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Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. KURT VONNEGUT
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Word of the Day: PÉNISPLIQUER (Canadian French, neologism) — mansplaining; ‘expliquer’ is French for ‘explain’.
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Word of the day: MERRYNEUM (neologism) - the odd week between Christmas and the New Year
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In 1945, American soldier Jack Lucas threw himself on two grenades; 250 pieces of shrapnel lodged in his body, but he survived. In 1961, he survived a jump when both of his parachutes failed. In 1977, his wife plotted to kill him. He died in 2008 at the age of 80.
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Alice Lee was a statistician who debunked the claim that men must be more intelligent than women because of bigger skulls. In 1898, she measured the skulls of 35 members of the Anatomical Society and found that the smallest heads belonged to the most renowned scientists.
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Ever wondered where the expression 'devil's advocate' comes from? 🤔
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Euphonia, a Victorian ‘talking machine’, was one of the first robots who could speak sentences. It was so unsettling one commentator labelled it a ‘scientific Frankenstein monster’ with a ‘hoarse sepulchral voice’.
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When the Moon is directly overhead, its gravity pulls on clouds and makes it rain less.
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"The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head." TERRY PRATCHETT
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SITE OF THE DAY: The Martin Luther Insult Generator, ergofabulous.org/luther/
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People spend 46.9% of the day daydreaming.
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The Danish phrase ‘er det hestens fødselsdag?’ (literally ‘is it the horse’s birthday?’) means ‘this rye bread is too thick for my open sandwich’.
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In the 1800s, ducks were sometimes called ‘arsefeet’ because their feet are so close to their bottoms.
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Last year scientists discovered an explosion, 390 million light years away, which was the equivalent of ‘setting off 20 billion, billion megaton TNT explosions every thousandth of a second for the entire 240 million years.’
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To make the war less visible and traumatising for the small children of Kyiv, a local concrete manufacturer and a children’s charity have turned some of the military roadblocks in the city into fairy-tale characters. (Images: childrenheroes.org/en/; h/t @VlOstrovskyi)
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Mongoose were introduced to Hawaii to control the rat population.
Unfortunately, the mongoose is diurnal and the rat nocturnal, so they rarely encounter each other.
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Like if you think Sandi Toksvig should be the next Bond villain.
RT if you think Sandi Toksvig should be the next Bond.
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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."
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Raindrops are about the same size on all planets - regardless of if they're made of water (Earth), methane (Titan), or liquid iron (WASP-76b).
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Samuel Beckett once was enjoying a walk with a friend on a sunny afternoon. The friend remarked it was a beautiful day that made one glad to be alive. Beckett replied, ‘I wouldn’t go that far’.
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If you want to use a photo of the Eiffel Tower for commercial purposes, you need permission if it was taken at night but not if it was taken in the day. The copyright on the tower and its image has expired, but the copyright on the tower illumination installed in 1989 has not.
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Dogs will ignore their owners if they know they are lying.
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Regular farting can be a sign of good intestinal health.
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Only 1% of English-language tweets that use the 🍑 emoji actually refer to the physical fruit itself.
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This dog from Tbilisi, Georgia is featured on Google Maps where she has several five star reviews. (h/t and image: Egor Mikhailov).
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves