Trivia Thread!

[Berzelmayr]

The father and sister of actor Kelsey Grammer were both murdered (in 1968 and 1975).

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

Whales are mammals. Mammals make milk. Whale milk is so high in fat it is the consistency of toothpaste.

 

[Berzelmayr]

Belgium's goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois was born in Bree.

 

[Deimos]

The Subaru logo was taken directly from the star cluster known as The Pleiades.
In Greek mythology the Pleiades are "the Seven Sisters".
In ancient Japan they called the Pleiades "Subaru" which means "United"
In LOTR they are called "The Remmirath" ("The Netted Stars" or "The Netted Jewels")

You will notice that there are only six Stars in the logo, but one star is larger than the other five.
That is because that one star is really two stars which are so close together (visually) that for most people viewing the Pleiades "naked eye" , they see only one star. The Pleiades were actually used as an eye test. If you could discern all seven you had near perfect eyesight.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

There are more hydrogen atoms in a teaspoon of water than there are teaspoons of water in the sea.

334,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 hydrogen atoms in teaspoon of water.

252,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 teaspoons of water on Earth.

 

[Ent]

Now HERE's a shocker...!

"
There are roughly 40 to 75 recognized cat breeds globally, depending on which cat registry you consult. Major organizations, such as The International Cat Association (TICA), recognize around 70 to 75 breeds, while The Cat Fanciers' Association (CFA) recognizes about 45.

The reason for the variation comes down to how different feline registries define standards and genetics. Some organizations, like the CFA, only consider heavily documented pedigreed lines, while others are more inclusive of newer or experimental breeds."

Do you really mean to tell Ent the hooman cannot agree on how to define standards and genetics?

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

Shirley Temple hated the non-alcoholic drink being named after her. In 1988, she filed a lawsuit in order to stop a company from selling a ready-made drink mix with her name.

She lost the case, because the drink had been around since the 1930s and her family had failed to put a stop to it for over five decades. So the judge determined that the drink had simply become "ubiquitous" and it was too late for her to do anything about it now.

Lori Black, her daughter, also claimed to always order a Shirley Temple whenever they went out together. Just to tick her mother off.

 

[Deimos]

Until the middle of the 2nd millennium AD (around the 15th and 16th C) there were no tomatoes, potatoes and chiles (peppers) anywhere in the world except the Americas. Those foods were brought back to the Old World by the explorers of the New World.
Also there was no Chocolate, corn, or vanilla.

Italy had no tomato sauce: Pasta was served white, dressed only with olive oil, cheese, or herbs.
India and Thailand had no chili peppers: Spicy dishes relied entirely on black pepper, ginger, and mustard seed.
Ireland and Germany had no potatoes: Northern Europeans survived primarily on turnips, cabbages, rye, and wheat.
Switzerland had no chocolate. Switzerland had no chocolate??!!!. ( Aaiiiieeee!!!! How did they survive??? 😱😱😱 )

 

[chocolate]

Until the middle of the 2nd millennium AD (around the 15th and 16th C) there were no tomatoes, potatoes and chiles (peppers) anywhere in the world except the Americas. Those foods were brought back to the Old World by the explorers of the New World.
Also there was no Chocolate, corn, or vanilla.

Italy had no tomato sauce: Pasta was served white, dressed only with olive oil, cheese, or herbs.
India and Thailand had no chili peppers: Spicy dishes relied entirely on black pepper, ginger, and mustard seed.
Ireland and Germany had no potatoes: Northern Europeans survived primarily on turnips, cabbages, rye, and wheat.
Switzerland had no chocolate. Switzerland had no chocolate??!!!. ( Aaiiiieeee!!!! How did they survive??? 😱😱😱 )

No tobacco or tea leaves either! What did those hobbits do?
No vanilla? I have a container with 2 vanilla beans in my desk @ uni which is like my snuffbox, nothing like that scent to inspire. I feel like the Swiss would have made a cocoa substitute given time, and evolved there out of sheer destiny

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

Mantis shrimp attack by sort of “punching” with their claws. They move so fast that the water around the claw is flash boiled during the strike. If a human could move their arm that fast, it would be enough to launch a baseball into orbit.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Mantis shrimp attack

Shrimp attack!

 

[Berzelmayr]

A black Darth Vader style helmet was also worn by some of the black-uniformed Fedayeen, as Uday Hussein (commander of the Fedayeen and eldest son of Saddam) was reportedly an avid fan of Star Wars.

Fedayeen Saddam - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Berzelmayr]

250th birthday of:
Francesca Scanagatta (1 August 1776 – 1864). She disguised herself as a man in order to attend Austria’s Military Academy in 1794. She served in both the 1797 and 1799 campaigns during the French Revolution and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant in 1800. She left the military the next year and married a fellow Lieutenant with whom she raised four children. She was granted a special pension by Kaiser Franz II when he learned of her service.

Jackie Chan was attached to a movie called Nosebleed that was set at the World Trade Center and involved terrorists. He publicly claimed he was supposed to be filming there on the morning of 9/11. While the project was real and the coincidence is eerie, the precise claim that he was definitively scheduled to be on top of the towers that exact morning is considered overstated.

 

[Deimos]

Jackie Chan was attached to a movie called Nosebleed that was set at the World Trade Center and involved terrorists. He publicly claimed he was supposed to be filming there on the morning of 9/11. While the project was real and the coincidence is eerie,the precise claim that he was definitively scheduled to be on top of the towers that exact morning is considered overstated.

Ya think?....😄

 

[Ent]

Ent would just like to draw your attention to the Sailing Rocks in Death Valley National Park.
A most interesting phenomenon, inviting a great deal of thinking about all the forces involved making the thing happen. Great for the science buffs (and others) working in the realms of the interaction of various events, and forces.

 

[Ent]

Yes, Ent likens the Sailing Rocks to people, in many ways. Here they are... impacted by the events and forces around them... often seeming to just 'move with those forces' as they must... yet the trail they leave behind them can last for countless years. Think of Lincoln, Hitler, Einstein, Tolkien, Szell, Bach, Trump, Asimov...

What sort of trail wll each of us leave? We wonders, my precioussssssss, yesssss, we wonders.

 

[Berzelmayr]

W.T. Stead, a publisher and journalist with a keen interest in the occult, traveled first class on the Titanic in 1912. One evening during the voyage, he jokingly told people that an Egyptian mummy, believed to possess evil powers, had been found on board the ship. One of those present at that evening survived the shipwreck and told reporters that the Titanic had fallen victim to the mummy's curse.

The story became an urban legend, but it has a basis in reality. The plan was to send the lid of a coffin (without the mummy) from the British Museum to New York on the Titanic. But in reality, it never left London.

At the Battle of New Ross in 1798, an Irish rebel used a sword that actually originated from the Bronze Age, it was more than two millenniums older than the battle.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

The Sun primarily fuses hydrogen into helium, while larger stars can continue fusing heavier elements like carbon and oxygen. But where do the elements heavier than that actually come from?

Most elements up through the periodic table to iron form deep inside the cores of massive, dying stars. Normal fusion hits a hard barrier at iron: fusing iron consumes more energy than it releases, halting the exothermic reactions that support the star against gravitational collapse.

Elements beyond iron cannot form through standard stellar fusion. They require free neutron capture. In massive stars, slow neutron capture (the s-process) does occur, but it is a gradual mechanism that tops out around lead and bismuth.

So where does the rest of the heavy periodic table originate?

The heaviest elements require extreme cosmic events: supernovae and neutron star mergers (kilonovae). The rapid neutron capture process (r-process) drives this synthesis. Neutron star collisions, in particular, flood the local environment with free neutrons at densities high enough to forge massive nuclei like gold and platinum in seconds.

Roughly half of all elements heavier than iron owe their existence to these rare kilonova events. A gold ring or silver coin exists on Earth today largely because neutron stars collided billions of years ago.

 

[Deimos]

....
The heaviest elements require extreme cosmic events: supernovae and neutron star mergers (kilonovae). The rapid neutron capture process (r-process) drives this synthesis. Neutron star collisions, in particular, flood the local environment with free neutrons at densities high enough to forge massive nuclei like gold and platinum in seconds.

Roughly half of all elements heavier than iron owe their existence to these rare kilonova events. A gold ring or silver coin exists on Earth today largely because neutron stars collided billions of years ago.

Now THAT is very cool indeed...🙂

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

I had never heard this story prior and thought I'd share.

On September 11, 2001, Rick was working as Vice President of Security at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. When American Airlines flight 11 struck the North Tower, Rick reacted according to the training he had and the plans he developed following the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Against the advice of officials, he ordered an immediate evacuation of all 2,700 Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. employees from the building and led them to safety. After the evacuation, United Flight 175 hit the South Tower; he then re-entered the building to search for survivors. He was never seen again. Due to Rick’s heroic actions, more than 2,700 lives were saved that day.

Rick Rescorla | Citizen Honors | CMOHS

Rick Rescorla of Newark, NJ was selected for the 2009 Citizen Honors Citizen Service Above Self Award

www.cmohs.org