Trivia you never wanted to know

The interrobang (‽)was introduced by the New York publishing establishment as "a twentieth century punctuation mark". The interrobang combined the functions of a question mark and an exclamation point. It received some attention at first, but never caught on, although for a brief period during the 1960s it was added to some typewriter keyboards

"load 200"-- A Russian pilots' term for soldiers' coffins flown out of Chechnya. A military coffin-- zinc, actually --plus a body is rated at 200 kilos.

"nine grams"-- Russian phrase...the weight of the lead in a Makarov pistol bullet, and thus a term for a final solution to a problem

Signo de interrogación, or inverted question mark (¿), has its origins in the mid-1700s. At the time, it was felt that a single mark at the end of a sentence was insufficient to allow Spanish readers to regularly achieve the right intonation pattern, and after officially recognizing the problem, the Real Academia Española in 1754 advocated the use of '¿' at the beginning of interrogative clauses in conjunction with '?' at the end. Even then it took a couple of decades before it came into regular and consistent use.

The phrase "in the pink" comes from fox hunting. Pink is the way the hunt has traditionally described the colour of its red jackets, though there is also a school of thought that believes it originates with clothier Thomas Pink, who made jackets for hunters.

The flatulence of sheep, cattle and other farm animals accounts for 25% of world methane emissions. Australian scientists are working on injections to reduce the creatures' production of one of the worst greenhouse gases, the New Scientist reports.

There are 320,000 lampposts in New York.

There are now more different kinds of cheese made in the UK than France, thanks to new blends being devised, the British Cheese Board says.

Although it's nearly 24 years since Jimmy Carter was US president, he still receives about 4,000 letters a month.

Pink Lady is not an apple variety but the world's first branded apple, derived from the Cripps Pink variety. As such they must meet strict criteria. At least 40% of a Pink Lady's surface must be covered in the characteristic pink blush.

Britain has more than twice as many managers (12%-14%) as France or Germany (5%-6%) due to the trend in "up-titling" - inflating an employee's job title in lieu of a pay rise. For example, train guards are now often called train managers.

Cancers produce certain odours, which dogs have been scientifically proven to have the ability to smell.

Women in the UK spend an average of £33 a year on fake tans, a survey this week found.