301
@qikipedia
The pobblebonk frog is so called because when it croaks it sounds like it’s saying the word ‘pobblebonk’ (Image: Will Brown)
302
@qikipedia
The suggested terms for a person who has received two doses of a coronavirus vaccine include ‘recidivac’, ‘boxer’ (=one who has two jabs), ‘doppio’ (=a double espresso shot), ‘binoculated’, and ‘a complete prick’. (h/t @dontattempt)
303
@qikipedia
In 1959, a Harvard researcher tried to teach three octopuses — Albert, Bertram and Charles — to pull a lever to get food. Albert and Bertram were cooperative, but Charles constantly squirted the researcher with water and prematurely terminated the study by breaking the lever.
304
@qikipedia
Ronald Reagan’s library just burned down. Both books were destroyed. But the real horror: He had not finished colouring the second one. GORE VIDAL
305
@qikipedia
The frequency of a pig’s grunts reveal its personality.
306
@qikipedia
The Dutch for drinking beer with a spirit chaser is ‘kopstoot’, meaning ‘head butt’.
307
@qikipedia
In 1984, Tim Macartney-Snape climbed Everest, but his mate Michael Dillon said 'you've only done the top part, technically', so he went back and started from sea level to prove a point.
308
@qikipedia
All the universe’s hydrogen and most of its helium were produced in the first 20 minutes after the Big Bang.
309
@qikipedia
Two-thirds of the universe’s predicted quantity of lithium is missing and no-one knows where it is. This is known as the ‘cosmological lithium problem’.
(Image: W. Oelen)
310
@qikipedia
In ancient times cats were worshiped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
TERRY PRATCHETT
(Image: Kotofeij K. Bajun)
311
@qikipedia
In 1908, the Russian shooting team arrived the Olympics twelve days late.
The Russian team had made sure to arrive a few days before the event was scheduled, but Russia still used the Julian calendar. The UK had switched to the Gregorian calendar 150 years earlier.
312
@qikipedia
At the 1928 Olympics, rower Henry Pearce stopped mid-race to let a family of ducks safely cross his lane.
He still won the heat.
313
@qikipedia
Word of the day: ANTISOCORDIST - an opponent of people behaving stupidly
314
@qikipedia
"Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear." OSCAR WILDE
315
@qikipedia
When divorcing Aaron Burr, his second wife hired Alexander Hamilton Jr. as her divorce attorney.
316
@qikipedia
On his deathbed, surgeon Joseph Henry Green was checking his pulse, and his last word was ‘Stopped’.
317
@qikipedia
Medieval surgeons used spider webs to close wounds.
318
@qikipedia
London foxes appear to be domesticating themselves.
319
@qikipedia
Word of the day: PANPHOBIA - irrational fear of absolutely everything
320
@qikipedia
"Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works...
Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things." DOUGLAS ADAMS
321
@qikipedia
Some mathematicians call 667 ‘the fax number of the beast’.
322
@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.
323
@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’.
324
@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'.
325
@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
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves