Thread: Did you know...?

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is buried deep inside a mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, in the Arctic Circle. It is a fail-safe seed storage facility, built to stand the test of time and disasters whether natural or caused by Man. In the event of a planetary catastrophe, this vault is designed to preserve the world’s food crops and help restore the plant kingdom on Earth, effectively allowing life to continue.

It was built with that scenario in mind and can withstand earthquakes and explosions.

Small parts of these catacombs under Paris are open to the public, but 99% of the 170-mile long labyrinth full of skulls and bones is forbidden because people will almost certainly get lost and possibly never be found.

Chernobyl, 32 years on. The entire area was abandoned in 1986 after the nuclear disaster. Some parts are open to the public, though a 19-mile exclusion zone is strictly enforced because of high radiation levels.

That's a coincidence, was talking to the kids about the terracotta army just last night...

Qin Shi Huang’s tomb, must be one of the largest tombs ever, not discovered until 1974, and entry is not allowed. This tomb still hasn't been excavated because researchers believe whatever is inside could not be preserved by current knowledge and technology.

NO ENTRY

Pluto’s Gate – Turkey



Originally dedicated to the Roman god of death, Pluto. The cO2 concentration inside the gate, in pools and the bottom form a 'deadly lake' at night when the temperature drops, when the cO2 levels are enough to kill animals and humans.

No end of stories about the super-secretive military base in the middle of the Nevada desert. The US gov denied the existence of Area 51 until 2013 when the Obama admin confirmed that such a place does exist, which might suggest there’s a whole lot of top-secret stuff going on there.

Pizza Facts:

Lombardi’s in New York City was America’s first pizzeria, which opened in 1905.




Only three people in the world have a degree in Pizzaology, one of these is Domino’s founder Tom Monaghan, who also founded the business management program that offers the Pizzaology class.

While pizza was already available in the US since the beginning of the 20th century, its popularity broadened after World War II when American soldiers who had served in Italy brought home a craving for the pizza.

Chicago’s first deep dish pizza was made in 1943 by the restaurant that later became the Pizzeria Uno chain.

The Domino’s “30 minutes or less” delivery guarantee is still offered in some places around the world, including Turkey.

The first frozen pizza hit American supermarkets in 1962, with very basic packaging.



The first computer-ordered pizza was in 1974, when Michigan State’s Artificial Language Laboratory tested its new “speaking computer" by ordering a pizza from a local restaurant.

There’s a pizza museum in Philadelphia called Pizza Brain.



The largest pizza ever weighed 51,257 pounds and was 131 feet in diameter, while the longest was 6,333 feet and created by a team of chefs on Saturday morning at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif.

Pizza Hut became the first company to deliver a pizza to outer space when it delivered to the International Space Station, in 2001, aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket.

We know of the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts, which lasted just over a year, but what happened during the paranoia and hysteria that led to the execution of 20 people?

In 1689, the Puritan village of Salem was inundated with refugees escaping King William’s War, between New France and New England. The refugees added fuel to rivalry between the wealthy and the peasant farmers. The Village’s minister, Reverend Samuel Parris, was widely disliked because of his greed.


In January 1692, Parris’ 9-year-old daughter Elizabeth and 11-year-old niece Abigail Williams alarmed their friends by throwing fits, screaming, speaking gibberish, and twisting themselves into weird positions; a third girl named Ann Putnam had similar experiences, and a local doctor believed the girls’ calamities were supernatural.



In late February, the three young girls were pressured into admitting that the source of their madness was three women, a Caribbean slave owned by Parris (Tituba), a homeless woman (Sarah Good), and a poor, elderly woman (Sarah Osborne) who were arrested and brought before the local magistrates.

Good and Osborne denied any knowledge or association with witchcraft, but the slave Titula admitted she had been contacted by the Devil himself and was doing his work; this confession was probably made under duress. She also said there were other witches in Salem and that they intended to destroy the Puritans. All three women were imprisoned.

Then rumours and paranoia gripped the town and women of all ages were accused of being witches. The first 'witch' convicted and hanged on Gallows Hill was Bridget Bishop, whose last words were a plea of innocence. As the summer of 1692 wore on, 18 more women were hanged for being witches and many more imprisoned.



Eventually, respected people including Massachusetts Governor William Phips, prohibited the arrest of accused witches. By May 1693, the Governor released and pardoned everyone accused of witchcraft, though by then 20 had been executed, several had died in jail, and over 200 prosecutions were pending.

In 1957, over 250 years after the trials, the state of Massachusetts formally apologised for the events of 1692-93.

^ unless it's packed inside a shuttle

In 1942 during WW2 there was a convoy of American ships that was sunk in which were loaded 7000 tanks en route from the USA to Russia. Information was never released to the press because of low moral as a the result of the losses at Pearl Harbor. Nearly 3000 men ( about the same death total as Pearl ) and 30 ships were lost to German subs who attacked the American convoy near the Alaskan coast. Those ships, tanks and men are still on the floor of the Pacific.

^ Gotta name for that convoy?

Doesn't seem to be on this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...n_World_War_II


This is though.

On 14 September 1942, (some sources say 13 September), the US cargo ship Mary Luckenbach was attacked by several German aircraft and was hit by an aerial torpedo. The impact of the torpedo struck the ship's cargo of 1,000 tons of TNT and the explosion was so violent the ship was basically vaporized along with the entire crew.

Woodpeckers don't get headaches, because unlike a human brain its brain sits firmly in the skull and doesn't bounce back and forth when its beak is delivering staccato blows to a tree.

^The aircraft carrier USS Oriskany, decommissioned and being sunk in the Gulf of Mexico as pictured above is the carrier where John McCain started his famous flight to bomb Hanoi power plant...

^ Was that before or after he almost destoyed the USS Forrestal by "wet starting" his fighter jet?

Originally Posted by Luigi

^ Gotta name for that convoy?

Doesn't seem to be on this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...n_World_War_II


This is though.



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No...I got that info from the first comment below, on this page : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...f_World_War_II

and trusted it. But if it cannot be verified, I guess it may be bullshit.

Then again, perhaps not. That list of maritime disasters is from official records, and the record of that occurrence was suppressed at the time.

Originally Posted by Latindancer

and 30 ships were lost to German subs who attacked the American convoy near the Alaskan coast.

Must have been right after the Germans attacked Pearl Harbor...

Er....yes. I missed that bit. (Embarrassed silence).

Originally Posted by SKkin

^ Was that before or after he almost destroyed the USS Forrestal by "wet starting" his fighter jet?

Within days, eager to get his combat career back on track, he put in for a transfer to the carrier USS Oriskany. Two months after the Forrestal fire — following a holiday on the French Riviera — McCain reported for duty in the Gulf of Tonkin.

McCain performed adequately on the Oriskany. On October 25th, 1967, he bombed a pair of Soviet MiGs parked on an airfield outside Hanoi. His record was now even. Enemy planes destroyed by McCain: two. American planes destroyed by McCain: two.

The next day, McCain embarked on his fateful 23rd mission, a bombing raid on a power plant in downtown Hanoi. It was a dangerous mission — taking the planes into the teeth of North Vietnam’s fiercest anti-aircraft defenses. As the planes entered Hanoi airspace, they were instantly enveloped in dark clouds of flak and surface-to-air missiles. Still cocky from the previous day’s kills, McCain took the biggest gamble of his life. As he dived in on the target in his A-4, his surface-to-air missile warning system sounded: A SAM had a lock on him. “I knew I should roll out and fly evasive maneuvers,” McCain writes. “The A-4 is a small, fast” aircraft that “can outmaneuver a tracking SAM.”

But McCain didn’t “jink.” Instead, he stayed on target and let fly his bombs — just as the SAM blew his wing off.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...verick-202004/

The USS Oriskany - and its staff - had not enjoyed his stay for long...

Originally Posted by Latindancer

Those ships, tanks and men are still on the floor of the Pacific

I'm pretty sure any "men" have been eaten and turned into productive marine energy by now.

Fu Manchu, an orang utan formerly at Omaha Zoo, was frequently found lounging in the trees outside his enclosure when zoo employees arrived in the morning.

Keepers couldn't figure out how he kept escaping from his enclosure, often searched him to no avail, and eventually decided to do some overnight camera surveillance.


After zoo employees had left for the night, Fu would climb into the air vents connected to his enclosure and follow them to a dry moat surrounding the orangutan exhibit, where there was a locked utility/maintenance door that employees often used. Then he would pull out a small piece of metal wiring that he kept hidden under his cheek throughout the day, and proceed to pick the door's lock!


It's still a mystery how Fu Manchu learned to pick locks, though keepers speculate he may have learned by watching them use a key, while his planning skills and ability to hide the wiry tool from zoo employees all day is the stuff of legend.

Forty-five years ago, two psychiatrists administered history's largest dose of LSD to Tusko, a three-and-a-half ton elephant.

• Before LSD became known to the greater public as a recreational drug, it was used in psychiatric therapy. The last therapeutic LSD session in the U.S was in the 1980’s.

In early 1962 Oklahoma City had acquired an adolescent Indian elephant named Tusko. Tusko was brought with the intent of becoming a research subject for the critically acclaimed psychiatris Dr. Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West. At the time Dr. West was researching musth, a sensation in adolescent male elephants which was commonly seen as momentary madness. Musth occurs first as a dark discharge is secreted from their ears and is then followed by intense stampeding. Dr. West was one of the most well-known psychiatrist of the time and was the head of the Department of Psychiatry, Neurology and Biobehavioural Sciences at the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine. Dr. West was intrigued by the concepts of hypnosis, drugs and mind control and by the late 1950s Dr. West had examined the psychiatry behind various brain washing tactics used on American prisoners of war.
In 1960s LSD was slowly becoming a drug of interest within the scientific community as prominent researchers argued the therapeutic effects of LSD and the positive impact it had on psychiatric patients. Dr. West and his team intended to “induce experimentally a behavioral aberration that might resemble the phenomenon of going on musth.”
Dr. West intended to first induce Tusko and once sedated the scientists would observe the dark discharge and thus allow for a clear understanding on the causes of musth allowing for preventative care and an eventual end to musth.


Before the experiment, Tusko was administered a placebo of a controlled dose of penicillin using an air rifle. Tusko was shown to have “immediate startle response… 2 or 3 minutes of restlessness followed by normal behavior throughout the day”. The following morning at approximately eight o’clock August 3, 1962, Dr. West and his team intravenously injected Tusko with 297 milligrams of LSD. The immediate reaction startled the researchers noting the following:

“[Tusko’s] mate (Judy, a 15-year-old female) approached him and appeared to attempt to support him. He began to sway, his hindquarters buckled, and it became increasingly difficult for him to maintain himself upright. Five minutes after the injection he trumpeted, collapsed, fell heavily onto his right side, defecated, and went into status eplilepticus.”

Researchers noticed Tusko’s tongue had become discolored a sign of insufficient oxygen to his head. Tusko was then injected with 2,800 miligrams of promazine hydrochloride (commonly used for schizophrenia). There was no noted improvement in Tusko’s health they then attempted to use pentobarbital sodium, a known anesthetic. To no avail, Tusko died one hour after his LSD dose. Tusko’s autopsy determined his death was caused by strangulation due to his spasms. Though it was unclear if LSD was the cause of Tusko’s death what was noted was Tusko’s dosage was the equivalent of 1,5000 human adult dosages.
Dr. West’s experiment was published in Science with his conclusions stating that LSD “may prove valuable in elephant control work in Africa.”