Fun Fact Sharing

Here are some random and (subjectively) fun facts:

The word “expediate” which pretty much means the same thing as “expedite” came about from a spelling error in an essay, that then made its way into the Oxford English Dictionary as a new word. By the time word had spread about the error it was already being used and as such, kind of belonged in the dictionary as a result.

Renowned satirist, musician and mathematician Tom Lehrer apparently invented Jell-O shots. Also learnt today that he’s still alive at 93 which is great.

The reason so many things that claim to taste of “banana flavour” don’t taste very much of what a lot of people recognise as banana flavour is because most artificial banana flavouring is mimicking Gros Michel bananas that were almost wiped out decades ago by fungus, and that were replaced by Cavendish bananas which are resistant to the fungus but taste quite different. Gros Michel peels were apparently a fair bit more slimy than Cavendish peels which is where the whole slipping on banana peels thing comes from.

What are some fun facts the lovely people of CC know?

cuddles_ndream

Pretty cool!

Fact 1 - hitlers dream was to become a professional artist, but was rejected twice from the academy of fine arts Vienna

Fact 2 - 95% of the ocean remains undiscovered & unseen

Fact 3 - there are about 6 billion earth like planets in our galaxy alone (the Milky Way 🌌) there are several hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe

There are more tigers in captivity in Texas than the rest of the world.

CuddleDuncan

@cuddles_ndream I once went to an exhibition of paintings by Hitler and Churchill. Churchill was by far the better artist, and indeed some of his pictures I thought were really quite good. I'm no expert but it was obvious even to me that Hitler had no chance of being accepted by any art college, anywhere, ever.

sillysassy

Awwww @Zundar what a fabulous fun thread!!! 😊😊😊

That was so interesting about bananas!! Between your post and @SitaRosee granny thread…. I’m thinking I need to bake some banana bread!!! ❤️

Those are some fun facts indeed! that’s both a bit fun and a bit sad to think about @Saysoh bit mostly it’s just interesting.

And thanks @sillysassy now I’m just thinking about making baked apples with my grandmother’s recipe and having it with some icecream. Banana bread sounds like a plan!

Sheena123

Squirrels will adopt other baby squirrels if they’re orphaned 🌸🌸

NicoSnuggs

No one born blind has ever become schizophrenic.

Take a look:

“ It’s a phenomenon that’s stumped even the smartest scientific brains for decades: No one born blind has ever been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

And though there have been countless studies conducted to test the theory, none have been as comprehensive as one published in Schizophrenia Research in 2018, which looked at whole-population data from 467,945 children born in Western Australia between 1980 and 2001.

Over the course of the study, scientists found that of the 1,870 children (0.4 percent) who developed schizophrenia, none were born blind.”

https://www.psycom.net/blindness-and-schizophrenia/

Mela_B

Today I received a missed phone call from myself. My name and my phone number was in my missed calls. When I tried to dial it back just out of curiosity, it said that the location was Russia. 😦

CuddleDuncan

During the course of his life British astronomer and broadcaster Sir Patrick Moore met Orville Wright, Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong. And Albert Einstein.

He was also great friends with Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Brian May.

Travismo

Oh my gosh, I live for useless facts and trivia! Here’s my contribution today:
The major veins and arteries of a fully grown blue whale are large enough for a human child to crawl through. Picture for reference.

UKGuy

The blue whale has the longest penis in the world. 12 inches in diameter and up to ten feet long.
A dentist invented the electric chair.
TYPEWRITER is the longest word you can type using only the letters on one row of the keyboard.
It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
The lint in the bottom of your pocket has a name, gnurr.
Dr. Seuss invented the word “nerd.”
Maine is the only state whose name has just one syllable.

Travismo

Crows are possibly the most intelligent non-human animals on earth, with problem-solving skills on par with human children. They have a primitive language of sorts to communicate simple ideas to each other and some even understand the concept of bartering, offering shiny things to humans in exchange for food.

TheFunCartel

This once generated millions in taxable gambling revenue in Mexico.

CuddleDuncan

If you think you are unlucky - or lucky - consider the merchant seaman Arthur John Priest (31 August 1887 – 11 February 1937), who was an English fireman and stoker. He worked in the deepest, hottest part of the ship. He eventually had to retire early from the sea because nobody would sail with him. He survived:

• RMS Olympic: 1911 collided with HMS Hawke, two watertight compartments holed but didn't sink. (Hawke also narrowly avoided sinking.)

• RMS Titanic: 1912 collided with iceberg and sank

• HMS Alcantara: 1916 (February) sunk in battle with German merchant raider Greif. Priest was wounded by shrapnel in the action.

• HMHS Britannic: 1916 (November) hit mine and sank

• HMHS Asturias: 1917 (March) torpedoed by UC-66, abandoned and nearly sank but ran around first

• SS Donegal: 1917 (April) torpedoed by UC-21 and sank

Titanic, Olympic and Britannic were sister ships. Priest eventually died of pneumonia with his wife by his side.

@CuddleDuncan that's pretty wild! I can't remember their name but I remember hearing about a cat that similarly survived a bunch of shipwrecks/ships being sunk with it on board.

Whitetail deer can jump an average of 8 feet high. At full running speed they can also easily leap and cover over 20 feet in a single bound.

TheFunCartel

With winds below 5 mph and with a temperature above 50, I can write my name in cursive with my pee from six feet away.

NicoSnuggs

@FunCartel - I almost couldn’t believe that human being would sink so low as to do what I just saw to another of God’s creatures.🥺😣Truly reprehensible!😖

TheFunCartel

@NicoSnuggs Where did I say anything about another creature?

CuddleDuncan

John Wayne knew Wyatt Earp, and credited his walk, talk and persona to him.

TheFunCartel

@CuddleDuncan that is false. They never met. Earp did meet and was good friends with Tom Mix, the silent film version of John Wayne.

Here is an article that explains how that myth is merely a fairy tale:

https://www.americancowboy.com/.amp/lifestyle/the-influence-of-wyatt-earp-on-john-wayne

CuddleDuncan

So, Wyatt Earp knew John Ford and visited the set of Mother Machree, a film in which Ford was the director and Wayne was a prop-boy and/or extra. Neither prop-boys nor extras routinely hobnob with directors, so perhaps Wayne saw Earp but never met him.

Wayne is alleged by the internet to have said, “Earp was the man who had actually done the things in his life that I was trying to do in a movie. I imitated his walk; I imitated his talk” but I haven't found an actual source. And that quote does not even claim a meeting, never mind an acquaintanceship.

There is no dispute that Wayne was not a pallbearer at Earp's funeral.

My original remark came from Wikipedia which quoted this source:
Hughes, Johnny (2012). Famous gamblers, poker history, and texas stories. Iuniverse. ISBN 978-1475942156.

Upon investigation, it seems that iUniverse is a self-publishing company. Mr Hughes has a background in poker, and is neither a historian nor an expert in anything pertaining to this tale.

TheFunCartel

I only knew this because as a boy we lived in Tucson, AZ for a couple of years and my birthday coincided with Tombstone Days so we drove down to Tombstone and took the dime tour where the tour guide told us how Earp influenced Hollywood but never, contrary to popular belief, met or spoke to John Wayne. That was in 1972. Somewhere I still have black and white Polaroids that I took of Boot Hill, the brothels and bars because my birthday gift was an instant camera.

zoeloveshugs

20 000 bodies are buried under Washington Sq Park in NYC due to the yellow fever in the 1700 s and again in the 1800’s.
It was once a Potters field , so if you couldn’t afford a proper burial you were buried there!
It still remains a park because no one wants to dig up the bodies and determine whether a finger they found is a century old or recent!
Public hangings took place there too!

CuddleDuncan

I suppose the really interesting thing is that even though John Wayne never met Earp, John Ford did and discussed the Old West with him in detail.

History is recent, and some of the stuff in cowboy films is real.