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I bet you didnt know that
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I remember reading this years ago (prob here) and came across it again recently. Not entirely sure on its accuracy but sure is fun to read:
Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost a child while living in the White House.
Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.
Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln.
Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.
John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.
Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.
Lincoln was shot at the theater named "Ford."
Kennedy was shot in a car called "Lincoln" made by "Ford."
Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.
A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe.
Lincoln was shot in a theater and the assassin ran to a warehouse...
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and the assassin ran to a theater...0 -
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Would have thought B.C. and A.D. were before that?spacetweek wrote: »Another reason why you know it's false is because practically no word from before the 20th century is an acronym. They were virtually unheard of until the First World War.
Two rare examples are AWOL and ASAP, which seem to date from the American Civil War.
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Strictly speaking these are both initialisations, not acronyms.Would have thought B.C. and A.D. were before that?
People often confuse both types of abbreviations.
An acronym is where the abbreviation is pronounced as a word, e.g. NATO for North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
An initialisation is where each individual initial is pronounced separately, e.g. F.B.I. for Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A First World problem I suffer from is when people believe commonly used words are in fact acronyms, e.g. tips is an acronym based on the initials of the phrase To Insure Prompt Service.
I once misspent time in a pub arguing with a friend's wife who believed that golf was an acronym for Gentlemen Only Ladies Prohibited.0 -
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Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »The Hebrew Bible ("Old Testament") is known as "Tanakh", is an acronym composed from the Hebrew initial letters of its three major sections: Torah, Nevi'im, and K'tuvim .
I assume the poster you replied to was referring to English though!
Perhaps the Hebrews were more forward-thinking on acronyms?0 -
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Germany you think? Well, let’s look at the facts, shall we? :cool:
In the history of mankind the Brits instigated the most wars. 90% of all countries in the world have been raided by Britons.
No 2 in the list of warmongers are the French, at the same time being the main target of the Brits, meaning the country that suffered the most British invasions.
The first recorded invasion by Britons was in the 2. century, led by Clodius Albinus who marched into Gaul with a mainly British army (probably some foreign mercenaries among them).
All countries the Brits ever were at war with are seen here (in pink):
https://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02388/BRITAIN_2388153b.jpg
The countries that didn’t experience a British invasion are:
...
Way to go Britain :rolleyes:
Now for the US: In the last 230 years they started 219 wars of aggression. Since end of WWII they started 201 wars. So far.
As for us Germans: We do the stealth thingy - we invaded boards.ie :P
I was thinking and referring (humorously!) specifically to warfare / civilisation stopping events originating in Europe.
Sure ther were invasions all over the place and elsewhere with the English and French being at war for what seems like forever! However it remains that Germany / German peoples have certainly gone down in history as playing a central part in perhaps three of the most impotant events in European history (imo anyway)
Now I'll think you'll agree that It kinda loses the point if we go into a general discourse or scorecard on 'who was / is the worse neighbour. If you look at it that way the Roman empire probably invaded more countries than they had hot Cenae
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If you look closely at a piece of Waterford Cystal - you will note that a Seahorse is used in the companies logo.
The Sea Horse was adopted as a symbol by Waterford city. It has been used as a logo for Waterford Crystal. It became the symbol for many clubs and organisations in Waterford. It is used on the crest of Tramore Golf Club. It is also used on the crest of Tramore National School.
This symbol of The Seahorse memorialises a maritime disaster in nearby Tramore in January, 1816 when the transport ship the Sea Horse foundered in Tramore Bay with the loss of 363 lives. The unexpected storm force conditions at the time, along with a substandard ship which was overcrowded and which had an inexperienced crew, ensured that the tragedy was recorded as one of Ireland’s worst maritime disasters in the 19th century.0 -
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Peregrinus wrote: »Ah! Made-up etymologies! Don't you just love them?
Eavesdroppers didn't hang from the eaves, or drop down from them. The eavesdrop or eavesdrip is the water that falls from the eaves of a house to the ground. Since the eaves project a little from the walls, it lands a little distance from the walls and, in the rain, there's a strip of somewhat dry ground right next to the wall. This dry ground is also known as the eavesdrop. I'm sure most of us have sought shelter in an eavesdrop from time to time. The word entered the English language in about the ninth century
Right. Eavesdroppers - this word dates from the sixteenth century - stood in the eavesdrop, usually right next to an open window, so they could hear what was being said without themselves being seen by those inside (unless they stuck their heads out the window).
Thanks - that makes more sense! I was hoping someone comes along with more linguistic knowledge.
I did read the explanation somewhere, can't remember where, but it stuck in my head because it was so funny to visualise.0 -
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BOG: It's a wetland that is acidic.
FEN: It's a wetland that is alkaline.
SWAMP: It's a wetland whose vegetation consists of trees or other woody plants.
MARSH: It's a wetland with other forms of vegetation.
Not sure how accurate that is, but I got it from the internet, so it must be true. It was interesting, anyway.
We can be fairly proud that the word "Bog" is derived from a Gaelic word 'bogach, meaning ‘soft’...
In Ireland there are two main types of Bog - Raised Bog and Blanket Bog
Raised Bog is generally found in lowland regions and builds up over time into a dome shape made up of peat created through the process of growth and partial decay of plants such as spaghnum moss which eventually colonise areas which were once open water
Blanket Bog which is generaly flat - is found in upland areas and forms from a gradual build up of dead and decaying vegetation into a thin covering of peat in areas of poorly drained soils.
A Bog Burst occurs when sloped bogland is undercut by means of drainage, land reclamation or road building. Following heavy rainfall huge quantities of semi-liquid soil and bog debris can start to move and completly cover farmland and even inundate and destroy houses.
Hence down the country - 'a fierce pile of bog'!0 -
Just a little visual demonstration of Special Relativity. Forgive the big graphics.
So the following shows a person, Alice (typical in physics, from Alice in Wonderland) with two events that'll happen in her future. Both events will happen to her right. The closer one will happen sooner than the one further to the right. Events are the blue-grey circles and the orange lines are to give an indication of how far from now they are. Events could be anything, but I'll say they are two distant stars exploding. From the diagram you can see the closer explosion happens first.
This is called a spacetime diagram. Time is the vertical direction, Space the horizontal. The idea is that space and time are just two different directions in one bigger thing, spacetime.
Now according to relativity, all that happens when you speed up is that your personal space and time directions rotate. Here is another observer, Bob, who is moving at near the speed of light past Alice, I've kept the events in the same places:
So Bob's space and time directions are rotated quite a bit from Alice's. However notice what this does to the events from his perspective.
Where as both stars exploding where in the future for Alice, one is in the past for Bob. Also which explosion happens earlier has also flipped.
To Bob the more distant explosion as already happened (it's behind him), but for Alice it's in the future (in front of her). Also to Bob the closer explosion has yet to happen, so it happens after the distant one.
This is no different to how what is in front or behind you changes when you turn a bit.
You can also see time dilation from these images. the blue line here marks everything that is, let's say, 10 seconds from now, according to Alice:
However because Bob's time is tilted you have to follow it for longer to hit those events. So they are more than 10 seconds away from him.
The key thing to Relativity is that time is just another direction and when you move fast you rotate a bit in space and time.
When Einstein first came up with Special Relativity he originally wrote it down as a set of rules for transforming space and time for people moving at different speeds. It was Hermann Minkowski who noticed that all of Einstein's rules were really just rules for rotating in what he called spacetime (you'll commonly hear that Einstein came up with spacetime, not so). Minkowski had actually been Einstein's lecturer in college in Zurich, but Einstein skipped his lectures as he didn't enjoy abstract mathematics at the time and was focused more on physics.
Minkowski himself remembered Einstein as a really lazy student, so was quite surprised when he heard that he was now famous for his new theory. He spent a year (1907-1908) showing the whole theory was really about rotating in spacetime. Einstein initially dismissed this as just pure mathematical trickery, he didn't think there was really a spacetime. He just thought that space and time were different for different observers, but not different parts of one thing.
He regretted thinking this later and fully accepted Minkowski's ideas by 1912. Minkowski himself had died in 1909 of appendicitis. However without his insight that the theory is really about spacetime, Einstein may never have discovered its more advanced version, General Relativity.0 -
Just a little visual demonstration of Special Relativity. Forgive the big graphics.
So the following shows a person, Alice (typical in physics, from Alice in Wonderland) with two events that'll happen in her future. Both events will happen to her right. The closer one will happen sooner than the one further to the right. Events are the blue-grey circles and the orange lines are to give an indication of how far from now they are. Events could be anything, but I'll say they are two distant stars exploding. From the diagram you can see the closer explosion happens first.
This is called a spacetime diagram. Time is the vertical direction, Space the horizontal. The idea is that space and time are just two different directions in one bigger thing, spacetime.
Now according to relativity, all that happens when you speed up is that your personal space and time directions rotate. Here is another observer, Bob, who is moving at near the speed of light past Alice, I've kept the events in the same places:
So Bob's space and time directions are rotated quite a bit from Alice's. However notice what this does to the events from his perspective.
Where as both stars exploding where in the future for Alice, one is in the past for Bob. Also which explosion happens earlier has also flipped.
To Bob the more distant explosion as already happened (it's behind him), but for Alice it's in the future (in front of her). Also to Bob the closer explosion has yet to happen, so it happens after the distant one.
This is no different to how what is in front or behind you changes when you turn a bit.
We can also see time dilation from these images. the blue line here marks everything that is, let's say, 10 seconds from now, according to Alice:
However because Bob's time is tilted you have to follow it for longer to hit those events. So they are more than 10 seconds away from him.
The key thing to Relativity is that time is just another direction and when you move fast you are rotating in space and time.
When Einstein first came up with Special Relativity he originally wrote it down as a set of rules for transforming space and time for people moving at different speeds. It was Hermann Minkowski who noticed that all of Einstein's rules were really just rules for rotating in what he called spacetime (you'll commonly hear that Einstein came up with spacetime, not so). Minkowski had actually been Einstein's lecturer in college in Zurich, but Einstein skipped his lectures as he didn't enjoy abstract mathematics at the time and was focused more on physics.
Minkowski himself remembered Einstein as a really lazy student, so was quite surprised when he heard that he was now famous for his new theory. He spent a year (1907-1908) showing the whole theory was really about rotating in spacetime. Einstein initially dismissed this as just pure mathematical trickery, he didn't think there was really a spacetime. He just thought that space and time were different for different observers, but not different parts of one thing.
He regretted thinking this later and fully accepted Minkowski's ideas by 1912. Minkowski himself had died in 1909 of appendicitis. However without his insight that the theory is really about spacetime, Einstein may never have discovered its more advanced version, General Relativity.
That post really made a concept I've never been able to understand properly make perfect sense. Bravo.
I remember reading somewhere that a clock in Bern inspired Einstein to an explanation of this concept as well. He noted that, obviously, the "information" on the clock, the time at any given moment, travels to us at the speed of light. So he imagined that if a tramcar were travelling away from the clock at the speed of light, the time on the clock face would stay the same for a person sitting in the tram. But that person's watch would continue ticking onward as normal, so that the clock in Bern would APPEAR to be standing still relative to one's position in space, even as time appeared to move forward normally in the car.
Anyway the clock is called the Zytglogge, which has been there since the 1200s, and has had an astronomical clock since the 15th century. It's incredibly beautiful, and is the centrepiece of the Old City of Bern, a UNESCO world heritage site.0 -
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A beautifully detailed map of the Apollo 11 flight (not to scale). Shows only the tip of the detail that they had to go into, such as positioning ships in various oceans to get a signal as we didn't have the satellites back then.
Link is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/9axcbd/nasas_map_of_the_apollo_11_mission/?st=JLDPFBT7&sh=f6e49a60
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sbsquarepants wrote: »I can't be the only one in the class who can't not see the giant dick:D
Well, you'd certainly need a big pair of balls for a mission to the moon.
If it was drawn to scale it would be a really big mickey
I rewatched Unbreakable last week, it's a gem by the way, but there is a flashback scene with Bruce Willis' character as a college student in the aftermath of a car accident. The first time I watched it, I thought it was Willis mocked up to appear younger, wearing a wig. After rewatching it last week, I again, thought it was Willis mocked up, wearing a wig to look younger. Turns out it was actually a younger Willis look-a-like, named Davis Duffield, who was hired to play the small role.
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Well, you'd certainly need a big pair of balls for a mission to the moon.
If it was drawn to scale it would be a really big mickey
You certainly would!
Slightly off topic but there's a van I see driving around from time to time, with a suspiciously phallic logo on it, from a place called bigmickey.ie - I looked them up and apparently they sell furniture!
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sbsquarepants wrote: »You certainly would!
Slightly off topic but there's a van I see driving around from time to time, with a suspiciously phallic logo on it, from a place called bigmickey.ie - I looked them up and apparently they sell furniture!
Yeah I'm still not having that URL on my google history.0
This discussion has been closed.
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