Things you wouldn't know...

All the mountains on Saturn’s moon Titan are named after peaks in The Lord of the Rings.

J.R.R. Tolkien and Adolf Hitler both fought at the battle of the Somme.

Splenda was an insecticide that became a sweetener when an assistant misheard an order to “test” it as “taste” it.

 The symbol of the Alzheimer’s Society of Canada is the forget-me-not.

A decapitated planarian flatworm grows a new brain complete with all its old memories.

95% of all avocados on sale today are descended from one tree grown by a Milwaukee postman in 1926.

There are whales alive today that were born before Moby-Dick was written in 1851.

The 1784 “Kettle War” between the Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire involved only a single shot. It hit a kettle.

North Americans account for less than a sixteenth of the world’s people, but more than a third of their weight. (error - see reader Kyle's comment)

After just four moves in a game of chess, there are 318,979,564,000 possibilities for the layout of the board.

10,000 horses were killed at the battle of Waterloo. 

Selections from the first book written by the elves at QI/NSTAAF.  They have now authored The Book of the Year.