True tales of an oddball world

A new book, The Unbelievable Truth , by Jon Naismith and Graeme Garden, asserts that all the following odd observations are true.

• Apples are better at waking you up than coffee .

Apples do not contain caffeine but do have glucose, which fuels your brain and gives you energy

• Adolf Hitler and Spain's Francisco Franco both had only one testicle

An army medic who treated Hitler at the Battle of the Somme confirmed that Hitler had lost a testicle. Franco's doctor's grand-daughter confirmed that Franco had lost a testicle in battle. Napoleon is also rumoured to have had only one testicle but it seems from his autopsy that this was not the case. However, his genitals were "strikingly small".

• A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world

Argentine ants, which have spread in vast numbers across Europe, America and Japan, all belong to the same interrelated colony, numbering more than a trillion. They refuse to fight one another. Together they are about as brainy as 2000 humans.

• Most banana plants have not had sex for 10000 years

Almost every banana we eat was propagated by hand, a process that started in the jungles of Southeast Asia at the end of the last Ice Age.

• In 1943, the US developed a new weapon - bats carrying time-delay napalm bombs

The US planned to release the bats over Japanese cities so that when they roosted in the wood and paper buildings they would go up in flames. Aside from the atomic bomb, another reason for abandoning the project was that on the first test a US army base was burned to the ground.

• A man's beard grows fastest when he expects to have sex

A Cambridge scientist measured his beard growth by collecting and weighing the shavings from his razor. During the day before sexual activity his beard grew much faster than normal and it slowed afterwards.

• Writer Graham Greene once came second in a 1949 "Write like Graham Greene" contest.

Greene's entry was titled The Stranger's Hand and was submitted under the pen name "N Wilkinson". Charlie Chaplin went to a Charlie Chaplin-look-alike competition in San Francisco but didn't even make it into the final round. In 1984 Paul McCartney donned dark glasses and old clothes and went busking in London's Leicester Square. He made only a few pounds, which he donated to a charity.

• A chicken can live for up to two years without its head

In 1945 a cockerel in Colorado had his head chopped off - and lived. The axe missed the jugular vein and left enough of the brainstem attached to the neck for him to survive, even thrive. Mike, as he was known, became a national celebrity making $4500 from appearances.

• By weight, hamburgers cost more than new cars.

A Burger King Whopper costs £13782 a ton; a Renault Clio costs £11234 a ton.