The fun facts thread---share your useless trivia!

[maninahat]

Ever wonder why olde fashione wordes are spelt with "y"s instead of "th" (as in "ye")?

It is because we used to have an extra letter in the alphabet known as a thorn (þ), which represents the Th sound. Since dropping this letter (along with others like æ) in the standardisation of English, y became used as a stand in.

 

[dkyros]

When the movies need Bong-water they use this recipe:
1 Teaspoon vinegar, 1 Bag black Tea (2 minutes) und 3 big spoons unfiltered apple juice in 1/2 Liter Water

lol, cause knowledge is power!

 

[TriggerHappyAngel]

Miranda Lawson from Mass Effect 2 is voiced by and modeled after the lovely Yvonne Strahovski

 

[Buizel91]

When you yawn... your not actually tired, it's just your body's way of saying your low on oxygen

There's my useless fact!

I thought yawning was found to be something animals do to express being tired to each other. I was told that's why when one person yawns other people yawn too. It's a non-verbal expression of "Hey I'm sleepy" "Yeah I'm sleepy too."

Apparently not, there's a reason why it's contagious but i can't remember it =\

 

[Buizel91]

Optimus Prime, Eeyore, and the Predator are all voiced by the same guy.

O_O Eeyore is now in my awesome books, i love Peter Cullen <3

Best voice actor ever!

 

[Chased]

Fun fact on how heavy metal got its sound:

Tony Iommi (guitarist of Black Sabbath) had his fretting hand's finger tips cut off in a machine accident at work. He then tuned down his guitar to relieve tension on his finger tips and it resulted in a "heavier" sound.

 

[endnuen]

The capacitors inside your TV can kill you.

Apparently you can actually make a crude projectile launcher by taking a huge capacitor (the kind you find in the electric systems of modern cars) and running a current through it the wrong way.

I would love to see where you've seen that?
What I have learned and experienced with connecting a capacitor the wrong way:
No, no you can't.. It will just explode and there will be a foul foul smell and a lot of cleaning to be done..

Just hearsay. Youtube provides videos of guys firing washers using overpowered capacitors, though I don't know if that result is from running the current in the wrong way, or simply exaggerating the capacitor's normal functions.

What happens when you mix up the anode at cathode.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJOUe5IqCps&feature=related

You are talking about this right?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M3rzx6jtnk&feature=related
Basically a capacitor is a form of battery. It has to be charged before letting a current run through it. It appears they have built a rather large "battery", able to store quite an amount of voltage. Then charge the pack up, and releases the energy stores in the capacitors. If one of those bad boys were turned the wrong way they would probably notice ;-)

That's the one. Thanks for setting me straight.

There was a time where I was top in my class for electronics.

Np. Rather nice launcher they made..

Another fun fact: If you charge anything with 100.000.000 Volts the air around will ionize and become inductive, making lightning strike out in random directions.
I cannot remember the actual lower limit for this to occur, but it is actually quite a problem in producing electricity and getting it out to the consumer.

 

[Fetzenfisch]

When the movies need Bong-water they use this recipe:
1 Teaspoon vinegar, 1 Bag black Tea (2 minutes) und 3 big spoons unfiltered apple juice in 1/2 Liter Water

lol, cause knowledge is power!

i can imagine where that fact comes from.

director to assistant: Wow great job, that bong water looks completely real.How did you do that?
assistant:hehe yeah, really , like real......ehhrr i used *looks panicly around in his trailor* vinegar...ehhrrrr tea....aaaaaand apple juice...damn i want some apple juice right now, you too?I totally do

 

[MithosMania]

-If a female ferret cannot find a mate when it is in heat, it will die

-If you keep a goldfish in a dark room, it will eventually turn white

-The Worlds shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England,Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes

-Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories per hour

-Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula" and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, "L.A."

 

[mew4ever23]

I like pudding

Well, according to some website I just found, more than 10 people are killed by vending machines a year.

Someone please explain how that works. Seriously. Were they like crushed by one, or something...?

They were probably crushed while trying to tilt the machine to get free stuff.

 

[hyker]

when Cristopher Columbus found america he thought that it's India and died in the mindset that america is actually India
Amerigo Vespucci was the first who said it, without any proof, that's why it's america

that's the only one that comes into my mind

 

[Arehexes]

When there are two gay penguins, they get jealous of the other couples when they have an egg to look after, so they grab a rock and put it between their feet and look after it, as if it was their egg.

lol shouldnt they steal another egg

sshhh that would give the republican penguins something against the gay ones . Um Bill Gates bought D.O.S off someone and then hired him to help work on it after he sold it to IBM.

 

[KuwaSanjuro]

Drunkenness is in fact a placebo effect, and also the placebo effect still takes effect even if you know it is a placebo.

 

[Quaxar]

Batman's arch-nemesis Joker was voiced by the ultimate Jedi, Mark Hamill.

Highly concentrated oxygen (what you use for a blowtorch) and simple fat used for cooking or shining your shoes is EXTREMELY flammable, and will in most cases turn into an explosion upon contact.

Actually, oxygen is itself not flammable, it just promotes spontaneous combustion really good.
But if you soaked wood in liquid oxygen you could make it detonate on mechanical impact. Get some liquid O2, a wooden stair and you've got the perfect assasination!

 

[Someone Depressing]

Funt fact : Do you know that at the age of 3-5 a babies Bones will start to merge due to Skeletal growth, causing a baby to have average 306 Bones and Child,Teen,Elder,Adult have average 245 Bones .... THAT WAS COMPLETLEY POINTLESS =D!!!

 

[MetaKnight19]

Dolphins have sex up to 5 times a day.....dont ask me why I know this

They are also the only animal, apart from humans, that have sex for pleasure. I might be mistaken on that though.

A football match in the Democratic Republic of Congo was abandoned because a lightning strike killed the entire away team. Strangely, the home team walked off the pitch perfectly fine.

Even more strange, a similar incident happened the same weekend in Johannesberg, when a lightning strike killed half of the players from each team.

 

[FoolKiller]

It took Leo Tolstoy 6 years to write War and Peace.

It took me that long to read it

Also, did you know that 'stewardesses' is the longest word in the English language that you can type with one hand on a QWERTY keyboard.

 

[Goldeneye1989]

If done early enough in life a person can live an almost perfect life without the majority of their brain. It's Called Plasticity of the brain.

Children who are born deaf (or who learn sign language) Stutter in the same way as that children with "normal" hearing do, except they stutter with their hands

Until a certain point in their life children can learn any and all languages that you put in front of them if given enough exposure, they will also be able to perfectly mimic the accent of the native tongue.

 

[DTWolfwood]

After sex, a wolf becomes attached to the female because his penis swells to form a plug.

Now there is a problem most men would be proud to have XD

 

[The Night Shade]

Did you know that Bruce Willis first role was a video nasty called The Driller Killer (1979) he cleaned the windshield of the main character

E.T for the Atari 2600 is one of the best selling games of the sistem

Pacman for the Atari 2600 is considered one of the worst ports ever made

Astron Belt is the first FMV game

Wikipedia supports content in 260 different languages

In a certain Laserdisc edition of E.T there is a cameo by Harrison Ford

You can make and Explosive using water