Tag: trivia

Day 146 – My sort of video

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This is my sort of video. 5 minutes filled with neatly explained facts and trivia. And what amazing trivia. I mean, yes. I knew that the Arctic Circle wobbles and I knew it was heading north. But I didn’t know just how that would affect Iceland. Or how they had altered their Arctic Circle monument to deal with that. (Genius, by the way.)

And since I can now add Youtube videos to my log with seeming impunity… Have this:

And the lengths that someone would go to just to find out a piece of (interesting but) mostly useless information?

Well, I liked that too.

Spare yourself 5 minutes and see if Kolbeinsey (for that are the Most Northern Part of Iceland) is still there.

Of Penguins and Landmines

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This comes from the QI website, so I’m fairly convinced of its veracity.

There are thousands of landmines in the Falkland Islands, laid in the 1980s by the Argentinians, which have been a boon to the Islands’ penguin populations, who are too light to set them off (sadly, more modern landmines can be set off by the change in temperature caused by a shadow falling on them, so any penguins in Afghanistan wouldn’t get away with it). The consequent lack of humans in the Falklands means that their populations have rebounded after the decline caused by whaling ventures.

When they did stay on the Falklands, whalers needed fire to turn the whales’ blubber into whale oil. As there aren’t many trees there, whalers would simply burn the penguins, which have highly flammable fat beneath their skin.

Now we know. And now we’re off to Boulders Beach to see if you can actually use a penguin as a firelighter.

Penguin facts, eh? You can never have too many of them.

I was watching an old episode of QI last night and it struck me that I should probably watch a whole lot more episodes of it. While the comedy doesn’t always work, the facts are… well… Quite Interesting.