I bet you didnt know that

WildWater

It's estimated that the Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, inadvertently cost the band more than $100,000,000 in lost royalties by signing away merchandising rights too cheaply due to a combination of inexperience and stupidity.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johngreathouse/2015/07/25/this-rookie-mistake-cost-the-beatles-100000000/#b3a78648b279

cdeb

That was my first job actually - though it was mostly crab skeletons that were in the pipes, not jellyfish. Maybe Dublin Bay had less in the way of jellyfish.

Edit - to clarify, WildWater's post crossed with mine. My first job was cleaning crab skeletons out of power station pipes, not managing the Beatles!

I remember standing by the docks in Izmir with my parents when I was little, looking down at the sea and it was topped with wall to wall jellyfish on the surface. You couldn't see the water past them. There was something about it that struck me as apocalyptically horrifying, I've hated them since.

Capt'n Midnight

mzungu wrote: »

The jellyfish has caused shutdowns in power plants in America, UK, Sweden, Japan, the Philippines and Israel over the past few decades.

The jellyfish has caused shutdowns in Nuclear power plants in America, UK, Sweden, Japan, South Korea the Philippines South Africa and Israel.

Capt'n Midnight

mzungu wrote: »

We know that jellyfish breed very quickly, but what we can't be sure of is why their numbers have been steadily growing. One theory suggests that climate change could be responsible, and another suggests overfishing of their predators.

Overfishing is a biggie

Looking at catches landed in the UK , in the early days of steam powered trawlers less hours were needed to catch fish compared to today. Seventeen times less.

We are replacing fish with jellyfish and things like vampire squid.

Water John

A man named Fred Williams lived in Aherla Co Cork. His claim to fame was he passed up on the opportunity to be the PR guy for the Beatles, working under Epstein.

Buford T. Justice XIX

On the 21st August 1968, Soviet tanks invaded Prague put a halt to reforms instigated by elected communist leader Alexander Dubcek. One of his reforms, along with more press freedom, speech and travel, was the first division of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-czech-politics-1968/punch-to-the-face-czechs-mark-half-century-since-soviet-invasion-idUSKCN1L612F?utm

IvyTheTerrific

On this day in 1816, snow fell in Vermont, and frost was noted as far south as South Carolina. 1816 was known as the year without a summer after ash from a volcanic eruption in Indonesia spread and lowered temperatures.

Capt'n Midnight

Greenland is farther north than Iceland.

Greenland is farther east, west, and south than Iceland.

Booms

Capt'n Midnight has not slept for the last ten years.
(That's actually supposition - I don't know how he does it - there's not enough hours in the day. Glad he does though!)

Carry on, Capt'n!

Water John

There's 2 posters, clue in the name.

Capt'n Midnight

New Home wrote: »

Snail teeth

http://funsubstance.com/uploads/gif/487/487738.gif

Limpets,those conical shells you find on rocky shores, are snails.

And they have teeth. The strongest teeth. Iron teeth.

Actually it's a composite material with goethite nanocrystals. Either way they have no problem scraping algae off rocks. Or scraping rocks.

New Home

When I was a child (maybe 8 or 9), a garden snail bit me. Nobody believed me. But I knew the truth. I KNEW.

RiderOnTheStorm

Over and out

Think I posted before about inaccuracies in movies, but "over & out" persists.
"Over" means "I am finished talking, over to you"
"Out" means "we are finished talking"
So you can't say over AND out.
Also, its traditionally the more senior of the two talkers who says "out" but that's just etiquette.

More radio stuff...

"Roger" is said to mean understood or received. This is because in the days of Morse code, the letter R was sent back after receiving a message (meaning that the message was Received OK). Then when the message was read back out loud, the letter R was called Roger as per the phonetic alphabet of the time. NATO alphabet now calls R as Romeo. But Roger persists.

SOS doesnt mean anything. Well, it does mean "we are in trouble, come n help" but the letters don't stand for words. It was just a code sequence. The first SOS sent by Morse code was from the Titanic the night it sank.

English is the official language of marine radio transmission. Except the emergency call codes. Such as "securite" and the famous "may-day". May-Day (m'aide) is French for " help me". When giving a May-Day, there is a standard "formula" in order to get the important info out quickly. Most important info? Your location. That way if your battery dies, or ship sinks, then help knows where to go.

Capt'n Midnight

I knew a girl who took up Morse after her father.

She only did-it 'cos her Dada-did-it.

Capt'n Midnight

After many many years the @ symbol , short for "AT" in emails, gained a morse character.

.--.-.

It's longer than the word AT :rolleyes:

.-/-

retalivity

IvyTheTerrific wrote: »

On this day in 1816, snow fell in Vermont, and frost was noted as far south as South Carolina. 1816 was known as the year without a summer after ash from a volcanic eruption in Indonesia spread and lowered temperatures.

Speaking of indonesian volcanic eruptions of the 19th century, i remember reading about Krakatoa as a kid, and it blew my mind. It was an island between java and sumatra in indonesia that was literally blown apart in a series of volcanic explosions in 1883. I think it was still smaller than the 1816 one though...

The most violent eruption was heard in mauritius, 4800km away, and ruptured the eardrums of sailors in the sunda straight at least 60k away. The pressure and air waves were recorded 7 times on barographs all over the world over the next 5 days - 4 times travelling away from the volcano, and 3 times back. Tsunamis raged across the indian ocean and beyobd, Charred bodies on boats washed up on the african coast for months afterwards, whole populations on islands near krakatoa were annihilated.

The climate effects were similar, temperatures fluctuated wildly for years, harvests failed, and the amount of ash/pumice blown into the sky is said to have caused vivid blood red sunsets acrosd the world for years. Munch's famous 1893 painting The Scream, the sky is said to be a true representation of the norwegian sky 10 years on.

Esel

quickbeam wrote: »

Stuart Copeland of The Police is Courtney Cox's cousin.

His father, Miles Copeland, was in the CIA. I heard this was the origin of the band's name? He wrote a book about his career and experiences.

Capt'n Midnight

New Home wrote: »

I can't remember if it's a repost or not...

The imprint of a kamikaze Mitsubishi Ki-51 on the side of H.M.S Sussex in 1945

A very rough guide to warships for the first half of the 20th century.
All were vunerable to torpedoes and armour piercing bombs.


Destroyers - 5 inch guns.
Amour - The plating on a destroyer is usually thick enough to keep out the water and the smaller fish from Igniton, a book about rocket fuel, it's a must read if you like chemisty.

Cruiser - Light cruisers had 6" guns while Heavy Cruisers had 8" guns. Overall it didn't make much difference as ships bigger guns had less of them and they fired slower but the shells were bigger.
Armour - about the same as the guns 6"-8" , see the picture above for how effective it was.

Battleship - Huge guns 12" - 18" and similar armour. Heavyweights.

Battlecruiser - Huge guns, but only the armour of a Cruiser. The theory was they could take our Cruisers. Bigger guns can fire shells further so they could destroy a Cuiser while staying out of range of it's guns.

In practice they were sent into battle against battleships becuse they had big guns. It didn't end well. "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today," said Admiral Beatty at Jutland. Later on in WWII Hood lost all but 3 of 1,418 crew.

Most ships today don't have armour worth talking about because armour piercing techology has improved so much. Yamato's 23,000 tons of armour was just dead weight in the end. She was also rendered inert during the Battle off Samar because she was trapped trying to outrun two torpedoes. Her sister ship Musashi had been sunk a few days earlier by aircraft.


Today names don't mean much. The British used "through deck cruiser" to describe the Invincible class aircraft carriers. But that's nothing compared to the Japanese and their "Helicopter destroyer" that would be considered a Fleet Carrier during WWII. 27,000 tonnes and a flight deck a quarter of a Km long.

Ten of Swords

The most powerful man made, pre-nuclear weapons, explosion to have ever occurred was in Halifax Canada in December 1917. Norweigan Steamship SS Imo collided with the SS Mont Blanc, a French armed merchant vessel fully loaded with volatile explosives (picric acid, TNT and guncotton) which caught fire and within minutes the cargo ignited.

The collision happened in a narrow channel between the Atlantic Ocean and the inner harbor. Halifax, on the south side of the channel, suffered extreme devastation with most of the city center being completely flattened. Dartmouth, on the north side of the channel was less affected but suffered considerable damage nonetheless. The map here shows the areas of destruction but also shows where the SS Mont Blanc's Anchor was found (in south Halifax) and a portion of it's defensive cannon was found in north Dartmouth.

The blast yield was estimated at 2.9 Kilo tons and resulted in nearly 2,000 fatalities and 9,000 injuries.






Ironically the SS Imo, the vessel that had collided with the SS Mont Blanc, was not heavily damaged and was repaired and back in service within a year.

New Home

More than "I didn't know that" it's a case of "I never thought about it, but it makes sense."

KevRossi

Chicago, which is on the shores of Lake Michigan is actually built on a watershed. The water in west Chicago runs into the Des Plaines river, then the Illinois river, the Mississippi and into the Caribbean Sea.

The water in east Chicago runs into Lake Michigan and then eventually through the St Lawrence river into the North Atlantic ocean.

the eastern shore of Lake Michigan has the largest freshwater sand dunes on the planet, some of them being several hundred feet high. There are several areas around the lake that have dunes, mostly quartz sand.

sbsquarepants

New Home wrote: »

More than "I didn't know that" it's a case of "I never thought about it, but it makes sense."

In a similar vein to the cosmonaut thing - It's blindingly obvious when you think of it, but I still remember being a little surprised when I read something along the lines of "For every adult on the planet, there's a day somewhere in your past, when your parent picked you up, put you back down and then just never picked you up again"

Luckily you don't know it at the time, just imagine how sad a day that would be if you knew!

Professor Moriarty

sbsquarepants wrote: »

In a similar vein to the cosmonaut thing - It's blindingly obvious when you think of it, but I still remember being a little surprised when I read something along the lines of "For every adult on the planet, there's a day somewhere in your past, when your parent picked you up, put you back down and then just never picked you up again"

Luckily you don't know it at the time, just imagine how sad a day that would be if you knew!

Way to ruin my day!

RiderOnTheStorm

New Home wrote:

More than "I didn't know that" it's a case of "I never thought about it, but it makes sense."

And if you think about it ..... The planet Mars is entirely populated by robots!

RiderOnTheStorm

Another "think about it" fact...

If you take 18 as the age of adulthood, then in 2018 all children were born in 21st century, and all adults were born in 20th century.

Wibbs

sbsquarepants wrote: »

In a similar vein to the cosmonaut thing - It's blindingly obvious when you think of it, but I still remember being a little surprised when I read something along the lines of "For every adult on the planet, there's a day somewhere in your past, when your parent picked you up, put you back down and then just never picked you up again"

Luckily you don't know it at the time, just imagine how sad a day that would be if you knew!

Back in the late 90's my dad read/heard that very thing somewhere and mentioned it to me. So for the craic we thought let's give it a go. I'm light and he was strong so job done. So the day in my past when last a parent picked me up was circa '99 and I was 30 something and he was 80 odd.

New Home

The baobab tree is active only three months of the year, during the rainy season, when its leaves come out and it flowers. The flowers take 45 minutes to bloom, but only last 24 hours. After the rainy season, it loses all of its leaves, and for the rest of the year its bare branches make it look like it's growing upside down.

The tree, however, has a peculiarity. It uses its trunk for photosynthesis, and if you lightly scratch its bark, you can see the clorophyll under it.

EndaHonesty

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

Another "think about it" fact...

If you take 18 as the age of adulthood, then in 2018 all children were born in 21st century, and all adults were born in 20th century.

The first day of the 21st century was January 1st 2001, so the children won't be adults until 2019...

sbsquarepants

New Home wrote: »

The baobab tree is active only three months of the year, during the rainy season, when its leaves come out and it flowers. The flowers take 45 minutes to bloom, but only last 24 hours. After the rainy season, it loses all of its leaves, and for the rest of the year its bare branches make it look like it's growing upside down.

The tree, however, has a peculiarity. It uses its trunk for photosynthesis, and if you lightly scratch its bark, you can see the clorophyll under it.

There's an ancient fable (aboriginal I think?) about how the trees vanity led to it's upside down appearance.

Back at the dawn of time the first baobab grew next to a calm lake where it could see it's reflection, he then began to notice other trees and felt he was ugly compared to them, so he began to complain to god about how he wanted leaves like this tree, or flowers like that tree, fruit like another.
Eventually god got an almighty pain in his almighty arse with the moaning and yanked him out of the ground and replanted him head first where he no longer had to be bothered by how either himself or others looked. Poor auld baobab has been that way ever since.

Which is a long time since he was around for some dinosaurs to shade under!