"Adam" is the first episode of the first series of QI, other than the Pilot. It was first broadcast on BBC Two on 11 September 2003. It was followed by "Astronomy", which was broadcast on the same date on BBC Four.
Adam's navel and the Archbishop of Canterbury's left ear are both purely decorative. Adam couldn't have had a navel, because he was created, not born, so there would be no umbilical cord. The Archbishop of Canterbury was born deaf in the left ear, so it has no function. The Creation of Adam was painted by Michelangelo, who John informed the panellists was born in 1475 and died in 1564.
God allowed Noah to eat animals, a right he had previously denied to Adam. Previously, they were vegetarians and told by God to just eat fruit and vegetables only. Some theological authorities believe the "forbidden fruit" that was eaten in the Garden of Eden, which isn't specified in the Bible, to be a banana, not the apple as popularly thought.
Christopher Plummer once said of Julie Andrews that working with her was like being hit on the head with a Valentine card.
Andrew Graham-Dixon discovered that Caravaggio, who died in 1610, accidentally killed Ranuccio Tomassoni on a tennis court... he was merely attempting to cut off his testicles.[1]
Finocchio (fennel) is Italian street slang for a homosexual.
If a Burmese man said that "your department store is open, even on weekends", it means that your fly is open. This was revealed in Andrew Marshall's writings on Burma in The Trouser People which describe Burmese idioms and quote from the diary of Victorian adventurer Sir George Scott.
Edward Woodward has four 'd's in his name to prevent it becoming 'Ewar Woowar'.
Actor John Barrymore regretted not being able to see himself perform on stage. He also famously said "Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock."
Young giant anteaters indulge in 'bluff charging', when they jump up and down like a cat and raise one front foot and hop menacingly side-to-side with all the fury of a clogged drain.
Anteaters have sixteen-inch (406 mm) tongues, but have mouths as narrow as a pencil.
A giant anteater's claws are sharp enough to eviscerate a human.
Dwarf anteaters are the size of squirrels and are a delicacy in parts of South America.
The country with the highest suicide rate is Lithuania.[2] It has 52 suicides per 100,000, which is more than 13 times higher than the United States and 6½ times higher than Britain.
Caravaggio's real name was Michelangelo. He took the name Caravaggio, because his father, Fermo Merisi, was the chief architect to the Marchese of Caravaggio, Italy. Derek Jarman famously made a film about Caravaggio.
The steam engine was invented by Hero of Alexandria, (this is debatable[note 1]) and was named the aeolipile. The railway was invented seven hundred years earlier by Periander of Corinth. The modern steam engine was invented by Richard Trevithick. When Stephenson's Rocket was introduced, people were concerned that travelling at such high speeds could cause irreparable brain damage, so fences were erected so people wouldn't hallucinate at the "terrible sight".
The twenty-third tallest tree in the world is a Giant sequoia called 'Adam'. It's one of the 30 tallest trees found in the Giant Forest in California.
