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In Utrecht, for George Orwell's birthday, local artists put party hats on the city's CCTV cameras. 📷:Dutch artists 'Front404'
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The average public swimming pool contains 75 litres of urine.
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Ponyhenge is a collection of rocking horses in an open field in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
No one knows where the ponies come from, or who is donating them - but the herd continues to grow.
(Image: Jenn Forman Orth; CC BY-NC-SD.)
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In World War II New Zealand designed and built a tank after studying a picture of one on an American postcard. It was a tractor covered in corrugated iron, with a mattress where the gunner was supposed to lie. It never made it to combat.
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If Elon Musk lost 99.9% of his net worth, he would still have $250 million to his name.
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Word of the day: HOUSE-DOVE (16th century) - a person who prefers to stay at home rather than go out
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Bats give birth upside down and catch their babies in their wings.
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Word of the day: BAYARD - someone with all the self-confidence born of ignorance
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In 1949, the rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun wrote a novel about a manned mission to Mars, in which the leader of the Martian government is called ‘Elon’.
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From 1986 to 2007, all cosmonauts were equipped with a triple-barreled pistol, in case they encountered bears upon landing.
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This is from NASA’s Apollo 10 mission’s transcript… (Image: Apollo 10 Mission, NASA/JSC)
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When fruit flies are lonely, they have trouble sleeping and eat too much.
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When he died in 1955, Dewey Beard (Wasú Máza) was the last known Native American survivor of both the Battle of the Little Big Horn (1876), and the massacre at Wounded Knee (1890).
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The U.S. Department of State’s anti-corruption coordinator is a man called Rich Nephew.
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The Peel P50, the smallest mass-produced car ever made, was advertised as being able to carry ‘one adult and a shopping bag’. It has no reverse gear but has a handle on the back: you get out of the car, pick the handle, and turn the car around. [📷: Philip (flip) Kromer.]
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Word of the day: FREUDENFREUDE - joy in other people's success
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Word of the day: LIBROCUBICULARIST - someone who reads in bed
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A serious drought 150,000 years ago reduced the global human population to 600. They survived by moving to the coast and eating oysters.
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The average person swears 80-90 times a day.
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Japanese parents have recently started commissioning bags of rice that weigh the same as their newborn children so that their relatives, who are unable to visit them due to the pandemic, could have the experience of hugging the baby.
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In 2013, an Ohio man was confirmed as legally dead, despite him appearing in court to overturn the decision.
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Using extreme high pressure, diamonds can be made from peanut butter.
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This is of course supposed to say by-product, not bi-product. We are not aware of the sexual orientation of any produce relating to the Beaufort cheese industry. Our apologies for the typo. twitter.com/qikipedia/stat…
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Word of the Day: ORTHINOLOGY (neologism) — word-botching. For instance, saying ‘orthinology’ instead of ‘ornithology’ and ‘word-botching’ instead of ‘bird-watching‘.
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Word of the day: ANTISOCORDIST - an opponent of people behaving stupidly
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A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves