1001
@qikipedia
"Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self." TERRY PRATCHETT
1002
@qikipedia
According to some physicists, there is no such thing as "now".
Since we must wait for light to travel to us to react to something, and the brain must process the information, we are effectively all living (about twenty milliseconds) in the past.
1003
@qikipedia
Scientists have developed 13-millimetre artificial fish which can tow 5kg of material, heal themselves, and collect microplastics from the sea as they swim.
1004
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When Bill Shakespeare, the first man to receive the Pfizer vaccine, died in 2021, one Argentinian news channel got confused and announced the death of ‘one of the most important writers in the English language.’
1005
@qikipedia
French employees are forbidden by law from eating lunch at their desks.
1006
@qikipedia
The G-forces experienced by your shoelaces are greater than any roller coaster on Earth.
1007
@qikipedia
Without biting midges, we wouldn’t have chocolate: cocoa plants are pollinated by them.
1008
@qikipedia
Pigeons can be taught to recognise all 26 letters of the English alphabet and to distinguish between real words and gibberish.
1009
@qikipedia
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word ‘penguin’ probably comes from the Welsh phrase ‘pen gwyn’, which means ‘white head’.
1010
@qikipedia
Before the introduction of postage stamps in the U.S., a letter was supposed to be paid for by the recipient. In the 1830s, one American harassed his enemy by sending him letters filled with nothing but blank pages.
1011
@qikipedia
Irish for ‘echo’ is ‘macalla’, which literally means ‘son of a cliff’.
1012
@qikipedia
After drummer Pete Best was fired from the Beatles, he released an album called "Best of the Beatles".
Buyers were disappointed to find out it was not a Beatles compilation album.
1013
@qikipedia
A London tennis club attempted to train dogs to replace "ball boys" at Wimbledon.
The trial failed because the dogs did not want to return the tennis balls.
(Image: carterse; CC BY-SA.)
1014
@qikipedia
There is a cloud in Australia named Hector.
"Hector the Convector" forms every afternoon in the summer over the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory of Australia.
(Image: Djambalawa; CC BY-SA.)
1015
@qikipedia
Before the invention of rubber condoms, Japanese men used condoms made of tortoiseshell.
(Image: Wellcome Collection / Science Museum, London; CC BY.)
1016
@qikipedia
Word of the day: LOVE-DARG (19th century Scots) - a task you do for someone, not because you want to, but because you love them
1017
@qikipedia
"Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god... [if] you provide [cats] with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods." CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
1018
@qikipedia
In 1899, G.E. Dudley patented an electrical anti-masturbation device for men that consisted of a tube connected to a bell that would ring if the penis, inserted in the tube, became erect.
1019
@qikipedia
‘Soy sauce’ is a tautology. The word ‘soy’ comes from the Japanese ‘shōyu’ meaning ‘soy sauce’.
1020
@qikipedia
A 100-year-old tree absorbs 4.2 tonnes of CO2. Over the course of its life, a great whale on average captures 33 tonnes of CO2.
1021
@qikipedia
A study of compound swears used in Reddit comments from 2006 to 2020 has found that the most popular combination is ‘dumbass’ (3.6 million comments). The 444 combinations used only once include ‘sleazenozzle’ and ‘bastardbucket’. (📷 and the study: Colin Morris, @HalfEatenScone.)
1022
@qikipedia
Facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true. HOMER SIMPSON
1023
@qikipedia
At one point, Prince William and Prince Harry changed the Queen's voicemail to:
"Hey wassup! This is Liz. Sorry I'm away from the throne. For a hotline to Philip, press one. For Charles, press two. And for the corgis, press three."
1024
@qikipedia
"Rubber duck debugging" is the practice of debugging software by explaining what you meant the program to do to the duck.
Often, explaining the process will cause the programmer to figure out what they did wrong.
(Image: Tom Morris; CC BY-SA.)
1025
@qikipedia
Penguins alter their accents to sound like their friends.
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves