Tell Me Something I Don't Know

[sms001]

Weird, random trivia bits:

And several fun ones as well! Thanks.

[SongsOfDragons]

On the subject of tornados, the UK get a few too...more per capita than the US!!

Though that's not hard, and they're not movie-worthy damaging. One passed through Romsey some years ago and I remember the cloudburst of thick rain that destroyed all visibility that accompanied it in Winchester.

[KhirasHY]

Since we mentioned QI (and I've been watching it nonstop since), here's some fun trivia that made the airwaves on that show:

1 When customers visited the UK’s first supermarkets they were afraid to pick up goods in case they were told off.

2 Women buy 80% of everything that is for sale.

3 Nelson Mandela was not removed from the US terror watch list until 2008.

4 The founder of match.com, Gary Kremen, lost his girlfriend to a man she met on match.com.

5 The proud owner of the first silicone breast implant was a dog called Esmeralda.

6 In 1915, the lock millionaire Cecil Chubb bought his wife Stonehenge. She didn’t like it, so in 1918 he gave it to the nation.

7 Thomas Edison’s last breath is held in a vial at the Henry Ford museum in Detroit.

8 A pumping human heart can squirt blood 30ft.

9 In ancient Greek the word “idiot” meant anyone who wasn’t a politician.

10 Jimmy Carter once sent a jacket to the cleaner’s with the nuclear detonation codes still in the pocket.

11 The second man to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, Bobby Leach, survived the fall but later died as a result of slipping on a piece of orange peel.

12 Just like humans, British cows moo in regional accents.

13 Every year, 4 million cats are eaten in Asia.

14 Under Chairman Mao, every Chinese family was obliged to kill a sparrow a week to stop them eating all the rice. The project was ineffective because sparrows don’t eat rice.

15 John Cleese’s father’s surname was Cheese. Cleese grew up 10miles from Cheddar and his best friend at school was called Barney Butter.

16 The last private resident of 10 Downing Street was a Mr Chicken.

17 The shortest war ever fought was between Britain and Zanzibar on August 27, 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.

18 The sun’s core is so hot that a piece of it the size of a pinhead would give off enough heat to kill a person 160 kilometres away.

19 Liechtenstein, the world’s sixth smallest country, is the largest exporter of false teeth.

20 Michael J Fox’s middle name is Andrew.

21 In 1811, nearly a quarter of all the women in Britain were named Mary.

22 In 1881, there were only six men in Britain called Derek.

23 Only 4 Clives and 13 Trevors were born in the UK in 2011.

24 It’s unsafe for travellers to rely on St Christopher any more: he lost his sainthood in 1969.

25 Until 1913, children in America could legally be sent by parcel post.

26 China is the world’s largest supplier of Bibles: one factory in Nanjing prints a million a month.

27 Ants can survive in a microwave: they are small enough to dodge the rays.

28 Heroin was originally marketed as cough medicine.

29 The Nazis made it illegal on pain of death for apes to give the Heil Hitler salute.

30 When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, one of the suspects was Picasso.

31 The Dyslexia Research Centre is in Reading.

32 The United States of America maintains a military presence in 148 of the 192 United Nations countries.

33 If you drilled a tunnel straight through the Earth and jumped in, it would take you exactly 42 minutes and 12 seconds to get to the other side.

34 Beyonce Knowles is an 8th cousin, four times removed, of Gustav Mahler.

35 All but one of the ravens at the Tower of London died from stress during the Blitz.

36 George W Bush and Saddam Hussein had their shoes hand-made by the same Italian cobbler.

37 In his first year at Harrow, Winston Churchill was bottom of the whole school.

38 The Irish poet Brendan Behan became an alcoholic at the age of eight.

39 In Afghanistan and Iraq it takes 250,000 bullets (three tons of ammunition) to kill each insurgent.

40 Baseball legend Babe Ruth always wore a cabbage leaf under his cap to keep his head cool. In South Korea, this is considered unsporting, unless the player has a doctor’s note.

41 Under extreme high pressure, diamonds can be made from peanut butter. (Note, QI said this on the show...but I think it was disproven Not sure)

42 The citizens of Kuwait celebrated the end of the first Gulf War by firing weapons into the air. 20 Kuwaitis died as a result of bullets falling from the sky.

43 The Sami people of northern Finland use a measure called Poronkusema: the distance a reindeer can walk before needing to urinate.

44 In 2009, a retired policeman called Geraint Woolford was admitted to Abergale Hospital in north Wales and ended up next to another retired policeman called Geraint Woolford. The men weren’t related, had never met and were the only two people in the UK called Geraint Woolford.

45 In 1999, Darlington FC acquired 50,000 worms to irrigate their waterlogged pitch. They all drowned.

46 Edmund Hillary, right, the first man to climb Everest, was a professional beekeeper. When filling in forms, he always gave his occupation as “apiarist”.

47 Tintin is called Tantan in Japanese because TinTin is pronounced ‘Chin chin’ and means penis.

48 The water in the mouth of a blue whale weighs more than its body.

49 Saddam’s bunker was designed by the grandson of the woman who built Hitler’s bunker.

50 The first-ever edition of the Daily Mirror came with a free mirror.

[Jester]

4 The founder of match.com, Gary Kremen, lost his girlfriend to a man she met on match.com.

Now that's hilariously ironic!

12 Just like humans, British cows moo in regional accents.

As funny as this is, it is rather likely that it is false. Most stories stating this cite a phonetics professor's comments on the subject. The problem is, they're completely misquoting him. They took his "it's possible but highly unlikely" and made it into a "yes." See his complete comments here

48 The water in the mouth of a blue whale weighs more than its body.

Also untrue. While the blue whale can hold a staggering amount of food and/or water in its mouth--close to 100 tons!--that is only about half the blue whale's weight, give or take a few tons.

Check it out here, and scroll done to "Size."

More interesting to me about a blue whale is that they are not only the largest animal currently living, they are the largest animal known to have EVER lived, dwarfing the biggest dinosaur known to have existed.

[Tama]

They're bigger than a (I think I have it right) MEGALODON?

[Jester]

While they can only estimate what a megalodon weighed, as they are extinct, their estimations for the largest ones come in at approximately half the weight of a blue whale. Still very huge and massive....and still not even approaching the blue whale.

Here's a visual aid to show you how massive these guys are.

[dalesys]

The Hebrew word for "frog" sounds very much like the word for "French".

Maybe there is something to British Israelism after all...

[KhirasHY]

Here's another one from QI: Why do we have two words in English for various animals, such as Cow and Beef, or Sheep and Mutton? It comes from old England, where there was a disconnect for many of the aristocrats in society never actually seeing the living versions of animals, but only consuming the slaughtered versions as food. Eventually, it resulted in two words being used, differing based on the status of the animal, so a Cow is a living animal, for food, the French word would be used: "bœuf", which later became "beef." The same thing applies with "mouton" which is French for sheep's meet, and is a colloquialism as "mutton" in English. There are quite a few words in English that borrow from other languages, which is why so many words are recognizable across language barriers.

Speaking of words, there are a long list of words that William Shakespear created (or that are attributed to him, at least), some of which caught on and are still used today, including: Assassination, accused, addiction, aroused, amazement, backing, bandit, elbow, gossip, skim milk, swagger, zany, and grovel. There are around 100 or so that I could type, but I'm too lazy

[wolfie]

44 In 2009, a retired policeman called Geraint Woolford was admitted to Abergale Hospital in north Wales and ended up next to another retired policeman called Geraint Woolford. The men weren’t related, had never met and were the only two people in the UK called Geraint Woolford.

One I've heard about is that in 1895, there were 2 cars in the state of Ohio. They crashed.

[KhirasHY]

If you would try to subsist on a diet of nothing but duck, you would die. Unlike some other meats, it doesn't provide the correct vitamins to keep you going for long, unless you supplement with other foods.

[El Pollo Guerrera]

The recipe for Duck Soup:

"Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you'll duck soup for the rest of your life." - Groucho Marx

[KhirasHY]

Here's another one from QI: contrary to popular belief, Jesse Owens was never snubbed by Adolf Hitler during the Olympics in 1936. On the first day of the games, Hitler famously congratulated only the German athletes, and was told by the Olympic Commission that he must either congratulate all winners or none of them, so he stopped congratulating anyone. It is because of that matter that we have the myth. In fact, his German opponent Luz Long actually offered him some technical advice during one event (confirmed by Owens) that led to his qualifying in the event, creating a strong friendship between the two (until Long's death during WWII).

However, based on quotes from Owens himself, he was more spurned by Franklin Roosevelt, who never congratulated him (as he did other medal winners), and never invited him to the White House for the celebration.

"Hitler didn't snub me – it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram."

He was given a ticker tape parade upon his return to New York, but upon arriving at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, where the celebration event was held for the winners, he was required to enter the building using the service elevator, since the guest elevator was for whites only. Additionally, there was a tournament in Sweden just after the Olympics, but Owens returned to the US hoping to capitalize upon his success. Instead, he was expelled from the American Amateur Atheletics Union, preventing him from being able to participate in any regular competition within the US. To make ends meet for his family, he was forced to perform as a sort of sideshow act, racing against horses, cars, and so on. He also worked as a janitor at a children's playground, and a pump attendant at a gas station.

He partnered with two men to open a dry cleaning operation just a few years after his return, but his partners turned out to be conmen and he was forced to declare bankruptcy. Despite all of this, he was constantly called upon to give commentary about public events, and grew a noted distrust of any type of politics.

Too bad, if he had been an olympic athlete in this age, he would've been treated far better...one would hope, anyway.

[fireheart]

A couple of kids TV show fun factoids:

-The TV show "Art Attack" had the presenter (Neil Buchanan) wearing a bright red jumper. That jumper had to be specially made using a particular material, because red was hard to pick up correctly on cameras at the time of filming. Each jumper cost 700 pounds.

-The Australian TV show Bananas in Pyjamas was based off of the song "Bananas in Pyjamas" which involved teddy-chasing. There were very few instances of actual teddy-chasing on the series and the bananas and teddies lived side-by-side harmoniously.

-The VA for one of the teddies on the show (Who had this weird French/Greek accent) is now the announcer for SydneyRail. (although it's not that obvious)

-The targeted market of the show was kids between the ages of 2-7 (roughly). Despite this, there was an entire episode stemming around the Bananas being NAKED. This somehow escaped the censor. (The episode was titled "Naked Bananas" and the whole episode was basically the Bananas trying to cover up while their PJs dried)

-On the note of censorship, Adventure Time in Australia is aired on two different TV networks: Cartoon Network (pay-TV) and Go! (on free-to-air TV). Cartoon Network seems to continually censor the episodes, shaving a few seconds off here and there for completely ridiculous reasons (one example touted was the removal of the word "Screwball" because it was believed to relate to nudity and removing the expression "jam on" because it sounded sexual)....but the channel Go(!), despite being subject to the same restrictions as Cartoon Network (to a point) airs the episodes in their uncut glory and in child-friendly timeslots.

-On the episode "Island of the Giant Pokemon" in the original Pokemon series, there's a scene where the separated Pokemon are at a food/alcohol stand lamenting their fate. Pikachu and Charmander are comforting Koffing and Ekans (who are upset), while Meowth and Bulbasaur get drunk (Bulbasaur gets angry drunk and starts yelling at Squirtle, Meowth just passes out). Somehow this particular scene was kept in, but left untranslated. (If you look at Bulbasaur's "face", the area between his eyes and mouth is red-striped, indicating drunkenness)

[KhirasHY]

Rats have been found to laugh when tickled. The sound is inaudible to human ears, but using a bat detectors (or similar device), the sound can be amplified to be heard.

It's also fucking adorable.

[fireheart]

The author of Mary Poppins (P.L. Travers) attended school in the area that I'm now living in.