Interesting Facts

31st July Harry Potter's birthday Purely coincidentally JK Rowling's birthday too. Oh, and Harry is 35!  

There's a new sport being played in Britain: Quidditch, the fictional ball game from the Harry Potter books. (To play the game, opposing teams of seven have to put ‘quaffles’ into hoops while avoiding dodgeballs known as ‘bludgers’.   The flying ‘snitch’ is played by a neutral player dressed in yellow with a tennis ball in their waistband. In the absence of flying broomsticks, players have to run around with sticks or brooms between their legs. I don't want to pour scorn on the idea, but, flying through the sky chasing a magical ball = cool. Running around a muddy field, chasing someone with a tennis ball stuck in their knicker elastic, with a broom between your legs = not so cool.) Source

According to a survey for National Kid's Day the Queen and Harry Potter are more famous than God. (The Almighty was at third place, Father Christmas was fourth, Simon Cowell fifth, Jesus sixth and England rugby star Jonny Wilkinson seventh.)

Harry Potter author JK Rowling revealed that one of her characters, Hogwarts school headmaster Albus Dumbledore, is gay. (I can imagine that winning her even more fans amongst the far right Christian groups.)

The French translation of the bestselling book Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has an extra 120 pages. (   The reason is that French is a less concise language than English, but d oes it mean it's more expensive in France?)

The first Harry Potter book was published in 1997 and since then the books have sold 270 million copies in 62 languages to date. (The new book Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is being launched right now. It is expected to sell more than 10 million copies. Just today!)