Share Your Interesting But Not Very Useful Facts

[nismocat]

mko9 said:

Cockaigne said:

you don't go across the pole, straight from nz past South America to uk.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6667709/A...

You might need an ice breaker on that route, too. Plus there are no crows down near the Antarctic.

South Australians are known as Crow eaters, due to a shortage of meat at the time. The state SANFL/AFL (Australian rules) team is known as The Crows, or Adelaide Crows. (they also have Port Adelaide but they are "flogs and s")

They say that there are no crows in Western Australia because South Australians, that borders WA, ate them all!

Australians say and fk a lot.

[Silver Smudger]

nismocat said:

Ronin - the epic 1998 film with De Niro, Bean, Price, Skaarsgard.

The chase scenes were not filmed in Paris, as many think, but Nice.

Both Paris and Nice, and other locations, in fact - https://web.archive.org/web/20020924090248/http://...

Trivia. The Xantias that were used were originally the Activa models but they handled so well and looked boring on camera they changed to the standard model. that had more body roll.

(I can't remember where I heard that but it was on an interview on some obscure internet radio station with John Frankenhiemer)

What's the colour of the boathouse at Hereford!"

[Frimley111R]

RizzoTheRat said:

The very well known tune from Dr Dre and Snoop Dog's "The Next Episode" is a sample from "The Edge" by David McCallum, of Men From U.N.C.L.E. fame

Good one!

[Nethybridge]

Richard Asher, father of 60s icons Peter and
Jane wrote a paper
on the behavoural disorder
Factitious Disorder Imposed On Self and gave it the much snappier
name Munchausen Syndrome.

[RizzoTheRat]

Apparently a woman conceiving early in her cycle is slightly more likely to have a boy, and later in the cycle more likely to have a girl, so when people are having a lot of sex there's a higher probability of a boy.

An increase in the ratio of boys to girls being born can be seen at the end of WW1 and near the end of WW2 (lots of soldier home on leave before D-Day, also resulting in a spike in marriages). This is called "Returning Soldier Effect" and was noticed as early as the 1700's. There was also a spike in the early 70's, along with a spike in teenage pregnancies and reducing in the average age of marriage, so the change in social attitudes around then really did lead to a lot of sex!

Quite an interesting new podcast series from Hannah Fry
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001qw8x

[Dan Singh]

RizzoTheRat said:

Apparently a woman conceiving early in her cycle is slightly more likely to have a boy, and later in the cycle more likely to have a girl, so when people are having a lot of sex there's a higher probability of a boy.

An increase in the ratio of boys to girls being born can be seen at the end of WW1 and near the end of WW2 (lots of soldier home on leave before D-Day, also resulting in a spike in marriages). This is called "Returning Soldier Effect" and was noticed as early as the 1700's. There was also a spike in the early 70's, along with a spike in teenage pregnancies and reducing in the average age of marriage, so the change in social attitudes around then really did lead to a lot of sex!

Quite an interesting new podcast series from Hannah Fry
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001qw8x

Twenty odd years ago, after having two girls the ex-wife followed a similar regime, including dietary and other advice because we wanted our third child to be a boy. I was skeptical of all this hocus pokus, but either by luck or by judgement – it worked.

[nismocat]

Rotor blades on USA built helicopters go anti clockwise whereas European go clockwise.
There’s also a correlation between where the pilot sits.

Not sure where the UK is with all this. Do we even make helis?

[legless]

nismocat said:

Rotor blades on USA built helicopters go anti clockwise whereas European go clockwise.
There’s also a correlation between where the pilot sits.

Not sure where the UK is with all this. Do we even make helis?

I'm pretty sure that Leonardo's Yeovil site is still building them.

[RizzoTheRat]

I think it just varies by manufacturer, complicated by manufactures buying up other companies.

Lynx rotates clockwise, Merlin anticlockwise, and the Chinook swings both ways.

[nismocat]

Silver Smudger said:

nismocat said:

Ronin - the epic 1998 film with De Niro, Bean, Price, Skaarsgard.

The chase scenes were not filmed in Paris, as many think, but Nice.

Both Paris and Nice, and other locations, in fact - https://web.archive.org/web/20020924090248/http://...

Trivia. The Xantias that were used were originally the Activa models but they handled so well and looked boring on camera they changed to the standard model. that had more body roll.

(I can't remember where I heard that but it was on an interview on some obscure internet radio station with John Frankenhiemer)

What's the colour of the boathouse at Hereford!"

The chase scenes (that everyone remembers and replayed multiple times) was filmed in Nice, not Paris.

Try again.

[nismocat]

RizzoTheRat said:

I think it just varies by manufacturer, complicated by manufactures buying up other companies.

Lynx rotates clockwise, Merlin anticlockwise, and the Chinook swings both ways.

Yes, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

I went down a wiki rabbit hole; ducted fan, NOTAR, Tip Jets, Twin Rotors, Tandem, Coaxial, Intermeshing, Transverse, Quadrotors, Kopp–Etchells effect! Arghhh!

[CT05 Nose Cone]

If sound could travel through space, we would hear a 100Db drone from the Sun all day.

[BlackZeD]

Macclesfield is the official UNESCO heritage site of the end of the Silk road.

[droopsnoot]

nismocat said:

Silver Smudger said:

nismocat said:

Ronin - the epic 1998 film with De Niro, Bean, Price, Skaarsgard.

The chase scenes were not filmed in Paris, as many think, but Nice.

Both Paris and Nice, and other locations, in fact - https://web.archive.org/web/20020924090248/http://...

Trivia. The Xantias that were used were originally the Activa models but they handled so well and looked boring on camera they changed to the standard model. that had more body roll.

(I can't remember where I heard that but it was on an interview on some obscure internet radio station with John Frankenhiemer)

What's the colour of the boathouse at Hereford!"

The chase scenes (that everyone remembers and replayed multiple times) was filmed in Nice, not Paris.

Try again.

And the GPS location shown on the screens in the van that someone was sitting in (it's a while since I've watched it) are somewhere in Germany when they're supposed to be in the South of France.

[Silver Smudger]

nismocat said:

Silver Smudger said:

nismocat said:

Ronin - the epic 1998 film with De Niro, Bean, Price, Skaarsgard.

The chase scenes were not filmed in Paris, as many think, but Nice.

Both Paris and Nice, and other locations, in fact - https://web.archive.org/web/20020924090248/http://...

The chase scenes (that everyone remembers and replayed multiple times) was filmed in Nice, not Paris.

Try again.

[Stick Legs]

As there are 360 degrees in a circle, and 24 hours in a day, each time zone (excluding wiggly ones) occupies 15 degrees of longitude.

Hence why knowing the time at Greenwich and the exact moment of Zenith where you are you can work out how far east or west you are.

North & South is trickier but essentially in a perfect world at noon on the equinox the angle of the sun from the horizon taken from 90 degrees is your latitude.

All the complex tables & calculations are there to provide accuracy.

But for emergency ‘life boat’ navigation that’ll do.

Casio watch, protractor & a bit of string & you have mastered the heavens.

[boyse7en]

droopsnoot said:

nismocat said:

Silver Smudger said:

nismocat said:

Ronin - the epic 1998 film with De Niro, Bean, Price, Skaarsgard.

The chase scenes were not filmed in Paris, as many think, but Nice.

Both Paris and Nice, and other locations, in fact - https://web.archive.org/web/20020924090248/http://...

Trivia. The Xantias that were used were originally the Activa models but they handled so well and looked boring on camera they changed to the standard model. that had more body roll.

(I can't remember where I heard that but it was on an interview on some obscure internet radio station with John Frankenhiemer)

What's the colour of the boathouse at Hereford!"

The chase scenes (that everyone remembers and replayed multiple times) was filmed in Nice, not Paris.

Try again.

And the GPS location shown on the screens in the van that someone was sitting in (it's a while since I've watched it) are somewhere in Germany when they're supposed to be in the South of France.

And the Xantias weren't Xantias, they were XMs.
In one chase scene, the car swaps from a MK1 to a MK2 (different grill an headlamp design) mid way through

[nismocat]

boyse7en said:

droopsnoot said:

nismocat said:

Silver Smudger said:

nismocat said:

Ronin - the epic 1998 film with De Niro, Bean, Price, Skaarsgard.

The chase scenes were not filmed in Paris, as many think, but Nice.

Both Paris and Nice, and other locations, in fact - https://web.archive.org/web/20020924090248/http://...

Trivia. The Xantias that were used were originally the Activa models but they handled so well and looked boring on camera they changed to the standard model. that had more body roll.

(I can't remember where I heard that but it was on an interview on some obscure internet radio station with John Frankenhiemer)

What's the colour of the boathouse at Hereford!"

The chase scenes (that everyone remembers and replayed multiple times) was filmed in Nice, not Paris.

Try again.

And the GPS location shown on the screens in the van that someone was sitting in (it's a while since I've watched it) are somewhere in Germany when they're supposed to be in the South of France.

And the Xantias weren't Xantias, they were XMs.
In one chase scene, the car swaps from a MK1 to a MK2 (different grill an headlamp design) mid way through

True dat, however, as I said and should have made clearer, originally the chase cars would have been Xantia Activas but were changed to the standard model and then to XMs!

[Bannock]

BlackZeD said:

Macclesfield is the official UNESCO heritage site of the end of the Silk road.

Had often wondered why their football team's nickname is "The Silkmen", but never bothered to look it up. Now I know.

[hairy v]

The fastest manmade object isn't a hypersonic jet or spacecraft, but a large manhole cover....

When the US started doing underground nuclear testing, nobody really knew what would happen. One test bomb was placed at the bottom of a 485-foot deep shaft on July 26, 1957, and someone thought it was a good idea to put a half-ton iron manhole cover on top to contain the explosion. The bomb turned the shaft into the world's largest Roman candle, and the manhole cover was nowhere to be found.

Robert Brownlee, an astrophysicist who designed the test, wanted to repeat the experiment with high-speed cameras so he could figure out what happened to the cover. So another experiment was created, this time 500-feet deep, and a similar half-ton manhole cover was placed on top. On August 27, 1957, they detonated the bomb. The high-speed cameras barely caught a view of the cover as it left the top of the shaft and headed into oblivion. Brownlee used the frames to calculate the speed to be more than 125,000 miles per hour.... more than five times the escape velocity of the Earth, and the fastest man-made object in history.

Physicists have debated the whereabouts of the two manhole covers ever since. Recently, with the help of supercomputers and a lot more scientific knowledge, physicists are certain that they wouldn't have had time to burn up completely before exiting the atmosphere. This means both of the remaining pieces would have passed Pluto's orbit sometime around 1961 and are way beyond the edge of the solar system by now.