What have you learned today?

hanselthecaretaker

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Nov 18, 2010
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And an uncanny ability for - to an outside observer at least - punching above his weight.
Relatively easy to do when you’re a rich & famous, eccentric and still relevant/talented director. Let’s see someone that looks like him who isn’t those things snag these kinds of broads.
 

Xprimentyl

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Aug 13, 2011
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My parents surprised me with an early birthday gift. It's a framed document that details the history of our family name. Today I learned that the earliest know recorded use of our name was in the late 15th century by a man that had the same first name as my late grandfather. Obviously, that's purely coincidental, but still pretty cool.
 

Thaluikhain

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Jan 16, 2010
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Before "Stayin' Alive" became widely used, the chorus for "Nellie the Elephant" was used to teach the rhythm of CPR.
 

Baffle

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Oct 22, 2016
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Before "Stayin' Alive" became widely used, the chorus for "Nellie the Elephant" was used to teach the rhythm of CPR.
The TV depiction of CPR as something you just do for a bit until the person comes round will never not infuriate me.
 

Thaluikhain

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The TV depiction of CPR as something you just do for a bit until the person comes round will never not infuriate me.
Oh yeah, that's bad. Though apparently sticking tourniquets on for everything is now somewhat justified, in that the victim can generally get to a hospital before they become a problem.
 

Thaluikhain

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In medieval Europe, it was not unknown for people to cast mace heads out of bronze, if the shape of a head. If the person had a pointy nose and ears and spiky hair, it could work, I guess. Also, for a time people had shields with decorative faces in them...for some reason.

But the weirder one is that you could have trials by combat with a man fighting a woman, and to make it fair, the man stands in a hole and has a club, and the woman stands on ground level and is armed with a rock in a sock. This, apparently, was totally a thing that happened.
 

Thaluikhain

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You know how ballistas shoot spear like things and catapults shoot rocks or whatever (over simplification, but you know what I mean)?

Apparently the ancient Romans used those words the over way round, but the meaning shifted over time.
 

Xprimentyl

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Today I learned that apparently, Yoda is of an unknown species. I'm not a fan of Star Wars, so the scale of my knowledge within its universe is quite limited, but I thought surely a character as prolific as Yoda is of a named species. Nope.