Trivia Thread!

[Berzelmayr]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1570476207489040385

 

[Starbrow]

Sepak Takraw is a game like volleyball, except you can only use your feet, knees, chest, or head to hit the ball.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

Stole this one from Reddit because I thought it was interesting:

The Rope Around The Earth Problem

Take a rope tied tautly around a basketball. Now the rope must be lengthened so that there is a one foot gape between the ball and the rope at all points, as if the rope is hovering a foot away around the entirety of the ball. How much must the rope be lengthened to accomplish this? 6.28 feet.

Now take a rope around tied tautly around the equator of the earth. We have the same goal for the one foot hovering gap around the entirety of the earth. How far must the rope be lengthened? 6.28 feet.

 

[Eljorahir]

Stole this one from Reddit because I thought it was interesting:

The Rope Around The Earth Problem

Take a rope tied tautly around a basketball. Now the rope must be lengthened so that there is a one foot gape between the ball and the rope at all points, as if the rope is hovering a foot away around the entirety of the ball. How much must the rope be lengthened to accomplish this? 6.28 feet.

Now take a rope around tied tautly around the equator of the earth. We have the same goal for the one foot hovering gap around the entirety of the earth. How far must the rope be lengthened? 6.28 feet.

Trust, but verify.

π = 3.14 (approximately)
Circle Diameter = D
Add 2 ft to Circle Diameter = D+2

Original Circle Circumference = πD
Larger Circle Circumference = π(D+2) = πD + 2π

Difference Between Larger Circle and Original Circle Circumferences =
πD + 2π - πD = 2π = 6.28 ft

The diameter zeroes out regardless of its value.
It works!

I like a good math puzzler.

 

[Elbereth Vala Varda]

Very interesting!

 

[grendel]

John Tyler, the 10th (yes tenth) U.S. President, was born in 1790. He has a grandson who is alive today.

Read that again, it is not a misprint.

 

[Elbereth Vala Varda]

Heard this recently. SHOCKING.

 

[Olorgando]

John Tyler, the 10th (yes tenth) U.S. President, was born in 1790. He has a grandson who is alive today.
Read that again, it is not a misprint.

Yup. Tyler's fifth (of seven children) child with his second wife (after eight children with his first wife), Lyon Gardiner Tyler, was born in 1853, the year Tyler turned 63 (his last child, a daughter, was born in 1860, when Tyler turned 70, less than two years before his own death; this daughter lived to about 87, dying in 1947, or two years after FDR, the US's 32nd president).
Lyon Gardiner Tyler, who lived until 1935, or about 82, fathered this last surviving grandson of JT's, Harrison Ruffin Tyler Sr., in 1928, the year Lyon turned 75. That's a late age to become a father in any century ...
Harrison Ruffin Tyler Sr. would turn 94 in early November - more precisely om 09 November, the date in 1989 that the Berlin Wall fell ...

 

[Elbereth Vala Varda]

WOW.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

The longest wedding veil was longer than 63 football fields.

 

[Elbereth Vala Varda]

Oh wow. Who on earth would even..? I have so many questions...

 

[Ent]

Oh wow. Who on earth would even..? I have so many questions...

We're speaking of humanity here.. we must not look for sense or sensibility.

 

[Elbereth Vala Varda]

That is fair.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

There's even a video of it on this page...

Cyprus Woman Breaks Guinness World Record for Longest Veil Ever, Stretching Over 6 km

The length of the veil is 6962.6 metres, almost the same length of a 63-and-a-half American football fields.

www.news18.com

 

[Berzelmayr]

Meloni is an avowed fan of fantasy, particularly J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which she called a "sacred text".[162] As a youth activist with the Italian Social Movement, she attended "Hobbit Camp" and sang along with the extremist folk band Compagnia dell'Anello (named after The Fellowship of the Ring).[162] Later, she named her political conference Atreju, after the hero of the novel The Neverending Story.[162] The Italian far-right has traditionally associated itself with fantasy, which it considers to share its "vision of spirituality against materialism".[162]

Giorgia Meloni - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Yeah, I saw that.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

James Garfield could write in Greek with one hand and in Latin with the other at the same time.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

I thought the fact that John Stuart Mill read all of Plato's Dialogues in Greek by age nine was impressive, until I read that the philosopher and literary theorist Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was a "precocious child, mastering Latin and Greek by the age of eight." He earned a master's degree in philosophy at age 17.

 

[HALETH✒🗡]

James Garfield could write in Greek with one hand and in Latin with the other at the same time.

It must be difficult.
I've started to study Latin recently. One of the sentences from our textbook sounds a bit frightening

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

It must be difficult.
I've started to study Latin recently. One of the sentences from our textbook sounds a bit frightening
View attachment 16059

I took three years in high school and yeah, it was very difficult. I can't imagine writing it with one hand while doing another with the other hand.