The Mega Book of Useless Information. Noel Botham

US Army doctor D W Bliss had the unique role of attending to two US presidents after they were shot. In 1865, he was one of 16 doctors who tried to save Abraham Lincoln; in 1881, Bliss supervised the care of James Garfield.

      • King John did not sign the Magna Carta in 1215, as he could not write his name. Instead he placed his seal on it.

      • Notorious bootlegger Al Capone made £34,000,000 during Prohibition.

      • One in ten people admit that they would buy an outfit intending to wear it once and return it.

      • Only 29 per cent of married couples agree on most political issues.

      • It is estimated that 74 billion human beings have been born and died in the last 500,000 years.

      • Thirty-nine per cent of people admit that, as guests, they have snooped in their host’s medicine cabinets.

      • Trying to prevent ageing, Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill and Christian Dior all had injections of foetal lamb cells. The process failed.

      • In a test of Russian psychic Djuna Davitashvili’s powers, a computer randomly selected a San Francisco landmark for her to predict. However, not only had she managed to predict it correctly six hours before it made the selection, Djuna also gave an incredibly detailed description of the site, though she was 6,000 miles away in Moscow at the time.

      • A psychology student in New York rented out her spare room to a carpenter in order to nag him constantly and study his reactions. After weeks of needling, he snapped and beat her repeatedly with an axe, leaving her mentally retarded.

      • The average person receives eight birthday cards annually.

      • More than 50 per cent of adults say that children should not be paid money for getting good grades in school.

      • Robert Todd Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln, was present at the assassinations of three presidents: his father’s, President Garfield’s, and President McKinley’s. After the last shooting, he refused ever to attend a state affair again.

      • Leonardo da Vinci wrote notebook entries in backwards script, a trick that kept many of his observations from being widely known until decades after his death. It is believed that he was hiding his scientific ideas from the powerful Roman Catholic Church, whose teachings sometimes disagreed with what Da Vinci observed.

      • Peter the Great of Russia was almost 7 ft (2 m) tall.

      • On his way home to visit his parents, a Harvard student fell between two rail-road cars at the station in Jersey City, New Jersey, and was rescued by an actor on his way to visit a sister in Philadelphia. The student was Robert Lincoln, heading for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The actor was Edwin Booth, the brother of the man who, a few weeks later, would murder the student’s father.

      • When a thief was surprised while burgling a house in Antwerp, Belgium, he fled out of the back door, clambered over a 9-ft (3 m) wall, dropped down and found himself in the city prison.

       • A flower shop entrepreneur named O’Banion held the greatest ever funeral for a gangster in Chicago. The shop, at the corner of State and Superior Streets, was a front for O’Banion’s bootlegging and hijacking operations. Ten thousand mourners were in attendance, and the most expensive wreath, costing $1,000, came from Al Capone, who had ordered that O’Banion be killed.

      • When a thief was surprised while burgling a house in Antwerp, Belgium, he fled out of the back door, clambered over a 9-ft (3 m) wall, dropped down and found himself in the city prison.

      • About 25 per cent of alcoholics are women.

      • Levi Strauss was paid £3.35 in gold dust for his first pair of jeans.

      • Adolf Hitler’s third-grade school report remarked that he was ‘bad tempered’ and fancied himself as a leader.

      • Robert Peary, discoverer of the North Pole, included a photograph of his nude mistress in a book about his travels.

      • The first women flight attendants in 1930 were required to be unmarried, trained nurses, and weigh no more than 115lb (52kg).

      • One of Napoleon’s drinking cups was made from the skull of the famous Italian adventurer Cagliostro.

      • When King Edward II was deposed from the throne in the 14th century, there were strict instructions that no one should harm him. To avoid leaving marks on his body when he was murdered, a deer horn was inserted into his rectum then a red-hot poker was placed inside it.

      • Pamela Anderson is Canada’s Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on the centennial anniversary of Canada’s independence.

      • A woman weighing less than 100lb (45kg) ran a fever of 114°F (45.5°C) and survived without brain damage or physiological after-effects.

      • Seventy-five per cent of people who play the car radio while driving also sing along with it.

      • While 1950s Hollywood actor Jack Palance was serving in the US Air Corps, during World War II, he was shot down in flames. Although Palance survived the crash, he received severe facial burns that required major plastic surgery.

      • Three per cent of adults use toilet paper to clean a child’s hands and/or face.

      • Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was a famous actor who belonged to one of the most distinguished theatrical families of the 19th century. He received 100 fan letters a week.

      • Orson Welles’ ghost is said to haunt Sweet Lady Jane’s restaurant in Los Angeles, where customers and employees have reported seeing Welles’ caped apparition sitting at his favourite table, often accompanied by the scent of his favourite brandy and cigars.

      • French chemist Louis Pasteur had an obsessive fear of dirt and infection. He would never shake hands, always carefully wipe his plate and glass before dining, and sneak a microscope into friends’ houses under his coat and then examine the food they served to make sure it was safe from germs.

      • Pope Innocent VIII drank the blood of three young donors thinking it would prevent ageing, and died shortly after.

      • Three per cent of adults use toilet paper to clean a child’s hands and/or face.

      • Tsar Nicholas II considered the construction of an electric fence around Russia and expressed interest in building a bridge across the Bering Straits.

      • Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest Americans ever, never carried cash. He was once sent off a London train because he did not have the fare.

      • Purple is by far the favourite ink colour in pens used by bingo players.

      • The average person spends 30 years being angry with a family member.

      • Thirty per cent of all marriages occur because of friendship.

      • Seventy per cent of women would rather have chocolate than sex.

      • Before going into the music business, Frank Zappa was a greetings-card designer.

      • University graduates live longer than people who did not complete school.

      • Richard Wagner was known to dress in historical costumes while composing his operas.

      • In 1981, near Pisa, 42-year-old Romolo Ribolla was so depressed about not being able to find a job, he sat in his kitchen with a gun in his hand threatening to kill himself. His wife pleaded for him not to do it, and after about an hour he burst into tears and threw the gun to the floor. It went off and killed his wife.

      • Humphrey Bogart’s ashes are in an urn that also contains a small gold whistle. Lauren Bacall had the whistle inscribed, ‘If you need anything, just whistle’ – the words she spoke to him in their first film together, To Have and Have Not (1944).

      • Of devout coffee drinkers, about 62 per cent of those who