Facts by Rob unless otherwise stated ...

• The first car ever to be stollen was a Peugeot (in 1896 ?) (NJ)
• The White House is painted white to cover the scorch marks left when the British army set fire to it during the war of 1812 (RFN/IL)
• The speed of light is 1,802,617,500,000 furlongs per fortnight
• 5780 stars are visible to the naked eye under ideal Earth-based viewing conditions
• Empress Marie-Theresa of Austria was 4'11" tall and weighed 21 stone
• Queen Anne was buried in a square coffin
• The Hour of Scampering is usually around tea-time, according to the Vorlon/Human Translation Dictionary (PB) (c.f. Brillig (RFN))
• According to ancient Chinese astrologers, 70% of omens were bad
• In Australia, 'Durex' is a brand of sellotape
• The Danish word for condom is 'svangerskabsforebyggendemiddel' (PB)
• The word 'haywire' is not the legacy of an early and futile experiment in the transmission of electricity (RFN/PB)
• The address of the start of the display memory on a ZX81 is given by PEEK(16396)+256*PEEK(16397)
• The 3,000,000,000th decimal digit of Pi is an 8 (PB)
• On Pitcairn island it is a criminal offense to shout "Ship Ahoy" when there is in fact no ship in sight
• Icelandic phone books are listed by given name rather than surname (IL)
• The population of Outer Mongolia have recently been issued with surnames
• Polar bears are the only mammals with hair on the soles of their feet
• All polar bears are left-handed (PB)
• Earth worms are hermaphrodites
• There is no single word in the English language for the back of the knee
• The word 'set' has more distinct meanings than any other word in the English language
• Japan is the only country ever to have changed its capital to a city whose name is an anagram of the name of the previous capital (Tokyo and Kyoto)