Total Trivia

[Gaia_Lorraine]

The path that led scientist Joseph Priestly to discover oxygen was started when he moved next door to a brewery, became fascinated by the bubbles rising in the beer vats, and asked the brewers if he could do some experiments with it.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

The 17th century English free-market economist Nicholas Barbon may have pioneered both fire insurance and the modern fire brigade, but he's probably best known for the magnificently unwieldy full name that his father, Praise-God Barbon, gave him: Nicholas Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barbon. (He normally just went by Nicholas.)

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

While everybody's worried about a global pandemic, here's something to take your mind off those fears: since 1945, it's thought that at least 50 nuclear weapons have been lost around the world, and were never recovered.

 

[fire_breeze]

Some people claim that the end of the world, the Apocalypse so to speak, will happen on December 20, 2012. Why? According to the Popol Vuh, a book compiling details of creation accounts known to the K'iche' Maya of the Colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fourth world. The Popol Vuh describes the first three creations that the gods failed in making and the creation of the successful fourth world where men were placed. In the Maya Long Count, the previous creation ended at the start of a 13th b'ak'tun. The start of the 14th b'ak'tun will happen on on December 21, 2012. Three figures within the New Age, the artist and theorist José Argüelles, John Major Jenkins, Daniel Pinchbeck and the late ethnobotanist and psychonaut Terence McKenna, have publicized theories concerning the significance of the end of the cycle. (They arrived at their conclusions separately from one another). They have jointly inspired a number of articles and books that this will be the end of this creation, the next pole shift or, as McKenna speculated in his theories, the end of history and events as "novel" as the origin of life on Earth, which we could not possibly imagine. The date is supposed to mark the return of the Mexican god Quetzalcoatl. His name is a compound of the Nahuatl words for plumage (quetzalli) and snake (coatl). The symbolism of this name implies that the catastrophe could be a unification of opposites, the merging of flight and slithering, dark and light, life and death, suggesting that 2012 could be more of a paradigm shift than a physical cataclysm. Jenkins has focused on the occurrence of a Galactic Alignment in the "era of 2012". Other, more mundane speculations involve a worldwide catastrophe, such as a pole shift. The idea of the significance of the date has also increasingly passed into popular culture.

Okay, so?

Well, according to Mayan scholars, the Mayans didn't believe that world ends in 2012, and they would have celebrated the completion of a cycle with a huge party. One scholar dryly notes that many Mayans would have probably wished that the world ended the next morning.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

When an iceberg melts, it makes a loud fizzing noise, caused by all the trapped high-pressure air bubbles in the ice being released. This noise has the rather wonderful name of 'Bergy Seltzer.'

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

Nicotine gum was invented in Sweden in the late 1960s, after the Swedish government asked a pharmaceutical company to investigate ways of preventing sailors in their navy becoming grumpy after spending days at sea on their smoke-free ships.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

The first picture anybody ever clicked on the web was a promotional photograph of Les Horribles Cernettes, a girl group formed at particle physics research centre CERN, who sing about high energy physics. They had an office next door to web creator Tim Berners-Lee.

 

[brummiesteve]

usless fact

40% of the American population have never visited a dentist.

 

[RUlookingup]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o_JNTPs--Y&feature=related


http://www.metacafe.com/watch/115124/phoebe_cates_fast_times_at_ridgemont_high/


Cates was born Phoebe Belle Katz in New York City, New York, the daughter of Lily and director and producer Joseph Cates (originally "Joseph Katz"). Her uncle is producer/director Gilbert Cates and her stepfather was Marshall Naify, a horse breeder. Cates' maternal grandfather was of Chinese Filipino descent, and her father as well as her maternal grandmother were of Russian Jewish origin. Cates attended the Professional Children's School and the Juilliard School.



Cates achieved icon status in 1982 for her performance in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, particularly the topless scene in which she sheds her bikini top in a slow-motion fantasy sequence.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

The earliest known chain letter in history spread around America in 1888 - asking for people to donate a dime to the education of poor children in the Cumberlands region of Tennessee, and asking the recipient to forward the letter to four friends.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

The world's first ever telephone directory was published in New haven Connecticut, in February 1878 - less than three years after the invention of the telephone. It had fifty names in it, and was just one page long.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

The Real McCoy is not in fact the real McCoy - the phrase was originally 'the real MacKay', and referred to a Scotch whisky. It changed to 'McCoy' when it moved to America, possibly as a result of it being applied to the boxer Kid McCoy.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

Long before anybody thought of the Darwin Awards, Austrian tailor Franz Reichelt removed himself from the gene pool in spectacular fashion. He had created a garment that he believed would enable men to fly - or at least glide - through the air.

His creation - which from contemporary pictures appears to be one part parachute, two parts Batcape and seventeen parts IKEA wardrobe - was supposed to allow men to jump from great heights and float gently to the ground. Naturally, he decided to prove his invention's worth by jumping from sixty metres up the Eiffel Tower in front of assembled onlookers - and promptly plunged to his death. Afterwards, helpful officials carefully measured the size of the crater he'd left in the ground.

His misadventure was recorded for posterity by a number of early cine cameras. Obvious warning: while the passage of time has the potential to imbue any tragedy with some bleak comedic value, this is still a film of a man jumping to his death and hitting the ground very hard, and readers of a sensitive disposition may not want to watch it.

Franz Reichelt Death

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

In its inaugural year in 1982, The Weather Channel lost $10.6 million, and came dangerously close to being shut down. In fact, the network didn't make any money until 1985. Since then, The Weather Channel has steadily grown to where it is now seen in more than 67 million homes, or 98 percent of homes with cable television.

 

[NattyBumppo]

The late Phil Hartman was a graphic artist who designed the album covers for rock groups such as America. The liner notes spell his last name as Hartmann which is the actual spelling of his name.

This is an example of his work:

http://inel.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/americaitunescoverartlondonsanfrancisco.jpg

 

[fire_breeze]

A group of owls is called a parliament.

 

[fire_breeze]

Duelling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

 

[fire_breeze]

Armored knights raised their visors to themselves when they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute.

 

[fire_breeze]

The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.

*cue jokes about the right hand*

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

Oktoberfest Zinzinnati is an annual celebration of Cincinnati's German heritage. It is the second largest Oktoberfest in the world – only Munich's is larger.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

Mystery writer Agatha Christie acquired her extensive knowledge of poisons while working in a hospital dispensary during World War I.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

In 1872, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant designated two million acres in Wyoming as Yellowstone National Park.

 

[Gaia_Lorraine]

Moon landing trivia

The Saturn V was the largest operational launch vehicle ever produced. Standing over 363 feet high with its Apollo Spacecraft payload, it produced over 7.5 million pounds of thrust at lift-off.

 

[NattyBumppo]

In Spanish, one of the words for potato is papa, pronounced PA pah. One of the words for father is papá, pronounced pa PAH. Somehow, though, the Pope is known in Spanish as El Papa, as in El Papa Juan Pablo II.

Thus, one could say that the head of the Roman Catholic Church is the Big Potato.

 

[MSH2]

The original word for potato was Batate. Its a native south american word and recent evidence shows they were eating potatoes over fourteen thousand years ago