Random Facts Thread

[pdomino]

lol

A chip of silicon a 6mm square has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a whole city block.

Your stomach needs to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it would digest itself.

The longest word in any normal dictionary is floccinaucinihilipilification...the measure of something as being worthless. lol

[the wiggle baron]

A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!

Gwan read it backwards.

Oh, and the possum is the only mammal without nipples, it secretes milk through its skin!

[rojparody]

The nursery rhyme Ring Around the Rosey is a rhyme about the bubonic plague. Infected people with the plague would get red circular sores (Ring around the Rosey...). These sores would smell very bad so people would hide flowers on their bodies in an attempt to mask the smell ("pocket full of posies..."). People who died from the plague would be burned to reduce the spread of the disease ("ashes, ashes, we all fall down").

The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA."

The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its A Wonderful Life."

The Ten Commandments contain 297 words.
The Bill of Rights is stated in 463 words.
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address contains 266 words.
A recent federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words.

Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

When a horned toad is angry, it squirts blood from it's eyes.

A group of unicorns is called a blessing.
A group of kangaroos is called a mob.
A group of whales is called a pod.
A group of owls is called a parliament.
A group of ravens is called a murder.
A group of bears is called a sleuth.
12 or more cows is called a flink.

A duck's quack does not echo and no one knows why.

All time favourite: When someone annoys you, it takes 42 muscles to frown, but it only takes 4 muscles to extend your arm and whack them in the head.

[chunkie]

Apparently these are true:

In the old days, sometimes folk could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their
bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, bring home the bacon. They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat..

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests
got the top, or the uppercrust.

[spooKs]

A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!

Gwan read it backwards.

Oh, and the possum is the only mammal without nipples, it secretes milk through its skin!

like it


and


like it

[fushimi]

The famous and mythical quote from Hamlet - "Alas poor Yorrick, I knew him well" doesn't appear in the play. The actual quote is "Alas poor Yorrick, I knew him brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap"

[thomas]

Once the war ended, there was a big pea festival in the small Cornish town on Truscombe on Mary which continues annually to this day.

Where did you hear this from mate? I've never heard of that place or that festival...bearing in mind there's not that much to report on down here apart from cats getting stuck in tree's and such like a pea festival would've made the front page...[/quote]

Dont you cornish still have a black face festival?

[FSTZ]

Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

SO BATS ARE LIKE DEREK ZOOLANDER?

[seebs2000]

[quote="RojParody"]
Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
[quote]

Apparently, people always tend to turn right when they enter a supermarket or shop.

[guerillaeye]

Apparently, people always tend to turn right when they enter a supermarket or shop.

that is a completely fraudulent claim!

However.. In what could be a landmark reformation, Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, and bassist John Paul Jones, the irrefutable, thunderous pioneers of hard rock, have reportedly agreed to reunite for the first time in nearly twenty years for a one-off memorial gig in honor of late Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun. But if all goes smoothly, the band, alongside deceased drummer John Bonham's son Jason skins, have reportedly exposed a full tour may lie in the imminent future.

[seebs2000]

nah im serious. i dont have any proof mind, but i didnt make that up. off the top of my head, all the supermarkets near me are laid out so u either turn right or go straight on, a left turn is never the first thing you do. however, i wouldnt put my house on that.

also, led zepplin are reforming, tickets cost £125 and allocated thru random ballot. apparently there were 10million applications. now if u charged them £1 to enter the ballot, youd be laughing...

[razer-wire]

racecar is racecar backwards.

WOW!!!!!!

[j rock]

the phrase "it costs an arm and a leg" originates from the cost of getting your portraits painted (before photography).

Portraits were the norm, but if you wanted your full body painted they'd charge you by the limb.

[j rock]

the phrase "balls to the wall" actually comes from fighter planes.

'The "balls" are knobs atop the plane's throttle control. Pushing the throttle all the way forward, to the wall of the cockpit, is to apply full throttle.'

[casino]

At lift off, US space shuttles weigh about 4.5 million pounds.

A cubic yard of air weighs about 2 pounds at sea level.

Bamboo plants can grow up to 36 inches in a day.

Google receives more than 200 million search queries a day, more than half of which come from outside the United States. Peak traffic hours to google.com are between 6 a.m. and noon PST, when more than 2,000 search queries are answered a second.

It takes eight and a half minutes for light to get from the sun to earth.

The first domain name ever registered was Symbolics.com on March 15, 1985.

[tronman]

On any given day, more than 87,000 flights are in the skies in the United States. Only 35 percent, or just over 30,000 of those flights are commercial carriers, like American, United or Southwest. On an average day, air traffic controllers handle 28,537 commercial flights (major and regional airlines), 27,178 general aviation flights (private planes), 24,548 air taxi flights (planes for hire), 5,260 military flights and 2,148 air cargo flights (Federal Express, UPS, etc.). At any given moment, roughly 5,000 planes are in the skies above the United States. In one year, controllers handle an average of 64 million takeoffs and landings.

For every one flight you see listed on an airport monitor, two you don't see show up on air traffic controllers' screens. It would take approximately 7,300 airport terminal monitors to show all the flights controllers handle in a single day and approximately 460 monitors to show the number of flights being handled at any one time.


FACT

[auan]

Air traffic controllers, like everyone else, occasionally go out and get smashed midweek when they know they shouldn't, and have to work through a hangover the next day.

[LEQ]

Once the war ended, there was a big pea festival in the small Cornish town on Truscombe on Mary which continues annually to this day.

Where did you hear this from mate? I've never heard of that place or that festival...bearing in mind there's not that much to report on down here apart from cats getting stuck in tree's and such like a pea festival would've made the front page...

Dont you cornish still have a black face festival?[/quote]

I'm not actually Cornish, I just moved down here 5 years ago after uni...

But yeah there is a black face festival down here called, would you believe it, 'Darky Day' where people paint their faces black and walk around the town.

Taken from Wikipedia 'On Boxing Day and New Year's Day, it was a tradition for some residents to don blackface and parade through the town singing 'minstrel' songs. The origin of this custom, once called "Darky Day" is unknown, although it has been speculated that it is associated with freedoms given to the occupants of passing slave ships on those days. Folklorists associate the practice with the widespread British custom of blacking up for mumming and morris dancing, and suggest there is no record of slave ships coming to Padstow. Once an unknown local charity event, the day has recently become controversial, perhaps since a description was published.[6] Also some now suggest it is racist for white people to "black up" for any reason.[7] Although "outsiders" have linked the day with racism, Padstonians insist that this is not the case and are incredulous at both description and allegations. Long before the controversy Charlie Bate, noted Padstow folk advocate, recounted that in the 1970s the content and conduct of the day were carefully reviewed to avoid potential offence.[8] The Devon and Cornwall Constabulary have taken video evidence twice and concluded there were no grounds for prosecution.[9] Nonetheless protests resurface annually. The day has now been renamed mummer's day in an attempt to avoid offence and identify it more clearly with established British tradition.[10] The debate has now been subject to academic scrutiny.[11]'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padstow

[stanton]

racecar is racecar backwards.

WOW!!!!!!

"Bron-yr-Aur is a small cottage just outside the town of Machynlleth and it was to this quiet corner of Powys that one of the world's biggest rock bands escaped in May 1970, after a gruelling 15-month tour. Here, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant wrote much of the material which appears on the Led Zeppelin III album. The Bron-yr-Aur track on their Physical Graffiti album was also written during this time."


My Gran used to own an inn called The Blue Bell in llangurig (about 5 miles away over the mountain) around the same time. My Dad has loads of stories about Led Zep in the White Lion on Machynlleth high st, apparently they used to demand lock ins constantly and then just pay the the bar for everyone all night. Heroes.

[impatientpiranha]

Fanta was invented in izan Germany.

Fanta was actually coca-cola's way of making money in NaziGermany. Shipping restrictions between the U.S. and Germany kept certain ingredients needed for Coca-Cola from being sent to the Coca-Cola plant in Germany. So coke used ingredients that were available to make a new drink to sell to the sizan. BUM bum BUM!! FANTA!!

Also... Germany had numbers and information cards on file for every person held in the concentration camps. IBM was the company that printed the cards.

(I just realized that I watch WAY too many documentaries)