The QI Elves @qikipedia@tooot.im

Marcel Proust was a committed beer drinker. On his death bed he sent his chauffeur to the Ritz to pick up some chilled bottles. His last words are rumoured to be: ‘Thank you, Odilon, for getting the beer.’ https://t.co/MtmKHyDJUM

In his classic study, the 17th century writer Robert Burton claimed that beer ‘hath an especial virtue against melancholy’.

A philologaster is someone who shows incompetence in the study of language (i.e. by supplying inaccurate sources for etymologies).

A philosophaster is someone who engages in shallow or pretentious philosophising.

‘Chamber-work’ was a 17th century slang term for sexual activity.

The oldest surviving cookbook is the ‘Deipnosophistae’ or 'The Philosphers at Dinner' compiled by Athenaeus, a Greek living in Rome in 223 AD. It features recipes from a Spartan poet Alcman who claimed he learned poetry from listening to a partridge.

‘Partridge’ comes from the Greek ‘perdix’, which is thought to derive from ‘perdesthai’, meaning ‘to break wind’, because of the whirring sound its wings make as it takes off.
(Image: Mark Medcalf) https://t.co/ukQq5R8WPR

“Novelty” ice cream is popular in Japan, with flavours including viper, boiled egg, beer, eel and salad.

A New York Times study found that readers were most likely to agree with a statement if it was written in the Baskerville font. The least agreeable font was Comic Sans. https://t.co/BFoDiEOwZj

Key in Lock Syndrome is the name for the phenomenon when you start needing a pee as soon as you get home and put your key in the front door.

The world’s first commercial maglev train was abandoned in a hedge in Birmingham and later bought for £100 on eBay.

Gorillas hum and sing while eating as a sign to others that they are busy.

Read like a butterfly, write like a bee. PHILIP PULLMAN

An unmanned Russian spacecraft crashed on the moon on July 21, 1969 - while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were still walking on the surface.

WORD OF THE DAY: CUMBERWORLD - someone useless and ineffectual.

The original name for Pepsi was “Brad’s Drink”.

An analysis of over 22,000 heavy metal songs shows that ‘burn’ is the most metal word. The least metal word is ‘particularly’. (Photo credit: Javi Parrado) https://t.co/yRLkbJaELL

Steve Jobs chose Apple as a company name partly because it would appear before his then-employer Atari in the phone book.

In the 1930s, British films could be rated as H for ‘Horrific’.

The University of Leicester has discovered that baby pterodactyls could fly from birth. Paleobiologist Dr David Unwin said ‘Theoretically what pterosaurs did... is impossible, but they didn't know this, so they did it anyway.’