Entertainment

Saturday, 24 January, 2015 - 12:40

General knowledge

by KatB

An unexpected snow flurry in my small corner of rural Germany made me think of two seemingly unrelated, but closely connected things.

The first thought was the realisation that every single snowflake falling from the sky was unique. When you think of the hundreds and thousands of snowflakes that fall somewhere in the world every day, it seems impossible. A fascinating fact. 

The second thing I thought of, which is slightly harder to explain, are Wednesday evenings at home. Every Wednesday, my friends and I have a brilliant, very specific tradition. We go to our local pub to take part in the weekly pub quiz. The rules are simple: ten questions per round, ten rounds in total. No mobile phones allowed (to prevent cheating). First prize is either a voucher or a few free bottles of wine. In two whole years, our team has never won. Or even come close to victory. Still, as the saying goes, it's the taking part that counts!

As quite competitive people, my friends and I would usually disagree. Winning is the most important thing. But what we love about the pub quiz is that, even when we don't win, we learn all sorts of useless (or useful) facts - like the fact that every snowflake is individual.

These sort of facts can be defined as trivia, or general knowledge; whatever you call them, they can be at times interesting, mind-blowing, hilarious, or simply great conversation starters. For example, did you know that sharks never sleep? Or that Nutella was invented in Italy during WWII? Or that a flea can jump 350 times its own body length? For us humans, that would be like jumping the length of a football pitch. 

All bizarre, ultimately useless facts - but nevertheless, they are fun to learn about and discuss. If you have the chance, team up with some friends and go to a team quiz to test your general knowledge. Or, better yet, design your own.

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Discussion
Do you know any interesting pieces of trivia? Do you have any similar types of quiz in your country like the 'pub quiz' mentioned in the post? 
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