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After the French Revolution, the French government introduced a new calendar.
To replace saint's days, every day was renamed in honor of something important to rural French life.
In this calendar, 28 December was the day of manure.
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According to a 2012 Radio 4 analysis, Cabot Cove, Maine - home to Jessica Fletcher of Murder She Wrote - has the highest murder rate of any fictional town.
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According to addiction researchers, it is extremely difficult to get hamsters drunk.
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In Norwegian, the period between Christmas and the New Year is called ROMJUL. Etymologically, it comes from Old Norse jól (Christmas) + rúmheilagr ("that needs not adhere strictly to legal proscriptions for a holiday").
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Word of the day: BAYARD - someone with all the self-confidence born of ignorance
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People think cynics are smarter than optimists, but cynics actually do worse on tests of cognitive ability.
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After Christmas, many zoos give used Christmas trees to their animals as enrichment.
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Neptune is the only planet in the Solar System that is never visible to the naked eye.
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1922 was an important year in western literature: the publication of ‘Ulysses' in full by James Joyce and ‘The Wasteland’ by T.S. Eliot, the death of Marcel Proust and it's the year in which F. Scott Fitzgerald set 'The Great Gatsby’.
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Word of the Day (Dutch, slang): AZIJNPISSER — someone who constantly makes negative and critical comments; the literal meaning is ‘a vinegar pisser’.
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The technology for the Roomba was originally created for military robots clearing minefields.
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During the period from 2019 to November 2021, the usage of English swearwords increased by 41% on Facebook and 27% on Twitter.
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‘Is there any mice in your arse?’ was a 19th-century Scottish way of replying to someone who is referring to themselves as ‘we’.
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It's not that we have too little time to do all the things we need to do. It's that we feel the need to do too many things in the time we have. GARY KELLER
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According to a historical anecdote, a Neapolitan nobleman once fought 14 duels to prove that Dante was a better poet than Ariosto. At his deathbed, he confessed that he had read neither of them.
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In 1795, a French cavalry regiment won a battle against a Dutch naval fleet.
The fleet had frozen in ice, so the cavalry just rode up and surrounded them.
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In 2010, a debate between the two candidates for prime minister of Australia had to be rescheduled because it conflicted with the final of Masterchef.
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Word of the day: TOSIE (Scots) - warm, snug and comfortable
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Cats can safely receive blood transfusions from dogs - but only once.
A second transfusion of dog blood is often fatal.
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The Scottish Highlands, the Appalachian Mountains in the USA, and the Atlas Mountains in North Africa were once all part of the same mountain range.
(Image: Pedro Correia & J. Brendan Murphy; CC BY.)
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The first ever speeding ticket was issued in a 1896 to a driver in Kent for going four times the legal speed limit.
The driver was going the breakdown pace of 8 mph. The speed limit was 2 mph.
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One horse produces 15 horsepower.
A human produces one horsepower.
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Britney Spears' "Toxic" changed how people used the word "toxic".
According to research by @OxLanguages, her song helped popularise the metaphorical use of "toxicity".
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While adultery is generally illegal in Japan, it is legal as long as it's done for business purposes.
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‘Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you’ was the longest string of words signed by Nim Chimpsky, the chimpanzee subject of an extended study into animal language in the 1970s.
Image: Herbert Terrace/Bantam
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves