01. Thomas Cook, the world's first travel agency in the world, was founded in 1850.

02. The 16th century Escorial palace of King Phillip II of Spain had 1,200 doors.

03. A dog was the first in space and a sheep, a duck and a rooster the first to fly in a hot air balloon.

04. Music was sent down a telephone line for the first time in 1876, the year the phone was invented.

05. Playing-cards were known in Persia and India as far back as the 12th century. A pack then consisted of 48 instead of 52 cards.

06. Excavations from Egyptian tombs dating to 5,000 BC show that the ancient Egyptian kids played with toy hedgehogs.

07. Accounts from Holland and Spain suggest that during the 1500s and 1600s urine was commonly used as a tooth-cleaning agent.

08. Julius Caesar was the first to encode communications, using what has become known as the Caesar Cipher.

09. The first mention of soap was on Sumerian clay tablets dating about 2,500 BC. The soap was made of water, alkali and cassia oil.

10. The first animal in space was the female Samoyed husky named Laika, launched by the Soviets in 1957.

11. In 1958 the US sent two mice called Laska and Benjy into space.

12. In 1969 the US launched a male chimpanzee called Ham into space.

13. In 1963 the French launched a cat called Feliette into space.

14. Great Britain was the first county to issue postage stamps, on 1 May 1840. Hence, UK stamps are the only stamps in the world not to bear the name of the country of origin.

15. Napoleon's christening name was Italian: Napoleone Buonaparte. He was born on the island of Corsica one year after it became French property. As a boy, Napoleon hated the French.

16. John Rolfe married Pocahontas the Red Indian Princess in 1613.

17. Only one of the Seven Wonders of the World still survives: the Great Pyramid of Giza.

18. The first parachute jump from an airplane was made by Captain Berry at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1912.

19. On 21 June 1913, over Los Angeles, Georgia Broadwick became the first women to parachute from an airplane.

20. The first written account of the Loch Ness Monster, or Nessie, was made in 565AD.

21. The world's first skyscraper was the 10-storey Home Insurance office, built in Chicago in 1885. (During Roman times buildings were up to 8 storeys high.)

22. In ancient times, it was believed that certain colours could combat the evil spirits that lingered over nurseries. Because blue was associated with the heavenly spirits, boys were clothed in that colour, boys then being considered the most valuable resource to parents. Although baby girls did not have a colour associated with them, they were mostly clothed in black. It was only in the Middle Ages when pink became associated with baby girls.


23. In the West the most popular male names are James and John. The most popular female name is Mary.

24. The name Wendy was first used in JM Barrie's Peter Pan.

25. There are about 5,000 prince and princesses in each Saudi Arabian royal.

26. Lady Peseshet of Ancient Egypt (2600-2100 BC) is the world's first known female physician.

27. The 16th century Escorial palace of King Phillip II of Spain had 1,200 doors.

28. Adriaan van der Donck was the first and only lawyer in New York City in 1653.

29. A Duke is the highest rank you can achieve without being a king or a prince.

30. The British royal family changed their surname (last name) from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor, the name of their castle, in 1917.

31. Before writing 007 novels, Ian Fleming studied languages at Munich and Geneva universities, worked with Reuters in Moscow, and then became a banker and stockbroker.

32. Julius Caesar was known as a great swimmer.

33. There are more than 600 million telephone lines today, yet almost half the world's population has never made a phone call.

34. When Alexander Graham Bell passed away in 1922, every telephone served by the Bell system in the USA and Canada was silent for one minute.

35. The people killed most often during bank robberies are the robbers.

36. Orville Wright numbered the eggs that his chickens produced so he could eat them in the order they were laid.

37. On New Year's Day, 1907, Theodore Roosevelt shook hands with 8,513 people.

38. The oldest person on record is Methuselah (969 years old).

39. An exocannibal eats only enemies. An indocannibal eats only friends.

40. Alexander Graham Bell never phoned his wife or mother because they were deaf.

41. Burt Reynold's father was the chief of police in West Palm Beach, Florida.

42. On 5th October 1974, four years, three months and sixteen days after Dave Kunste set out from Minnesota, he became the first man to walk around the world, having taken more than 20 million steps.

43. English sailors came to be called Limeys after using lime juice to combat scurvy.

44. English soldiers were called Tommies because the example name on the soldier forms was Thomas Atkins. (The example name on US forms is John Smith.)

45. The word "Machiavellian" is named after Niccolo Machiavelli, who was friends with Leonardo da Vinci.

46. Queen Isabella of Castile, who dispatched Christopher Columbus to find the Americas, boasted that she had only two baths in her life - at her birth and before she got married.

47. Leonardo da Vinci could write with the one hand and draw with the other simultaneously.

48. Until he was 18, Woody Allen read virtually nothing but comic books but did show his writing skills. He sold one-liners for ten cents each to gossip columnists.

49. In the 18th century Dr Monsey of Chelsea, England tied a piece of catgut around a patient's tooth, threaded the other through a hole drilled in a bullet, loaded the bullet into his revolver and pulled the trigger.

50. Thomas Jefferson wrote his own epitaph without mentioning that he was US President.

51. Winston Churchill was a stutterer. As a child, one of his teachers warned, "Because of his stuttering he should be discouraged from following in his father's political footsteps."

52. The 17th-century French Cardinal Mazarin never traveled without his personal chocolate-maker.

53. King Louis XIV of France established in his court the position of "Royal Chocolate Maker to the King."

54. Napoleon reportedly carried chocolate on all his military campaigns.

55. The word "electric" was first used in 1600 by William Gilbert, a doctor to Queen Elizabeth I.

56. In 1973, Swedish confectionery salesman Roland Ohisson was buried in a coffin made entirely of chocolate.

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