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For The Emigre

— The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, November 22 1906
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In the Republic of Cameroon Guinness is thought to be an aphrodisiac.

A search for ‘fat naked German man chasing pig’ did not match any image results.

Bernard Lout was buried in a white dress.

Bookshelves are problematic.

A ‘hucklebearer’ is another term for pallbearer.

Emus are almost impossible to hit with machine-gun fire.

The England dressing room has a maximum occupancy of 18.

The order Testudines includes both extant and extinct species.

The Greek philosopher Chrysippus died from laughing at his own jokes.

In late-medieval France there was a crisis of authority.

Warren Buffett cannot buy time.

There is no Chinese takeaway in the Falkland Islands.

Other quizzes are available.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, July 19 1906
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Jacob Zuma is the only black South African president never to lift the rugby world cup.

At Morrisons, your opinion gets rewarded with a £500 voucher.

Vegetarianism, which is based on false hypotheses and ideas, does not have followers in the Soviet Union.

Property blinds all eyes.

You must be prepared to stabilise if you need to excavate earth.

Apples don’t have daddies.

Only humans know that trees are beautiful.

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne is appearing at the CENS Workshop on Understanding and Countering Online Falsehoods and Influence Operations.

Necessity, Manitoba, has a population of 1,230 souls.

Almost everyone is happy to accept the cookies.

The lion-keepers at Dublin Zoo have a remarkable record in breeding lion cubs.

Gustav Mahler wrote the Kindertotenlieder before any of his own children died.

Basketball is not an interesting sport.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, January 6 1909
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In LA there is a chess set designed for the East India Company, featuring Sikh soldiers vs Afghans.

Among a certain kind of people, being ‘passionate about Israel/Palestine’ is usually a substitute for having any actual political thought.

During WWII, in Germany, a Django Reinhardt record was worth 2kgs of butter on the black market.

A sailor has a tattoo of a swallow for every 5,000 nautical miles he has travelled.

Sam Lewis Craft has been named the Rain Men Player of the Year.

Alfred the Great of England believed that a thorough grounding in the liberal arts was essential for those called to exercise judgement and authority.

A South Benfleet millionaire has revealed how she earns £1,472/hr.

A town in Iceland has painted 3D zebra crossings in an attempt to slow down speeding cars.

Bobby Kennedy had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, then had her killed by Communists.

Truth is harder to bear than ignorance, and so ignorance is valued more.

Brett Dean’s new opera, Hamlet, contains precisely zero tunes.

The Fuegian word ‘mamihlapintafoi’ means ‘(two people) looking at each other, hoping that either will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do’.

In 2017 over half the people living in absolute poverty work for a living.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, September 8 1908

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Ben Stokes is the sixth Englishman to have his name on the honours boards at Lord’s for both batting and bowling.

The smell of hot food is not very common on building sites.

Annalise was stunning in Neighbours. But what she looks like now is insane.

Irish people ended up in Kilburn because the Holyhead train came into Euston and the Fishguard train came into Paddington.

The bite of a tarantula can be cured by musick.

The National Health Service will be £350m better off per week after Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union.

In South Africa there is a town called Nilstrom, because the Afrikans voortrekkers thought that they had found the Nile.

Sebastian Faulks takes his own alcohol to Iceland.

The first American performance of Peter Grimes was conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

A man in Reading is celebrating after his penis is confirmed as being the longest in the world.

The Chinese invented gunpowder while searching for the elixir of life.

Big hair don’t care.

The paraphrast draws only from the Book of Daniel.

— The Nelson Evening Mail, January 22 1907

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It is a German conceit, that the vertebrae are absolutely undeveloped skulls.

Vladivostock is 1000km east of Beijing.

The Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association allows for two spaces after a full stop in draft manuscripts, but recommends one space in published work.

Journalists are suicide merchants.

A dachshund has never won Crufts.

A lawyer representing an alleged arsonist has set his trousers on fire.

Iceland has an official Naming Committee which rules on the validity of children’s names.

The piccolo is known as ‘Satan’s instrument’.

Sri Lanka has 94 members of parliament without any O Levels.

The official Nudie Jeans Online Shop has the best selection of Nudie Jeans denim.

Sick Boy’s real name in Trainspotting was Simon Williamson.

Kurt Franz, final commandant of the Treblinka death camp, kept an album of his time there titled ‘Beautiful Years’.

It is never worth pointing out the irony. In life. To anyone. Ever.

— The Nelson Evening Mail, October 10 1906

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The Museum of Emotions in London has a game with yes/no answers.

Adolf Hitler fixed the Nazi Party registrations, to make it seem they had more members than they did.

The endnotes to David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest comprise their own entire audiobook.

Vandals put lives at risk.

The ‘Blue Danube’ waltz is played on a radio station somewhere in the world every minute of the day and night.

The English county of Midsomer has the highest murder rate of any non-metropolitan area in the UK.

Barns are typically painted red because of nuclear fusion.

In France a few yards of silk can make a nobleman.

The Cutty Sark was still in service in 1953.

‘Orientation’ comes from the fact that the earliest Western maps placed the East at the top, putting Paradise in pole position.

Public procurement expenditure accounts for nearly 50% of the Afghan budget.

The weather in Northern Ireland is always fine.

Girls have a higher chance of getting pregnant than boys.