926
@qikipedia
Daylight saving time was first proposed by an entomologist who wanted more after-work daylight to collect bugs.
927
@qikipedia
Word of the day: UHTCEARU, n. anxiety before dawn (Old English) – pronounced ‘oot-key-are-oo’.
928
@qikipedia
In 2010, a debate between the two candidates for prime minister of Australia had to be rescheduled because it conflicted with the final of Masterchef.
929
@qikipedia
The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock because they were about to run out of beer.
930
@qikipedia
Japan’s poo museum features a giant inflatable poo that erupts miniature toy-poos every 30 minutes.
931
@qikipedia
When the 83-year-old historian, sociologist and civil rights activist, W.E.B Du Bois was indicted by the FBI as a foreign agent in 1951, Albert Einstein offered to stand as a character witness and the case was dropped.
932
@qikipedia
Researchers at the University of Glasgow have created a phone that your dog can use to contact you.
933
@qikipedia
French employees are forbidden by law from eating lunch at their desks.
934
@qikipedia
The G-forces experienced by your shoelaces are greater than any roller coaster on Earth.
935
@qikipedia
This 1881 map shows how long it would take (in days) to get by train from London to other parts of the world.
936
@qikipedia
Vampire bats lap blood rather than suck it – their saliva contains an enzyme called draculin to prevent the blood clotting.
Image: Mokele, CC BY 3.0
937
@qikipedia
The Chinese giant salamander can reach almost six feet in length and seven stone (50kg) in weight, is prone to cannibalism and makes a noise like a crying baby.
(Image: Petr Hamerník)
938
@qikipedia
The word ‘wassailing’, as in ‘Here we come a-wassailing’, comes from the Old English greeting ‘wes hāl’ (‘be well’). It became a drinking salutation (‘waes hail’), then the name for the Yuletide drink (‘wesseyl’) and finally the name for the holiday fun when you were drinking it.
939
@qikipedia
A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
SHERLOCK HOLMES
Image: David Iliff CC BY-SA 3.0
940
@qikipedia
The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. TOM WAITS
941
@qikipedia
Pond Square, North London is said to be haunted by a chicken that Francis Bacon tried to preserve in ice in 1626.
942
@qikipedia
Over 26 years, zoologist Jennifer Owens recorded 2,673 different species living in her small suburban garden in Leicester, including 474 plants, 1,997 insects, 54 species of birds and seven mammals.
943
@qikipedia
In 2019, a Russian police officer was constantly asked by the regional prosecutor’s office to question a witness who had died a year before. The officer finally went to a medium and wrote a report saying he tried to contact the soul of the witness during a séance but to no avail.
944
@qikipedia
The longest anyone’s left a light on is 120 years; a Californian fire station has a bulb that's been constantly illuminated since 1901. (Image by Rjaerial CC BY-SA 4.0)
945
@qikipedia
Ecstasy was patented in 1913 as a diet pill.
946
@qikipedia
The first domesticated bird was not the chicken, but the cassowary.
Adult cassowaries weigh 60 kilograms and are highly aggressive.
947
@qikipedia
Blackcurrant was banned in the US for much of the twentieth century. One researcher estimates only 0.1% of Americans have ever eaten one.
948
@qikipedia
Swedish-built cars (Saabs, Volvos) are specifically reinforced so that the occupants will survive if you hit a moose.
(h/t @mary_roach)
949
@qikipedia
The Mars rover Perseverance has measured the speed of sound on Mars and it’s about 100 m/s slower than the speed of sound on Earth.
950
@qikipedia
The earliest recorded use of the term ‘Wild West’, to mean the American frontier, was by Charlotte Brontë.
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves