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Word of the day: UHTCEARU, n. anxiety before dawn (Old English) – pronounced ‘oot-key-are-oo’.
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Macropinna microstoma is a deep-sea fish with glowing green eyes that look out from inside its transparent, fluid-filled forehead (the holes on the front of its face are nostrils).
Image: Ezra Weller, CC BY 3.0
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In December 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes and more than 20,000 readers cancelled their subscriptions to The Strand Magazine, which almost bankrupted it. Staff referred to Holmes’ death as ‘the dreadful event’.
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A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
SHERLOCK HOLMES
Image: David Iliff CC BY-SA 3.0
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Word of the Day: WIKIRACING — a game whereby you have to get from a predetermined Wikipedia page to another one by navigating links in articles (excluding the ‘See also’ ones) quicker or clicking fewer links than your opponent.
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From 1987 to 2015, it was more lucrative to invest in Lego than in bonds, wine, or gold. (Study: bit.ly/33tbVRq.)
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The real-life technology chief of MI6 is now called ‘Q’.
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Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the U.S. to earn the M.D. degree, was admitted to a medical school in 1847. The faculty allowed the all-male student body to vote on her admission, being sure they would reject her, but the students voted ‘yes’ as a joke.
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Cowboys in the Old West were more likely to wear bowler hats than cowboy hats.
(Image: Oxfordian Kissuth; CC BY-SA.)
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An ATOMIC TYPO is a typo that results in a correctly spelled word, just not the one you intended to write.
For instance, you might type "pubic" for "public".
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Phrase of the day: FARE LA SCARPETTA (Italian) - using a piece of bread to mop the last bits of pasta sauce
(Image: James; CC BY-NC-ND.)
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"It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people." NEIL GAIMAN and TERRY PRATCHETT
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The steeper the street you live on, the less likely you are to be robbed.
Criminologists speculate that this may be because criminals don't feel like climbing hills.
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0.5% of US births are to self-reported virgins.
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In 1956, Harper Lee's friends gave her a full year's salary as a Christmas gift, so that she could take time off to focus on writing.
She used that time to write To Kill A Mockingbird, which has now sold more than 40 million copies.
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Every 25 December in Chumbivilcas Province, Peru, residents go to the centre of town to have a communal fistfight. Residents claim it is cathartic.
Afterwards, fighters are encouraged to drink away the pain of their injuries.
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TROLL once meant "to sing loudly and clearly" - as in, "to troll the ancient Yuletide carol".
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An early form of the ‘round robin’ letter was used by British Navy sailors petitioning their commanding officers– signatures were arranged in a circle around the demands to prevent the ring-leader being identified.
Image: The National Archives
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Victorian Christmas cards were often secular in theme and their content could be quite morbid: many featured dead birds or anthropomorphic frogs in various states of jeopardy.
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One of the miracles associated with St Nicholas was the restoring to life of three young boys who had been dismembered by a cruel butcher and thrown into a brine tub.
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This year’s PNC Christmas Price Index (based on the cost of the gifts listed in the 12 Days of Christmas) is 5.7% up on 2020 to $41,205.58, with the biggest increase of +57% attributed to the cost of six geese-a-laying at $660.
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The ‘mas’ in ‘Christmas’ comes from the word ‘mass’, which, in its turn, is thought to come from the Latin phrase ‘Ite, missa est’ spoken by a priest at the end of the liturgy and which can be translated as ‘Go, it is the dismissal’. So Christmas means 'go away Christ'.
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The Sherlock Holmes Museum is located at 239 Baker Street, but it is allowed by the City of Westminster to use the 221B address.
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I use a lot of what I learned from chess in my day to day life. For example, I never let a horse position itself so it can attack both me and my wife in a single move. COREY MOHLER
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Word of the day: MERRYNEUM (neologism) - the odd week between Christmas and the New Year, mostly occupied by eating leftovers and taking naps
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A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
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