826
@qikipedia
The oldest known spider was 43 years old when it passed away.
827
@qikipedia
A long term study of nearly half a million people found that those who eat spicy food 6 or 7 days a week live longer than those that don’t.
828
@qikipedia
The man who wrote the preamble to the US constitution died due to an infection after he inserted a whalebone into his urethra.
829
@qikipedia
Competitive chair-sitting is an endurance sport that involves sitting in extreme environments like deserts or the Antarctic from sunrise to sunset without a watch and any electronic devices. The sport was invented by Robert Silk, who to this day remains its only practitioner.
830
@qikipedia
John Harvey Kellogg, the co-creator of Corn Flakes, fostered 42 children but was so repelled by sex he never consummated his marriage.
831
@qikipedia
During the 1980s, New York City used these signs instead of standard "no parking" signs.
(Image: Sunny Ripert; CC BY-SA.)
832
@qikipedia
The inventor of the transistor, John Bardeen, won a Nobel prize in 1956 but only brought one of his three kids to the ceremony. When questioned on it, he said he’d bring the others the next time he won, which he then did in 1972.
833
@qikipedia
The suggested terms for a person who has received two doses of a coronavirus vaccine include ‘recidivac’, ‘boxer’ (=one who has two jabs), ‘doppio’ (=a double espresso shot), ‘binoculated’, and ‘a complete prick’. (h/t @dontattempt)
834
@qikipedia
After the French Revolution, saints' days were replaced with days honoring important items in rural French life.
June 21 was the day to honor the onion.
835
@qikipedia
Word of the Day: WISH-CYCLING — putting an item in a recycling bin in the hope that it can be recycled, usually when the item is not actually recyclable.
836
@qikipedia
HTTP 451 is the error code returned when a web page cannot be displayed because it is illegal to display that content.
It was chosen as a reference to censorship in Fahrenheit 451.
837
@qikipedia
Word of the Day: HEIMSCHEISSER (German slang) — someone who doesn’t like to use any toilet other than their own, literally: ‘a person who defecates only at home’.
838
@qikipedia
The word ‘barn’ literally means ‘barley house’, derived from the Old English bere ‘barley’ + aern ‘house’.
839
@qikipedia
According to the a 2003 online survey of 9,000 people in the UK, the most important invention of the previous 40 years was the widget, a nitrogen ball used in beer cans. It outranked space exploration, contraceptive pills, and the Internet. [📷: slworking2.]
840
@qikipedia
Word of the day: LIBROCUBICULARIST - someone who reads in bed
841
@qikipedia
Dolphins have no vocal cords. The voice of Flipper was actually a modified kookaburra’s call.
842
@qikipedia
The Dutch for drinking beer with a spirit chaser is ‘kopstoot’, meaning ‘head butt’.
843
@qikipedia
Strangolapreti is a type of pasta whose name in Italian means ‘priest-strangler’.
844
@qikipedia
Toronto financier Charles Vance Millar (1854-1926) used his will as a vehicle for practical jokes.
For instance, he willed a vacation home to three men who hated each other, on condition they lived there together indefinitely.
845
@qikipedia
About 15% of the population of the world has a headache at any given time.
846
@qikipedia
Word of the day: JOTTLE (20th century Scots) - to appear busy but not get anything done
847
@qikipedia
Word of the day: BAYARD - one blind to the light of knowledge, who has the self-confidence of ignorance.
848
@qikipedia
Word of the day: APOPHENIA, n. the tendency to see patterns in unrelated things (apo- ‘from’ + phainein ‘to show’).
849
@qikipedia
Scientists have created a potato plant that glows when it is stressed.
850
@qikipedia
According to etymologist Anatoly Liberman, both ‘skite’ in ‘blatherskite’ (chatterer) and ‘skate’ in ‘cheapskate’ (miser) ultimately come from the Old Icelandic verb ‘skíta’, ‘to shit’. So, a blatherskite is a blathering piece of shit and a cheapskate is a cheap piece of shit.
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves