Useless Fun Facts, Anyone?

I remember 6 June 2006 - some people at my school thought the world was going to end on that day, lol.

 

The state sport of Maryland is jousting.

 

The time period we call Ancient Egypt lasted longer than the entire written history of the British Isles to date.

There were Roman aqueducts in use for several centuries after the Western Empire fell. Pretty sure some are still in use today.

The Colosseum in Rome doesn't have massive gaps in the walls because it fell apart, it has them because workers in later periods were using the stone for other stuff. That building was built to last.

Lions are native to Southern Europe. You can blame the Romans for them not being around anymore.

It is somewhat well known that British armored combat vehicles are always equipped with facilities for making tea, and that this is just about the most British thing ever. Less well known is the fact that American armored combat vehicles have that, too.

Gasoline is an accelerant, not an explosive. If you shoot a car's gas tank and get lucky enough to light a spark, you'll start a fire, not blow the car up. You can't blow up a car with gasoline.

The only mode of travel more energy efficient than an electric train is an airliner. The bigger the better. Bigger jets mean that the passenger load is increasing faster than the energy requirements to move the plane, which in turn means that the plane is getting more energy efficient as it gets larger, so long as it is filled near to capacity.

If you see workers putting what looks like duct tape on an airplane, don't worry. That's speed tape, and it is designed for that sort of thing. It's safe as long as the ground crew knows what they are doing (they almost always do).

Airliners and cargo planes almost never carry full fuel tanks. Filling the tanks means more weight, which means more energy, which means more fuel consumption and more expenses. Instead, flights calculate how much weight they expect to carry and how far they are traveling to determine how much fuel they need, then add a cushion in case of emergency.

---------- Post added 22nd Jun 2015 at 09:01 PM ----------

If you get your hands on a WW2 vintage M1 Garand, don't load civilian ammunition into the rifle without first checking to see if it has an adapter for civilian rounds installed. Modern civilian .30-06 ammunition is more powerful than what we were using in WW2, so if you just load it into an M1, you can break the gas mechanism that cycles the action. There is an adapter made for the rifle so it can shoot more powerful civilian rounds, and you need one of those if you want to own an M1 at all.

 

When carrying out an execution by firing squad, tradition is that one of the shooters fires a blank round, so that nobody knows if they killed the condemned or not. The thing is, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Blank rounds do not have recoil, as there is no bullet blocking the barrel, creating an easy path of no resistance for the force of the gunpowder. As a direct result, everybody on the firing squad would know full well whether they fired a live round or a blank, negating the reason to have a blank in the first place.

 

This is false.

This is also false as a gun needs recoil to power the mechanism that cycles the next round into the breach. The recoil carries less kick, but is still noticeable.


Anyways, I know millions of these kind of trivia facts, but I can never just come up with them on the spot, they just kind of pop out of me when something relevant comes up in discussion.

 

The Emancipation Proclamation didn't free all the slaves, only the ones who were in rebel states. The slaves in non-rebel states were still slaves (and yes, some slave states stayed loyal to the union).

And Constantine the Great didn't make Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire. He (along with Licinius) made the previously illegal religion legal by making all religions legal (in the Edict of Milan). It was Theodosius I (along with Valentinian II and Gratias) that made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire (in 380 AD in the Edict of Thessalonica). This is a mistake I've seen in books about Roman history and even newspaper articles. Drives me crazy.

 

That only applies to semiautomatic or automatic firearms, and they need a special adapter to channel some of the force of the shot into sufficient recoil to cycle the mechanism in order to function properly. If you felt a kick while firing blanks, that adapter is where it came from. If you fire a blank out of an M1 or M16 without an adapter, the mechanism isn't going to cycle at all do to a lack of recoil, and the shooter will have to manually cycle the action in order to chamber another round. The thing is, the adapters are very conspicuous, and they aren't fitted to the rifles used in executions.

 

Pineapple has an enzyme that degrades meat. When you eat pineapple, pineapple eats you too!

 

Potatoes and tomatoes are both parts of the nightshade family.

The square root of rope is string.

 

Lesbians are twice as likely as straight females to be left handed. I'm a leftie!
This would also support that homosexuals are "born that way" since handedness is an innate trait formed in the womb.
Is There a Link Between Left-Handedness and Homosexuality?

 

Hey... that's a pretty useful fact.

To add on to the biology behind it-- Did you know the more older brothers a male has, the more likely chance he has of being gay? (I have 2 older brothers-- females don't apply to this rule) The best part of this rule? It only applies to right handed males...

 

Phillipe, Duc D'Anjou, brother of Louis XIV, regent of Louis XV, and courageous fighter suffered from the "Italian Vice," homosexuality, and was a cross-dresser.

The Cuban Hummingbird, the world's smallest bird, is the size of a bumblebee.

Cary Grant never says, "Judy, Judy, Judy," in the movie, Only Angels Have Wings, despite being used by a number of impersonators.

The sea otter has the densest coat of fur approximately 1,000,000 hairs per inch. This insulates their bodies in frigid waters. Their skin remains dry. Sea otter lacks the extra layer of blubber or fat that is found in other aquatic mammals, and rely on their dense coats for insulation.

 

Norway owns this really neat Arctic island that has more polar bears than people.

Labrador retrievers come from Newfoundland, not Labrador.

The USA has a cool native primitive breed that lived among the Indians, sort of like a dingo but friendly.

A steppenwolf is just a coyote.

There is this really cool Jewish secular music called klezmer.

If I understand correctly, the easternmost part of Norway is actually to the east of Budapest, Hungary. Also, there are towns there that are actually fairly comfortable places to live, considering they are on the arctic coast.

The ancient Sumerians had a really cool creature that is like a reverse gryphon, called an "anzu bird." It is source of mischief, in most stories, and represents the south wind and whirlwinds.

Nietzsche was actually a very sensitive man who loved animals. He was so sensitive to the feelings of animals that he actually had his final psychological breakdown, compounded by his syphilis, after seeing a horse being beaten. He threw his arms around it to protect it. There is actually a movie based on the incident, called The Turin Horse.

Atlanta actually has a pretty cool heavy metal scene.

 

I've heard of that! It's pretty interesting.

 

-Adult cats don't really meow at each other to communicate; meowing seems to be a post-domestication extension of the "mewing" that kittens do. I.e. adults cats seem to only meow at humans.

-The words "grammar" and "glamour" come from the same root. So do "pyre" and "fire", and "skirt" and "shirt". Some other pairs: ward/guard, warranty/guarantee, warden/guardian.

-The rule "don't end a sentence with a preposition" was created by a bishop who was trying to make English more like Latin, a language with completely different rules from English. In other words, it's completely arbitrary So next time someone tells you you can't end a sentence with a preposition, bring that up.

 

Pennies used to be 95% copper until rising prices made them too expensive, so in 1982 pennies began to be made of 97.5% solid zinc and a 2.5% copper glaze. If you find a penny from 1982, it can be made of both the full copper or full zinc variety. Best way to tell is weigh it. Pre-82 copper pennies weigh close to 3.1 grams and post-82 zinc pennies weigh 2.5 grams. To this day, pennies are still produced at a net loss by the Treasury.

 

Cows have accents.

 

Curious. I always thought he was a kind-hearted sort, tarred by his adveraries.