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British shoe sizes are measured in barleycorns, a unit based on the length of a grain of barley (an inch was ‘3 barly cornes dry and rounde’).
Image: Alexander Klepnev
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The word ‘barn’ literally means ‘barley house’, derived from the Old English bere ‘barley’ + aern ‘house’.
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The Green Zone golf course straddles Finland and Sweden (seven holes in Finland and 11 in Sweden). On hole six, balls stay in the air for approximately an hour and three seconds due to the countries' differing time zones.
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The knobbles on our kneecaps are as individual as our fingerprints or irises.
Image: Jörg Bittner Unna
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Aztecs prescribed chocolate for angina, fatigue, dysentery, gout, hemorrhoids and dental problems.
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Arthur Dent may have been on to something; people are least inclined to take risks on Thursdays.
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Dutch people are getting shorter.
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"Computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh only 1.5 tons."
Popular Mechanics, 1949
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Toronto financier Charles Vance Millar (1854-1926) used his will as a vehicle for practical jokes.
For instance, he willed a vacation home to three men who hated each other, on condition they lived there together indefinitely.
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In 2015, a young man named Bud Weiser was arrested while trespassing at a Budweiser brewery.
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"The moral of 'The Three Bears,' for instance, is 'Never break into someone else's house." The moral of 'Snow White' is 'Never eat apples.' The moral of World War One is 'Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand'." LEMONY SNICKET
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In the 1600s, to be depressed was to be in your MUBBLE-FUBBLES.
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After a rabbi discovered in 2004 that New York City's tap water contains tiny crustaceans called copepods, the city's tap water is no longer considered kosher.
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Word of the day: DRUXY - literally, wood that is decayed in the center; used to mean someone who seems good but is actually quite rotten
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Swedish-built cars (Saabs, Volvos) are specifically reinforced so that the occupants will survive if you hit a moose.
(h/t @mary_roach)
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The French word ‘ça’ (‘it’ or ‘that’) as in ‘Ça va?’ is a shortening of the word ‘cela’, which itself is a shortening of the Vulgar Latin phrase ‘ecce hoc illac’, meaning ‘look this over there’.
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The design of Barbie was inspired by a German doll Lilli, a sexualised secretary based on the character of a daily tabloid cartoon. The dolls were popular as bachelor party gifts and were sold in tobacco shops, bars, and adult-themed toy stores. [📷: dollyhaul.]
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The word ‘Nationalsozialist’ was shortened by Hitler’s opponents to ‘Nazi’, partly because ‘Natzi’ or ‘Nazi’ was a short form of the name ‘Ignatz’ (Ignatius) and had already been used in regional slang to describe a foolish or clumsy person.
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Wikipedia has a list of ‘Lamest Edit Wars’ that includes such disputes as ‘Is Limp Bizkit a nu metal/rapcore or rapcore/nu metal band?’, ‘Is it Star Trek into or Into Darkness?’, and ‘Should we say that economist Guy Standing is sitting in his photo?’. bit.ly/39qXtcu
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Chinese people learning English often memorise the word ‘ambulance' by associating it with a Chinese phrase ‘An bung neng si’, which means ‘I can’t die’.
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During World War 1, the Germans suspended sausage making in order to increase the supply of cows’ intestines used to line the hydrogen chambers in zeppelins. A single zeppelin required the innards of quarter of a million cows.
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Children’s dislike of cauliflower and broccoli is connected to the concentration of enzymes produced by bacteria in their saliva. The more of an enzyme called cysteine lyases their mouths produce, the more sulphurous brassicas will taste.
Image: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos
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The Cuban giant owl (which went extinct over 9,000 ears ago) was flightless, stood over three feet tall and weighed nine kilos (imagine a big turkey armed with massive claws).
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‘Buccaneer’ originally meant ‘one who barbeques’ from ‘boucanier’ – a 17th century French word for runaway sailors who lived in the forests of Haiti and cooked their meat on a boucan - a kind of Brazilian wooden barbecue.
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"Of course there are no cat gods. That would be too much like... work." TERRY PRATCHETT
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves