Archive of Useless Information
August 2026
31/08/26 The fork didn’t appear until the 16th century, and knife-and-fork pairs were not in general use in Britain until the 17th century.
30/08/26 St Columbia and his followers first saw the Loch Ness Monster in AD 565
29/08/26 The celebration of May Day was forbidden in the time of Oliver Cromwell.
28/08/26 The first truly humanlike creatures on earth were called Homo habilis which translates to ‘Handyman’
27/08/26 There are no rivers in Saudi Arabia
26/08/26 The orginal title of Jacqueline Susann’s novel Valley of the Dolls was ‘They Don’t Build Statues to Businessmen’
25/08/26 Lord Alfred Tennyson wrote a 6,000-word epic poem… when he was 12 years old.
24/08/26 After his death, the remains of Pope Formosus was exhumed and out on trial for various crimes.
23/08/26 St George, the patron saint of England, never actually visited England.
22/08/26 In ancient Rome, oysters were so highly prized that they were sold for their weight in gold.
21/08/26 Only one person walked with Mozart’s coffin, from the church to the cemetery, for its burial.
20/08/26 In the latter part of the 18th century, Prussian surgeons treated stutterers by snipping off portions of their tongues.
19/08/26 A foetus develops fingerprints at around 3 months.
18/08/26 There are more possible combinations for a deck of cards than there are atoms in the Milky-way galaxy.
01/08/26 – 17/08/26 On Hiatus
July 2026
31-07-26 Albert Einstein reportedly had a huge crush on film star Marilyn Monroe.
30-07-26 After the death of Alexander the Great, his remains were preserved in a huge crock of honey.
29-07-26 The art of map making is older than the art of writing.
28-07-26 An estimated £600,000 is lost at racetracks each year by people who lose or carelessly throw away winning tickets.
27-07-26 Up to the age of six or seven months, a child can breathe and swallow at the same time, unlike an adult.
26-07-26 The saguaro cactus requires 30 years to grow just one branch.
25-07-26 Fleas can accelerate 50 times faster than the space shuttle.
24-07-26 Lewis Carroll was a mathematics professor at Oxford.
23-07-26 The common cold will delay a child’s growth for the duration of the cold.
22-07-26 There is no living descendant of William Shakespeare.
21-07-26 Human bones can withstand stresses of 24,000 lb per square inch >>> (16,873,670 kg/square meter)
20-07-26 In China, there are 600 bicycles for every car.
19-07-26 Jaffa Cakes have been around since 1927.
18-07-26 We filter out 99% of the sights, sounds, and other sensations around us if they don’t seem threatening or important. If we didn’t filter, the sensory overload would drive us insane.
17-07-26 There are more bacteria in your mouth than there are people in the world
16-07-26 Per capita, the Irish eat more chocolate than Americans, Swedes, Danes, French and Italians.
15-07-26 Billie Eilish’s middle name is Pirate.
14-07-26 The ancient Greeks considered the philtrum (The indentation in the middle area between the nose and the upper lip) to be one of the body’s most pleasurable erogenous zones.
13-07-26 Wombats are the only known mammals in the world that produce cube-shaped poop, which stops it from rolling away.
12-07-26 There are more than 100 different viruses that cause the common cold.
11-07-26 Soap was considered a frivolous luxury of the British aristocracy from the early 1700s until 1862, and there was a tax on those who used it in England.
10-07-26 The first elephant in England was a gift to King Henry III from the King of France.
09-07-26 There is evidence that many people gain and lose weight in accordance with the cycles of the moon.
08-07-26 Throughout history, malaria has been the most destructive disease. More than 1.5 million people die from malaria every year.
07-07-26 The longest name in the Christian Bible is Mahershalalbaz.
06-07-26 The Hollywood sign originally read “Hollywoodland“.
05-07-26 Black Sabbath got their name from a 1963 horror film of the same name, starring Boris Karloff.
04-07-26 US boxer Sugar Ray Leonard won titles at five different weights.
03-07-26 Proms founder Sir Henry Wood was the first conductor to admit women into a major British orchestra. He was also the first person to encourage the orchestra to stand and share the applause at the end of a performance.
02-07-26 Greenland has more ice on it than Iceland dose, while Iceland has more grass and trees than Greenland.
01-07-26 The average person receives eight birthday cards annually.
June 2026
30-06-26 PEZ got its name from an abbreviation of the German word for peppermint (PfeffErminZ)
29-06-26 Until the 19th century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia.
28-06-26 Chopin made his debut as a pianist at the age of eight.
27-06-26 When Marlon Brando signed into hotels, he went under the pseudonym Lord Greystoke (aka Tarzan)
26-06-26 Ancient Egyptians used stones as loo roll. Yep. You read that right. Before toilet paper was invented, they used smooth stones to clean their nether regions.