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Quite Interesting
@qikipedia
A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI. linktr.ee/TheQIElves
QI HQqi.comJoined February 2009

Quite Interesting’s Tweets

In the 1970s, the FBI conducted an operation offering bribes to elected US officials. Almost a quarter accepted and were prosecuted.
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The Georgia Department of Drivers’ Services in the US had to issue a statement last month reminding drivers to wear clothes in photos submitted for official government ID.
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During World War II, a Polish doctor discovered a harmless bacterium that would make people test positive for typhus. Another doctor promptly infected nearly 8,000 Jews - making the Nazis unwilling to get close to the ‘contagious’ people and sparing them from concentration camps.
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In 1910, US Rep. Robert F. Broussard introduced a bill to the US congress to allow the importation of hippos into Louisiana. He thought the creatures would eat invasive water hyacinths, and that Americans would enjoy ‘lake cow bacon’.
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Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia, and James Earl Jones, who provided the voice for Darth Vader in Star Wars in 1977, met for the first time on a 2014 episode of The Big Bang Theory.
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Novelist John Le Carré coined such convincing intelligence jargon like ‘mole’, ‘lamplighters’ and ‘pavement artists’ that they are now used by real spy agencies. For more on Secrets, Spies & Sleuths watch #QI tonight at 10pm on with Sandi, Alan, James Acaster,… Show more
sandi and the panellists in the studio
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The index to the 1980 edition of the U.S. standard obstetrics textbook was prepared by the lead author’s wife and contained the line ‘Chauvinism, male, voluminous amounts, 1–1102’.
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In 1921, an Illinois hotel owner stood trial for violating Prohibition laws. The jury convicted him after 20 hours of ‘evaluating evidence’, during which time they drank three quarts of the hotel's whiskey and a quart of port wine.
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In 1927, Helene Shelby filed a patent for an interrogation device. It was a human-operated skeleton with red lightbulbs in the eyes, a megaphone in the mouth and a camera in the skull to record the confession.
A line drawing of two people separated by a wall. The diagram is numbered and most figures point to the mechanical skeleton that is imbedded in the wall separating the two parties.
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Banned techniques in athletics events include somersaulting in the long jump, spinning into a javelin throw, and cartwheeling while putting the shot.
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A man called Sylvester Magee claimed to have been born in 1841 and died in 1971 aged 130. He divorced his wife in 1966 who was 65 years his junior.
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Using ground-up basalt as a fertiliser on fields not only increases yields, but sprinkling it on half the world's farms would capture as much carbon as Germany and Japan combined emit annually.
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Since Bermuda has no natural water sources, almost all houses have these white, stepped roofs to collect rainwater. This alone is enough to supply the islanders’ needs; there are still no water mains on Bermuda. (Image: Darkroom Daze, CC BY-NC-SA.)
A white roof sloped with terracing and  a prominent gutter.
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In 1986, Donald Miller disappeared. He was declared dead in 1994. In 2005, a very much alive Miller - who had simply left his wife and children - tried to obtain a driving license. He appealed his death, but the Ohio state courts denied him.
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