Thread: Did you know...?

Originally Posted by katie23

Have tasted the "miracle berry" - it really does make sour food taste sweet.

Interesting facts about the buck, shot of whiskey and being unable to sleep in a new place. Now I know that there's an explanation to my being awake in new places/ hotels. In PI, we just called that phenomenon "namamahay". Loosely translated, it means "yearning for home".

Never heard of them before today, available online, will send off for some.

Originally Posted by PAG

Originally Posted by Luigi

The Apollo 10 Command Module is kept in the London Science museum, a fascinating place located next to the National History Museum.





Well worth a visit if in London (with or without a kid)

They used the lunar module (Snoopy) in the pic instead of the command module (Charlie Brown). The Apollo 10 mission had a Peanuts thing going on.


Great thread Jabir, cheers.

The Science Museum in London has a replica of Sputnik. The kids were honest enough to say it looks like a piece of junk. Made it to first, though.

Originally Posted by Maanaam

54-year-old Chaplin married 18-year-old Oona O’Neill

I remember thinking that one of the actresses in GOT was worth cracking one off to so I googled her name, Oona Chaplin, to discover that she was Charlie's granddaughter.

I did not follow the Wikipedia links any further but I see she must be named after her grandmother.

Did you know that a lot of these "meme-facts" are actually BS?

Or is the idea of the thread to spot the true one?

Trust the party pooper to moan, which ones aint true then know it all?

Mines the same size

Regarding the pregnancy test.
The device notes the presence of growth hormone in the body and is used by body builders to check if they got real or fake HGH.

Whether cancerous cells deliver growth hormone I don't know but I wish to find out.

Orrens

Originally Posted by Cujo

do not google image that

Ok...how about bing image?

Origin of 'brass monkey':

The story goes that cannonballs used to be stored aboard ship in piles, on a brass frame or tray called a 'monkey'. In very cold weather the brass would contract, spilling the cannonballs: hence very cold weather is 'cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey'.

There are several problems with this story:


the term 'monkey' is not recorded as the name for such an object like the frame/tray;
the rate of contraction of brass in cold temperatures is unlikely to be fast enough to cause that effect;
the phrase is first recorded as 'freeze the tail off a brass monkey', which has no real connection with balls.

It seems likely that the phrase is simply a humorous reference to the fact that metal figures will become very cold to the touch in cold weather.

Origin of 'flea market':


Flea market comes from the French marché aux puces, originally given to one market in Paris which specialised in shabby second-hand goods of the kind that might contain fleas.

The earliest English use that the OED has found dates from 1922.

Origin of 'pros and cons':

The phrase ‘pros and cons’ is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase pro et contra (for and against), and has been in use in the abbreviated form since the 16th century.

Origin of 'UFO':

UFO is an abbreviation of ‘unidentified flying object’, an object in the sky which can’t be explained by current scientific theories, often associated with extraterrestrial spaceships of the ‘little green men’ in sci-fi movies and stories.


The term ‘unidentified flying object’ goes back at least to the 1950s, although strange objects in the sky were first named flying saucers in the 1940s, after a US pilot claimed to have seen ‘saucer-like’ objects in the sky. The media went for it and the snappier 'flying saucer’ was born.

Investigators in the 1950s realised that 'saucer’ was too limited a description, since various 'sightings' were of different shapes: hence the invention of ‘UFO’, which captured the public’s imagination and sightings were reported from all over the world.

The study of UFOs became known as ufology and experts in the field were named ufologists about four years later.

Origin of 'four twenty (420)':

There are many origin stories for this a slang term referring to marijuana, but unlike most slang terms, researchers have been able to pin down its actual origin.

420 was first used by a group of students at San Rafael High School in 1971, and it refers to the time of day, 4:20 pm, when they would meet to search for a mythical crop of marijuana plants.

San Rafael is in Marin County, on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, and in 1971 a group of students who called themselves the Waldos - because they congregated along a wall near the high school - got wind of a crop of pot plants allegedly growing near Point Reyes, further north. They would meet each day at 4:20 pm, after the school’s athletic practice, and venture north in search of the cannabis cache. They never found the pot, but in the course of their quest they smoked a lot of weed, had fun, and began using the term 420.

Marin County in the 1970s was also the stamping grounds of the Grateful Dead, and members of the Waldos had friends and family associated with the band. 420 was picked up and used by Deadheads, as fans of the band call themselves, and from there the slang term spread to the wider world.

420 was in use by the Waldos in 1971, but the first known use in print is from the Red & White, San Rafael High School’s newspaper from 7 June 1974:

If you had the opportunity to say anything in front of the graduating class, what would you say? 4-20!

In a letter from Dave Reddix, one of the Waldos, from 23 September 1975, he writes: P.S. a little 420 enclosed for your weekend.

That’s the real origin.

Among the false alternatives proposed over the years are:

It was a police code referring to marijuana;
it was a section of [insert state here]’s penal code referring to marijuana;
it is the number of chemical compounds in marijuana;
it was the date [insert name of famous rock musician here] died;
it refers to Hitler’s birthday (Hitler was born on 20 April, but his association with pot is never explained).

There are many other explanations, all unsubstantiated.

Origin of 'to throw the book at':

To throw the book at someone is to sentence them to the maximum penalty for an offense, though the 'book' in question is a bit uncertain. It is likely just a metaphorical law book or rule book, and to throw the book at someone is to sentence them for every crime in that book.

Originally Posted by jabir

San Rafael is in Marin County, on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, and in 1971 a group of students who called themselves the
Marin County in the 1970s was also the stamping grounds of the Grateful Dead, and members of the Waldos had friends and family associated with the band. 420 was picked up and used by Deadheads, as fans of the band call themselves, and from there the slang term spread to the wider world.

My kid brother has lived in Marin since the early '70's. His first house there was originally owned by one of the members of Big Brother and The Holding Company - including a small recording studio where legend has it "Piece Of My Heart" was first recorded. Lots of music started in the Bay Area in those years.

guess who went to SRHS and graduated in 71? Waldo's rule.....

Originally Posted by Loy Toy

Great thread mate,

Indeed,....it is. Thanks for sharing, Jabir.

The human brain named itself.


#deepmaaaan.

The Royal Dragon Restaurant of Bangkok, Thailand was recorded in the Guinness World Records as the world's largest restaurant in 1992. The 21 rai (8.35 acre) restaurant seats 5,000, and waiters zip around on roller skates.

Twins were born 87 days apart, in 2013, beating the previous Guinness world record of 84 days by 3 days. Both survived healthy.

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was the first American film to show a toilet being flushed.