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"It's my belief we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain." LILY TOMLIN
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The more you spend on an engagement ring, the more likely you are to get divorced.
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In 1743, King Gustav III of Sweden ordered one man to drink an excessive amount of coffee and his identical twin drink an excessive amount of tea to see which died first.
Both men outlived the king.
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The town of Levi in northern Finland hosts the Tree Hugging World Championships. There are three categories: speed hugging (hugging as many trees under a minute), dedication (showing passion and emotion), and freestyle (imaginative ways to hug a tree).
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Word of the day: CONJOBBLING (19th century) - to get together to eat and gossip
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The cloudiest city in the US gets more sunlight than the sunniest city in England.
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Orcas go through short-lived fads. For instance, they recently started breaking rudders off sailboats along the European coast; and for a few weeks in the 1980s, some took to swimming with dead fish on their heads.
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On July 11, 1979, NASA's first space station, Skylab, crashed to earth, scattering debris across Western Australia.
A local council issued NASA a $400 fine for littering.
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"If I cannot swear in heaven I shall not stay there." MARK TWAIN
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Word of the day: 손맛 (son-mat; Korean) - "hand taste", the unique taste each person making a recipe adds to it, usually used to describe how no one can make food like your mum
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On average, tall people are smarter than short people.
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The city of Minneapolis, Minnesota employs twelve mussels to monitor water quality.
If they come across something unpleasant in the water, they close, setting off an alert.
The mussels do not have names.
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The Seán O'Casey bridge in Dublin was designed to swing open to allow ships to pass through.
It stayed closed for four years after the operator lost the remote control.
(Image: Peter Misik; CC BY-SA.)
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In 40 U.S. states, the highest-paid public employee is an American football or basketball coach at a state college.
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In the 1990s, Mark Strong auditioned for the role of a Bond villain. He failed the audition because he had a severe hangover after a night out with his friend Daniel Craig.
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In order to avoid paying for meals, Salvador Dalí would doodle on the back of his cheques, knowing they would then never be cashed.
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In 2011, Belgians were voted the least cool nationality.
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"An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience." MITCH HEDBERG
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In 1900, Argentina had a tax on unmarried men - but men whose proposals were turned down were exempt from the tax.
Enterprising women promptly set up businesses where they would reject men's proposals so they could be exempt from the tax.
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In Polish slang, if you want to say that someone is overdressed, you can say that they are ‘dressed up like a rat for the opening of a sewer’.
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Nothing is illegal if one hundred well-placed businessmen decide to do it. ANDREW YOUNG
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Word of the Day: VERGURKEN (German) — to screw up or ruin something, literally ‘to cucumber [something] up’.
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When the US Postal Service was established, it had an eleven pound weight limit but no restrictions on what you could mail.
An Ohio couple therefore sent their baby to visit his grandmother - by post. He only cost $0.15 to mail but was insured for $50.
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In 2008 thieves in Russia stole an entire church, brick by brick.
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Word of the Day: ATTACHMEANT (neologism) — the file you forgot to attach to an email.
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves