601
@qikipedia
January 14th was the Feast of the Ass in the medieval Christian calendar, a day when all Biblical donkeys were celebrated.
602
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Tardigrades – also known as water bears - have survived all five mass extinctions on Earth since they evolved over half a billion years ago.
Image: Schokraie E, Warnken U, Hotz-Wagenblatt A, Grohme MA, Hengherr S, et al. (2012), CC BY 2.5
603
@qikipedia
German chocolate cake is not from Germany.
It was originally made from a kind of chocolate developed by a man named German.
(Image: Tracy Hunter.)
604
@qikipedia
When restaurants play classical music in the background, diners spend 10% more per person. When they play pop music, diners spend 10% less.
605
@qikipedia
The steeds of knights were not massive, powerful horses - knights actually rode horses the size of modern ponies.
(Image: Miles Wolstenholme; CC BY.)
606
@qikipedia
"It's a troublesome world. All the people who're in it
are troubled with troubles almost every minute.
You oughta be thankful, a whole heaping lot,
For the places and people you're lucky you're not!"
DR. SEUSS
607
@qikipedia
To avoid US libel suits, authors will sometimes make sure to note that a fictionalized person has a small penis.
For libel, it must be obvious the real person and character are the same.
Men rarely want to prove in court that they are obviously the character with a small penis.
608
@qikipedia
Made a typo in an important email? This may make you feel better.
For most of 2009, the Chilean Mint produced 50 peso coins that advertised that they were from the Republic of "Chiie".
609
@qikipedia
If you are listening to something boring, doodling while you listen will improve your recall by 30%.
610
@qikipedia
At the end of 2020, the Guardian held a poll in which they asked readers to sum up the year in a single word.
The most common answer was "shit", followed by "fucked".
611
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"Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable." ROALD DAHL
612
@qikipedia
In 2020, a French man was awarded €40,000 by a court because they determined his job was so incredibly boring it had damaged his mental health.
613
@qikipedia
If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it’s another nonconformist who doesn’t conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity. BILL VAUGHAN
614
@qikipedia
‘Roomba’, the name of the robotic vacuum cleaner, was created by marketing specialists. Before that, the company had tried to come up with the name on their own and held an internal contest. The best entry was ‘Cyber Suck’.
615
@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.]
616
@qikipedia
According to The Malcolm Tucker Awards for Excellence in Swearing, the best ‘sweary moment’ of 2021 in sports was on April 24th, when the teams in the MLB’s American League West division were ranked so that their logos spelled out ‘ASSHAT’.
617
@qikipedia
Items that got stuck in Americans’ orifices last year include a piece of cake (ear), ‘hard poop’ (nose), ‘unknown amount of marbles’ (throat), ‘headphones’ cord’ (penis), barbell (vagina), and stress ball (rectum).
618
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Axolotls, the Mexican salamanders famous for being able to regenerate whole limbs, spinal cords, eyes and parts of their brains, have a genome ten times bigger than that of humans.
Image: th1098, CC BY-SA 3.0
619
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Think photosynthesis is just for plants? Think again.
620
@qikipedia
Word of the day: FUTILITARIAN – someone devoted to futile pursuits or futility itself.
621
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‘Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you’ was the longest string of words signed by Nim Chimpsky, the chimpanzee subject of an extended study into animal language in the 1970s.
Image: Herbert Terrace/Bantam
622
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While adultery is generally illegal in Japan, it is legal as long as it's done for business purposes.
623
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Britney Spears' "Toxic" changed how people used the word "toxic".
According to research by @OxLanguages, her song helped popularise the metaphorical use of "toxicity".
624
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One horse produces 15 horsepower.
A human produces one horsepower.
625
@qikipedia
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.
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves