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"I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees, and unmechanised farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats." J. R. R. TOLKIEN
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"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." ALDOUS HUXLEY
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Wild honeybees practice social distancing to avoid spreading parasitic mites.
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Bhartṛhari’s Paradox asks: if something is unnameable, but you’ve named it ‘unnameable’, can an unnameable thing exist?
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In 1871, lawyer Clement Vallandigham was defending a client accused of murder.
In demonstrating how the victim might have accidentally shot himself, he accidentally shot himself.
He died. His client was acquitted.
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The last vote needed to pass women's suffrage in the United States was that of Tennessee legislator Harry Burn.
While he was initially opposed to the amendment, his mother had told him to "be a good boy" and vote for it - so he did.
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Roundabouts are about 90% safer than intersections with lights.
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The city of Minneapolis, Minnesota employs twelve mussels to monitor water quality.
If they come across something unpleasant in the water, they close, setting off an alert.
The mussels do not have names.
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In early drafts of Lord of the Rings, Frodo was named "Bingo".
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People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around. TERRY PRATCHETT
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The bonnacon is a mythical creature with the body of a bull, the mane of a horse and the ability to expel corrosive faeces with great force.
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"Anyone who believes what a cat tells him deserves all he gets." NEIL GAIMAN
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The decision to capitalise the ‘i’ on the Wikipedia page for Star Trek Into Darkness was made after 40,000 words of argument in the edit pages.
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In 1802, US businessman Timothy Dexter wrote a book, ‘A Pickle for the Knowing Ones’, containing no punctuation marks. When readers complained, he released a second edition with 11 lines of punctuation at the end for readers to distribute as they saw fit.
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Euphonia, a Victorian ‘talking machine’, was one of the first robots who could speak sentences. It was so unsettling one commentator labelled it a ‘scientific Frankenstein monster’ with a ‘hoarse sepulchral voice’.
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Paris, Texas has an Eiffel Tower with a cowboy hat on it.
(Image: Adavyd; CC BY-SA.)
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In 2019, a Russian police officer was constantly asked by the regional prosecutor’s office to question a witness who had died a year before. The officer finally went to a medium and wrote a report saying he tried to contact the soul of the witness during a séance but to no avail.
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Word of the day: BAYARD - someone with all the self-confidence born of ignorance
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In the early years of the BBC, there was a framed warning near the microphone in the radio studio that read: ‘If you sneeze or rustle papers you will DEAFEN THOUSANDS!!!’
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Cuttlefish are better at remembering what they ate for lunch last Wednesday than most humans.
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Most kangaroos are left-handed.
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"There's no problem so awful that you can't add some guilt to it and make it even worse!" BILL WATTERSON
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The first ever speeding ticket was issued in a 1896 to a driver in Kent for going four times the legal speed limit.
The driver was going the breakdown pace of 8 mph. The speed limit was 2 mph.
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Nothing is illegal if one hundred well-placed businessmen decide to do it. ANDREW YOUNG
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About 1.69 million Britons have three or more nipples.
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves