Shakespeare? I think not.

One often hears the assertion that if you left a million monkeys bashing away at a million typewriters, you would, eventually, get some randomised versions of Shakespeare's plays, sonnets or poems. About ten years ago, someone at a university, obviously with a 'research' grant and a sense of humour, decided to test this hypothesis.

They proved, that a hundred monkeys bashing away on a hundred keyboards for a year does not produce any of Shakespeare's work, or anyone else's for that matter. What it did produce was a lot of frustrated monkeys (Press keys to get reward), a lot of wasted effort and hundreds of broken keyboards.

So next time someone says, "if you put a million monkeys in front of a million keyboards ..." you can now say with absolute confidence - "No, it doesn't. All it produces is a lot of monkey p**h and a million broken keyboards.