826
@qikipedia
Word of the day: HINDERMATE - the opposite of a helpmate, a friend who only makes things more difficult
827
@qikipedia
For over 100 years people tried to crack this code on a gravestone in Ontario until a 94 year-old woman solved it in the 1970s. (Image: Mac Armstrong).
828
@qikipedia
You can get raw herring and onion ice cream in the Netherlands (Image: Redherring NL)
829
@qikipedia
Defecation can stimulate the vagus nerve and produce a pleasurable sensation that is called ‘poo-phoria’.
830
@qikipedia
In 1996, a store manager in California robbed the store, reported the robbery, and then gave a detailed description of the ‘suspect’ to the sketch artist. When the police pointed out to him that the ‘suspect’ looked exactly like him, the man confessed.
831
@qikipedia
Most kangaroos are left-handed.
832
@qikipedia
The word ‘rhubarb’ comes from two Greek words ‘rheon’ and ‘barbaron’. ‘Barbaron’ means ‘foreign’, and ‘rheon’ means ‘rhubarb’, so ‘rhubarb’ is a ‘foreign rhubarb’.
833
@qikipedia
In 2021 an arrest warrant was issued for a woman in Oklahoma after it was discovered she hadn’t returned a copy of Sabrina the Teenage Witch on VHS to a video rental store in 1999 when it was due.
834
@qikipedia
The Inca people believed the past, present, and future were all happening in the same moment.
835
@qikipedia
For a couple of years, Snoop Dogg and Picasso were alive at the same time.
836
@qikipedia
In 2020, the world’s fossil fuel industry was subsidised by $11m per minute.
837
@qikipedia
Gray whales have threesomes.
838
@qikipedia
Just like humans, octopuses have a specific arm they prefer to use.
839
@qikipedia
The decision to capitalise the ‘i’ on the Wikipedia page for Star Trek Into Darkness was made after 40,000 words of argument in the edit pages.
840
@qikipedia
Scientists found a new state of matter in 2019 by squeezing potassium until it became both liquid and solid at the same time.
841
@qikipedia
The inventor of the transistor, John Bardeen, won a Nobel prize in 1956 but only brought one of his three kids to the ceremony. When questioned on it, he said he’d bring the others the next time he won, which he then did in 1972.
842
@qikipedia
Experts believe there are 5.25 trillion bits of plastic in our oceans; 50 bits for every star in our galaxy.
843
@qikipedia
There is a restaurant in New York that only employs grandmothers as their chefs.
The menu is set by the grandmothers in charge that night, and consists of her family recipes.
(Image: Garrett Ziegler; CC BY-NC-ND.)
844
@qikipedia
According to research from the University of Essex, the world's most boring person is probably a data analyst who lives in a small town and who enjoys watching TV.
845
@qikipedia
M. C. Escher once told Mick Jagger off for using his first name in a letter.
846
@qikipedia
You can tell the rough date of a Victorian image by ladies’ gloves; they were worn short until 1835, mid-length until 1865, then up beyond the elbow by 1900.
847
@qikipedia
The COP26 climate conference is estimated to have a carbon footprint of 102,500 tonnes, equivalent to the annual average emissions of 8,000 Britons.
848
@qikipedia
At various points throughout the year, the hottest part of the solar system is Didcot. There is a nuclear fusion reactor there that can reach temperatures higher than the sun.
849
@qikipedia
A Victorian sewer worker once proved he’d found a tunnel into the Bank of England’s gold vaults and for his honesty, was given £800 (about £90,000 in today's money).
850
@qikipedia
A French power station that makes enough electricity for about 1,500 homes is powered by the bi-products of the Beaufort cheese industry.
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves