythical beast, a Scottish heraldic symbol since the twelfth century, is the national animal of Scotland?

Unicorn was a pointed choice: heraldry cast it as the natural enemy of the lion, the symbol England's royals had already adopted. A pair of them held up the old Scottish royal arms.

A 1957 BBC April Fools' report on Panorama showed a Swiss family happily harvesting which food from trees?

Spaghetti was still little known in 1950s Britain, so a number of viewers rang the BBC for advice on growing their own trees. The spoof credited a mild winter and the vanishing 'spaghetti weevil'.

What did Melbourne name in memory of Harold Holt, the Australian prime minister who vanished in the surf in 1967?

A swimming pool in Glen Iris, his own patch as a local MP, became the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre. It was being rebuilt when he apparently drowned, so the council changed the planned name.

In the 1893 case Nix v. Hedden, the US Supreme Court ruled that which fruit should be taxed as a vegetable?

Tomato importers had sued to escape a tariff that covered vegetables but not fruit. The justices accepted the botany and still ruled against them, because everyday speech treats it as a vegetable.

Which Beatles ballad began life with the working title 'Scrambled Eggs' because Paul McCartney had no lyrics yet?

Yesterday came to McCartney as a complete melody in a dream, and he hurried to a piano so he would not forget it. The stand-in verse ran 'Scrambled eggs, oh my baby how I love your legs'.

Which Australian marsupial has fingerprints that even an electron microscope can struggle to tell from a human's?

Koala prints look like a climber's adaptation, since animals that climb or grasp wet objects tend to evolve them. Gorillas and chimpanzees have their own unique prints too.

Which fairground treat was co-invented in 1897 by a dentist, William Morrison?

Cotton candy reached a wide audience at the 1904 World's Fair, where Morrison and candy maker John Wharton sold 68,655 boxes. Their machine spins melted sugar through tiny holes.

Fredric Baur asked for some of his ashes to be buried in which famous piece of packaging he had designed?

A Pringles can was his own request, so after he died in 2008 his children placed part of his remains in an Original flavour tube in his grave. He had filed the patent for the packaging in 1966.

Which sudden pain may have been first recorded in the 1770s, when a naval officer in Sicily spat out his ice cream?

Brain freeze, or a cold-stimulus headache, strikes when something icy touches the roof of the mouth. Patrick Brydone recorded that the officer spat out his big bite 'with a horrid oath'.

Which soft drink was created in wartime Germany when a trade embargo cut off the ingredients for Coca-Cola?

Fanta was first made from what its creator called the 'leftovers of leftovers', including whey and apple pomace. A salesman blurted out the name when the team was told to use their 'Fantasie', or imagination.

Which nautical word did Alexander Graham Bell suggest for answering his newly invented telephone?

Ahoy lost out to 'hello', the word Thomas Edison suggested instead. Bell's choice began as a call for hailing vessels at sea and survives today mostly in playful pirate talk.

Which scientist turned down the presidency of Israel in 1952, writing that he was 'deeply moved' by the offer?

Albert Einstein was approached by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion after President Chaim Weizmann died. The post was largely ceremonial, and he wrote that he was 'saddened and ashamed' to turn it down.

Which Founding Father wrote an essay urging scientists to make flatulence as agreeable as perfume?

Benjamin Franklin wrote it as ambassador to France, answering a call for papers from the Royal Academy of Brussels that he found pretentious. The piece is often reprinted as 'Fart Proudly'.

Which Romantic poet kept a tame bear as a Cambridge student because his college's rules only banned dogs?

Lord Byron resented the ban on his beloved dog Boatswain, and the statutes said nothing about bears. He even suggested applying for a college fellowship for the animal.

Which sea creature has three hearts, one of which stops beating whenever the animal swims rather than crawls?

Octopus hearts come as one main pump plus two that serve the gills, and the main one goes idle on the move. That is why the animal tires quickly and mostly prefers to crawl.

The village of Hell, where winter postcards joke that the place has frozen over, is in which European country?

Norway's Hell can drop to −25 °C in winter, so the joke writes itself. The name is innocent enough: it comes from the Old Norse 'hellir', meaning a cliff cave.

Marcel Duchamp's 1917 artwork Fountain was a porcelain example of which bathroom fixture, signed 'R. Mutt'?

A urinal sent in under a pseudonym split the board of New York's Society of Independent Artists, which hid it from view at its exhibition. Duchamp, a board member himself, resigned in protest.

Pac-Man was renamed for North America because vandals could easily alter one letter of which original title?

Puck Man came from 'paku paku taberu', a phrase for gobbling something up. The worry was that arcade cabinets would be defaced by turning the P into an F.

British wartime propaganda credited which vegetable for pilots' night vision, to keep radar secret?

Carrots took the credit for night-fighting successes that really came from the introduction of radar. The myth that they help people see in the dark has lingered ever since.

British spies hid maps, compasses and real money for wartime prisoners inside which board game?

Monopoly sets were doctored in 1941 by Waddington, the game's licensed British maker, at the request of British military intelligence. Fake charities then delivered them to the prison camps.

What colour was Oscar the Grouch during the first season of Sesame Street, before a visit to Swamp Mushy Muddy?

Orange fur lasted only that debut run. The programme explained the switch to green with the swampy trip, and green has been his permanent colour ever since.

Whose performer in The Wizard of Oz earned $125 a week, more than many castmates and the average American?

Toto was played by Terry, a female Cairn terrier who spent two weeks recuperating at Judy Garland's home after an on-set injury. Garland offered to buy her, but the trainer refused to sell.

Which snack began at a Disneyland restaurant in the early 1960s, when staff cut up and fried surplus tortillas?

Doritos take their name from the Spanish 'doradito', meaning little golden thing. In 1966 they became the first tortilla chip sold nationally in the United States.

Which snack is named after Ignacio Anaya, a maître d' who improvised it in 1943 when he could not find the cook?

Nachos took the nickname of their creator, who topped fried tortilla triangles with cheese and jalapeño peppers for a group of American officers' wives. His restaurant stood in Piedras Negras, across the border from Texas.

Which frozen treat did Frank Epperson claim to have invented aged eleven by leaving a drink outside overnight?

Popsicle boxes still tell the tale: in 1905 he left lemonade soda with a mixing stick in it on the porch on a cold night. He patented the idea in the 1920s, first calling it the 'Epsicle'.

Which Southern rock band's name mocks a gym teacher who strictly enforced a ban on boys' long hair?

Lynyrd Skynyrd borrowed the name of Leonard Skinner, a P.E. teacher at Robert E. Lee High School. The group had been The One Percent until hecklers said that was how much talent it had.

Which pop group had to negotiate for its own name with a Swedish fish-canning company that was already using it?

ABBA began as the manager's play on words, since Abba was a well-known fish-canning firm at home. The canners agreed, one singer recalled, as long as the group did not make them feel ashamed.

Which animal swam hissing towards President Jimmy Carter's fishing boat in 1979, prompting 'killer' headlines?

A rabbit, specifically a swamp rabbit, came at him with teeth flashing and nostrils flared, so he fended it off with his paddle. Carter guessed it was fleeing a predator.

Which pet of President Andrew Jackson was, the story goes, removed from his funeral for causing a disturbance?

A parrot named Poll, bought for his wife Rachel in 1827, is said to have shouted profanities until it was carried out. The anecdote has never been authenticated.

William Windsor, a British Army lance corporal demoted for failing to keep in step on parade, was what animal?

A goat known as Billy, he also tried to headbutt a drummer at a parade in Cyprus honouring the Queen. Charged with 'lack of decorum', he spent three months of 2006 reduced to the rank of fusilier.

Sir Nils Olav, a resident of Edinburgh Zoo who received a knighthood in 2008, is what kind of animal?

A penguin holds the title: the name and its military ranks have passed from bird to bird at the zoo since 1972. A real monarch approved the knighthood, with a citation calling him 'in every way qualified'.

In an ancient account, the Greek playwright Aeschylus was killed when an eagle dropped what on his head?

A tortoise, wrote Valerius Maximus: the eagle supposedly took the playwright's head for a stone on which to crack the shell. He died near Gela in Sicily around 456 BC.

In one ancient account, the philosopher Chrysippus died of laughter after watching a donkey eat which fruit?

Figs set him off: he reportedly cried 'Now give the donkey a drink of pure wine to wash down the figs' and collapsed. Another account says undiluted wine at a feast finished him instead.

Popular legend says Sweden's King Adolf Frederick died in 1771 after a feast that ended with 14 helpings of what?

Semla buns served in hot milk, a dessert called hetvägg, supposedly followed lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, kippers and champagne. Modern writers consider the tale propaganda.

A chronicler blamed the death of England's King Henry I on a 'surfeit' of which fish?

Lampreys got the blame from Henry of Huntingdon, who wrote that the king ignored his physician and fell ill on a hunting trip in 1135. Historians think it improbable that they killed him.

In which fish does the male carry up to 1,500 eggs in a brood pouch and then give birth to the young?

Seahorse fathers carry the eggs for 9 to 45 days, then expel the fry with muscular contractions, typically at night. By morning the male is ready for the next batch.

Butterflies check whether a leaf is fit for laying eggs by tasting it with sensors on which part of the body?

Their feet, or tarsi, carry chemoreceptors that work only on contact. By standing on a leaf, a female can tell whether her offspring will be able to feed on it.

Which planet spins so slowly, and backwards, that one of its days lasts longer than one of its years?

Venus needs 243 Earth days to turn once on its axis but only 224.7 to circle the Sun. It also rotates clockwise, the opposite way to most planets.

The first basketball hoops, nailed to a gym balcony by James Naismith, were baskets meant for which fruit?

Peaches gave Naismith his targets, bottoms and all: after every score a janitor had to fetch a ladder and retrieve the ball. Only after a while were the bottoms removed.

In an old Yorkshire endurance contest, where exactly do contestants keep two live ferrets for as long as they can bear?

In their trousers, tied at the ankles and belted tight, hence the name ferret-legging. The record leapt from 40 seconds in 1972 to more than five hours in 1977, set by a man who played darts despite two large bites.

Which punctuation mark, proposed in 1962 by Martin Speckter, fuses a question mark with an exclamation mark?

Interrobang joins 'interro', as in interrogation, to 'bang', printers' jargon for the exclamation mark. It closes a question asked in an excited manner; the other three names were rejected.

Which French artist's cut-out Le Bateau hung upside down at New York's Museum of Modern Art for 47 days?

Henri Matisse made the cut-out in his final years, and in 1961 nobody on the staff spotted the mistake. A stockbroker, Genevieve Habert, finally noticed and told a guard, then informed The New York Times.

The crew of Gemini 6A played 'Jingle Bells' on small bells and which other instrument, the first played in space?

A harmonica, an eight-note Hohner 'Little Lady', followed a deadpan report of a mystery object in polar orbit heading from north to south. The Smithsonian keeps the pair on display.

Defenestration, a word coined around a 1618 incident at Prague Castle, means throwing someone out of what?

A window at Prague Castle gave the word its meaning, and the 1618 incident there became the spark that started the Thirty Years' War. The term comes from the Neo-Latin 'de fenestra'.

Which garment is named after the nineteenth-century French acrobat who made it famous?

Leotard honours Jules Léotard, an acrobatic performer who lived only from 1838 to 1870. The unitard, a later variation, extends the same idea down to cover the legs.

What does the number in the name of the household spray WD-40 record about how the product was created?

Its 40th formula was the one that worked, and WD stands for water displacement. The spray was first designed to protect the outer skin of the Atlas missile from rust and corrosion.

Which toy did NASA engineer Lonnie Johnson invent after an experiment shot water across his bathroom?

Super Soaker prototypes combined PVC pipe, acrylic glass and an empty plastic soda bottle. Pumped air pressure gave the finished gun far more power and range than an ordinary squirt pistol.

What fell from the sky for several minutes near Olympia Springs in Bath County, Kentucky, in March 1876?

Chunks of red meat covered a patch about 100 yards long, and guesses ran from lamb and deer to bear. Locals favoured the theory that vultures flying overhead had all thrown up at once.

Which Pacific nation earns royalties from websites worldwide because its internet country code is .tv?

Tuvalu began cashing in during 1998 on the fact that its code is also the abbreviation for television. By 2019 the royalties supplied 8.4% of government revenue.