Share Your Interesting But Not Very Useful Facts

[P5BNij]

Doofus said:

The Royal Mail shipping line had, in its history, three ships called Amazon.

BR had a Class 47 diesel loco named Amazon which often worked Royal Mail trains (the 'TPO) in and out of Paddington.

BR had three locos named Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

[Jader1973]

matchmaker said:

The first ever international football match was played on a cricket ground. Scotland -v- England, 1872, played at the Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow ground of the West of Scotland Cricket Club. Another fact about the game - the whole Scottish team was made up of players from Queens Park.

The first ever international tournament was the British Home Championship in 1883-84. Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales took part - the only countries in the world with national teams at the time.

Scotland won, and are therefore the first ever European and World champions.

[Fermit]

Doofus said:

As I said, define 'car'.

The Benz was the first self-propelled vehicle using an internal combustion engine, whilst Trevithick used steam, but does the engine make it a car? If so, what's an EV?

Mercedes seem confident that they produced the first car, actually 1886

https://group.mercedes-benz.com/company/tradition/...

[Doofus]

Fermit said:

Doofus said:

As I said, define 'car'.

The Benz was the first self-propelled vehicle using an internal combustion engine, whilst Trevithick used steam, but does the engine make it a car? If so, what's an EV?

Mercedes seem confident that they produced the first car, actually 1886

https://group.mercedes-benz.com/company/tradition/...

Yes, but if we include steam power, they didn't.

ETA: according to the link you provided, the patent was for a "vehicle powered by a gas engine".

Edited by Doofus on Thursday 27th July 12:21

[Milkyway]

Benz did try to claim the first UK ‘road trip’... in 1896.

There was only fifteen motor vehicles in the whole Country...
In 1900.. there was seven hundred.

Edited by Milkyway on Thursday 27th July 19:47

[Nethybridge]

Milkyway said:

paua said:

Milkyway said:

Nethybridge said:

Tin Hat said:

Not far enuff [ tumbleweed ]

Seriously, what about Inverness ?

Inverness is a long way from Norwich.

It's a long way to Tipperary.

Yarp... it’s a long way to go.

Edited by Milkyway on Thursday 27th July 00:30

Get over yourselves, Tipperary is in ROI and not relevant.

Inverness is the city that’s furthest away from any other city in the UK.

OK the noo ?

[Milkyway]

The six million dollar man is now worth 33.6M dollars.
( But that doesn’t roll off the tongue so quite so well).

[Muntu]

Harrison Ford was a roadie for The Doors

[Nethybridge]

Muntu said:

Harrison Ford was a roadie for The Doors

Now that I did not know.

[RizzoTheRat]

Christiaan Huygens discovered Saturns rings, but not the gap, which was discovered by Cassini some 20 years later. But Cassini's telescope wasn't as as good as Huygens.

It turns out Huygens telescopes weren't as good as people thought they were as he was 1.5 diopters short sighted but was correcting for this in his telescope rather than wearing glasses.
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-eyeglasses-prescript...

[Frimley111R]

There are two main sales that take place in France. These are four weeks in the summer and four weeks in the winter. Beginning and ending dates are fixed, and it is the law for all sellers to adhere to this.

[thewarlock]

One of my grads was on the phone with me yesterday, and was trying to figure out 8% of 25


Blew his mind when I pointed out that 25% of 8 is the same thing, and much easier to do in your head.

Apparently not everyone knows this, and it's quite useful.

[LordGrover]

^^ Wrong thread.

[thewarlock]

LordGrover said:

^^ Wrong thread.

So it is, its the complete opposite of the thread title.

My apologies!

[Pedro25]

I'm sure the PH collective can confirm or deny, I was told years ago that the Titanic had a book in her library titled Titan about a cruise liner that sank on her maiden voyage. As stated I was told this by my history teacher about 50 years ago, impossible to verify then but with the tech world we now inhabit yes or no???

[Doofus]

Pedro25 said:

I'm sure the PH collective can confirm or deny, I was told years ago that the Titanic had a book in her library titled Titan about a cruise liner that sank on her maiden voyage. As stated I was told this by my history teacher about 50 years ago, impossible to verify then but with the tech world we now inhabit yes or no???

Well the novel exists (albeit called 'Futility', not 'Titan'), but the rest of the tale is apocryphal.

[Cockaigne]

Titanic was never called unsinkable in its lifetime.

[Nethybridge]

In Futility the big liner strikes a iceberg in the north atlantic in april, sinks, and there are insufficient lifeboats.
That's the similarities, while hardly clairvoyant, still pretty good though.

A trade magazine at the time of Titanic's constrution opined that the likelihood of a
modern liner equipped with watertight compartments and emergency
watertight doors foundering was almost nil.

[Cockaigne]

half fact, if titanic had hit the iceberg head on, it most likely wouldn't have sunk. The ships were designed with head on crashes in mind.

[Fermit]

Whilst we're discussing Titanic trivia.

The Runtime of the 1997 film by the same name is 3 hours and 14 minutes.
However, remove all the modern day scenes with elderly Rose and her daughter, Bill Paxton, the Submarines and the wreck, etc. If you count ONLY the scenes set in 1912, you have 2 hours and 40 minutes. the exact time it took Titanic to sink.

Another trivia is that from the time of sighting the iceberg by Fredrick Fleet to the time of impact is filmed in real time, and was exactly 37 seconds, as it was thought to be in real life.