Trivia Thread!

Fun facts about Missouri (MO), my home state:

Florida MO: Birth place of Mark Twain (author of Tom sawyer and Huckleberry Finn... real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens).
Hannibal MO gets all the press because that town is the setting for the two aforementioned stories.

Missouri is home to more than 6,100 known caves and is known as “the cave state.” Only Tennessee has more caves.

And thanks to @Olorgando for reminding me of this: the state is named after the longest river in North America, exactly one mile longer than the Mississippi to which it's a tributary. The Missouri [river] was named after the indigenous Missouria, a Siouan-language tribe.
And as long as I'm mentioning geographical things ...the Ozark Mountains (which cover the southern half of the state and extend into Arkansas) are the oldest mountains in the US... ~1.65 billion years old. At one time they were much taller than the Rockies...now the tallest peak is a mere 2500 ft.

Kansas City MO:
Has the most working fountains of any city in the world. Rome has the greatest number of fountains in the world (3,000) - many of these have fallen into disrepair and are no longer in use.
Home of the Kansas City Chiefs... 'nuff said

Lebanon MO: home of Independent Stave Company (ISC) is the world’s largest barrel manufacturer, founded in 1912. It supplies barrels to wineries and whiskey distilleries around the world.

St Louis:
Home of the 600ft Gateway Arch, prompting the locals to call St Louis "Wicket City". The Arch was recently in the news because the tram that travels inside it to the top got stuck for couple of hours.

Birth place of TS Eliot (188-1965) poet (considered one of the greatest of the 20th C)
Birth place of Vincent Price (1911- 1993)

And finally, best of all....St Charles MO (about 4 miles from where I was born and grew up) is the home of Peter Quill aka Star Lord!! 😁

Deimos said:

Fun facts about Missouri (MO), my home state:
Florida MO: Birth place of Mark Twain (author of Tom sawyer and Huckleberry Finn).
Hannibal MO gets all the press because that town is the setting for the two aforementioned stories.

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Having been birthplace and early home to Samuel Langhorne Clemens makes everything else look like ho-hum trivia.
But you forgot to mention that the state is named after the longest river in North America, slightly longer than the Mississippi to which it's a tributary.

Olorgando said:

Having been birthplace and early home to Samuel Langhorne Clemens makes everything else look like ho-hum trivia.
But you forgot to mention that the state is named after the longest river in North America, slightly longer than the Mississippi to which it's a tributary.

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ooops...thank you for mentioning that ...will add it to an edit comment, along with a mention about the Ozark mountains.

Don't forget the Missouri Outlaws. 😉

Squint-eyed Southerner said:

Don't forget the Missouri Outlaws. 😉

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Which ones? The desperadoes associated with Jesse James, or the minor league baseball team?

@Eljorahir HAHAHAHA... yep, I figured you would like my post about "Misery" 😄

Deimos said:

@Eljorahir HAHAHAHA... yep, I figured you would like my post about "Misery" 😄

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Of course. Everybody knows Missouri loves company.

Eljorahir said:

Of course. Everybody knows Missouri loves company.

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BADA-BING ! <rim-shot> 🙄😉

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984):

Kate Capshaw's dress in the Shanghai club was completely made of 1920's and 1930's original beads. This meant that there was only enough to make one dress. The opening dance number was actually the last scene to be shot, but the dress did feature in some earlier location shots in Sri Lanka, in particular, a nighttime one with Harrison Ford and Kate Capshaw sitting by a campfire, with the dress drying on a nearby tree. Unfortunately, an elephant had started to eat the entire back of the dress, which was saved just in time. Consequently, some emergency repair work had to be done with what remained of the original beads, and it was costume designer Anthony Powell who had to fill out the insurance forms. As to the reason for damage, he had no option but to put "dress eaten by elephant".

Erestor Arcamen said:

and it was costume designer Anthony Powell who had to fill out the insurance forms. As to the reason for damage, he had no option but to put "dress eaten by elephant".

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Reminds me of a (possibly apocryphal) story I once read about someone who had visited one those drive-through safari parks where you can drive with your own car (obviously, with windows shut!). Seems that person ran into an elephant with an itchy backside, the elephant deciding the relieve the sensation by rubbing the offending body part against a fender. In the insurance form, the cause of damage was given as "an elephant sat on it." 😬

From the video description:

The six-tonne Altar Stone at the heart of Stonehenge came from the far north of Scotland rather than south-west Wales as previously thought, new analysis has found.
It means that the stone was brought about 700km (434 miles), from Scotland, to the ancient monument, near Salisbury in south-west England.

The discovery shows the construction of Stonehenge was a far greater collaborative effort than scientists realised.

It also suggests that Neolithic Britain was a far more connected and advanced society than earlier evidence indicated.

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Credit: Helen_Field/ iStock

One Day on Earth Wasn’t Always 24 Hours Long​

When Homo sapiens began walking the Earth some 400,000 years ago, a day was basically 24 hours long — but that hasn’t always been the case. Scientists from Kyoto University estimate that when the moon first formed a few billion years ago, it spun around the Earth at a much closer distance than it does today, which affected the Earth’s own rotation. By their calculations, when life first appeared 3.6 billion years ago, an Earth day (one full rotation of the planet) was only 12 hours long. As the moon slowly distanced itself from Earth, the days grew longer, lasting 18 hours around the emergence of photosynthesis and 23 hours when multicellular life first took form. Research in 2021 discovered that the Earth is now spinning ever-so-slightly faster than it was 50 years ago, a major headache for physicists, astronomers, and computer programmers everywhere.

• https://interestingfacts.com/earth-amazing-facts/

@Deimos, you might find this interesting. Yesterday, at around 8:50 AM, there was an explosion like a clap of thunder, and the roof of my house (it's a wriggly-tin roof) vibrated and shook, like someone was walking on it. Immediately after the explosion, there was a rumbling noise like far off thunder which lasted for about a minute and a half, before fading away. For a while none of us knew what it was. Turns out a meteorite, which had flown past roughly 100 km to the east of me, had exploded (this is what we first heard) into two or three pieces, (one of the pieces allegedly hit the ground) and crashed into the ocean, about 200 meters from a whale-spotting boat, the captain of which says he saw it hit the ocean with a blue flash, followed by six explosions.

Here's a video someone got of it:

Vorondil said:

@Deimos, you might find this interesting. Yesterday, at around 8:50 AM, there was an explosion like a clap of thunder, and the roof of my house (it's a wriggly-tin roof) vibrated and shook, like someone was walking on it. Immediately after the explosion, there was a rumbling noise like far off thunder which lasted for about a minute and a half, before fading away. For a while none of us knew what it was. Turns out a meteorite, which had flown past roughly 100 km to the east of me, had exploded (this is what we first heard) into two or three pieces, (one of the pieces allegedly hit the ground) and crashed into the ocean, about 200 meters from a whale-spotting boat, the captain of which says he saw it hit the ocean with a blue flash, followed by six explosions.

Here's a video someone got of it:

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Oh that is so cool...especially the video. Thanks for posting it..
I've seen A LOT of meteors, but never an exploding one. They aren't real common, but neither are they super rare.
I envy the folks who have seen one (including my brother, while I was looking at a different part of the sky.😠)

The tune for The Carol of the Bells was inpired by a Ukranian folk song that is sung in spring called "Schedrik-schedrik".

Praseodymium is unique among the known chemical elements in that its name has six syllables, the most of any element. The name was derived from the Greek (of course) "prasinos" (leek-green) and "dydimos" (twin). It has one stable isotope, Pr-141. Like most lanthanides, it's most common uses are in colored glass and magnets.

Boanthropy is the psychological disorder in which patients believe they are a cow.

Not trivial, but I didn't know where else to post this.
Parts of the Balkans, eastern Austria, the Czech Republic and parts of Slovakia and Poland really got drenched since last week Thursday. Some regions had 20 or more inches (500 mm) of rainfall in 72 hours. A buddy of mine lives in Vienna, so I phoned him Sunday afternoon. They had up to 16 inches (400 mm) in 72 hours, but the situation was not critical, though a couple of subway lines had to discontinue service. Durig the chat, he mentioned having read a news item about Australia, with temperatures being unseasonably hot there for early spring, over 40°C or 104°F. @Halasían , @TrackerOrc , have you been affected by unusual heat where you live?

Olorgando said:

Not trivial, but I didn't know where else to post this.
Parts of the Balkans, eastern Austria, the Czech Republic and parts of Slovakia and Poland really got drenched since last week Thursday. Some regions had 20 or more inches (500 mm) of rainfall in 72 hours. A buddy of mine lives in Vienna, so I phoned him Sunday afternoon. They had up to 16 inches (400 mm) in 72 hours, but the situation was not critical, though a couple of subway lines had to discontinue service. Durig the chat, he mentioned having read a news item about Australia, with temperatures being unseasonably hot there for early spring, over 40°C or 104°F. @Halasían , @TrackerOrc , have you been affected by unusual heat where you live?

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I live in Western Australia, and while we have not had temperatures that high (it has only neared the 30s on a couple of days), the warmth and sun has returned quickly.
This year just seems to be a warm one: we had a very long and dry summer for much of the first half of the year. Basically no rain from October 2023 to May 2024.

Unlike 2022, which I recall as being cool/cold for a long time: we still had damp, overcast winterish weather through October.

Olorgando said:

Not trivial, but I didn't know where else to post this.
Parts of the Balkans, eastern Austria, the Czech Republic and parts of Slovakia and Poland really got drenched since last week Thursday. Some regions had 20 or more inches (500 mm) of rainfall in 72 hours. A buddy of mine lives in Vienna, so I phoned him Sunday afternoon. They had up to 16 inches (400 mm) in 72 hours, but the situation was not critical, though a couple of subway lines had to discontinue service. Durig the chat, he mentioned having read a news item about Australia, with temperatures being unseasonably hot there for early spring, over 40°C or 104°F. @Halasían , @TrackerOrc , have you been affected by unusual heat where you live?

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The last official day of winter was 34 degrees in Sydney, which is a bit scary. Last winter wasn't really cold at all either (though I was in the UK for the first forty years of my life, so I might have a bit more tolerance than the average Aussie). I think the real problems can be the extended fire seasons where dangerous conditions seem to be getting more common.