Quite Interesting

LEWIS'S LAW states that ‘the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism’.

It's the last new episode of the W Series tonight and we're looking at a whole range of WHATNOTS with Sandi, Alan, Andrew Maxwell, Joanne McNally and Sally Phillips! BBC Two, 9pm.

In the 14th century, a high-spirited person was known as a 'great-willy'. Tonight at 9pm on BBC Two we've got a WILLY NILLY episode with Sandi, Alan, Catherine Bohart, Russell Kane and Josh Widdicombe!

There are about 6,500 species of mammal, 15,000 species of ant and 200,000 species of wasp. Tonight at 9pm on BBC Two there's a brand new episode of QI all about W Animals starring Sandi, Alan, Nabil Abdulrashid, Sam Campbell, Holly Walsh and several chickens!

Wonder Woman was created by the inventor of the lie detector. Tonight on QI we're looking at everything WEIRD AND WONDERFUL in a brand new ep starring Sandi, Alan, Melanie Bracewell, Roisin Conaty and Patrick Kielty. BBC Two, 9pm.

According to researchers at the University of Sydney, Santa’s sleigh flies at a speed that would cause the light from Rudolph’s nose to undergo the Doppler Effect, so it would look orange as the sleigh approached, and almost black as it receded.

Word of the Day: SOCKENSCHLÄFER (German) a wimp, literally ‘someone who sleeps with socks on’.

In a study of 15-year olds, the tendency to claim to know something when they don’t was most common in males from rich families.

After the urine collection device in his spacesuit broke, Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon with a boot full of pee.

‘Soy sauce’ is a tautology. The word ‘soy’ comes from the Japanese ‘shōyu’ meaning ‘soy sauce’.

Bobcats climb cacti to escape predators. Thanks to their tough, thickly-padded paws, they don’t get injured by the spines.

Your heartbeat will synchronise with your date if the date is going well. Tonight we're looking at WOOING in a brand new loved-up episode of QI with Sandi, Alan, Maisie Adam, Larry Dean and Rosie Jones! BBC Two, 9pm. 💕

In World War II, Bletchley Park scientists sometimes asked the RAF to lay mines in a specific area. They’d then look out for the name of that area in the ensuing encrypted messages that would inevitably be sent by the Germans, thereby helping them crack the Enigma code.

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December. J. M. BARRIE

The Diderot Effect is when, after buying something, you feel pressured to buy more things to match it. The name comes from an 18th century essay by Denis Diderot, lamenting that a new red velvet robe led him to replace his furniture.

Freddy Mercury’s original title for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was ‘The Cowboy Song’. Tonight we're headed to the WILD WEST in a brand new episode with Sandi, Alan, Eshaan Akbar, Jo Brand and Alex Brooker! 🤠

Income inequality is higher in the US today than it was in 1774, even if you factor in slavery.

Thresher sharks can jump up to six metres out of the water. (📷: Steve Momot)

A woman named Krystal Ball ran for US Congress in 2010. She lost.

The Voyager probe, launched in 1977 to explore beyond our Solar System, contains this picture of a balding man eating a slice of toast.

Word of the Day: MUMPSIMUS – someone who obstinately sticks to their old ideas in spite of evidence that they are wrong.

Swedish writer Fritiof Nilsson Piraten’s gravestone inscription says: ‘Here below are the ashes of a man who had the habit of putting everything off until tomorrow. But in his last days he improved, and did actually die on 31 January 1972’. (📷: jorchr)

Cloudflare has a wall of lava lamps in their San Francisco office to help with their entropy-gathering system. (📸HaeB)

I have never seen the film but by all accounts it was terrible. However I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific. MICHAEL CAINE on JAWS: THE REVENGE

Lemurs’ vaginas have no permanent opening. For 24 to 72 hours in July of a good year, their vagina will open, there’s a brief frenzy of mating and then they close up again.

If you ask an AI chatbot to name a random number between 1 and 10, 90% of the time it responds with 7.

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. VICTOR HUGO

In 1911, a journalist crept into a sarcophagus in the Louvre and spent the night there to show how bad the museum’s security was.

Spoonfeed is the longest word in the English language with all of its letters in reverse alphabetical order.

While testing a top secret aircraft design during WWII, pilot Jack Woolams wore a gorilla suit and a bowler hat so that any witnesses who reported back would not be believed.

Chinese slang for a combover is ‘The local authorities provide support for the central government’. (📷: Nesnad)

Where the English might say 'It's the bee's knees', the French say 'C'est le petit Jésus en culotte de velours' (It's the baby Jesus in velvet shorts).

Word of the Day: CUÑADISMO (Spanish slang) — literally: ‘brother-in-law-ism’; speaking on topics you know little about as if you were an expert and smarter than everyone else.

12 + 3 – 4 + 5 + 67 + 8 + 9 = 100

In 1959, the first commercially successful document copier, the Xerox 914, went on sale. It came with a small fire extinguisher as the machine had a tendency to catch fire.

In 1952, a bus driver managed to propel his bus over an opening Tower Bridge after a watchman forgot to ring the warning bell. The driver was given £10 and a day off work as a reward for bravery.

Sea otters have underarm pockets that they keep food and their favourite stones in.

Salt Lake City has the widest roads of any major US city. They were originally built to such a width so that farmers could turn their cattle without “resorting to profanity”.

Word of the Day: ANTIMETABOLE - a rhetorical device when words are repeated in successive clauses, but swapped. For instance JFK's "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country", or Snoop Dogg's "With my mind on my money and my money on my mind."

According to a medieval Irish legal text on cats called Catslechtae (Cat-Sections), if a cat is able to purr and to catch mice, it’s worth three cows and if it’s only able to purr, it’s worth one cow and a half.

If every zombie bit one new person a day, starting with one zombie, the whole world would be zombified in 34 days.

Elephants in sub-Saharan Africa are being more aggressive towards people and experts believe they might be seeking revenge against humanity.

In 2015, two Americans were injured in separate events where a man shot at an armadillo and the bullet ricocheted off its shell.

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 with 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.

The first paperback vending machine was installed at Charing Cross Station in 1937 by Penguin books. They called it the ‘Penguincubator’. (📷: STML)

Hebocon is a Japanese contest to find the worst fighting robot, a sort of anti-Robot Wars. Entrants of the first Hebocon in 2013 included a pole dancing Barbie doll, a robot that banged a packet of ramen flavouring on the ground and a tissue box with vibrating dildos for legs.

Tonight at 9pm on BBC Two we'll be looking at WINGS AND WHEELS in a brand new episode with Sandi, Alan, Aisling Bea, Desiree Burch and Hank Green.

When the U.S. military tested their AI human-movement recognition robot on a group of Marines, all of them managed to approach it undetected. One was disguised as a fir tree; another somersaulted for 300 metres; two hid under a cardboard box and giggled the whole distance.