926
@qikipedia
Internet trolls are just as badly behaved offline.
927
@qikipedia
Female octopuses throw things at males that harass them.
(Image: Morten Brekkevold; CC BY-NC-SA.)
928
@qikipedia
The Lapland town of Salla, the coldest in Finland, put in a request to host the Summer Olympics in 2032 to raise awareness of climate change.
929
@qikipedia
Saccadic masking is the process by which the brain edits out the motion of our eyes. Look in a mirror, first at one eye and then the other. You won’t be able to see your eyes move but an observer standing next to you will.
Image: Petr Novák
930
@qikipedia
Word of the day: APOPHENIA, n. the tendency to see patterns in unrelated things (apo- ‘from’ + phainein ‘to show’).
931
@qikipedia
Over 26 years, zoologist Jennifer Owens recorded 2,673 different species living in her small suburban garden in Leicester, including 474 plants, 1,997 insects, 54 species of birds and seven mammals.
932
@qikipedia
When the 83-year-old historian, sociologist and civil rights activist, W.E.B Du Bois was indicted by the FBI as a foreign agent in 1951, Albert Einstein offered to stand as a character witness and the case was dropped.
933
@qikipedia
The sperm cell is the smallest human cell and the egg (or ovum) the largest.
934
@qikipedia
‘Calenture’ is the heat-induced illusion suffered by sailors that the sea is a green field they can walk on. It comes via Spanish from the Latin calēre, meaning ‘to be warm.’
Image: European Space Agency
935
@qikipedia
In 1903, The San Francisco Examiner reported the story of a woman who, before visiting a neighbour, put her baby’s crib in front of the telephone, took off the receiver, and told the operator to call her up at the neighbour’s should the baby began to cry.
936
@qikipedia
Site of the Day: artist Uli Westphal has charted the evolution of the depiction of elephants in the Middle Ages when European illustrators did not know how the animal actually looked and had to rely on second-hand sources. bit.ly/3B61a34
937
@qikipedia
In his dictionary of 1755, Samuel Johnson defined ‘rant’ as ‘a high sounding language unsupported by dignity of thought’.
938
@qikipedia
The town of Levi in northern Finland hosts the Tree Hugging World Championships. There are three categories: speed hugging (hugging as many trees under a minute), dedication (showing passion and emotion), and freestyle (imaginative ways to hug a tree).
939
@qikipedia
In 1979, mathematicians David A. Cox and Steven Zucker wrote a joint paper about an algorithm that is now known as the ‘Cox-Zucker machine’.
940
@qikipedia
Word of the Day: URINATOR (17th century) — someone who dives under water.
941
@qikipedia
A collection of some of the Elves' favourite bits from the late, fantastic Sean Lock on QI over the years:
youtu.be/YcGoVXDh0Ts
942
@qikipedia
Many happy returns to the wonderful @stephenfry on his birthday, from all of us at QI!
943
@qikipedia
"It is likely I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read." LEMONY SNICKET
944
@qikipedia
OCKHAM'S BROOM is a proposed addition to Occam's razor, and is "the principle whereby inconvenient facts are swept under the carpet".
945
@qikipedia
When this sea slug gets parasites, it rips its own head off and grows an entire new body.
(Image: Steve Childs; CC BY.)
946
@qikipedia
The UK has approx. one pub for every 1400 people.
Rhayader, Wales holds the crown for most pubs per capita; in 2008, it had one pub for every 173 residents.
947
@qikipedia
MTV's show "16 And Pregnant" caused a 4.3% reduction in teen births in the US.
948
@qikipedia
Word of the day: UNASINOUS - sharing the same amount of stupidity, united in stupidity
949
@qikipedia
Word of the day: THOROUGH-COUGH - coughing and breaking wind at the same time
950
@qikipedia
American baseball player Rube Waddell (1876-1914) was so fond of puppies fans of the opposing team would bring their dogs to games and hold them up. Waddell would run over to play with them instead of focusing on the game.
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves