Archive

Month: August 2026

Fact We only use ten per cent of our brains is completely false Scans show essentially all of it active over the course of a day. Damage anywhere causes deficits. 1 min read Fact Studying for an exam in the room you will sit it in helps Divers who learned word lists underwater recalled them better underwater. 1 min read Fact Zero took centuries to be accepted in Europe Some Italian cities banned it as an invitation to fraud. 1 min read Fact Writing was probably invented for accounting The oldest substantial texts are receipts, not poetry. 1 min read Fact OK began as a joke about bad spelling From a fad for comic abbreviations in 1830s Boston newspapers. 1 min read Fact One Amazonian language appears to have no exact numbers Roughly one, roughly two, many. And speakers struggle with exact matching tasks above three. 1 min read Fact QWERTY was not designed to slow typists down The jamming story is repeated everywhere and rests on very little. 1 min read Fact Shakespeare did not coin as many words as you were told He is the first recorded use of many words. That is a different claim. 1 min read Fact Basque is related to no other language on Earth Surrounded by Romance languages, descended from none of them. 1 min read Fact A language was born in front of researchers in the 1980s Deaf Nicaraguan children were brought together, given no sign language, and invented one. 1 min read