Trivia

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The world’s tallest snowman was made in Bethel, Maine, USA in 2008. The snowman was actually a snow woman and was named Olympia. At 37 metres (122 feet) in height, Olympia was 9 metres (30 feet) shorter than the Statue of Liberty without the base. She had wreaths as eyes, skis for eyelashes, trees for arms and painted tyres as lips. Why was she made?  Simply to break the town’s 1999 record for the biggest snowman, who had been naked "Angus, King of the Mountain".

Olympia

Olympia

Previous record holder: ‘Angus, King of the Mountain’

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The flag of pirate Blackbeard, proper name Edward Teach (1680-1718), was black with a white, horned skeleton holding an hourglass and spearing a heart. For battle, Blackbeard put smoking fuses in his long black hair and beard to cause him to be wreathed in smoke, giving him a demonic appearance. The skeleton spearing the heart on the flag meant that no quarter would be given.

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Frederic J Baur had part of his cremated remains buried in a Pringles potato crisp can. This was because in 1966 Baur, a Proctor & Gamble chemist and food storage technician, devised the curved, stackable crisps that could be packaged in such a can.

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The first writer to make it onto Forbes magazine's billionaire list was Harry Potter creator J K Rowling in 2004. She was expelliarmused from the list in 2012

when her income dropped becuase of the high Brit taxes and her generous charitable donations.