random fact: Birthdays weren't invented until 1881 (at Coney Island, if memory serves). Until then people just went along day to day until they keeled over, with no notion of how old they were.

I just had an idea to have an thread in the general discussion about all sorts of random facts that you find interesting.

so which facts you find interesting and why?

me, I find it interesting that a lot of people back then actually didn't give a shit about age and celebrations that had to do with age. certainly a big difference from our world now. espeically when it was only 125 years ago that birthdays got invented.

Jesus
There are only 2 steampunk webcomics online. Only one is any good.

girlgenius, whoo!!

Probably because it is great.

I read thier stuff. :lol:

What in the world do you mean? My helpful friend the Wikipedia tells me that birthdays have been around since the Romans and before… But they've always dipped and surged in popularity.
I mean, royalty has always had prominent birthdays… What is this, people seem to think that everything from Christmas, to racism, to Christianity, Homosexuality, and art were all just invented in the late 19thC these days…. History is older :evil:

Maybe I'm completely missing the point here though? Is there something I just don't get?

-edit- :P

-Anyway, in my studies in art history I came across lots of fellows born well before the 19th C who had recorded birthdays.

Interesting facts then:
-Radioactive metal (uranium, plutonium etc), does not glow green. But uranium oxides are used to make luminous yellow-green pigments, especially in glassware.

-The red jolly Santa Claus was not invented by Coca-Cola

-TV was around as early as the 1920’s

-The “Jazz singer” was not the first talking film.

-The Wright brothers didn’t invent aeroplanes or manned flight, they just managed to get the first powered heavier-than-air craft to fly for a few seconds. Balloons had been around long before and the principals involved in the wing shapes had been developed thoroughly long before, especially by manned gliders.

-Columbus did not want to prove the earth was round, and people before him did not all believe that it was flat and that they would fall of the edge. The Vikings were the first Europeans to colonise the Americas.

Blah, blah, blah…
Sorry, I've got a headache and I'm not in a good mood :(
it turns me into a dickhead.

-There is drama on the internet

Fact: The topic title has BAAD SPELING

I love all that stuff about firemen! Especially about the helmets!

Jesus: Yep, I could be wrong about them having the first powered heavier-than-air flight, but not the rest. And besides, that is what they're really famous for, not for inventing the aeroplane, or manned flight, or the principals of flight. That was the point.

Balloons are about “manned flight”. Read the first sentance there again: "aeroplanes or manned flight" ^_^

Anyway, it was just a bit of sounding off.

“Ms. Pacman” was originally an illegal knockoff of Pacman, but the producers of the game thought the design was of professional quality and sold the designs to Midway (then the licenser of Namco). The game (and several later Pac-Man “sequels”) was produced without Namco's consent, ending with Namco ending their contract with Midway.

Oddly enough, the “official” Pacman sequels from Namco did very poorly, and are almost never included on their re-releases (such as the PlayTV systems or the Namco Museum series).

While possible, the odds of an average cigarette igniting gasoline (as seen in movies) is extremely low.

There is no word in the English language that rhymes with “Orange”

The use of the word “Duck Billed” for the “Duck Billed Platypus” is exceedingly unnecessary, as there is only one known species of platypus on Earth, thus no need to distinguish “Duck Billed” from non-“Duck Billed” varieties.

“Clorophobia” - Fear of Clowns
“Eisophobia” - Fear of the sun
“Batophobia” - Fear of having a lethal object dropped on one's head from a great height.
“Portophobia” - Fear of doors

Most paper produced comes from trees specifically planted for the purpose of making paper; no major forests are in danger because of the use of paper in modern society.

There are, in fact, a number of people who are flexible enough to lick their own elbow. Even more people who, with some leverage, can lick the sides of their elbows.

Jackie Chan was a stuntman in Enter the Dragon; he suffered an accidental blow to the face that forced him to require medical attention.

Christopher Lee (of “Lord of the Rings” and “Star Wars” fame) is in the Guiness book of world records as the world's tallest leading man. As an odd side note; he is a direct descendant of King Charlemagne.

The Simpsons is the longest running animated series and sit-com in modern history. It also features the most celebrity appearances of any show to date.

Curly's (of the three stooges) real name is “Jerome”

I'll take U.S. States for 500, Alex.

In Alaska it is illegal to whisper in someone's ear while they are moose hunting.

It's against the law in Willowdale, Oregon, for a husband to curse during sex.

In Atlanta, GA, it is illegal to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp.

Horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants in Marshalltown, Iowa.

If a child burps during a church service in Omaha, Nebraska his or her parents may be arrested.

In California, animals are banned from mating publicly within 1,500 feet of a tavern, school, or place of worship.

In Arkansas it is illegal to buy or sell blue lightbulbs.

In Utah, it is illegal to swear in front of a dead person.

California has issued 6 drivers licenses to people named “Jesus Christ.”

It is illegal to hunt camels in the state of Arizona.

It is illegal to get fish drunk in Oklahoma.

You can't plow a cotton field with an elephant in North Carolina.

In Lehigh, Nebraska it's against the law to sell donut holes.

Anti-modem laws restrict Internet access in the country of Burma. Illegal possession of a modem can lead to a prison term.

Every citizen of Kentucky is required by law to take a bath at least once a year.

In Breton, Alabama, there is a law on the town's books against riding down the street in a motorboat.

In some smaller towns in the state of Arizona, it is illegal to wear suspenders.

In Michigan it's illegal to place a skunk inside your bosses desk.

In Kentucky, it is illegal to carry ice cream in your back pocket.

.: SpANG! :.

SpANG!
In Breton, Alabama, there is a law on the town's books against riding down the street in a motorboat.

This guy better stay out of Breton then…

SpANG!
Anti-modem laws restrict Internet access in the country of Burma. Illegal possession of a modem can lead to a prison term.

But then how do they read Burma Online.

Also Burma not part of U.S. yet :smt105

Yeah… not part of the US ^^
That site's not in Burmese though, or Shan, Karen, Rakhine, Chinese, or some Indian langauge… I dunno :)

I am the only one in my school who

a) Does webcomics
b) Is addicted to webcomics
c) Watches Adult Swim anime
d) Knows that morning anime (Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Dragonball, etc) are all edited because there are scenes that 4Kids/Funimation believe aren't suitable for children (Though I wish they kept Joey bitch-slapping the Pharoah in the Atlantis series after the Pharoah loses Yugi's soul)
e) Can actually believe that amatuer artists can pull off excellent work
f) Laughs at Brittish humour
g) Wants the bookstores to have graphic novels
h) Has never been to a site that is dedicated to pornography (I swear on the holy bible I haven't and those who know me will know I would never kid about that)
i) Can watch a show like Law Order and not get bored
j) Still watches morning cartoons (Though not at the moment, since I don't like One Piece, Winx Club or Totally Spies)
k) Has had a steady girlfriend for more than a year
l) Has sat down and read the bible the whole way through in one sitting

I mean it, the above is all true

On another note, some gaming facts

A Gamecube isn't a cube. it's actually 15cm by 15cm by 15.5cm
Donkey Kong was originally Monkey Kong in the Japanese title, but the translator screwed up
People can recognise Nintendo characters more than any other gaming characters

A few other things:

In a certain town in England, if you steal from a shop, the punishment is still ‘Deportation to Australia’
The first product to have a barcode was a packet of Wrigley's gum
The first CD pressed was Bruce Springsteen's ‘Born in the USA’
A boeing 747's wing span is longer than the Wright Brother's first flight
Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes
Most dust in your house comes from dead skin
'Mother in law' can be re-arranged to spell ‘Woman Hitler’
Coke got it's name because it used to have traces of cocaine in it
Coca Cola only sold 28 bottles it's first year

More about me

I am an egotist
I first drew the bad guy for Gemini Storm in Kindergarten and kept the scrap of paper. It got lost in my closet for 12 years before I found it while cleaning up and I kept it since it was such a good idea for a villian
I could read before I could talk (Age 19 months) and my grandparents tried to get me into a special pre-school when I was three. I got kicked out though, because the teacher was so pissed off with me for correcting her spelling
Even though I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, my old therapist won't do anything about it since it's a really low level
If I don't wear sunglasses during the day, I could go blind
I can mimic Grenn Day's Billy Joe Armstrong singing and guitar playing perfectly (My music teacher bet a rival he could teach me to play ‘Time of Your Life’ and every one would think i was lip syncing. He won. Took a few months though)
I passed year 8 Advanced English by sitting around in class, writing a story in a 240 page exercise book

That's all for now

Until next time
The Aussie Kid

Chameloncholic

SpANG!
Anti-modem laws restrict Internet access in the country of Burma. Illegal possession of a modem can lead to a prison term.

But then how do they read Burma Online.

Also Burma not part of U.S. yet :smt105

YET. Do they have oil? :P

crap. That's what I get for copying/pasting. Reading it quickly I thought they were talking about a city in Alabama (Burmingham, I think). I am not a smart man. :oops:

.: SpANG! :.

Larry Fine (of the Three Stooges) has competed as a professional boxer and is a classically trained violinist.

An Argentine duck species has the longest penis in the animal kingdom, apparently (in relation to its body size).

Both Rhinoceroses and elephants (and maybe more creatures…) have penises capable of complex articulated movement.

The penis of a pig is shaped like a corkscrew.

The blue whale has the most massive penis in the animal kingdom.

…That’s all the penis facts I can think off from memory… I could be wrong about those.

The word “factoid” was originally coined specifically to describe made-up, invented, artificial, pointless, irrelevant, trivial, or spurious knowledge. It was later co-opted by the largely illiterate, and brainless mass-media to function in place of the actual real word that it parodied (“fact”). In a last irony, half the time the supposed factual “factoids” brought up by the people who describe them as such are often spurious, validating the word’s original meaning! :lol:

A factoid: MS Word has the absolute WORST computer dictionary in the history of computer dictionaries

This is so very fun!

Okay, random stuff:
-Egg shells glow in the dark (takes intense light, and it's very dim, but possible)
-Wint-o-green life-savers make sparks when you bite down on them (get a mirror and a dark room, it's awesome).
-Lemmings are not suicidal, that myth comes from a film disney was making about lemmings where the assistants scared and continuesly chased the lemmings until the lemmings in a panic fell off a cliff. Lemmings are by nature territorial since they live in tundra regions and food is hard to come by.
-newish research shows that dolphins have “names” for eachother and tell stories.
-Beloit College in Beloit Wisconsin holds the world record for the longest played continuous ultimate frisbee game, 72 hours. The record was just made this year.
-“Standard” Poodles were bread in Germany for water retrieval, the goofy tufts in the hair style was designed to keep important joints and organs warm. The “French” Poodle actually refers to the smaller sizes (tea-cup, toy, and minature) when the breed was taken to france and made smaller and “cuter.”
-Poodles do not shed because they grow hair and not fur.
-Carabous in rut have been known to destroy cars. (this didn't stop a family friend from going out and beating a carabou with a broom because it was “hooting” when she was trying to sleep).

-In the state of Illionois it is illegal to cut the hairs of a horse's tail with a pair of scissors. (we tried to get someone arrested for doing just that, the police were terribly confused XD)

-In Doore County Wisconsin there is one of the only(if not the only) restaurants in the world to have a grass roof AND use goats to keep the grass trim.
-the struggling town of Hesse Colorado had a final nail placed in its coffin by a pair of beavers and now is only accessible to the determined and those with AWD. (the beaver pond is higher than the road which has a constant stream of water running down it).
-Nedarland Colorado celebrates Dead Ned Days every year in Spring. This celebrates the pulling out and repacking(in dry ice) of a dead man in a shed (i've heard it called a shed though I've yet to see it myself). Apparently this now dead fellow and his son had moved to Nedarland from Norway. The gentleman died, and the son placed him in a shed with dryice. the son went back to norway, and the new owners found the dead man, and now the preserving process is a big festival. (so the story goes)


Random useless facts about me:
-I have lived in 2 of the 3 richest counties in the United States. (ugh have i ever) those counties are (or at least were last time I checked) in NY, IL, and CA
-I have a 6 inch long horizontal scar on my back from a campfire accident
-my dad is a poet and knows it (his sixth book just got approved for publishing)
-i love european death metal
-i am an “American” mutt, being mostly Swedish followed by, Scottish, German, British, French and Canadian MoHawk.
-My dog's name is Chauncey Gardner named after the man in the book (and movie) Being There, because he's quiet a bit addled in the mind, but very sweet and observant.

Inkmonkey
There are, in fact, a number of people who are flexible enough to lick their own elbow. Even more people who, with some leverage, can lick the sides of their elbows.

Someone in my school got on the tonight show because he could do that. Some sort of contest thing.

SCUBA - Self-contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus
LASER - Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.
JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group
LED - Light Emitting Diode


While never coming up in the comic, the creators of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have revealed, over time, that the chemical that mutated the Turtles was originally supposed to be the same one that blinded Daredevil.

Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston was a key player in the invention of the modern lie detector, which goes some way to explaining why her lasso causes people to tell the truth (though his partially documented SM fetish explains why a scantilly clad woman is tying guys up in the first place).

The Marvel character Black Panther existed before the radical group of the same name.

Nintendo's Mario character came to be based entirely on graphical limitations moreso than any particular intended design. At the time of Donkey Kong's creation, it was difficult to portray hair realistically, so they avoided that problem by giving Mario a hat. Similarly, mouths were also difficult to render, so they simply covered that part of his face with a mustache. Legend has it that his name was taken from the owner of a local pizza parlor, whom he greatly resembled.

Luigis name is a play on the Japanese word “Ruigi” which means “copy” (since his sprite was just a recolor of Mario's). Wario's name is a play on the word “Warui,” which means “bad” or “unpleasant”. Thus the character Waluigi (whose name is confusing and awkward in English) roughly means “bad copy” in Japanese.

Some eskimos use walrus whiskers as toothpicks.

Girls generally blink more than guys.

Turtles can breath through their anuses.

It's 1:12 am est and I'm still browsing this sight.

- The author of The Wizard of Oz (or satan, like i call him) got the name of Oz looking at a cabinet labeled O-Z
- The electric was invented by a dentist
- The most common name in the world is Mohammed
- The elephant is the only mammal that can't jump
- The term “Rule of Thumb” came from an old british law that said you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb
- The first toilet ever seen on TV was on “Leave it to Beaver”

more here: http://www.tealdragon.net/humor/facts/facts.htm

Pac-Man was originally going to be called “Puck Man” because of his resemblance to a hockey puck. But the creators worried that people would scratch off part of the “P” on the arcade cabinet and change it to an “F”, so they changed it.

Tim Burton was an uncredited animator in the movie “Tron”.

You know, I just realized it's quite likely that a handful of these interesting facts are wrong. Interesting facts are often born from complete conjecture or half truths. Some are totally made up just for the fun of it.

For instance, from PhatScurl's link:

“Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.”
False.

“A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.”
False.

The script for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was over 1,000 pages long.

On one of the radio stations in Vice City (VCPR), a “motivational speaker” names off a few of his treatment tapes. All of the titles, when abbreviated, are names of drugs. “Motivate, Demonstrate, then Motivate Again” becomes MDMA (Ectasy), “Think, Hold that thought, Complete” becomes THC, and “Learn, Start, Do” becomes LSD.

.: Myxomatosis :.

Hm… which movie was it that they spliced scenes of real life blood and gore into split seconds too fast to be picked up on consciously? I think it was Poltergeist… either way, after it was discovered, the spliced footage was removed.

Wicket, the most prominently featured Ewok in Return of the Jedi, was none other than 11-year-old Warwick Davis, who would later become Willow… not to mention one of Jabba the Huts goons at the pod races in The Phantom Menace.

As revealed in the Ewoks animated mini-series (my brother won a copy in a contest), Wicket's full name is “Wicket W. Warrick”.

Took what? flu shots?

The Ewoks were actually not part of Lucas' original concept. WOOKIEES were supposed to be the “primative tribe” that was able to overcome the Empire's vast technology and power.

However, with the introduction of Chewbacca, it was felt that wookiees would be percieved as “too technologically advanced”.
Hence, a “1/3-size wookie” was created and called Ewok (which was the name chosen because it is a “backwards” version of “wookiee”). ;-)

.: SpANG! :.