Share an interesting random fact

[Meight08]

The dutch santa saint nick will instead of give naughty kids coal Hit them with the front end of a broom used to clean chimneys
Or if they have been really bad kidnap them and take them to spain and either kill them or have them work for him until they die

 

[Boombox2003]

Flamingoes are the only animals capable of drinking boiling water.

 

[GameChanger]

Rock]

Octopuses have six arms and two legs.

The plural form of "Octopus" is "Octopi"

technically this isn't true...
Octopus is a word of Greek origin, not Latin. Therefore the correct plural form is OCTOPUSES.

even though both forms are generally accepted as correct

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/namegame/9174-Podi-Puss-Plural

Octopoi, if you were going with ancient Greek. But you don't hear people say that because it sounds silly.

 

[A Raging Emo]

In every episode of Firefly, the beloved sci-fi show from Joss Whedon, there is a tiny toy of Han Solo frozen in carbonite hidden somewhere in the episode.

 

[Starke]

Santa Claus wasn't originally red and white. It was a marketing campaign by Coke, but it was so popular that everybody else just kind of ran with it.

So what were the original colors?

New fact: The most mentioned fact in this thread is that the colors of Santa Claus came from the Coca Cola ad campaign. Not only is this fact mentioned the most, it is also wrong. There was another campaign from another company, before Coca Cola started theirs. Coca Cola was just more popular.

Also, according to sources, the original Santa Claus was green.

Goddammit, I've been deceived!

I don't suppose you know what that company was, by any chance?

 

[4RM3D]

Santa Claus wasn't originally red and white. It was a marketing campaign by Coke, but it was so popular that everybody else just kind of ran with it.

So what were the original colors?

New fact: The most mentioned fact in this thread is that the colors of Santa Claus came from the Coca Cola ad campaign. Not only is this fact mentioned the most, it is also wrong. There was another campaign from another company, before Coca Cola started theirs. Coca Cola was just more popular.

Also, according to sources, the original Santa Claus was green.

Goddammit, I've been deceived!

I don't suppose you know what that company was, by any chance?

Someone else made a remark about it also, so I looked up the original post. Here you go:

Santa was historically depicted wearing a green cloak.
...
Images of Santa Claus were further popularized through Haddon Sundblom's depiction of him for The Coca-Cola Company's Christmas advertising in the 1930s.[8][33] The popularity of the image spawned urban legends that Santa Claus was invented by The Coca-Cola Company or that Santa wears red and white because they are the colors used to promote the Coca-Cola brand.[34] Historically, Coca-Cola was not the first soft drink company to utilize the modern image of Santa Claus in its advertising-White Rock Beverages had already used a red and white Santa to sell mineral water in 1915 and then in advertisements for its ginger ale in 1923.[35][36][37] In fact, Santa Claus had already appeared in red and white on the cover of Puck magazine at the start of the century.[38]

---------------------------

This:

Is an animal that actually exists.
It's a sea slug.

Ahhhh, it's so cute!

Now my turn:

 

[Kashrlyyk]

Theodore Roosevelt, as beloved a president as he is, was a flaming racist.

Theodore Roosevelt also supported eugenics:

"Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind.... Some day we will realize that the prime duty, the inescapable duty of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his blood behind him in the world, and that we have no business to perpetuate citizens of the wrong type."

From http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/36.3/br_7.html

The last forcible sterilization in the USA was done in 1981 in Oregon.

 

[urahara75]

This:

Is an animal that actually exists.
It's a sea slug.

My God, man... kill it with fire, before it's species rises up and kills &/or enslaves humanity! It give me "super-advanced-slien"/people puppet-vibes to the max. D:

On-topic:
Did you know the Parasite Eve 2 game was originally a mere tech demo to so show off Squaresoft's new rendering engine intended for upcoming Final Fantasy games?

 

[Commissar Sae]

Anteaters can kill Jaguars in a fight. Thanks to their long arms and sharp claws.

 

[Jack Rascal]

No random fact to add, but may I ask what's that sea slug called? Looks pretty.

From Wikipedia: Glaucus atlanticus (common names sea swallow, blue glaucus, blue sea slug and blue ocean slug). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagic_sea_slug. I think that thing looks adorable

 

[Winthrop]

Christmas is not Christian-specific.

It's impossible to lick your own elbow

*Snaps off elbow. "Hah!" *Licks elbow then proceeds to die from blood loss. On a more serious note, I can't believe that no one can do that. There are people with abnormal qualities but humanity has still failed to lick their below?

Don't even have to be abnormal. If you try and bend it and pull it back, its hard but some can do it. If you put your elbow straight and lay your arm against your chest almost anyone can do it.

 

[Mojo]

If you squeeze your left thumb (in the same fashion as making a fist that would break your thumb if you hit someone) you will have no gag reflex.

Try it, but I warn you, you may feel strange doing it.

Oh god... I works...
That really is wierd.
OT:
Noone has ever seen a Ostrich bury its head in sand.

 

[ccggenius12]

The plastic tips at the ends of shoelaces are called aglets.

Their true purpose is sinister.

32 flavors... I knew it!
Also, on topic, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions
cue

Spoiler

 

[soultrain117]

Babies are not dishwasher save, and kangaroos can not jump backwards. Who gets the reference?

 

[ccggenius12]

but after that your fingers just say 'fuck this shit' and stop working? can you elaborate please, because i is confused.

Its a computer joke. there are 1024 units in one unit of memory.

The syrup used to make soda is corrosive enough to eat through metal.

 

[Warr5718]

Technically 5/2=3. You're only supposed to have as many decimals as the original numbers in the equation. So your supposed to round. It's a dumb rule.

 

[Edible Avatar]

This thread is perfect for a mameshiba video:

 

[4RM3D]

This thread is perfect for a mameshiba video:

WTF!? And there is a whole series of this stuff?

Oh well, you know what they say about the Japanese...

 

[lionrwal]

Well, since no one else posted this yet:

The Tardigrade(also known as the water bear) is a microscopic animal that usually lives in moss. At most, they grow to be 1.5 millimeters.

Spoiler: This is it at small magnification

Spoiler: This is it at high magnification

These little animals can survive a few minutes at temperatures up to 151 degrees Celsius, or 303.8 degrees Fahrenheit. They can live for days at -200 C(-328 F), and can survive for a few minutes at one degree above absolute zero.

They can survive for a decade with no water, and can survive 5,000 Gy of gamma rays. To put this into perspective, a human will die at 5 Gy. They can survive extremely low and high pressures.

Best of all, they can survive ten days in outer space.

 

[The Code]

Powdered non-dairy coffee creamer can function as a deceptively powerful incendiary weapon. I s#!t you not, Mythbusters actually proved this.