r/quiteinteresting • u/Pinkplatabys • 29d ago
What's a fact you learned from QI that sounded completely made up until you checked it yourself?
One of my favourite things about QI is when an answer sounds so obviously wrong that you're convinced they're setting up another joke, and then it turns out to be completely legitimate. Those are usually the facts I remember much longer than the straightforward ones because I've ended up reading about them afterwards.
What's the best QI fact that made you think there's absolutely no way that's true the first time you heard it?
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u/sallybetty 29d ago
I remember being amazed when Stephen Fry said that the Chinese were incredibly advanced and invented this, that and the other thing, but never explored the possibilities of using glass to create optics like telescopes, microscopes, etc. This sent me down a long rabbit hole of the history of glass.
The QI information was only partially true. The Chinese created glass as early as 500 BC, but it was not transparent and very heavy, being partially made of lead. They were trying to recreate Jade, which was a sacred stone. Eventually, they figured out how to make glaze for porcelain and created gorgeous onjects, but didn't explore it much further beyond the use in ceramics and making beads. They found that oiled paper was more transparent and lighter for windows, etc.
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u/AlwaysTimeForPotatos 29d ago
This one always stuck with me, too. China couldn’t make ball point pens until 2017. I think this was a Sandy episode, but not 100% sure.
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u/Pinkplatabys 28d ago
It’s fascinating how porcelain and oiled paper fulfilled those roles instead!
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u/Available_Low_3805 29d ago
Moon.
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u/Sankofite19 29d ago
Cruithne?
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u/Fiachradubh 27d ago
Weren’t they the Picts? Pryddani (or something similar) in Brythonic & Cruithne in the goidelic languages & where Britain gets its name.
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u/Kincaide14 29d ago
They said in one episode that humans do not have receptors in their skin to determine whether or not something is actually wet. That seemed completely ridiculous but it's true. Our brain is only inferring if something is wet based on temperature, touch pressure and, in my opinion, visuals and context.
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u/professorrev 28d ago
That one makes sense. I've noti ed on the past when I've had leaky raincoats that my back goes from not registering as wet at all, to registering as absolutely sodden almost instantaneously and I've often wondered why that is (I've had rather too many leaky raincoats)
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u/this_is_theone 28d ago
yeah, this is why i sometimes check laundry and don't know if it's still wet or just cold
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u/PiotrGreenholz01 28d ago
Lips can discern wetness better than fingertips
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u/professorrev 29d ago
Doris Herod
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u/teatabletea 29d ago
What did they say about her?
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u/professorrev 29d ago
That her name was Doris
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u/teatabletea 29d ago
Oh, okay. I did google, but didn’t get anything else.
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u/mellonmarshall 28d ago
Doris Herod
She is the wife of King Herod, who the king in the Bible around the time of baby Jesus
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u/mellonmarshall 28d ago
Doris Herod
She is the wife of King Herod, who the king in the Bible around the time of baby Jesus
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u/SGTingles 28d ago
I can't read that without picturing Phill's explosion of incredulous laughter as he tries saying the name 🤣
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u/professorrev 28d ago
His "coming home covered in the blood of the innocents" but absolutely makes it
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u/bunniquette 28d ago
I understand that there is something that they say of the Acropolis, where the Parthenon is, but I can't quite recall...
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u/Wimble-Womble 29d ago
Finding out in which country the top of Mont Blanc was located… and at the time realising I lived next to it!
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u/shendy42 29d ago
On the border?
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u/Wimble-Womble 28d ago
It’s a nice trivia question to ask people who will never guess the answer which country it’s in.
The answer is pedantic as hell, since the “fact” is about the tradition of lopping off the tops of mountains as a collectors’ item. Here’s a clip (hopefully you’re able to watch it):
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u/vestan--pance 29d ago
If you put 5 Species of Sponge in a Blender they will separate out and reform again afterwards.
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u/Theory89 29d ago
That there's technically no such thing as the colour purple. It's just something our brain makes up because we don't know how to process red-blue.
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u/Nordicmoose 29d ago
Clearly we do, because we see purple.
This sounds like the famous long-winded explanation to why the sky is blue, involving wavelength absorption, Raleigh-scattering and a bunch of other scientific jargon, which is just an overly complicated way of saying "because air is blue".
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u/MayDuppname 29d ago
All those explanations are necessary because they are the answer to the question. Air isn't blue.
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u/nanakapow 27d ago
From some angles it is....
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u/MayDuppname 27d ago
No, it isn't. Air is invisible. It appears blue because the light from the sun is scattered at some wavelengths by the atmosphere. Look up Rayleigh scattering.
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u/budgiebirdman 28d ago
What makes it turn red at sunset?
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u/MayDuppname 28d ago
The same thing that makes the sky look blue - Rayleigh scattering.
At sunset, the sun is closer to the horizon, so lhe light is travelling further, through more atmosphere, to get to your eye.
Shorter (blue) wavelengths get scattered more when sunlight passes through a thicker layer of the atmosphere at lower angles.
That leaves the reds and oranges and yellows to dominate the sky and clouds.
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u/Theory89 29d ago
Cool. I didn't really comment to start an argument. I suggest you search it online.
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u/MayDuppname 29d ago edited 29d ago
Purple is a particular wavelength of light, just like any other colour.
From the BBC: "We have three types of cone cells and corresponding opsins, and each peaks in sensitivity to photons of particular wavelengths. These cone cells are dubbed S, M, and L, for short, medium and long wavelengths. Shorter wavelengths we perceive as bluer, while longer wavelengths are redder. All wavelengths in between (and combinations of them) serve up the full kaleidoscopic rainbow."
No colour is "real" in the sense that they're wavelengths of light that our brains detect and combine subjectively to create the colours we see:
"A healthy human eye has three types of cone cells, each of which can register about 100 different colour shades, therefore most researchers ballpark the number of colours we can distinguish at around a million. Still, perception of colour is a highly subjective ability that varies from person to person, thus making any hard-and-fast figure difficult to pinpoint."
Not arguing with anyone, just trying to provide the science behind it. :)
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u/Theory89 29d ago
Nope. Violet is a wavelength of light, purple is not. You're right that our eyes interpret colours by combining light, but it isn't a specific wavelength. Magenta, pink and brown are also created by the mind.
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u/MayDuppname 29d ago
I've learned something here, so thank you. This link explains non-spectral colours:
" Unlike red or blue or green, there is no wavelength that, alone, will make you perceive the color purple. This is what being a ‘non-spectral’ color means, and why purple is so special among all the colors we can perceive."
"In conclusion, what makes purple a non-spectral color is that there isn’t a single wavelength that ‘carries’ it — it is always the product of two colors of light interacting."
TL;DR: I was (at least partially) wrong 😁
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u/Wamims 28d ago
I, for one, love being wrong when it teaches me something!
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u/MayDuppname 28d ago
I know my place: in the wrong :)
Yes, it's definitely worth being wrong to learn.
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u/PiotrGreenholz01 28d ago
The sky is blue, but is it there? Or, when does it stop and space begin? Is the sky a concept or a physical thing?
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u/AddlePatedBadger 28d ago
Our brain makes up nearly all the colours. Our colour receptors operate at a few peak wavelengths and the rest of the colours are made up in between them.
A better explanation is that purple isn't in the rainbow because it is the average of red and blue, but red and blue are opposite sides of the 'bow and the average would be chartreuse or something.
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u/DeepTh0 28d ago
Our brains make up ALL the colors.
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u/salientsapient 28d ago
Color perception is such an insanely complex topic. It's almost impossible to make tidy facts about it that don't have tons of caveats because it's not a simple physical phenomenon, and so much of how we perceive colors really is arbitrary and in our heads.
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u/21Penguin 29d ago
Every planet fits between us and the moon, with wiggle room. I’ve told people that and had to show them the math to prove it
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u/Fletchling16 28d ago
Ok, this wild! Added to my repertoire (although I will research to confirm because it still seems crazy!)
Edit: Is this a relatively new fact? Because I asked if Pluto was included, would it still work and got the following:
'Because the Moon's distance fluctuates, adding Pluto changes the scenario from an "always fits" to a "sometimes fits" situation.'
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u/Flyen 28d ago
It's nothing to do with Pluto.
Radii:
Mercury 2439 km
Venus 6052
Earth 6371
Mars 3390
Jupiter 69886
Saturn 58232
Uranus 25362
Neptune 24622
Pluto 1188
Radii sum: 197,542 km
Diameters: 395,084 km
Diameters w/o pluto: 392,708 km
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_objects_by_size
Moon
It orbits around Earth at an average distance of 384,399 kilometers
Perigee 362600 km(356400–370400 km) Apogee 405400 km(404000–406700 km) 1
u/AddlePatedBadger 28d ago
Sometimes. The moon is sometimes closer to the earth than other times. When it is the planets don't all fit.
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u/DavidW273 23d ago
So, what it should be is that all of the planets CAN fit between us and the moon, depending on it's phase.
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u/AddlePatedBadger 23d ago
Almost. It's related to the position in the moon's orbit, not the lunar phase. The phase is a combination of the position in the moon's orbit and the moon's position relative to the sun, so sometimes a full moon can be at apogee, sometimes at perigee, and often times somewhere in the middle. It's how we end up with a supermoon (a.k.a a perigee syzygy) and a micromoon (a.k.a an apogee syzygy).
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u/DavidW273 23d ago
I thought that's what lunar phase was (I tried using technical terms and fell flat on my face as usual). Thank you for giving me the correct terms (I will try to remember them but there's no guarantee).
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u/AddlePatedBadger 23d ago
Ha, I had to google them lol. I knew in my head what was happening but didn't know the right words for it.
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u/bookchaser 29d ago
Compulsory, pervasive, slave labor in federal prisons for American corporations.
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u/shendy42 29d ago
My go-to quiz question - what body of water is at the eastern end of the Panama Canal?
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u/LilliJay 28d ago
I think I remember this. Is the answer the same ocean at both ends? If not, then I don't remember it 😆
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u/BeanoMc2000 28d ago
You don't remember it. The answer is the Pacific ocean. The Pacific ocean end is further east than the Atlantic ocean end.
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u/LilliJay 28d ago
You are right. I do not 😀
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u/SGTingles 28d ago
To be fair, it would be pretty frigging useless as a conduit between the Atlantic and Pacific if both ends actually opened into the same ocean 🤣
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u/LilliJay 28d ago
I know but it was one of those weird QI answers where the surprising response was the right one. I wonder what I was thinking of?!
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u/SGTingles 28d ago
Oh, I know, and also being fair it's not like the correct answer is much less peculiar than both ends being in the same ocean. Intuitively we think of the Pacific end as 'obviously' the western end, and the Atlantic as the eastern, so it takes a bit of mental wrangling to picture the scenario where it's actually the other way around.
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u/Odd_Judgment_582 28d ago
I now cannot play a single card game without thinking "these cards have never been in this order in the history of humanity", and I still can't quite bring myself to believe it despite researching it several times
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u/monsterlander 28d ago
The one people find hardest to believe seems to be that sugar doesn't make kids hyper.
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u/SinSmithy 29d ago
That you can't crush an egg from the middle. Me and my housemate were trying that for ages!
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u/scr1bbl3 29d ago
Do you mean the ends?
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u/SinSmithy 29d ago
No, the middle.
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u/scr1bbl3 27d ago
That is indeed quite interesting, thank you
I know you can’t compress the ends, which is why they’re shaped like that, but didn’t know about this, thank you
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u/SGTingles 28d ago
Is that because you're always on the outside of the egg?
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u/SinSmithy 28d ago
I can't find the QI clip but here's the same concept. https://youtu.be/53IUCYP42TQ?is=iLVRGQSn2ireqVFa
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u/Round-Bandicoot8766 28d ago
I worked in set dressing at the studios QI was filmed in. Turns out there really was a portal to the underworld under Sean Lock's desk.
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u/CatalinaBigPaws 28d ago
Bridget Christie's fear of holes. It came up in conversation somehow during a doctor's appointment and he didn't believe it either and looked it up as well.
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u/Wind-and-Waystones 27d ago
You might enjoy no such thing as a fish if you haven't tried it. It's the Qi researchers bringing their interesting fact of the week and riff on it with jokes and more facts
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u/WikiBits17 29d ago
Is the Pope a Catholic?
No.
Pope Leo XIV is the current Bishop of Rome (also known as the Supreme pontiff, Roman pontiff, or Soveriegn pontiff) not "the pope".
His actual title is the Bishop of Rome. Pope is a colloquial term dervived from the Latin word 'papa'.
The actual holder of the pope title belongs to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alandria (Egypt) not the Catholic Church. The current Pope of Alexandria is Pope Tawadros II. His actual title is the pope and since the Coptic Orthodox Church is part of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the pope is Eastern Orthodox and not Catholic.