OT: Share useless Trivia!

[ColonelHardisson]

I read in Stephen Ambrose's "D-Day" of those Korean soldiers - apparently this is a true story.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

Wow, isn't this thread just filled with material that will get you marked as the most insignificant know-it-all at ay party.

This is great!

World Series: So in fact in the americans do not have a good excuse for calling the playoff the World Series beside egomania? Who'd have thought.

Some of this knowledge is barely useless; The real name of Lenin and ''Who was Stalin's Foreign Minister'' are actually question I've had to answer on a test before. But then I studied political science and had a class on USSR so...

Some of my favorite that I already knew; The poor chap who was struck by lightning seven time and commited suicide. The Basquee language being unique. The Devil's advocate. Nobel and Dynamite.

Some of the best new one (if all true): Korean soldier defending Normandy Beach! Elephants can't jump (Well, I remember cartoons where the tamer made the elephant stand on a stool and jump through a hoop...). Farting constantly and the atomic bomb (dubious, but funny). Boeing Wingspan and wright's flight.

Hey, keep it up.

 

[Numion]

I am not sure I believe that one. How many people each year actually die from asteroid collisions? None that I have ever heard of.

Well, in the past HUGE asteroids have hit earth. One such could destroy the whole human race. I guess the chances that such an event happens in your lifetime is larger than the chance of you dying in a plane crash. ("you" being an average human).

And remember, were talking about the whole planet. Most of the humans on this planet never fly. All can be killed by an asteroid.

 

[Douane]

Hitler was born a bastard son to one Schickelgrüber. By sheer luck his uncle happened to be in the town at the time of the birth and gave him the name Hitler. Or bad luck, since would've the nazi regime worked with "Heil Schickelgrüber!"?

Unfortunately, your source seems to have it's facts a little bit twisted.

In fact, Adolf's father was born a bastard (while A.H. himself was not one) with the name of Alois Schicklgruber. 13 years before A.H. was born Alois changed his name into Hitler to match the name of his foster-father, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler.


Just a small correction I wanted to add for the sake of historical truth!

Folkert

 

[Numion]

Well, in the past HUGE asteroids have hit earth. One such could destroy the whole human race. I guess the chances that such an event happens in your lifetime is larger than the chance of you dying in a plane crash. ("you" being an average human).

And remember, were talking about the whole planet. Most of the humans on this planet never fly. All can be killed by an asteroid.

Actually I'll correct myself. Science site I checked put the chances of dying in asteroid hit vs. plane crash at about the same. You're much more likely to die from electrocution.

You've got about one in 300 million chance of dying from a shark attack, though. Not very likely

 

[Numion]

I read in Stephen Ambrose's "D-Day" of those Korean soldiers - apparently this is a true story.

I'll be damned. Well, when you've got tens of millions of people trying to kill each other, some pretty strange stuff is bound to happen. Like the paratrooper who took a flak hit in the chest. Of the 88mm type.

Another piece of war trivia: In the defense of Stalingrad the soviets executed one divisions worth of their own troops.

 

[Fred Delles]

(Correct some of these if I'm wrong.)

No U.S. President has ever been an only child. There has been only one bachelor President (James Buchanen).

The bulletproof vest, the fire escape, the windshield wiper, and the first computer bug were all invented or discovered by women.

The initial print run of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was only 3,500 (?) copies.

The first Harry Potter book was rejected by publishers nine times.

In 1989, Back to the Future Part II held the all-time record for a movie's opening week.

You cannot sneeze with your eyes open.

Sega, a major Japanese video gaming company, was founded by an American (David Rosen), and in 1957.

 

[s/LaSH]

In the middle ages Black clothing was extremely expensive, because it was so difficult to die cloth that dark.

The ancient Romans used lead powder to sweeten their wine.

In antique times (antique meaning Roman and before), purple clothing extremely expensive because purple dye could only be obtained from certain small shellfish that were quite rare. (The Histories of Herodotus makes mention of many gifts to the Delphic Oracle: six jars of gold, a lifesize silver statue of Apollo, and a dozen purple tunics is a typical gift.)

Mauve dye was invented in the 19th century and was based on coal. Before then, mauve did not exist.

The ancient Romans used lead for their water pipes. They called lead plumbum, from which we get both lead's symbol Pb and the word 'plumbing' for piping.

A group of ferrets is called a "business."

A group of crows is called a murder. (And do ravens have parliaments? I can't remember.)

"Americans, for nearly two centuries, lived as the world's tallest human beings. Averaging 172 centimeters in the year 1750, American men towered over English and Norwegians by seven centimeters, Austrians by six, and Swedes by five.

But, somehow, things changed. Young Dutchmen, once among the shortest in Europe, today lead the pack at 183 centimeters, or just over six feet tall, while Americans, who gained just four centimeters in the last 250 years, are shorter than all of them. "

Source: http://www.oberlin.edu/~alummag/oamcurrent/oam_may99/tall.html

I knew the Dutch were the tallest in the world, but I had to back it up with my 174 cm (5'9") now didn't I?

Rav

Actually, the African Masai are rumoured to be extraordinarily tall, although I have no exact figures. Taller even than the Dutch, though. (And I knew a dutch kid who was taller than I am now when he was in secondary school.)

Now for some unrelated trivia:

The Japanese use at least four alphabets. Hiragana characters spell out words; Katakana spell out words from foreign languages; Kanji are pictograms stolen from the Chinese; and Romaji is the roman alphabet. They also read from the top right corner of the page down in columns, and their books appear backwards to us Westerners.

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was delivered in 'a high, reedy voice' as an afternote to the much longer speech of another senator. He later said 'I failed' in reference to the Address, and everyone agreed.

World War One was the scene of unusal aerial antics:

Britain had reliable parachutes, but did not issue them to their pilots for fear that they would leap from their planes in fear of the enemy.

And unconfirmed: A fighter crashed into a building, catapulting the pilot from his cockpit into a bed below. It was a hospital.

Even before that, it's a little-known fact that a New Zealand farmer was flying an aeroplane before the Wright Brothers. There's debate as to whether he managed a controlled flight or not, but he is credited with inventing the aileron (an important part of maneuvering a plane).

 

[The Sigil]

From the upcoming Enchiridion of Treasures and Objects d'Art...

A pound of pure diamond cut into a cube would measure exactly 2 inches by 2 inches by 2 inches (well, 1.99 inches, but close enough).


--The Sigil

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

You're more likely to be killed in a vending-machine-related accident than to win the lottery.