The recent discovery that “to defenestrate” means “to throw a motherfucker out the window” was huge for me, and will play a big part in my Bulwer-Lytton Contest entries this year.
“Angels and archangels may have gathered there…”
See, there’s something to be said for Christmas carols after all.
The under oven storage bin cost me quite a bit of great bake ware during my move from my own apartment, to one which I shared with my (now) wife.
She had always been exposed to ovens that it was a broiler, and would never have stored anything there. She was helping me move, and packed up the kitchen. I assumed she’d have looked there, and didn’t realize the stuff was missing until months after we moved (I was 100% travel for the first 6 or so months of our co-habitation) and I went looking for my ‘good muffin pan.’ The stuff was either recovered by the next renters, or by someone doing the final cleanup… but it was unrecoverable to me. 
Same here. I also have an Uncle Joe (not Joseph), who labors under the additional burden of having no middle name whatsoever.
I’ve just learned that ponies aren’t young horses. (Give me a break, I can count the number of horses I’ve seen in person on one hand!)
Also, that your brain shrinks when you have a hangover. Neat huh.
I’ve posted this before:
Arby’s = R.B. = Roast Beef
Huh.
Just a few months ago, on Google Earth I saw a placemark labeled “Confederate Mound” in Chicago. It’s the burial place of the Confederate soldiers who died in the awful conditions of Camp Douglas, a Civil War POW camp in Chicago. I think I had heard of the camp before in passing, but even as a Chicago native I had never heard of the burial site. Actually, the placemark had been located incorrectly in an area I was somewhat familiar with, and that was how it caught my attention.
I just found out that there is no such thing as a banana tree. It’s an herb, and bananas are berries. The really cool thing is that the woody stalk (the tree) dies off periodically and a new one will grow off the root a little off to the side, so over time, the banana non-tree will appear to be walking.
So wait, does that make it an Ent?
I’ve driven through banana, er, fields, in Israel, and they resemble nothing so much as a shitload of trees to me. I can’t say I can wrap my head around that walking thing, but I don’t have a whole lot of experience with bananas or anything…
While listening to one of Feynman’s lectures on physics, I learned (and hopefully the info is still accurate, as he hasn’t lectured in quite some time) that electrons, and presumably other sub-atomic particles, vibrate at absolute zero. Otherwise, we’d be able to tell both their location and velocity. I knew about absolute zero and Heisenberg’s Principle, but hadn’t before considered the implications of the one on the other.
Indeed, that’s why helium won’t solidify (except under pressure) even at absolute zero: it’s atoms would be slowed and localized beyond the limits permissible by the Heisenberg principle. Monatomic hydrogen, if it could be stabilized, would be a quantum gas at absolute zero.
Who uses drown to mean anything other than that? I can’t even think of a way to use drown in a way that isn’t fatal.
Drowning in paperwork?
I overlooked that but I don’t think it counts since it’s a metaphor. People (including me) use “electrocute” as a synonym for shocked not realizing it means to die from electricity but I can’t think of any similar use for “drowning” that isn’t metaphorical.
Some folks got themselves in a big ol’ kerfluffle in the recent waterboarding thread over whether “drowning” does or does not explicitly include dying. Much rudeness and raising of ire ensued, but little penis.
I knew a parson was something like a minister, but I figured Brown was the parson’s name. I didn’t know it was used as a generic , but I’m still not sure I believe that.
Born in raised in SoCal, I didn’t know you could actually see the pattern on a snowflake until one landed on me while I was traveling in Russia. That was when I was 25 years old. I always figured the pattern was microscopic or something, since the snow in our local mountains tends to be little specks of ice, and I don’t even see that very often.
Funny–now that you mention it, I’ve completely forgotten that you can see the patterns in snowflakes, even though I lived in Maryland until I was 10.
In the South, One can only purchase a four pack of Pounders. In the North, one might buy, more typically a, a six pack of pounders.
In case one doesn’t know, six is the perfect number of pounders for a night.
Due to this little purchasing point one might feel compelled to purchase two four packs of Pounders. An octet. This supposedly lesser packaging, inadvertently pushes one to buy more, and the breweries are gettin’ over.
I’m under the understanding that as long as there is any matter at n, then n cannot be at absolute zero…
Okay, I’ll bite. What is a Pounder? I’m only familiar with that term when prefixed with “Quarter,” and 6 damn sure isn’t the optimum number of those for a night.