"Tell Me Something I Don't Know": Trivia & Fact Thread

[Blergh]

6 hours ago, GaT said:

I just found this out, it's illegal to have a garden in New Zealand. You can't even grow a lawn.

 

Why would I not be surprised if there are folks living there with VERY large window boxes?

[ParadoxLost]

7 hours ago, GaT said:

I just found this out, it's illegal to have a garden in New Zealand. You can't even grow a lawn.

 

Have I mentioned that I require a warning when links open to pictures of spiders (and sharks).  I'm not going to recover from reading about how Kiwis eat fried spider like that's not disgusting.

[auntlada]

I think that article is fake, although it is possible that some people eat fried spiders, as there are people in the world who eat spiders. But moa are extinct. as is Haast's eagle -- both according to New Zealand Birds Online (http://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/name-search?title=moa&field_other_names_value=moa&field_search_scientific_name_value=moa and http://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/haasts-eagle).

And the gardening thing appears to be a fake also (apparently New Zealanders like to pull the legs of other people around the world): https://www.buzzfeed.com/bradesposito/nz-garden-ban, https://www.aap.com.au/new-zealands-new-food-bill-doesnt-ban-gardening/ and https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/labour-weekend-gardens-what-to-plant-to-survive-auckland-hose-bans-and-water-restrictions/QT5HUY2VSUHROJP4S7LFNWUGRI/, which tells you what to plant that will survive drought according to the headline (although you can't read the article without a subscription).

[GaT]

6 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

Have I mentioned that I require a warning when links open to pictures of spiders (and sharks).  I'm not going to recover from reading about how Kiwis eat fried spider like that's not disgusting.

Sorry, I didn't read about the fried spiders, & you're correct, it's disgusting.

4 hours ago, auntlada said:

And the gardening thing appears to be a fake also (apparently New Zealanders like to pull the legs of other people around the world): https://www.buzzfeed.com/bradesposito/nz-garden-ban, https://www.aap.com.au/new-zealands-new-food-bill-doesnt-ban-gardening/ and https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/labour-weekend-gardens-what-to-plant-to-survive-auckland-hose-bans-and-water-restrictions/QT5HUY2VSUHROJP4S7LFNWUGRI/, which tells you what to plant that will survive drought according to the headline (although you can't read the article without a subscription).

Hmm, you may be correct, I found this on Reddit. I sent an inquiry to Snopes, so hopefully they will actually check it out.

[Brookside]

On 2/27/2019 at 12:11 PM, emma675 said:

According to my Snapple cap today,  in a room of 23 people, there is a 50% chance that two people have the same birthday. 

I've looked this up and tried to understand it before, but no, it's beyond my tiny mind.  My Mensa level sister tells me it's true, so I'll take her word for it and continue to balance our relationship by nourishing her with good food

 

 

[Calvada]

My siblings and their spouses/partners total `15 people.  There are 2 common birthdays involving 4 of those people. 

[Blergh]

23 minutes ago, Calvada said:

My siblings and their spouses/partners total `15 people.  There are 2 common birthdays involving 4 of those people. 

And there are at least 20 million folks out there sharing ANY birthday. But no one has considered having a joint birthday with the other 20 million or so fellow celebrants! 

 

OK, speaking of birthdays, due to a combination of high infant mortality and low literacy, until recent centuries few folks outside of royals had their actual birth dates recorded (which is one reason why Christmas Day is almost certainly not the actual anniversary of Jesus's birth).

However, one of the earliest surviving correspondences found in the Border region between England and Scotland was from the wife of a Roman officer living in a fortress town  adjoining Hadrian's Wall- inviting a friend to join them at her child's birthday party!  Yes, this was a frontier outpost on the literal edge of the Roman world- yet not only were the officers' families living with them there but they even had the time and inclination to throw at least one birthday party! 

[Ceindreadh]

35 minutes ago, Calvada said:

My siblings and their spouses/partners total `15 people.  There are 2 common birthdays involving 4 of those people. 

I once met somebody who had the exact same birthday (year and all) as mine.  We even calculated that - given the different time zone we'd been born in - we were pretty much born within an hour of each other. 

[isalicat]

I know two people that have the same birthday as I do, and one of them, the wonderful genius who cuts my hair, also shares the exact same day (year and all) with me. Unfortunately my birthday (and thus hers) is April 15th - income tax day when everyone is broke and grouchy.

[Blergh]

Speaking of grouchy, I'm not sure they ever met  in life but Groucho Marx died on August 18,1977 at age 86- three days after  Elvis had  died at age 42. Somehow, I can imagine Mr. Marx having some kind of  inimitable retort to being overshadowed by the younger man's passing! 

[emma675]

Today is the last day a woman has never been Vice President in the United States. 

[Blergh]

 The Grand Canyon of the Southwest US has at its base the Colorado River which is believed to have created this remarkable landscape by the surrounding land rising above the original riverbed but the water  and the solids within carving out this impressive natural wonder.  However, there appears to be far less debris at the Colorado River's mouth at the head of the Mexico's Gulf of California than scientists would expect re the sheer volume of rocks,etc that would have made up  Grand Canyon  .

Sadly, thanks to agriculture, industries and municipalities overtapping that river,  in these times the once mighty  Colorado River is lucky to have a trickle of sludge emptying into Gulf of California.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Blergh

[Blergh]

In 1880, on a transatlantic cruise ship, a 36-year-old redhead observed a giant wave sweep this black-clad, black-veiled older woman off the upper deck's stairs. Without a moment to spare, the redhead grabbed the older woman by the ankle and prevented her from being swept overboard to a drowning death.

As soon as she was able, the older woman introduced herself, "I am Mrs. Abraham Lincoln. I had hoped to join my husband but Providence has prevented that at this time!"

It should be noted that Mary Todd Lincoln had learned fluent French as a young girl in Lexington, Kentucky and she had made good use of it the previous few years as she had attempted to permanently settle in France but ultimately decided to return to the land of her birth where she'd live until her 1882 death and it's a good thing she DID know French because the younger redhead was none other than France's own Sarah Bernhardt who was on her way to headline her first tour of the US!

As Mme. Bernhardt would reflect later " An actor had ended her husband's life but an actress had prevented her from joining him!"  (Yes, the news of President Lincoln having been killed by an actor had electrified both sides of the Atlantic almost instantaneously. It was only due  to Federal troops barricading themselves around the edifice that prevented Ford's Theater from being torn apart by an angry mob the day after- despite none of the actors within having had anything to do with the President's death).

Mme. Bernhardt would tour the US (and many other parts of the world ) several times and would live to make several films of her performances.   Oh,  Mme. Bernhardt would live to 78 and was so dedicated to making films that she turned her house into a film studio as she was dying but wouldn't live to actually be filmed there before her 1923 death. 

 

I thought about putting this in the Behind the Scenes but despite her fame (and infamy) in the 19th century, few folks have seen her films in many decades outside of those interested in early film history and Mme. Bernhardt's own history so here it is!   

 

[Blergh]

While the Inca  Empire that occupied a major part of the Andes Mountains had a very extensive road network with goods transported to all corners, there have been no historical records or even archaeological evidence found of any possible trading class, money . ..or even marketplaces! Contrast that with the Aztec Empire which had very well organized, thriving marketplaces in all its towns but especially huge ones in its capital city of Tenochtitlan  and, despite conquests, wars, plagues, famines, modernization, online trading,etc. down the centuries  marketplaces have remained a central feature of Mexican life  even to the present day . Yet  not even the Inca  capital city of Cuzco had any to speak of and it appears that marketplaces in the former Incan Empire  were only first established by the Spanish themselves.

Oh,but that wasn't the only thing the Incas did differently than other cultures. Not only were they able to build huge buildings and walls fitting enormous boulders too tightly for knife blades to squeeze in despite having no wheeled transports (which have survived centuries of earthquakes and other natural disasters  despite the lack of mortar)and their largest beast of burden being the alpaca but, despite having no written language, they were able to communicate precise commands,orders and messages  to all parts of the Empire via runners carrying nothing more than strings tied in specific coded knots- that were considered SO sacred that anyone believed to have tampered with said knots were automatically executed! 
 

 https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-greatest-mystery-of-the-inca-empire-was-its-strange-5872764

Edited March 8, 2021 by Blergh

[Blergh]

While there are surviving phonographic recordings of the British Royal Family at least as far back as 1923 when George V and Queen Mary made an Empire Day radio speech and, even a  recording  from 1888   made possibly of Queen Victoria herself in 1888, there are no  known claimed recordings made by Edward VII and Queen Alexandra- despite the latter living until 1925!

Edited March 22, 2021 by Blergh

[Bastet]

3 hours ago, Blergh said:

While there are surviving phonographic recordings of the British Royal Family

Oh, dear, it's going to be one of those days - at first glance, I read this as "pornographic recordings".

[greyflannel]

On 3/21/2021 at 11:20 AM, Bastet said:

Oh, dear, it's going to be one of those days - at first glance, I read this as "pornographic recordings".

Me too!!

[Blergh]

In 1992, farmers in a small village in southern China decided to have a small 'bottomless' pond pumped out- and discovered that the pond actually concealed a huge, very elaborately carved manmade cavern and, as it turned out, one of dozens of caverns in the area that had been hidden for centuries beneath farm ponds!  Despite having been concealed by water for at least 1000 years, they were in remarkable condition with perfectly intact staircases and engravings that had all been carved from the rock itself! However, there were no clues within the caves as to who might have had them carved out, for what purpose, or HOW (and where the builders disposed of the debris that had been extracted from them remains a mystery). Oh, and despite them having been carved in  territory within  the Chinese Empire which kept meticulous records of virtually every project, landmark event, etc., there have been NO references or allusions to them found in the known, surviving  official records (apart to possible allusion from a poem dated written in the 17th century)- although the carved engravings do appear to depict scenes of Chinese rural life in addition to some religious iconography. And there's no definitive answer as to exactly when what are now called the Longyou Caves were carved out besides a few pieces of pottery found that seem to date to about 2,000 years ago.

Talk about truth being stranger! 

https://www.thegypsythread.org/longyou-caves-another-ancient-unsolved-mystery/

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/08/the-mystery-of-the-longyou-caves/134874

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longyou_Caves

Edited April 5, 2021 by Blergh

[PRgal]

Alibaba founder Jack Ma was in a movie featuring major players like Jet Li.  Yep.  

[jenh526]

I read about a study where they were looking at how long people stayed in a job with a toxic boss. The results were very interesting. They found people stayed about 2 years longer in a job with a toxic boss vs. non-toxic. The hypothesis was that people felt more beaten down in those jobs so found it harder to get the motivation to leave.

One has to wonder though if that isn't a deliberate strategy in some places.

Edited April 18, 2021 by jenh526

[Blergh]

Malta has had a rather unique history down the centuries. From 870AD to 1091AD it was occupied by Arabs but that period is a bit of a mystery. For one thing, during that period, the island's main fortress/capital town of Melita   ( which was also the name of the island which meant 'land of honey'  and located on a  prominent  mountaintop with views of   virtually the entire coastline) had its name changed to emulate the Islamic holy city of   Medina (  called Mdina  today) and pared down to a quarter of its former size. Also the Maltese language has most of its vocabulary and grammatical structure based on Arabic (with Italian, English and French influences and a few vestige Phoenician words)  and is considered to be the only Semitic language that uses the Roman alphabet (albeit with extra letters) despite the fact that Malta is 95 percent Christian. Only a single confirmed mosque  on the island from that era has been found by archaeologists. However  relics of the nation's  patron saint St. Paul (whose time being shipwrecked  in Malta was mentioned in the Book of Acts) were alleged to have survived this occupation to  to the present day.   

[Gramto6]

On 4/4/2021 at 1:14 PM, Blergh said:

In 1992, farmers in a small village in southern China decided to have a small 'bottomless' pond pumped out- and discovered that the pond actually concealed a huge, very elaborately carved manmade cavern and, as it turned out, one of dozens of caverns in the area that had been hidden for centuries beneath farm ponds!  Despite having been concealed by water for at least 1000 years, they were in remarkable condition with perfectly intact staircases and engravings that had all been carved from the rock itself! However, there were no clues within the caves as to who might have had them carved out, for what purpose, or HOW (and where the builders disposed of the debris that had been extracted from them remains a mystery). Oh, and despite them having been carved in  territory within  the Chinese Empire which kept meticulous records of virtually every project, landmark event, etc., there have been NO references or allusions to them found in the known, surviving  official records (apart to possible allusion from a poem dated written in the 17th century)- although the carved engravings do appear to depict scenes of Chinese rural life in addition to some religious iconography. And there's no definitive answer as to exactly when what are now called the Longyou Caves were carved out besides a few pieces of pottery found that seem to date to about 2,000 years ago.

Talk about truth being stranger! 

https://www.thegypsythread.org/longyou-caves-another-ancient-unsolved-mystery/

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/08/the-mystery-of-the-longyou-caves/134874

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longyou_Caves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fascinating! I love historical things like this!

When I went to Pompeii  I swear my heart stopped when viewing the bodies coated in ash and seeing the buildings uncovered that they perished in. History is a moving and evolving thing. It all adds to how we live our lives now...

 

Edited June 14, 2021 by Gramto6

[Blergh]

2 hours ago, Gramto6 said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fascinating! I love historical things like this!

When I went to Pompeii  I swear my heart stopped when viewing the bodies coated in ash and seeing the buildings uncovered that they perished in. History is a moving and evolving thing. It all adds to how we live our lives now...

 

I fully agree! Pompeii has shown the world a snapshot of what everyday life was truly like for the average Roman city dwellers- including having fast food outlets (!)!

BTW, I got what you're saying. When I was in Santiago de Compostela, Spain at the Cathedral, there is a certain spot on a certain  column where all pilgrims (and tourists) have put their hands- and all those millions of hands over eight centuries pressing on that spot have made a perfect handprint. Thus, even more than viewing  supposed sarcophagus of St. James the Apostle, putting my hand there (feeling the moist, oily marble)  made me feel I was linked to all these millions of folks from all walks of life who had traveled from all over Europe for centuries to a somewhat remote spot in northwest Spain just so they could have the chance to see something that was supposed to be linked to an Apostle.  Anyway, I felt rather moved. 

[Blergh]

In spite of innumerable invasions,famines  wars, governments (including the extremely autocratic, religion-phobic Hoxha Communist one),etc. down the centuries, there's one unusual tradition that has survived to the present day among the Albanian Christian communities- 'sworn virgins'.

While the communities are very male-dominated and patrilineal via property distribution, they developed an evidently unique reaction to the fate of family properties in lines that have descended to heiresses. Instead of chancing low-born fortune-hunters reaping windfalls of ancient proud lines via marrying the heiresses, upon the death of their last male relative ( father,brother, nephew, cousin,etc.), the heiresses are compelled to immediately 'become men' via cutting their hair, wearing men's clothes and taking over the properties. However, they ALSO must swear to be virgins from that point on and  can NEVER marry anyone (male or female)  but are obligated to administer said properties until their own demises (after which the line comes to an end ). 

 

 

 On the other hand, until the middle of the 20th century, Japan had a different approach to heiresses. Up to the end of WWII, girls (and unmarried women of all ages) were legally  considered 'temporary' family members of their own birth families - with the censuses listing them as such.  They'd only become 'permanent' members of their husbands' families upon marriage . However, in cases where the families had no male heirs, they would have the heiresses marry men who'd been disowned by their own birth families or would themselves disown said families. After marriage, the new husband would become the family's literal new 'son' with him taking the heiress's surname and their daughter becoming the family's legal' daughter-in-law'- and all resulting grandchildren carrying the heiress's family surname from that point on. 

[JustHereForFood]

In other topic, I have just learned that there are species of flatworm that reproduce via practice that is called "penis fencing". Since they are hermaphroditic, two individuals that meet engage in a combat over who gets to impregnate the other one. No, I am not making this up:

 

 

[Gramto6]

Wow! As beautiful as they are, I don't ever want to come upon one of those flatworms!!

[Blergh]

Honeybees are NOT native to North America but were imported via basket hives on ships by European settlers from the 16th century onward. While there ARE native bee species in many parts of the world, most of them only pollinate a single kind of flower or fruit while the European honeybee will pollinate virtually any kind of flower (or crop) out there. 

[Blergh]

In 1866, after having deserted the Confederate Army in Missouri to become a reporter in Virginia City, Nevada, 31-year-old Samuel Clemens (AKA Mark Twain) ventured to Hawaii- and became one of the earliest known non-Hawaiian native to attempt surfing (or, 'surf-swimming'- as he termed it in "Letters from Hawaii"). He had had seen Hawaiians shoot along  faster than a 'lightning express train' speed  via this then-exotic transport and attempted to do it himself. He 'got the board placed right'  but only  the gigantic wooden board made it to shore in 'three-quarters of a second' while he himself struck the bottom 'with a couple of barrels of water in me'. At the time, Mr. Twain observed that the surfers themselves practiced their technique in the altogether instead of wearing any kind of swimwear and in the accompanying illustration (with a strategically placed breaking wave over his private parts)  in Roughing It (1872) when recounting his experience, it appears he likely did it in the same  manner.     

[Blergh]

The Great Wall of China and Beijing's Forbidden City were built for the express purpose of keeping other folks OUT.

 

YET these are now the two biggest TOURIST DRAWS of the People's Republic of China! 

[Blergh]

 The current slang term 'flipped' (meaning gone off the rails,etc) is short for an older term 'flipped his wig'.

'Flipped his wig' started in the 18th century when wealthy folks and/or aristocrats were expected to wear very large wigs in public but the men were supposed to keep their actual noggins shaved beneath them to be able to secure said wigs.

That's  because if  even a quarter-inch of stubble had grown, it often proved disastrous during those times the men aristocrats would greet a lady and tip their hats because, when doing so, they were also  expected to also bow down their heads which, with   enough stubble would result in them literally . .. .FLIPPING THEIR WIGS! LOL

Edited December 31, 2021 by Blergh

[Blergh]

The 'Shot Heard Around the World' re the Battle of Lexington and Concord may have been a  euphemism for the US American Revolution which saw the first colony become independent of its 'mother country' since the Fall of the Roman Empire  but it also had the lesser known effect of spurring the colonization of Australia.

 While the continent of Australia had been known to Europe since at least the mid 1600's (and, at least the northern coast, to Asians for millennia longer), since it was somewhat distant from any known commodities or trading routes, it had been virtually left alone by all the above as nothing more than something to avoid when going to/from more desirable places if not just a geographic quirk not worth bothering with. 

That is, until Thirteen North American mainland British colonies south of what's now Canada succeeded in ridding itself of British rule AND in grudgingly gaining recognition as  thirteen independent nations in 1783 (yes,at that time nations plural because these former colonies would not be united under a single government until the 1789 United States Constitutional Convention).

In addition to what George III would call the loss of the crowning jewel of his empire and Britain's wounded pride, it also somewhat left the British judicial system in a bit of a quandry. Namely, the southernmost (and most recently settled) of these 13 onetime colonies had been Georgia which the British had established   both as a buffer to protect North and South Carolina (and the rest of the British mainland territories) from possible expansion from the Spanish colony of Florida  AND as a penal colony in which a significant number of convicts would be transported to in order to rid Great Britain from having to deal with them without having to incarcerate them in overcrowded workhouses, prisons. ..or put them to death. 

However, 1783 had happened, and the option of transporting criminals ended. Or so they thought.

 

THEN someone had considered that there was this entire unexplored gigantic continent that no other nation had claimed or had attempted to permanently settle in which they could transport convicts- AUSTRALIA!!!

Thus, within just five years of the loss of Georgia the first ship carrying the first British convicts landed in January, 1788 in what's now Sydney Harbour but back then had had not even the most rudimentary facilities set up for the 11 ships carrying the 1,000 settlers (778 of whom were convicts transported there against their wills with infinitely less means to find their ways back to Great Britain than had been possible in Georgia which was only one instead of two ocean crossings away )- to say nothing how the Indigenous Australians living  in that area having never had any previous interactions with the outside world  in tens of thousands of years but that IS the start of the settlement from outsiders and written history of Australia! 

Yep, had the British quelled the Shot Heard 'Round the World, it's possible via keeping   Georgia as its penal colony, they likely would have never considered having anything to do with Australia as long as no other powers   expressed any interest. IOW, it's possible that the Indigenous Australians may have been able to keep their Dreamtime  and preserved their cultures with  900 plus languages for X number of years, decades or even centuries longer than fate had had   happen with Georgia.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Blergh

[Blergh]

While European colonization has been well documented, European were by no means the only people who traveled great distances to settle other lands. A lesser known with less concrete documentation but nonetheless an impressive colonization has to be that of the Austronesian peoples who started out  from   the Malay Peninsula of modern day Malaysia from as early as 2000 BC to colonize not just the  islands immediately surrounding that peninsula but  islands all over the South Pacific as far away as the Hawaiian Islands (of modern US) to Easter Island (of modern-day Chile) to New Zealand(c.1200 AD) and even Madagascar (c.600 AD) off the east coast of Africa- possibly even having made contact with the Native Americans of Pacific coast of South America! They achieved this by navigating outrigger canoes  across hundreds of miles of open ocean with nothing more than cowrie shell and bamboo star charts to guide them- not just men, but also entire families, dogs, pigs and huge stone idols. 

Oddly enough, despite the waves of far-flung colonization/migrations arching over the continent, there doesn't appear to have been more than the most sporadic contacts with the Aborigines of the northern coasts of Australia much less any attempts  over the millenia  by the Austronesians to immigrate/colonize the continent! 

Considering how these waves were responsible for the first human settlements of many parts of the world, I only hope that there is more scholarly study of them in the future!

[GaT]

I just found this out, there is such a thing as "Korean age". When babies are born in Korea, their Korean age is 1 because they count the time you spend in the womb. Everyone's Korean age changes to one year older on January 1st. Sometime babies born on December 31st can have a Korean age of 2 when they're born because they're born 1 years old & immediately get one year older on January 1st.. This is a related to their culture which I am not qualified to explain (if I even knew it), but they also celebrate their actual age (international or Western age) which I would find confusing, but Koreans probably don't. No idea if any other country does this.

[Gramto6]

My late DH was Hungarian, I don't know if it was a Hungarian thing or just a thing of his, but he always counted himself a year older on Jan 1 of each year despite the fact his birthday was in March. So maybe it is a thing in other cultures too. 

Not me I'm not a year older until June 3 of each year!! LOL

Edited August 17, 2022 by Gramto6

[GeeGolly]

On 8/16/2022 at 5:39 PM, GaT said:

I just found this out, there is such a thing as "Korean age". When babies are born in Korea, their Korean age is 1 because they count the time you spend in the womb. Everyone's Korean age changes to one year older on January 1st. Sometime babies born on December 31st can have a Korean age of 2 when they're born because they're born 1 years old & immediately get one year older on January 1st.. This is a related to their culture which I am not qualified to explain (if I even knew it), but they also celebrate their actual age (international or Western age) which I would find confusing, but Koreans probably don't. No idea if any other country does this.

How interesting. So if X is born 12/31/22 and Y is born two days later on 1/2/23, their ages would be a year apart, rather than two days apart. Would twins born on the late evening of 12/31 and the early morning of 1/1 be the same age or one year apart?

[Mindthinkr]

On 8/17/2022 at 2:46 AM, Gramto6 said:

My late DH was Hungarian, I don't know if it was a Hungarian thing or just a thing of his, but he always counted himself a year older on Jan 1 of each year despite the fact his birthday was in March. So maybe it is a thing in other cultures too. 

Not me I'm not a year older until June 3 of each year!! LOL

That is how we age horses and try to breed them so they drop in early spring. If a foal was born in June it would be 1 in January. 
 

Edited to add: You can tell a horse’s age by examining their teeth. Certain ones only come in at certain ages. Similar to our wisdom teeth not showing up until after our adolescence (in most cases). 

Edited August 20, 2022 by Mindthinkr

[GaT]

5 hours ago, GeeGolly said:

How interesting. So if X is born 12/31/22 and Y is born two days later on 1/2/23, their ages would be a year apart, rather than two days apart. Would twins born on the late evening of 12/31 and the early morning of 1/1 be the same age or one year apart?

Good question, I have no idea,  It sounds like their actual age would be the same, but their Korean age would be a year apart. I know that one twin will always be considered elder & gets a different honorific, so it seems like the age thing would matter.

[isalicat]

5 hours ago, Mindthinkr said:

Edited to add: You can tell a horse’s age by examining their teeth. Certain ones only come in at certain ages. Similar to our wisdom teeth not showing up until after our adolescence (in most cases). 

Which, in case anyone here did not already know, is where the saying "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" comes from!

[Mondrianyone]

55 minutes ago, isalicat said:

Which, in case anyone here did not already know, is where the saying "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" comes from!

How interesting! If I'd thought about it, I would've assumed it came from the Trojan Horse. But in that case looking a gift horse in the mouth (and seeing all the Greek soldiers hiding inside) would've saved everyone a whole lot of trouble. So a better saying for that situation might've been "Always look a gift horse in the mouth." Live and learn!

[Blergh]

Although each Greek Mythological tale has many variations, I think the basic story of the Fall of Troy had the prophetess princess called Cassandra  vainly try to warn her family NOT to accept the supposed 'tribute' prize of the giant wooden horse with 'beware of Greeks bearing gifts' I'm not sure that that was the occasion of someone piping up not to 'look a gift horse in the mouth'.

However, according to the Illiad, Cassandra had been a high priestess in the temple of Apollo and had been offered the gift of prophecy. However, when she declined his advances, he punished her by having her prophecies being completely accurate but NEVER believed. Another interesting trivia deal about the Illiad is that it was supposedly composed by a blind chanter named Homer centuries before the Greek written language came to be and, evidently, was passed down until finally written down via being sung around campfires.

[chitowngirl]

Our 10th President, John Tyler who died in 1862, has a living grandson. He is 91. 

[Blergh]

Harrison Ruffin Tyler (born 1928)'s grandfather John Tyler had been elected Vice-President in 1840 and only became the US President due to the elected President William Henry Harrison having succumbed to pneumonia on April 4,1841- at age 68 exactly ONE MONTH after his Inauguration in which he insisted on parading without his top coat  or hat  before delivering a two hour speech-the longest inaugural address on record -despite the blustery wet and  cold weather.

One interesting trivia note is that President Harrison's wife Anna Symmes Harrison (1775-1864) wound up being the only  living US Presidential spouse thusfar to never occupy the White House since Martha Washington. The 65-year-old Mrs. Harrison had outlived eight of their ten children, had opposed her husband's retirement being disrupted, felt ill and dreaded having to travel overland from Ohio to D.C. so she sent their widowed daughter-in-law Jane Irwin Harrison to do the hostessing duties but intended to arrive in May when the weather was due to improve. Instead President Harrison  died and,upon receiving the devastating news,  she refused to travel for the state funeral but wound up long  outliving both her husband and daughter-in-law before her own death at age 88.

Mrs. Harrison had lost her own namesake mother on her 1st birthday and her father John Cleves Symmes who'd  had joined the Continental Army (and represented New Jersey in the Continental Congress)  before disguising himself as a British soldier to get his 4-year-old daughter safely to her maternal grandparents' farm on Long  Island so she could be raised in a stable environment during that war. They saw to it that she was better educated than most other Colonial/ Early US American women were during her time. She would elope against her father's wishes with Mr. Harrison in 1795 but the men eventually became genuine friends by the time of Mr. Symmes's death in 1814.

Edited November 14, 2022 by Blergh

[Blergh]

The gymnastic standby the pummel horse was first invented by the Classic Greeks for the purpose of being able to get the feel of mounting and dismounting a horse due to the Greeks usually riding them bareback- and bare everything else (and that's not counting the horses themselves). 

Even so, I have to wonder if it wouldn't have been easier to have made saddles and chaps for that purpose!

[Bethany]

I found out today that marrying your first cousin is actually legal in most places.  In the US roughly half the states have passed laws against it but, of course, that means the other half have not. The reason this came up was because I was reading a book written around 1960 where some of the characters are convinced that two of their friends, who happen to be cousins, would be a perfect match. 

My first reaction was "seriously??" partly because that seemed like an odd thing for friends to want for other friends but also because I had assumed even if they wanted to marry they wouldn't have been allowed.  Anyway if anyone out there has fallen in love with your first cousin and thought your love was not meant to be, take heart.

[ABay]

Albert Einstein and his second wife were first cousins.

[Blergh]

8 hours ago, ABay said:

Albert Einstein and his second wife were first cousins.

As were Vic and Albert!  Oddly, there was no opposition to their marriage on those grounds.

However, decades later some featherbrain went on a rant on the calamities of cousin marriages in Vic's presence who icily shut it down with 'We were cousins!'

[Blergh]

A Scandanavian couple had,in hindsight, an encounter with history that put them on the edge of a still-unsolved mystery.

While Sigrid Bjornsdottir and Thorstein Olaffson were sailing from Norway to their intended destination of Iceland, their ship got blow off course by a storm and they landed in the Norse settlement of Hvalsey in what's now Greenland. The Norse settlements in Greenland had been established in the 980's by Eric the Red but, by this point, due to a combination of the Black Death (which wiped out half the population of Iceland from 1402-1404) ,the market for walrus ivory bottoming out thanks to elephant ivory getting imported to Europe from Africa and  a mini-Ice Age making communication and even trade with the outside world becoming more and more challenging to the settlers who were, by this point, virtually totally isolated from the outside world. Regardless of their own hardships, the community evidently were hospitable to the couple and the couple decided to make use of their time there by getting married in the community's tiny rock church on September 14,1408 before their boat got repaired and they were able to make it to Iceland where they settled and started their own family.  A few years later, they were questioned about their union's legality but several of the fellow Icelandic wedding guests wrote letters testifying that it had been sanctified in that remote church in Greenland on that date  which would be permanently recorded in the Icelandic saga records.

  Big deal, one may say. In itself, that would be correct. However, this wedding wound up being the very last complete historic glimpse of life in the Norse colonies in Greenland! Oddly enough, somehow a claim  of local authorities condemning then burning someone for witchcraft around this same time somehow made its way to the outside world but  details were so scant that no one's sure the latter claimed event was gossip or actual news.

There was an account of an Icelandic seafarer (by the name of Jon Greenlander[!]) who somehow reached Greenland in 1540 over a century after the above-mentioned last historic contact- only to find the corpse of a single Norse colonist man lying face down wearing animal skins but no living Norse colonists! What this poor soul's name was and whether he'd spent his entire life having lived among the last survivors( if not the possibly having been the very last one) is unknown as is what had happened to any possible family members before him.

It wouldn't be the 1700's that the Danish government decided to see about re-establishing contact with the Greenlandic Norse settlements while  trying to establish their own colonies on that gigantic glacier dominated landmass- when they discovered that the Norse settlements had been completely abandoned with only a few indigenous Inuits living among the Norse ruins but no one was sure what had happened to the descendants of the Norse colonists themselves.

As best as can as contemporary scholars can tell, they seemed to have either died out or abandoned their settlements within  decades of  the recorded marriage of Sigrid Bjornsdottir and her groom Thorstein Olaffson. However, there's no record of anyone from Greenland known to have resettled elsewhere (and even Iceland was somewhat remote from Greenland- and itself had been somewhat left to fend for itself isolated  from the outside world during the Middle Ages but Iceland's inhabitants WOULD survive to the present day). Of course, there are Inuit of mixed ethnicity who may very well be descendants of the lost Norse colonists. There ARE Icelandic citizens who have some  North American Native DNA in addition to the predominantly Scandinavian DNA so it's entirely probable that descendants of those conceived via non-conventional couplings may be the  living remnants of the Greenlandic Viking colony!

Edited May 16, 2023 by Blergh

[DrSpaceman73]

On 12/17/2020 at 11:15 AM, Blergh said:

Aluminum is the only metal used on a large scale that one cannot find in metallic form in nature. To obtain it, one must smelt bauxite rocks to extract it then all the bits get melted to merge them into sheets,etc.  All this should be considered when one gets tempted to think  of aluminum of being 'environmentally friendly' solely due  it being able  to be cleaned then reused for X number of future uses. 

 

 

It was once extremely valuable until someone figured out a way to make it cheaply though as pointed out not easily from an environmental and worker viewpoint

There is an aluminum cap on the washington monument because at the time it was as valuable as silver 

 

https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/wamocap.htm

 

 

Edited May 28, 2023 by DrSpaceman73

[DrSpaceman73]

On 4/1/2023 at 8:56 PM, Bethany said:

I found out today that marrying your first cousin is actually legal in most places.  In the US roughly half the states have passed laws against it but, of course, that means the other half have not. The reason this came up was because I was reading a book written around 1960 where some of the characters are convinced that two of their friends, who happen to be cousins, would be a perfect match. 

My first reaction was "seriously??" partly because that seemed like an odd thing for friends to want for other friends but also because I had assumed even if they wanted to marry they wouldn't have been allowed.  Anyway if anyone out there has fallen in love with your first cousin and thought your love was not meant to be, take heart.

It's still incredibly common worldwide to marry second cousins or closer. 8.5% of kids worldwide come from such pairings though that is largely in North Africa the middle east and India. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consanguine_marriage

[EtheltoTillie]

Yesterday I learned that many states have vertical drivers' license for minors.  It's actually a good idea, so bouncers can see at a glance whether the kid is over 21.  My friends' kids, who are 20.8 year old twins, were telling us that in October they're getting their horizontal licenses. 

I'm sure they other fake IDs but any way, I just never knew this!