The Random Knowledge Thread
- Thread starter Wingchunwarrior
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He's actually not far off. I posted that same random fact before. Given you have a regular-sized (letter or A4 type) paper, you can fold it about 7 times. However, if you have a football-field sized paper then you can fold it waaay more times. I'm guessing it has something to do with the paper's thickness to size ratio.
EDIT: Also, long live Shono: My Lord and Master.
xmetalhead69
Unexpected Ally
PeteyG
Big Bear
Not completely up to the quality of some of the other good random knowledge in this thread but ho hum.
I went to college in a town called Shrewsbury in Shropshire, UK. It's a completely unremarkable town, in fact I don't expect anyone to have heard of it before. It's so unremarkable that it has two claims to fame, one of which most people (I would say 999 out of every 1000 people) have no clue about it.
In the town there is a column, called Lord Hill's Column. It is much like Nelsons Column and others around the world in that it holds a statue to commemorate someone special, however this Column in particular is the tallest Doric column in the world. It's not even that tall.
The only reason I know this is that I studied ancient Greece at college, and thus I know about the differing column types (doric, ionian, corinthian, blah, blah).
The only other claim to fame is that Charles Darwin was born there, I used to pass the very house he was born and grew up in on my daily bus journey into town. This is something that the whole town celebrates, there's a shopping centre named after him, as well as an £80,000 sculpture named after him (even though neither have a single thing to do with him), regardless of the famous fact that he despised Shrewsbury and often spoke of how terrible a town it is.
Edit: I forgot one other thing, John Peel went to Shrewsbury Boys School, and was raped by his student mentor. No wonder I avoid the place now.
I went to college in a town called Shrewsbury in Shropshire, UK. It's a completely unremarkable town, in fact I don't expect anyone to have heard of it before. It's so unremarkable that it has two claims to fame, one of which most people (I would say 999 out of every 1000 people) have no clue about it.
In the town there is a column, called Lord Hill's Column. It is much like Nelsons Column and others around the world in that it holds a statue to commemorate someone special, however this Column in particular is the tallest Doric column in the world. It's not even that tall.
The only reason I know this is that I studied ancient Greece at college, and thus I know about the differing column types (doric, ionian, corinthian, blah, blah).
The only other claim to fame is that Charles Darwin was born there, I used to pass the very house he was born and grew up in on my daily bus journey into town. This is something that the whole town celebrates, there's a shopping centre named after him, as well as an £80,000 sculpture named after him (even though neither have a single thing to do with him), regardless of the famous fact that he despised Shrewsbury and often spoke of how terrible a town it is.
Edit: I forgot one other thing, John Peel went to Shrewsbury Boys School, and was raped by his student mentor. No wonder I avoid the place now.
josh pelican
Banned
John Wayne and his drinkin' buddy (Ward Bond) used to prank each other constantly. One day Ward said, "I bet that we could stand on opposite ends of a newspaper and you can't hit me." John was intrigued in this challenge. Ward put newspaper in a doorway and had John stand on one side of the newspaper. Ward slams the door and says, "Try and hit me now!"
John sent his fist through the door and smoked Ward in the face.
John sent his fist through the door and smoked Ward in the face.
Gasgiant
[(o_O)]
There's 105 buttons on this keyboard I'm writing with, 17 computers and 4 windows in this classroom and I have no idea what the teacher's been talking about for the last 20 minutes.
Oh yeah... If i remember correctly sharks have two penises.
Oh yeah... If i remember correctly sharks have two penises.
PeteyG
Big Bear
Was watching QI last night, and found this kind of interesting.
There are only 5 American places that use an apostrophe in their names.
* Martha’s Vineyard, MA
* Ike’s Point, NJ
* John E’s Pond, RI
* Clark’s Mountain, OR
* Carlos Elmer’s Joshua View, AZ
No others, apparently they all got dropped in 1891.
There are only 5 American places that use an apostrophe in their names.
* Martha’s Vineyard, MA
* Ike’s Point, NJ
* John E’s Pond, RI
* Clark’s Mountain, OR
* Carlos Elmer’s Joshua View, AZ
No others, apparently they all got dropped in 1891.
vampiregenocide
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Dolphins use sonar to detect vital organs which they attack to cause internal bleeding. They are one of the few animals along with their larger cousins, killer whales, that actively torture other animals with no intention of eating them. Killer whales are known to beach themselves in order to grab seals on land, after which they take them into the ocean and throw them around like rag dolls. There seems to be no reason for this behaviour, as they leave the body when bored.
The bite pressure of a great white shark is actually close to that of a humans, the teeth do all the work.
The bite pressure of a great white shark is actually close to that of a humans, the teeth do all the work.
Wingchunwarrior
OVER THE LINE!
vampiregenocide
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I love da animals.
MikeH
Bring the gain
The oceans contain 99 percent of the living space on the planet.
The blue whale, Balaenoptera musculus, is the largest known animal ever to have lived on sea or land. Individuals can reach more than 110 feet and weigh nearly 200 tons more than the weight of 50 adult elephants. The blue whale's blood vessels are so broad that a full-grown trout could swim through them, and the vessels serve a heart the size of a small car.
Hydrothermal vents, fractures in the sea floor that spew sulphur compounds, support the only complex ecosystem known to run on chemicals, rather than energy from the sun. Gigantic tubeworms and mussels thrive in densities of up to 65 pounds per square foot around vents.
The oarfish, Regalecus glesne, is the longest bony fish in the world. With its snakelike body, sporting a magnificent red fin along its 50-foot length horselike face and blue gills, it accounts for many sea-serpent sightings.
Green turtles can migrate more than 1,400 miles to lay their eggs.
A group of herring is called a seige. A group of jelly fish is called a smack.
Many fish can change sex during the course of their lives. Others, especially rare deep-sea fish, have both male and female sex organs.
Oils from the orange roughy, Hoplostethus atlanticus, a deep-sea fish from New Zealand, are used in making shampoo.
Bluefin tuna, Thunnus thynnus, are among the largest and fastest marine fish. An adult may weigh 1,500 pounds and swim up to 55 miles per hour. Prized as sushi in Japan, bluefins are also among the most valuable fish: individual bluefins can bring as much as $20,000 at U.S. docks.
Penguins "fly" underwater at up to 25 miles per hour.
Since the architecture and chemistry of coral are very close to human bone, coral has been used to replace bone grafts in helping human bones to heal quickly and cleanly.
Horseshoe crabs have existed in essentially the same form for the past 135 million years. Their blood provides a valuable test for the toxins that cause septic shock, which previously led to half of all hospital-acquired infections and one-fifth of all hospital deaths.
Alginates, derived from the cell walls of brown algae, are used in beer, frozen desserts, pickles, adhesives, boiler compounds, ceramics, explosives, paper and toys.
The remains of diatoms, algae with hard shells, are used in making pet litter, cosmetics, pool filters and tooth polish.
One study of a deep-sea community revealed 898 species from more than 100 families and a dozen phyla in an area about half the size of a tennis court. More than half of these were new to science.
Life began in the seas 3.1 billion to 3.4 billion years ago. Land dwellers appeared 400 million years ago; a relatively recent point in the geologic time line.
The blue whale, Balaenoptera musculus, is the largest known animal ever to have lived on sea or land. Individuals can reach more than 110 feet and weigh nearly 200 tons more than the weight of 50 adult elephants. The blue whale's blood vessels are so broad that a full-grown trout could swim through them, and the vessels serve a heart the size of a small car.
Hydrothermal vents, fractures in the sea floor that spew sulphur compounds, support the only complex ecosystem known to run on chemicals, rather than energy from the sun. Gigantic tubeworms and mussels thrive in densities of up to 65 pounds per square foot around vents.
The oarfish, Regalecus glesne, is the longest bony fish in the world. With its snakelike body, sporting a magnificent red fin along its 50-foot length horselike face and blue gills, it accounts for many sea-serpent sightings.
Green turtles can migrate more than 1,400 miles to lay their eggs.
A group of herring is called a seige. A group of jelly fish is called a smack.
Many fish can change sex during the course of their lives. Others, especially rare deep-sea fish, have both male and female sex organs.
Oils from the orange roughy, Hoplostethus atlanticus, a deep-sea fish from New Zealand, are used in making shampoo.
Bluefin tuna, Thunnus thynnus, are among the largest and fastest marine fish. An adult may weigh 1,500 pounds and swim up to 55 miles per hour. Prized as sushi in Japan, bluefins are also among the most valuable fish: individual bluefins can bring as much as $20,000 at U.S. docks.
Penguins "fly" underwater at up to 25 miles per hour.
Since the architecture and chemistry of coral are very close to human bone, coral has been used to replace bone grafts in helping human bones to heal quickly and cleanly.
Horseshoe crabs have existed in essentially the same form for the past 135 million years. Their blood provides a valuable test for the toxins that cause septic shock, which previously led to half of all hospital-acquired infections and one-fifth of all hospital deaths.
Alginates, derived from the cell walls of brown algae, are used in beer, frozen desserts, pickles, adhesives, boiler compounds, ceramics, explosives, paper and toys.
The remains of diatoms, algae with hard shells, are used in making pet litter, cosmetics, pool filters and tooth polish.
One study of a deep-sea community revealed 898 species from more than 100 families and a dozen phyla in an area about half the size of a tennis court. More than half of these were new to science.
Life began in the seas 3.1 billion to 3.4 billion years ago. Land dwellers appeared 400 million years ago; a relatively recent point in the geologic time line.
If you're anything like me, you live with Discovery Channel and National Geographic on 24/7.
soliloquy
Well-Known Member
snakeheads would rape dolphins and whales. they just enjoy attacking anything and everything that moves. sometimes they eat em, most times they just bite off their tails and leave em be...
vampiregenocide
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I did not know about coral being used as bone replacements, thats mad.
Those hydrothermal vents you speak of are based upon extremophile bacteria which are able to chemosynthesise and start a food chain that isn't based on solar energy. Research into this has given scientists hope that similar life may exist on other planets seeing as the conditions these bacteria live in are inhospitable to most life.
Due to the increased oxygen in the atmosphere on earth around 300 million years ago, insects and arachnids were able to grow to sizes much bigger than todays standards. The giant scorpion pulmonoscorpius grew to around a metre in length, the dragonfly meganeura had a wingspan on 75cm and the centipede-like arthropleura was the largest land invertebrate of all time, reaching lengths of up to 2.6m.
Snakeheads are pretty small on average though, and only the giant snakehead is known to be aggressive to the point of being a danger to humans. They're not as mobile on land as made out to be either. Personally I'd be more scared of the goliath tiger fish.
These creatures are built to survive in the most violent currents, meaning their strong as fuck. They have been known to try and eat whole fish almost the same size as themselves, often ripping open their stomachs and dying in the process. They will eat anything tha moves.
Those hydrothermal vents you speak of are based upon extremophile bacteria which are able to chemosynthesise and start a food chain that isn't based on solar energy. Research into this has given scientists hope that similar life may exist on other planets seeing as the conditions these bacteria live in are inhospitable to most life.
Due to the increased oxygen in the atmosphere on earth around 300 million years ago, insects and arachnids were able to grow to sizes much bigger than todays standards. The giant scorpion pulmonoscorpius grew to around a metre in length, the dragonfly meganeura had a wingspan on 75cm and the centipede-like arthropleura was the largest land invertebrate of all time, reaching lengths of up to 2.6m.
snakeheads would rape dolphins and whales. they just enjoy attacking anything and everything that moves. sometimes they eat em, most times they just bite off their tails and leave em be...
Snakeheads are pretty small on average though, and only the giant snakehead is known to be aggressive to the point of being a danger to humans. They're not as mobile on land as made out to be either. Personally I'd be more scared of the goliath tiger fish.
These creatures are built to survive in the most violent currents, meaning their strong as fuck. They have been known to try and eat whole fish almost the same size as themselves, often ripping open their stomachs and dying in the process. They will eat anything tha moves.
soliloquy
Well-Known Member
I did not know about coral being used as bone replacements, thats mad.
Those hydrothermal vents you speak of are based upon extremophile bacteria which are able to chemosynthesise and start a food chain that isn't based on solar energy. Research into this has given scientists hope that similar life may exist on other planets seeing as the conditions these bacteria live in are inhospitable to most life.
Due to the increased oxygen in the atmosphere on earth around 300 million years ago, insects and arachnids were able to grow to sizes much bigger than todays standards. The giant scorpion pulmonoscorpius grew to around a metre in length, the dragonfly meganeura had a wingspan on 75cm and the centipede-like arthropleura was the largest land invertebrate of all time, reaching lengths of up to 2.6m.
Snakeheads are pretty small on average though, and only the giant snakehead is known to be aggressive to the point of being a danger to humans. They're not as mobile on land as made out to be either. Personally I'd be more scared of the goliath tiger fish.
These creatures are built to survive in the most violent currents, meaning their strong as fuck. They have been known to try and eat whole fish almost the same size as themselves, often ripping open their stomachs and dying in the process. They will eat anything tha moves.
yes and no. indirectly, snakeheads, regardless of size are affecting humans significantly. why and how? they rape and irradiate pretty much every fish out there that man eats. cod or salmon or whatever other fish are no match to that annoying lil thing...
and yeah, the goliath is an insane fish, but due to how hard they are to find, and how rare a goliath that size can get, they dont really kill humans...
MikeH
Bring the gain
I want to keep a Snakehead. I've been fascinated with them ever since I've been keeping fish. Fuckers are brutal. Here's a video of such brutality:
Although, I would never treat a Snakehead the way they do in that video (ie. small tank, feeding it fish that it doesn't need to be eating), they would be awesome to have.
Although, I would never treat a Snakehead the way they do in that video (ie. small tank, feeding it fish that it doesn't need to be eating), they would be awesome to have.
Male kangaroos have a bifurcated two-pronged penis. Females have one vagina per ovary, with a third acting as a birth canal.
Marsupials be fucking crazy.
