I bet you didnt know that

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.

This doesn't happen until 31st December this year.

Wibbs wrote: »

Putting people in prison has a long history, but the concept of it being a longterm thing is not so recent a thing. In the ancient world imprisonment was nearly always a temporary state. Where an individual was awaiting trial, if they were lucky, even then usually a foregone verdict. Punishments in the ancient world were usually along the lines of; fines, exile, or execution.

The first recorded person who suggested long term, even life imprisonment was of all boyos, one Gaius Julius Caesar. Yeah him. It came about when a plot to take down Rome by one senator who had fallen on debt and hard times(whose name escapes ) was opposed by another, one Cicero, the great orator. The plot was discovered and it went back and forth, as these things tend to, but the upshot was the rebels were found out, caught and rounded up. Our boyo Julius suggested life imprisonment for some of the perps, but this didn't foster much debate or sympathy and Cicero had them executed. His announcement to the people of Rome was one word; Vixere(sp?). "They lived", in the past tense.

more "'they have lived"

Watching an interesting documentary from National Geographic about Area 51. Which we all know now was a testing and developmental facility of new aircraft back in the day.

Anyways, the Americans were developing stealth. So they had this long pole out in the middle of the desert floor with the shape of the new plane attached on top of it. Testing the shape of the plane, rotating it, bouncing radar off it... Testing and developing etc. Problem was the russians had already launched satellites over the United States at this point. So the Area 51 crew had information/intel of when the russian satellite passes over the horizon so it's time to bring the mock-up plane model back in.

Thing was... those crafty russians had some pretty smart people working for them. As years later Area 51 employees found out that the Russians knew the shape of the plane. How I may hear you ask? while the test plane was on the rotating pole it cast a shadow from the intense Navada sun. So the satellite picked up heat temperatures of the soil (as the casting shadow reduced heat) and were able to make out the shape of the plane. Despite never, even once, actually photographing the actual plane via satellite.

How bleeding smart do you have to be to come up with that idea.

Q-Ships were a rather quirky defence mechanism used during the World Wars. Essentially, they were "dummy" ships that were disguised as harmless merchant vessels but had hidden heavy artillery inside used specifically to destroy U-Boats.

They were deployed in seas where U-boats were known to be active, and rather than waste their limited supply of torpedoes, the U-Boat were instead "encouraged" to surface and use their deck gun. To further the illusion that said ship didn't pose much of a threat, the crew would "abandon" ship dressed as civilian mariners. However, once the U-Boat was within firing range, the ship's panels would drop, revealing its own deck guns underneath and immediately open fire. At the same time, the White Ensign (the Royal Navy's internationally-recognised surrender flag) would be raised. With this element of surprise, the U-Boat could be quickly overwhelmed.

The word "Q-Ship" came from it's code-name which referred to the vessels' home port, Queenstown, which is modern-day Cobh. The Germans had their own name for it: "U-Boot-Falle" which translates as "U-Boat Trap". There is estimated to have been 366 such ships used during WW1 alone, with 61 lost. However, a post-war review concluded that they were over-rated, as they diverted skilled seamen from other important engagements without sinking enough U-Boats to justify the strategy. In all, about 10% of U-Boats were sunk using this method, which ranks far lower than the use of ordinary minefields in strike-rate.

The first known reference to Q-Ships dates back to 1670s when the HMS Kingfisher was deployed specifically to deal with Algerian pirates operating in the Mediterranean. And rather oddly, nearly 400 years later, they have been suggested as a possible measure by security experts to deal with the pirate problem off the Somalia coast.

Interestingly, one such schooner that served as a Q-Ship during WW1 was the Mary.B.Mitchell, but she had an entirely different fate after the war. In 1934 she was commissioned by the British International Film Company, and a year later "starred" as Mary Celeste in "The Mystery of the Mary Celeste", which was one of the earliest releases of Hammer Film Productions, which later become synomonous with Frankenstein, Dracula and other horror film classics.

Haiti and Liechtenstein had the exact same flag as each other but only found out when they both competed at the 1936 Olympic Games. From there, they developed each of their flags a little further with their own emblems representing them a little clearer.

Pter wrote: »

I wonder what the blue on top of red signifies in each case.

Red is nearly always for the blood spilled in the wars for independence. I'd wager the blue for L'stein is a royal colour and maybe for Haiti it's the sea or the sky.


Edit- This is interesting.

Haitian lore holds that the newly appointed revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines created the flag by taking a French tricolor and ripping out the white center, which he discarded. He then asked Catherine Flon, his god-daughter, to sew the remaining bands together. The white pale removed, the blue was taken to represent Haiti's black citizens and the red the gens de couleur.

Liechtenstein's is a little less dramatic. The blue represents the sky, while red alludes to the "evening fires" that are lit inside houses throughout the country.

Photography has only been allowed in the Tashkent (Uzbekistan) metro since this summer as it was built to double as a nuclear bomb shelter. It is the oldest one in Central Asia benefiting from a policy of the USSR that once a city hit 1,000,000 inhabitants, then it got a metro.

As is typical for the time, they are lavishly decorated and are like many former Soviet undergrounds, they are tourist attractions in their own right.

The one in Kosmonavtlar station (Cosmonaut station) is my favoutie. It features dreamy pictures of the people of the USSR space programme. The background tiles also represent the changing colours of the sky that they experience when going into space.

This is Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space.


And here's Gagarin



There's a good article here. https://www.rferl.org/a/uzbekistan-s-secret-underground-a-ban-on-photography-is-lifted-on-tashkent-metro-/29437456.html

Ten of Swords wrote: »

The Zambezi river forms part of the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, and along this river is Victoria Falls - a 2 km long, 100m high waterfall. Between August and January, typically after the dry season, the rivers water level drops slightly.

There is a place at the very edge of the waterfall on the Zambian side called the Devils pool and when the water levels are right there is absolutely no current whatsoever in this pool even though it is RIGHT AT THE EDGE! It's a tourist attraction and it is 100% on my bucket list.





Devils pool is located in the center of this image

Not on your Nelly!

Ten of Swords wrote: »

The Zambezi river forms part of the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, and along this river is Victoria Falls - a 2 km long, 100m high waterfall. Between August and January, typically after the dry season, the rivers water level drops slightly.

There is a place at the very edge of the waterfall on the Zambian side called the Devils pool and when the water levels are right there is absolutely no current whatsoever in this pool even though it is RIGHT AT THE EDGE! It's a tourist attraction and it is 100% on my bucket list.

My balls retracted up into my scrotum when I saw that middle picture.

Germanic tribes under the rule of their leader Odoacer, brought down the western Roman Empire 

As an ally of Austia-Hungary - the German leader Wilhelm II, went down on history as one of the principal protagonists of First World War.

Hitler as Chancellor of the German Reich invaded Poland and instigated the Second World War

As for World War 3 ....

The movie 'A Quiet Place' begins in a shop and as it is set in a post-apocalyptic world, most of the shelves have been stripped bare. However, you can see all of the packets of crisps are still on the shelves. Not good food when a noise can get you killed but brilliant subtle story telling through set design.