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The sperm cell is the smallest human cell and the egg (or ovum) the largest.
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"Of course there are no cat gods. That would be too much like... work." TERRY PRATCHETT
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In 1982, 43% of fathers in the UK had never changed a nappy.
By 2000, this had dropped to 3%.
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Aztecs prescribed chocolate for angina, fatigue, dysentery, gout, hemorrhoids and dental problems.
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A Victorian sewer worker once proved he’d found a tunnel into the Bank of England’s gold vaults and for his honesty, was given £800 (about £90,000 in today's money).
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There’s a soil bacterium that can ingest chemically unstable gold molecules, transform them into stable metal and excrete miniature pure gold nuggets.
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According to one account, Homer died from ‘grief and vexation’ when he couldn’t solve a riddle posed to him by fishermen. It went ‘what we caught, we left behind; what we missed, we bring along’.
Comment your guesses below (and don't get as stressed as Homer if you can't get it)
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In 1900, Argentina had a tax on unmarried men - but men whose proposals were turned down were exempt from the tax.
Enterprising women promptly set up businesses where they would reject men's proposals so they could be exempt from the tax.
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The Nobel disease is a term for a tendency of Nobel laureates to embrace unscientific ideas later in life. For instance, biochemist Kary Mullis accepted astrology, thought the climate crisis was a hoax and said he once spoke with a fluorescent raccoon who addressed him as doctor.
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There was less lightning in the world during the Covid lockdowns.
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In 1896 newspapers reported that the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Lesbos, having been pronounced dead, lay in state for two days before sitting up and demanding to know what was going on.
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Word of the Day (Dutch, slang): AZIJNPISSER — someone who constantly makes negative and critical comments; the literal meaning is ‘a vinegar pisser’.
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Word of the day: HYPNOPOMPIA - the half-concious state when you're just waking up
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The U.S. Department of State’s anti-corruption coordinator is a man called Rich Nephew.
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The average person is keeping 13 secrets right now.
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Research shows that heterosexual men who learn to play extreme metal guitar are mostly motivated to do so in order to impress other heterosexual men.
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Silver medalists, take heart: on average, athletes that win silver medals at the Olympics live longer than their gold medal-winning counterparts.
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Cats cannot make long-term plans.
(Image: Stefan Tell; CC BY.)
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The ‘seeds’ on a strawberry are actually its fruit, and inside those tiny fruit are its seeds.
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The ‘step’ in words like ‘stepmother’ or ‘stepsister’ has nothing to do with our word ‘step’. It comes from Old English ‘astiepan’ (‘to bereave’), which produced ‘steopcild’ meaning ‘orphan’. So ‘stepmother’ originally meant someone who became mother to an orphan.
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Youngest siblings tend to think they're the funniest in the family.
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Space X’s satellite dishes are heated to prevent snow build up. American cats have discovered this and are curling up on the dishes to warm themselves on cold days, interrupting streaming services.
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On average, tall people are smarter than short people.
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"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then... you're doing things you've never done before and more importantly, you're Doing Something." NEIL GAIMAN
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One in eight Britons reports that they feel tired all the time.
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves