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

New Home

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Australian astronomers have an average carbon footprint of 37 tons a year.

Over four times that of a EU citizen.

Why astronomers in particular?

castletownman

One of the coolest facts is that when John F Kennedy got assassinated, he was the youngest ever president to die. But his mother lived to be 104 years old, which seems incredible.

KevRossi

Melbourne is nearer to Antarctica than it is to Darwin.

KevRossi

There are less than 200 stone circles in Ireland, though it's still one of the highest in the world. But we are very much outdone by the Senegambia stone circles, spread along the Gambia river in Africa. Over an area of 350 km from East to West and 100 Km from North to South, they number well over 1,000. About 10 times the density of Ireland.

This is a map of them, the distance east to west is wider than from Clifden to Dublin. This link shows the east/west line roughly on Google Maps.



They are mostly made of laterite, not much is known about them, but they were erected from around 300 BC to 1600 AD, possibly as burial grounds. No proper connection between them and ones found in Europe has been found, but I've been to a fair few of them and the similarities are uncanny. There were certainly trade routes along these areas so IMO the possibility is there.

Capt'n Midnight

New Home wrote: »

Why astronomers in particular?

Number crunching and travel to remote places.

KevRossi

Parts of the main character in the film and TV series 'The Fugitive' were supposedly based on Dr Sam Shepperd, a doctor who was wrongly convicted of killing his wife in Ohio in 1954. He was released pending retrial in 1964, then retrialed and acquitted in 1966.

3 days after his release he married a German woman called Arainne Tebbenjohanns, she never knew him, but had corresponded with him when he was in prison. Her other claim to fame is that her sister was Magda Goebbels, wife of Josef and the woman who poisoned 6 of her kids in Hitlers bunker. Magda had another child from a previous marriage, he went on to own and rebuild BMW after the war.

New Home

Definitely stranger than fiction!

BonnieSituation

KevRossi wrote: »

This is one of the best threads on Boards.ie, but the first post in the original thread has only received 8 Thanks to date.



Anyway, there are 7 islands that are divided by international borders.

Here they are:

Timor comes form the Malay for "East" so East Timor/Timor-Leste is "East East".

KevRossi

In 2008 a box of CD's containing the details of 7 million bank customers was lost on a train in the UK. In his column in The Sun, Jeremy Clarkson rubbished the idea that the details could be used by criminals to withdraw money from people's accounts, arguing that only a deposit could be made.

To prove the point, he placed his bank details and PIN number in his Sun column, as well as details of his car, and how his address could be found on the electoral roll. He challenged anybody to attempt to hack his account. Some days later he found that £500 had been paid via direct debit to the British Diabetic Association. This had been done annonymously, Clarkson had not realised that some charities do not need a signature to set up a direct debit. He allowed them to keep the money and apologised in his next column.

He mentions the incident in this clip from QI. (starts at 1:48)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_GBPhSr4Es

humberklog

Why do we count units of time in batches of 60? 60 seconds in 60 minutes in 24 hours.

There's a good hypothesis that it comes from the Sumerians and their system of counting.
Hold out both hands. Using the thumb on your right hand count along the tops of the 4 fingers of that hand, then count along the middle section of the 4 fingers and then the bottom section of the 4 fingers. 3x4 is 12. On your left hand stick a finger out and then repeat the counting process on your right hand. Do this until you run out of fingers on your left hand. 5x12 is 60. This system was used for the measurement angles too (360).

Divisibility.

Capt'n Midnight

I guessing you kinda knew this but here's the science.

Experimental replication shows knives manufactured from frozen human feces do not work

Realt Dearg Sec

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

I guessing you kinda knew this but here's the science.

Experimental replication shows knives manufactured from frozen human feces do not work

I didn't know I knew it, but I guess on some level I knew it. I don't know why anyone was curious though.

Capt'n Midnight

Entomologists are afraid of spiders.

Capt'n Midnight

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

I guessing you kinda knew this but here's the science.

Experimental replication shows knives manufactured from frozen human feces do not work

That's the episode of Mythbusters that we needed, but never got.

Realt Dearg Sec

Candie wrote: »

That's the episode of Mythbusters that we needed, but never got.

Well, there is the time they polished a turd...

I remember it and it was a good one. Not as good as a turd knife would have been, but good. A turd knife would be hard to beat, to be fair.


Today I learned that cow/bison hybrids exist. And they are, of course, called beefalos.

retalivity

Marcusm wrote: »

There are more; including St Martin/Sint Maarten.

The smallest island split between 2 countries is Mårket island in the baltic, between Sweden and Finland. The Finns built a lighthouse on the highest point, and only realised after it was on the swedish side. Not wanting to give up the lighthouse and the swedes not wanting to give up any territory, they came to an agreement to re-draw the border as shown below.

cdeb

They also had to ensure the length of coastline remained the same so as not to affect fishing rights

cdeb

Actually, another interesting example - and this is more suited to the Interesting Maps thread I guess, but anyway - is Passport Island. It's the small figure-of-8 shaped island here -



It's an artificial island built on a bridge connecting Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and as the name implies, it serves as the customs point between the two countries. The border is at the narrow central part, which is where the actual customs point is. It's 0.3 square miles in size, has a permanent population of nil - but does, of course, have its own McDonalds.

The Atlas of Unusual Borders by Zoran Nikolic is a fun read for those interested in that sort of thing; it mentions Market Island and the Sint Maarten/Saint Martin borders too

Capt'n Midnight

Bahrain is on the right. And as part of the project they changed which side on the road they drive on.

cdeb

Just to clarify "as part of the project" - they changed side of the road in 1967 (when they only had 18,000 cars), and the bridge was opened in 1986.

They changed side with an idea they might build a bridge alright, but the "project" lasted almost 20 years!

764dak

cdeb wrote: »

Speaking of the Canary Islands, why is island spelled with an s anyway? What a silly silent letter.

The word in middle English was iland, which makes sense. But in the 15th century, it was thought that the unrelated French word isle was actually related, which would mean that the English version had dropped an "s" somewhere along the way. So it was added back in, having never been there in the first place.

Isle comes from the Latin insula, which does have an "s". Iland comes from the the Norwegian øy or the Swedish ö (meaning island) and the general suffix "land", meaning "land", neither of which have an s.

Island came from Old English.

Oxford Dictionary:

Old English īegland, from īeg ‘island’ (from a base meaning ‘watery, watered’) + land. The change in the spelling of the first syllable in the 16th century was due to association with the unrelated word isle.

Etymonline:

1590s, earlier yland (c. 1300), from Old English igland, iegland "an island," from ieg "island" (from Proto-Germanic *awjo "thing on the water," from PIE root *akwa- "water") + land (n.). The second syllable (also in Old Frisian alond, Middle Dutch eiland) was added later to distinguish it from homonyms, especially Old English ea "water" (see ea). As an adjective from 1620s.

Spelling modified 16c. by association with similar but unrelated isle. Similar formation in Old Frisian eiland, Middle Dutch eyland, German Eiland, Danish öland, etc. In place names, Old English ieg is often used of "slightly raised dry ground offering settlement sites in areas surrounded by marsh or subject to flooding" [Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names]. Island universe "solar system" (1846) translates German Weltinsel (von Humboldt, 1845). An Old English cognate was ealand "river-land, watered place, meadow by a river." Related: Islander.

Buford T. Justice XIX

A small bit more on origins of words, in this case the origin of the Irish expression to chance your arm.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CFhO1fUHtq0/?igshid=1vc9v1h63ptwr

secondrowgal

Coincidentally, a good friend of mine is a Butler and this has been put on our WhatsApp group only yesterday:

in 1192 Theobald Walter was appointed to the position of Chief Butler of Ireland by Prince John, son of King Henry II. He was granted lands in the Barony of Ormond, built the Castle at Nenagh and the family lived there for 200 years, later moving to Kilkenny Castle. In their Heraldic Shield you will find 3 covered cups referring to their occupation as cup bearers or butlers, and they had the responsibility of pouring the first glass of wine at coronations to the new King or Queen until 1821.

Their motto is "comme je trouve", rough meaning "I take things as I find them".

The last Marquis of Ormond died in Chicago in 1997, aged 98. The Earldom remains vacant and unclaimed (my kingdom for a horse!!). Their title was valuable as they were entitled to 10% share of all wines imported into Ireland. The Crown bought them out of this entitlement and paid £216,000 compensation in 1811 :eek:

Realt Dearg Sec

secondrowgal wrote: »

Coincidentally, a good friend of mine is a Butler and this has been put on our WhatsApp group only yesterday:

in 1192 Theobald Walter was appointed to the position of Chief Butler of Ireland by Prince John, son of King Henry II. He was granted lands in the Barony of Ormond, built the Castle at Nenagh and the family lived there for 200 years, later moving to Kilkenny Castle. In their Heraldic Shield you will find 3 covered cups referring to their occupation as cup bearers or butlers, and they had the responsibility of pouring the first glass of wine at coronations to the new King or Queen until 1821.

Their motto is "comme je trouve", rough meaning "I take things as I find them".

The last Marquis of Ormond died in Chicago in 1997, aged 98. The Earldom remains vacant and unclaimed (my kingdom for a horse!!). Their title was valuable as they were entitled to 10% share of all wines imported into Ireland. The Crown bought them out of this entitlement and paid £216,000 compensation in 1811 :eek:

The Castle was transferred to the people of Kilkenny in 1967 for 50 pounds. Mick Jagger attended the transfer ceremony.

A few years back a lad from Mooncoin claimed that he had a right of ownership over the castle because he was descended from pre-Norman kings of Ossory, but that he was willing to settle for a few rooms and a kitchen, or else he would chain himself to the gate. There's a funny thread about it here:

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=92210642

New Home

This is an antique design. It originated when midwives decades ago used to take needlework and embroidery to while away the hours waiting until delivery. They were multipurpose and are usually pretty sharp.

-Rebecca Broscombe-Adams

LostinBlanch

Some of you might have heard of Jack B Yeats, or seen some of his pictures in the National Gallery. But did you know that this one, won him a silver medal in the 1924 Olympics?

ohnonotgmail

LostinBlanch wrote: »

Some of you might have heard of Jack B Yeats, or seen some of his pictures in the National Gallery. But did you know that this one, won him a silver medal in the 1924 Olympics?

Oliver St John Gogarty won a bronze medal for a poem.

Letitia Marion Hamilton won a bronze medal for this painting. Well not quite this painting. this is an image of a study for the winning painting.

Capt'n Midnight

You keep seeing variations of this from across the pond.

It's like they are wimps who've never even considered the existence of something like a Bramley

But it turns out that each successive birth cohort reports more pain at any given age than the cohorts that came before it.