Quite Interesting

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!

A graphic advertising tonight's show

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.

*Sandi Toksvig

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’.

A bobcat in a cactus

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

A graphic advertising tonight's show featuring Sand and the panellists

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.

A promo graphic for tonight's show featuring the panellists

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.

A thresher shark that just jumped remarkably high out of the air

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.

A picture of a woman licking an ice cream, a balding man eating toast and a man drinking water from a jug.

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.

the gravestone with the text in Swedish

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)

A wall of lava lamps

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

A lemur

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.