276
@qikipedia
‘Nuair a chacann gé, cacann siad go léir’ is an Irish proverb about group mentality that literally translates as ‘When one goose shits, they all shit’.
277
@qikipedia
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard had 50 sets of cups and saucers for coffee. Each day his secretary had to decide on a set, and convincingly justify their choice.
278
@qikipedia
Before reluctantly deciding on the word ‘viewer’, the 1935 BBC Sub-Committee on Words considered many terms for their "users of television apparatus", including auralooker, glancer, looker-in, seer, sighter, teleobservist, viewer-in, visionnaire, vizzior, and witnesser.
279
@qikipedia
No one knows if spiders fart.
280
@qikipedia
Every actor has to make terrible films from time to time, but the trick is never to be terrible in them. – CHRISTOPHER LEE (1922-2015)
281
@qikipedia
Scientists hoping to track Australian magpies were foiled because the birds pecked each other’s tracking devices off.
282
@qikipedia
The Nobel disease is a term for a tendency of Nobel laureates to embrace unscientific ideas later in life. For instance, biochemist Kary Mullis accepted astrology, thought the climate crisis was a hoax and said he once spoke with a fluorescent raccoon who addressed him as doctor.
283
@qikipedia
"When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning." NEIL GAIMAN
284
@qikipedia
According to etymologist Anatoly Liberman, both ‘skite’ in ‘blatherskite’ (chatterer) and ‘skate’ in ‘cheapskate’ (miser) ultimately come from the Old Icelandic verb ‘skíta’, ‘to shit’. So, a blatherskite is a blathering piece of shit and a cheapskate is a cheap piece of shit.
285
@qikipedia
In 2020, the world’s fossil fuel industry was subsidised by $11m per minute.
286
@qikipedia
In the event of an apocalypse, about 200 humans would need to survive for the species to be able to repopulate.
287
@qikipedia
Word of the Day: NOODLEDOM — a collective term for a group of fools.
288
@qikipedia
Word of the day: ABIBLIOPHOBIA - fear of running out of things to read
289
@qikipedia
In ancient times cats were worshiped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
TERRY PRATCHETT
(Image: Kotofeij K. Bajun)
290
@qikipedia
Town planners in Porters Lake, Nova Scotia seem to have run out of ideas.
There are streets named "This Street", "That Street", and "The Other Street".
291
@qikipedia
Colorado, Washington, and Idaho have all replaced their "420" mile markers with "419.9" after repeated thefts.
(Image: Robert Ashworth; CC BY.)
292
@qikipedia
Word of the day: GLÉO-DREÁM (Old English) - the joy brought by listening to music
293
@qikipedia
There’s no such thing as a chemical that makes your pee visible in swimming pools.
294
@qikipedia
The average dog knows 89 words.
295
@qikipedia
Assuming each vampire feeds once a month, it would take two and a half years years for the whole human population to become vampires.
296
@qikipedia
Word of the day: GRAMMATICASTER - someone who is annoyingly pedantic about grammar
297
@qikipedia
The world’s largest living thing is a fungus in Oregon, USA. It currently covers around 8.9 square kilometres (about 1,665 football pitches) and is over 8,000 years old.
298
@qikipedia
Word of the Day: DEUTERAGONIST - the second most important person in a story, after the protagonist.
299
@qikipedia
Word of the day: BAYARD - one blind to the light of knowledge, who has the self-confidence of ignorance.
300
@qikipedia
In 1963, a Turkish man was remodeling his home and knocked down a wall.
He discovered an entire underground city behind it - capable of holding 20,000 residents.
(Image: Nevit Dilmen; CC BY-SA.)
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves