Share Your Interesting But Not Very Useful Facts

[CharlesdeGaulle]

Lily the Pink said:

Dr Jekyll said:

In 1979 the UK govt tried to discourage excess drinking by advising a maximum weekly consumption of 56 units a week. That's about 3 pints a night by my calculations.

Ah, the good old days.

Exactly. Pitching at around half normal consumption seems reasonable. Ish.

[Dan Singh]

We’re only allowed 14 a week now something I have difficulty in complying with.

[Ayahuasca]

The word ‘rostrum’ comes from the Latin rostra, which is what the Romans called the massive bronze battering rams on their triremes. Romans used to make speeches from a platform supported by captured enemy rams.

[Dr Jekyll]

There are only 2 sets of escalators in Wyoming.

[nonsequitur]

Dr Jekyll said:

There are only 2 sets of escalators in Wyoming.

I wonder why that is. Is it the elevation?

[slopes]

nonsequitur said:

Dr Jekyll said:

There are only 2 sets of escalators in Wyoming.

I wonder why that is. Is it the elevation?

Groan

[nonsequitur]

slopes said:

nonsequitur said:

Dr Jekyll said:

There are only 2 sets of escalators in Wyoming.

I wonder why that is. Is it the elevation?

Groan

[matchmaker]

One of the most common injuries in US homes is knife cuts sustained when slicing open bagels.

[SpeckledJim]

matchmaker said:

One of the most common injuries in US homes is knife cuts sustained when slicing open bagels.

Place bagel on a saucer, place upturned saucer on the top. Hey presto - a knive-guide.

[DoubleD]

SpeckledJim said:

matchmaker said:

One of the most common injuries in US homes is knife cuts sustained when slicing open bagels.

Place bagel on a saucer, place upturned saucer on the top. Hey presto - a knive-guide.

That sounds like a good idea if you can't slice straight.

[nonsequitur]

A big one in the UK is injury sustained while trying to remove an avocado stone. Clue: Cut the thing in half first. I know two people who did this. A right pair they were.

[Nimby]

Four of the six working nuclear power station sites in the UK start with "H".

(Hartlepool, Heysham, Hinckley Point, Hunterston. Others are Sizewell and Torness. Dungeness is offline)

[Corvid-2020]

Nimby said:

Four of the six working nuclear power station sites in the UK start with "H".

(Hartlepool, Heysham, Hinckley Point, Hunterston. Others are Sizewell and Torness. Dungeness is offline)

Which used to confuse one of my travel departments booking hotels and ending up at the wrong place. My worst experience was being in a hotel 3 miles from the Bradwell NPS, but a 47 mile drive around the estuary that was between hotel and power station (and this was before the internet so it wasn't a google postcode error, it was proper talent fkwittery).

Oh it is five by the way as you have Heysham A and Heysham Stage 2 as well. Used to be six as you had the reactors at Harwell near Oxford as well. Of course if you include all the HMS xxx of the boats it is even more, but they aren't all always located in the UK.

We just used to refer to them as Huntershamkleypool when asked where did we want to stay near and took our random chances with the travel department, 1 in 5 chance being near the reactor you were supposed to be at, better than there usual efforts. Almost 100% of the time when you wanted to visit Oldbury Technical Centre just outside Thornbury, Bristol Travel always booked you into Oldbury, Birmingham. Usual apology "well, you are nearly half way there".

And Dungeness isn't offline, it is has just finished being commissioned and is about to go into production operations.

[coppernorks]

HAL the computer in Kubrick's 2001 is *IBM one alphabet letter back.


* IBM were a big noise in electronics/computers back in the 1960/70s.

[SCEtoAUX]

Dr Jekyll said:

There are only 2 sets of escalators in Wyoming.

Wyoming, home to The Devil's Tower of course:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devils_Tower

No escalators there and the other place I want to visit when I am next in the USA. The first one being the ramp at the Snake River where Evel Knieval took off from.

[Rostfritt]

Dr Jekyll said:

In 1979 the UK govt tried to discourage excess drinking by advising a maximum weekly consumption of 56 units a week. That's about 3 pints a night by my calculations.

Reminds me of this.

It is fake, but pretty reflective of the attitude of the time.

[coppernorks]

SCEtoAUX said:

Wyoming, home to The Devil's Tower of course:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devils_Tower

No escalators there and the other place I want to visit when I am next in the USA. .

I was there in 2019 and didn't see one UFO.

[Dr Jekyll]

India has about 50% more people than Pakistan Bangladesh Russia and the USA put together.

[tertius]

coppernorks said:

HAL the computer in Kubrick's 2001 is *IBM one alphabet letter back.


* IBM were a big noise in electronics/computers back in the 1960/70s.

And in what at the time was rumoured to be a nod to this, when Windows NT was released, firstly the short form of the name (WNT) was one letter after that of VMS (a mid-range operating system from the '70s that the architect of NT, David Cutler, had been responsible for at Digital) and secondly within NT was a component called HAL - the Hardware Abstraction Layer.

[coppernorks]

Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter a hit for Hermann's Hermits was written by Trevor Peacock,
Trevor also played Jim Trotter in The Vicar Of Dibley.