I bet you didnt know that

quickbeam · 13-01-2018 10:47pm

New Home wrote: »

What's this? Am I in
Dr SHELDON COOPER
&
Dr AMY FARAH FOWLER

~~~present~~~

Dr SHELDON COOPER'S
FUN with FLAGS

?

:pac:

Ha, now that's something I *did* know - somebody was bound to bring that up. But yeah, I like flags!

LarryGraham · 13-01-2018 10:49pm

Paraguay is the only country to have a flag with a different back to its front.

New Home · 13-01-2018 10:52pm

quickbeam wrote: »

Ha, now that's something I *did* know - somebody was bound to bring that up. But yeah, I like flags!

I wasn't complaining, but it was too easy, I just had to!

Greybottle · 14-01-2018 12:47am

One of the most daring escapes in the history of the Iron Curtain was a balloon flight by Peter Strelzk and Gunter Wt=etzel and their families in 1979, 8 people in total, the youngest being only 2.

They had no knowledge or skills in making balloons and had very little technical literature to go on. After a couple of failed attempts they decided to make a 4,000 cubic metre balloon, to be sure to be sure and made the successful flight. The balloon was stitched togethe with material that they could buy, raincoats and bed linen.

The whole project was a triumph of East German tinker engineering, where people made the best out if the materials that were available to them.

What they didn't realise until after the flight was that it was at the time the largest non military balloon built for human transport.

There's a good version of the story here:
https://www.damninteresting.com/up-in-the-air/

The flight path is here (it's approximate) : https://www.google.ie/maps/dir/50.6204862,11.6284609/50.3598777,11.6860927/@50.4904546,11.5177803,11z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!4m1!3e2

The balloon "basket" that carried 4 adults, 2 teenagers and two kids is here as well as the people who travelled in it:

07.TheEscapeOfTheCentury.WV..JPG

Peter-Strelzyk-death-hot-air-balloon-escaped-East-Germany-864968.jpg

mzungu · 14-01-2018 12:57am

In 1232, Pope Gregory IX released a papal bull titled Vox in Rama (Latin, “A voice in Rama”), that condemned a contemporary surge in devil worship. His description of devil worship entailed the claim that black cats were used in the rituals. This was enough to stir up hatred of black cats and people begin exterminating them (It should be added that Gregory was not calling for their extermination, merely to highlight that they were being used in rituals). This sudden lack of cats led to the spread of disease because infected rats ran free. The most devastating of these diseases, the Bubonic Plague, killed 100 million people.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer · 14-01-2018 12:59am

the purple tin wrote: »

and during WW2 loads of british people donated their railings to be melted down and used for the war effort. The thing is the bulk of the metal was just scrapped and never used as it wasn't suitable. the government asked for the railings to make people think they were personally helping Britain win the war, like a morale booster.

They did the same with pots and pans. Most of them were never used.

Oldtree · 14-01-2018 3:20am

It is well known that all parts of the yew tree are poisonous/toxic including the seed and the pollen can be nasty too, except for the jelly of the berry.

I have tasted the berry on many occasions, but I take great care not to scrape the seed with my teeth. Do not try this as home!

14-01-2018 4:14am

Bet you guys didn't know that Irish house spiders are big and bad enough to BITE you. Their venom isn't in any way toxic to us, but their fangs are big and nasty enough to penetrate your skin and they will bite if you poke them, annoy them, or roll over on them in your sleep, etc.

Now people are all terrified of false widow spiders who are becoming more common here. Guess what - if you've never been bitten by an Irish house spider, then you probably wont be bitten by a false widow.

IvyTheTerrible · 14-01-2018 7:17am

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Now people are all terrified of false widow spiders who are becoming more common here. Guess what - if you've never been bitten by an Irish house spider, then you probably wont be bitten by a false widow.

Why?

nigel_wilson · 14-01-2018 7:34am

Ineedaname wrote: »

India does have blue

Remember on the Top Gear "India Special" where Richard Hammond accidentally painted his racing car with the colors of the Mexican flag. Apparently their colors are close enough.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1 · 14-01-2018 11:08am

Deleted User wrote: »

Bet you guys didn't know that Irish house spiders are big and bad enough to BITE you. Their venom isn't in any way toxic to us, but their fangs are big and nasty enough to penetrate your skin and they will bite if you poke them, annoy them, or roll over on them in your sleep, etc.

Now people are all terrified of false widow spiders who are becoming more common here. Guess what - if you've never been bitten by an Irish house spider, then you probably wont be bitten by a false widow.

Not true. While the false widow only bites in defence, it does so much more readily than our native House Spider. If you accidentally crush a House Spider it won't bite but a False Widow will. It's akin to a bad bee or wasp sting.

py2006 · 14-01-2018 12:32pm

quickbeam wrote: »

I didn't know Mauritania had amended its flag :eek:

I have fairly good country-flag recognition (thanks to having far too much time on my hands in the past). The extra stripes might have stumped me.

You clearly missed an episode of 'Fun with Flags' with Sheldon and Amy...

Edit: damn, not the first in with that one

muppetshow1451 · 14-01-2018 12:41pm

A freakwave is f....ng big in the North atlantic/North sea.

the purple tin · 14-01-2018 12:45pm

The oldest known joke in the world,dating back nearly 4000 years to Sumer is a fart joke. (these old gags were written in a newspaper headline sort of style):

"Something which has never occurred since time immemorial - a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1 · 14-01-2018 12:50pm

the purple tin wrote: »

The oldest known joke in the world,dating back nearly 4000 years to Sumer is a fart joke. (these old gags were written in a newspaper headline sort of style):

"Something which has never occurred since time immemorial - a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."

As the phrase 'time immemorial' was only coined in the 1600s, and in England, I assume the translation is a bit loose.

Time immemorial is taken in English law to be the beginning of the reign of Richard 1.

RiderOnTheStorm · 14-01-2018 1:45pm

Dont have exact figures, but from memory....

They thought freak waves used to occur once in a hundred years, and then they used a satellite to watch an area of ocean (near Antarctica iirr) for a week and they saw 10. They are a lot more common than we think. A freak wave (used to be called a tidal wave in years gone by) is near that is 4 times higher than the average wave in its vicinity. So it might not be huge.

Cant get clear answer, but i don't think a rogue/tidal/freak wave is same as a tsunami. A wave is usually water moving up and down (on imaginary Y axis). It hardly moves forward at all. But a tsunami wave does move forward, and this is where its destructive force comes from. Imagine the whole sea , from top to bottom, moved forward a few feet, because an island fell into it. It pushes the water in front of it and it keeps going. It might only be inches tall. But when it reaches shallower water, the entire column of water (that was inches high on top of a couple of hundred feet of water) now reaches the beach, and wants to stay at same height / volume.... so the wave builds height, keeps gong forward, and doesn't stop.

There is a big crack on Canaries island, and if island splits and falls into the sea, the resulting tsunami will travel west at approx 500 mile per hour and wipe out New York, with the wave traveling inland for 10 miles.... They will have 20 min warning that it's coming.

IvyTheTerrible · 14-01-2018 1:49pm

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

As the phrase 'time immemorial' was only coined in the 1600s, and in England, I assume the translation is a bit loose.

Time immemorial is taken in English law to be the beginning of the reign of Richard 1.

Translators rarely translate word-for-word. They will try to keep the overall meaning of a phrase intact, while making a text understandable to the target audience. So translating a Sumerian phrase with a modern (ish) English phrase is fine. (Especially seeing as English didn't exist in Sumerian times...)

Greybottle · 14-01-2018 3:10pm

Sophia Loren's sister was married to the son of Benito Mussolini.

Their daughter is Alessandra Mussolini, MEP, former nude model and one of the very few women in Europe to have founded a political party and get elected as a member of that party.

Kat1170 · 14-01-2018 4:33pm

Greybottle wrote: »

Sophia Loren's sister was married to the son of Benito Mussolini.

Their daughter is Alessandra Mussolini, MEP, former nude model and one of the very few women in Europe to have founded a political party and get elected as a member of that party.

Well, if any of our lot were nude models I'd be more inclined to gouge my own eyes out than vote for them.

xabi · 14-01-2018 4:38pm

"RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

There is a big crack on Canaries island, and if island splits and falls into the sea, the resulting tsunami will travel west at approx 500 mile per hour and wipe out New York, with the wave traveling inland for 10 miles.... They will have 20 min warning that it's coming.

It’s 3000 miles away, won’t they have 6 hours warning?

Wibbs · 14-01-2018 5:03pm

xabi wrote: »

It’s 3000 miles away, won’t they have 6 hours warning?

More like that alright and more recent research and conclusions have suggested that the island won't cleave apart in such a fashion. Which is a good thing.

MonkieSocks · 14-01-2018 5:08pm

LirW · 14-01-2018 5:59pm

MonkieSocks wrote: »

Hasn't that be debunked as highly exaggerated by some American institutes?
As far as I know you would only see the effects of it within the canaries but it certainly wouldn't spread like in these simulations.

Something similar happened a few months ago somewhere in the North of Greenland where a few km away another island was hit with a 100m high wave but the same waves would disappear in a fairly close distance. It only impacted the very immediate area.

Greybottle · 14-01-2018 6:06pm

xabi wrote: »

It’s 3000 miles away, won’t they have 6 hours warning?

A bit more I think. But cities like Conakry, Dakar, Nouakchott, Rabat, Casablanca and Lisbon and indeed any coastal city in the Canaries which all have populations of 1-5 million will be hit in anywhere from 30 mins to 2 hours. So no effective warning.

A lecturer I know calculated that it would up the Shannon as far as Co.Offaly in the worst case scenario.Limerick and Galway would be badly hit as would Cork and any coastal community.

Global recession lasting 20 years would be one result. But as Wibbs pointed out, recent studies showed it's unlikely to happen, but even a minor tsunami would cost hundreds of billions.

lmimmfn · 14-01-2018 6:32pm

sbsquarepants wrote: »

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!

The video game World In Conflict special edition was sold with a piece of the Berlin Wall in it. I have mine in the attic, whether the bit I have is real or not who knows.

Capt'n Midnight · 14-01-2018 9:44pm

During winter of 480-479 BC the Persians laid siege to the Greek town of Potidaea.

But there was treachery afoot, secret messages were being set to a traitor. That is until someone got hit by an arrow and it was "hang on, there's a message on this arrow" and the plot was revealed.

Later on there was a very low tide so the Persians ran around to get behind the defenders, but then the tide came back in way higher than anyone had ever seen. Most of the Persians were drowned, with more killed by the defenders who went after the rest.

And that was the first recorded Tsunami.

poo poo · 14-01-2018 9:52pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

During winter of 480-479 BC the Persians laid siege to the Greek town of Potidaea.

But there was treachery afoot, secret messages were being set to a traitor. That is until someone got hit by an arrow and it was "hang on, there's a message on this arrow" and the plot was revealed.

Later on there was a very low tide so the Persians ran around to get behind the defenders, but then the tide came back in way higher than anyone had ever seen. Most of the Persians were drowned, with more killed by the defenders who went after the rest.

And that was the first recorded Tsunami.

I knew that!

dinorebel · 14-01-2018 10:55pm

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

Dont have exact figures, but from memory....

They thought freak waves used to occur once in a hundred years, and then they used a satellite to watch an area of ocean (near Antarctica iirr) for a week and they saw 10. They are a lot more common than we think. A freak wave (used to be called a tidal wave in years gone by) is near that is 4 times higher than the average wave in its vicinity. So it might not be huge.

Cant get clear answer, but i don't think a rogue/tidal/freak wave is same as a tsunami. A wave is usually water moving up and down (on imaginary Y axis). It hardly moves forward at all. But a tsunami wave does move forward, and this is where its destructive force comes from. Imagine the whole sea , from top to bottom, moved forward a few feet, because an island fell into it. It pushes the water in front of it and it keeps going. It might only be inches tall. But when it reaches shallower water, the entire column of water (that was inches high on top of a couple of hundred feet of water) now reaches the beach, and wants to stay at same height / volume.... so the wave builds height, keeps gong forward, and doesn't stop.

There is a big crack on Canaries island, and if island splits and falls into the sea, the resulting tsunami will travel west at approx 500 mile per hour and wipe out New York, with the wave traveling inland for 10 miles.... They will have 20 min warning that it's coming.

Given that New York is 3500 mile from the Canaries that's 7 hours warning.

mzungu · 15-01-2018 12:31am

Before the mid-19th century dentures were commonly made with teeth pulled from the mouths of dead soldiers. In fact, the battlefield at Waterloo was a very happy hunting ground as there were lots of bodies in one place and above ground. Surviving troops and locals (joined by scavengers that travelled from Britain) pulled the teeth out with pliers to be sold when they got back home. Live donors for dentures was not unheard of either (usually the less well off), however the demand far exceeded supply, hence why they took them from dead bodies. One reason for the demand was that the mouths of the rich were rotting from excess sugar in their diets. As a result, the dentures never lasted that long due to their poor oral hygiene.

This is what they looked like, and would have set you back £100.

MonkieSocks · 15-01-2018 12:36am

PPP Perishing Persians Of The Toon Army :P

I bet you didnt know that

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