The earliest known example of government propaganda is the Bayeux Tapestry. William "The Conqueror" actually won England from King Harold in a high stakes game of "pissenlit", an early forerunner of poker that was popular in France at the time. After the game, Harold and William (who were still the best of friends) decided to produce the tapestry in order that William's newly acquired subjects should feel better about their new king, and also so that Harold's mother, who strongly disapproved of gambling (at least for anything larger than the Orkneys), would not attempt to find and chastise her errant son, believing him dead. The Doomsday Book was instigated some years later by William, when he became suspicious that Harold - now living as a playboy in the French court - had taken some of England with him; and, indeed, upon the completion of the Book, it was discovered that thirty-two cows, fourteen chickens, eighty-seven virgin maidens, and three small villages were missing. This - still unhonoured - gambling debt is the real root of the enmity between England and France that survives to this day.

Sir Robert Peel is famous, not only for being the founder of Britain's police force, but also for being the first Scot to possess a navel since they were first banned in Scotland during the reign of Louis XIV.

Morrissey's favourite party trick is to burp the whole of "Girlfriend In A Coma", pausing for breath only three times.

The overwhelming majority of heart attacks are caused by a fatal combination of smiling while jogging. The extra strain on the facial muscles is enough to push most people's cardiovascular systems just that little bit too hard. This is why most joggers prefer to dribble and wobble their cheeks.

Horse radish has only relatively recently been used as a condiment. It was originally intended as a haemmorhoid cure.

Most word processors will not print the word "toop" for religious reasons.

Japan was officially at war with the small Suffolk town of Brome for 174 years. During the entire war, only seventeen shots were fired: in 1877, the Japanese ambassador to Britain fired twice at a London fruit-market trader whom he suspected (wrongly) of coming from Brome, missed, and was promptly deported; and in 1944, an American pilot, whose mother had emigrated from Brome to Los Angeles forty years previously, took particular relish in firing his first - and only - nine rounds at a Japanese aircraft carrier before he himself received six bullets to the head from a fanatically anti-Brome Japanese spy who had been hiding in the rear of the cockpit. Peace broke out in 1983, when it was finally realised that there were no surviving records of the incident that had supposedly started the war, and that the whole thing was bloody stupid anyway.

The letter "w" was originally intended as a joke. Dr Samuel Johnson placed it liberally throughout his Dictionary in order to provide some light relief, and to amuse his friends. Unfortunately the joke backfired horribly, as everyone, including his friends, took it absolutely seriously. To this day, the letter still does not have a sensible name. It is said that Doctor Johnson died an angry man, and finally passed away screaming the words "Weasles! Wensleydale! Wishy-washy! Work! Wimbledon, tupperware, twenty-two, twins!" to anyone that could hear him. In his will, he requested that none of his descendents should ever be called William, Wallace, Wilbur, Wilma, or (mysteriously) Edgar.