It’s almost the weekend, and everyone’s looking for a few impressive knowledge bombs to drop when the time is right.

Given that you’re only one ‘Let me Google that quickly’ away from being found out, it pays to exercise caution. That’s why we have found you 20 facts, verified by the team over at the Telegraph, that will hold up under scrutiny.

Geography, history, the arts – gosh, you’re so damn cultural.

Let the games begin:

• Roald Dahl’s first name was actually pronounced ‘Rue-all’, not ‘Rolled’. That’s according to this television show he presented, anyway. And we doubt they’d have gotten that wrong.
• Rock band Aerosmith made more money from a single licensing deal, for their songs to be used in the Guitar Hero video games, than they did from any of their 32 albums.
• On William of Orange’s wedding night, Charles II was there to watch the consummation, even cheering his nephew on as he went. In the medieval times it was common – if not required – for crowds to gather to witness the new couple seal the deal.
• Despite being associated with entirely separate historical eras, Martin Luther King Jr and Anne Frank were born in the same year.
• McDonald’s is technically the world’s largest toy distributor, thanks to their Happy Meals.
• Adolf Hitler’s nephew, William Patrick (who incidentally was born in Liverpool), fought against his uncle for the US Navy in the Second World War.
• Iceland has more authors per head than any other country. One in 30 Icelandic people will publish something in their lifetime.
• Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll llantysiliogogogoch in Wales is not, in fact, the world’s longest place name. It’s the longest village name, and the third longest place name overall, but first place goes to Thailand’s Krung thep maha nakorn amorn ratana kosin­mahintar ayutthay amaha dilok phop noppa ratrajathani burirom udom rajaniwes­mahasat harn amorn phimarn avatarn sathit sakkattiya visanukamprasit.

I suggest you deliver that last fact before you’re too deep into the Chocolate Block, although we can’t blame you for such a situation.

Right, fact me:

• Mt. Everest may be the world’s tallest mountain, but Chimborazo in Ecuador is the farthest point from the Earth’s core.
• Many countries are landlocked, but only two countries in the world are doubly landlocked, meaning they are trapped entirely by countries that are themselves landlocked. They are Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan.
• St. Lucia is the only country in the world named after a woman.
• Michael Phelps has won more Olympic gold medals than Jamaica ever has.
• ‘Flower of Scotland’ isn’t a traditional old song at all. It was written in 1967, by folk group The Corries. It only became associated with Scottish rugby when Billy Steele, a Scotland winger, sang it on the 1974 Lions tour. By 1990 it had become part of matchday in Edinburgh.\

And then every school in the Southern Suburbs adopted it, too.

Seven more facts to go:

• Most believe we say ‘love’ for 0 in tennis because it sounds like ‘l’oeuf’
• One blood cell in your body takes roughly a minute to make a full lap of your body.
• It took Dr. Amar Bose, the creator of Bose Headphones, 10 years to develop noise-cancelling headphones [time well spent – goodbye wailing babies on flights].
• On Saturn and Jupiter, when lightning hits clouds of methane, the carbon soot clouds harden to form graphite rain, which turns into diamonds.
• Woody from Toy Story’s last name is Pride.
• Saudi Arabia imports both sand and camels from Australia. Their sand isn’t the right quality to build on.
• The first man-made object to break Mach 1 (the speed of sound), a plane? A bullet? A cannonball? Nope, a whip. That’s what the cracking sound is.

We made it, folks – 20 facts at your disposal.

I suggest you deliver a few of those above, and then when people let their guard down throw in a whopper of your own design.

[source:telegraph]