num_pages: 336
description: QI is the smartest comedy show on British television but few people know that we're also a major legal hit in Australia New Zealand Israel and Africa and an illegal one on BitTorrent. We also write books and newspaper columns; run a thriving website a Facebook page a Twitter feed; and produce an iPhone App and a sister Radio 4 programme. At the core of what we do is the astonishing fact - painstakingly researched and distilled to a brilliant and shocking clarity. In Einstein's words: 'Everything should be as simple as possible but not simpler.' Did you know that: cows moo in regional accents; the entire internet weighs less than a grain of sand; the dialling code from Britain to Russia is 007; potatoes have more chromosomes than human beings; the London Underground has made more money from its famous map than it has from running trains; Tintin is called Tantan in Japanese because TinTin is pronounced 'Chin chin' and means penis; the water in the mouth of a blue whale weighs more than its body; Scotland has twice as many pandas as Conservative MPs; Saddam's bunker was designed by the grandson of the woman who built Hitler's bunker; Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981 it is explicitly illegal in Britain to use a machinegun to kill a hedgehog. 1227 QI Facts To Blow Your Socks Off will make you look at the universe (and your socks) in an alarming new way.
language: English
title: 1,227 QI Facts to Blow Your Socks Off
publisher: Faber and Faber Non Fiction