Useless Facts

You sure seem to have a multifaceted job. You must be some kind of Swiss Army moose. I bet your resume must take up several volumes by now.

 

Spoiler: Adult Content

A scrotum of Frat Boys.

 

I'd heard a retch of frat boys.

A gossip of housew... Er, homemakers
A giggle of schoolgirls.

 

Flight 191 is cursed.

 

It says there have been five major incidents involving flights numbered 191 over a period of 34 years. It doesn't say how many incidents occur on average for all flights, so I'm calling confirmation bias.

 

Well, kinda confirmation bias, but it seems (checked a couple other sources, but no primaries) that 191 is the only flight number that has had multiple serious incidents. Well within the bounds of statistical error, but this is the useless facts thread

ETA: For further weird, in 1969, a 14 year old kid named David Booth attempted to use a knife to hijack an airliner. In 1979, a (presumably different) David Booth predicted the crash of one of the flight 191s....

Allegedly. I place very little credence in these things, but it's still fun to notice.

 

Well, I don't think that five events within 34 years would stand up to statistical scrutiny, though I haven't done the analyses myself

Hmm, well I interpret the thread title as "facts which are actually true but aren't helpful to know". If the facts are false, they're not useless facts. They're not facts at all

The plot thickens; my ex has a weird friend called David Booth, and I'm certain he's been on an aeroplane. We could be on to something here.

Yes, spotting the patterns is fun. But so is destroying conspiracy theories

 

The 'blackest' blacks found in nature are on birds of paradise in Papua New Guinea. Parts of their feathers absorb 99.5% of the light that falls on them.

 

The thing with "useless facts" is this. Are they worth fact checking? Uh. . . They are useless, so the answer is no. Still, in some cases there is an obvious "c'mon, you've got to be pulling my leg" factor. I recently saw a post on the social media site that only humans and dolphins experienced sexual pleasure.

Oh, c'mon!

I wish some one would tell that to those two cats outside my window last night. I am no expert in evolutionary biology, but mammals all seem to have evolved an incentive to procreate, and there are similarities in the equipment that make me call a great big BS on that one.

 

When I was young I was told airfoils worked because the air flowing over the top has to travel a farther distance over the more curved, hence longer surface than the bottom half, so had to travel faster to arrive at the end at the same time. (As an unsophisticated nine year old I accepted this. I am no Sheldon Cooper. That I knew this much at all when I was nine, I was not his brother either) Also, that some guy named Bernoullli has a physical law named after him that states that the pressure of a fluid drops as it's velocity increases.

Years later, while studying physics I came to find the part about Bernoulli's principle is correct. The other stuff is not. What causes the increase in the velocity of the air over the top, and produces the pressure drop as well, is a consequence of Newtons law of conservation of momentum. Since the air molecules adjacent to the surface of the wing are being forced in to a narrowing passage, they must either increase in density, increasing pressure, and hence adding energy, or gain speed to get out of the way. As one form of energy (velocity) increases, another form (pressure) must decrease to maintain equilibrium. This doesn't work unless there is an outside input of energy to propel the wing through the air. It could come from the muscles of a bird, an engine, or in the case of a glider, gravity.

The air molecules flowing over the top actually do not meet the ones flowing under the bottom at the same time.

 

The Geographic Centroid of the lower 48 states is just outside a dormitory on the campus of the University of Kansas in Lawrence. It is also the default location that Google Earth goes to when opened.

 

The term "sky pilot" has nothing to do with aircraft, and in fact predates the Wright Brothers' flight by decades. A sky pilot is a preacher.

 

The TV show The Brady Bunch ran from 1969-1974, almost spanning the entirety of Richard Nixon's presidency.

 

Coincidence?









Yes.

 

With a few minor exceptions, there are really only two ways to say “tea” in the world. One is like the English term—té in Spanish and tee in Afrikaans are two examples. The other is some variation of cha, like chay in Hindi.

 

Fellow Vagabond fan?

 

I do find it mildly amusing that when people ask for Chai Tea, they're asking for tea flavoured tea.

 

Um, no?

 

Taxi, with variations in spelling is common in almost all of the worlds languages. (Sorry, that one is actually kinda useful.)

 

My favorite supermarket tea is labeled. Chai Spice Tea, so it would be "Tea Spice Tea." Must be the beverage equivalent of "Bond. James Bond."

 

Ah, this had just popped up on a linguistics page I follow:

History of the Word Tea

 

Ah. That's the same place I read it, but I was linked to there by slashdot.

 

If a person is blown out of an airlock into the vacuum of space with out a space suit, they will survive for over a minute. The longer it takes to get them back to at least 4 psi, the more serious the medical effects will be. This includes a condition similar to the bends experienced by divers who surface too quickly, except instead of nitrogen, it is oxygen that effervesces from the blood.

There is an error in the scene from 2001 a Space Odyssey where Dave has to reenter the airlock without his helmet. Before blowing open the pod hatch, he takes a deep breath and holds it. To survive the jump through Vacuum, he should have opened his mouth the let the air expel from his lungs to prevent them from rupturing. A.C. Clark who consulted on the film should have caught this, being an avid diver himself.

 

I read an article on this discussing the differences between 2001: A Space Odyssey, the book and the film. Basically, the gist of it was, in the book, science prevailed, in the movie drama and visuals were king.