Did you know that most toilets flush in E-flat? Or that American Airlines once saved $40,000 by removing a single olive from each salad served in first class? Well, now you will with this clever, fun, and occasionally shocking compendium of facts from around the world.

Organized into witty categories, including “Battle of the Sexes: Facts About Men and Women” and “The Past Is a Foreign Country: Facts About History,” You Are One-third Daffodil contains hundreds of weird and wacky facts, including:
*In Milan, it is a legal requirement to smile at all times, except during funerals or hospital visits.
*The most expensive age of your life is thirty-four.
*Cuba will lift its ban on toasters in 2010.
*Thomas Jefferson invented the swivel chair.
*The “zip” of zip code stands for “zone improvement plan.”
*Counting up from zero, and excluding the word “and,” the first number to contain the letter “a” is one thousand.
*There are an estimated 10,000 trillion ants on earth–roughly 1.6 million ants for each person. Their combined weight is equivalent to the weight of the entire human population.
*In the Second World War, every Italian soldier in North Africa carried his own personal espresso machine.

So go ahead, become the office Einstein (though did you know Einstein didn’t learn to read until he was ten?) or the cocktail party trivia star with You Are One-third Daffodil . The words “did you know?” will never sound the same again!


From the Trade Paperback edition.