We want to share an important update with our Betfair Community users.
Over the coming months, the Betfair Community platform will be winding down. The final active day for the platform will be December 21st. From December 22nd, users will no longer be able to access the platform.
Your discussions, insights, engagement, and, most importantly, feedback have helped shape the platform and guided innovation. Your feedback continues to be important to us, and we will continue to listen via our dedicated feedback channels, as well as through product testing and innovations.
To share your feedback and experience, visit: https://support.betfair.com/app/home
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The Voynich Manuscript is the world’s most secretive book. It’s dated to the 15th century and contains an unknown writing system that even renowned cryptographers have never deciphered. Illustrations in the book suggest it may cover topics like herbal remedies, biology, astronomy, and the zodiac, but no one knows for sure what it is, what it means, or whether it’s a hoax.
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Microsoft has officially confirmed you do not need to ‘safely remove’ USB flash drives anymore.
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About 1% of the static in between the channels of an FM radio or an old analogue TV is leftover radiation from the Big Bang.
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Anxiety affects your balance. When you experience severe levels of anxiety, you can also have frequent balance problems, like feeling dizzy for no apparent reason or swaying more than others while standing normally. This begins at an early age, but studies have shown that treating the balance problem during childhood can help reduce anxiety and boost self-esteem.
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The most successful pirate in history was a Chinese prostitute. Cheng I Sao had an unbeatable fleet with 80,000 sailors, which was bigger than most countries’ navies, and the government eventually had to give up and offer her a truce. She retired with her loot, opened a gambling house, and later died, peacefully, a 69-year-old grandmother.
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We don’t have any real pictures of the Milky Way galaxy. Most non-illustrated images of the entire Milky Way spiral are actually of another spiral galaxy called Messier 74. It’s impossible to take a full photo of the Milky Way’s spiral structure because it’s about 100,000 light-years across, and we’re stuck on the inside
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Target knows when you’re pregnant. There’s a guest ID number tied to your credit card that tracks what you purchase, so they notice if you start buying vitamin supplements and unscented lotions.
That’s how an angry man in Minneapolis, who went to a local Target to yell at the manager for sending maternity coupons to his teenage daughter, found out he was actually about to become a grandpa. |
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April 7th is International Beaver Day.
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When Beyoncé was managed by her father, he made her run a mile while singing so she could perform onstage without getting exhausted
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There’s a Chrome browser extension that changes Donald Trump’s last name to Drumpf, his ancestor’s original surname, on any website you visit.
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In 2015, Kate Winslet joked on an episode of ‘Extras’ that acting in a Holocaust film guarantees an Oscar. Four years later, she won her first and only Oscar for her role in The Reader as a former Nazi concentration camp guard.
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Uranus smells like farts. In 2017, scientists determined the planet’s clouds are composed of hydrogen sulfide, which means the suffocating atmosphere of Uranus contains a stinky gas that has the odour of rotten eggs.
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All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads. While both belong to the order Anura, toads are actually a subset of frogs. They can usually be identified by appearance, but there are some frogs that appear dry and bumpy, and many toads can trick you by looking wet and slimy. When in doubt, just call it a ‘frog,’ and you’ll always be correct.
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There’s an interactive ‘murder map’ that pinpoints all the homicide locations in London since 1811. Each pin is coloured to indicate the method of killing, and clicking on a pin also reveals the victim’s profile and links you to their case details.
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‘Percussive maintenance’ is the term for hitting a device until it starts working again.
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The Spanish town of Huéscar was at war with Denmark for nearly two centuries. Not a single shot was fired, and no one died - because as soon as war was declared in 1809, everyone completely forgot about it. A peace treaty was finally signed in 1981, when a historian happened upon the official declaration and realized they technically should have been fighting each other for the past 172 years.
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Abraham Lincoln used his hat as a file cabinet. For years, he slid his letters and documents into the lining of his iconic stovepipe hat. This once caused a major delay in his response to an important letter, because he’d stashed it in his old hat and forgot it was there after buying a new one the next day
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In 1976, someone altered the Hollywood sign to make it say ‘Hollyweed’. A local student pulled the prank to use as his art project in honor of California’s newly- relaxed marijuana laws. The same thing happened again in 2017, when someone changed the sign as both a tribute to the original artist and to celebrate California legalizing recreational marijuana.
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If you’re in bed a lot, you might be lonely. Studies suggest lonely people spend more time in their beds despite the fact that they often have trouble sleeping. This is because chronic loneliness not only causes insomnia, it can also make you feel the need to be in your bed even when you’re not actually tired.
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The ‘interrobang’ is a punctuation that combines an exclamation point with a question mark. You can find it by using the following keystroke keys: Word: Alt + 8253 Html: ‽ Unicode: U + 203D
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There’s a brain condition that gives you an uncontrollable urge to make puns. If you’ve damaged the right frontal lobe of your brain, you can develop Witzelsucht, which is German for “joke addiction”.
The condition causes a compulsive need to constantly make up or tell jokes- even in the middle of the night or during an important interview. |
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Despite being dead for over a year, famous author Agatha Christie saved a baby’s life in 1977.
Her novel The Pale Horse described thallium poisoning so well that a nurse who’d been reading it was able to diagnose a sick infant, who had doctors stumped. The baby was immediately tested, they found traces of thallium, doctors changed treatments, and her life had suddenly been saved by a 16-year-old murder mystery novel. |
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Jackie Chan dubbed the Beast’s lines in the Chinese translation of Disney’s animated classic Beauty and the Beast, and he sang all the songs in Mandarin.
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Medical error is estimated to be the 3rd biggest killer in the US. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine concluded that over a quarter of a million people died in 2013 due to mistakes made by health care professionals. That number, which was based only on people who died inside a hospital, is more than double the number of suicides, firearm deaths, and motor vehicle fatalities combined.
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‘Backpfeifengesicht’ is the German word for ‘a face that’s badly in need of a punch
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Easter has a different date every year because it’s based on the moon phases. In 325 CE, Constantine I led a council of Christian bishops who decided that Easter must always be a Sunday to honour the resurrection of Jesus. They also said it would immediately follow, but not land on, the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, which is why the date can fall anywhere between March 22 and April 25.
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Mickey and Minnie got married in real life. When Russi Taylor became the voice of Minnie Mouse in 1986, she fell in love with Wayne Allwine, who had been voicing Mickey Mouse for the past decade. The feeling was mutual, they tied the knot in 1991, and they stayed happily married until his death in 2009.
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If Earth’s entire history were compressed into a single year, modern humans would first appear on December 31 at about 11:00 pm.
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Spiders are your friend. In a given year, humans consume 400 million tons of meat and fish, but spiders eat almost double that volume of meat in the form of bugs and tiny animals. If you imagine all the meat and fish you consumed this week and then picture that same space and weight being entirely occupied by insects, you’re seeing all bugs that could have been stalking you if spiders hadn’t already gotten rid of them.
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People who swear a lot are usually more honest than those who don’t.
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Kids trust their pets more than they trust their siblings. Research shows that children who are going through a difficult time are much
more likely to confide in their pets than they are to seek support from their brothers and/or sisters. |
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Pablo Picasso used to carry around a revolver loaded with blanks and would fire it at people who asked him about the meaning of his paintings.
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In a 1970s experiment, a Stanford psychologist and 7 other mentally healthy participants got themselves admitted to 12 different psychiatric hospitals across the US by pretending to hear voices.
Once inside, they began acting normally, but all 12 hospitals diagnosed each of them with disorders, forced them to take drugs, and required them all to admit they had a disease before they could be released. |
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Greyhounds are universal blood donors. Most greyhounds have a blood type that can be given to almost any other breed of dog on the planet
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‘A Void’ is a 300-page autobiographical novel written entirely without the letter ‘e.’ Author Georges Perec lost both parents during the Holocaust and spent his youth living under a fake identity, so the absence of such a familiar letter symbolizes his life and loss. The book has over 12 translations by authors who also wrote them without using the most common letter of their alphabets.
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We know more about the surfaces of Mars and Venus than we do about the ocean floor.
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Letting teens sleep in could save the US over $9 billion dollars a year.
Studies show teenage brains are wired to stay up and wake up late, they need 8 to 10 hours of sleep per night, and that school, therefore, starts too early. It is estimated that high school classes starting after 8:30 am or later would improve student health, boost graduation rates, raise lifetime earning potential, and lower the risk of fatigue-related car crashes, all of which could potentially contribute at least $83 billion to the US economy within a decade. |
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If you feel guilty a lot, you’re probably good at reading people’s emotions. Feeling guilt has long been linked with empathy, and studies show guilt-prone people have an enhanced capacity for seeing another person’s perspective and are therefore better able to analyze facial expressions. Shame, however, despite being closely-related emotion, can have the opposite effect: people who often feel ashamed tend to have lower empathy levels because the focus of shame is much more self-centred.
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In 1946, a South African child who dreamed of being a scientist wrote to Albert Einstein, and they became pen pals. A few letters later, she said she regretted being a girl, apologized for not telling him sooner, and hoped he wouldn’t think less of her. He quickly replied, ‘I do not mind that you are a girl, but the main thing is that you yourself do not mind. There is no reason for it.
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George R.R Martin was the first person ever to buy a ticket to Comicon.
In 1964, the future Game of Thrones author attended the world’s first Comicon, and he also bought the very first ticket - making him the very first person to ever pay admission for a comic convention. |