20 Facts You Never Knew About... EGGS!

1. The shape of an egg can be described as a prolate spheroid, usually consisting of a prolate half and a roughly spherical (potentially even minorly oblate) ellipsoid joined at the equator, sharing a principal axis of rotational symmetry. Or - to put it another way – eggs are egg-shaped.

2. The many thousands of eggs adorning kitchen tables across the land each morning come from chickens. However, although the eggs typically consumed by humans are, by a large margin, chickens’ eggs, there are many other types of eggs in the world. These include ostrich eggs - which are huge - and pheasant eggs, which are fowl.

3. Also, ducks.

4. Oh, and then there's caviar. That counts too. It's fish eggs.

5. Fritzl. Moat. Shipman. Goering. You may think these gentlemen had nothing in common, but you’d be flat out wrong. As it so happens, the four of them each enjoyed the exact same thing for breakfast every single day of the week  – a soft-boiled egg, lightly salted, with toast soldiers for dipping. (Apart from Sundays, when Moat would choose to break his fast with a packet of honey-roast ham from his local Morrison's.)

6. The expression "dog eggs" does not literally mean the egg of a canine; this would be preposterous, for dogs are mammals and do not lay eggs in the traditional, biological sense. No, it just means dog shit.

7. Egg cups are thought to have been in use since prehistoric times, with some of the earliest dating back to the Bronze Age. It’s likely these early egg cups were in fact made of bronze, rather than the porcelain variety common today. They also probably weren’t shaped like miniature monks, VW camper vans or testicles.

8. The term "poaching" can be used to describe not only the act of illegal hunting, but also the process of simmering food - such as eggs - in liquid. It can also mean the act of illicit snowboarding, but this has about as much to do with eggs as stealing plants and animals. Unless of course you’re poaching wild birds, then stealing eggs from their nests. Then that’s pretty egg-related.

9. The largest omelette ever made contained over 110,000 eggs and was prepared by 80 chefs. Once finished, it was consumed by a single man, which was fitting as omelettes are a staple food for men who can’t get a girlfriend. He remarked at the time, "It was a bit on the plain side - could’ve done with some grated cheese."

10. When storing eggs at home, the optimum temperature is 4°C or below. It’s also possible to freeze eggs for future use, but this is only done by very weird people who smell of biscuits and have no friends.

11. At Easter, people often like to fill their faces with egg-shaped chocolate treats whilst watching The Sound of Music or whatever other film Channel Five happens to be showing. The reason we have chocolate eggs at Easter is neither interesting nor relevant. As for the idea of the Easter Bunny laying eggs for children to find, that’s just perverse. Especially if rabbit eggs are anything like dog eggs.

12. The egg-and-spoon race popular at so many primary school sports days is now often carried out with some kind of ball instead of an actual egg. This is an example of both political correctness and health and safety going mad simultaneously, all at the same time.

13. The scientific term for the study of eggs is Oology. The scientific term for a student of Oology is an egg-head.

14. Popular BBC general knowledge quiz "Egg Heads" is actually a misnomer, for the regular panel are not students of Oology, nor do they have shell craniums containing a yolk suspended in albumen. However, as an interesting aside, host Dermot Murnaghan once took half a dozen organic eggs from his local farm without paying.

15. The word egg can be used to form the basis of many puns, often found in newspaper headlines. Popular examples include 'egg-static', 'eggs-centric' and 'eggs-cellent'. People who use such lazy witticisms are themselves referred to as 'predictable cunts'.

16. Owing to their striking resemblance, small, virtually flat breasts are sometimes referred to as ‘fried eggs'. These are often a source of great frustration and disappointment to any gentleman hoping for a ‘sausage sandwich’.

17. The Latin word for egg, or egg cell, is 'ovum'. In human beings, the ovum is one of the largest cells in the body. Measuring in with a diameter of 0.2mm, they’re actually visible to the naked eye, should a naked eye be looking for one. Contrary to popular belief, this type of ‘egg’ doesn’t taste nice when scrambled with a dollop of HP.

18. King Egbert of Wessex was - ironically - not a fan of eggs, and on many occasions attempted to ban them across his realm and beyond. In the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, he is quoted as saying "þy geare geeode Ecgbriht cing Myrcna rice eall þæt be suþan Humbre wæs" or, in modern English, "Begone all the eggs of this fair land, through Mercia to the Humber, for I detest thee more than thou could ever knoweth."

19. Scotch eggs are not simply eggs from Scotland, but rather a snack consisting of a hard-boiled egg swathed in a sausage-meat mixture, coated in breadcrumbs and deep fried. They are popularly found at depressing family picnics, cheap wedding buffets, and underneath seats on public transport, usually half-squashed and covered in grime.

20. Scottish eggs, however, are simply eggs from Scotland.