Did you know?... The Interesting Fact Thread
 

Not sure if this has been done already, but thought this would be a good idea for a thread.

Post an interesting fact. It's as simple as that.


Mr Mephisto

Did you know...
that so far I am the only reply

for real though, dark side of oz, ill just post the site so I don't have to explain.

http://www.everwonder.com/david/wizardofoz/

Did you know...

...in the video for "Come On Eileen", no one's wearing underwear?
...camel's milk doesn't curdle (or so I'm told...)
...kids starting college next fall were born in 1987.
...you burn more calories by sleeping than you do watching TV.

[if you're referring to fall 2005, nope] I was actually born in 1986 [Yes, I am 18] ^_^

more random facts:
- 'Disco' translated from latin actually means 'i learn'

Water is the only substance that expands when it freezes.

Did you know:
Blue reflectors in the middle of a street indicate the location of a fire hydrant.....

Dave Barry has a sewer treatment facility named after him in a town in Kansas? :)

Cheers won more Emmies in Comedy than any other show the year it debuted, despite being last place in the ratings, and being up against greats like Taxi, even winning Outstanding Comedy Series.

They also were the only TV show nominated in Outstanding Writing for Comedy category. There were three nominations for 5 different writers...

That a penny dropped from the Empire State Building will not kill someone on impact? Even if it hits them in the head. The terminal velocity of a penny is around 65MPH. It'd sting and that's about all.

-Courtesy of the Mythbusters.

Is that edge on or face on?

FACT ME TIL I CR@P!
 

Did you know: That the Chines wall is NOT visible from space!

Thank you for that one! Just had an argument with an idiot who though the penny would kill you. This should be prove enough for me.

Regarding the penny:

They used a wind tunnel tube made from a holed plexi/acrylic tube that tested the max speed the penny could achieve in freefall. So in this case the penny was in various angles.

Jamie made an attachment for a pneumatic nail gun that he used to shoot the penny at a concrete disc, an asphalt disk and a balistic gel covered skull (yes, a real skull), and Adam's hand and ass.

Adam made a damned cool attachement for a rifle that let him "shoot" the penny using the powder charge from a rifle cartridge. The calulation from the camera footage showed that the penny was moving at about 3000 fps. When shot into a concrete disc, it left an imprint of penny and just about wiped off the penny's embossing.

The show is currently available (Nov 16) on On Demand from various cable providers.

What a fantastic gig that is. They get to blow shit up, burn things, do crazy shit and get they paid for it. Mythbusters rocks.

I want to be a mythbuster when I grow up.

_______________________________
Edit:
Episode 4: Penny Drop, Deadly Microwaves, Radio Tooth Fillings
Can pennies from heaven kill? Or, more specifically, can a penny dropped from a skyscraper kill a pedestrian on the sidewalk below? Jamie and Adam take the challenge, hopefully without deadly results. Speaking of fatal fallacies, is it possible to literally bake yourself on a tanning bed from the inside out? The guys also investigate the claim that Lucille Ball exposed a Japanese spy ring by listening to radio signals transmitted by her tooth fillings. Hmmm ...

Cool!

Did you know: Coca Cola may have been invented in Atlanta, but the first bottle of it sold anywhere was sold in Auburn, Alabama at Toomer's Drugstore (it still stands).

A cheetah's speed is the result of having six more vertabrae in its back than the average wild feline.

Did you know that you're wrong? ;)

It's actually Grand Forks, North Dakota.

*Off to re-read Dave Barry books for 15th time*

'Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia' is the fear of long words.

It is impossible to lick your elbow. (wondering how many of you might actually try this)

"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

All the planets in our solar system rotate anticlockwise, except Venus. It is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

How can you say this without specifying font size or spacing? With enough toner and creative kerning I could make a two letter word circle the world 500 times.

Nope; we covered this one already:
<a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpost.php?p=1479151&amp;postcount=99">Tilted Forum Project - View Single Post - Useless Information Competition</a>

Did you know....

That the origin (etymology) of the word "Sophomore" is from two greek words meaning:

Wise and Foolish.

I've always loved that word, as it so captures the essence of a second year ;-)

An oft repeated 'quote' attributed to originate from GWBush is the word strategery. It comes instead from Will Ferrell's portrayal of GWB on Saturday night live.

-bear

I was going on kids that turn 18 next year...either way, that's weird for me :)

This is incorrect. The element Bismuth, when changing from a liquid to a solid state, also expands.

My high school science teacher stands corrected...

Did you know...

-Coke (the soda) can be used to clean your toilet bowl.
-Pure Coca Cola is shipped in a tanker with a "corrosive" symbol on it.

These are cool...

I especially liked those from Bendsley.

Did you know?..

...Thomas Watson, who was the chairman of IBM in 1943 predicted that there would probably only be a world market for five computers.



Mr Mephisto

did you know tat fish can drown although living underwater?

Did you know that if you dropped a diamond in a bottle of Clorox, it would eventually desolve?

I argued my highschool English teacher on this. I won on specifications: she didn't say your arm or toungue had to be attached :p Funny... She never liked me...

Hmph... that link's kinda cool, though. The kid didn't even loose a limb.

666 is accually a mathmatical representation of the Roman emporer Nero.

The Roman emperor Nero would dress up young boys in his dead wife's clothes and make love to them.

E Plurbis Unum, The U.S. motto, (Latin:"Out of many, One.") comes from a Roman poem and was originally part of a salad recipe :D

The final words of H.G. Wells were, "Go away. I'm all right."

Four Popes have died while having sex.

For a science experiment, a girl I knew poured a can of Coke into a bowl, then put a hot dog wiener into it. After several hours the wiener looked pretty disgusting, like it had been sitting in a corrosive substance. Now imagine what happens when you drink a can of coke and sits in your stomach for awhile!

Sort of like coke sitting in stomach acid! Somehow I think that your belly could handle that.

Bush and Kerry are related. 9th cousins.

They are also related to Hugh Hefner.

Libya is the only country with a single-coloured flag. It's green.
More people speak English in China than in the United States.
<obscure>Did you know that urine is sterile? That's right, you can drink it.</obscure>

Isn't that only true for your own urine? I remember watching a video on Nazi camps and they were talking about it...

It has been calculated that in the last 3,500 years, there have only been 230 years of peace throughout the civilized world.
If you attempt to count all the stars in a galaxy at the rate of one every second it would take around 3,000 years to count them all. And that's just a galaxy, not the whole universe.
In chess, there are 169, 518, 829, 100, 544, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 ways to play the first 10 moves.
You share your birthday with at least 9 million other people in the world.

The very highest-quality chocolate is a dusky red/brown, not dark brown. Got that from an ace chocolatier, who showed me some.

Stomach acid is one of the most corrosive chemicals known.

Did you know that there's a sculpture outside the CIA Headquarters that has a code on it that hasn't yet been fully deciphered, yet it's been there since 1990?

Meh, I couldn't remember... It was off the top of my head. :)

It seems the "obscure" tags were removed during posting... It's a quote from a Fight Club PSA.

I'm not sure if these have been posted before, and I can't take credit for them. I found most of this over years of surfing the web.

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
The A&W of root beer fame stands for Allen and Wright
There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball
"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."
Stewardesses' is the longest word that is typed with only the left
hand.
A group of frogs is called an army.
A group of rhinos is called a crash.
A group of kangaroos is called a mob.
A group of whales is called a pod.
A group of geese is called a gaggle.
A group of ravens is called a murder.

Rather untrue. Also, one major thing about these fact listings, is that often times people are wrong about something and then others get that info and tell it to someone else, and it spreads like wildfire. :/

This thread needs its own group of myth busters. There's misinformation all over the place.

NASA says it is: link

Specifically, it actually has more to do with the increased mobility they have in the pelvic girdle (ossa coxae and to some degree femur) and pectoral girdle (scapula/clavicle), which would be attributes resulting from their soft tissue formation, not bone. Being able to extend their shoulders and hips farther, they can achieve much longer strides.

Not a word according to the Oxford English Dictionary. What dictionary have you found it in?

Acid chyme in the stomach (resulting from HCl) has a pH of about 2.5 While this is a strong acid, it is fairly dilute in the stomach. Plenty of the strong acids, when concentrated, can push the pH 0 boundary, which is over 300 times more acidic as pH 2.5


To add my own fact:
The concept of deadly "quick sand" doesn't really work. While it would be difficult to get out of, it can't suck you under because water containing sand is much denser than pure water. Since people can easily float in water, they are significantly more buoyant in a water/sand mixture and float considerably better.
That's also thanks to Mythbusters.

Poloboy, you're just out to attack everyone

http://dictionary.reference.com/sear...ppedaliophobia

a link for "Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia"

Oxford can't always be up to date with new fears ;)

And thanks for the new fact. :)

Not out to attack, just to expand on people's facts ;)

Thanks for the link.

LoL, ;) looks like you know a lot / have just been watching way too many Mythbusters

:) No probs @ the link.

Yep. What's untrue is that the Great Wall is the only man-made object visible from space. There are others as well, none of which come to mind at the moment.

Oh, ok, I spent the 30 seconds required to Google it ... and it turns out there are many. You can see some here.

As usual, Snopes has a good explanation, including the fact that this canard dates back to at least the 1930s.

what about strengths?

The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

is it just me or is that link not leading to a defination. But after a google search got this link http://www.changethatsrightnow.com/p...?SDID=204:1595

that might be a parody but proves your point

heccubusiv,

wtf..

I could've sworn the definition popped up the other day I did the search..

graggh. sOrry :\

Hypotheticals!
 

Well I can't specify font size because depending on varying screen resolution, what you see as Arial 10, could well be my Arial 8. Also spacing wouldn't be applicable either as I have already stated that this is one contiguous figure/statement of Pi. But if you're desperate for specifics each digit would have to be no larger than 3mm with a 0.1mm kerning area on either side of it.

Did you know that...


...if you lined up every one in China in a straight line and walked along it, you would never reach the end due to reproduction rates.

Hey Avail, if everyone was standing in a straight line, wouldn't that make it hard for them to reproduce? :) And as for the Great Wall from Space debate, define space. Are we talking atmosphere? Or Outer Space? That makes a difference.

This is also true for crows, unless ravens and crows are basically the same thing.

Kind of hard to reproduce if you're standing in a line (assuming shoulder to shoulder here). :thumbsup:

If you're stuck on a liferaft with unpalatable (fresh) water, you can absorb up to 1 pint per day through enemas.

i've attemted this many times.... cuz i have allergies. and even when trying to hold my eyelids open, i cannot while sneezing.

Did you know that the T.V. show 'Twin Peaks' budgeted $150 a week for on-screen doughnuts?

I couldn't resist arising from lurkerhood to refute you on this. There are actually 24 other words I found with this property that equal "almost" in length. I will abstain from listing them.

However, I did find one word longer than "almost":

billowy

I will now rest my tired eyes, as they need it after much diligent reading of the dictionary.

facetiously is the only english word with all the vowels once and only once in alphabetical order

vowels
 

How about abstemious? If you want to go backwards try subcontinental.

Sneeze through your mouth and not your nose. Problem solved! :)

I heard of "almost" as being* the longest word with letters in alphabetical order

I guess billowy doesn't apply as the double "l" doesn't count? :)

yeah double L is kind of a cheap trick

Your forgetting the Y.

you're.
and in a post about knowledge, nonetheless.

Did you know... saliva has wound healing properties? Yep, when your mom told you she was going to kiss your booboo and make it better, she wasn't too far off the mark.

Not going to get into mom slobbering on your wound vs. kissing it.

To get blood out of fabric you should use the spit of whomever spilled the blood. You have enzymes that help break down the blood. Someone elses spit won't do as good.

I see the light
 

Hmm, seems to me there are a LOT of lighbulbs visible from space. They are man made aren't they?

Here you dictionary fans go:

Bookkeeper has the most pairs of letters in a row in the English language.
The longest word you can spell using only the top letter of the keyboard...typewriter

And finally, according to what I've heard, honey never goes bad. Anything trapped inside of it will be forever preserved. It will be just as sticky & difficult to spoon out of a jar today as it would be in 1000 years.

Did you know that 51% of people are in the majority? That blows my freaking mind!

I recently moved to indianapolis from cincinnati and was wondering what in the hell those damn blue reflectors were doing in the middle of the road.

hydrogen is the least dense element in its gas form, and the most dense element in its solid form.

I know someone who can do this :p

Did you know there are traces of cocaine in the majority of American paper money?

Really not that hard to believe if you think about it =p

The OED is a descriptive work, it has no power to declare that some combination of phonemes is or is not a word. Odd as it sounds, popular usage is, in the end, the only thing that makes a word a word.

No, any healthy person's urine is essentially sterile, in the sense that there are no bacteria in it. It's possible for it to get contaminated from skin contact as it leaves the body, but that would still be quite insignificant; especially when compared to most other bodily fluids, which are chock full of all sorts of pathogens.

Chemically speacking urine is fairly harmless as well, it's mostly composed of urea with small amounts of uric acid. The latter, in large quantities over a long period of time can lead to gout, but you literally would have to down several quarts of urine every day to achieve that effect.

Once outside the body urine will get contaminated with bacteria fairly quickly, one of the effects there is that urea will be broken down back into ammonia, which is toxic. So, I guess, if there's urine drinking to be done, make sure it's fresh...

Hmm, seems kinda open-ended, but OK, I'll bite.

Did you know?

The scene in Longus' "Daphnis and Chloe" where Daphnis fetches the single remaning apple from the very top of a tree is actually a reference to a poem by Sappho, the surviving fragment of which consists of only the few opening lines (Lobel-Page fr. 105).

Oh, did you mean "interesting" to other people as well? :)

Around 1.75 millions animal species are now totaly extinct, out of an approximate 12 millions total animal species.
Over 12,000 species are currently labeled as "in danger of exctinction".

What the ??? Who is Longus, and who are Daphnis and Chloe, and why the hell didn't she just go to the store for another apple instead of risking her neck by climbing to the top of the tree for the last remaining apple? And who came up with these names???

oh wait this is a fact thread not a question thread.

Bees communicate with little dances. Each shake is a measure of distance. This is how they all find the soda you spilled.

"Daphnis and Chloe" is, while not the earliest surviving novel, probably the earliest surviving novel that's any good. Longus is the author. Daphnis was actually a he, not a she (the guy's very lucky that he didn't have to attend an American highschool). They didn't go to the store because it takes place around the second century, and you know, just isn't as romantic. Being the author Longus was probably the one to come up with the names; probably his own as well, as it's likely to have been a pseudonym.

See, you learn something new every day.

I don't know if this is true, as I live deep in the heart of Arkansas, but I have heard that on the Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.

Snopes says False. Another urban legend debunked. Perhaps this thread should be redirected. New title: Stuff I've heard is true? ;)

Real Canadian money

Ok, new fact... hmmm. Many non-flammable materials are flammable as fine particulates. Example: baking flour. Now with linkage!

The male platypus has a poison barb on the inner side of each hind leg. It's potent enough to kill a dog.

A liger is the mating of a male lion and a female tiger. A tigon is what you get when you cross a male tiger and a female lion. Why the distinction? A male liger is a giant cat at ~900lbs and 12 feet tall/long. Tigons are dwarfs and generally weigh in under 350lbs.

Did you know:

That 12 men have walked on the moon?
That when they were on the moon, they placed small 12"x12" mirriors aimed back at earth so that we can shoot earth based lasers at the moon and precisely track its position? (LLR - Lunar Laser Ranging)
That in doing this precise position tracking, they realized that the earth - due to its liquid core - experiences "Solid earth tides" that - like the ocean tides - cause the actual solid ground to move up and down (up to a couple inches) due to the moons gravity?

That Christopher Columbus never set foot on America. He discovered Haiti - and died still convinced he had landed on India.

Just random stuff I seem to remember.

One drop of Cobra poison can kill an elephant.

:) correct me if I'm wrong though. This is what I've heard.

the huge sea floor earthquake that caused the tsunamis affected the earth's rotation, making it wobble slightly.

Wow - hope we don't go plummeting into the sun!

Slate article confirming it

During the American Civil war, when large amounts of explosives were in short supply, bags of flour were shot through cannons into buildings. These were then followed by a small explosive charge. The resulting explosion blew up the building or to started it on fire.

X'mas , the short form of Christmas.

The X does not represent anonimity like in Mathematics. The X stands for "Christ" in Greek.

dark chocolate is loaded with flavonoids, which helps blood flow and is good for the heart

link : http://my.webmd.com/content/article/88/99702.htm

You can drop an ant from any height and it won't die.

Did you know Stalin was a state capitalist?*


*My friend is a communist and his parents lead a communist party. He strongly says that Stalin was a state capitalist and that no country in the world has ever had communism.

Communism is a great idea on paper but it just doesn't work out in real life.

did you know : -459F, -273C are equal to 0K, which is absolue zero. also that atoms stop moving at 0k and everything dies..


did you know : that no matter how big the number is, that if it is a multipul of 9 that you can add the numbers together until they become 1 number and that number will always be 9 (wow isnt that confusing).

The first Life Saver flavour, which was peppermint, was invented in 1912 and it was called Pep-O-Mint.

hmmm...... 9 X 9263 = 83367 and 8 +3 + 3 + 6 + 7 = 27, not 9. So if that's not how it's done than you need to explain it a little better.

The moon is moving away from the Earth at 3.8 centimeters per year.

The original color of bubblegum was pink, not white.

Christopher Columbus was not a genius because he thought the world was round, the idea had already been accepted by scholars of the day, Christopher Columbus thought he could make it to India because he was incredibly bad at math, he miscalculated the circumfrence of the earth, shrinking it by almost 8,000 nautical miles. Other people thought he was crazy because they new the actual circumfrence of the earth* and beleived it to be all sea from Europe to China, a journey that ships of that day would not have been able to make over open ocean. If the Western Hemisphere had actually been ocean Columbus and his crew would have starved on the journey, they only brought enough food for a one way, 3,000 mile trip, which incidently happens to be roughly the distance from the Canary Islands to America.

*approximatly the correct circumfrence, but much closer than Columbus' estimate.

You shed your skin once every three months.

9 X 9263 = 83367
8 +3 + 3 + 6 + 7 = 27
2 +7=9

It works with all multiples of nine.

Did you know that in 10 to 25 years we will run out of our main source of Helium, and the Earth will be virtually helium-free by the end of the 21st century.

Chocolate and marijuana both have neurotransmitters in them that act on the same brain receptor, causing the production of dopamine which causes feelings of well being ("high"). Chocolate contains anandamide, which is already present in the brain (but is broken down quickly), and marijuana contains THC. A 130 pound person would have to eat 25 pounds of chocolate to get a marijuana-like effect.

Chocolate also contains phenylethylamine (related to amphetamines) that cause blood-sugar to rise, causes blood pressure to rise, and quickens the pulse. These effects are also found when someone is in love (phenylethylamine is called the "love-drug").

Vespa mandarinia, thre Japanese Giant Hornet, measures on average from 27-45mm, but the queen can reach sizes of 55mm (to reference this, I just measured my pinky and it is 65mm). They feed on bee colonies, specifically eating the pupa, which are rich in protein. One giant hornet will scout out the bee's nest and mark it with a pheremone :) . This pheremone will allow the other giant hornet's to find the nest and attack together.

There was a National Geographic show called "Hornets from Hell" which filmed a giant hornet attack on a nest of European honeybees. There were 30 giant hornets and 30,000 honeybees. The attack lasted 3 hours and all the honeybees were killed. Wow.
Video of giant hornet attack

The giant hornets can annihilate the European honeybees, but cannot attack the native Japanese honeybee. When the giant hornet tries to mark the nest with pheremone, the honeybees all swarm the hornet in tandem and move their bodies to create heat. They do not bite, but simply make a big ball of heat around the hornet. They raise the temperature above 47 degrees C, which kills the hornet, but does not harm the honeybees, who have an upper temp limit of about 50 C. The nests' location dies with the hornet and the bees survive.

Read more here

So it is in the end, bad for health? ....