Tell me/ us an interesting fact we might not know. I’ll start.

its impossible to measure the coastline of Britain let alone the world – the more accurately to measure the coast the longer it gets.

Fractal, innit.

the ‘B’ in ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ stands for ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ and the ‘B’ in ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ stands for ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot and the ‘B’ in ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ stands for ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot and the ‘B’ in ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ stands for ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot….

We should call this something.

Recursive.

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/recursive

How would we know?

Extrapolation? If you fire a gun, you might not be able to see the bullet but you could work out how far it went.

Geometry – providing you know he angle that the barrel was pointing, the trajectory is a parabola..

The explanation as I understand it is that the North facing thing is to orientate the dog to its surroundings

The origin of the word ‘orientate’ is that some of the first maps were made by Islamic cartographers, so they put Mecca at the top. Maps of Western Europe therefore had East at the top, hence Orient-ate.

650b and 26″ are exactly the same size. Rims, forks and tyres are interchangeable. Due to strong marketing, everyone was convinced and went out to buy new stuff. Absolutely no one bothered to check.😉

The quote by John Lennon about Ringo not being a very good drummer, not even the best drummer in The Beatles is bogus. It’s actually a joke by Jasper Carrott, that’s been wrongly attributed to Lennon for years.

650b and 26″ are exactly the same size. Rims, forks and tyres are interchangeable. Due to strong marketing, everyone was convinced and went out to buy new stuff. Absolutely no one bothered to check

Yeah, right. My first grown-up bike had 27.5” rims, as did most bikes back then, it was the standard touring wheel size. It’s now referred to as 650b.

Purple is not an actual colour.

Neither is brown. It’s a hue of orange.

“Urban myth. If nothing else the curvature of the Earth means the fired bullet has further to drop.”

If you fired a bullet with a tiny amount of charge in the cartridge so that it only travelled about 20 feet, you could conduct that experiment indoors with a perfectly level floor.

Or you could trust Galileo, who conducted the same experiment with canon balls fired with small amounts of gunpowder 500 years ago.

It’s actually a joke by Jasper Carrott, that’s been wrongly attributed to Lennon for years.

Weirder than that: It’s actually a joke on a radio sketch show called Radio Active in 1981 that was wrongly attributed to Jasper Carrot, wrongly attributed to Lennon.

If you hold a bullet in one hand and a gun horizontally in the other at the same height, drop the bullet and fire the gun simultaneously, both bullets will hit the ground at the same time

In a vacuum, yes.

In the real world, no.

Because lots of complicated reasons…

https://www.wired.com/2009/10/mythbusters-bringing-on-the-physics-bullet-drop/

The B in Benoit B Mandelbrot is short for Bennet B Mandelbot. The B in Bennet B Mandelbot is short for Benny B Mandelrot. The B in Benny B Mandelrot is short for Benji B Mandelnot…

Weirder than that: It’s actually a joke on a radio sketch show called Radio Active in 1981 that was wrongly attributed to Jasper Carrot, wrongly attributed to Lennon.

Even weirder  still it was actually George Harrison’s joke that was wrongly to a  Radio Active sketch in 1981 that was wrongly attributed to Jasper Carrot that was wrongly attributed to Lennon. A rare bootleg recording ‘Here Comes the Sun’ performed live in Japan in 1992 features a long, expletive ridden tirade about the whole situation between the second verse and the chorus that left the audiences in bewildered silence – it was edited out of the official release. The fact that it was edited out made him even more angry.

Most images you associate with the Mandebrot set don’t show the Mandelbrot set.

Haven’t got an interesting fact but this was an awesome thread to read!

Tri-color cats are female only.

Musk Ox, are more closely related to sheep and goatsElon than Oxen.

Fixed that for you…

Those ‘salted peanuts’ (KP etc) that are advertised as ‘roasted’ are actually deep-fried in oil.

advertised as ‘roasted’ are actually deep-fried

In the west of Scotland ‘roasted’ has a broader definition  – so cheese on toast is ‘roasted cheese’ and deep fried food can be described ‘roasted’ too. A ‘roaster’ though is something different – an ‘absolute roaster’ shares common traits with a ‘total rocket’.

In the west of Scotland ‘roasted’ has a broader definition – so cheese on toast is ‘roasted cheese’

No it’s not! Ever!

and deep fried food can be described ‘roasted’ too.

Whit?!? Away down the Blue Lagoon, ask for a roasted fish and see what they say.

Nobody on the west coast says that, sounds more like the sort of nonsense that comes from the land of salt and sauce.

The last execution by guillotine in France was the same year as The first Star wars film.

Cleopatra lived closer to the invention of the Ipad than she did to the building of the pyramids.

Two I heard a couple of days ago, had heard the first one before but tbh not sure how true either are!

No one in Scotland ever says roasted cheese, ever. Unless they’re an English.

Also no Scotspersin will ever, ever say ‘I brought a new (insert item)’

It’s bought you cretins.

Nobody on the west coast

Its possible you’ve haven’t been to all of the west of Scotland yet 🙂

Shane McGowan is 65

A (possibly true) factoid about my home town of Stony Stratford…
The phrase “a Cock and bull story” originates from the two pubs that are more or less next to each other (the cock and the Bull) where apparently a tale would be told in one and by the time it was retold in the other it was embellished.

@iancity1 Google machine says true on the first one.

Good fact.

If you were born in 1970, you were as close (in time) then to the First World War as you were to 2022.

A brass monkey is a brass plate with indentations to store cannon balls on.
When cold enough the metal shrinkage caused the balls to roll off.

Hence the phrase ‘cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey’.

No one in Scotland ever says roasted cheese, ever.

I say it. A lot.

I love roasted cheese.

The company that manufactures the most number of tires worldwide each year is… Lego.

If you were born in 1970, you were as close (in time) then to the First World War as you were to 2022.

Born in ’69 😱

The surface roughness of a billiard ball as a proportion of its radius is greater than the surface roughness of the earth as a proportion of earth’s radius.

Earth is smoother than a billiard ball.

(ignoring that earth isn’t a sphere)

On productive grassland the mass of earthworms below ground is equal to or greater than the mass of cattle or sheep grazing above.

Recursive.

If you want a laugh, google “recursion.”

The origin of the word ‘orientate’ is that some of the first maps were made by Islamic cartographers, so they put Mecca at the top. Maps of Western Europe therefore had East at the top, hence Orient-ate.

Orientation means to face East. I’m less convinced about the maps story. Got a citation for that?

Neither is brown. It’s a hue of orange.

And orange is a hue of red. The word didn’t exist as a distinct colour until we had oranges the fruit. Hence why we have Robin Red-Breast despite it being orange, that word didn’t exist when we named the bird.

Tri-color cats are female only.

Is this true, or mostly true? For years I held that calico / tortie cats were always female and ginger cats were always male. Right up until getting a ginger kitten a year and a half ago who turned out to be female (one of two in that litter).

A brass monkey is a brass plate with indentations to store cannon balls on.

Nope, this is another urban myth.

Stevie Nicks’ dad was president of Greyhound (the big ol’ bus company).

Wasn’t it originally ‘a norange’ as in the Spanish naranja and it evolved into ‘an orange’. Might be wrong, always possible.

Payment on demand…on the nail is derived from (corn/grain) merchants in Bristol making their payments on the pedestals – referred to as nails – on Exchange Street.
To the best of my knowledge, they’re still there.

Not all woods float; some are so dense that they sink – ebony and greenheart are two examples; there are others. Don’t make a canoe from either of those woods.

Kangaroo – apocryphal story…Captain Cook lands in Australia, sees marsupial and asks aboriginal native ‘what’s that’; response is ‘gangaru’ meaning…I don’t know and is heard as yes, you’ve guessed it – Kangaroo!
Great story but I don’t believe a word of it.

The surface roughness of a billiard ball as a proportion of its radius is greater than the surface roughness of the earth as a proportion of earth’s radius.

Mind.

Blown.

Magnetoreception (also magnetoception) is a sense which allows an organism to detect a magnetic field to perceive direction, altitude or location. This sensory modality is used by a range of animals for orientation and navigation, and as a method for animals to develop regional maps.

In navigation, like in bird migration, magnetoreception deals with the detection of the Earth’s magnetic field.

Magnetoreception is present in bacteria, arthropods, molluscs, and members of all major taxonomic groups of vertebrates.

Humans are not thought to have a magnetic sense, but there is a protein (a cryptochrome) in the eye which could serve this function.

… and asks aboriginal native ‘what’s that’

Many of the world’s rivers are, for exactly the same reason, called River River.

The best dictionary definition of all time is the Chambers definition for litotes – affirmation by negation of the contrary.

Men are 6 times more likely to be struck by lightning than women.

Men are six times more likely to go wandering around outside in a storm looking up at the sky and going “See, i told you it was sa…”

@frankconway

In 1898, anthropologist Walter Roth wrote to the editors of The Australasian to set the record straight: “kangaroo,” he said, is clearly derived from “gangurru,” meaning “black kangaroo” in the language of the Guugu Yimidhirr people of north Queensland. It’s their name for the eastern grey kangaroo