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We are deeply saddened to hear of Sean Lock's passing. Sean was a QI regular right from the first series, and helped to shape the show with his fantastically sharp wit and anarchic good humour. Our thoughts are with his friends and family.
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The first Polish language dictionary (published 1746) included definitions such as:
"Horse: Everyone knows what a horse is."
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In 2021, 😭 became the world’s most used emoji. Previously, 😂 had spent years in the top spot.
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Many common nicknames beginning with ‘N’ came about from affectionate phrases where ‘mine’ was used before the first name. So, ‘mine Edward’ gave rise to ‘my Nedward’ and, eventually, to ‘Ned’; and ‘mine Eleanor’ became ‘Nell’.
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Last week, a Danish museum gave 534,000 kroner in cash to artist Jens Haaning who was supposed to display it in two glass frames in another museum. The artist pocketed the cash, sent two empty frames to the museum, and changed the title of the artwork to ‘Take the Money and Run’.
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The oldest known D20 is from 300 BCE.
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"A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person." DAVE BERRY
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This is a map of all reported UFO sightings, 1906-2014.
(Image: ESRI.)
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In 1956, Harper Lee's friends gave her a full year's salary as a Christmas gift, so that she could take time off to focus on writing.
She used that time to write To Kill A Mockingbird, which has now sold more than 40 million copies.
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During her father's presidency (1901-1909), Alice Roosevelt smoked cigarettes in public, rode in cars with men, and kept a pet snake.
When Theodore Roosevelt was asked about her, his reply was: "I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice... I cannot possibly do both."
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In 2016, archeologists unearthed a mosaic from the 3rd century BC in Southern Turkey. Its slogan, written above a bread-lounging, wine-drinking skeleton, read: ‘be cheerful, live your life.’ (Image: Dosseman CC by SA 4.0)
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A French man has recently won a court case affirming his right not to be "fun" at work.
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The word "Arctic" is from the Greek for bear, "Arctos", making it the "bear-place".
The Antarctic is the anti-Arctic, the "no-bears-place".
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In Australian cities, escaped parrots sometimes teach wild flocks to chat and swear in English.
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Most animals prefer to work for their food rather than freeload.
Cats are the only known exception.
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"A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man, who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet." TERRY PRATCHETT
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The man who voiced Tigger in Winnie the Pooh also invented the first artificial heart.
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"A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose, and a crooked mouth, and a double chin, and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams, and you will always look lovely." ROALD DAHL
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At around age 23, the average person falls off what the researcher Jennifer Aaker calls ‘the humour cliff’: we start to laugh and smile less and less. The average 4-year-old laughs and smiles 300 times a day, the average 40-year-old — 300 times every 75 days.
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In 2020, a French man was awarded €40,000 by a court because they determined his job was so incredibly boring it had damaged his mental health.
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At the 1928 Olympics, rower Henry Pearce stopped mid-race to let a family of ducks safely cross his lane.
He still won the heat.
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Word of the day: ONOMATOMANIA - the frustration of not being able to think of that particular word you're looking for
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People with imposter syndrome are actually better at their jobs than people without imposter syndrome.
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98.4% of Twitter users who announced they were moving to Mastodon are still on Twitter.
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After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Lithuania could not afford to send its basketball team to the 1992 Olympics.
The Grateful Dead offered to sponsor the team if they played in tie-dyed uniforms. They wore these shirts on the podium when taking home bronze.
🖼️: Greg Speirs.
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A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves