129 Fun Facts About Weird

Which animal produces cube-shaped droppings?

Wombat: its 2 cm cubes are thought to stay put on the rocks and logs where it marks territory, and the gut physics behind them won a 2019 Ig Nobel Prize.

Which animal has three hearts and blue blood?

Octopus: two hearts pump blood through the gills and one round the body, and that main heart stops while it swims, which is why octopuses mostly crawl.

In which animal does the female deposit eggs into the male, who then gives birth?

The seahorse: the male carries the eggs in his pouch, expels the young with muscular contractions and can take in a new brood soon after.

Which fruit is a berry in the botanical sense?

Banana: a botanical berry grows from a single ovary, while a strawberry's 'seeds' are really its true fruits, dotted over swollen flower tissue.

What turns flamingos pink as they grow up?

Carotenoids in their food: the pigments come from algae and small crustaceans, and zoos sometimes add colouring to captive birds' diets so their feathers don't fade.

Roughly how often does a three-toed sloth climb down to the ground to relieve itself?

About once a week: a three-toed sloth is nearly helpless on the ground, dragging itself along by its front claws, so each trip down leaves it exposed to predators.

Where are the taste receptors a female butterfly uses to test a leaf before laying eggs?

On its feet: she stands on the leaf to taste whether her caterpillars can eat it, which matters because some species lay eggs on only one type of plant.

What shape are a goat's pupils?

Horizontal slits: they give a grazing goat a wide panoramic view for spotting predators, while their flattened shape cuts dazzle from the sun overhead.

What kind of tree is Pando, the single Utah organism with about 47,000 stems sharing one root system?

Quaking aspen: Pando weighs about 6,000 tonnes, and because deer and elk eat its new shoots, parts of it are fenced so young stems can grow.

How do wood frogs of the far north get through winter?

Their blood and tissues freeze: the frog's heart and breathing stop, and a natural antifreeze keeps ice out of its cells until it thaws in spring.

Which animal smashes its prey with a club-like limb, in one of the fastest strikes in nature?

Mantis shrimp: its strike is so fast it creates cavitation bubbles in the water, and their collapse can add a second hit to the prey.

Which planet takes longer to spin once on its axis than to orbit the Sun?

Venus: one spin takes about 243 Earth days against a 224.7-day year, and because it spins backwards the Sun would rise in the west.

Which planet is less dense than water and would, given a big enough bathtub, float?

Saturn: its average density is about 0.69 grams per cubic centimetre, roughly 30% less than water, despite a mass 95 times Earth's.

Which body, discovered in 1930, has still not completed a single orbit of the Sun since it was found?

Pluto: found by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, it takes about 248 years to circle the Sun, so its first full orbit since discovery will not finish until 2178.

What colour does the sky glow around the setting Sun on Mars?

Blue: fine Martian dust lets blue light pass through more efficiently, so blue stays close to the setting Sun while the wider sky turns rose.

What happens to many of a newborn's bones over time?

They fuse together: a newborn's skull bones are still separate, and flexible gaps between them let the head squeeze through the birth canal before they join.

Which is the only bone in the human body not joined to another bone?

The hyoid: muscles and ligaments hold it at the root of the tongue, and in adults a fractured hyoid is a key forensic sign of strangulation.

Which part of the human body has three lobes on the right but only two on the left?

The lungs: the left lung is the smaller of the two, with a notch that leaves room for the heart.

The gene 'sonic hedgehog', which helps shape a growing embryo, is named after what?

A Sega video game character: Robert Riddle named it after Sonic the Hedgehog, and some doctors later found the jokey name awkward when counselling families about serious birth defects.

In 1991, Cambridge University computer scientists set up a camera to watch what, later putting its pictures on the web?

A coffee pot: the camera saved people elsewhere in the building fruitless trips to an empty pot, and once online the pot became world famous.

The famous 'first actual case of bug being found' in a computer, in 1947, was literally what?

A moth: engineers had called machine faults 'bugs' since Thomas Edison's day, so the operators who taped it into the logbook were probably making a pun.

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

Nintendo: it made playing cards for nearly 90 years before selling its first home video game machines in 1977.

Which phone maker began in 1865 as a wood-pulp mill?

Nokia: the paper firm took its name from the town it moved to, and after a 1967 merger it made rubber and cables alongside electronics before phones took over.

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

Samsung: over the next three decades the trading firm spread into food processing, textiles and insurance before it moved into electronics.

Which search engine began as a Stanford research project called BackRub?

Google: BackRub judged pages by the links pointing to them, and the new name played on 'googol', a 1 followed by 100 zeros.

Which online retailer was incorporated in 1994 under the name Cadabra?

Amazon: Bezos renamed it within months, partly because the world's largest river suggested how big he hoped the store would grow.

Which online marketplace's first sale, in 1995, was a broken laser pointer?

eBay: when founder Pierre Omidyar asked if the buyer knew it was broken, he said he collected broken laser pointers.

Which wireless technology takes its name from a 10th-century king who united Denmark?

Bluetooth: Intel's Jim Kardach proposed King Harald Bluetooth's nickname as a temporary code name, and it caught on before a formal name could replace it.

Which state fought Britain in 1896 in what is often called the shortest war in history?

Zanzibar: a new sultan had taken the throne without British approval, so British warships shelled his palace, and the fighting was over in under an hour.

In 1932 the Australian Army took machine guns into the field against which animal, and lost?

Emus: in the 1932 'Emu War' the birds split into small fast groups, Major Meredith compared them to tanks, and the operation was abandoned amid public ridicule.

In January 1919 a wave of what swept through Boston's North End, killing 21 people?

Molasses: the man in charge of building the tank had no engineering experience, and afterwards Boston began requiring engineers' and architects' calculations for such structures.

Per Suetonius, Caligula planned to give his horse Incitatus which office?

Consul: Suetonius adds that the horse had a marble stall, an ivory manger and even a house with slaves, so guests could be invited to dine in its name.

Wojtek, a Syrian brown bear, was enlisted as a private in which country's army in WWII?

The Polish army: enlisting him let the bear travel with his unit to Italy, and soldiers described him carrying artillery shells during the Battle of Monte Cassino.

According to Herodotus, how did an ancient Egyptian family mourn the death of a household cat?

By shaving their eyebrows: Herodotus adds that dead cats were carried to sacred buildings in the town of Bubastis to be embalmed and buried.

Liechtenstein added a crown to its flag in 1937 after finding at the 1936 Olympics it matched which country's?

Haiti: the two flags were identical blue-over-red bands, so Liechtenstein added the prince's gold crown, which also marks it out as a principality.

Which US state has the only non-rectangular state flag?

Ohio: its swallowtail burgee carries 17 stars, and its official folding method uses 17 folds, because Ohio was the 17th state admitted to the Union.

The unicorn is the heraldic national animal of which country?

Scotland: medieval lore made the unicorn the natural enemy of the lion, the beast English royalty had taken as its symbol about a century earlier.

Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs are illegal to import into which country?

The United States: the 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act bans confectionery with a 'non-nutritive object' inside; Kinder Joy, with the toy in a separate half, was allowed in from 2017.

Fanta was first made in which country, after a wartime trade embargo cut off Coca-Cola syrup?

Germany: Max Keith's team at Coca-Cola's German branch made the new drink from whatever was on hand, including whey and leftover apple pulp from cider making.

Which toy starred in the first television commercial ever made for a toy, in 1952?

Mr. Potato Head: children stuck its plastic face parts into real vegetables until Hasbro added a plastic potato body in 1964.

What is Barbie's full name?

Barbara Millicent Roberts: Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler named the doll after her own daughter, Barbara.

Fredric Baur, who designed a famous snack container, had some of his ashes buried in what?

A Pringles can: Baur asked to be buried in the tube he had patented, and after his death in 2008 his children put part of his ashes in one.

Which toy began as a putty for cleaning coal soot off walls?

Play-Doh: once a nursery teacher's pupils showed how much they enjoyed modelling with the putty, it was reworked for schools and became Play-Doh by 1956.

Which packing material was originally meant to be sold as wallpaper?

Bubble Wrap: the engineers' failed wallpaper idea became the founding product of Sealed Air, the packaging company they launched in 1960.

Which toy's name comes from a Connecticut bakery popular with college students?

Frisbee: students are said to have played catch with the Frisbie bakery's empty pie tins, and Wham-O borrowed the name for its plastic flying disc.

Engineer Richard James invented the Slinky after seeing a spring do what?

Get knocked off a shelf and 'walk': James was developing springs to steady ship equipment, and the first 400 Slinkys sold within 90 minutes at Gimbels in 1945.

What gave Swiss engineer George de Mestral the idea for Velcro?

Burdock burrs stuck to his dog: under a microscope the burrs showed tiny hooks that caught on loops in fabric and fur, and he later copied them in nylon.

The croissant is a French icon, but it descends from the kipferl, a crescent pastry from which country?

Austria: legend ties the crescent to Vienna's 1683 defeat of the Ottomans, but the kipferl is older, and French bakers later made it flaky with puff pastry.

In which country is a restaurant owner credited with inventing Hawaiian pizza in 1962?

Canada: Greek-born Sam Panopoulos put pineapple and ham on pizza at his restaurant in Chatham, Ontario, a topping Iceland's president later said he opposed.

Fortune cookies most likely originated with which group?

Japanese immigrants in America: a similar cracker was made near Kyoto in the 19th century, yet the cookies turn up in Chinese restaurants abroad and hardly at all in China.

The machine that spins cotton candy was co-invented in 1897 by a man of which profession?

Dentist: William Morrison and confectioner John C. Wharton sold more than 60,000 boxes of their fairy floss at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

Where does a cashew nut grow?

Hanging beneath a fleshy 'apple': the nut's double shell holds a caustic resin that irritates skin, so cashews must be shelled and roasted or steamed before eating.

Peanuts aren't true nuts, so botanically, what are they?

Legumes: peanuts belong to the pea family, and after the plant flowers its pods are pushed underground, where they ripen.

What does white chocolate lack that dark and milk chocolate contain?

Cocoa solids: white chocolate is cocoa butter, milk and sugar, and because it lacks the dark cocoa mass, whether it counts as chocolate at all is disputed.

When Coca-Cola went on sale in Atlanta in 1886, where was the first glass sold?

A pharmacy: pharmacist John Pemberton sold it as a soda-fountain tonic at Jacobs' Pharmacy, and the early drink contained cocaine from coca leaves.

Which food never spoils when properly stored?

Honey: its high sugar and acidity stop most microbes, and an enzyme from bees produces hydrogen peroxide, which also fights bacteria.

The marathon distance of 26 miles 385 yards dates from which Olympics, run from a royal castle to the royal box?

1908 London: Italy's Dorando Pietri crossed the line first, but officials had helped him up after he collapsed, so he was disqualified.

From 1912 to 1948, the Olympics also awarded medals for what?

Painting and sculpture: architecture, literature and music had events too, and founder Pierre de Coubertin won a literature gold in 1912 under a pen name.

During Apollo 14 in 1971, Alan Shepard hit two of what across the Moon's surface?

Golf balls: Shepard fixed a six-iron head to a sample-tool handle, and his stiff spacesuit forced him to swing with one hand.

Which future president won local respect by wrestling the leader of the 'Clary's Grove boys'?

Abraham Lincoln: accounts of his New Salem bout with gang leader Jack Armstrong disagree on who won, yet it earned the young newcomer the gang's respect.

An Olympic first-place medal is mostly made of which metal?

Silver: a 'gold' medal is mostly silver plated with about 6 grams of gold, so at 2021 prices its metal was worth only about $800.

Bir Tawil, a patch of desert claimed by no country at all, lies between which two nations?

Egypt and Sudan: each side's preferred border gives Bir Tawil to the other, because claiming it would mean giving up the far more valuable Hala'ib Triangle.

Point Nemo, the ocean spot farthest from any land, is a designated dumping ground for what?

Decommissioned spacecraft: Point Nemo lies about 2,688 km from the nearest land, so space agencies aim old craft there to lessen the risk of hitting anyone.

Which countries own the Diomede Islands, under 4 km apart?

Russia and the United States: the International Date Line runs between them, so Russia's Big Diomede is almost a day ahead of Little Diomede.

Which state is at once the northernmost, westernmost and, by longitude, the easternmost in the US?

Alaska: its Aleutian Islands stretch across the 180th meridian into the Eastern Hemisphere, making it the easternmost state by longitude as well as the northernmost and westernmost.

The point on Earth's surface farthest from Earth's centre is the summit of which mountain?

Chimborazo: Earth bulges at the equator, so the summit of this Ecuadorian volcano is about 2 km farther from the planet's centre than Everest's, despite standing roughly 2,500 m lower above sea level.

Which country's national anthem, first published in the 1570s, is often called the oldest still in use?

The Netherlands: the Wilhelmus began as a song of the revolt against Spain led by William of Orange, yet it became the official anthem only in 1932.

An 85-letter hill name, the longest place name in any English-speaking country, is found where?

New Zealand: Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu is a hill in Hawke's Bay on the North Island; locals just say Taumata.

The 'Wilhelm scream' stock sound effect is named after a character in a 1953 Western who is hit by what?

An arrow: Private Wilhelm takes an arrow in the leg in The Charge at Feather River (1953); the scream was recorded for Distant Drums in 1951 and has turned up in Star Wars, Indiana Jones and hundreds of other films.

Psycho (1960) worried censors by showing what, almost unseen in American cinema then?

A toilet flushing: Marion flushes away torn-up notes, and no mainstream American film had shown a flushing toilet before.

In 2015 a US federal judge invalidated a publisher's long-standing copyright on which song?

Happy Birthday to You: Judge George H. King ruled that the 1935 copyright covered only certain piano arrangements of the music, not the song itself.

A 2006 BusinessWeek article named which firm the world's top tyre maker by units?

Lego: its Billund factory turns out around 300 million tiny rubber tyres a year, more units than any car-tyre maker, a claim later recognised by Guinness World Records.

'Dord', defined as 'density' in Webster's 1934 dictionary, was really what?

A ghost word created by an error: a card reading 'D or d', meant to list abbreviations for density, was set as the single word dord, which was later removed.

What is the dot over a lowercase i or j called?

A tittle: in Turkish it is no decoration, since dotted and dotless i are two separate letters, each with its own capital.

For centuries European apothecaries sold 'mummia', a pricey cure-all made from what?

Powdered human mummies: the word first meant a medicinal asphalt, and because mummies were thought to be embalmed with it, apothecaries ground up the bodies instead.

In 1986, a Cleveland charity released roughly how many balloons at once?

1.5 million: a storm pushed the balloons back over the city and Lake Erie, where they hampered a Coast Guard search for two fishermen who drowned.

Which scientist's 1855 letter to The Times about the filthy Thames led Punch to caricature him?

Michael Faraday: from a boat he dropped pieces of white paper into the river, and they vanished from sight almost at once.

What gave Gary Dahl the idea for the 1975 Pet Rock?

A bar chat about pets: Dahl then wrote a joke training manual for the 'pet' and sold over a million rocks in a few months, becoming a millionaire.

What spread through a girls' boarding school in Tanganyika in 1962 until the school had to close?

Fits of laughter: after the school closed, the laughing followed pupils home to their villages, and other schools had to close too.

In Nix v. Hedden (1893), the US Supreme Court ruled which botanical fruit a vegetable for import-tax purposes?

Tomato importers lost because the justices went by the dinner table, not the botany textbook: it was eaten as part of a main course, never as dessert, so the vegetable tariff applied.

Which Australian marsupial has fingerprints so human-like they are hard to tell apart even under an electron microscope?

Koala fingers carry ridged prints that evolved independently of ours, an aid to climbing and grasping that also turns up in gorillas and chimpanzees.

Mike, who lived 18 months and toured American sideshows after a farmer's axe took off his head in 1945, was what animal?

A chicken's basic reflexes are run by the brain stem, which the axe left mostly intact along with one ear, and a clot kept Mike from bleeding to death.

In Switzerland, which small pet is it illegal to keep alone, because solitude is considered harmful to its well-being?

Guinea pig owners there must keep at least two, because in the wild the animals live in small herds of several females, a male and their young.

Tsar Peter the Great taxed which part of a nobleman's appearance to push his subjects toward Western European fashion?

Beards could be kept only by paying up, and those who paid had to carry a metal token stamped with a nose, mouth, whiskers and beard as proof.

Junk email is called 'spam' after a 1970 café sketch by which comedy troupe, in which Vikings sing the word?

Monty Python set the sketch in a café where almost every dish includes the tinned meat, and early chat-room users flooded screens with quotes from it.

Which painter did Paris police bring in for questioning over the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre?

Pablo Picasso was implicated by his friend, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who had been jailed on suspicion. The real thief, a Louvre worker, hid the portrait in his apartment for two years.

Which internal organ of the human body can grow back to full size after more than half of it is removed?

Liver tissue is the only visceral organ able to regenerate, though it cheats a little: the lost mass comes back, but the organ never regains its original shape.

Which drug did Bayer sell from 1898 as a supposedly non-addictive cough remedy and substitute for morphine?

Heroin was Bayer's own trademark for diamorphine, and the non-addictive claim collapsed as the drug went on to show one of the highest addiction rates among its users.

Virginia park ranger Roy Sullivan entered the record books by surviving seven of what between 1942 and 1977?

Lightning strikes earned Sullivan the nickname 'Human Lightning Rod', and two of his ranger hats went on display in Guinness exhibit halls.

Which micro-animal survived ten days exposed to the vacuum of outer space on a 2007 satellite mission?

Tardigrade toughness comes from drying out into a dormant state, in which it also withstands radiation, crushing pressure and temperatures as low as −272 °C.

In 1799, British scientists judged which Australian animal a fake sewn together from several creatures?

Platypus oddities go well beyond the bill: males carry a venomous spur on each back leg, and the fur glows cyan and green under ultraviolet light.

Which Arctic whale has a canine tooth that erupts through its lip and can grow up to three metres long?

Narwhal tusks were once believed to be the horns of unicorns, and the tooth is packed with millions of nerve endings that sense temperature changes in the water.

Which African animal's skin oozes a fluid that turns red and works as a natural sunscreen?

Hippopotamus skin fluid comes out colourless, turns red-orange within minutes and finally brown, and its acidic pigments also slow the growth of disease-causing bacteria.

Which North Atlantic fish is the longest-lived vertebrate known, not reaching maturity until around age 150?

Greenland shark lifespans are put at 272 years or more by radiocarbon dating of the eye lens, and a pregnancy is thought to last anywhere from 8 to 18 years.

Which Australian bird has been recorded mimicking chainsaws, car alarms and camera shutters?

Lyrebird males weave borrowed sounds into their courtship song, and a recording of one imitating workmen and a shooting game is kept in Australia's national sound archive.

Which burrowing East African rodent lives in colonies under a single breeding queen and strongly resists cancer?

Naked mole-rat colonies run like a beehive, with one breeding female and a caste of workers, an arrangement known in only one other mammal, the related Damaraland species.

Which Arctic animal has eyes that shine gold in summer but change colour for the dark polar winter?

Reindeer eyes manage it with the reflective layer behind the retina, a seasonal shift thought to sharpen vision in continuous darkness and help the animals spot predators.

Ambergris, a waxy substance prized by perfume makers, forms in the digestive system of which sea animal?

Sperm whale ambergris turns up floating at sea or washed ashore, and it makes a scent last much longer, though a synthetic substitute has mostly replaced it.

Which facial feature do humans alone have among the primates, its evolutionary purpose still highly debated?

Chin bone is missing even in the closely related Neanderthals, and rival theories tie the feature to the strain of biting, to speech or simply to a shrinking face.

Emperor Vespasian's retort that 'money does not stink' defended his tax on the trade in which Roman commodity?

Urine from Rome's public urinals was a prized ingredient for Roman industry, and Vespasian made his point by holding a coin under his son Titus's nose and asking whether it smelled.

A property tax introduced in England in 1696 led many homeowners to brick up which feature of their houses?

Windows were counted as a stand-in for income, a way to tax a household's prosperity without the controversy of an income tax, and the levy lasted until 1851.

The first video ever uploaded to YouTube, 19 seconds of co-founder Jawed Karim, was filmed where?

At a zoo in San Diego, Karim stands in front of two elephants and remarks on the length of their trunks, in a clip plainly titled 'Me at the zoo'.

Psychologist B. F. Skinner spent World War II training which animals to steer a guided bomb by pecking at a screen?

Pigeons sat behind lenses in the weapon's nose cone and pecked at an image of the target, having been trained with grain to peck faster and faster.

Which Danish astronomer wore a metal false nose after losing part of his own in a sword duel with a cousin?

Tycho Brahe's false nose was long said to be made of precious metals, but tests on his exhumed remains pointed to brass. He also kept a tame elk, which died after drinking beer at a dinner.

Which US president's pet parrot, Poll, is said to have been carried out of his funeral for swearing loudly?

Andrew Jackson had bought the grey parrot for his wife Rachel for $25 in 1827, and he adopted the bird himself after her death the following year.

Which scientist was offered the largely ceremonial presidency of Israel in 1952 but turned the job down?

Albert Einstein wrote that he was 'deeply moved' by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's offer, yet 'at once saddened and ashamed' that he could not accept it.

Joshua Norton declared himself an emperor in 1859 and issued currency that local businesses honoured in which city?

San Francisco played along with its self-crowned monarch until his death in 1880, and the 1870 census even listed his occupation as 'Emperor'.

Australia honoured Harold Holt, the prime minister who vanished in rough surf in 1967, by naming what after him?

A swimming pool in Melbourne, the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre, commemorates a leader who was presumed dead in the sea and whose body was never recovered.

Robert McCulloch bought London Bridge in 1968 and rebuilt it, stone by numbered stone, in which US state?

Arizona's Lake Havasu City, a planned community McCulloch had founded, received the granite facing stones, and the bridge first went up on dry land rather than over water.

Caesar salad, named after restaurateur Caesar Cardini rather than any Roman emperor, was created in which country?

Mexico's border city of Tijuana is where, by his daughter's account, Cardini improvised the dish when a Fourth of July rush in 1924 emptied his kitchen.

Most 'wasabi' sold in Western restaurants and shops is really a dyed-green paste made mainly from which plant?

Horseradish stands in because the real plant is hard to grow at scale and costly, so the usual substitute blends it with mustard, starch and green colouring.

Carmine, the bright red colouring used in some yogurts, sweets and cosmetics, is extracted from what?

Insects called cochineal supply the pigment, which appears on labels as E120 and also colours fruit juices, meat products, rouge and crimson ink.

Casu martzu, a traditional sheep's-milk cheese from Sardinia, is notorious for containing what?

Live maggots of the cheese fly are added on purpose to break down the fats, and because they can leap up to 15 cm, diners shield their bread with a hand.

The nests used in Chinese bird's nest soup, among the costliest animal products eaten, are built from what?

Hardened saliva from small birds called swiftlets makes up the nests, which are prized in Chinese cuisine for their rarity, rich flavour and high protein content.

Which frozen treat did Frank Epperson say he invented at age 11 by leaving a soda drink outside on a cold night?

Popsicle packaging has retold the story of that 1905 night, stirring stick and all, though Epperson did not sell his ice on a stick to the public until the 1920s.

Which symbol was once taught to schoolchildren as the 27th letter of the English alphabet, placed after Z?

Ampersand is a slurred form of 'and per se and', the way the mark was named when spelling aloud, and it began in Roman handwriting as the letters E and T run together.

Telephone engineers at Bell Labs coined which name for the # symbol when adding two new keys to the keypad?

Octothorp was invented because the new keys needed named symbols; the 'octo' is agreed to mean eight, but rival stories about the 'thorp' have never been settled.

Which garment takes its name from a 19th-century French acrobat who developed the art of the trapeze?

Leotard honours Jules Léotard, who passed his law exams before choosing the circus and inspired the 1867 song 'The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze'.

Which surrealist artist designed the logo of the Spanish lollipop brand Chupa Chups in 1969?

Salvador Dalí is said to have sketched the daisy-shaped emblem in under an hour, for a brand whose 1960s Spanish slogan translates as 'It's round and long-lasting'.

Which Pacific nation skipped 30 December 2011 entirely by jumping to the other side of the International Date Line?

Samoa went straight from Thursday 29 December to Saturday 31 December, a switch its prime minister said would improve business with Australia, China and the rest of Asia.

The Darvaza gas crater, nicknamed the Door to Hell for fires that burned there for decades, is in which country?

Turkmenistan's crater is said to have formed when Soviet drilling punctured a gas cavern and the roof fell in, and engineers reportedly lit it to stop poisonous gases spreading.

What message did engineer Neil Papworth type on a computer in 1992 as the world's first SMS text?

Merry Christmas travelled from a personal computer to the Orbitel handset of Vodafone's Richard Jarvis on 3 December, so the greeting arrived a little early.

During a metal shortage in World War II, Oscar statuettes were made for three years from which material?

Plaster Oscars were painted to look the part, and once the war was over the Academy invited winners to trade the figures in for gold-plated metal ones.

Which Mars sweet was offered a product placement in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial before Reese's Pieces took the role?

M&M's maker Mars rejected the 1982 offer, and Reese's Pieces, then a relatively new product, became very popular once the film was released.

Which composer's organ piece is being played in a German church in a performance scheduled to end in 2640?

John Cage titled the piece 'As Slow as Possible', and the Halberstadt performance, begun in 2001, lasts 639 years to match the time since the town's first documented organ.

Besides tiny Liechtenstein, which is the world's only other country surrounded entirely by landlocked countries?

Uzbekistan's neighbours all lack a coastline themselves, so any route from there to the open sea has to cross at least two national borders.

Fred Lorz was first across the line in the 1904 Olympic marathon, but how had he covered part of the course?

In a car driven by his manager, until it broke down. The real winner, Thomas Hicks, was dosed with strychnine and brandy by his trainers and collapsed after crossing the line.

Which South American country still keeps a navy on Lake Titicaca despite having lost its coastline to Chile?

Bolivia has been landlocked since the War of the Pacific, and its navy exists partly to keep alive the hope of one day winning back a stretch of coast.

Which product has been illegal to sell in Singapore since 1992, partly because it jammed the sensors of subway doors?

Chewing gum was also turning up inside lock cylinders and on lift buttons; since 2004 therapeutic, dental and nicotine gum has been sold by doctors and registered pharmacists.