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A South Korean university has a toilet that uses faeces to generate electricity.
In order to incentivise its use, users are paid in virtual currency every time they use it.
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On July 11, 1979, NASA's first space station, Skylab, crashed to earth, scattering debris across Western Australia.
A local council issued NASA a $400 fine for littering.
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Pimpmaker, slubber doffer and saggar maker’s bottom knocker were all once occupations. (Respectively; collecting firewood, replacing loom bobbins, and pottery.)
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There is a missing link in the ancestry of the European bison, linking the steppe bison to cows.
Researchers call this hypothetical species the "Higgs bison".
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Frequent watchers of online cat videos are shyer than those who don't often watch cat videos, but they are also nicer people.
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In 1896 newspapers reported that the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Lesbos, having been pronounced dead, lay in state for two days before sitting up and demanding to know what was going on.
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The world’s largest living thing is a fungus in Oregon, USA. It currently covers around 8.9 square kilometres (about 1,665 football pitches) and is over 8,000 years old.
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In 2005, a man named Ronald MacDonald robbed the Wendy's restaurant where he worked.
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Marvel has argued in court that the X-Men are definitively not human (for the purpose of selling action figures as toys, not dolls, and thus paying lower tax).
(Image: Manuel García Melgar; CC BY-NC.)
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Word of the day: LYCHNOBITE - someone who works at night and sleeps all day
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"A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person." DAVE BERRY
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The Australian state of Victoria has two different mountains called Mount Buggery.
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The USA is home to two towns named Accident, three towns named Embarrass, and four of the world’s five towns called Hazard.
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There is an outside toilet on the edge of a cliff in Siberia. It stands 2,500 metres above sea level and receives loo roll by helicopter.
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Word of the Day: ORTHINOLOGY (neologism) — word-botching. For instance, saying ‘orthinology’ instead of ‘ornithology’ and ‘word-botching’ instead of ‘bird-watching‘.
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Crows can understand the concept of zero.
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Personal names mentioned in medieval charters include Martin-Said-to-Have-Three-Testicles (Martinus Qui Dicitur Habet Tres Testiculis), Good-John Shits-Rage (Iohannesbonus Cacans Rabiam), and Gerard-Who-Does-Stupid-Stuff (Girardus Faciens Stultitiam).
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Until the founding of the Vegetarian Society in 1847, vegetarians were usually known as Pythagoreans.
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The word ‘uncle’ comes from the Latin word ‘avunculus’, which literally means ‘little grandfather’.
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Bhartṛhari’s Paradox asks: if something is unnameable, but you’ve named it ‘unnameable’, can an unnameable thing exist?
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The UK’s first national lottery in 1567 promised ‘get out of jail free cards’. To boost sales, ticket holders could avoid arrest for misdemeanour crimes.
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To fund his PhD Neil DeGrasse Tyson almost became a stripper. After watching friends set fire to their asbestos-lined underwear at a show, he decided to teach instead.
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In 2016, archeologists unearthed a mosaic from the 3rd century BC in Southern Turkey. Its slogan, written above a bread-lounging, wine-drinking skeleton, read: ‘be cheerful, live your life.’ (Image: Dosseman CC by SA 4.0)
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Cats can’t taste sugar.
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Lobsters communicate by peeing on each other out of their heads.
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves