I’d just wanted to note the creation of another fact-of-the-day Twitter feed from the indefatigable John D Cook. This one is dubbed Unit Facts, and it’s aiming at providing information about where various units of measure come from. The first few days have begun with, naturally enough, the base units of the Metric System (can you name all seven?), and has stretched out already to things like what a knot is, how picas and inches are related, and what are ems and fortnights besides useful to know for crossword puzzles, or how something might be measured, as in the marshmallow tweet above.
Cook offers a number of interesting fact-of-the-day style feeds, which I believe are all linked to one another through their “Following” pages. These include algebra, topology, probability, and analysis facts of the day, as well as Unix tool tips, RegExp and TeX/LaTeX trivia, symbols (including a lot of Unicode and HTML entities), and the like. If you’re of the sort to get interested in neatly delivered bits of science- and math- and computer-related trivia, well, good luck with your imminent archive-binge.
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