Quite Interesting

[Pip Madeley]

Let's have our own version of QI on PS! This is the thread for any interesting facts you may have to share. Hopefully we'll all learn something at the end. I'll start us off...

There were 61 billion web searches made in August, over half of which were powered by Google.

[Michael Mills]

George Bernard Shaw is the only man ever to been awarded both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar - Al Gore doesn't count because the Oscar was awarded to An Inconvenient Truth, not to him.

[Pip Madeley]

Katy Manning played Yvette in 'Allo 'Allo last year. It is a fact, Controller.

[Jon Masters]

The horse does not have a gall bladder.

[Dirk Gently]

In the 1500's.
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

[Jeff]

Why didn't they just get married in May right after their bath then?

[Dirk Gently]

Because it was raining! They saved the water for the bath!

[chalkie]

16/3/1968 was the first occasion the doctor is seen using his sonic screwdriver ep arc 42 fury from the deep, according to DW episode guide mark campbell

[Lissa]

"Tomorrow Never Dies" was supposed to be called "Tomorrow Never Lies" but someone wrote it down wrongly and the studio preferred the incorrect version.

[Pip Madeley]

Pulp b-side "Tomorrow Never Lies" was intended to be used as the theme to the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. The song was ultimately rejected in favour of a song by Sheryl Crow, and was renamed after the film's working title.

[SiHart]

In the meantime David Arnold had got KD Lang to record a theme for the film, unawre that the producers had approached Sheryl Crow, and so Surrender (Tomorrow Never Dies) is played over the end credits. It's a great song too- better than Ms Crow's effort.

Si xx

[enzo1701]

An arcade game in the 1980s called Continental Circus should have been called Continental Circuits but for a phone call misheard by the company who mass produced the arcade cabinets.

[Lissa]

On the same theme, "Donkey Kong" was of course a mistranslation of the Japanese "Monkey Kong", a name which makes a lot more sense.

[chalkie]

Pulp b-side "Tomorrow Never Lies" was intended to be used as the theme to the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. The song was ultimately rejected in favour of a song by Sheryl Crow, and was renamed after the film's working title.

hmmmmm....checks date of post........did you know they're going to take the word "gullible" out of the dictionary!!!!??

[Captain Tancredi]

Several species of plant grow in the ruins of the Colosseum in Rome which are unknown elsewhere in the world. Their seeds were transported to Rome inside the digestive systems of the animals used in the games, and subsequently took root when the animals did their business in the underground cages. In the 2000 years since the games took place, the wild counterparts of the plants in question have mutated or been out-competed, while their Roman counterparts remain as they were 2000 years ago.

[Lissa]

P.H. Vazak received an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay despite being a dog. He didn't win.

[SiHart]

In 2007, the most borrowed author from UK public libraries was James Patterson.

Si xx

[Captain Tancredi]

You can have lots of fun with book statistics. The year Delia Smith's Christmas came out, it was the top selling book in Britain by a country mile.

Oddly enough, it was also the most returned book the following January...

[Pip Madeley]

Here's a QI fact:

Seventh series of QI confirmed

QI, the hit intellectual panel game starring Stephen Fry and Alan Davies, has been commissioned for a seventh series. This somewhat-given commission allows the programme to continue on its 26-year-long project of covering every letter of the alphabet.

The sixth series, covering topics beginning with 'F' has been recorded and is due to be broadcast this autumn. Meanwhile Series 'G' will be recorded and broadcast next year.

[Pip Madeley]

hmmmmm....checks date of post........did you know they're going to take the word "gullible" out of the dictionary!!!!??

Gullible? It's a fact, "Tomorrow Never Lies" really was the working title. That's why the Pulp song is called that.

[shada pavlova]

Gordon Blows, editor of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society magazine TARDIS, once misheard the title of Image of the Fendahl, thinking it to be called The Island of Fandor.

[Stuart Wallis]

...which for many years was thought to be a Who story that was dropped prior to production.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the release, in 1932, of Flowers And Trees, produced by Disney. It was the first cartoon released in Technicolour, and the first cartoon to win an Oscar.

[Pip Madeley]

Gordon Blows

Does he?

[Dirk Gently]

Only in the privacy of his own home.

[shada pavlova]

...which for many years was thought to be a Who story that was dropped prior to production.

Err...yes. I was about to say that.