I bet you didnt know that

Ted111 · 25-01-2017 10:04pm

Laois_Man wrote: »

Ireland has the lowest number of reported UFO sightings in the world!

That's because of our north atlantic influenced weather patterns, with heavy cloud cover.

jimgoose · 25-01-2017 10:33pm

Laois_Man wrote: »

Ireland has the lowest number of reported UFO sightings in the world!

That's because the VZ-9 Avrocar never flew on this side of the Atlantic. Not even with Elvis at the controls.

StupidLikeAFox · 25-01-2017 10:36pm

Cartouche wrote: »

Will Smith is now older than Uncle Phil was at the beginning of "The Fresh Prince"

Not strictly true. Will Smith actually stopped aging in 1995.

JuliusCaesar · 25-01-2017 11:01pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Irish mainline railways have been using 1600 mm since 1843.

Needless to say today the Luas uses 4 feet 8 1⁄2 inches because :rolleyes:

And coffees are sold in Fluid Ounces.... the feckin' American influence.

HamsterFace · 26-01-2017 12:03am

The camera on your phone can pick up infra red.

If you look at your remote control through your camera, and press some buttons, you'll be able to see infra red light that you can't see with your own eye.

bnt · 26-01-2017 12:06am

Laois_Man wrote: »

Ireland has the lowest number of reported UFO sightings in the world!

Scotland has one of the highest, for some reason.

Speaking of Scotland: tonight is Burns Night, the birthday of the famous Scots poet Robert Burns, and people around the world are celebrating with a Burns Supper of haggis, tatties & neeps, and of course whisky.

Before you can cook a haggis for the supper, you have to catch one, but that isn't too hard. You see, wild haggis have evolved on Scottish hillsides, and have no trouble running around the hills, since thelr legs are longer on one side than the other. To catch one takes two people, then: one to stand in front of it, at which point the haggis will try to turn around. It falls over and rolls down the hill, to where the second person is waiting with a net to catch it.

More recently, it was discovered that haggis have evolved in to two separate sub-species. The common haggis runs around in a clockwise direction, but we now know that there is an anti-clockwise haggis that runs around in the other direction. These two sub-species are unable to mate, since as soon as a male of the one sub-species tries to turn around to mount the female of the other sub-species, it falls over and rolls down the hill ...

4068ac1elhodqr · 26-01-2017 12:13am

Tomorrow (26th) is Australia day, and yesterday (24th) temperatures broke a record set in 1896.
It's fair to say it's 'flaming hot' down there.

If you ever find yourself 'caught in a rip' go sideways, not back or forwards (until well clear of it).

Conchir · 26-01-2017 1:21am

stimpson wrote: »

The 7th largest building in the world by useable volume is the Tesco Distribution centre in Donabate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_buildings

That's a great fact.

Back in 1968, the first ever solo non-stop round the world sailing race started. Of the nine entrants, only one person finished the race, in 312 days. Of the other eight: 5 dropped out, 1 sank, 1 likely committed suicide, and 1 abandoned the race while in first place and on the home stretch, in order to sail halfway around again.

These days the in the Vendée Globe race, people sail the same route non-stop solo in less than 80 days.

sbsquarepants · 26-01-2017 10:09am

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

I think you need to redo your maths. New York is at 40 degrees latitude, Rome is at 41 degrees. the difference is only about 100KM.

Lattitude - that would have been the sensible way to check, but I didn't do that I just typed distance from .... to equator into google, as I found it hard to believe that new York was closer.
In my shock and disbelief I must have settled for some town called Rome in the far north of Alaska or somewhere like that!

100km - that's better. Turns out I don't picture the globe sideways after all:D.

ScrubsfanChris · 26-01-2017 11:15am

bnt wrote: »

Scotland has one of the highest, for some reason.

My guess is RAF manoeuvres?

By the time multi-millionare Howard Huges was living in Las Vegas he had become a recluse. He bought a local TV station so he could control what was played. He had them show movies through the night and sometimes if he didn't like what was on he would ring the station and ask them to change it or even rewind because he missed a bit.

sbsquarepants · 26-01-2017 11:28am

jimgoose wrote: »

That's because the VZ-9 Avrocar never flew on this side of the Atlantic. Not even with Elvis at the controls.

Aesthetically that is one of the coolest looking things I've ever seen. The handling seems a bit, eh, eccentric however:)

ForestFire · 26-01-2017 11:33am

BrianG23 wrote: »

Binary digits 1 and 0 represent a state and/or voltage. Normally 3.3 volts and above(up to 5) is a 1 and below it is a 0.

We can represent different patterns by sending different voltages in sequence different points. You can also represent 16 numbers with 4 'bits'.

8421
____
0000 = 0
0001 = 1
0010 = 2
0100 = 4
1000 = 8
1111 = 1+2+4+8 = 15

This is called digital logic and its how we make sense of electricity!

Binary is simply a Base-2 numbering system and it is not how we make sense of electricity. Decimal is a base-10 system and hexadecimal is a base 16 (Another Common system).

Normally binary numbers should have a small "b" proceeding the number e.g. b011010 and hexadecimal uses "0x" e.g. 0x12FB3. Decimal dose not use a proceeding code as it is the standard numbering system in the world.

Any number can be represented in any Base-X system.

Binary is used in computers and data storage, as having only two "values", it only requires two "states" to store the information, making it easier.

It can be stored Electrically (Charge State), Optically (CD/DVD's), Magnetically (Hard drive, Floppy Disc) and transmitted over radio waves.

Some more advance techniques store binary in four states with binary values 00, 01, 10, 11 to increase bandwidth.

For electrical storage and transmission voltages can vary. The latest microprocessor cores are running under 1V with old transmission systems using +15V to -15V (Computer Serial Ports).

bnt · 26-01-2017 11:57am

re latitude - Edmonton, Alberta is at roughly the same latitude as Dublin, to within a few miles. Its location on the east side of the Rockies, far from the ocean, means that the weather is much more extreme than Dublin's. The summers are hot and humid, and it gets pretty harsh winters, though not quite as bad as some other cities in the region. I've been there in winter, and walked around happily at around -20°C. It wasn't a problem since there was no wind and I was pretty well covered, except for my ears, which I thought were going to fall off. At night, though, when the temperature dropped to -30°C and the wind picked up, you can bet I didn't leave the hotel.

I could still live there, though, because Edmonton averages around 2300 hours of sunshine a year - nearly 60% more than the Dublin average (around 1460).

Laois_Man · 26-01-2017 1:19pm

Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants.

Jrop · 26-01-2017 1:22pm

Laois Man ew ! I hate Rats

La_Gordy · 26-01-2017 2:30pm

Laois_Man wrote: »

Ireland has the lowest number of reported UFO sightings in the world!

Do you have a link for that?! I can only find some pish on irishcentral related to European but I'd love to read more.

Cartouche · 26-01-2017 7:57pm

99% of our solar system's mass is the sun

Our star, the Sun, is so dense that it accounts for a whopping 99% of our entire solar system. That's what it allows it to dominate it gravitationally.

Technically, our Sun is a "G-type main-sequence star", it means that when it dies, it will become a red giant and envelop the earth and everything on it.

Cartouche · 26-01-2017 7:57pm

99% of our solar system's mass is the sun

Our star, the Sun, is so dense that it accounts for a whopping 99% of our entire solar system. That's what it allows it to dominate it gravitationally.

Technically, our Sun is a "G-type main-sequence star", it means that when it dies, it will become a red giant and envelop the earth and everything on it.

Senna · 26-01-2017 8:25pm

La_Gordy wrote: »

Do you have a link for that?! I can only find some pish on irishcentral related to European but I'd love to read more.

I like to think who ever it would be reported too in Ireland handles it better,

Caller: I just seen an UFO over ballygobackwards
Operator: OK, is it still there
Caller: No, it's gone now
Operator: so what do you want me to do about it?
Caller: Um... OK then...
Hangs up

Capt'n Midnight · 26-01-2017 8:44pm

Cartouche wrote: »

99% of our solar system's mass is the sun

Our star, the Sun, is so dense that it accounts for a whopping 99% of our entire solar system. That's what it allows it to dominate it gravitationally.

Our planet is nearly four times as dense as the Sun. It's a lot smaller though.

Saturn , the one with the rings, has 95 times the mass of the Earth. But surface gravity is lower you'd weigh only 91.6% of your Earth weigh there.

Also it would float in water, if you had a big enough bowl and didn't worry about the extra gravity from the water

Capt'n Midnight · 26-01-2017 8:46pm

No one's ever seen an Irish Ninja.

KingBrian2 · 26-01-2017 8:59pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

No one's ever seen an Irish Ninja.

Because their that good.:cool:

Chancer3001 · 26-01-2017 9:12pm

mark hamill who played Luke Skywalker did the voice of the joker in the batman cartoon that used to always be on TV about 15 years ago (it was class)

Cartouche · 26-01-2017 11:31pm

In 1923, jockey Frank Hayes won a race at Belmont Park in New York despite being dead — he suffered a heart attack mid-race, but his body stayed in the saddle until his horse crossed the line for a 20–1 outsider victory.

27-01-2017 9:29am

Fascinating story over on the BBC from 25 January 2017

The Irish novel that seduced the USSR:

One of the most popular English-language novels of the 20th Century is almost unknown in the English-speaking world – a global phenomenon in translation, now neglected in its original form. The Gadfly, by Irish writer Ethel Voynich, was a sensation on the other side of the Iron Curtain – it sold over 5 million copies in 107 editions in the 22 languages spoken in the Soviet Union. The book inspired seven musical adaptations, including an opera by Prokofiev, five theatre adaptations, including an ‘official’ version by George Bernard Shaw, and five film adaptations, one of which featured a famous score by Shostakovich.
... The novel gained popularity initially in Ireland with socialists and nationalists fighting for independence, and it remains the bestselling Irish novel of all time. Yet it was in the newly-created Communist states of the Soviet Union and China that the book found its most dedicated readership. Arthur, the embodiment of a Romantic tragic hero, was repeatedly voted Russia’s most popular literary figure, and cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova, the first man and woman in space, credited its influence.'

I heard of The Gadfly, but only as a suite by Shostakovich. Now, I know it's based on the book The Gadfly by one Ethel lilian Voynich (1864-1960), a native of Ballintemple, Cork.
Is it really 'the bestselling Irish novel of all time', though?

Here she is on her ninety fifth birthday in 1959:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYoxNOJ5fwk

Skylinehead · 27-01-2017 4:46pm

The PEPCON disaster (massive explosion at a factory in Nevada) was indirectly caused by the space shuttle Challenger exploding during launch in 1986 - the factory produced ammonium percolate, which was the fuel used in the shuttles solid boosters. NASA grounded the shuttles, so the excess fuel (about 4500 tons) was stored at the facility. It exploded due to a fire, resulting in one of the largest non-nuclear explosions on the planet:

Cartouche · 27-01-2017 11:11pm

1816 was called “The Year Without a Summer” after the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. Crop failure forced Joseph Smith to leave Vermont, and his journeys resulted in “The Book of Mormon,”
The dreary rain in Switzerland drove Mary Shelley to stay indoors, where she wrote “Frankenstein.”

PeadarK · 27-01-2017 11:16pm

There are around 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body
That's crazy.

Cartouche · 28-01-2017 3:25pm

Sharks bite roughly 70 people each year worldwide, with perhaps 6-10 fatalities, according to data compiled in the International Shark Attack File.external link Although shark bites get a lot of attention, this is far less than the number of people injured each year by elephants, bees, crocodiles, lightning or many other natural dangers.
On the other side of the ledger, we kill somewhere between 20-100 million sharks every year through fishing activities.

Kat1170 · 28-01-2017 8:14pm

Cartouche wrote: »

Sharks bite roughly 70 people each year worldwide, with perhaps 6-10 fatalities, according to data compiled in the International Shark Attack File.external link Although shark bites get a lot of attention, this is far less than the number of people injured each year by elephants, bees, crocodiles, lightning or many other natural dangers.
On the other side of the ledger, we kill somewhere between 20-100 million sharks every year through fishing activities.

What's even worse is tens of millions of these sharks are killed just for their fins. Their fins are cut off and the shark is thrown back, often alive to slowly drown, just so some ********* can have a bowl of soup with his Rhino horn powder and Bear bile whatever, and make him/her feel important/powerful (actually I can't fathom what these ******** feel to be honest). :mad::mad::mad:

IBYDKT ; The Irish Harp, Symbol of Ireland the country and Guinness the drink, face different directions because when the Harp was chosen as the Symbol of the Irish State, it was already copyrighted by Guinness, so in order to distinguish between them it was faced in the opposite direction.

I bet you didnt know that

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