17. Some fruit flies are genetically resistant to getting drunk — but only if they have an inactive version of a gene scientists have named "happyhour".

18. Experiments show that male rhesus macaque monkeys will pay to look at pictures of female rhesus macaques' bottoms.

19. In 1567, the man said to have the longest beard in the world died after he tripped over his beard running away from a fire.

20. The Dance Fever of 1518 was a month-long plague of inexplicable dancing in Strasbourg, in which hundreds of people danced for about a month for no apparent reason. Several of them danced themselves to death.

21. Vladimir Nabokov nearly invented the smiley.

22. In 1993, San Francisco held a referendum over whether a police officer called Bob Geary was allowed to patrol while carrying a ventriloquist's dummy called Brendan O'Smarty. He was.

23. Sigurd the Mighty, a ninth-century Norse earl of Orkney, was killed by an enemy he had beheaded several hours earlier. He'd tied the man's head to his horse's saddle, but while riding home one of its protruding teeth grazed his leg. He died from the infection.

24. The Dutch village of Giethoorn has no roads; its buildings are connected entirely by canals and footbridges.