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A 100-year-old tree absorbs 4.2 tonnes of CO2. Over the course of its life, a great whale on average captures 33 tonnes of CO2.
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‘Soy sauce’ is a tautology. The word ‘soy’ comes from the Japanese ‘shōyu’ meaning ‘soy sauce’.
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In 1899, G.E. Dudley patented an electrical anti-masturbation device for men that consisted of a tube connected to a bell that would ring if the penis, inserted in the tube, became erect.
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"Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god... [if] you provide [cats] with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods." CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
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Word of the day: LOVE-DARG (19th century Scots) - a task you do for someone, not because you want to, but because you love them
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Before the invention of rubber condoms, Japanese men used condoms made of tortoiseshell.
(Image: Wellcome Collection / Science Museum, London; CC BY.)
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There is a cloud in Australia named Hector.
"Hector the Convector" forms every afternoon in the summer over the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory of Australia.
(Image: Djambalawa; CC BY-SA.)
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A London tennis club attempted to train dogs to replace "ball boys" at Wimbledon.
The trial failed because the dogs did not want to return the tennis balls.
(Image: carterse; CC BY-SA.)
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After drummer Pete Best was fired from the Beatles, he released an album called "Best of the Beatles".
Buyers were disappointed to find out it was not a Beatles compilation album.
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Irish for ‘echo’ is ‘macalla’, which literally means ‘son of a cliff’.
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Before the introduction of postage stamps in the U.S., a letter was supposed to be paid for by the recipient. In the 1830s, one American harassed his enemy by sending him letters filled with nothing but blank pages.
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According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word ‘penguin’ probably comes from the Welsh phrase ‘pen gwyn’, which means ‘white head’.
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Pigeons can be taught to recognise all 26 letters of the English alphabet and to distinguish between real words and gibberish.
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Without biting midges, we wouldn’t have chocolate: cocoa plants are pollinated by them.
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The G-forces experienced by your shoelaces are greater than any roller coaster on Earth.
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French employees are forbidden by law from eating lunch at their desks.
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When Bill Shakespeare, the first man to receive the Pfizer vaccine, died in 2021, one Argentinian news channel got confused and announced the death of ‘one of the most important writers in the English language.’
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Scientists have developed 13-millimetre artificial fish which can tow 5kg of material, heal themselves, and collect microplastics from the sea as they swim.
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According to some physicists, there is no such thing as "now".
Since we must wait for light to travel to us to react to something, and the brain must process the information, we are effectively all living (about twenty milliseconds) in the past.
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"Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self." TERRY PRATCHETT
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The pumpkin toadlet is so small that its vestibular system doesn't function well.
This means it is very bad at jumping.
(Video from Essner et al 2022; used with permission.)
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In Ancient Greece, there was at least one man named Shitty, one man named Milk-Scum, and one man named Named.
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The earliest recorded use of the term ‘Wild West’, to mean the American frontier, was by Charlotte Brontë.
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Titivillus, ‘the patron demon of scribes’, was said to be sent by the devil to tempt monks into making errors in their manuscripts. For fifty years, the Oxford English Dictionary listed an incorrect page reference for a footnote on the earliest mention of Titivillus.
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In 1997, a container ship ran aground off the Isles of Scilly, and a container carrying a million plastic bags drifted ashore. Its doors burst open, and the foreshore became awash with the bags bearing the words ‘Help protect the environment’.
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A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves