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Word Of The Day: SPLOOT — the pose of a dog or cat when it lies on its stomach with hind legs stretched out behind the body. [📷: Rain Rabbit.]
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Willem Arondeus was an openly gay Dutch artist.
In 1943, he bombed the public records office in Amsterdam to prevent the identification of Jews by the Nazis.
His last words before being executed by the Gestapo were "tell the people that homosexuals can be brave!".
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In the town of Whittier, Alaska, almost everyone lives in one building.
90% of the town's residents live in one 14-storey building - that also houses a post office, shop, police station, health clinic, and a bed & breakfast.
(Image: WordRidden; CC BY.)
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Word of the day: EEDLE-DODDLE - someone who shows no initiative in a crisis.
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The ‘wheady mile’ is an old Shropshire term meaning the last bit of a journey that goes on much longer than you thought it would.
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To ‘poon’ means to put something under the leg of a table to stop it wobbling.
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Word of the day: NULLIBIQUITOUS – existing nowhere.
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In 1820, three men died in an avalanche in the Alps and fell into a glacier. Having studied the speed of the glacier, it was predicted by a geologist that their remains would emerge at the bottom in forty years time. They were found intact in 1861.
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Over the last 70 years, the United States has lost at least three nuclear bombs.
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Mel Blanc - the voice of Porky Pig - specified in his will that his epitaph should be "THAT'S ALL FOLKS".
(Image: Robert A. Estremo; CC BY-SA.)
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In general, people think you are both smarter and more likable than you think they think.
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‘Spocking’ is a Canadian practice whereby the features of the prime minister Wilfred Laurier on the Canadian five-dollar bill are altered so that he begins to look like the Star Trek character Spock. [📷: Kelapstick. CCA SA 4.0]
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According to a legend, the winner of the 1906 Tour de France René Pottier was ahead of his competitors by more than an hour during one stage. He stopped at a roadside cafe, drank an entire bottle of wine, waited for others to catch up, chased them down, and still won the stage.
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The 17th century equivalent for ‘Go to hell!’ was ‘Turd in your teeth!’
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Word of the Day: BINFLUENCER (neologism) — ‘the person on a street who takes the lead in putting out the correct waste and recycling bins on the correct day, thus prompting neighbours to follow suit’.
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Word of the day: BLELLUM (Scottish) – someone who is all talk and no action
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A signpost in Maine, USA, showing the names of local towns (Image: Magicpiano)
CC BY-SA 1.0
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Some elephants in Angola have learned to detect and avoid landmines. They also warn other elephants of the danger.
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There’s an art installation on the Moon. It’s called Fallen Astronaut by Paul Van Hoeydonck. The plaque names the men of the US and Soviet space programs that have lost their lives on space missions. (Image: NASA)
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Olivia Newton-John’s maternal grandfather was the physicist Max Born, who won the 1954 Nobel Prize for his research in quantum mechanics. Her father was the MI5 officer Brinley Newton-John, who helped break the Enigma codes. Her third cousin is Ben Elton.
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The more you *think* you definitely understand more than the experts on a particular issue, the more likely you are to be wrong.
(Paper: science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…)
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There is a cheese-themed theme park in South Korea.
(Image: Republic of Korea; CC BY-SA.)
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"We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special." STEPHEN HAWKING
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MUSHROOM MANAGEMENT is the management style where employees are "kept in the dark and fed bullshit".
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Word of the day: SHEMOMECHAMA (შემომეჭამა; Georgian) - when you did not mean to eat it all, but accidentally did
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves