The World's Greatest Book of Useless Information

The Book of Useless Information

The Book of Useless Information

The Book of Useless Information

The Book of Useless Information

By Botham, Noel

OH, but just how useless is useless? There, as Shakespeare observes in Act III, Scene I, of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, is the rub.

For instance, the news that flamingos can only eat with their heads upside down, while of more than passing interest to a female flamingo teaching her fledglings to eat up their shrimp, is of little use to a human being trained to sit up at a table and employ a knife and fork. Yet suppose someone made one a present of a flamingo, and it persisted in eating with its head upside down. You could spend a fortune on vet bills before learning that, in flamingo circles, that is the way it is done.

So we have to tread carefully. There have to be checks and balances. At our Useless Information Society summit meetings, we have these in the form of our formidable resident beadle, the distinguished jazz musician Kennie Clayton. If Mr. Beadle Clayton judges that an item may be put to use in the community, he solemnly bangs his ceremonial staff and it is ruled out of order. There is no appeal, although barracking and cries of “Rubbish!” are permitted.

An exception is sometimes made of material that may be of use to a biographer. Thus, when I learned from a newspaper cutting that Marilyn Monroe had six toes, I eagerly produced this nugget at the next Useless Information soirée in the confident belief that, with so many Marilyn biographers still trawling, it would get under the net. So it proved. What I hadn’t bargained for was that one of our more pedantic members—and we have a few—would seek to have the item barred on purely arithmetical grounds, on the basis that in total she must have had eleven toes at least.

The only other transgression is that of being boring. At the society’s earliest meetings, a few members misunderstood the nature of uselessness and came up with such conversation-?stoppers as that the Mississippi is 1,171 miles long or, for those who prefer it, 1,884 kilometers. We useless information aficionados are not interested in the length of rivers, a fact that is traditionally conveyed to the offender with elaborate yawns and shouts of “Boring!” Tell us, however, that in the Nuuanu Valley of Honolulu there is a river that flows upward, and our eyes light up.

Mr. Gradgrind, in the same volume as the Bard’s “There’s the rub” gag, observes, “Facts alone are wanted in life.” That is the policy of The Useless Information Society. It could be our motto.

But there are facts and facts. Useless information, as may be judged from this modest volume, is not in the same category as trivia, as in Trivial Pursuit. We do not care about any of that Guinness World Records kind of stuff. All our information has to pass the “Not a Lot of People Know That” test, preceded by gasps of surprise and, in extreme cases, followed by wild applause.

If we can send our fellow members home with their heads reeling under the weight of a cornucopia of entirely useless and out-?of-?the-?way facts, then our deliberations will not have been in vain.

Keith Waterhouse

THE USELESS INFORMATION MASCOT

It is estimated that millions of trees are planted by forgetful squirrels.

Squirrels can climb trees faster than they can run on the ground.

Squirrels may live fifteen or twenty years in captivity, but their life span in the wild is often only about one year. They fall prey to disease, malnutrition, predators, cars, and humans.

A squirrel cannot contract or carry the rabies virus.

THE BOOK OF

USELESS INFORMATION

HALL OF FAME

HAIL TO THE CHIEFS

All U.S. presidents have worn glasses; some of them just didn’t like to be seen wearing them in public.

There has never been a president from the Air Force or Marine Corps, although Ronald Reagan was in the Army Air Corps.

More presidents have been born in the state of Virginia than in any other state.

No president has been an only child.

The only three U.S. presidents who ever had to deal with real or impending impeachment—Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton—all have names that are euphemisms for “penis”—Johnson, Dick, and Willie.

David Rice Atchinson was president of the United States for exactly one day.

CURIOUS GEORGE

George Washington is the only man whose birthday is a legal holiday in every state as of a few years ago.

George Washington grew marijuana in his garden.

George Washington was deathly afraid of being buried alive. After he died, he wanted to be laid out for three days just to be sure he was dead.

George Washington’s false teeth were made of whale bone.

George Washington had to borrow money to go to his own inauguration.

Thomas Jefferson anonymously submitted design plans for the White House. They were rejected. He was the first president to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C.

Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Monroe all died on July 4. Jefferson and Adams died at practically the same minute of the same day.

John Quincy Adams owned a pet alligator, which he kept in the East Room of the White House.

John Quincy Adams took his last skinny dip in the Potomac on his seventy-?ninth birthday.

Andrew Jackson was the only president to believe that the world is flat.

The longest inaugural address by a U.S. president was given by William Henry Harrison. It was one hour, forty-?five minutes long during an intense snowstorm. One month later, he died of pneumonia.

John Tyler had fifteen children.

Millard Fillmore’s mother feared he may have been mentally retarded.

James Buchanan is said to have had the neatest handwriting of all the presidents. He was the only unmarried president.

Andrew Johnson was the only self-?educated tailor. He is the only president to make his own clothes and those of his cabinet.

Ulysses S. Grant had the boyhood nickname “Useless.”

HONEST ABE

Abraham Lincoln had a wart on his face.

Abraham Lincoln’s mother died when the family dairy cow ate poisonous mushrooms and Mrs. Lincoln drank the milk.

Abraham Lincoln had a nervous breakdown in 1836.

Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address consisted of just 272 words.

Before winning the presidential election in 1860, Abraham Lincoln lost eight elections for various offices.

A short time before Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, he dreamed he was going to die, and he related his dream to the Senate. He died in the same bed that had been occupied by his assassin, John Wilkes Booth. His ghost is said to haunt the White House.

The annual White House Easter egg roll was started by Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878.

James Garfield could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other—simultaneously!

Grover Cleveland was a draft dodger. He hired someone to enter the service in his place, for which he was ridiculed by his political opponent, James G. Blaine. It was soon discovered, however, that Blaine had done the same thing himself.

TEDDY TIDBITS

In 1912, after being shot in the chest, Theodore Roosevelt finished a speech he was delivering before he accepted any medical help.

Theodore Roosevelt was the first to announce to the world that Maxwell House coffee is “Good to the last drop.”

Theodore Roosevelt wrote thirty-?seven books.

Theodore Roosevelt’s mother and first wife died on the same day in 1884. He himself died from an infected tooth.

William Taft got stuck in his bathtub on his Inauguration Day and had to be pried out by his attendants. He had a special, reinforced steel dining chair.

Woodrow Wilson wrote all of his speeches in longhand. He is the only president who has held a Ph.D. degree.

Herbert Hoover was the first U.S. president to have a telephone in his office.

When First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt received an alarming number of threatening letters soon after her husband became president at the height of the Depression, the Secret Service insisted that she carry a pistol in her purse.

Harry Truman’s middle name was just S and was not short for anything. His parents could not decide between two different names beginning with S.

John F. Kennedy could read four newspapers in twenty minutes.

John F. Kennedy’s rocking chair was auctioned off for $442,000.

Pluto, the astrological sign for death, was directly above Dallas when JFK was born.

Lyndon B. Johnson was the first president of the United States to wear contact lenses.

Richard Nixon left instructions for “California, Here I Come” to be the last piece of music played (slowly and softly) were he to die in office.

Richard Nixon’s favorite drink was a dry martini.

Richard Nixon was the first U.S. president to visit Moscow.

Gerald Ford was once a male model.

Jimmy Carter is a speed reader (two thousand words per minute).

Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president born in a hospital. He had an operation for hemorrhoids while he was in office.

REAGANISMS

Ronald Reagan once wore a Nazi uniform while acting in a film during his Hollywood days.

Ronald Reagan married his first wife, Jane Wyman, at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Ronald Reagan sent out the Army photographer who first discovered Marilyn Monroe.

Ronald Reagan was the only divorced president, and he was the only president to be head of a labor union.

Bill Clinton was the first left-?handed U.S. president to serve two terms.

CRIMINAL MINDS

Al Capone’s famous scars (which earned him the nickname “Scarface”) were from an attack. The brother of a girl he had insulted attacked him with a knife, leaving him with three distinctive scars.

Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer. His brother was a town sheriff.

While in Alcatraz, Al Capone was inmate 85.

Behram, an Indian thug, holds the record for most murders by a single individual. He strangled 931 people between 1790 and 1840 with a piece of yellow and white cloth called a ruhmal. The most by a woman is 610, by Countess Erzsebet Bathory of Hungary.

Mass murderer Charles Manson recorded an album called Lie.

Benito Mussolini would ward off the evil eye by touching his testicles.

Fidel Castro was once a star baseball player for the University of Havana in the 1940s.

Leon Trotsky, the seminal Russian Communist, was assassinated in Mexico with an ice pick.

Lee Harvey Oswald’s body tag was auctioned off for $6,600.

Josef Stalin’s left foot had webbed toes, and his left arm was noticeably shorter than his right arm.

DER FÜHRER

Adolf Hitler was Time’s Man of the Year in 1938.

Hitler’s great-?great-?grandmother was a Jewish maid.

Hitler had planned to change the name of Berlin to Germania.

Hitler refused to shake Jesse Owens’s hand at the 1936 Olympics because he was black.

Hitler was claustrophobic. The elevator leading to his eagles’ nest in the Austrian Alps was mirrored so it would appear larger and more open.

THE OTHER KENNEDYS

Robert Kennedy was killed in the Ambassador Hotel, the same hotel that housed Marilyn Monroe’s first modeling agency.

While at Harvard University, Edward Kennedy was suspended for cheating on a Spanish exam.

LOUIS, LOUIS

Louis IV of France had a stomach the size of two regular stomachs.

Louis XIV bathed once a year. He had forty personal wigmakers and almost one thousand wigs.

THE ROYAL WE

The Queen of England has two birthdays—one real and one official.

The shortest British monarch was Charles I, who was four foot, nine inches.

Prince Harry and Prince William are uncircumcised.

Catherine the Great relaxed by being tickled.

Princess Grace of Monaco was once on the board of 20th Century Fox.

The royal house of Saudi Arabia has close to ten thousand princes and princesses.

While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes wore a fake beard.

King Tut’s tomb contained four coffins. The third coffin was made from twenty-?five hundred pounds of gold, and in today’s market is worth approximately $13 million.

Peter the Great executed his wife’s lover and forced her to keep her lover’s head in a jar of alcohol in her bedroom.

The German kaiser Wilhelm II had a withered arm and often hid the fact by posing with his hand resting on a sword or by holding a glove.

The Mongol emperor Genghis Khan’s original name was Temuji. He started out as a goatherder.

Alexander the Great was an epileptic. He was tutored by Aristotle.

Augustus Caesar had achluophobia—the fear of sitting in the dark.

Catherine de Medici was the first woman in Europe to use tobacco. She took it in a mixture of snuff.