Habeas corpulent
Habeas corpus formally entered English law because of a parliamentarian’s fat joke in 1679.
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Habeas corpus formally entered English law because of a parliamentarian’s fat joke in 1679.
Tiny Broadwick was the first person to intentionally jump out of a flying airplane without being tethered to something.
The Quran contains several mysterious letters, no-one is quite sure why; the Islamic concept of moderation, expressed as “best, middle, centred, balanced”; the order of chapters in the Quran; and the cats of Islam.
The calendar date February 30th has happened just once in history: in Sweden in 1712.
The US state of Nebraska is landlocked; all the states around it are also landlocked; and all the states around them are also landlocked. And yet, the Governor of Nebraska can grant residents the honorary title of Nebraska Admiral.
The Japanese kotatsu combines a table, a heater, and a layer of comfortable blankets.
The Man of the Hole is an indigenous man living alone in the Amazon rainforest. Authorities believe that he is the last survivor of a tribe otherwise wiped out by illegal loggers.
The English language is notorious for borrowing words from other languages. And sometimes it borrows them more than once.
The bioluminescent suction shark that’s one third liver; the falling houses feeding the deep; an unexplained underwater fossil that has been around for half a billion years; and the quadrillion bristlemouths of the mesopelagic twilight zone.
Six dancers in costume caught on fire at a ball in 1393 Paris. Only two survived; one of them was King Charles VI.
Want to work out what day of the week for any date? Just use the doomsday algorithm.
The Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic has operated as a government in exile for more than a hundred years.
Geocaching is a recreational treasure hunt, with containers hidden worldwide just waiting to be found. And I do mean worldwide: they can be found at the very bottom of the world, the very top of the world, and even out of this world entirely.
Michelangelo’s statue of Moses has horns, thanks to a mistranslation in the Latin Vulgate Bible.
The rise and fall and rise of the British canal; Dutch canal vaulting; the proposed canal to cut off a country; and the fifteen ships trapped on the Suez Canal for eight years.
The Basilica Cistern in Istanbul is an underground underwater forest of 336 huge marble columns. It was built in the 6th century CE, but parts are much older – because they were scavenged from other buildings, sometimes with original sculptures intact.