BY STEWART SLATER

A few months ago, I came across a reference to an obscure book written in the 1940’s. Until recently, there the matter would have had to rest. It was not the sort of thing a local library would stock; it would not line the shelves of Waterstones. Absent a serendipitous discovery in a second-hand shop or blagging my way into the reading room of a dusty Learned Society, it would have remained forever beyond my grasp.

But those days are fortunately gone, and just a couple of minutes after first coming across the work, I was happily reading a PDF of it on my laptop…

For while we often decry the internet – it corrupts the youth; it corrupts the adults; it allows some of the wrong people to say the wrong things to other wrong people – it is, at heart, the greatest tool we have invented for the spread of information, allowing most (but not all) of human knowledge to be accessed at the click of a button.

And so, as we did last year, let us pay tribute to the information superhighway with a random list of 52 weird, wonderful and potentially true things gleaned from another year of being too online.

1. The word “tabby” as applied to cats derives from the Arabic attabi, a type of striped cloth associated with the Al-Attabi district of Baghdad.
2. John Tyler was born in 1790 and served as U.S. President between 1841 and 1845. His grandson is, at the time of writing, still alive.
3. Attending Ghana’s Independence celebrations as Vice President, Richard Nixon asked the African man sat next to him how it felt to be free. “I don’t know, sir” came the reply. “I’m from Alabama.”
4. We have vaccines which can prevent the diseases which caused 80% of the deaths in Massachusetts in the 1840’s.
5. A Jacuzzi should properly be a Iacuzzi. The family name of the inventor, Candido, was changed accidentally by an immigration officer when they moved to America.
6. Mozart’s wife outlived him sufficiently to have her photograph taken.
7. Australia has had more Welsh-born Prime Ministers (1) than Britain (0). Lloyd George might have been the “Welsh Wizard” but he was born in Manchester.
8. The traditional Russian method for keeping milk fresh was to put a brown frog in it. Scientists have discovered that their skin produces a unique secretion with anti-fungal and anti-microbial properties which may lead to a new class of antibiotics.
9. Only 4 black chess-pieces have a higher chance of being on the board at the end of the game than their white equivalents – the centre pawns and the queenside knight and bishop.
10. As part of his remodelling of London after the Great Fire, Christopher Wren turned the then open Fleet River into a canal along the lines of Venice, complete with ornate bridges etc. Unfortunately, those upstream had not got the memo, and continued to use it as an open sewer. After just 50 years, the stench and silt meant it had to be covered over.
11. In a similar vein, the word Strand derives from the Anglo-Saxon Strond (“beach”). The street of that name in London originally ran along the banks of the Thames.
12. The Eastern coast of Greenland has three different time zones.
13. The first recognisably modern restaurant in Paris was called “La Grande Taverne de Londres”, suggesting the French were not always so sniffy about the cooking of les rosbifs.
14. The population of London almost tripled between 1550 and 1600. It was still less than that of Classical Athens.
15. The first sighting of Uranus took place 39 years before the first sighting of Antarctica.
16. Statistically, a cricket team all out for 75 in its first innings is more likely to win than one all out for 556 (2W, 2L vs. 1W, 3L).
17. The last Japanese participant in the attack on Pearl Harbor died in 2024.
18. Had 40 voters in Birmingham Ladywood changed their minds in the election of 1924, Oswald Mosley would have been returned to Parliament instead of Neville Chamberlain. The result came after three counts, the first giving the seat to the future PM by 7 votes, the first recount to the future fascist by 2. (There’s a cracking alternative history novel here).
19. Manly is Australia is so named because the first Aboriginals European settlers met in the location were both naked and well built.
20. A planet with a liquid surface at a sufficient distance from its star will freeze over. If the planet does not rotate on its own axis, one part will always be facing the star and so will remain liquid. Astronomers call these “cold eyeball” planets.
21. The French Army has a literature prize for works which demonstrate “a true culture of audacity in the service of the whole”. This year’s winner, retired General Francois Lecointre, led, in 1995, what is thought to be the last bayonet charge by French soldiers.
22. Barbra Streisand had a teenage crush on her high school classmate Bobby Fischer, who would go on to become (a particularly eccentric) World Chess Champion. Neil Diamond was also in their class.
23. Saint Bartholomew’s in London has a rare surviving Tudor gatehouse. It was covered up during the Georgian period and forgotten until a bomb dropped from a Zeppelin in 1917 blew the façade off.
24. Boreale Calcio who play football in Italy’s fourth tier have dedicated themselves to Constantine the Great, the Roman Emperor who converted to Christianity. Their away strip features a depiction of his victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.
25. That “set” is the word with the most definitions in the OED is a trivia truism. It is also wrong. “Run” has now overtaken it.
26. John Smith’s widow was awarded a peerage following his death and his daughter one in 2024, making them the only instance of a mother and daughter sitting in the House of Lords concurrently.
27. Lord Sainsbury so hated the false columns in the wing of the National Gallery he funded that he had a letter secreted in one of them to be discovered when, as he was sure they would, a later generation decided to tear them down. It was found this year…
28. Norwegian TV celebrated the 750^th anniversary of Magnus the Lawmender’s legal code by airing a public reading of it. Which lasted 12 hours.
29. Speaking of hairy men from Northern climes, the first Norse Duke of Normandy, Rollo the Walker, was so named because he was too big for any horse to carry.
30. The string of the bag oranges come in is red because it makes the fruit look more orange-y.
31. The amount of sugar in Fanta varies from 11.8g/100ml in Italy to 4.1g/100ml in Poland.
32. The Nawab of Pataudi’s Test career was derailed by his objections to Douglas Jardine’s “Bodyline” tactics, being dropped after just two matches in the series, and only playing for England once more. 25 years later, the Nawab’s son took Jardine’s record for the most runs scored during a summer by a boy at Winchester. Revenge sometimes truly is a dish best served cold.
33. In late 1814, the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, wanted to send Wellington to North America to take charge of mopping up the War of 1812. (Another alternative history novel there).
34. Despite evidence of beer brewing in England from about 400 B.C., hops only arrived in the country in 1524. The earlier version was based on a mixture of herbs (particularly bog myrtle) called “gruit” which could, on occasion, have hallucinogenic properties. As always, some were slow to adapt, hops being described in Parliament as a “wicked weed that would spoil the taste of a drink and endanger the people.”
35. In 2020, Neeraj Chopra became India’s first track and field Olympic gold medallist by winning the javelin. In 2024, Arshad Nadeem became Pakistan’s first track and field Olympic gold medallist. By winning the javelin…
36. Staying on this theme, with 326, the University of Southern California has won more Olympic medals than Romania.
37. Streetcar 651 was 700m from Ground Zero when the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Repaired over the following months, it is still in service today.
38. The longest-lived raven made it to 69. Unverified reports suggest one lived to 80.
39. Knowing that “The” was spelt “Ye”, we often adopt that pronunciation to give an air of faux antiquity. Doing so, however, only reveals our modernity, for it was never pronounced “Ye”. Old English had a character for the “Th” sound and when the printing press was imported, it was decided to use “Y” (to which it bore some similarity) to represent it.
40. About 2000 years ago, some crabs took up residence in Rome’s sewers. Their descendants are still there but due to the lack of predators, they are larger, slower growing and longer-lived than other members of their species.
41. Beekeepers in France, distressed that their hives had started to produce sticky blue and green fluids, discovered that rather than collecting nectar, their bees had taken to eating the shells discarded by the local M&M plant, the dyes making their way into the honey.
42. Roger Federer won 80% of the matches he played. He won 54% of the points he played.
43. Across Fleming’s books, Bond consumes 35 Martinis but only 19 are vodka (gin making up the rest). His weekly alcohol consumption is 92 units, 4x the safe amount. Daniel Craig is, surprisingly perhaps given our healthier lifestyles, the booziest Bond actor, getting through 21.25 units per film, almost twice Connery’s 11.58.
44. Q, in the later Bond books and earlier films, is Major Boothroyd, Fleming’s tribute to the Glaswegian firearms expert Geoffrey Boothroyd who had written to him to explain the deficiencies of the Beretta with which the author had armed his hero in the earlier stories.
45. Wartime rations gave each individual c. 3000 calories, 500-1000 more than today’s recommendation.
46. The beams used to make London’s department store Liberty were recycled from two old warships, HMS Hindustan and HMS Impregnable.
47. Within the first 2.7 trillion places of pi, the longest chain of repeating digits is 13. (The number in question is “8”, if you were wondering).
48. Women now write over 50% of the books published in America. This probably won’t make them rich – 96% of books sell fewer than 1000 copies.
49. Stalin and Frank Lloyd Wright shared a son-in-law.
50. There is a theory that the body in St Mark’s tomb in Venice is actually that of Alexander the Great.
51. John Surrat, one of the conspirators in Lincoln’s assassination fled to Rome via Canada, enlisting in the Papal Army. Recognised by a Canadian he had met during the Civil War, he escaped by jumping on to an excrement covered ledge and making his way to Naples. Arrested again, he pretended to be Canadian and got the British to arrange his release. Moving to Alexandria, he was arrested a final time and returned to America. The jury could not agree on a verdict, so he was released and lived out his days in peace. His mother who was also involved in the plot was less lucky. She was hanged.
52. Despite being a staple of almost every modern naval film, only one submarine has ever sunk another submarine while both were submerged. On February 9, 1945, using only a paper and pencil, Lieutenant Jimmy Launders of HMS Venturer was able to project the zig-zag course of U-864 in 3D space with sufficient accuracy to hit it with a torpedo. It would be churlish to note it took him 4 goes.

Happy New Year!

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Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.