Random Facts

[Elomin Sha]

I like random knowledge that I can bring out of no where when conversations get a little boring. Post any tid bits you like here.

Strafe came from World War 1. The German phrase "Gott strafe England!" ("God punish England!") was widely used in German propaganda. The word strafe entered the English language, meaning punish, bombard or reprimand. By the end of the war, though, strafe had narrowed to refer to a very particular type of punishment that the armies were inflicting, and took on the meaning it most commonly has today - that of attacking with machine-gun fire from low-flying aircraft.

Info comes from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26277732

[Prospero101]

Oh, you have opened the floodgates, my friend. I've been subscribed to Mental Floss since I was thirteen.

The longest movie ever made is called "A Cure for Insomnia," and runs 85 hours.

[Elomin Sha]

During a sunset when the sun is just touching the flat horizon it's not actually there, it has already set. Refraction of light through the atmosphere equals the sun's diameter so you are seeing an illusion.

[mariomario42]

Sliced bread was invented 75 years after the toaster.

[Amake]

You know how many languages have a buttload of completely different words for "be"? (Am, are, is, etc.) It's theorized they come from various prehistoric languages' words for "growing" and "breathing", indicating that describing the characteristics of living things were the closest bronze age man could get to conceptualizing the idea of existing. The realization that of our perception of reality as something separate from things that aren't real is a newborn, fragile idea should now give you a case of meta-existential dread.

[Master Gunner]

The most common word shared between languages (with some allowances for spelling) is "Amen". The second is "Taxi".

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Oh man, I was MADE for this thread

-There is a Starbucks coffee cup visible during every single scene of 'Fight Club'

-iPhone users have more sex than Android or Blackberry users

- The average person on OKCupid is almost exactly one and a half inches shorter than they say they are. The shift in the bell curve is almost hilariously exact.

-Handguns are legal on the Isle of Man

-The famously neutral Switzerland has the highest firearms/people ratio of any country in Europe (and possibly the world- it's been a while since I checked)

-There are officially more types of cheese in Britain than in France

-The Bir-Hakim triangle in North Africa is the only place on Earth, outside of Antarctica that is not claimed by any sovereign nation

-The only mammals that suffer from AIDS, apart from humans, are cats and nine-banded armadillos (there may be one other that I've forgotten)

-Only two words in the English language come from Finnish: sauna and Molotov cocktail

-History does not record the name of the first man to take to the air in a heavier-than-air craft, but he handed in his resignation as coachman to Sir George Cayley (the man who designed and built his glider) saying 'I was hired to drive, not fly'

-The tin can was invented sixty years before the tin opener

-A tin of food from Robert Scott's ill-fated voyage to the South Pole was recently discovered, opened and the contents found to be edible over 100 years later, preserved by the canning and the cold.

[Dutch guy]

Most CPU's today are made using 22 nanometer architecture. To give a sense of scale on that, grass grows at roughly 33 nanometers per SECOND!

[Amake]

Well, an excuse to watch Fight Club this month too.

A random fact: The radiation of one pinhead's worth of the sun's core could immediately kill a person at 150 million kilometers distance.

Which is how far Earth is from the sun.

[Prospero101]

-The only mammals that suffer from AIDS, apart from humans, are cats and nine-banded armadillos (there may be one other that I've forgotten)

I'm pretty sure gorillas and other primates can get AIDS too.

WWII British general Monty Montgomery had two dogs named Hitler and Rommel.

Frank Sinatra once said to Bobby Darin: "You sound great, kid. It's a pity you live in the same era as me."

It's popularized that George Washington had wooden teeth, but it's actually a lot more disgusting than that. They were made of wood, gold, donkey teeth, and other people's teeth.

[Dutch guy]

Human perception of colors is a little weird. For instance, the human eye perceives a mixture of blue (450–495) and yellow (570–590) light to be green, while in fact not containing any light of green wavelengths (495–570) which is precisely what allows CMYK and RGB color mixing to work.

[Keab42]

The rays of light visible as the setting sun passes behind a cloud are known as Crepuscular Rays.

[Ptangmatik]

The Laser Relativity Satellite (LARES) is a 386kg (at time of launch), 36cm ball that completes an orbit of the Earth roughly once every two hours. It is made of tungsten alloy and houses 92 cube corner retroreflectors, its main job is to be there so that people on the Earth's surface can fire lasers at it. (To measure the Lense-Thirring effect)

The LARES satellite is the densest known object orbiting in the Solar System.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Daffodils only have 1 petal; the "trumpet in the middle".

The "petals" which you think are petals are sepals.

[MinniChi]

Avocadoes and bananas will not ripen while on the tree.

Avocadoes will remain mature on the tree for up to 7 months before rotting.

Children do in fact lie.

It's cheaper and easier to purchase a large wooden dowel instead of a rolling pin.

Wheat flour is most prized by bakers due to it's wonderful ability to generate a good quality gluten structure.

Putting scotch tape on frosted glass makes it clear.

Most breads advertised as "artisan" sold by large companies are not actually artisan breads and contain many dough conditioners. France however has legislation that restricts this. The only dough conditioner legally allowed in artisan dough (in France) are small amounts of ascorbic acid.

[Jimor]

The population of Ireland STILL hasn't recovered from the potato famine and the followon emigration waves.

[Bebop Man]

Fanta was created by a Reichstag Coca-Cola company that didn't have the ingredients for Coke due to WW2 import restrictions.

[Smeghead]

The Spanish Flue didn't originate in Spain, but it got that name because the countries involved in WW1 censored the press and hid the true extent of the illness. Neutral Spain on the other hand had no such restrictions and openly told the world of just how devastating the illness was.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

-Banana trees are not trees (they are herbs) and can walk. Not terribly far, true, but they can move a good few feet from where they originally were planted in pursuit of the sun.

-Current Irish rugby captain Jamie Heaslip is the second Irish international to be born in Israel

-Israel's national airline has the strictest security protocols of any in the world.

-Despite their reputation for wisdom, owls have incredibly small brains (even for a bird of their size)

-A woodpecker's tongue stretches round the back of its brain, preventing it from getting concussion during vigorous pecking

-The tallest man ever to play international rugby was called Glenn Metcalfe, a Scottish lock who was 7ft 1 and a half. Unfortunately, he didn't start playing until the introduction of lifting laws made his height advantage largely irrelevant in the lineout.

-Surrey Satellite Technology, an amazingly imaginatively-title satellite company based in Surrey, England, was founded by a bunch of students who decided to build a satellite for their PhD. Upon being told by their supervisor that a satellite on earth was nothing more than an expensive paperweight, they then had to walk up to a NASA representative at some fancy function and persuade him to let this group of complete unknowns put their untested, home-built satellite onto a rocket for practically nothing- oh and by the way, we're students.
Somehow, it worked.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

There are over 50 Welsh words to say "yes".
There are over 100 Welsh words to say "yes" or "no".

If Wales was flattened, it would cover a significant larger area than England does. We don't mention the area if England was flattened too because England is essentially flat and wouldn't make much difference.

The biggest Waterfall in the world is part of the Gulf Stream Current, where the current literally plummets down to the Ocean floor in the North Atlantic.

The biggest river in the world is underneath the Amazon River. There is a subterranean river that flows underneath the Amazon Rainforest.

There's a species of (Freshwater) Snail whose body emcompasses its shell with a film of slime.

There's species of Spider that can dive and swim underwater (in still Ponds/Lakes/Pools etc...)

[My pseudonym is Ix]

We don't mention the area if England was flattened too because England is essentially flat and wouldn't make much difference.

As somebody who has hiked over large chunks of both England and Wales in his time, I can attest you have clearly not spent enough time in the hilly bits of England.

[Wolfwood723]

Since I love Fight Club I got one of my favorites. Spoilers for a 10+ year old movie.

The payphone that Jack(The Narrator) calls Tyler on has a notice on it that says "No incoming calls" meaning it would be impossible for Tyler to *69 him.

[Kortanios]

-The famously neutral Switzerland has the highest firearms/people ratio of any country in Europe (and possibly the world- it's been a while since I checked)
...
-The only mammals that suffer from AIDS, apart from humans, are cats and nine-banded armadillos (there may be one other that I've forgotten)

The US has over twice as many firearms per person as Switzerland, ranked 2nd in the world is Yemen with around 1.5 times the number of firearms per person as Switzerland.

HIV is the human version of SIV (the chimpanzee version of the virus). Chimps have adapted to the virus a lot more than humans have/the virus is more adapted to not killing the chimp as quickly. Whether the immunodeficiency they suffer from due to infection is technically called AIDS as well I am however unsure of.

Sorry for being so nitpicky...

[Amake]

Since I love Fight Club I got one of my favorites. Spoilers for a 10+ year old movie.

The payphone that Jack(The Narrator) calls Tyler on has a notice on it that says "No incoming calls" meaning it would be impossible for Tyler to *69 him.

There's lots of little hints like that. My favorite is Tyler's address, "Paper Street". According to Google there are five Paper Streets in America, although in any of the cities Fight Club might reasonably be set it exists only in postal worker jargon: It's where they send letters to nonexistent addresses.

[Azbrosh]

Of all the words in the English language, the word "SET" has the most definitions.