Small Talk - Micro Learning

Nobel laureate Tu Youyou discovered the malaria drug 'artemisinin' after reading a 1,600-year-old Chinese medical text and realising the herb had to be extracted cold, not boiled. That insight paved the way for a treatment estimated to have saved tens of millions of lives.

Source: NobelPrize.org

Learn more on your iPhone

Get the small talk app to receive words, facts, quotes and more each day

Previous facts of the day

One of the Oxford English Dictionary's most prolific contributors was William Chester Minor, who submitted thousands of quotations while confined in an asylum after committing murder.

VELCRO was first invented by nature. Burdock is a prickly plant whose burrs stuck to a Swiss engineer’s clothes and dog while out walking. He copied their tiny hooks and loops to invent VELCRO.

In 2024, automated bots accounted for 51% of all web traffic, meaning bots overtook humans for the first time on the internet.

Botulinum toxin (the active ingredient in Botox) is among the most potent toxins known, with estimated lethal doses in the low nanograms per kg range depending on exposure route.

The popular Converse shoe, the Chuck Taylor All Star, has been sold for about a century, with the core design largely unchanged since the early 1920s.

The Guinness World Record for the oldest verified dog to have ever lived is held by an Australian cattle dog named Bluey, who lived for 29 years and 5 months.

Content

General

Copyright