ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF EVERYTHING ELSE

Forget the pursuit of worthy but dull information to be found in a standard reference work, and instead immerse yourself in this encyclopaedia of things you really want to know. The first page alone will tell you that the aardvark population of the UK has more than doubled, from four to nine, since 2006, while the USSR was the first country to legalise abortion, in 1920. Adultery, Aeschylus, Afghanistan and Air Hostesses are sources of equally fascinating information on the next page, and so it goes on. The word "anorak" first appears in English meaning a jacket in 1924, but the secondary meaning of a boring person has to wait until 1984. The entry on Charles Dickens includes the information that the expression "What the dickens" was first recorded in 1599, well before the novelist's time, and among the words that are first recorded in works by Dickens is "dustbin". The country with the highest divorce rate is the Maldives, followed by Kazakhstan and Russia. In Kazakhstan there is only an average of 15 people per square mile, and in 2007 a man was arrested for trying to smuggle 500 parrots into the country, though it was unclear how he got them all into his Audi. According to a Biophysics paper of 2022, octopuses may come from another planet, cryopreserved in meteors several hundred million years ago. 60% of an octopus's brain is shared between its eight legs, which each has an independent learning capacity. Spectacles date back to 13th century Italy, when they had wooden or leather frames. The earliest reference to vampires was originally thought to be in 1190, long predating Bram Stoker's Dracula, but the 12th century mention is now thought to refer to zombies. In 1999 alone, 907 Americans took out insurance against turning into vampires or werewolves. Unmissable. A delightful and witty treasure trove of utterly useless information by the author of The Things That Nobody Knows. 517pp.