Blog Tour ~ 1342 QI Facts To Leave You Flabbergasted

As  a huge fan of the QI programme

I am delighted to be hosting a stop on the amazing 1342 QI Facts Blog Tour

I'm really excited to share with you this Factifying Guest Post by John Mitchinson, QI’s head researcher and co-author, 1342 QI Facts to Leave you Flabbergasted

Factifying

In the early days of QI, when John Lloyd and I were asked, ‘where do you get your facts?, we used to refer people to a small shop in Cullercoats, a village on the Northumbrian coast. We were kidding, of course (at least, that’s what we tell people…)

A more direct answer is that we get our facts by asking questions. Given the co-author of this blog is feline, what kind of questions would we ask a cat? We have a shelf of books on cats in QI HQ, exploring physiology, behaviour, history and symbolic function. The internet, even the bits not filled with cute GIFS of kittens, is brimming with research and debate about their virtues and vices. Despite this, we are no closer to solving the ineffable mystery of cats than we were when we started. We know they sleep for 85% or their lives. We know only a quarter of cat ‘owners’ say they deliberately went out to acquire a cat: in 75 per cent of cases, it was the cat that acquired them. And studies have shown that many more people claim to own a cat than there are cats. The closer we look; the deeper the mystery. And are cats any help? Jaffa?

But the long process of sifting books, magazines, blogs and academic research does pay off occasionally. Here’s one cat-related question we think we’ve nailed. That unpleasant slimy thing they leave on the stairs after they’ve killed and consumed a mouse? It’s the mouse’s caecum, the enlarged section of the large intestine which is full of fermenting seeds. No one know why cat’s leave it – but the best guess is that it's a way of avoiding toxins the mouse has ingested. Knowing cats, it might just be because they don't like the taste .

A small but interesting question answered. A tiny drop of truth in an ocean of speculation. We once worked out that a minute of QI the TV show, usually has half a day of research behind it. That may seem wasteful, but the gathering of facts is its own reward. Galileo understood this: ‘Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.’

Faber and Faber
2016

1342 QI Facts To Leave You Flabbergasted is researched and complied by:

 John Lloyd

John Mitchinson

James Harking

Anne Miller

Follow the QI Elves on Twitter @qikipedia

Here are my thoughts..

There's nothing I like better than a good list and to have an amazing 1342 facts listed in such a really easy to read format is something that really appeals to my sense of order.

Of course, this is one of those books that you can pick up and open at whim and yet, I guarantee that within a few minutes, you will be avidly scanning the pages for another interesting fact that you never knew you needed to know. I love how they all blend seamlessly and very cleverly together.

Some of the facts, it must be said  made me laugh out loud especially the word that Robert Browning inadvertently used in his poem 'Pippa Passes'...

Some of the words I intend to make good use of, particularly, Plother which it seems to do nonstop here in the North West and also Subrident which is something Jaffa makes me do every day...

But, by a cat's whisker, the favourite fact found by the orange one is this little gem....' In 2015, America’s ‘National Hero Dog Award’ was won....by a cat’


Amazon UK

Huge thanks to John for his Factifying guest post and also to Ruth and Diana at Ruth Killick Publicity for  their invitation to be part of the #qifacts Blog Tour and for all their support and help.

~***~

Sunday WW1 Remembered...

Little Known Fact

Did you know that there were roughly 25,000 miles of trenches dug on the Western Front? 

Soldiers would usually spend no more than two weeks at a time in them. The average life expectancy was around six weeks, with junior officers and stretcher bearers being most at risk. German trenches tended to be superior to British ones, many having shuttered windows and even doorbells.

Trenches were approximately 6 feet wide and 9 feet deep. They were invariably dirty and due to the exposure from the rain, were filled with, not just levels of dirty water oozing mud, but were also home to rats, lice and frogs. The exposure to bad weather meant that the soldiers were always wet and therefore at risk from frostbite, trench foot and dysentery. 

Soldiers of 'A' Company, 11th Battalion, the Cheshire Regiment, occupy a captured German trench.

Somme. July 1916

© IWM (Q 3990)

Trenches typically had an embankment with a barbed wire fence which offered some degree of protection along with sandbags and wooden boards which helped to stabilise the sides of the trench. The floor of the trench was covered in wooden boards which became known as duckboards. 

There were three methods of trench building:

Entrenching was digging straight into the ground but this meant that men were even more exposed to enemy sniper fire.

Sapping was extending a trench at one end but this was slow and laborious.

Tunneling involved digging a tunnel and then removing the roof. This was the safest option but took longer.

It took 450 men six hours to build around 250 metres of British trenches.

The men would eat, sleep and relax in the trenches but hot food was not supplied until late 1915. Up until then men had made do with a diet of tinned food , often served cold. Howver, some trenches did set up a primitive cooking system in order to make meals more palatable.

Men of the 2nd Australian Division in a front-line trench cooking a meal, Crois du Bac,

 near Armentieres

© IWM (Q 583)

Sunday WW1 Remembered ...

Little Known Fact

Did you know that women workers in the Munition Factories during WW1 

were known as Munitionettes or 'canary girls' 

From the start of WW1 the UK struggled to produce the amount of weapons and ammunition it needed to keep the troops supplied. In response to the Shell Crisis of 1915, the British government passed the Munitions of War Act in 1915, which started to regulate the munitions industry. The newly created Ministry for Munitions controlled wages and conditions of employment. Between 1915 and 1918 many British factories were taken over to produce munitions for the war effort and as the war progressed and more and more men were sent to the Western Front, women started to make up the shortfall in labour. By June 1917, roughly 80% of the weaponry and ammunition used by the British army during World War I was being made by women. Interestingly, women were paid on average less than half of what their male contemporaries had been paid.

Credit : IWM

The women, known as munitionettes, worked long days in physically demanding conditions but for many of them it was their first opportunity to do paid work outside of the home and a great camaraderie developed between the women workers. However, the work was not without great risk as prolonged exposure to hazardous chemicals, particularly TNT (trinitrotoluene) turned the women’s skin yellow, so much so that they became known as ‘canary girls’. Long term health risks also involved toxic liver failure, anaemia, spleen enlargement and fertility problems.

Another pervasive danger came from the risk of explosions. The explosives that the women worked with were dangerously flammable and flare-ups were an ever present danger. The Silvertown explosion in 1917 killed 73 people and injured over 400 and the 1918 explosion at the National Shell Filling Factory, Chilwell, killed over 130 workers.

The author Pat Barker wrote about Munition workers in her novel, Regeneration, which is book #1 in the Regeneration Trilogy.

Sunday WW1 Remembered..

Little Known Fact

Did you know that modern blood transfusions and blood banks were pioneered during the First World War?

 Oswald Hope Robertson 1886-1966

Oswald Hope Robertson was a British born medical scientist who pioneered the use of blood banks during the First World War. He emigrated, aged eighteen months, with his parents to California where they settled in San Joaquin Valley. Roberston went on to study medicine at the University of California and also at Harvard but had to cut short his studies during WW1 when he was called to join a medical team. In 1917, whilst at the Western Front, he is credited with the invention of the first blood bank.

Due to the excessive need for blood replacement the British army began to use donated blood directly from one person to another but this was unpredictable and not without danger as even though blood grouping had been understood since the early part of the twentieth century, there were still problems with compatibility and blood coagulation.

Between 1914-1915 the use of sodium citrate as a blood coagulant  was introduced which allowed the blood to be stored for several days and so the need for donor to recipient donation was no longer necessary. Citrated blood could now be stored, on ice, for up to 28 days. It was the arrival of the US physicians in 1917, amongst them, Robertson, who took the idea of blood preservation much further. Robertson was sent to the British Third Army Clearing Station to consult with the British on improving the blood donation service and plans were drawn up for the first official Blood Bank where Robertson used only those blood donors with blood group O as this is compatible with all other blood types.

This was a major advancement in the treatment of catastrophic blood loss and the lessons learned during wartime went on to provide advanced blood donation in the years following the war.

Sunday WW1 Remembered...

A Little Known Fact

Winnie the Pooh and Friends
New York Public Library
Photo ©KSB

Yesterday my daughter visited New York Public Library where she took this photograph of Winnie the Pooh and his friends, Eeyore, Piglet, Kanga, and Tigger. The New York Public Library has been their home since 1987 where they are cherished and loved by millions of visitors.

On August 21st 1921, a 20" Harrods teddy bear was given to Christopher Robin Milne on the occasion of his first birthday. Originally named Edward bear, this was later changed to Winnie, after a black bear Christopher saw regularly at London Zoo. The name 'Pooh' came from a swan he had met whilst on holiday!

What has this to do with WW1?

Harry D. Colebourn (April 12, 1887–September 24, 1947) was born in England and moved to Canada when he was 18. He attended Ontario Veterinary College where he  received a degree in veterinary surgery. He later settled in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

On his way across Canada, on his way to England, where he was to embark on overseas duty during WW1, Colebourn came across a hunter who had a black bear cub for sale. Coleman purchased the cub for $20 and took it with him all the way to the army training camp at Salisbury Plain, England. Colebourn named the bear cub, 'Winnie', in honour of his home town of Winnipeg. 

Colebourn was a member of the Royal Canadian Army Veterinary Corps, and was attached to the Fort Garry Horse as a veterinarian, and Winnie the black bear became their unofficial mascot. 

While Colebourn served three years in France, attaining the rank of Major, he kept Winnie at the London Zoo to which he eventually donated her. 

After the war Colebourn worked for a while at the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in London but later returned to Winnipeg where he set up in private veterinary practice. He is buried in Brookside cemetery, Winnipeg. 

There are statues of Colebourn and Winnie in Winnipeg's Assiniboine Park Zoo and also in London Zoo.

A. A. Milne wrote Winnie the Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928)

Methuen &Co Ltd. London
1926