What's the most ridiculous fact you know?
- Thread starter dscross
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Banana slugs apparently sometimes chew off each other's penis (or sometimes their own) after mating.
That the only David Fincher movie to not include a Trent Reznor (from NIN) or NIN related score, Fight Club, the original book's author admitted to writing while listening to NIN's Downward Spiral album.
Did you know that when cats feel their death encroaching, they think they can outrun it. So they often die alone, far from their homes and loved ones.
A real downer.
A real downer.
Major-General John Sedgwick's last words were " They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance" .
He was shortly proven wrong when a confederate sniper shot him in the head.
He was shortly proven wrong when a confederate sniper shot him in the head.
My kitty cat's not going anywhere. She's not even a year old yet but I know that I'm gonna be there for her holding her paw and stroking her head when her time comes.Just Ebola said:
Holy shit now I got all teary eyed
I'd heard he didn't get to finish saying 'distance' before he took a bullet through the eye.RobertEHouse said:
As for my contribution to ridiculous facts- Corn Flakes were meant to curb masturbation.
The biggest line item of Dutch orphanages in the 18th century was... alcohol. Because it was less poisonous than water.
I know everyone rags on how bad Prohibition was, but American drank alcohol 6 times a day even for breakfast becuase it was the only was to get liquids into you. Know we only usually drink at night. Prohibition was reasonably successful in that regard
I know everyone rags on how bad Prohibition was, but American drank alcohol 6 times a day even for breakfast becuase it was the only was to get liquids into you. Know we only usually drink at night. Prohibition was reasonably successful in that regard
I don't think that holds water, pun intended. Alcohol, even when it's relatively watered down dehydrates the body. Say you drink nothing but 12 ounce beers, at like 4% alcohol by volume. Even that would leave you seriously lacking fluids after awhile. Ever noticed that if you drink too much, by the morning you're thirsty as hell and your mouth is dryer than the Sahara? And that's best case scenario, booze back then tended to be way stronger.trunkage said:
I once had a teacher tell me that Mexicans drank so much Tequila because the water was basically poison. After visiting Mexico, I can confirm that they just fucking like tequila.
There is at least one Holocaust Museum heated by a pair of GASMASTER brand boilers that were sold to them by a german based company.
Back in my college days, the anatomy lab had a take-apart model of the male reproductive system. It was produced by Bobbit Industries.
In some text books he finished the sentence and was quickly shot, other accounts say he was half though the world "distance". In the end the only thing they all agree upon with 100% certainty is he was shot. Very near the time he said those now well known hubris lines.twistedmic said:
Bonus fact.
General Custer- (while chasing buffalo 1867) actually shot his own horse in the head while riding it .
No, it doesn't hold water. There's a pervasive myth that in the time before proper sanitation, people drank nothing but alcohol because all the plain water was dirty and contaminated. There is plenty of written historical evidence that people of all social classes drank water all the time and that they were for the most part well aware to avoid water that looked or smelled dirty (and that boiling can make less-than-ideal water safer).Just Ebola said:
Also, the alcohol they usually drank back then was not stronger. Quite the opposite actually, most of it was stuff like small beer and watered down mead, cider, grog or wine, which had very low alcohol contents (below 1%). Although it is true that children and adults alike drank those. They were often favored over water because they were seen as more nutrinional and simply for flavor and variety. Stronger stuff was generally reserved for celebrations and special occasions, partly because of price, partly because they knew going around drunk and/or hung over all the time wouldn't do.
My bad, I hate myself every time I wheel that little fun fact out. I've got a bobtail and a Norwegian forest cat myself, so it really does leave a bad taste in my mouth. It's an interesting fact, but probably not well-suited for funerals or parties.Adam Jensen said:My kitty cat's not going anywhere. She's not even a year old yet but I know that I'm gonna be there for her holding her paw and stroking her head when her time comes.
Holy shit now I got all teary eyed
I knew that trying to hydrate with booze is a fool's errand, but alcohol being weaker back in the day is news to me. As far back as I can remember, people have been telling me that ancient booze was basically rotgut compared to the drinks of today. Learn something new everyday, I'm gonna take a moment to appreciate that next time I open a beer.Chimpzy said:
I was under the impression weak beer was used in ancient times more for the fact that it was calories you could store a long time without it expiring, rather than hydration.
oh and ridiculous facts? Turtles have dicks as long as their bodies. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/terrifying-sex-organs-of-male-turtles/
oh and ridiculous facts? Turtles have dicks as long as their bodies. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/terrifying-sex-organs-of-male-turtles/
There were two books that might interest you. John Nye - Wine, War and trade. It looks at why the British drank beer and France wine due to a trade war between them. It had that factoid in it.Just Ebola said:
I'm trying to remember the second book's name but it was the history of alcohol in the century leading up to prohibition. Ken Burns Prohibition does some of this time too. Beer was usually less than one percent for kids. Maybe a bit more for adults but generally less than 3. The problem was that alcohol was usually beer in very low percentages for the regularity of drinking. When they figured out how to make Whisky, being a higher percentage, lead to more drunk people. They old regularity of drinking met with new innovation of whisky for devestating consequences. Temperance and Anti Saloon League was a result.
Also, this is a reason why tea was popular in Britain. This lead to a massive British trade deficit to China, as China didn't want anything from the British except silver. At least until the Brisith took over Afghanistan for that delicious Opium. Then.. War
Well, that's not wrong. Before refrigeration, people used all kinds of means to preserve food like drying or pickling. Alcohol was one of them. For example, scurvy was the scourge of sailors for a long, long time. They eventually learned that eating fresh lemons (i.e. vitamin C) could prevent it, but even lemons don't keep well on months-long sea journeys. So they solved that by adding lemon-juice to their grog (strongly diluted rum). The alcohol acted as a preservative, scurvy became much less frequent and the lemon made the grog tastier to boot.Fieldy409 said:
And alcoholic beverages like beer, wine and such were indeed seen as more nutritional. Although that shouldn't be overstated. The purposefully weak and/or watered down versions people drank day to day didn't contain all that many calories (since they were mostly water). Still, some calories is better than none at all, like pure water.
It's not so much that all alcohol was weaker back then. The average real unadultered wine or whatnot from back then was roughly as strong as today. Real beers were often stronger (especially those brewed by abbey monks, which they still do). But that wasn't the stuff people drank daily, not even those who could afford to (rare exceptions notwithstanding).Adam Jensen said: