Useless Facts

Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by Lewdog, Apr 20, 2014.

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  1. J.T. Woody

    J.T. Woody Book Witch Contributor

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    its also the 31st most populous state
     
  2. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the plane which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, originally aspired to become an abdominal surgeon.
     
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  3. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    Want to know when people referred to the Atlantic Ocean as 'pond'? Turns out it dates back to 1641. Details below in image:

    [​IMG]
     
  4. J.T. Woody

    J.T. Woody Book Witch Contributor

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    ....2 pairs of Orca have learned that flipping a shark on their back puts them in a state of suspended animation. So now 2 known pairs in the entire world (one pair off the coast of California, and the other pair in South Africa) hunt great white sharks just to rip out and eat their livers. This makes Orca the only known predator to Great White Sharks, thus disrupting the food chain
     
  5. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    *laughs*
    *realizes he's being watched*
    *flees*
     
  6. NobodySpecial

    NobodySpecial Contributor Contributor

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    Given that it’s only two know pair doing the shark pâté thing, I would think that makes only the four the great white predators, not the whole of the genus. Besides, people have been hunting sharks for ages. Now if those four orca start sharing word of this delicacy with their kin...
     
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  7. J.T. Woody

    J.T. Woody Book Witch Contributor

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    i started to say "besides humans" but then i thought, we pretty much kill anything and everything so that goes without saying. lol, I could have worded it better!

    also, scientists think that they HAVE shared this information because the first orca pair to attack and killed a shark (video evidence of it at least), came out in the 90s i believe. no other pair or pod have been recorded doing this until 2017-2018ish when a younger pair attacked and killed a great white. So they believe the young ones learned this from the duo at some point in their lives when they crossed paths
     
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  8. NobodySpecial

    NobodySpecial Contributor Contributor

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    True, and just because they hadn’t seen other evidence between then and now doesn’t mean it hadn’t happened. It conceivably could be a widespread orca hobby- going after shark livers. We don’t have many cameras on the ocean floor to monitor deadfall.
     
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  9. Some Guy

    Some Guy Manguage Langler Supporter Contributor

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    The oils of the liver repel the sharks for sometimes hundreds of miles. It was the root cause of the disruption of sharks following seal migrations and seal-over population. The sharks and orcas know this instinctively, so it is likely to be ancient in some form.
    Dolphin pods attack sharks on sight, and bash their fins, at speed, with their dense snouts. They also attack the ampullae. Once the shark is unable to swim they bash its organs until it dies. The thorough process suggests that they enjoy it. Orcas could also have picked up this team behavior from the dolphins.
    Very useful facts.
     
  10. A.M.P.

    A.M.P. People Buy My Books for the Bio Photo Contributor

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    You know the series Firebrand? Where feral deer go against their wolf overlords?
    We need this but Dolphins vs Sharks...
     
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  11. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    The 2002 murder of Jam Master Jay, the DJ for Run DMC, has never been solved.
     
  12. Some Guy

    Some Guy Manguage Langler Supporter Contributor

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    Strange Days

    Did he owe anybody money?
     
  13. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Best near-term SF movie ever made.
     
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  14. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    A woman (by birth) in 18th century America by the name of Jemima Wilkinson had a near-death experience with an illness, and came to identify as the genderless prophet Public Universal Friend, who had been given a mission by God and returned from death. The Friend, as they were known, refused gendered pronouns and their birth name, and held her property in trust by others to avoid seeing the name Jemima on documents. They refused to acknowledge their birth name in their will either. Public Universal Friend was popular particularly with unmarried women. They believed in sexual modesty, even abstinence if possible, and were opposed to slavery as well as using Quaker theology around free will (as opposed to forms of fixed predestination).
    I love the fact that we have this non-binary person in history who was actually legit popular in their own circle and had people who accepted their non-binary identity. And they were anti-slavery which is a plus.
     
    Last edited: Dec 27, 2019
  15. hedgerowpete

    hedgerowpete Member

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    in 1992 i was the worlds youngest town crier and held that tittle for nine years, i was also the second tallest in europe for five years
     
  16. Kinzvlle

    Kinzvlle At the bottom of a pit Contributor

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    To get in the Christmas spirt.
     
  17. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    A little while ago, a month or two? I mentioned Yola and Fingallian, two very different sounding mostly-dead dialects of what is still technically English, from Ireland.
    I'd like to present this song in Yola because it's a great example and sounds nice:

    Also this sample in Fingallian shows how many repeated vowels it has:
    "Ribbeen a roon
    Ribbeen moorneeng
    Thoo ware good for loand stroand and mounteen
    For rig a tool and roast a whiteen
    Reddy tha taakle
    Gather tha baarnacks
    Drink a grote at Nauny Hapennys"
    You can see how there is English in there, particularly in the Fingallian which has a lot of words sound almost the same (although the "moorneeng" is actually not "morning" but a corruption of an Irish Gaelic word for "my dear").
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2019
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  18. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    This was the first 'emoticon': :-
    And it was called the Dogs Bollocks.
    Who said that people in the centuries
    past didn't have a sense of humor. :p
    The symbol itself represents a point
    to take a pause. o_O
     
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  19. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Don't read this before bed.

    Three sailors, Ronald Endicott, Clifford Olds, and Louis Costin, aboard the USS Virginia were trapped when the ship was sunk during the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor. They hammered on the inside of the hull to let their shipmates know they were still alive, but there was no rescue possible.

    It took them sixteen days to die.
     
  20. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    @Iain Aschendale — Jesus, so their bodies could still be down there... :bigfrown:

    Also, for Americans who just turned 19 and want to legally buy tobacco. You can’t anymore. As now the legal age limit is 21. :bigeek:
     
  21. NobodySpecial

    NobodySpecial Contributor Contributor

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    Not just yet. That won't go into effect for a few months. They have to give states time to make the conversion on new laws, so laws signed between Jan 1 and June 31 don't take effect any sooner than the following October. Laws signed between July 1 and Dec 31 won't take effect any sooner than the following March. There are always special circumstances to alter that, but that's the starting point. But yes, 21 to buy tobacco products has gone federal, and thanks to the FDA, anything used to consume tobacco is now considered a tobacco product; lighters, rolling papers, cigarette cases. Go into a head shop- that bong they describe as a cigarette cooler... It's a tobacco product now. They just said it was for use with cigarettes.
     
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  22. Steve Rivers

    Steve Rivers Contributor Contributor

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    The quote "Golf is a good walk spoiled" believed to come from Mark Twain by Americans, or the same quote "to play golf is to spoil an otherwise enjoyable walk. " believed by brits to come from Winston Churchill, was said by neither, and was actually first quoted in a book by author H.S.Scrivener in 1903 about Lawn-Association Tennis, noting that the opinion came from his friends, a couple called 'the Allens.'
     
  23. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    There are a lot of bodies still down there, but those three aren't. If you read the link, they later managed to get into the ship and found the bodies, along with a chart they'd marked on the wall showing the passage of time. Still a thousand or so in the Arizona though, and Truk Lagoon is considered a Japanese military cemetery, IIRC.
     
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  24. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    I'm going to spoiler-wrap this because it contains details (really fucking odd details) of the sexual...plumbing of koala bears. If you aren't up for knowing some freaky zoological shit, feel free to move along:

    The male climbs onto the female from behind, bites the back of her neck and briefly copulates with her. Like kangaroos and most other marsupials, male koalas have a double-headed penis and females have two vaginas (a third birthing vagina later forms to bring the new joey into the world, and then closes back up). SOURCE
     
  25. MissBadWolf

    MissBadWolf Senior Member

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    Dry weather can cause dry throats.
     
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