the useless (but educational) trivia thread

[BillyVance 34]

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A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.

Now that's a serious biological alarm clock. I bet a lot of male ferrets get lucky when they're least expecting it.

Of course, at the other end of the spectrum, you have the Praying Mantis species. After the male and female have completed their sex session, the female eats the male. Kinda gives a whole new meaning to "hi honey, I'm ho-what the fuck?!?"

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[BikerBabe 0]

there are only four division NCAA division 1 football programs whose mascots meet the following criteria: they don't contain animals, colors, or end in "s".

Illinois (Fighting Illini)
Notre Dame (Fighting Irish)
Stanford (Cardinal - it's actually a tree)
US Naval Academy (Midshipmen)

disclaimer: this may be old, as ncaa adds schools to division 1 every year. was accurate when i was in college, though. I answered this question correctly when i was in college while sitting at a table full of members of the Air Force Football team.

if you can think of more, by all means, add them!

Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

[diablopilot 2]

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The A-10 Warthog's 30mm cannon firing produces more thrust backwards than both engines at full throttle produce forward.

An interesting read http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/GAU-8_Avenger_-_The_recoil_vs_forward_thrust_myth/id/5070495

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You're not as good as you think you are. Seriously.

[JohnMitchell 16]

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An interesting read http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/GAU-8_Avenger_-_The_recoil_vs_forward_thrust_myth/id/5070495

Yeah, googled it already. Read my 2nd post.
Like I said, who can trust what the "experts" write in their books anymore.

[silent_pumpkin 0]

The Blackberry was originally called the Strawberry (its buttons looked like seeds) but people at RIM thought it sounded 'slow'.

Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards, but do not walk very well (poorly developed feet).

A squirrel can climb down headfirst because it has special joints and bones in its hips/knees/ankles allowing it to rotate its hindfeet 180degrees.

The daguerreotype process (1st photos) was only discovered after exposure to mercury from a broken thermometer.

Penicillin was discovered when Fleming came back after a week-long vacation. By sheer 'luck', he kept a messy lab and went to clean his petri dishes. He discovered that Staph had continued to grow on the dishes, except where a fungus had contaminated them. Fleming had called this 'mould juice' but later identified it as from the Penicillium genus and thus, Penicillin as its product.

[freefallfreak 0]

The red stripes in peppermint candy canes have no flavor but were added as decoration.

TripleF

"Upon seeing the shadow of a pigeon, one must resist the urge to look up."

[Erroll 80]

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peanuts are actually NOT nuts; they're seeds legumes!

[AusJack 0]

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The 'Car Talk' show (on NPR) with Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers have a feature called the 'Puzzler', and their most recent 'Puzzler' was about the battle of Agincourt. The French, who were overwhelmingly favored to win the battle, threatened to cut a certain body part off of all captured English soldiers so that they could never fight again. The English won in a major upset and waved the body part in question at the French in defiance.

The 'puzzler' was: What was this body part?

This is the answer submitted by a listener:

Dear Click and Clack;

Thank you for the Agincourt 'Puzzler', which clears up some profound questions of etymology, folklore and emotional symbolism. The body part which the French proposed to cut off of the English after defeating them was, of course, the middle finger, without which it is impossible to draw the renowned English longbow. This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and so the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking yew". Thus, when the victorious English waved their middle
fingers at the defeated French, they said, "See, we can still pluck yew! PLUCK YEW!"

Over the years some 'folk etymologies' have grown up around this symbolic gesture. Since 'pluck yew' is rather difficult to say (like "pleasant mother pheasant plucker", which is who you had to go to for
the feathers used on the arrows), the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodental fricative 'f', and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute are
mistakenly thought to have something to do with an intimate encounter. It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird".

Actually it was the index finger AND the middle finger.
And "giving the bird" is very much an Americanism. I've never heard it in this country at all.....

Cheers>>Jack

[NealFitz 0]

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A blue moon is when 2 full moons occur within a month- they are so rare that they are called blue moons hence the phrase "once in a blue moon"

We are in a blue moon month now then.

You are correct there. the first one happened on 2 Dec and the next one is due on the 31st Dec :)

Dudeist Skydiver #170
You do not need a parachute to skydive, you only need one to skydive again

[Misternatural 0]

Ozzy Osbourne used to bite the heads off of rubber bats thrown on stage by fans during shows- he and every one else thought this was cool until one night he realized he was chewing on the head of a real dead bat someone threw on stage he finished the show and went to the hospital for a rabies shot.

Beware of the collateralizing and monetization of your desires.
D S #3.1415

[Andy9o8 2]

The principal lead guitarist in George Harrison's recording of While My Guitar Gently Weeps was not Harrison, it was Eric Clapton.

The principal lead guitarist in Cream's recording of Eric Clapton's song Layla was not Clapton, it was Duane Allman.

Duane Allman's first name was not Duane, it was Howard.

[Anta 0]

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About 98% of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, a sheet of ice averaging at least 1.6 km (1.0 mi) thick. The continent has about 90% of the world's ice (and thereby about 70% of the world's fresh water). If all of this ice were melted, sea levels would rise about 60 m (200 ft).

Do you really believe that? Frozen water will displace liquid water equal to its own weight, this is the reason ice floats (1 gram of ice takes up more space than 1 gram of liquid water).

Imagine an ice-cube, floating in a glass. Then imagine that you remove the ice-cube and are left with a "hole" in the glass of water where the cube was. If you then melt the ice cube, the resulting water will exactly fill the hole.

You can easily test this at home by putting some ice cubes in a glass and see if the level changes as it melts.

As long as the water isn't frozen solid the volume will not change.

[Andy9o8 2]

Most (much? whatever) of the Antarctic ice is on land - atop the Antarctic continent - not already floating in (and thus already displacing) sea water. So over-land ice that melts and flows into the sea would add to the current volume of water in the sea (aside from other factors like evaporation).

[NealFitz 0]

I studied this in depth (no pun ) at university. The melt of the polar ice caps is up for debate. If the Arctic sheets melted sea level rise would barely be affected for the reasons that Anta said. if you think of all the icebergs that are 90% under water it would only be them 10% contributing to sea level rise which at a global scale would be very little. However Andy makes a good point about the Antartic already being on land.

Therotically speaking global warming could create another ice age. the antartic (as well as other snow areas) have a very high albedo and thus reflect the sun's heat radiation back into the atmosphere into space keeping the temperatures cool. however as more ice breaks off the shelves more surface area is exposed reflecting even more heat back into space, cooling temperatures andkeeps going thus forth. but its only a theory

Dudeist Skydiver #170
You do not need a parachute to skydive, you only need one to skydive again

[warpedskydiver 0]

Yes Andy and if all the ice on the planet melted it would cause the seas to rise, the problem is it might not be even measurable.

It is all about surface area, the oceans and lakes of this planet dwarf the land, so considering that only a small percentage of land is covered in ice this will not appreciably effect the level of the seas.

[Niki1 1]

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A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes.

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I really don't won't to know how you found out about this factoid.

Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossilbe before they were done.
Louis D Brandeis

Where are we going and why are we in this basket?

[virgin-burner 1]

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A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes.

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I really don't won't to know how you found out about this factoid.

u dont get many emails,, do you!?

“Some may never live, but the crazy never die.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
"No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try."
-Yoda

[Niki1 1]

The A-10 does not slow down when it fires the gun - I have lots of friends that fly it, I've flown the sim and fought with/against it. Gun is just loud and shakes the jet, doesn't slow them down.

Darn, that factoid was out of a book I read on Gatling guns written by someone who supposedly helped develop the gun. Anyone got the numbers to calculate the recoil of the cannon? Here's some stuff I found on the web.

A persistent urban legend is that the recoil force of the Avenger matches that of the A-10's engines and as such the plane would slow down, stall and subsequently crash if the gun was to be fired for long periods of time. While the cannon does slow the aircraft when flying at high speed, it cannot stop the plane in mid-air. The recoil force can be calculated by multiplying the muzzle velocity with the mass of the projectiles over ...

Thanks for the correction. It's always nice to hear from someone who's got the inside scoop.


When the B-25 was being refitted as a ground suppoet aircraft, they tried a 105mm hoitzer in the nose. The program I saw on the History Channel said that the recoil "stopped the plane in flight". I think that was an exageration but the idea was scrpped. The ones with 6 (or was it 8) .50 cal. machine guns in the nose was problably the most awesome thing until Snoopy and Puff came along.

Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossilbe before they were done.
Louis D Brandeis

Where are we going and why are we in this basket?

[JohnMitchell 16]

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When the B-25 was being refitted as a ground suppoet aircraft, they tried a 105mm hoitzer in the nose. The ones with 6 (or was it 8) .50 cal. machine guns in the nose was problably the most awesome thing until Snoopy and Puff came along.

I'd seen models of the B-25 with a cannon in the nose. A quick google came up with the H model, 75 mm cannon in the nose, fielded in late '44, with 8 fixed forward firing .50's. The copilot position was removed to shoehorn the cannon in. It also said it wasn't easy to aim the cannon on the long, straight run ins, and many cannons were removed in the field. The 14 total .50 cals had plenty of punch on their own.

[sxc 0]

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About 98% of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, a sheet of ice averaging at least 1.6 km (1.0 mi) thick. The continent has about 90% of the world's ice (and thereby about 70% of the world's fresh water). If all of this ice were melted, sea levels would rise about 60 m (200 ft).

Do you really believe that? Frozen water will displace liquid water equal to its own weight, this is the reason ice floats (1 gram of ice takes up more space than 1 gram of liquid water).

Imagine an ice-cube, floating in a glass. Then imagine that you remove the ice-cube and are left with a "hole" in the glass of water where the cube was. If you then melt the ice cube, the resulting water will exactly fill the hole.

You can easily test this at home by putting some ice cubes in a glass and see if the level changes as it melts.

As long as the water isn't frozen solid the volume will not change.

That is not entirely true. Water expands when frozen and so your experiment with the ice cube removed and leaving a "hole" in the water, will not be completely filled with the water from the melted ice cube. Water has a maximum density at 4 degrees C. It is one of a few substances that expand when frozen - most contract when they get colder!

And the ice-cubes in the glass would overflow the glass if you could completely fill the glass with the same volume of ice. A better test would be, to fill a container with water and freeze that. If the container cannot expand, it will break when the water freezes.

[BillyVance 34]

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Ozzy Osbourne used to bite the heads off of rubber bats thrown on stage by fans during shows- he and every one else thought this was cool until one night he realized he was chewing on the head of a real dead bat someone threw on stage he finished the show and went to the hospital for a rabies shot.

That happened in Canada at a concert that a friend of mine went to. He had front row seats. Lucky bastard

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[Misternatural 0]

SHARON!!


The doc was prolly like- "Mr Osbourne, by the looks of you....I think you needed a rabies shot a long time ago."

Beware of the collateralizing and monetization of your desires.
D S #3.1415

[jcd11235 0]

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Ozzy Osbourne used to bite the heads off of rubber bats thrown on stage by fans during shows- he and every one else thought this was cool until one night he realized he was chewing on the head of a real dead bat someone threw on stage he finished the show and went to the hospital for a rabies shot.

That happened in Canada at a concert that a friend of mine went to. He had front row seats. Lucky bastard

According to Rolling Stone, it happened in Des Moines.

"One night in Des Moines, someone threw a live bat onstage. Stunned by the lights, the bat lay motionless. Osbourne, thinking it was a rubber toy, bit into its neck. He was rushed to the hospital and tested for rabies."

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[BillyVance 34]

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Ozzy Osbourne used to bite the heads off of rubber bats thrown on stage by fans during shows- he and every one else thought this was cool until one night he realized he was chewing on the head of a real dead bat someone threw on stage he finished the show and went to the hospital for a rabies shot.

That happened in Canada at a concert that a friend of mine went to. He had front row seats. Lucky bastard

According to Rolling Stone, it happened in Des Moines.

"One night in Des Moines, someone threw a live bat onstage. Stunned by the lights, the bat lay motionless. Osbourne, thinking it was a rubber toy, bit into its neck. He was rushed to the hospital and tested for rabies."

Hmmm.... guess my friend has a knack for embellishment...

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[wmw999 2,439]

Social Security numbers are issued according to the US state you were associated with at the time of issue. That's because in 1936 the records weren't computerized, and that made it easier to find which office issued it.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)