60 Fun Facts About Obscure

Which San Francisco resident declared himself 'Emperor of these United States' in 1859?

He issued his own currency, was humoured by local businesses, and about 10,000 people are said to have attended his funeral in 1880.

Which Roman emperor won the throne in AD 193 at an auction held by the Praetorian Guard?

He reigned for about nine weeks before the Senate condemned him and he was executed in his palace.

Kongō Gumi, described as the world's oldest documented company, was founded in AD 578 to build what?

It stayed under family control for roughly 1,400 years before becoming a subsidiary of Takamatsu Construction in 2006.

Sir Nils Olav, colonel-in-chief of the Norwegian King's Guard, is what kind of animal?

He lives at Edinburgh Zoo and is inspected by the guard whenever it visits Scotland; the name has passed down through successive penguins since 1972.

The self-declared Principality of Sealand sits on what kind of structure in the North Sea?

Roughs Tower was built in international waters during World War II and has been occupied by the Bates family since 1967.

Canada and Denmark's decades-long 'Whisky War' was a friendly dispute over which Arctic land?

Visiting officials from each side traditionally left a bottle of their national spirit and a flag; the two countries agreed to split the island in 2022.

Ernest Vincent Wright's 1939 novel Gadsby famously avoids which letter for 50,000 words?

A work that deliberately avoids a letter is called a lipogram; Wright said the hardest part was dodging '-ed' past tenses.

Pope Urban VII, whose 1590 papacy is the shortest ever, issued the first known public ban on what?

He threatened excommunication for anyone chewing, smoking or sniffing it in or near a church, and died of malaria 13 days after his election.

Shizo Kanakuri's 54-year 'slowest marathon' began when he vanished mid-race at which Olympics?

Overcome by heat, he quietly went home to Japan without telling officials; Swedish television invited him back to cross the finish line in 1967.

The longest tennis match ever, at Wimbledon in 2010, ended with a fifth set of what score?

John Isner beat Nicolas Mahut after 11 hours and 5 minutes of play spread across three days.

Why was the last 'timeless' cricket Test, at Durban in 1939, abandoned as a draw after nine days?

Timeless Tests were meant to be played to a finish; 99 of them took place between 1877 and 1939 before the format was dropped.

Which company registered the world's first .com domain name, in March 1985?

The Massachusetts maker of Lisp machines is long gone, but symbolics.com was sold to a domain investor in 2009 and still resolves.

What did the first ever SMS text message, sent over the Vodafone network in December 1992, say?

Engineer Neil Papworth typed it on a computer to a colleague at a Christmas party, since phones of the time could not yet send texts.

Long before email, the @ symbol was used in Spanish and Portuguese as the abbreviation of what?

The arroba took its name from the Arabic for 'the quarter'; Ray Tomlinson borrowed the symbol for email addresses in 1971.

The distress signal SOS was first adopted as a national radio standard by which country, in 1905?

The letters were chosen only because the Morse rhythm was easy to recognise; 'save our souls' was a backronym invented later.

Which country's anthem uses lyrics from a 9th-12th century poem, the oldest of any anthem?

Kimigayo's words come from an anonymous Heian-period waka poem; the tune itself was only composed in the 1880s.

Along with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, which country's national anthem has no official lyrics?

The Marcha Real has had words written for it several times, including under Franco, but none was ever adopted by law.

Which country's national anthem is the only one still set to the melody of Britain's 'God Save the King'?

Oben am jungen Rhein was written in the 1850s, when the tune was also used by Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Switzerland.

The ngultrum is the currency of which country?

Its name means 'silver coin' in Dzongkha; the currency is pegged one-to-one to the Indian rupee.

Nukuʻalofa is the capital and largest city of which Pacific kingdom?

It sits on the north coast of Tongatapu; Captain James Cook recorded anchoring there in June 1777.

Which is the only US state capital with neither a McDonald's nor a Starbucks?

It is also the least populous state capital, with about 8,000 residents at the 2020 census.

Which US state was a de facto independent republic from 1777 to 1791, with its own coinage?

Its founding delegates also forbade adult slavery, and its laws stayed in force when it joined the Union as the 14th state.

Which two countries are 'doubly landlocked', surrounded entirely by other landlocked nations?

One of the pair sits on the Rhine but has no boat access, because the river is not navigable that far upstream.

Which country sits on the highest ground of Zealandia, an almost entirely submerged continental mass?

It broke away from Gondwana roughly 80 million years ago and may have been fully underwater by about 23 million years ago.

The oldest known Earthly material, 4.4-billion-year-old zircons, comes from the Jack Hills in which country?

The site is about 800 km north of Perth; graphite in one 4.1-billion-year-old zircon may even hold traces of early life.

Lake Hillier, famous for its bubble-gum pink water, lies on an island off which country?

It sits on Middle Island in the Recherche Archipelago and is separated from the ocean by only a narrow strip of dunes.

Which vertebrate has the longest known lifespan, estimated at anywhere from 272 to more than 500 years?

It does not reach sexual maturity until around 150 and its pregnancies may last 8 to 18 years.

Which microscopic eight-legged animals have survived direct exposure to the vacuum of outer space?

Also called water bears, they shrug off extreme heat, cold, pressure, radiation and years of dehydration.

The male platypus is one of very few venomous mammals. Where does it deliver its venom from?

The animal also hunts with electrolocation, sensing prey with its eyes, ears and nostrils shut.

Frigatebirds can stay aloft for weeks over the ocean. How do they manage to sleep?

Recorded mid-air sleep added up to less than an hour a night, usually while the birds were climbing on thermals.

The largest heart ever recorded, from a stranded blue whale, weighed roughly how much?

Blue whales reach around 30 metres and 200 tonnes, making them the largest animals known to have ever existed.

Which were the first living creatures launched into space, in 1947?

They rode a captured German V-2 rocket from New Mexico and were recovered alive; monkeys followed in 1949.

What was the first food and drink ever consumed on the Moon?

Buzz Aldrin, a Presbyterian elder, took communion privately in the lunar module shortly after landing, using a kit from his pastor.

When William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, what did he originally propose calling it?

The name honoured his patron King George III; the Nautical Almanac Office held out for it until 1850 before switching to Uranus.

Which element was first detected in the Sun's spectrum during an 1868 eclipse?

Its name comes from helios, the Greek for sun; it was finally isolated on Earth from a uranium ore in 1895.

Which metal, solid at room temperature, will melt into a puddle in the palm of your hand?

Its melting point of 29.76 °C is used as an official temperature reference; alloyed with indium and tin it stays liquid well below freezing.

In the 1671 legend, what did Ethiopian goatherd Kaldi notice that led to coffee's discovery?

The story does not appear before Antoine Faustus Nairon's 1671 treatise, so historians consider it almost certainly apocryphal.

The word 'ketchup' most likely comes from a Hokkien Chinese term for what?

Early English ketchups were made from mushrooms, walnuts and oysters; the tomato version came later.

By company lore, what did Lea and Perrins do with their first, overpowering batch?

Rediscovered after months of fermenting, the forgotten barrel had mellowed into the sauce that bears their name.

The Panama hat actually originates from which country?

The toquilla straw hats picked up their name because they were shipped through Panama; the weaving tradition is on UNESCO's heritage list.

Before the Statue of Liberty, Bartholdi pitched a giant robed woman with a torch as a lighthouse for what?

Egypt's khedive turned down the plan and built a conventional lighthouse at Port Said instead.

What job had Vincenzo Peruggia, who stole the Mona Lisa in 1911, held at the Louvre?

He had likely helped build the painting's protective glass case, so he knew how to open it in minutes.

Who bought The Red Vineyard, thought to be the only painting van Gogh sold in his lifetime?

She paid 400 francs at the 1890 Les XX exhibition in Brussels; van Gogh later admitted she should probably have got a friend's price.

How many times does Holmes say 'Elementary, my dear Watson' in Conan Doyle's sixty stories?

Holmes does call things 'elementary' and Watson 'my dear Watson', but the full phrase probably came from William Gillette's 1899 stage play.

In L. Frank Baum's original 1900 novel, what colour are Dorothy's magic shoes?

The 1939 film changed them to ruby slippers to show off the new Technicolor process.

Which philosopher declined the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, saying a writer should not become an institution?

He said he always refused official honours; the prize money was never collected.

For three years during World War II, Oscar statuettes were made of what?

After the war, winners were invited to swap their wartime figures for gold-plated metal ones.

Which team's name was engraved on the Stanley Cup as 'BQSTQN' in 1972?

The Cup carries several engraving errors that were never corrected, including 'Ilanders' for the 1981 champions.

Why does no complete broadcast recording of Super Bowl I (1967) survive?

CBS and NBC both aired the game with their own announcers; a two-inch tape found decades later is missing the halftime show and most of the third quarter.

The 1900 Paris Olympics remain the only Games to use live animals as targets. What animals?

The same Games included one-off events in ballooning, croquet, cricket, angling and an underwater swimming race.

Which country's islands stretch across all four hemispheres, north, south, east and west?

Its 32 atolls and one island straddle both the equator and the 180th meridian, and the International Date Line bulges east to keep the whole country on one day.

At just 21 square kilometres, which Pacific island is the world's third-smallest country?

Its interior was strip-mined for phosphate for about a century, and the reserves ran out in the 1990s.

Which country skipped Friday 30 December 2011 by jumping across the International Date Line?

Moving from UTC−11 to UTC+13 put the country on the same side of the line as its main trading partners, Australia and New Zealand.

The shortest recorded war in history, in 1896, was fought between Britain and which sultanate?

It lasted between 38 and 45 minutes; the sultan's side took about 500 casualties while one British sailor was injured.

Roughly how many emus had descended on Western Australia's Wheatbelt to prompt the 1932 'Emu War'?

Soldiers with Lewis guns were sent to cull them; the gun jammed after just 12 birds at one ambush of more than 1,000 emus.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi is the only person officially recognised by Japan as having survived what?

A Mitsubishi marine engineer, he was in Hiroshima on business and returned home to Nagasaki in time for the second bomb; at least 160 people were affected by both.

What was 'dord', which appeared on page 771 of Webster's New International Dictionary in 1934?

A slip reading 'D or d, cont./density' was read as one word; it took until 1939 for an editor to notice it had no etymology.

How did Frederick Lorz cover much of the 1904 Olympic marathon before being crowned with a wreath?

Alice Roosevelt was about to hand him the gold when spectators protested; the real winner, Thomas Hicks, was dosed with strychnine and brandy.

The word 'nerd' first appeared in print in which 1950 children's book?

Dr. Seuss's narrator wants to collect 'a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too'; the slang sense dates from 1951.

Under what name was the ghost ship Mary Celeste launched in Nova Scotia in 1861?

She was renamed after transferring to American registration in 1868 and was finally wrecked deliberately off Haiti in an 1885 insurance fraud.