976
@qikipedia
Cleopatra was living in Rome as Julius Caesar’s mistress at the time of his assassination.
977
@qikipedia
The Spanish word for cardigan is 'rebeca’ based on the one Joan Fontaine wore in the 1940 Hitchcock film ‘Rebecca’.
978
@qikipedia
Bees can count to four but score higher marks when punished for getting their answers wrong.
979
@qikipedia
The Hawaiian language has 139 words for rain.
(Image: W.carter)
980
@qikipedia
‘Nuair a chacann gé, cacann siad go léir’ is an Irish proverb about group mentality that literally translates as ‘When one goose shits, they all shit’.
981
@qikipedia
Japanese parents have recently started commissioning bags of rice that weigh the same as their newborn children so that their relatives, who are unable to visit them due to the pandemic, could have the experience of hugging the baby.
982
@qikipedia
When they sleep in a flock, some birds form a row. Those in the middle sleep with both hemispheres of the brain at the same time, and those at the edges go into deep sleep with only one hemisphere each — leaving one’s right eye and another’s left eye to watch out for predators.
983
@qikipedia
"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." DOUGLAS ADAMS
984
@qikipedia
Colorado, Washington, and Idaho have all replaced their "420" mile markers with "419.9" after repeated thefts.
(Image: Robert Ashworth; CC BY.)
985
@qikipedia
Word of the Day: PODSNAPPERY - an absolute refusal to accept unpleasant truths.
986
@qikipedia
"[Australians] spend half of any conversation insisting that the country's dangers are vastly overrated... and the other half telling you how six months ago Uncle Bob was driving to Mudgee when a tiger snake slid out from under the dashboard and bit him on the groin." BILL BRYSON
987
@qikipedia
You are more likely to get a virus from a religious website than a porn website.
988
@qikipedia
When hunting, weasels and ferrets dance around their prey to disorient them.
It is called the "weasel war dance".
(Image: USFWS Mountain-Prairie; CC BY.)
989
@qikipedia
This is how scientists predict the continents will move over the next 200 million years.
(Animation: Sammy2012; CC BY-SA.)
990
@qikipedia
Word of the day: NOTGEIL (German) - so horny it's an emergency
991
@qikipedia
Liechtenstein only realised they had the same flag as Haiti when they both competed at the 1936 Olympics.
Liechtenstein added a crown to their flag in 1937 to avoid further confusion.
992
@qikipedia
Everywhere is walking distance if you've got the time.
STEVEN WRIGHT
993
@qikipedia
The peregrine falcon has a series of baffles in its nostrils to prevent the air pressure bursting its lungs when it dives.
(Image: Greg Hume)
994
@qikipedia
‘Intransigence' is the longest word to make a palindrome in Morse Code: ··–·–·–··– –······– –··–·–·–··.
995
@qikipedia
In the UK, February is usually a drier month than August.
996
@qikipedia
If the cat looks at you after washing his face it is said you will die before the end of the year. IRISH SUPERSTITION
997
@qikipedia
In 1979, New England Journal of Medicine described a case of finger infection caused by snapping one’s fingers too much while disco dancing, known either as ‘disco felon’ or ‘disco digit'.
998
@qikipedia
The ‘couth’ in the word ‘uncouth’ is related to the word ‘kith’, as in ‘kith and kin’, and means ‘known’. So, ‘uncouth’ originally meant ‘unknown’, then ‘unfamiliar, strange’, and only later came to mean ‘uncultured, bad-mannered’.
999
@qikipedia
As part of its COVID response, Seoul has recently banned gyms from playing music with a tempo higher than 120 beats per minute — so that people won’t breathe too fast or splash sweat on others. This means that Gangnam Style (132bpm) is officially banned.
1000
@qikipedia
Some mathematicians call 667 ‘the fax number of the beast’.
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves