I bet you didnt know that

sbsquarepants · 10-01-2018 10:11AM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

If you heat a diamond up without pressure it will turn into a worthless chunk of carbon.

.

What sort of temperature are we talking? Acetylene torch, blast furnace, nuclear fusion?

I know it's safe enough to leave an engagement ring on the mantle piece!:D

Riva10 · 10-01-2018 02:49PM

sbsquarepants wrote: »

I know it's safe enough to leave an engagement ring on the mantle piece!:D

Much safer and cheaper than putting it on someone's finger.

Nagikami · 10-01-2018 02:55PM

There's a clock at an abandoned petrol station in the evacuation zone area around the Fukushima Dai'ichi power plant that's still working, despite being hit by the earthquake and tsunami, and it being seven years since.

It was a Seiko clock.
Good clocks.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1 · 10-01-2018 03:12PM

sbsquarepants wrote: »

What sort of temperature are we talking? Acetylene torch, blast furnace, nuclear fusion?

I know it's safe enough to leave an engagement ring on the mantle piece!:D

Diamonds burn in pure oxygen at 690º C to 840º C. Carbon Dioxide is given off and carbon remains in a similar form to graphite.

Oldtree · 10-01-2018 03:46PM

Nagikami wrote: »

There's a clock at an abandoned petrol station in the evacuation zone area around the Fukushima Dai'ichi power plant that's still working, despite being hit by the earthquake and tsunami, and it being seven years since.

It was a Seiko clock.
Good clocks.

Is it battery operated?

New Home · 10-01-2018 06:02PM

Nagikami wrote: »

There's a clock at an abandoned petrol station in the evacuation zone area around the Fukushima Dai'ichi power plant that's still working, despite being hit by the earthquake and tsunami, and it being seven years since.

It was a Seiko clock.
Good clocks.

Oldtree wrote: »

Is it battery operated?

Is this a wind up? :pac:

Thargor · 11-01-2018 10:50AM

7 years on a clock is hardly that impressive is it?

Quazzie · 11-01-2018 11:17AM

Thargor wrote: »

7 years on a clock is hardly that impressive is it?

The batteries were taken out of it 5 years ago :eek:

may not be true

Nagikami · 11-01-2018 12:54PM

Thargor wrote: »

7 years on a clock is hardly that impressive is it?

I'd say so! Mine only goes up to 12 hours.

Oldtree wrote: »

Is it battery operated?

Solar powered

valoren · 11-01-2018 01:04PM

In the summer of 1943, American and Canadian forces launched an amphibious assault on the north Pacific island of Kiska.

Codenamed Cottage, the operation was intended to seize the last enemy stronghold on North American soil from Japanese occupiers. The assault began in the predawn hours of August 15 with a heavy coastal barrage by an armada of nearly 100 Allied warships. Intense fire support was followed by a chaotic but successful ship-to-shore movement of over 34,000 U.S. Army and Canadian combat infantrymen. For 2 long days, the invasion force slugged its way inland through thick fog and against the constant din of machine gun and artillery fire. By the time the island was declared secure, 92 troops had been killed and 221 had been wounded.

Japanese casualties?

There were none. The Japanese (all 5,000 of them) had abandoned the island almost 3 weeks prior under cover of dense fog.

http://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/577595/jfq-76-operation-cottage-a-cautionary-tale-of-assumption-and-perceptual-bias/

Chrongen · 11-01-2018 03:03PM

Dolly Parton (the real Dolly Parton) entered a Dolly Parton lookalike contest in Santa Monica California........and DIDN'T WIN.

She exaggerated her looks, hair and beauty spot and wasn't recognised as a result.

ohnonotgmail · 11-01-2018 03:19PM

Chrongen wrote: »

Dolly Parton (the real Dolly Parton) entered a Dolly Parton lookalike contest in Santa Monica California........and DIDN'T WIN.

She exaggerated her looks, hair and beauty spot and wasn't recognised as a result.

is that not just a retelling of the same story about charlie chaplin?

scotchy · 11-01-2018 03:49PM

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

is that not just a retelling of the same story about charlie chaplin?

What??? Charlie Chaplin entered a Dolly Parton lookalike compitition ???

I definitely didn't know that.

.

Buford T. Justice XIX · 11-01-2018 04:02PM

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

is that not just a retelling of the same story about charlie chaplin?

Doubt it, Charlie Chaplin looked nothing like Dolly Parton...

Riva10 · 11-01-2018 04:51PM

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

Doubt it, Charlie Chaplin looked nothing like Dolly Parton...

Not from the side anyway

BrokenArrows · 11-01-2018 05:00PM

Apparently the Berlin wall fell by mistake.

The soviets had decided to allow travel from east to west but it was still highly restricted travel which wouldn't change much for regular east Germans.

Guenter Schabowski was giving a press conference in east Berlin and was given this information at the last minute and was asked to announce it as part of his conference. He wasn't aware of the finer details of the decision and it wasn't meant to be a big deal.

When he did eventually announce it at the end of his conference he got confused and wasn't very clear about what was allowed. He also said it came into effect immediately.

Some reporters left the conference immediately and didn't wait for clarification.

Hanns Friedrichs a big news reporter announced that "This ninth of November is a historic day. East Germany has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone."

Thousands started to gather at the wall. Initially the guards refused people to cross but the crowd became so big there was nothing they could do and didn't want to just start shooting people on mass so they started slowly allowing people through and eventually just opened the gates.

Anyone who was actually in significant power who would have ordered use of force to control and reject the crowd had no idea that this was happening because they were either in closed meetings or asleep in different time zones and by the time they did it know about it it was too late.

That night there was a huge party as everyone partied in the streets and freely flowed from east to west and visited family.
It would have been too difficult to restore order so the border remained open.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/30/AR2009103001846.html

ohnonotgmail · 11-01-2018 05:26PM

Due to the events of the War of 1812 the US started In 1816 to build a fort at Lake Champlain to protect againt invasion from British Canada. After 2 years of construction and considerable expense it was discovered that they were actually building on the Canadian side of the border. They had to abandon what they had built and start work again half a mile further south.

11-01-2018 05:55PM

BrokenArrows wrote: »

Apparently the Berlin wall fell by mistake.

The soviets had decided to allow travel from east to west but it was still highly restricted travel which wouldn't change much for regular east Germans.

Guenter Schabowski was giving a press conference in east Berlin and was given this information at the last minute and was asked to announce it as part of his conference. He wasn't aware of the finer details of the decision and it wasn't meant to be a big deal.

When he did eventually announce it at the end of his conference he got confused and wasn't very clear about what was allowed. He also said it came into effect immediately.

Some reporters left the conference immediately and didn't wait for clarification.

Hanns Friedrichs a big news reporter announced that "This ninth of November is a historic day. East Germany has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone."

Thousands started to gather at the wall. Initially the guards refused people to cross but the crowd became so big there was nothing they could do and didn't want to just start shooting people on mass so they started slowly allowing people through and eventually just opened the gates.

Anyone who was actually in significant power who would have ordered use of force to control and reject the crowd had no idea that this was happening because they were either in closed meetings or asleep in different time zones and by the time they did it know about it it was too late.

That night there was a huge party as everyone partied in the streets and freely flowed from east to west and visited family.
It would have been too difficult to restore order so the border remained open.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/30/AR2009103001846.html

Wow. A great moment in modern history - accidentally so.

Thanks for posting that BA.

Kat1170 · 11-01-2018 06:12PM

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

Doubt it, Charlie Chaplin looked nothing like Dolly Parton...

Turns out neither does Dolly Parton :eek::eek:

New Home · 11-01-2018 08:07PM

Still in the subject of the Berlin Wall, when it was built a "shortcut" was taken to save money, and a triangular patch of land (approx. 350 sq. m.) that technically belonged to East Berlin was left on the West side of the Wall. This land couldn't be used by either side because of its location, and was abandoned. In 1983 an Anatolian immigrant father of six, Osman Kalin, began clearing out the fallow land and built a single-storey hut and a vegetable garden there, and neither side could "legally" stop him, they only managed to limit the height of the building for fear that it might be used as an entry point. Kalin lived there for years (even after the fall of the Wall) and made his living in part by selling/smuggling goods to the East Berlin soldiers. The hut is known as "Baumhaus an der Mauer", or "Treehouse at the Wall", even though it's not built on a tree but between trees.

More here.

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FBaumhaus_an_der_Mauer&edit-text=&act=url

sbsquarepants · 12-01-2018 09:09AM

These are 2 brilliant Berlin Wall stories - fascinating both of them.

I have a chunk of it at home somewhere. A cousin of mine just happened to be in berlin on a school tour when it fell. He picked up a few chunks off the ground that people had smashed off with sledge hammers and pick axes as they vented their anger at the damn thing.

30 years or so it stood as the physical embodiment of the cold war and division in general, and it topples in hours because of a botched press conference. Absolutely amazing!

AndyBoBandy · 12-01-2018 09:53AM

BrokenArrows wrote: »

Apparently the Berlin wall fell by mistake.

This story is covered in an excellent episode of BBC's Days that Shook the World

redfacedbear · 12-01-2018 06:23PM

The Berlin Wall has now been down longer than it was up (1961 to 1989).

Kat1170 · 12-01-2018 11:40PM

45% of the world's Tic-Tacs are produced in Cork

SimonTemplar · 13-01-2018 12:23AM

85 year old movie composer John Williams (Jaws, Star Wars, ET, Indy, Schlinder's List, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, Home Alone, etc) has never upskilled with modern technology and is in fact a complete novice when it comes to anything modern. Therefore, he is the only major Hollywood composer who still uses just a piano, pencil and paper when writing scores without any use of any synth or computer programs. Most movie composers use computer based orchestra mockup tools before passing it to a real orchestra, but Williams has been composing in the same way as he did in the 1950s.

mzungu · 13-01-2018 12:51AM

If you drop a raisin into a glass of fresh champagne it will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.

evolving_doors · 13-01-2018 01:13AM

For men it's Blond
For women it's Blonde

Duckworth_Luas · 13-01-2018 02:22AM

Ireland is one of only 10 countries that doesn't have red or blue on their national flag.

The others are Bhutan, Cote d'Ivoire, Cyprus, India, Jamaica, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and the Vatican City.

Junkyard Tom · 13-01-2018 02:37AM

Low fat milk contains slightly more calcium than full fat as the calcium is in the water not the fat.

Also, low fat milk is a scam.

LirW · 13-01-2018 10:40AM

When Sylvester Stallone moved to Hollywood to make it big there, he really found himself struggling with money with his wife (just before Rocky). They had an old Pitbull dog and because they were struggling so much, they decided to sell the dog to a family in a very hot summer because they couldn't accommodate his elderly needs in the heat.
When around half a year later Sly was starting to shoot Rocky, he approached the family and asked if they'd be willing to let the dog star in the movie because he'd written parts for him in the script. After short hesitation the family said yes and the dog got to star in 2 Rocky movies.

Out of that story there developed the legend that Sly sold the dog to a stranger and once he made money from Rocky he bought the dog back for 15.000$. Which of course isn't true.

I bet you didnt know that

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