Exilian

Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter => History, Science, and Interesting Information - The Great Library => Topic started by: Jubal on October 26, 2010, 10:03:41 PM

Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Jubal on October 26, 2010, 10:03:41 PM
Post a fact you bet we all didn't know, attempting to get as many as possible!

1. You can have a working typewriter with only 4 keys (slider to select 1 of 26 places, button for the alphabet option in each place, button for a second number/punctuation charset, button for space).

Continue!
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Silver Wolf on October 26, 2010, 10:45:19 PM
2. The blue whale has the largest tongue in the animal kingdom ... It is the size of an elephant !
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: comrade_general on October 26, 2010, 10:51:39 PM
Ummm, some of you might know a bit of this:
3. Neanderthal man lived along side modern man up to as late as 20,000BC when the Sahara wasn't yet a desert (and it's speculated that the Nile flowed east across it). It's also speculated that early 'homo erectus' humans were still around in the orient, but not as late, which means there were possibly 3 species of humans on the planet at the same time. (I find this stuff fascinating)  B)
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Silver Wolf on October 27, 2010, 02:04:49 PM
4. Everybody knows what "Soul Kiss" is.  We also call it the French kiss, but surprisingly, the French call this "The English Kiss".
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Jubal on October 27, 2010, 08:00:19 PM
5. The French term for the English in the 100 Years' War was "Godams", because "God Damn" was all they ever seemed to say.

(Comrade, look up Homo Floresiensis - can't remember when they think it evolved, but it could bring your total to four)
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: comrade_general on October 27, 2010, 10:59:49 PM
Ah yes, the "hobbit" people. I've heard of them, but they haven't been confirmed as a separate species.

6. Blue eyes are thought to have arisen from a single individual in the Near East or around the Black Sea region 6,000 - 10,000 years ago.

One fact I'd like to denounce is that you can't sneeze with your eyes open. Bull! Done it myself multiple times (and not holding them open like on Mythbusters).
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: comrade_general on October 29, 2010, 03:24:08 AM
7. We use more than the mythical 10% of our brains; upwards of 35% or more and around 15% even when we're not trying to use it. (from Mythbusters last night)
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: DeepComet5581 on October 29, 2010, 04:10:18 PM
8. There are 170,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ways to play the ten opening moves in a game of chess

9. The human body can survive without the stomach or large intestine

10. I have the same birthday as the first Sainsbury's Supermarket (July 31st)

11. Negative matter will get you past the light speed barrier

12. McDonald's is the world's largest distributor of toys

13. Disney has the world's 4th largest flotilla

14. Mercury is the only known metal to be a liquid at room temperature

15. In solid form, Hydrogen has metallic properties

16. Mercury's day is longer than it's year

17. Plutonium didn't exist on Earth until humans came along.

18. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words

19. Jimmy Carter was the first US president to be born in a hospital

20. if you lined up the population of china in a eight person wide line and had them march by you, the line would never end

I have hundreds of these.
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: comrade_general on October 29, 2010, 06:40:17 PM
Did you just copy them from a google search :P
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: DeepComet5581 on October 30, 2010, 10:33:35 AM
Quote from: "comrade_general"
Did you just copy them from a google search :P
An autistic brother, actually :P
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Silver Wolf on November 02, 2010, 11:00:20 PM
21. It takes 75kg of raw materials to make a mobile phone.
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Jubal on November 03, 2010, 04:23:19 PM
It does concern me how much of the world's resources we're using without even knowing it...
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: comrade_general on November 04, 2010, 12:20:20 AM
22. We can do whatever we want to the planet; in the long term it doesn't care.  :ninja:
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Jubal on November 04, 2010, 11:25:22 PM
Can we keep the debatable/political points out of here?

Since that needs a reply though;
23. We can do whatever we want to ANYTHING without it "caring" in the long run, it just doesn't mean we or our society will survive the consequences.

Now back to fact, gentlemen! Solid, reliable, non-debatable fact!
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Marcus on November 05, 2010, 01:36:30 AM
24. I was once TW Admin.
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: comrade_general on November 05, 2010, 12:12:22 PM
That was a fact, it was on the history channel.
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Jubal on November 06, 2010, 08:48:03 PM
Ah, but without a good definition of "doesn't care" it's a pretty meaningless fact anyway. The planet's not sentient, so in that sense it CAN'T care.
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: comrade_general on November 06, 2010, 11:54:21 PM
"doesn't care" means that given a long enough time the planet will self-repair any damage done to it.
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Jubal on November 07, 2010, 11:21:55 AM
Well to an extent that's pretty obvious, we've had mass extinctions before and life has recovered. On the other hand, the "repaired" world is usually very, very different to the one it left behind prior to said damage.
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Son of the King on December 03, 2010, 05:14:12 AM
some number..) I was very cold until yesterday, as I had a broken radiator, no heater and 6 inches of snow...
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Jubal on December 14, 2010, 01:50:46 PM
26. For static protests in the UK (not marches), there is no legal obligation to inform anyone including police beforehand.
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Goldyrulz on December 14, 2010, 08:57:25 PM
Hmmmmm..... then why did you??????
And how static can it be? People will still move around.....

and on a side not for anybody interested (should be everybody, all 5 [estimate] of us seemingly...)

Jubal was in a police interview room talking about the "protest"
Now think whatever you want to think..... ;)
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Jubal on December 20, 2010, 10:00:58 PM
27. Walking into wardrobes doesn't actually take you into other worlds. Usually it just takes you into a cloudy haze of ancient garments and mothballs.
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Calisthenis of Green Day on December 26, 2010, 01:57:50 PM
A two-metre crocodile that can crush a pig skull with the slightest movement can't open it's jaw if it's tied by a rubber band.
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Jubal on January 08, 2011, 06:13:08 PM
The world's first public smoking ban was implemented by Pope Urban VII (also the shortest reigning pope ever) in 1590.
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: I_Forgot_My_Name on January 10, 2011, 11:44:53 PM
30? I'll go for 30, correct me if I'm wrong:

30: Of the world's 100 largest economic entities, 51 are now corporations and 49 are countries, with General Motors, Ford Motor and Wal-Mart having a higher GDP per sales than countries such as Norway, Poland and Indonesia.

31: The first pok
Title: 500 things I bet you didn't know
Post by: Captain Carthage on January 23, 2011, 09:58:42 PM
32. The little bit of plastic that's on the end of shoelaces is called an aglet.