50 fascinating facts to amaze your friends.

Byline: BY LORNE JACKSON

'TIS the season to be knowledgable, tra-la-la-la-lah, der-dar-dar-dar.

Especially if you've got a holiday from work and will be spending quality time with your loved one - ie, the local pub - this New Year.

There is bound to be plenty of quizzes down the Dog And Duck and you don't want to be dubbed a daft dimwit of a dumb-dumb.

Luckily for you, there's plenty of new fact-packed general knowledge books available.

The Book Of Fascinating Facts and The Best Book Of Useless Information Ever are full of tip-top trivia.

Here's a selection of some of the most curious facts.

1Abraham Lincoln died in the same bed that had been occupied by his assassin John Wilkes Booth.

2 Queen Victoria eased the discomfort of her period pains by having her doctor supply her with marijuana.

3 King Kong was Adolf Hitler's favourite movie. 4 The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's Born In The USA. 5 Giraffes have no vocal cords.

6 A pig always sleeps on its right side. 7 A duck has three eyelids.

8 Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa's dying words were: "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."

9 People start to shrink after the age of 30.

10 When young and impoverished Pablo Picasso kept warm by burning his own paintings 11Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.

12 Boris Karloff's real name was William Henry Pratt and he was educated at Dulwich College, England.

13 In all his film contracts, James Stewart was granted the right to select all the hats he wore on screen.

14 The part of outlaw Jesse James has been played by many Hollywood stars, but the first actor to play the role on screen was James's own son, Jesse James Jr in the 1921 movie Under The Black Flag.

15 In America, it's possible to force a dog to appear in a court case.

16 A mouse can fit through a hole as thin as a pencil.

17 Tour De France cyclist Lance Armstrong's heart is almost a third larger than the average man's.

18 Pulling your foot out of quicksand takes the same force as it would take to lift a medium-sized car.

19 One in 18 people has a third nipple.

20 Oliver Twist is very popular in China, where the book is translated as "Foggy City Orphan".

21The man who was the voice of one of the original Daleks, Roy Skelton, also did the voices for George and Zippy in children's TV series Rainbow.

22 The average employee spends 14 working days a year, not counting official breaks, on personal e-mails, phone calls and web browsing.

23 Donald Duck comics were once banned in Finland because he never wore trousers.

24 Doctors are banned from looking directly at a nude woman in Bahrain, so docs who need to carry out examinations have to use a mirror.

25 It is illegal to set a mousetrap in California if you don't have a hunting licence.

26 The entire Encyclopaedia Britannica is banned in Texas because it contains a formula for making beer at home.

27 Cat wee glows in the dark.

28 An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

29 The Jesus Christ lizard that lives in the Amazon can run across water.

30 America's national sport, baseball, was mentioned in the Jane Austen novel, Northanger Abbey.

31Astronauts cannot burp in space. There is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.

32 Many expressions now taken for granted in English first appeared in Shakespeare's works, including puppy dog, skim milk, wild goose chase and 'What the dickens'.

33 A donkey will sink in quicksand but a mule won't.

34 It is estimated that within 20 years of Columbus discovering the New World, the Spaniards killed off 1.5 million Indians.

35 A rat can survive longer without water than a camel.

36 New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote in 1890.

37 Pirates thought wearing an earing would improve their eyesight.

38 A sultan's wife is called a sultana.

39 Rhythm and syzygy are the longest words without vowels.

40 Women who wink at men are known as "nictitating".

41Henry Ford never had a driving licence.

42 The Roman emperor, Nero, whose father was dead and mother in exile, was brought up by a barber and a male ballet dancer.

43 Walt Disney had wooden teeth. 44 The newest trend in the Netherlands is having tiny jewels implanted directly into the eye.

45 Don McLean's famous song was inspired by the name of the plane in which Buddy Holly died - American Pie.

46 The legs shown walking down the street in the opening of Saturday Night Fever were not John Travolta's, but those of his stand-in, Jeff Zinn. 47 The blood in the famous shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho was in fact chocolate syrup.

48 Sometimes Prince Philip hides a radio in his top hat when he attends the Ascot races - because he hates racing and prefers to listen to the cricket.

49 The Nepalese word for the Abominable Snowman is Metohkangmi, which means the 'indescribably filthy man of the snow'.

50 Virginia Woolf wrote her books standing up.

CAPTION(S):

TOP TRIVIA: thirsty rats, King Kong, Lance Armstrong, Winston Churchill, Donald Duck, Abraham Lincoln, a wide-eyed ostrich and Bruce Springsteen,; The Book Of Fascinating Facts, John Blake Publishing (pounds 9.99); The Best Book Of Useless Information Ever, John Blake Publishing (pounds 7.99)