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Re: stupid/strange little facts thread
- 'Jedi' is an official religion, with over 70,000 followers, in Australia.
- California has issued at least 6 drivers licenses to people named Jesus Christ.
- Most alcoholic beverages contain all 13 minerals necessary to sustain human life.
- The creator of the NIKE Swoosh symbol was paid only $35 for the design.
- More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.
- Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
- If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
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Re: stupid/strange little facts thread
You can't be double-jointed. It's physically impossible. You're just really bendable if that's a word. To be double jointed you'd have to have two joints in the same place which is not possible as a joint is the location that two or more bones make contact.
And that China population walking by you is amazing.
Tipping at a restaurant in Iceland is considered an insult.
The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache on a standard playing card.
Of all the words in the English language, the word set has the most definitions.MLB: St. Louis Cardinals
NBA: New York Knicks
NFL: Houston Texans, St. Louis Rams
NCAA: Georgia Tech Yellow JacketsComment
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Steelers : IX, X, XIII, XIV, XL, XLIII
Penguins : 1990/91, 1991/92, 2008/09, 20015/16, 2016/17
Pirates : 1909, 1925, 1960, 1971, 1979
Panthers (FB): 1915, 1916, 1918, 1929, 1931, 1934, 1936, 1937, 1976
Panthers (MBB): 1927/28, 1929/30Comment
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Re: stupid/strange little facts thread
Or you could just sit down and compare them. You don't even need to really stretch, just sit cross-legged.Comment
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Re: stupid/strange little facts thread
This isn't really unusual, but a lot of people don't see to know it.
The highest peak in eastern North America is Mt. Mitchell, located in Yancey County, NC. A lot of people seem to think that Mt. Washington is the highest mountain in eastern North America, but this is not even close to the top of the list as 19 peaks in North Carolina alone rise above Mt. Washington's altitude. Tennessee has 10 peaks that rise above Mt. Washington, as well. The Black Mountains of North Carolina, which are located north of Asheville, are responsible for many of these high peaks.
So, Mt. Washington is the 30th-highest mountain in the eastern United States, at best.Comment
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Re: stupid/strange little facts thread
Not really a stupid fact but a cool one.
During the Cold War, had North Dakota been it's own country, it would have been the world's third most powerful nuclear country. Strategically and geographically, ND was a perfect location for warheads to be stationed, so, the US had them placed at Minot AFB and Grand Forks AFB(and satellite areas around the rest of the state)
I got to take a tour of one of the bunkers and where they stored the warheads(thanks to dad being in the AF, that's also why I live here). It was pretty cool.
Both AFBs are still around but aren't as significant as they were during the Cold War era. To my knowledge, there are no warheads in the state anymore.Huskers | Chelsea FC | Minnesota United | OmahaComment
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Re: stupid/strange little facts thread
Just got this in an e-mail and I thought it went well with the premise of this thread:
If that is true, then it is quite interesting as it exemplifies one thing can result in a chain of events throughout history.Railroad tracks.
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the US railroads.
Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.
Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's *** came up with this?' , you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.)
Now, the twist to the story:
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah
The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ***. And you thought being a horse's *** wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost everythingComment
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Re: stupid/strange little facts thread
yeah that was pretty cool.
The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog." uses every letter of the alphabet
The car manufacturer Henry Ford was awarded Hitler's Supreme Order of the German Eagle.
The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.Comment
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Re: stupid/strange little facts thread
Have you ever looked at the back of a $5 bill....on weed????
<a href="http://s78.photobucket.com/albums/j84/imtellintim/?action=view¤t=stewart_half_baked.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j84/imtellintim/stewart_half_baked.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
If you add up the digits of any number divisible by 9, the sum will also be divisible by 9.
9 x 958,431 = 8,625,879 8+6+2+5+8+7+9=45
9 x 1,645,879,623 = 14,812,916,607 1+4+8+1+2+9+1+6+6+0+7=45Comment
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Re: stupid/strange little facts thread
I found this article interesting about the origins of the Peace Symbol:
Have you ever wondered where the peace symbol came from?
The peace symbol combines a circle, a vertical line, and downward sloping lines.
Throughout history the peace symbol was not always used in the spirit of love and service to humanity. For this reason, the Teach Peace Foundation logo is not a traditional peace symbol but people around the world holding hands.
A popular explanation of the peace symbol is that Gerald Herbert Holtom (1914 - 1985) created this symbol on February 21, 1958.1 At that time Holtom worked with the Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War. Holtom was a dedicated peacemaker and graduate of the Royal College of Arts. During World War II he worked on a farm in England as a conscientious objector. The BBC quoted Holtom, "I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad."2 The picture on the right shows one of Holtom's first sketches of the peace symbol.
Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970), a philosopher, historian, mathematician, and a member of the Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War, supported Holtom's claim. Russell wrote, “It was invented by a member of our movement (Gerald Holtom) as the badge of the Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War, for the 1958 Aldermaston peace walk in England. It was designed from the naval code of semaphore, and the symbol represents the code letters for ND.'” The code ND for Nuclear Disarmament is shown on the right.3
The circle, representing the concept of total or complete, surrounds the N and D signifying total or complete nuclear disarmament.
American journalist and playwright Herb Greer adds support for the Holtom explanation. He reported, “I was actually there on and before the first Aldermaston march for which it was created. I visited Holtom, I saw the original sketches and discussed it with him.”
Ken Kolsbun, author of the book Peace: The Biography of a Symbol, reported that Holtom expressed regret in not designing the peace symbol with the joyful lifting of arms towards the sky.4 For most of Holtom's life he would draw only the upright peace symbol. Holtom requested that the upright peace symbol be placed on his tombstone in Kent, England. As shown by the picture of his tombstone, his wish was unfortunately ignored.5
Holtom's wish that the peace symbol connotation of despair be changed to joy is illustrated by the picture on the right. When the peace symbol is inverted the letter "N" becomes the semaphore code for "U" which could mean universal disarmament.6
While it appears reasonable that the modern day peace symbol comes from Gerald Holtom, this logic fails to address the fact that the symbol has been used for evil both in modern times and for thousands of years.
This same symbol was used by Hitler's 3rd Panzer Division from 1941 to 1945. The image on the left is the regimental 3rd Panzer Division symbol. Soviet, Polish, and Hungarian citizens, having suffered from the Nazi massacres, undoubtedly struggled with Holtom’s use of the symbol as a thoughtful way to communicate peace. The symbol can also be found on some of Hitler's SS soldiers' tombstones.7
Another flaw in the Holtom creation story is the use of the symbol as an anti-Christian symbol by the Saracens as early as 711 A.D.8 For the Saracens, the image placed on their shields symbolized the breaking of the Christian cross. For some the broken cross was equated to a satanic symbol known as the raven's craw or witch's foot. While Holtom may not have known the historical meaning of the peace symbol, Bertrand Russell was a historian and member of the Fabian Society. A 1970 article in the American Opinion magazine claimed Russell knew the historical occult meaning and intentionally selected an "anti-Christian design long associated with Satanism."9
The fifth and final Roman emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Nero (born Lucius Domitius Ahenabarbus 37 - 68 AD), is remembered in history for persecuting Christians. Nero's rule was so wicked he even had his mother executed. The First Roman-Jewish War (66 - 70 AD) started during his reign and today the term "Nero Cross" is the symbol of the "broken Jew" or "broken cross." The most famous person believed to be crucified by Nero was the Apostle Peter. To symbolize humility and unworthiness in comparison to Christ, Peter requested that he be crucified with his head toward the ground. As a result of Peter's death the upside down cross was used by early Christians as a positive symbol for peace.
The symbol of the upside down cross changes its meaning when the person on the upside down cross is no longer Peter but Jesus. Anti-religious and satanic groups use the "Nero Cross" or inverted "Latin Cross" to symbolize everything opposite of Christianity. Today this is clearly illustrated by "black metal" or heavy metal music lyrics and imagery that communicate anti-Christian sentiments.10 An album cover for the black metal group, Mayhem, is shown on the left. The first letter "M" in "Mayhem" and the last "m" depict the upside down cross. In addition to musicians, film makers have reinforced the notion that the upside down cross is an anti-Christian symbol as illustrated by The Omen in 1976 and The Exorcism of Emily Rose in 2005.
The symbol has also been used to communicate support for communism. Bertrand Russell once said: “There is no hope in anything but the Soviet way.” Governments--both those who supported communism and those opposed to it--have perceived benefits in aligning the peace symbol with communist ideology. For people like Bertrand Russell, the author of the 1927 essay Why I Am Not Christian, the symbol represented not only a pro-communism meaning but peace without God.11
The confusion about what the modern day peace symbol means is further clouded by the founder of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey. LaVey used the symbol as the backdrop for his alter.12 Rudolf Koch's Book of Signs explains the downward pointed fork represents the death of man.13 Placed in the circle the symbol means the total death of all people which is the exact opposite of what Holtom worked to prevent with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
While the anti-God, communist and death of man arguments are far from representative of the majority of people that carry or wear a peace symbol, they can frustrate the sincere efforts of peacemakers.
Today because many people carry the symbol without understanding the history, we miss an opportunity to address historical uses and move forward to reclaim the symbol for good.14
When you see the peace symbol, I encourage you to see the person displaying it as communicating a message of love.
If you display the peace symbol, my recommendation is point the arms of the peace symbol toward the sky to honor Holtom's wish, address historical objections, and communicate love of all people.
Dave Dionisi, Teach Peace FoundationComment
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