Useless Information

I have been gradually working through The Encyclopedia of Useless Information, which I received for my birthday and which makes good bathroom reading.
I am only up to the B's so far, but here is the kind of uselss thing I have been finding out from the A's:

• Age of Consent: The lowest age of consent ever was in England in 1576 when 10-year-olds were allowed to marry (although, even today, consenting 12-year-olds in Mexico are legally allowed sexual activity).
• Alaska: Under the Alaskan penal code, "wanton waste of a moose" is a Class A misdemeanour, comparable to drunk driving.
• Queen Alexandra: Edward VII's wife was left with a limp after an illness in 1867. Ladies at court copied the limp to be fashionable.
• Alphabet: The dot above the letter "i" is called a tittle.
• America: Recent evidence suggests that America is less likely to have been named after Amerigo Vespucci (which always seems suspect to me), and more likely to have been named after Richard Amerike, a Bristol merchant and one of the major sponsors of John Cabot's voyages to North Amercia, long before Vespucci or Colombus. Amerike's family banner also shows a flag in red, white and blue, depicting stripes and stars.
• St Apollonia: The patron saint of dentists and toothache sufferers had her teeth knocked out by the Romans in in AD249. During Henry VI's reign in the 15th century, several tons of her alleged teeth, which were peddled as cures for toothache, were collected in a bid to stop the scam.
• Apple: There are more than 7,000 varieties of apples in the world.
• Armadillo: The nine-banded armadillo is the only animal other than the human that can suffer from leprosy.
• Atlantic: In 1995, two Englishmen became the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean from east to west on a pedalo.
• Australia: The top 14 deadliest snakes on earth are found in Australia.

They are supposedly collected from disparate and obscure but reliable sources.