In Fact: impress your friends with Prospect's Trivia file

August 19, 2015


Each month we run a set of pointless yet pertinent facts in the magazine. We'll now be compiling them all here, and we want suggestions from you for future issues; let us know any ideas in the comments or on Twitter.

September

The UK’s first mobile phone call was made 30 years ago this year, when Ernie Wise rang the Vodafone head office, which was then above a curry shop in Newbury. Vodafone, 31st December 2014 Humans have the same number of hairs on their bodies as chimpanzees. The Guardian, 27th January 2013 Dr Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham to win a bet against his publisher, who thought he could not write a book using only 50 words. CNN, 23rd January 2009 Britain produces 700 regional cheeses—more than France. Daily Mail, 6th October 2014 Before the crisis in Syria, Lebanon hosted just 8,000 refugees. Now it hosts more than a million. Forbes, 18th June 2015 Professional dog walkers in the UK earn an average of £26,500. The Times, 26th May 2015 The hyphen was invented by Greek grammarians in Alexandria in the second or third century BC, to help people read the language, before they realised leaving spaces between the words was more effective. BBC, 11th August 2015 It would have taken 2.5m seagulls to lift James’s giant peach into the air, not the 501 that Roald Dahl suggested. The Guardian, 4th January 2013