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

Physicists do not care what engineers think

That’s not true, more to do with ability on behalf of both parties.

That’s not true,

Of course, it was a joke

Stallone never said “Don’t push me!” in Rambo

First Blood is great and if memory serves the line is “Don’t push it. Don’t push it or I’ll give you a war you won’t believe”

I thought the scrolling wordy bit at the start always had ‘Episode IV – A New Hope’ as the title, but the film itself was just called “Star Wars”.

The title roller at the start of the film was a nod to the old serialised  sci-fi films like Flash Gordon that Lucas watched as a kid which would have a bit of text at the start to give the cinema audience a catch up on what happened in the previous episode. Whether he had plans to make further sequels or prequels or not it was simply a nod to that – the idea that (although at the time it was a stand alone movie) the story in the film was part of an on-going saga. If he’d actually intended to make an on-going saga he’d have started at episode one. He simply wanted to set the audience up for the film by imagining they were joining a story part way through.

A majority of the hands you shake on a daily basis have had at some point a penis in them.

Unless you’re shaking hands with young girls a lot that seems remarkably likely. I’d expect a percentage of lesbians will have done so at some point or other, even.

Wm. Shakespeare was the first person to be banned from a pub (several, actually, in and around Stratford upon Avon)

“Get out, you’re bard”?

Busted. Fact!
Probably by most of you. Also fact 🙂

relapsed_mandalorian
Full Member
A majority of the hands you shake on a daily basis have had at some point a penis in them.

When was the last time you shook hands with anyone though?

The third largest island in the British Isles is Lewis and Harris.

Yep, I was trying to infer that physicists don’t care die to. Alack of emotions and engineers don’t think because that a higher developed skill than they have. Poor attempt at a big bang type repartee.

Nearly all people have more legs than average

No two snowflakes are exactly the same. Woops, maybe the wrong thread.

(Some) Bees can’t fly in the dark

I can’t do the embedded video thing

I like stories from The Great Span, like those ones where US Civil War veterans married young women in their old age for the pension and the last child died in 2017.

https://www.military.com/off-duty/last-person-receive-civil-war-pension-dies-90.html

When I was a kid I knew a WWI veteran who presumably had met people who lived in pre-Victorian Britain.

U.S President John Tyler born in 1790 , still has a living grandson.

Boogie Nights by the (mostly) US funk group Heatwave was written by Rod Temperton from Cleethorpes, who played keyboard in the band. I saw this fact on a TOTP2 programme.

Vinyl fans : a person born in 1933 was 45 in 1978.

Boogie Nights by the (mostly) US funk group Heatwave was written by Rod Temperton from Cleethorpes, who played keyboard in the band. I saw this fact on a TOTP2 programme.

Rod Temperton wrote several of the songs on Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall and Thriller, including both title tracks. He probably had a comfortable retirement.

The Vatican City has the highest pope-density of any country at 2 popes per square kilometre.
Italy has 0.0000033185 retired popes per square kilometre and all other countries have 0.

My grandad was born before the Wright brothers flew for the first time, before motor cars were mass-produced and watched a man standing on the moon on his television. There were a few other developments as well, the jet engine, the Turing machine, the atom bomb, etc. Head-spinning I would think!

The opening credits to the film eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, don’t come on until the films been running for 20 minutes!!!
What’s that all about?
I only know cos I’m watching it on great movies channel right now!

The theme tune for Going For Gold was written by Hans Zimmer.

Grange Hill and Give us a Clue had the same theme tune

The Vatican City has the highest pope-density of any country at 2 popes per square kilometre.

I don’t think there are any popes in Vatican city. You might find one in Alexandria.

Grange Hill and Give us a Clue had the same theme tune

Holy crap.

When I was a kid I knew a WWI veteran who presumably had met people who lived in pre-Victorian Britain.

In 1986 I remember my Great Uncle Fred telling me about seeing the previous passing of Halley’s Comet in 1910.

What everyone with a car knows as a shock absorber actually doesn’t absorb the bumps at all, that’s the job of the spring. The spring is then controlled by the damper, on its own the car wil happily move and drive on springs but not on just the ‘shock absober’ as it collapses under the weight of the car.

My grandad was born before the Wright brothers flew for the first time, before motor cars were mass-produced and watched a man standing on the moon on his television. There were a few other developments as well, the jet engine, the Turing machine, the atom bomb, etc. Head-spinning I would think!

Same for my dad’s dad who sadly died a year before I was born. Mental amount of change to happen in one lifetime.

I remember my mum making a phonecall in the village she was born in.
You stood at the telegraph post and wound the handle. The lady in the village shop went to the switch board to connect the call.
The pub opposite was called the Ronald Reagan.

i remember my parents phone number when I was tiny had 3 digits, and we used to answer it as [local exchange] 1-2-3

Then they added another digit at the start, then another 2 and now another 1. Now it has 7.

And to round it off, barely anyone uses a landline any more anyway!

Manatees can control their buoyancy by farting.

The phrase ‘an aye for an aye’ (which most people incorrectly think is an eye for an eye) originated in the North East in 1914.

Because the FA cup final was cancelled due to the outbreak of WW1 the chairmen of the finalists, Newcastle Utd and Middlesbrough agreed that the match should be declared a draw, although more interestingly, couldn’t agree who should declare that first!

😂

i remember my parents phone number when I was tiny had 3 digits, and we used to answer it as [local exchange] 1-2-3

A mate’s folks were the same, in Dunsop Bridge.

Ducks can sleep with one eye open and half their brain fully awake while the other half sleeps. They can go from sleep to fully awake in a fraction of a second

I think my wife can go from sleep to fully awake in a fraction of a second…just when I stumble in from a particularly late one at the pub.

What everyone with a car knows as a shock absorber actually doesn’t absorb the bumps at all, that’s the job of the spring. The spring is then controlled by the damper, on its own the car wil happily move and drive on springs but not on just the ‘shock absober’ as it collapses under the weight of the car.

I’m confused by this, as it seems to be a mixture of completely obvious stuff and ( if you’ll forgive me for being so blunt) complete nonsense.

Not that I know anything about cars, so I could be wrong.

My grandad was born before the Wright brothers flew for the first time, before motor cars were mass-produced and watched a man standing on the moon on his television.

I recall listening to a man on the radio tell the story of how he had watched the moon landing with his grandmother. He went on to say that she had been found alive in a ditch, the only survivor of an attack on the wagon train she was travelling in.

I’m confused by this, as it seems to be a mixture of completely obvious stuff and ( if you’ll forgive me for being so blunt) complete nonsense.

That’s why they’re labelled wrong!

The spring holds the weight of the car. When a car hits a bump the spring compresses, absorbing the shock. This energy will then cause the spring to decompress and try to return to its original length. Without a damper fitted this still happens but the car will bounce up and down as there’s nothing to stop it doing so. Take the spring out and the damper just sinks to its lowest and does nothing. The damper’s sole job is to control the oscillation of the spring during and after you hit a bump. They work together as a team to give a smooth ride and decent grip.

For a bike comparison it’s like a coil shock. The spring absorbs the hits while the damper takes care of the control. Run a coil with all the damping fully open and it’s just the spring absorbing the hits but with no control.

I dunno. Without shock absorbers, the shock goes into the spring but it isn’t absorbed, it’s just spat back out again at the wheel. The damper does actually absorb some of it.

i remember my parents phone number when I was tiny had 3 digits, and we used to answer it as [local exchange] 1-2-3

+1 (Airton). There were also local dialing codes, so neighbouring exchanges were e.g. 9 or 99.

Yes, I remember my friends family always answered the phone East Langton XXX. Confused me, when I was young. They didn’t live in East Langton, they lived in Foxton.

999 was settled on for emergencies in 1937; the powers that be decided against 111 because it could be triggered by a faulty line, and 222 was the number for the Abbey exchange. 000 couldn’t be used because it went through to the operator

Pop quiz: From 1934 who would you ring on Whitehall 1212 (and the number still ends in 1212 today)?