Really TRUE odd factoids

[Andy in Germany]

Now WHO was the person who thought of trying that .
"Oh that Beaver has just had a p*ss, I think I will add it my ice cream".

Mabe he'd sampled the alternatives and decided that was the most palatable.

Somewhere there could be a notebook with the following list:

"Possible pee for ice cream:
Alligator
Moose
Giraffe
Cow
Beaver"

 

[Beebo]

Do you like vanilla ice cream?
Were you aware that vanilla flavoring is sometimes made with beaver urine?

It’s an anal secretion actually!
And it’s extremely rare nowadays as collecting the deposits is far harder and more expensive than importing vanilla nowadays.

 

[classic33]

In one small region of German-occupied Poland, from early 1942, a faked typhus outbreak helped save thousands of people from forced labor or death.

The “epidemic” was caused by physician Eugene Lazowski in and around the town Rozwadow, 150 miles (240 kilometers) south of Warsaw. By forcing the Germans to quarantine a dozen surrounding villages, the faux plague kept 8,000 villagers — including a small number of Jews in hiding — relatively safe for more than two years.

 

[Dave7]

Screaming Lord Sutch** was to say the least an interesting character.
As you will know, he formed the Monster Raving Loony party.
What you may not know is that he holds the record for the number of times he contested a seat.......39 elections from 1983-97.
Sadly he suffered severe depression and hanged himself while in his 50s.
**sutch was his real name.

 

[Dave7]

Most on here will be aware of the house/farm that splits the M62.
Many will have driven past it.
Like me, many believe it was the stubborn farmer the refused to sell.
BUT......the reason** for the motorway having to split is that there is a geological fault below the land which forced the diversion.
**that is according to the then farmers granddaughter.

 

[Beebo]

Lightbulbs can be made to last far longer but.
In 1925 a cartel of lightbulb manufacturers including osram, GE and Philips all agreed to reduce the lifespan of lightbulbs so they could sell more product to the public.

 

[Chris S]

Evian is naive spelt backwards.

 

[classic33]

A chef's tall hat (officially known as a "toque") is traditionally made with 100 pleats, meant to represent the 100 ways to cook an egg.

 

[classic33]

Every one hundred years, the moon adds approximately 1.4 milliseconds to a day. While this may be minuscule, it does add up: When dinosaurs roamed the planet, days were 23 hours long, according to NASA.

 

[Seevio]

Every one hundred years, the moon adds approximately 1.4 milliseconds to a day. While this may be minuscule, it does add up: When dinosaurs roamed the planet, days were 23 hours long, according to NASA.

Windows calculator and wikipedia would suggest that the 23 hour day was before the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were around a long time. During the time they were around, the day probably gained nearly 45 minutes.

 

[classic33]

The reason for the blue dominance of Facebook isn’t random, it is because of Mark Zuckerberg’s red-green colour blindness. He sees blue the best which is why he chose it.

 

[Profpointy]

Alfred Nobel was inspired to start the Nobel Prize when he read his own obituary in a newspaper that ran it by mistake. Nobel didn't like the headline, "The Merchant of Death is Dead," a reference to the fact that he invented dynamite, so he found a new legacy for himself.

Whilst I believe the premature obituary bit is true, dynamite was overwhelmingly a civilian explosive used for mining and tunnelling and the like. You can't put it in an artillery shell else it would blow up when you tried to fire it, and you'd be "hoist on your own petard" as it were. So, the "merchant of death" comment can't sensibly relate to dynamite

 

[Punkawallah]

Apparently Nobel bought the Bofors company, and made it into a major arms seller. So the ‘Merchant of Death’ could be said to be accurate.

 

[Blue Hills]

Heligoland is part of Germany and the EU but excluded from the EU VAT area and customs union. Was British for much of the 19th century and the Brits administered it again from 1945 to 1952.

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

Dick Emery was president of the Airfix modeler's club