Pub trivia

• The first reference to the word scone by the Oxford English Dictionary was early in the 16th century. It is believed the scone was first made in the Scottish town of the same name. This was where Scottish Kings were crowned. The original version was made of oats and baked on a griddle.

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• The most outrageously named Bond girl must surely be Goldfinger's Pussy Galore. But the producers originally wanted to play it safe by calling her Kitty Galore instead. Director Guy Hamilton stubbornly refused, reasoning that "If you were a 10-year-old boy and knew what the name meant, you weren't a 10-year-old boy, you were a dirty little f*cker."

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• Some parasites are content to feed on bits of you over time. Others are less polite. The dreaded Ebola parasite will, for example, attack internal organs and eat into collagen, which is the connective tissue that holds the human body together.

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• It was only in the second modern Olympics, held in 1900, that women were allowed to compete. The first woman to receive an Olympic gold medal was Charlotte Cooper, a tennis star from Middlesex who would go onto win Wimbledon no fewer than five times.

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• The "toughest US president" crown must go to Andrew Jackson, the seventh man to rule the roost. This swaggering gunslinger fought more than 13 duels in his time, taking bullets to the chest and once killing a rival almost at point blank range. And you thought George W Bush was a cowboy.

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• Louis XIV of France hated washing so much he only took three baths in his whole life.

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• The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the only MP allowed to drink booze in the House of Commons, and only during the Budget speech.

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• Inbreeding causes three out of every ten Dalmatian dogs to suffer from hearing disability.

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• The United States are the world's reigning rugby champions - when it comes to the Olympics, anyway. The US rugby team took the gold medal when the game was last played at the Olympics back in 1924. Rugby was dropped from the tournament after that, but there's a growing campaign to make it an Olympic sport again.

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• In March 2001 a "fresh, watery, floral" fragrance called "Madeleine" was introduced at a number of stations in a touching attempt to make the Underground a pleasanter place to be. It was taken out of action the very next day as people reported feeling sick.

  All London Underground pub trivia

• Rugby balls are shaped the way they are because the original balls, made by a cobbler near Rugby School, were fashioned from pigs' bladders. These bladders naturally became oval-shaped when inflated – a grisly process which literally involved blowing into them like balloons.

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• A female flea consumes 15 times her own body weight in blood each day.

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• Nowadays when people say "mocha" they mean coffee mixed with hot chocolate. But this stems from the fact that there's actually a type of coffee bean from Yemen called "mocha" that has a naturally chocolatey flavour.

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• The largest king's ransom in history was raised in 1194 by Richard the Lionheart, to buy his release from Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI. The English people were forced to contribute almost 150,000 marks to free their king who ironically didn't speak a word of English and hated being over here.

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• The word ‘snooker’ was originally military slang for raw, inexperienced army recruits. This was why Neville Chamberlain once called an opponent ‘a regular snooker’ for missing an easy shot. The word stuck, and was soon taken on as the name of the game.

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• The average worker bee will make half a teaspoon's worth in its lifetime. A bee can fly at about 15mph, visiting up to 100 flowers on each collection trip.

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• Admirals are well represented in pub names, sailors being enthusiastic drinkers in times past. Nelson was the most popular, with more pubs being names after him than any other person. Vernon, another naval hero of the 18th century, also gave us Portobello, after his capture of the Panama islands.

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• The origin of fish and chips can be traced to Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal in the 17th century. They traditionally ate cold fried fish on Friday evenings to welcome the Sabbath. It wasn't until the 19th century that shops appeared selling the food. Coupling fish with chips seems to have resulted from the merging of small shops selling either item.

  All Origins of UK food pub trivia

• Before the arrival of money, people would barter, using cattle and grain to pay for goods. In about 1200 BC, the Chinese began to use shells as a basic currency. By 1000 BC they had started using metal replicas of the shells.

  All Money pub trivia

• The oldest rugby club in the world is Dublin University Football Club. Founded in 1854, it is also happens to predate the first ever soccer club, Sheffield FC, by three years.

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• 'Stewardesses' is the longest English word that is typed with only the left hand.

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• Smallpox was officially eradicated in 1980, but the micro parasites that cause this deadly disease still lie dormant in the ice of Greenland. Some scientists are even worried that global warming could actually free them from captivity.

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• Big Ben is the name of the bell, not the clock tower – which is simply called the Clock Tower. And if you want to get technical, the bell is properly called the Great Bell. Big Ben is just a long-standing nickname whose origins remain unclear.

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• Norah Jones is the daughter of Ravi Shankar – the legendary Indian musician who taught Beatle George Harrison to play the sitar. Her real name is Geethali Norah Jones Shankar.

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• King Alexandros I of Greece, became king in 1917 but died three years later from blood poisoning after being bitten by his pet monkey.

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• The South Koreans love dogs, especially when served in stew. In Andean parts of South America, you might be offered a delicacy known as 'cuy' - guinea pig roasted whole.

  All Strange meals pub trivia

• Every time you lick a stamp, you consume a tenth of a calorie. Licking 3,000 stamps has the same energy value as a bar of chocolate.

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• Golf was outlawed in Scotland in 1457. James II was the killjoy behind the ban – he was preparing for an English invasion and wanted his citizens to concentrate on useful hobbies like archery. The ban was eventually lifted in 1502.

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• The good thing about Tapeworms is that they have the decency to stay hidden. Not so the Guinea Worm. Ingested via contaminated water, the larvae burrow into the intestines and eventually emerge, fully grown, from the skin.

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• Boxing first emerged as a competitive sport in Ancient Greece and the often brutal matches were fought with bare knuckles. Things got even gorier with the Romans, who came up with a wonderful tie-break round which involved the fighters standing still and taking turns smashing each other in the face until one crumpled.

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• Bats make up just about a fourth of all mammals on the planet; there are over 1000 known species of these flying curiosities and most would fit in the palm of your hand.

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• During medieval England, it was once illegal to stand near the monarch when not wearing socks. It was also illegal to place a postage stamp with the image of the monarch upside down.

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• In 1822, Clement Clarke Moore wrote the poem 'The Night Before Christmas' in which Santa was first known to climb down the chimney to deliver gifts. Here, Santa was depicted as a 'jolly old elf' covered in soot who arrives on a miniature sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer.

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• Vatsyayana himself did not come up with the ideas contained within the Kama Sutra. Most of book's details on spiritualism and society pre-dated him by centuries and were bound up with Hindu mythology. Vatsyayana merely set on paper the teachings that had until then been passed down orally from generation to generation.

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• If you're normal and don't enjoy warm beer, reach for the brown bottled kind. Brown coloured glass is the best at blocking UV light, which not only warms the beer but can affect the taste too.

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• The call of the humpback whale is louder than the sound of a high-speed plane like Concorde and can be heard from 500 miles away.

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• The Honduran white bat is snow white with a yellow nose and ears. It cuts large leaves to make "tents" which protect its small colonies from harsh jungle rains. It is one of fifteen other species known to make tents.

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• John I of France became king at his birth in 1316 but died five days later.

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• All bowling in cricket was originally underarm. Kent cricketer John Willes is credited with popularising the "roundarm" bowling motion which eventually became the overarm we see today. Legend has it that he was inspired by his sister, who started bowling in this outrageous fashion while playing in the garden because her massive 19th Century skirt made underarm rather difficult.

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• The Amazon rises dramatically during the year, flooding the forest floor and allowing fish to swim between the trees. This has led to the evolution of fruit-eating fish - one kind is tambaqui, a kind of vegetarian piranha which use their powerful teeth to bite into fruit and nuts.

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• The star-nosed mole has developed a peculiar shaped nose to help it find its food. The snout is surrounded by ‘tentacles’, which constantly move around as it searches. The 22 fleshy appendages are crammed with over 25,000 sensors which feel the ground to find anything edible. Once located, the tentacles retract so that the mole can get the food into its mouth.

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• The first walk in space was by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. On March 18, 1965 he ventured outside his Voskhod spacecraft, but it nearly ended in disaster. He struggled to re-enter the airlock in his bulky, rigid spacesuit and had to bleed air in order to make it back into the ship.

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• Dating agencies were given the cold shoulder by more than half of respondents to the BBC's Single Life Survey. The top places for meeting people were found to be the gym and office. Younger singles relied on friend networks, while pensioners favoured holidays as a way to meet new people.

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• Mexican actor Emilio Fernandez is one of the unsung heroes of the movie world. In the late 1920s he was approached by a Hollywood art director to pose naked for a full-length sketch. He was reluctant, but the moment made him immortal – the drawing was used to sculpt the Oscar statuette.

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• In 1990, American Vivian Wheeler decided to give up her battle with facial hair and let it grow. Ten years later, with a total length of 27.9cm, Vivian had grown her way into the record books for the longest beard on a living female.

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• Hippies altered the Hollywood sign to read 'Hollyweed' in 1976 to promote looser marijuana laws and 'Holywood' in 1987 during a visit by Pope John Paul II.

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• The vampire bat is a poor little bugger who doesn't deserve his fearsome reputation. They actually adopt orphans and are one of the few mammals who will risk their own lives to share food with less fortunate roost-mates.

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• The legendary "33" on the Rolling Rock beer bottle refers to the number of words in the beer's original slogan. The number was scribbled on the end of the slogan as a guide for the printers – who naturally assumed it was part of the text and bunged it in.

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• Only three teams have won the FA Cup without conceding a single goal during the entire competition. Don't expect to see any footage though. The teams were The Wanderers, who won it in 1873, Preston North End in 1889, and Bury in 1903.

  All Football pub trivia

• The war dance performed by the All Blacks and other New Zealand teams to intimidate their opponents is called a haka. They've been doing it since 1884, and the most common haka is "Ka Mate", which was composed by a Maori chief in 1810. A new haka called Kapa o Pango – which includes a controversial throat-slitting motion - has been used in recent years.

  All Rugby pub trivia

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