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Redshirt is a slang term for a minor stock character in an adventure drama who dies violently soon after being introduced to dramatize the dangerous situation faced by the main characters. The term originated with the science fiction television series Star Trek, from the red shirts worn by Starfleet security officers, who frequently beamed down with a landing party, only to become the first, and sometimes only, victims within the party. (via @caldron_baidu)

Philip Chandler Gale was a pioneering internet software developer and computer prodigy, and avid musician, raised from birth as Scientologist but later rejected that upbringing. Gale chose Friday, the thirteenth of March (L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday) as the day he wanted to commit suicide, falling to his death from a classroom window on the fifteenth floor of a building on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus. On the blackboard of the MIT classroom, he wrote out Isaac Newton’s equation for how an object accelerates as it falls, along with a sketch of a stick figure of someone tossing a chair.

The coastline paradox is the counterintuitive observation that the coastline of a landmass does not have a well-defined length. This results from the fractal-like properties of coastlines. Over a wide range of measurement scales, down to the atomic, coastlines show a degree of self-similarity, and as the measurement scale is made smaller and smaller, the measured length continues to increase, rather than converging on any one value. (via @jsomers)

The Schmidt Sting Pain Index or the Justin O. Schmidt Pain Index is a pain scale rating the relative pain caused by different Hymenopteran stings. It is mainly the work of Justin O. Schmidt, an entomologist at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center. Schmidt has published a number of papers on the subject and claims to have been stung by the majority of stinging Hymenoptera. Schmidt described some of the experiences in vivid and almost synesthetic detail: “4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.” (via @yjon)

The Spirit of Ecstasy is the name of the hood ornament on Rolls-Royce cars. It is in the form of a woman leaning forwards with her arms outstretched behind and above her. The Spirit of Ecstasy carries with it a story about a secret passion between John Walter Edward Scott-Montagu and his secret love Eleanor Velasco Thornton, his secretary. (via @yjon)

Paresthesia is a sensation of tingling, pricking, or numbness of a person’s skin with no apparent long-term physical effect. It is more generally known as the feeling of “pins and needles” or of a limb “falling asleep” (although this is not directly related to the phenomenon of sleep). In some cases, rocking the head from side to side will painlessly remove the “pins and needles” sensation in less than a minute.

Borborygmus also known as stomach growling, or rumbling, is the rumbling sound produced by the movement of gas through the intestines of animals, including humans. The word borborygmus is an onomatopoeia for this rumbling. (via Corey)

The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch is a fictional weapon from the comedy film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It bears a striking resemblance to the Sovereign’s Orb of the United Kingdom, and seems to draw some inspiration from the Holy Spear of Antioch. Although a minor gag in the film, the Holy Hand Grenade (as it is more popularly known) has gone on to be a frequently referred-to element of Monty Python humor.

Time in Indiana refers to the controversial time zone division of Indiana, and to the state’s historical response to the innovation of daylight saving time. The official dividing line between Eastern Time and Central Time has, over time, progressively moved west, from the Indiana–Ohio border, to a position where it divided Indiana down the middle, to the Indiana–Illinois border as it is today. (via @yjon)

Defenestration is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window. Self-defenestration is the act of jumping or throwing oneself out of a window. In United States, jumping is among the least common methods of committing suicide (typically less than 2% of all reported suicides in the United States for 2005) whereas in Hong Kong, jumping is the most common method of committing suicide, accounting for 52.1% of all reported suicide cases in 2006, and similar rates for the years prior to that. (via @jturnbull by way of @leebennett)