Post a random fact

[Drago]

Some things are just generally interesting to know, y'know? Some things you just discover randomly along the way, some things are excellent little tips you've been aware of for some times, and some things are just so shocking you must let us know.
So now, let us know what you've got! Doesn't matter what it's about - science, entertainment, history, politics... If you've got a fact that's interesting, post it here.

You may post only once per day. If you come up with more facts that simply cannot wait, just edit your original post. Just so that we don't get a flood of tiny little tidbits.

My first set of facts aren't the best in the world, but they're just things I recently discovered so I wanted to throw them out there, plus an extra bit to flesh things out.
* Daft Punk often use samples from other tracks for their music, but the perennial Daft melodies Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger and Robot Rock are basically lifted directly from older funk pieces - the former from Edwin Birdsong's Cola Bottle Baby (1978) and the latter from Breakwater's Release the Beast (1980).

* Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his own father while trying to break up an altercation between his parents in 1984. His father's sentence was reduced from first-degree murder to manslaughter when Marvin Snr. was found to have a brain tumor. When news of Marvin Jr.'s death first spread, several thought it was an April Fools' Joke - his death happened on April 1st.

* The 1984 film Ghostbusters was originally intended to have included space and time travel, and star John Belushi, Eddie Murphy and John Candy.

[DarkestLight]

Pigs can't sweat. They lack actual sweat glands. S'all I got right now.

[classy_cat18]

* The sound of the twisters in Twister is actually the recording of a camel's moan slowed down.

* No one ever used the popular phrase "Beam me up, Scotty" on Star Trek.

* The guy who made the song "Still Alive" for the Portal game also did the theme of the cartoon Code Monkeys.

* The paradoxical frog is called so because the tadpole stage is 75% bigger than its adult stage.

* The first job of a newborn queen bee is to kill the other newborn queens.

[Jeff]

-Racecar spelled backwards is racecar.
-Firefox's spell checker doesn't recognize racecar as a word. (yeah just found that out )
-The numbers on two opposite sides of a die always add up to 7.
-Pluto has three moons.
-Pluto and it's largest moon, Charon, can be considered to be orbiting each other, since they both orbit the same point in empty space.
-The same is true with Jupiter and the Sun.

[Weasel Overlord]

-A cockroach can live for NINE DAYS without its head!
-The praying mantis female bites the head off the male during copulation, but the male keeps on going anyway, cos its brain is in its willy hur hur hur.

Dunno why both of mine are about bugs. Yeuch. I know, here's some dry etymology shiz! Everyone loves etymology... right guys? *looks around at the suddenly empty forums* No? No-one? OH WELL.

-The word "edit" was never originally a word. People just took "editor" and assumed that "to edit" was the verb. S'called back-formation, that.
-A hamburger contains no ham - it is called such because it was made in Hamburg. People then took the "-burger" suffix and added other meats and the like on to the beginning, to make "chickenburger," "beefburger," etc.
-Same goes for "bikini." The word and garment was invented, and people assumed that the "bi" meant "two", as it often does. Thus "monokini," "tankini," etc.

...I could go on.

[Jeff]

Here's another etymology one. The word "dollar" originally meant a large silver coin. It came from the German word "thaler", which was a specific silver coin made in Germany. The Spanish Peso was the de facto currency of the entire Western Hemisphere during colonization, and the one peso coin was a large silver coin, so it was known as a dollar in English. Since English-speaking people in the Americas were accustomed to calling money dollars, the U.S. naturally named its currency the dollar. Otherwise, our money would have probably ended up being called pounds.

[Crazy Elf Boy]

-The phone was not invented by Alexander Graham Bell.
-Penicillin was not discovered by Alexander Flemming.
-The second world war didn't officially end till 1990.
-Platypus and Echidna are only mammals to lay eggs
-There are no green mammals
-Hitler survived 42 assasaination attempts and ended up commiting suicide.
-The whip was the first invention to break the sound barrier.

[Weasel Overlord]

-The flushing toilet was NOT invented by Thomas Crapper.

EDIT: Also:

-The plural of octopus is octopode, not octopi/octopuses. Huzzah for QI!

[Heald]

300 is, in fact, the greatest movie of all time.

Also, dermatoglyphics, misconjugatedly, and uncopyrightable are the longest words in the English language in which no letter appears twice.

[Blademaster]

The largest number known to humanity contains in it more digits than the known Universe contains atoms.

[Jeff]

I'm assuming you mean Graham's number?

-If you were to write that number in scientific notation, the exponent would contain more digits than there are atoms in the known universe. And even if you were to write that exponent in scientific notation, its exponent would have more digits than there are atoms in the known universe.

-For those that don't know, the known Universe has about 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000 atoms.

[Endy Ends]

I saw Knowing today.

More money is spent on gardening than on any other hobby!

[Zak]

3's look like butts, and the number 3 is ruined for me forever.

The most common name in the world is Mohammmed.

"H" is the only letter of the alphabet that doesn't have a word rhyming with its name.

[Jeff]

The majority of household dust is actually bits of dead skin.

[Blademaster]

I'm assuming you mean Graham's number?

-If you were to write that number in scientific notation, the exponent would contain more digits than there are atoms in the known universe. And even if you were to write that exponent in scientific notation, its exponent would have more digits than there are atoms in the known universe.

-For those that don't know, the known Universe has about 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000 atoms.

...Did you just steal my fact? And make it sound smarter and/or more accurate? You jerk.

"H" is the only letter of the alphabet that doesn't have a word rhyming with its name.

There's a word that rhymes with 'W?' o_O

[Crazy Elf Boy]

Yeh Clubbayou, as in I am going to Club you

[Jeff]

A town in Austria got so sick of people stealing their Fucking road signs, that they had to cement them into the ground. And yes, I capitalized "Fucking", because that's what the signs say on them, it's the town's name.

[DarkestLight]

...Did you just steal my fact? And make it sound smarter and/or more accurate? You jerk.



There's a word that rhymes with 'W?' o_O

W cheats. It has 3 syllables. So yer really just looking for "u" again. So we got--randomly..

ewe...
view..
through..
Waterloo..

Yeah top 4 that came to mind.

[Jeff]

Ok, here's a couple ones related to this time of the year.

Daylight Saving's Time is officially "Daylight Saving Time".

Lent ends on Palm Sunday, not Easter Sunday. Count the days on the calendar if you don't believe me.

[Houndoom_Lover]

Random Facts- I'm the master of Random Facts!

Ford, the inventor of the T-model disliked the Jewish people.

The skin is the largest organ on the body.

The gnaw worm travels through your body when it parasites all up on you.

It is beleived that there is a missing spart in Macbeth because of the random characters that come towards the end of the play.

Bill Gates never finished college

[PancaKe]

The popular religious word Trinity (meaning One god but three persons) is actually not in the bible. It was invented as a way of simplifying a complex idea into one word. =)

[Telume]

The famous line from Star Wars the Empire Strikes Back "No, I am your father" is commonly misquoted and mispunned as "Luke, I am your father".

[Jeff]

Pure water does not conduct electricity.

[Endy Ends]

Valance elcectrons are the electrons on the outer most energy level of an atom.

[Telume]

Grimer does not change weight during evolution.

[Jeff]

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the founding of the United States.

[Kirby]

Carbamide peroxide is the active ingredient is most teeth-whitening solutions. When applied to the teeth, it works by releasing hydrogen peroxide which in turn produces hydroxyl free radicals that break down colored molecules.

[PNT510]

Ok, here's a couple ones related to this time of the year.

Daylight Saving's Time is officially "Daylight Saving Time".

Lent ends on Palm Sunday, not Easter Sunday. Count the days on the calendar if you don't believe me.

Palm Sunday is the last Sunday of Lent, but it's not the last day of Lent. It's Holy Saturday(day before Easter) for most churches or sundown Holy Thursday(Thursday before Easter) for Roman Catholics. Sundays don't count as part of the 40 days.

[Drago]

Fuck yeah, this thread is awesome. So...



The bushes in Super Mario Bros are just recoloured cloud sprites. Dafuq, mang.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Along the chimney of a building called Turku Energia, there is a neon light piece of art featuring the first 10 numbers of the Fibonacci sequence 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55. In the Fibonacci sequence, each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two. Depending on the definition, the Fibonacci sequence may also start from number 0.

[Blademaster]

The observable Universe, which is the biggest thing we can infer the size of, is 93,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 meters across.

Quantum foam (or strings if you ascribe to string theory), the smallest thing we can infer the size of, is 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001 meter across.

So, you are millions of times closer in size to the known Universe as a whole than you are to the most fundamental components of it.

[Oslo]

Magnitude from Community



and Lee Jordan from the Harry Potter movies



are played by THE SAME ACTOR WTF