Even More Things That Nobody Knows

501 Further Mysteries of Life, the Universe and Everything

William Hartston

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• eBook ISBN:
  9781782396116
• Year: 2015

There are many, many more things that nobody knows...! Why do we have five fingers? Do animals have a sense of humour? Did the universe have a beginning? What causes déjà vu? Why do cats purr? How fast did dinosaurs move? In Even More Things That Nobody Knows, William Hartston once again explores the limits of human knowledge, revealing 501 further mysteries in subjects as diverse as cosmology, mathematics, animal behaviour, medical science, music, art, language and literature. From the trivial to the profound, this is an enthralling and enlightening investigation into the things we just don't know, and which lurk tantalizingly beyond the bounds of our understanding.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Aesop

Alchemy

Alcohol

Anatomy

Ancient Cities

Ancient History

Ancient Rome

Animals

Ants

Art

Asparagus

Astronomy

Atilla

Austen

Australia

Autism

Avocados

Aztecs

Baboons

Bears

Bees

Bible

Big Bang

Biology

Birds

Black Holes

Bones

Brains

Brazil

Camels

Cancer

Cannabis

Cannibalism

Carroll

Cats

Chaplin

Cheese

Chemicals

Chewing Gum

Chickens

Chimpanzees

China

Chocolate

Christianity

Codes

Coffee

Comets

Computers

Cosmology

Costa Rica

Crickets

Crime

Crocodiles

Death

Dinosaurs

Disease

Dogs

Dolphins

Dracula

Dreams

Ears

Earth

Ebola

Egypt

Einstein

Elephants

Energy

English History

Evolution

Eyes

Fashion

Fish

Florida

Food

Football

France

Frogs

Fundamental Particles

Games

Genetics

Geology

Germany

Global Warming

Gold

Gorillas

Gravity

Guillotines

Guinea-Pigs

Hair

Henry VIII

Hitler

Human Evolution

Humour

Hypnosis

Incas

Intelligence

Inventions

Iowa

Italy

Jesus Christ

Jupiter

Kangaroos

Kisses

Language

Legs

Lemurs

Leonardo

Leopards

Literature

Lobsters

Longevity

Mammals

Marriage

Mars

Mathematics

Mayans

Medicine

Meerkats

Mercury

Mesopotamia

Meteorology

Mexico

Mice

Milky Way

Monkeys

Moths

Mountaineering

Mummies

Murder

Music

Myanmar

Mythology

Names

Napoleon

Nazis

North Dakota

Noses

Numbers

Octopuses

Opera

Otters

Outer Space

Palao

Pandas

Pangolins

Parapsychology

Penguins

Philosophy

Physics

Plants

Platypuses

Poker

Polar Bears

Porpoises

Prehistory

Psychology

Quasars

Rats

Religion

Riddles

Russia

Salamanders

Salmon

Salt

Saturn

Science

Sex

Sex Differences

Shakespeare

Sharks

Sheep

Shellfish

Ships

Sleep

Sloths

Smell

Snails

Snakes

Socrates

Solar System

Spiders

Sport

Squid

Squirrels

Suicide

Technology

Tennis

Termites

Theatre

Time

Treasure

Troy

Turkey

Turtles

Tyrannosauruses

United Kingdom

Universe

USA

Vanuatu

Venus

Vikings

Volcanoes

Waitresses

Wales

Walruses

Water

Whales

Wild Boar

Wine

Witches

Words

Worms

Zebras

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Index

INTRODUCTION

‘Real knowledge is to know the extent
of one’s ignorance.’

Confucius (6th–5th century BC)

I have always found it much more enlightening listening to experts talking about what they don’t know rather than what they do know. Only when we start peering over the boundaries of human knowledge do things begin to grow really interesting.

Every year, an estimated 1.5 million papers appear in academic journals. Each one of these pushes the boundaries of our knowledge a little further forwards. Just as important, it points the way into the unknown, giving us ideas for where our explorations should go next. The majority of the 501 unanswered questions in this book are about those areas where ‘further research is needed’, as the writers of those papers love to put it. Even if that is only a way of asking for their research grant to be renewed, it may also serve as a bright signpost into the unknown.

When I wrote the previous Things That Nobody Knows book in 2011, some readers were apparently disappointed that I did not give answers to the 501 questions posed. They both missed the point and clearly didn’t read the title carefully: if I, or anyone else, were able to give the answers, the questions wouldn’t have been in the book. These aren’t the things that most people don’t know; they are the things that nobody knows.

So here are another 501 unanswered questions. I hope you will find that my discussion of each of them is nonetheless enlightening, intriguing and in some cases even amusing.

William Hartston
Cambridge, 2015

AESOP

1. Was Aesop a fable?

The collection of stories known as Aesop’s Fables dates back to around the sixth century BC, but whether Aesop himself was fact or fiction is still an open question. Herodotus, in the fifth century BC, and Aristotle in the fourth century BC both wrote of Aesop being a slave in Samos. Plutarch, some 300 years later, wrote of Aesop visiting Delphi on a diplomatic mission, annoying the locals and being thrown from cliffs to his death. Later still, probably around the first century AD, a work entitled The Aesop Romance appeared, putting together and further embellishing tales of Aesop’s life.

Great doubt, however, has been cast on the accuracy of these tales, and in some cases the chronology simply does not add up. In 1965 the Aesop scholar Ben Edwin Perry concluded that much of what had been written about Aesop ‘must be reckoned as literary fiction’. So the question of whether Aesop himself was a fable is still open.

‘Ignorance is the softest pillow on which
a man can rest his head.’

Michel de Montaigne

ALCHEMY

2. Who was Fulcanelli?

In the 1920s a Frenchman who called himself Fulcanelli gained the reputation in Paris of being the last of the great alchemists. His writing style and knowledge of Latin, Greek and several modern languages marked him out as a well-educated man and references in his writings to a wife suggest that he was married, yet no evidence has been found of his education or marriage. He disappeared in 1926, after which tales of alleged sightings have only added to the mystery surrounding his true identity.

Fulcanelli is said to have met with the Russian/French spy Jacques Bergier in 1937 to warn him of the dangers of atomic explosives, which he said alchemists had known of for centuries. He is also said to have told a pupil, Eugène Canseliet, the secret of transmuting lead into gold, and there is an account of Canseliet demonstrating the method successfully by turning 100 grams of lead into gold at the gasworks of Sarcelles in the north of Paris.

Canseliet was also responsible for ensuring the publication of Fulcanelli’s great work, Le Mystère des cathédrales, which his master had left with him before he disappeared. It has been suggested that Fulcanelli was in fact Canseliet himself, which would of course have involved a deception of great ingenuity to stage the disappearance of a man who didn’t exist.

Canseliet insisted that Fulcanelli survived the Second World War and that the two men had their last meeting in 1953, when Fulcanelli would have been in his eighties but was said to look about thirty years younger. Canseliet died in 1982 and, if one is to believe the tales about Fulcanelli, the secrets of the Philosopher’s Stone and eternal youth vanished with him.

SEE ALSO FRANCE 201; LONGEVITY 280; PHYSICS 372

ALCOHOL

3. Why does alcohol make women less fertile?

In 1998 a paper was published in the British Medical Journal with the title ‘Does moderate alcohol consumption affect fertility?’ Based on a study of 430 Danish couples who were trying to conceive their first child, it concluded, after correlating their conception rates with their drinking behaviour, that: ‘A woman’s alcohol intake is associated with decreased fecundability even among women with a weekly alcohol intake corresponding to five or fewer drinks.’

Previous research studies had shown lower conception rates among women who drank more than five units of alcohol a week, but most of them had not detected any such effects for moderate drinking. Another surprise was that: ‘Among men no dose–response association was found after control for confounders including women’s alcohol intake.’ In other words, previous studies reporting low conception rates among male drinkers may have occurred because men who drink a lot may be more likely to have partners who drink a lot and whose conception rates suffer as a result.

Since then, many further studies have failed to reach agreement on whether low alcohol intake can decrease chances of conception. Alcohol has been associat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Copyright Page