OT: Share useless Trivia!

[Agback]

A katana (samurai sword) has 32,768 layers of steel in the blade.

Most katanas weren't made using the folding techniques, and don't have any layers as such. There were techniques (considered inferior) that produced a sword from a single homogeneous billet. Most quality katanas were made by a technique that involved welding together five pieces of steel of different grades.

Some katanas made by the folding technique were folded only five or seven times, producing 32 or 128 layers. Some were reputed to be folded up to seventeen times, producing in theory 131,072 layers (though I doubt that the layers would have remained distinct at only 0.00004 mm thick: the processes of forging are pretty turbulent on that scale). Only a sword folded fifteen times would have 32,768 layers, and that would be a rareity.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Agback]

The ancient Romans used lead powder to sweeten their wine.

Not lead powder but lead acetate, also known as 'sugar of lead'.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Agback]

The verb 'chat' (as in Instant Relay...) comes from military slang of WW1. Back then, lice were known as 'chats', and removing lice from one's clothing became a daily routine.

Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition, tells me that this verb can be attested in writing as far back as AD 1530.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Chun-tzu]

Buffy fans might find this interesting. Remember the two-parter where Faith steals Buffy's body? (Part 1 was called "This Year's Girl" and it was from Season 4.) In it, one of Faith's catch phrases is "five by five."

Willow: "She's like this cleavagey slutbomb walking around going 'Ooh. Check me out, I'm wicked cool. I'm five by five.'"
Tara: "Five by five? Five what by five what?"
Willow: "See, that's the thing. No one knows."

Well, Willow, if you were half the computer geek you're supposed to be, you would have looked it up on an entymology site, like I did.

Often in old war movies you'll hear a radio operator say, "I read you five-by-five." The operator in question is ranking the voice transmission on a scale of one to five in two categories, strength and clarity. So, five-by-five is loud and clear and one-by-one would be weak and unintelligible.

 

[Zander]

Your arm span is roughly equal to your height (for most people).

Japanese people eat lettuce for breakfast.

The son of Abraham Lincoln was almost killed in a train accident a few years before his father's assassination. The man who saved young Lincoln's life was John Wilkes (sp?) Booth's brother.

Camouflaged clothing is illegal in Barbados.

You can't enter the British Virgin Islands with dreadlocks.

It's against the law to step on a local banknote or coin in Thailand. (That's because it has a picture of the king on it and stepping on it is considered insulting to the royal family).

You can save a fish's life with a D6. A particular species of spotted puffer fish will normally die of loneliness if it is alone. If you drop a white D6 with black pips in the tank with your fish, it will think it is another of its kind and won't die.

 

[Gez]

Since we have mentionned Nobel Prize, I'll add my own bit of useless trivia.

There's no Nobel Prize of Mathematics because Alfred Nobel was cuckholded by a mathematician. He wanted to make sure his foundation would never give a prize to his wife's lover.

That's why mathematicians have the Field Medals instead.

 

[Zander]

...if you were half the computer geek you're supposed to be, you would have looked it up on an entymology site, like I did.

Don't you mean etymology?

Not to be confused with entomology: the study of insects.

 

[Chun-tzu]

Coconuts kill more people in the world than sharks do. Approximately 150 people are killed each year by coconuts.

Columnist Cecil Adams, of the Straight Dope, looked into this statistic and finds absolutely nothing to verify it. (Cecil's no dope.) It seems to be another of those Internet "facts."

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020719.html

 

[Chun-tzu]

Don't you mean etymology?

Not to be confused with entomology: the study of insects.

Yes, yes I do.


Funny, I spelled it right when I typed it into Google (or else I'd have just gotten gibberish!).

 

[Buttercup]

Until the 1960's men with long hair were not allowed to enter Disneyland.

Actually, I think that men with long hair were not allowed to enter Disneyland until later than that. I think it was the late 1970s. Of course, I could be completely wrong.