A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI. linktr.ee/TheQIElves
QI HQ
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Until 1982, there was no word for the pointy bits at the end of a Stegosaurus' tail. Gary Larson coined the word ‘thagomizer’ in a Far Side strip and the word was quickly adopted by palaeontologists. (📷: Fred Wierum)
ALT An illustration of a stegosaurus.
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From 1913 to 1942, Arthur Gehrke of Watertown, Wisconsin went to bed in November and didn't get up until the next April. He claimed that ‘if more folks went to bed all winter, there wouldn't be so much trouble and confusion in the world’.
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Calling all book lovers! Our literary quiz BOOKMARKS with Clare Balding is recording its first full series in the new year and we'd love for you to be involved. 📚
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In Irish, the word for otter translates as ‘water dog’, the word for squirrel ‘tree dog’, and the word for seal ‘sea dog’.
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The collective noun for a group of ducks on water is a PADDLING.
ALT A mother duck swimming followed by 11 ducklings.
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In 2018 a Polish environmental charity put a SIM card in a GPS tracker to follow the migratory pattern of a white stork. They lost track of the stork and later received a phone bill for $2,700: someone in Sudan had taken the SIM from the tracker and made over 20 hours of calls.
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Once a little boy sent me a charming card... I sent him a card. I got a letter back from his mother and she said, ‘Jim loved your card so much he ate it’. That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it. MAURICE SENDAK
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Cicadas pee so much people can mistake it for rain. In parts of the US, it’s advisable to wear a hat when walking near trees in summer.
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In 1959, a Harvard researcher tried to teach three octopuses — Albert, Bertram and Charles — to pull a lever to get food. Albert and Bertram were cooperative, but Charles constantly squirted the researcher with water and prematurely terminated the study by breaking the lever.
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Brand new QI Series X launches tonight!
Sandi Toksvig looks at some extra-large and extra-small topics with Desiree Burch, Gyles Brandreth, Sheila Hancock and Alan Davies.
QI XL 'XL XS XL', Tuesday 3rd November at 9pm on BBC Two and available on iPlayer straight after.
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A popular Victorian recipe was ‘Toast Water’, made by putting a slice of toast into a cup of boiling water and letting it go cold.
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There are eight times as many atoms in a teaspoonful of water as there are teaspoonfuls of water in the Atlantic.
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QI Series X debuts tomorrow evening at 9pm!
Here are the new titles - how many X words can you spot? Let us know in the comments.
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