Andy Simpson: 'Can Crocodiles Cry?'

These 500 answers, to an unknown (but lesser) number of questions, are culled from the Daily Mail’s Answers To Correspondents column, which has been published since 1888.

The questions cover all topics, from original meanings of words such as ‘Why do we “turn the tables” on someone?’ to scientific questions such as ‘What level of detail can we see from the Hubble telescope?’. It also includes some questions and answers from the Victorian era in grey panels for comparison, such as ‘Is early rising beneficial for the health?’.

The answers are culled from the readership of the Daily Mail by their weirdness and wonder, according to the back page, but not, notably, by their accuracy. To give an example, the residents of Portland, Oregon would be surprised to find out that they come from ‘Forest City’ given that Portland has been known as the ‘City of Roses’ since the first year Answers To Correspondents was published: 1888. (And in America, that’s about as ‘ancient’ as a West Coast city gets.) This is a problem in a book of facts, because once one error is discovered, you wonder how many others might be lurking between the pages. The answers are provided by readers of the Daily Mail, not experts in a field. If you’re going to learn from a bunch of people writing what they think they know, why not just browse Wikipedia?

The book does make for interesting reading from the sheer variety of answers, and if you are a Wikipedia addict, then here’s a nice portable version. Some of it is undoubtedly true, so check the source: the hurricane names for 2008 and 2009, provided by The Meteorological Office in Bracknell, are probably safe.

Published on 15th November 2007 by Hamlyn.

Written by W. L. Clark.