20 Useless Facts You Probably Didn’t Need To Know

13. There Are Over 177,000 Different Ways To Tie A Tie

One of them involves sneaking a crafty flask of alcohol into the thing and taking sly sips when the boss isn't looking, apparently.

Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson, a mathematician in Stockholm, decided to lead a small team on a mission to find out how many knots are possible when using a regular tie. Johansson's crack squad of experts came up with a whopping 177,147. That's mind-blowing and is way more than the 85 experts came up with in 1999, even if it does sound like one hell of a boring afternoon all round.

There's a discrepancy between both numbers though. Johansson allowed his team to tie the fashion item wrongly, or at least not in accordance with conventional methods. Yes, there are people on this planet who care about this sort of stuff.

You also now have no excuses for not knowing how to put the thing on before meetings.