2.   Stow is home to many, many forms of wildlife. Cows and sheep can often be seen in the fields around the village gathering grass for their nests whilst hedgehogs and cats are frequent visitors.

3.   Dogs became extinct in Stow during the 1970s due to over-hunting. Dog-fur coats were much sought after by the villagers and their meat was used to make soup. The last dog died in captivity in 1979. Efforts to re-introduce them have so far failed.

4.   During the 1960s Stow made national headlines when it was terrorised by the “Beast of Stow” which roamed the moors surrounding the village. Reports at the time describe “the Beast” as being roughly the same size and shape as a black Labrador. A farmer once managed to corner “the Beast” but it managed to escape. He said before his death in 2002: “ I’ll never forget the noise it made when I cornered it. It’s a noise I’d never heard before and have never heard since. Sort of a barking noise.”

5.   Stow is the only place in Britain to be built on a fault in the Earth’s crust. Houses in the village have had to be specially reinforced to prevent them from tumbling over like a row of dominoes during the many earthquakes which strike there. Tsunamis which are caused by these quakes frequently flood the football pitch, meaning that quite often games are cancelled -  sometimes at the last minute.

6.   Robert Burns - Scotland’s national poet - who wrote “Auld Lang Syne” once had a fight in the ancient Springbank Inn in the village. He was barred for three months and told that if he didn’t pay for a new pool cue, he wouldn’t get back in.

7.   The national dish of Stow is Butterscotch Angel Delight.

8.   Stow’s bid to host the 1988 Olympics failed when the executive committee failed to raise the two billion pounds needed to fund the event. The coffee morning organised to raise the money only managed to make a profit of £186.55 once the cost of hiring the village hall had been deducted.

9.   In 1902 Stow declared war on Heriot after their near neighbours invaded Fountainhall. The war lasted until 1924. The cold war between Stow and Heriot has lasted ever since. Both villages have been banned by the UN from developing nuclear weapons.

10.  In 1982 Christians swarmed to the village when the image of Christ appeared in a dried up pool of vomit outside the Springbank Inn on the last Friday before the trades fortnight. Almost half a million pilgrims crammed the streets trying to catch a glimpse of “The Holy Vomit of Stow” before it was washed away the next time it rained.

11.  Wasps have been banned from Stow since 1989 after one stung the Community Council leader on the inside of his mouth after it had landed on a can of Vimto he had been drinking. Bees are only allowed to enter the village under certain conditions.

12.  In 1994 the village was engulfed in scandal when it was revealed that a local man was neither local, nor a man.

13.  Bald men in the village have found a novel way of preventing flies from landing on them by painting spiders’ webs on their heads. It’s believed to be so effective that the fly population in Stow dropped from 3,155,662 in 1970 to just 189,438 in 2009.

14.  The Bubonic Plague wasn’t entirely eradicated from Stow until 1984.

15.  Stow’s space agency SASA was beaten to the moon landing in 1969 by NASA after Stow’s rocket ran out of fuel just short of the moon. It crashed at Gorebridge.

16. In 1957 a Blue Whale ran aground next to the football pitch after it became disorientated in the North Atlantic and swam up the burn in the village before becoming stranded. Villagers tried for three days to try and push it back to sea but gave up and made it into margarine instead.

17. In 1975 all the roads and pavements in Stow were painted white at a cost of over £100,000. Community leaders believed that this would make the roads and pavements safer in the winter as black ice would show up, warning drivers and pedestrians to potential danger.

18.  During World War 2, people with beards were banished from the village because the mayor of Stow believed that they showed up on radar.

19.  Stow didn’t go completely colour until 1981, many years after the rest of the country. Until then the area from the Springbank Inn right down to the Royal Hotel, and many of the fields surrounding the village were still black and white.

20.   Mother Theresa of Calcutta went on her honeymoon to Stow, staying in a room in the Royal Hotel. It was after this visit that she decided to devote the rest of her life to helping the poor and destitute.