251
@qikipedia
The cloudiest city in the US gets more sunlight than the sunniest city in England.
252
@qikipedia
This year, the Minnesota Transportation Department again selected new names for eight snowploughs from the ideas provided by the public. The winning entries include No More Mr Ice Guy, Scoop Dogg and Ctrl Salt Delete.
253
@qikipedia
Men are 28 times more likely to have an object stuck in their rectums than women.
254
@qikipedia
Stephen Spielberg has been thanked in more Oscar acceptance speeches than God has.
255
@qikipedia
Humans have the largest bottoms in the animal kingdom relative to body size.
256
@qikipedia
Word of the day: MERRYNEUM (neologism) - the odd week between Christmas and the New Year, mostly occupied by eating leftovers and taking naps
257
@qikipedia
‘Vaccination’ comes from Latin ‘vacca’ (‘cow’), because Edward Jenner immunised against smallpox with the cowpox virus. At the time, horsepox-based immunisation was just as effective, so instead of vaccinating we could have easily been equinating (Latin ‘equus’, ‘horse’).
258
@qikipedia
The Danish phrase ‘er det hestens fødselsdag?’ (literally ‘is it the horse’s birthday?’) means ‘this rye bread is too thick for my open sandwich’.
259
@qikipedia
This year, New Zealand's "Bird of the Year" contest was won by a bat.
(Image: Shellie; CC-BY-NC-ND.)
260
@qikipedia
About one quarter of all adults will never have a headache in their life.
261
@qikipedia
A man from Shaanxi province, China, used a hand grenade to crack walnuts for 25 years. He surrendered the ‘nutcracker’ in 2016 after spotting it on a list of illegal explosives.
262
@qikipedia
Yuor aibltiy to ueandrstnd tihs jmubled txet is comonmly cllaed ‘typoglycemia’.
263
@qikipedia
Word of the Day - KLEPTOTHERMY: the act of stealing someone else’s body heat.
264
@qikipedia
A wet man does not fear rain. - RUSSIAN PROVERB
265
@qikipedia
Charles Dickens wrote to a friend that his annoying house guest Hans Christian Andersen ‘speaks no language but his own Danish, and is suspected of not even knowing that.’
266
@qikipedia
WORD OF THE DAY: POKEMON an old Cornish word meaning 'clumsy', first recorded in the 19th century.
267
@qikipedia
All the universe’s hydrogen and most of its helium were produced in the first 20 minutes after the Big Bang.
268
@qikipedia
On the day of South Korea's university entrance exams, the entire country goes quiet.
Shops close, construction stops, and planes are grounded - so that students can focus on their exams.
Students that are late can even get a police escort to make sure they make it in time.
269
@qikipedia
There is evidence that Greenland sharks can live as long as 500 years, meaning some older specimens might have been born during the reign of Henry VIII.
(Image: Hemming1952)
270
@qikipedia
The word ‘herb’ is derived from the Old French erbe but the initial ‘h’ only appeared in the 15th century and wasn’t voiced until the 19th century (which was why Americans still refer to ‘erbs’).
271
@qikipedia
There is a restaurant in New York that only employs grandmothers as their chefs.
The menu is set by the grandmothers in charge that night, and consists of her family recipes.
(Image: Garrett Ziegler; CC BY-NC-ND.)
272
@qikipedia
Ever wondered where the expression 'devil's advocate' comes from? 🤔
273
@qikipedia
"Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men." NEIL GAIMAN and TERRY PRATCHETT
274
@qikipedia
When he died in 1955, Dewey Beard (Wasú Máza) was the last known Native American survivor of both the Battle of the Little Big Horn (1876), and the massacre at Wounded Knee (1890).
275
@qikipedia
Internet trolls are just as badly behaved offline.
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves