[Closed] Obscure knowledge thread - edumacate STW!

Starbucks in Llanishen closes at 7.30pm.

The fastest field sport in the world is hurling.

I'm wearing black pants. They're not my favourite.

Hugo Boss designed the Germans SS Uniforms, and his links to the Nazi PArty made him rich...

All polar bears are left handed.

What about bi-polar bears?

Beavers' teeth are reinforced with iron, which is why they are orange.

Degus also have orange teeth, but that's due to a reaction between the chlorophyll in their diet and their saliva.

Galantamine, an anti Alzheimer's/Dementia drug was discovered through an Eastern European folk remedy. It is based on extracts of Snowdrops or a synthetically produced version of the plant extract.

Not all swans are gay.

Polar bear liver is poisonous due to it's very high levels of vitamin A.

The detonation velocity of PE4 explosive is 8090m/s. Useful eh.

I have an above average number of legs.

This is Tigger
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The voice of Tigger for the movies was Paul Winchell, he did Dastardly and Mutley too!
[img] ?1287001191[/img]

He invented this, the artificial heart!
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Manchester's fresh water flows all the way from the lake district,purely through gravity, no pumps are used.

It takes two days for water to flow the entire distance.

Florence Nightingale invented the pie chart.

A parsec is a unit of distance, not time.

🙂

No edits here, no sir, not me.

😉

Or time 🙂

an american fanny is at the back
an english fanny is at the front
this is a nice pink french fanny
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tom hanks didnt do the voice of woody in toy story - he gave the job to his brother cos he was too busy
sorry, but its a myth that polar bears are not left handed

Polar bears being left handed is an urban myth.

[url= http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/polar-bears/bear-essentials-polar-style/myths-and-misconceptions ]http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/polar-bears/bear-essentials-polar-style/myths-and-misconceptions[/url]

People with HIV have a greatly increased chance of developing dementia.

Peppermint is definitely the nicest flavour of artificial saliva.

Denier is a measure of a a fabric's linear mass in grams per 9000m, and double woven 1050 denier nylon is one of the most strong, it's difficult to dye, which is why it's nearly always black

Polar bear liver is poisonous due to it's very high levels of vitamin A.

So are dogs's livers - eating his dog's livers and the resultant vitamin A overdose is thought to be what finally did for Captain Scott and his colleagues.

Its reckoned around 4 million americans routinely wear spectacles with plain, non-corrective lenses.

The bit between you nose and top lip is called the [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philtrum ]Philtrum.[/url] My 4 year old tells people this when she is trying to freak them out.

So what is holocaust denier?

So what is holocaust denier?

Something very, very thick.

CharlieMungus - Member

So what is holocaust denier?

It's what this bloke wears for a quiet night in:

[img] [/img]

So what is holocaust denier?

Mac got there first, I can't think of anything else so I'm going for a shower then off to bed.

who is he? 😕

who is he?

he's the author of the book he's carrying

The currently topical Roald Dahl developed a valve used in the relief of hydrocephalus (water on the brain) following his son developing the condition as a baby.

Jamie Lee Curtis holds a patent for [url= http://www.google.com/patents?vid=4753647 ]Nappies with Pockets[/url]

emsz - Member

who is he?

[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving ]David Irving [/url]emsz.

Not a very nice bloke.

The bat is the only mammal that can fly. Flying squirrels can only glide.

Bees have hairy eyes.

Anak Krakatoa is growing at an alarming rate.

it's only* female honey bees that have barbed stings and rip their arse out after they've stung you

*probably

Take a football and wrap a piece of string around it once, so that your string equals the circumference of the ball. How long is it? About 70cm for a typical footie.
Now add 100 cm to your string. If you make a circle round the ball with the new 170 cm long string, such that it hovers above the surface of the ball, exactly how high above the ball would the new circle be? Simple geometry says 15.9cm.

Now take a piece of string and wrap it round planet Earth one time. How long? A little over 40,000 km. Now add 1 meter to it as before with the football and make a new circle around the earth. How high would this new 40,000,000 +1 m of string be above the earth's surface? A nanometer? A micrometer? No my friend, 15.9 cm just as before.

Anak Krakatoa is growing at an alarming rate.

bruneep - Member

The bat is the only mammal that can fly. Flying squirrels can only glide.

Pffffftt.....

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You can't tickle yourself

Pap or Cioch in Gaelic mean 'nipple' or 'tit'
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Tom Hanks voiced Woody in the films, His brother recorded the voices in the Woody Toys.

Tom himself told the story on the One Show.

it's only* female honey bees that have barbed stings and rip their arse out after they've stung you

*probably

True, only female bees and wasps can sting you - the sting is a modified ovipositor.

Dogs can't look up.

Intensive Care costs about £2000 a day, hence insurance companies will fly a plane from Germany to England, then England to Thailand, then Thailand to England, then home to Germany rather than leave you in a Thai hospital ITU for a week.

Oh, and elephants don't have a pleural space.

Dogs can look up, at least mine can. I thought it was pigs that couldn't.

I also have an above average number of arms.

kayak23 - Member

Dogs can't look up.

Ahem.....

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Elephants are the only mammal that has four knees rather than two elbows and two knees.

When a hippopotamus walks past your tent it feels exactly like an earthquake.

Giraffes are generally thought to be totally silent - but in very very rare circumstances make a bleating sound like a lamb.

Dogs can't look up... trivial facts with google

Take a football and wrap a piece of string around it once, so that your string equals the circumference of the ball. How long is it? About 70cm for a typical footie.
Now add 100 cm to your string. If you make a circle round the ball with the new 170 cm long string, such that it hovers above the surface of the ball, exactly how high above the ball would the new circle be? Simple geometry says 15.9cm.

Now take a piece of string and wrap it round planet Earth one time. How long? A little over 40,000 km. Now add 1 meter to it as before with the football and make a new circle around the earth. How high would this new 40,000,000 +1 m of string be above the earth's surface? A nanometer? A micrometer? No my friend, 15.9 cm just as before

[img] [/img]

Giraffes can't cough.

Female pandas are only in heat 48 - 72 hours a year, and in that time there are only 12 - 48 hours during which they can actually conceive. In addition, male pandas have tiny todgers, meaning that they have to get their positioning exactly right in order to inseminate the female.

Dogs can't look up... trivial facts with google

My granddad worked out the chemical make-up of the plastic that's now used on all pram/buggy wheels. He got a small bonus for it. I imagine the company he worked for (think it was BASF or Dunlop) did quite well.

Giraffes can look over really, really high walls.

A duck's quack [b]does[/b] echo, just not very well.

According to a York university before 2007: British youngsters were ranked 21st out of the then 25 EU countries for "child well-being". Children were worse off in only Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Slovakia.

Only 60% of kids spoke to their parents several times a week and only 67% ate with their parents, the lowest in Europe.

The first thing I did when I arrived at my desk this mornIng was check the string/football/world fact.

It's true, seems ridiculous, but the numbers work, it's now my life long ambition for it to come up in a pub quiz

Hmm.. Edukator - never entirely sure about studies that say stuff like that because it entirely depends on what the survey asks about.

German kids seemed to spend the entire winter months incarcerated indoors. That doesn't sound good to me.

(shamelessly lifted from [url= http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093058/trivia ]IMDB[/url])

[i]Former US Marine Corps Drill Instructor R. Lee Ermey was not originally hired to play Gunnery Sgt. Hartman but as a consultant for the Marine Corps boot camp portion of the film. He performed a demonstration on videotape in which he yelled obscene insults and abuse for 15 minutes without stopping, repeating himself or even flinching - despite being continuously pelted with tennis balls and oranges. Stanley Kubrick was so impressed that he cast Ermey as Hartman.[/i]

He is of course also the voice of the army men sergeant in Toy Story. 😀

Also, the highest tor on Bodmin Moor is called Brown Willy. F'ner f'ner.

Mel Blanc's tombstone reads, "That's all folks."

Or are we talking about the obvious connection between a dog and a reference book?

yes. occam cuts again

The back of the knee is the only place in the human body that does not have a latin name.

I thought it was called the Poplital Fossa (or something like that?)

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inspired this
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Owen Finlay Maclaren invented the buggy. Before that he invented the Spitfire undercarriage.

"German kids seemed to spend the entire winter months incarcerated indoors."

Are British ones shut outside in the rain, snow and dark then? That could explain the survey results.

In the German school I do the exchange with the kids were outside at break times even when it was minus lots. Most walked/biked to school. The kids in the tri club came out running in the dark at -10°C

While balancing an egg on her head and a spoon on her nose, Adriana Yugovich recited the alphabet backward in 2.4 seconds.

Shamefully robbed from the interwebs.

The football/world/string one was awesome.

The part at the 'back' of the knee is called popliteal fossa, some people believe it doesn't have a name.

Bob Holness didn't play sax on Baker Street

Ronald Ross (aka [i]Ronaldo of the Glens[/i]) has scored more goals than any other Scotsman

The part at the 'back' of the knee is called popliteal fossa, some people believe it doesn't have a name.

If you held down the trigger in a fully armed Mk1a Spitfire, you'd run out of ammunition within twelve seconds.

yes, and its latin name is fossa poplitea

😯

Thomas Midgely the man who developed ethyl lead as an additive to petrol was working one day on a cheap reliable refrigerant and developed CFC's

So leaded petrol and CFC's quite a legacy!

The term "The whole nine yards" comes from the length of the bullet belts in the guns of US Navy fighter planes from WW2.

Going "The whole nine yards" in combat literally meant giving it everything you'd got.

The hydra (freshwater invertebrate rather than snakey headed monster) is (almost certainly) biologically immortal as it's cells appear not to senesce (age) and it undergoes morphallaxis (tissue regeneration) when injured.
Unfortunately for such a long lived creature, it's limited sensory abilities reduce its entire experience of the universe to {glutathione/not glutathione} which whilst enabling it to feed effectively means it writes rather poor poetry......

Onzadog - Member
Florence Nightingale invented the pie chart.

No she didn't. She developed and popularised the polar area chart which was first used by André-Michel Guerry.

Shinola - as in 'he don't know sh•t from shinola - was an American brand of waxy shoe polish.

A Fry's Chocolate Cream now costs 75p in Liverpool. Worth every penny though!