I bet you didn't know that this thread would have a part 2

Franz Von Peppercorn

That link was interesting but not totally true. Not all water molecules are alien and not all hot water cools faster than cold water. Looked good though.

pavb2

The 1979 film The Warriors which describes a New York gang trying to make it back home to Coney Island from the Bronx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Warriors_(film)

is based on the excellent book by the ancient Greek philosopher Xenophon. He describes the March of the Ten Thousand in their attempt to get home to Athens from Persia

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

LostinBlanch

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

On September 30, 331 BC Alexander the Great banned beards for health and safety reasons.

Go on, post that on the shaving forum. I dare ya

mzungu

Vermont Republic is the term used by historians for the government of Vermont from 1777 to 1791. Before becoming part of the United States in 1791, it was technically a separate country with its own currency and postal service.

mzungu

In 1976 the states of Washington and New Hampshire restored the death penalty with hanging being one of the allowed methods of execution. They became the second and third states to allow hanging after Delaware.

Since 1965 only three people have been hung in the United States, the most recent being in 1996. Convicted double murderer Billy Bailey chose hanging over lethal injection. It was the first in Delaware in over 50 years. The other two hangings took place in Washington state in 1993 and 1994.

Wanderer2010

Rory Best is only 36, Fcuk me. The oldest looking 36 I have ever seen in my life. I have never even seen or heard anyone else make this comment, he easily looks at least 10 years older.

KevRossi

Union Berlin is currently the 2nd biggest club in Berlin and is in a promotion spot for the Bundesliga next year. One of the most innovative clubs in Europe, they are often broke or near to it and have had many initiatives over the years to raise some extra money,. including getting fans to donate blood.

At the 2014 World Cup they initiated the 'World Cup Living Room', where they encouraged people to bring along their favorite couch and watch the matches sitting on the pitch, with the match being broadcast on a giant screen. You could leave your couch there for the duration of the tournament. 12,000 were in regular attendance at those matches.












They also have Christmas carol singing which is so popular they need to limit the numbers attending to 28,500.

There are a billion more people alive today than there was in 2007. I think we all have a rough idea of this but when you really think about that it is striking. 2007 seems like only yesterday.

mzungu

The term “lunatic” was used to to describe those working towards finding a reliable method of determining longitude, given that lunatic comes from the Latin word “lunaticus,” meaning “of the moon,” which were originally thought of as the source of madness and epilepsy.

pleas advice

a million seconds is roughly 11 days, a billion seconds is over 31 years

KevRossi

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/28/opinion/l-just-how-long-is-a-trillion-seconds-229186.html

And a trillion seconds would amount to no less than 31,709.8 years.

A trillion seconds ago, there was no written history. The pyramids had not yet been built. It would be 10,000 years before the cave paintings in France were begun, and saber-toothed tigers and mammoths were still prowling the planet.

Wibbs

KevRossi wrote: »

It would be 10,000 years before the cave paintings in France were begun

Not quite K, Chauvet Cave was already painted and if you were standing in that cave 31,000 years ago, the oldest art on the walls would be about the same distance in time behind you as the pyramids are to us today.

Fourier

It always surprised me that some of the animals on those cave paintings look better than animals in medieval art.

mzungu

Fourier wrote: »

It always surprised me that some of the animals on those cave paintings look better than animals in medieval art.

Professor Moriarty

Deleted User wrote: »

There are a billion more people alive today than there was in 2007. I think we all have a rough idea of this but when you really think about that it is striking. 2007 seems like only yesterday.

The population of Nigeria is expected to more than double from 190 million to day to 398 million in 2050. Or in 31 years.

Big Nasty

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

The population of Nigeria is expected to more than double from 190 million to day to 398 million in 2050. Or in 31 years.

Like rabbits they are! :pac:

Wibbs

Fourier wrote: »

It always surprised me that some of the animals on those cave paintings look better than animals in medieval art.

Well they were superb anatomists and observers of animal behaviour as hunters tend to be. Though funny enough F it's quite the head scratcher for the researchers of cave art and its development. Before they had good dating techniques it was generally assumed naturally enough, the more primitive the art, the older it was and we got better at it as time went on. Then carbon dating and other methods came along and it turns out the reverse is true. It's generally the oldest art that's the more sophisticated and accomplished and figurative.

To the degree that the Chauvet paintings show that Cave Lion males didn't have manes like lions today. The human figure is almost absent in the earliest art(in caves. In portable art the human figure comes first). That comes later. The early stuff tends to represent a wider range of animals and most aren't species we hunted. So you get more lions and rhinos and mammoths. In Chauvet there are animals like bears and even an owl which almost never show up anywhere else. The later stuff seems much more about food source animals like deer and horses, often with human figures firing arrows/spears at and predators like lions rarely figure. This suggests a different purpose for the art in different periods.

With the figurative art we get more abstract paintings. Rows of dots and Mondrian like squares are common enough, but the figurative art is the most common. Neandertals the only other human species that we've found so far that also painted caves and did so before we did paint entirely abstract themes, even more abstract than our stuff. This may suggest a slightly different view of their world.

One thing is common between us though and about the most consistent image in the history of ancient art; the handprint. Interestingly in many sites the hand sizes and height they are from the cave floor strongly suggest that the hands mostly belonged to women and children, with the occasional adult male sized handprint among them. In a few sites a few of the hands have missing tips to fingers, mostly the little finger. Lord knows what was going on.

New Home

New Home

LostinBlanch

Somewhat closer to home, I just found out that Wicklow comes from Víkingaló, which means "Vikings' Meadow. So people from Wickla aren’t Irish.


*may not be entirely true, but feckit they’re from Wicklow.*

New Home

mzungu

In the 1970s hit series The Brady Bunch, the upstairs bathroom played a prominent (and somewhat iconic) role as that was where a lot of their squabbles played out. The jack-and-jill bathroom was symbolic of the blended family itself.

One problem. There was no toilet in the bathroom. At the time it would have been considered taboo to show it onscreen.

Oddly enough, Leave it to Beaver, which actually aired a decade before there was a story of a man named Brady, is credited as showing the first toilet on screen, but there was a catch. Only a peek at the toilet's tank — which was integral to the episode's plot — would get screen time.

A very Brady bathroom....

LostinBlanch

New Home wrote: »

Would he ever make his mind up.

Ipso

New Home wrote: »

He was great in The Prestige.
A very interesting character.

LostinBlanch

New Home wrote: »

In the 1930's he offered the Governor Clinton Hotel in Manhattan a box containing his death beam in lieu of a $10,000 hotel bill. Only it wasn't what it seemed.

He told them the device—which he referred to as a death beam, not a death ray—was extremely dangerous, and could detonate if someone opened it without taking the proper precautions.

When Tesla died in 1943, an MIT scientist working for the National Defense Research Committee was sent to Tesla’s hotel room/lab to retrieve the potentially deadly weapon. John G. Trump* (uncle of the 45th president) later wrote that he took time to reflect upon his life before he opened the container.

He shouldn’t have bothered.

The only thing the wooden chest contained was a “multidecade resistance box of the type used for a Wheatstone bridge resistance measurements—a common standard item found in every electric laboratory before the turn of the century!”

In other words, Tesla threw some common electrical components in a fancy-looking box and convinced everyone it was a "death beam" worth $10,000. Tesla’s good friend, Mark Twain, would have been proud.

*This is the same John that Trump mentioned in his rambling speech about the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015.

"Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged . . . . .

I never thought I'd find a genuine link to Tesla and Trump in the same reply. :P :cool:

Ted_YNWA

During the Great Depression, the Barter Theatre in Virginia paid royalties to Tennessee Williams and Noel Coward in ham. George Bernard Shaw, who was a vegetarian, got paid in spinach.

mzungu

Over the course of their careers, flight attendants are regularly exposed to several known and probable carcinogens, including cosmic ionizing radiation, disrupted sleep cycles and circadian rhythms, and possible chemical contaminants in the airplane. Moreover, cabin crews are exposed to the largest effective annual ionizing radiation dose relative to all other U.S. radiation workers because of both their exposure to and lack of protection from cosmic radiation.

The study found that US flight attendants have a higher prevalence of several forms of cancer, including breast cancer, uterine cancer, gastrointestinal cancer, thyroid cancer, and cervical cancer, when compared with the general public. The findings of higher rates of several cancers among flight attendants is striking given the low rates of overweight and smokers in the study population.

The findings suggested that the US should make additional efforts to minimise the risk of cancer among flight attendants, including monitoring radiation dose. The EU already does this, and also monitors radiation doses to try minimise exposure.

LostinBlanch

The first ever steam engine in Ireland wasn't used to power trains, it was used to produce whiskey.

The Dublin Distillery firm of John Power & Son were located on Thomas Street. The Distillery, which had for its motive-power the first steam engine erected in Ireland, was founded for the production of "Pot Still" Whiskey in the year 1791 by James Power.

branie2

The late Stephen Gately wrote a children's book. I spotted it in a charity book shop this evening

Buford T. Justice XIX

https://twitter.com/ZonePhysics/status/1106767885844795392?s=19