The fun facts thread.

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estoria-etnia

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Aug 22, 2009
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In Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, the Reliance was supposed to have a similar design to the Enterprise, but the model builder looked at the plans upside down, hence the iconic design which appears in the film.
 
Mar 9, 2010
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Magicmad5511 said:
Neil Patrick Harris actually got his famous part in How I Met Your Mother by messing up the audition. He beieved he was certain to get it so he went over the top and actually knocked over some furniture. The directors liked it.

This guy? Really? Samm Levine as Barney Stinson?​

Footballs (soccer balls) are truncated icosahedron, not actual balls. Pringles are hyperbolic paraboloids. There are my bread and butter facts for this thread. The HIMYM thing is the meat.
 

Barry93

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Mar 5, 2009
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If you put all of Earth's history on a 24 hour clock, the existence of humans is the last two seconds.
 

CrimsonBlaze

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Aug 29, 2011
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Despite what Sega has lead you to believe, hedgehogs can actually swim for small periods of time. When the creators of Sonic the Hedgehog were asked about this fact, they insisted they were unaware of this feat, and designed Sonic to be slow and vulnerable underwater.
 

DJ_DEnM

My brother answers too!
Dec 22, 2010
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Tsaba said:
El Paso, TX is the "safest big city in America" shares the border with the most dangerous city in the world, Juarez Mexico.
http://urbantitan.com/10-most-dangerous-cities-in-the-world-in-2011/

Whats that internet? Number one is Bogota?

Get your facts straight and stop being so freaking discriminative against Mexicans.
 

Dorian6

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Apr 3, 2009
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The pentagram has nothing to do with satanism. It was initially a pagan symbol (the first known usage being in Mesopotamia around 3000BCE) The Sumerian pentagrams served as pictograms for the word "UB" meaning "corner, angle, nook; a small room, cavity, hole; pitfall." In René Labat's index system of Sumerian hieroglyphs/pictograms it is shown with two points up. In the Babylonian context, the edges of the pentagram were probably orientations: forward, backward, left, right, and "above". These directions also had an astrological meaning, representing the five planets Jupiter, Mercury, Mars and Saturn, and Venus.

The image of the Devil that many people have (Horns, goatee, goat legs, pitchfork) is actually not mentioned in the bible at all. At some point, people decided to take some things that seemed evil at the time and throw them on him like a kid playing dress-up. His pitchfork is actually a trident, a popular accessory of the Greek god Poseidon (or Neptune as he was called in Rome). The horns were most likely taken from all those animal worshiping religions the church hated. The goat legs were added as late as the 19th century when neo-paganism became popular. Many artists and writers used the Greek god of goats, herds and fertility, Pan, as inspiration. Needless to say this upset a lot of christians.
 

BlueberryMUNCH

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Apr 15, 2010
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DJ_DEnM said:
Tsaba said:
El Paso, TX is the "safest big city in America" shares the border with the most dangerous city in the world, Juarez Mexico.
http://urbantitan.com/10-most-dangerous-cities-in-the-world-in-2011/

Whats that internet? Number one is Bogota?

Get your facts straight and stop being so freaking discriminative against Mexicans.
I'm really, really hoping you're just having a laugh DJ...how, in any way, shape or form, is that discriminatory against Mexicans? For the love of god grow the hell up.

EDIT: Venus' day is longer than its year o.o
 

Anthony Wells

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May 28, 2011
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DJ_DEnM said:
Tsaba said:
El Paso, TX is the "safest big city in America" shares the border with the most dangerous city in the world, Juarez Mexico.
http://urbantitan.com/10-most-dangerous-cities-in-the-world-in-2011/

Whats that internet? Number one is Bogota?

Get your facts straight and stop being so freaking discriminative against Mexicans.

maybe he was copying an old fact that he heard about before the 2011 update
 

Llil

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Jul 24, 2008
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Whateveralot said:
Llil said:
-The word "gullible" isn't actually in the Oxford English Dictionary.
I don't believe this for some reason.
Well I thought it was funny so I had to throw it out there. Of course, it would have been funnier if someone had quoted me asking if it's really true.
 

Dorian6

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Apr 3, 2009
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Karlosdj86 said:
Thomas Edison invented the word hello specifically to give us something to say when we answered the telephone. "hello" is actually a mispronunciation of the word Haloo which is basically the hunting version of Fore! in golf (basically means get your head down... unpleasantness incoming!)
And by "invented" you mean "stole the idea from someone smarter and less wealthy than himself."

OP: Thomas Edison did not actually invent the light bulb. Heinrich Goebel was likely the person who actually invented it, back in 1854. He tried selling it to Edison, who saw no practical use in Goebel's invention and refused. Shortly thereafter, Goebel died and, Edison bought the patent, the one he saw no merit in, from Goebel's impoverished widow at a fraction of what it was worth.

after Goebel, and a year before Edison "invented" his light bulb, Joseph Wilson Swan developed and patented a working light bulb. So he made Swan a partner, forming the Ediswan United Company and effectively buying Swan and his patent.

Soon enough, Edison bought out Swan completely, thus leaving all records of the light bulb under the care of the Edison Company. Sure, Swan had money, but since he bought all the records, Edison could take sole credit for the light bulb. So, the majority of Edison's inventions were actually created by inventors he's either stepped on, bullied, exploited or bought out to his name, but what do they say about Edison in the textbooks? Father of the goddamn light bulb.
 

redisforever

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Oct 5, 2009
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Flare Phoenix said:
1.) Milhouse's middle name comes from Richard Nixon (Milhouse Nixon Vanhouton (I am terribly mispelling that).
Not just his middle name.
Nixon's full name is: Richard Milhous Nixon
 

Navvan

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Feb 3, 2011
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Mikkelet said:
All people are born girls, which is why boys have have nipples.
Correction they are not born female. For the first 6 weeks of pregnancy (in which nipples develop) the male hormones have not yet begun to be produced and thus the male and female fetuses are the same. From this we can conclude that "female" is the default human template assuming no male hormones.

Continuing with this one can actually narrow down the gene that makes one male. Contrary to popular belief it isn't the Y chromosome but a single gene that performs this function that happens to be located on the Y chromosome. This gene is known as SRY (Sex determining region Y) and is highly susceptible to mutation. Males with an XX genotypes and females with an XY genotype have been recorded. This is due to chromosomal trans-location (XX and XY) or a mutation that causes the gene to be defective (XY females).

Of course there are other factors, but the absence or presence of SRY is the most influential in determining your sex.
 

Roofstone

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May 13, 2010
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OT: In Florida, shooting a rabbit with a set of bow and arrows, while on a bus moving backwards. Will land you a $25 fine..

I do kinda wonder why they specified that it should move backwards..

Also: In Alabama it is against the law to cross the state border while carrying a dead chicken on your head.


RobCoxxy said:
In Chico, California, detonating a Nuclear Device within city limits will land you a $500 fine.
That hardly seems effective.. o_O
 

freakylarzzy

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Jan 24, 2011
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it is illegal in the netherlands to whistle in certain streets in amsterdam because it offended the hookers working there legally.
 

GeorgW

ALL GLORY TO ME!
Aug 27, 2010
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Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.
An hour in front of a computer burns 110 calories.
On average people swallow 14 bugs while they sleep over a year.
The snake, according to polls, is the least liked animal in the world.
TrilbyWill said:
OT: Thomas Edison invented the word 'hello' as a greeting over phones to replace ahoy-hoy (which is still used by Mr Burns in the simpsons.)
Actually, as far as I understand it, Edison wanted people to answer the phone with hello while Alexander Graham Bell wanted to use Ahoy, and Ahoy-hoy as a response. In the end, Edison won. According to me, and Mr. Burns, the wrong one won.