Really TRUE odd factoids

[Andy in Germany]

For isolated communities that will be the case.
Small islands are remote rural places will have plenty of inter family breeding. It would be almost impossible it to over the course of a few generations.
It wasn’t until recently on a generational level that people travelled more than 20 miles from their place of birth.

Oddly, my family name is Welsh, we don't know when our ancestors came to the West Midlands, but we're guessing it was when mining really began, or possibly on the railway building.
On my Mothers side they seemed to come from Yorkshire, where they owned a farm before moving to Sheffield at the start of the industrial revolution, except that we then found one of the original patriarchs was a "Specht", which is a German name meaning "woodpecker", but he was said to have come from Dundee and was a weaver. Based on his trade and name, we're guessing he was a refugee, which could mean he was a Hugenot from Alcase, or a Lutheran from Germany. As Scotland has more links with France at the time, I'm inclined to the former.
This means I may have even cycled through my ancestor's home village.
As my wife's family have ancestral ties to this nice pile of stone, we apparently are continuing the family tradition of making things complicated for future historians.

 

[Andy in Germany]

for those from Norfolk its only about 6 common ancestors

For isolated communities that will be the case.
Small islands are remote rural places will have plenty of inter family breeding. It would be almost impossible it to over the course of a few generations.
It wasn’t until recently on a generational level that people travelled more than 20 miles from their place of birth.

Not just "isolated communities" either:

 

[classic33]

 

[kynikos]

View attachment 787620

...except:
1. you can't see Big Ben.
2. some basic trigonometry would tell you that the angle of the shot means it was taken from a much closer position.
3. the "hardware" was the camera, not the plane, and we're not told what is was.

 

[classic33]

Broadband promised to unite the world with super-fast data delivery - but in South Africa it seems the web is still no faster than a humble pigeon.

A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest web firm, Telkom.

Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles - in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data.

Telkom said it was not responsible for the firm's slow internet speeds.

The idea for the race came when a member of staff at Unlimited IT complained about the speed of data transmission on ADSL.

He said it would be faster by carrier pigeon.

"We renown ourselves on being innovative, so we decided to test that statement," Unlimited's Kevin Rolfe told the Beeld newspaper.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8248056.stm

 

[kynikos]

Broadband promised to unite the world with super-fast data delivery - but in South Africa it seems the web is still no faster than a humble pigeon.

A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest web firm, Telkom.

Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles - in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data.

Telkom said it was not responsible for the firm's slow internet speeds.

The idea for the race came when a member of staff at Unlimited IT complained about the speed of data transmission on ADSL.

He said it would be faster by carrier pigeon.

"We renown ourselves on being innovative, so we decided to test that statement," Unlimited's Kevin Rolfe told the Beeld newspaper.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8248056.stm

So, it wasn't fast 16 years ago when this story was published - which rather excludes it from the 'odd' category.

 

[markemark]

So, it wasn't fast 16 years ago when this story was published - which rather excludes it from the 'odd' category.

A lot is these factoids turn out to be nonsense, outdated or not really anything to note. I think scraping the internet for interesting facts keeps giving bad results.

 

[Andy in Germany]

So, it wasn't fast 16 years ago when this story was published - which rather excludes it from the 'odd' category.

Maybe that's the point: it was published 16 years ago but only just arrived.

 

[Drago]

A lot is these factoids turn out to be nonsense, outdated or not really anything to note.

Hhhmm. Now thats an interesting fact!

 

[Chris S]

The electric chair was invented as a humane alternative to hanging.

 

[classic33]

Scientists have revived a microscopic worm that had been frozen in Siberia’s permafrost for over 46,000 years. The species, Panagrolaimus kolymaensis, dates back to the late Pleistocene era—when mammoths still roamed the Earth.

What’s truly mind-blowing is how it survived: by entering a state called cryptobiosis—a kind of extreme hibernation where life processes nearly stop. In this state, the worm likely dried itself out, shielded its cells with special sugar molecules like trehalose, and endured freezing temperatures, zero oxygen, and cosmic radiation.

 

[Punkawallah]

Scientists have revived a microscopic worm that had been frozen in Siberia’s permafrost for over 46,000 years. The species, Panagrolaimus kolymaensis, dates back to the late Pleistocene era—when mammoths still roamed the Earth.

What’s truly mind-blowing is how it survived: by entering a state called cryptobiosis—a kind of extreme hibernation where life processes nearly stop. In this state, the worm likely dried itself out, shielded its cells with special sugar molecules like trehalose, and endured freezing temperatures, zero oxygen, and cosmic radiation.

‘First it’s the ‘oooh-ing’ and the ‘aaah-ing’. Later, later it’s the running, and the screaming’.

 

[Drago]

Oddly, my family name is Welsh, we don't know when our ancestors came to the West Midlands, but we're guessing it was when mining really began, or possibly on the railway building.
On my Mothers side they seemed to come from Yorkshire, where they owned a farm before moving to Sheffield at the start of the industrial revolution, except that we then found one of the original patriarchs was a "Specht", which is a German name meaning "woodpecker", but he was said to have come from Dundee and was a weaver. Based on his trade and name, we're guessing he was a refugee, which could mean he was a Hugenot from Alcase, or a Lutheran from Germany. As Scotland has more links with France at the time, I'm inclined to the former.
This means I may have even cycled through my ancestor's home village.
As my wife's family have ancestral ties to this nice pile of stone, we apparently are continuing the family tradition of making things complicated for future historians.

My family name is Cornish, as thats where my Dad's family hails from. On his side I'm a Breton-Celt and can trace the family back to the 1500s.

My Mum's side is murkier. They fled Hungary due to the Nazzies and went to Scotland, as my Grandad had worked there previously. They settled in Shetland where my Grandad worked as a farm labourer.

It gets a bit murky with my Grandad on me Ma's side. I cant trace back further than him, and he was a bit of an oddball in that he sometimes earned cash on the side bareknuckle fighting and spoke several languages, which was unusual for a person of lowly station at the time. Its generally accepted these days that gramps wasn't who he said he was and was likely in trouble somewhere.

He was a good old feller though. My Dad worked away a lot and when I was getting bullied at school Gramps came with me one day and made me point the lad out. I did so, and Gramps went across and smacked the lads dad full on the nose, putting him on his arris, and informed him that was going to happen every time his boy touched me. Strangely enough that proved sufficient incentive for the chap to rein his lad in and I was never touched again.

Anyway, the odd factoid here being that while I knew my Grandad I never really knew who he was.

 

[Electric_Andy]

It's quite funny that my Uncle (mum's side of the family) is a proud Devonian sheep farmer; he was always very forward in his criticism of foreigners, especially the French. He never realised that the surname on his maternal side was Boyer. The surname Boyer is of French origin, derived from the word "bouvier," meaning "herdsman" or "cowherd." Although it is interesting that they are still in the same sort of vocation as the name suggests

 

[classic33]

The world’s shortest flight? Just 53 seconds.
Loganair hops 2.7 km between Westray and Papa Westray in Orkney — and it’ll still cost you £17 one-way.

That’s £19 per mile.