The Mega Book of Useless Information. Noel Botham

flights after taking over a runway at Beijing International Airport.

      • A Canadian scientist claims to have proven that the world’s most expensive coffee really does taste better because the beans it is produced from have been eaten and defecated by a wild cat.

      • Former First Division footballer, ex-Crystal Palace and Middlesbrough defender Craig Harrison says he had dozens of dogs on a waiting list after opening a hydrotherapy pool for overweight hounds.

      • The UK faces an invasion of parakeets, with the wild population likely to exceed 100,000 in a decade, experts are warning.

      • Male and female rats may have sex twenty times a day.

       • Rabbits love liquorice.

      • An Essex man believes he has the biggest cockerel in Britain – a 2ft monster called Melvin.

      • Farm animals have been banned from council flats in Kiev after a survey found residents were keeping more than 3,000 pigs, 500 cows and 1,000 goats.

      • Mosquitoes have teeth.

      • Penguins can jump as high as 6 feet in the air.

      • Scottish scientists have become the first in the world to breed a golden eagle chick from frozen sperm.

      • A snake measuring more than 19ft long and weighing almost 16 stone was found inside a factory in Brazil.

      • Polar bears’ fur is not white, it’s clear. Polar bear skin is actually black. Their hair is hollow and acts like fibre optics, directing sunlight to warm their skin.

      • Italy has put border collies, corgis and St Bernards on a dangerous-dogs list that bans children and criminals from owning them.

      • A Japanese department store cashed in on a pet boom by offering a special £145 New Year meal for dogs.

      • Princess Tamara Borbon and her five-year-old Yorkshire terrier Bugsy were top of the bill at a canine fashion show at Harrods.

      • Thailand’s prime minister has banned vagrant elephants from the streets of Bangkok in an effort to ease traffic chaos.

      • Canada’s entry in the world’s most prestigious international art exhibition featured a video filmed by a Jack Russell puppy called Stanley.

      • Trained hawks employed to keep pigeons from making a mess on visitors in a Manhattan park were grounded in August 2003 because one of the birds mistook a Chihuahua for its lunch.

      • A British homing pigeon has become a star in the US after completing a 3,321-mile journey across the Atlantic.

      • Giant rats have been trained to sniff out landmines in Tanzania.

      • Most marine fish can survive in a tank filled with human blood.

      • Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.

      • Poodles, dachshunds and Chihuahuas have strutted down the catwalk at a fashion show organized by a Tokyo department store.

      • Some dogs can predict when a child will have an epileptic seizure, and even protect the child from injury. They’re not trained to do this, but simply learn to respond after observing at least one attack.

      • Rats destroy an estimated third of the world’s food supply each year.

      • The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.

      • International animal-rights groups are urged Thailand to ban orang-utan kickboxing fights being staged at a Bangkok safari park.

      • A chain of gyms in the US has started offering yoga classes for dogs.

      • Armadillos breed in July, but get pregnant in November after delaying implantation. This allows the young to be born during the spring when there is an abundance of food.

      • The world’s smallest winged insect is the Tanzanian parasitic wasp. It’s smaller than the eye of a housefly.

      • The world’s only robotic swimming shark is moving into an aquarium with four live sharks. The 2m-long creature called Roboshark2 will spend up to three years alongside sand tiger sharks at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth.

      • In Tokyo, they sell wigs for dogs.

      • Tarantulas can go up to two years without eating or drinking. Sea turtles can go up to 35 years without eating or drinking.

      • Manatees possess vocal chords that give them the ability to speak like humans, but they don’t do so because they have no ears with which to hear the sound.

      • Homing pigeons use roads where possible to help find their way home.

      • Authorities in New Delhi are planning to export cow dung and urine to the United States. The dung will be processed into compost while the urine will be converted into a biopesticide.

      • Engineers in the East Midlands are fitting rubber boots to the top of pylons to save squirrels from electrocution and keep the power flowing.

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       ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

      • When Marlon Brando signed into hotels, he used the name Lord Greystoke, aka Tarzan.

      • Batman actor Michael Keaton’s real name is Michael Douglas.

      • The largest number of fatalities on a film set is 40, occurring during the making of The Sword of Tipu Sultan (1989).

      • Norma Talmadge made the first footprints in the Hollywood Walk of Fame outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater in May 1927.

      • Some Like it Hot (1959) was originally called ‘Not Tonight, Josephine’.

      • One of the actors in Reservoir Dogs (1992), Eddie Bunker (Mr Blue), was a real former criminal and was once on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.

      • Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Steve McQueen, Cher and Tom Cruise never finished school.

      • Brad Pitt once worked as a chicken for the El Pollo Loco restaurant chain.

      • Marni Nixon provided the singing voice for Audrey Hepburn’s character in My Fair Lady (1964).

      • Screen 6 at Atlanta’s CNN Center has been showing Gone with the Wind twice a day, 365 times a year since the film’s release in 1939.

      • Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton first married in Canada in 1964, and then again in Botswana in 1975.

      • The first film to show the sex act was Extase in 1932.

      • The longest ever interval between an original film and its sequel is 46 years – between The Wizard of Oz and Return to Oz.

      • Since 1989, to avoid offending losers, Oscar presenters say, ‘And the Oscar goes to…’ instead of ‘And the winner is…’

      • Darth Vader has advertised Duracell batteries.

      • Charlie Chaplin first spoke on film in The Great Dictator (1940).

      • James Dean recorded an album called Jungle Rhythm.

      • Oliver Reed was once a bouncer for a strip club.

      • Robert Duvall’s character in Apocalypse Now (1979), Colonel Kilgore, was originally called Colonel Kharnage.