October 1814: A Beer Wave of 1.4m litres flooded London after a huge vat carrying the equivalent of 3500 barrels of beer ruptured. Fortunately, only 7 or 8 deaths occurred.

Cenosillicaphobia: the fear of an empty beer glass.

The strongest beer in the world has a 67.5% alcohol content.

At any given time, 0.7% of the world is drunk. So 50 million people are drunk right now.

Beer was not considered an alcoholic beverage in Russia until 2013.

At the Wife Carrying World Championships in Finland, first prize is the wife's weight in beer.

There's a beer brewed from bananas in Africa.

More Guinness is drunk in Nigeria than Ireland.

In the 13th century, some people in Norway would baptize their children with beer.

You can swim in pools of beer in Austria.

162,719 pints of Guinness are wasted each year due to moustaches.

In France, Germany, Austria, Spain and the Netherlands they serve beer in McDonald's.

Remember this?

Until 1963, it was illegal to brew at home in the
UK without a licence. In his April budget that year,
Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald Maudling
changed that, opening the floodgates. Boots the
Chemist became the primary high street supplier of
brewing equipment and, by 1982, the market was
worth £17m a year.

The first Belgian beer to make a splash on the British market was Chimay Rouge which arrived via off-licence chain Arthur Rackham in 1974. Though at first its strength – more than 6% ABV -- caused amusement, it opened the eyes of many British drinkers to the wonders of "world beer". By the end of the decade, many "real ale" pubs had branched out and also had selections of German and Belgian beer lurking behind the bar.