The original title of “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy was “War, What is it Good For?”
Absolutely nothin’.
Say it again…
We learned about Barrie in my history of kidlit class this semester–no mention of this!
But, then again, I had to bring the class up to speed re Lewis Carroll and those photos, too, so…
True crime writer Ann Rule did not get her first book contract to write “The Stranger Beside Me” because she knew Ted Bundy.
She got a contract to write a book about the murders of several young women. At that point, the police did not even have a suspect.
The fact that she knew Bundy was a total off the wall coincidence.
I say you chaps - you need to get going on our English TV quiz ‘Quite Interesting’! 
For example:
If you still think that Henry VIII had six wives, the earth has only one moon, that George Washington was the first president of the USA, that Bangkok is the capital of Thailand, that the largest living thing is a blue whale, that Alexander Graeme Bell invented the telephone, that whisky and bagpipes come from Scotland or that Mount Everest is the world’s tallest mountain…
And did you know, that if you took all the veins out of a man’s body and laid them end-to-end…
…that man would die.
Psychogenic dwarfism limited the guy’s height to 5’? That’s nothing! Oskar Matzerath consciously decided to stop growing at the age of Three and remained at through much of his adult life until he started growing again.
I’m guessing the largest living thing is some sort of plant or fungus, and that the tallest mountain is some undersea mountain, but how is G. Washington not America’s first president and where is our other moon?
I thought the largest organism was a bunch of trees in Washington state somewhere.
[Peter Cook]
Did you know that you’ve got 4 miles of tubing in your stomache?
[/Peter Cook]
I’m a long-time lurker here, but I had to sign up as a guest simply so I could chime in on the talk of J. M. Barrie as a psychogenic dwarf. The Wikipedia article cites a paper written by an undergrad, who cites a defunct website. Unless his mother and Michael Llewelyn-Davies (shown at twenty years old) were also little people he was of perfectly ordinary height. Just an example of how notoriously unreliable Wikipedia is–just having a cite isn’t enough, it actually has to be a worthwhile one.
See? You make them mad enough and they come out of hiding! Welcome aboard, CaerieD! Please stick around.
I read somewhere that it is a coral reef. Or maybe I misremember.
…If the giraffe could leap, pound for pound, as high as a grasshopper it would avoid a lot of trouble.
Coral reefs are made up of billions of living organisms, so that doesn’t count. There’s a fungus called a Armillaria ostoyae or honey mushroom in Oregon, however, that is perported to be the largest single living organism in the world. It’s said to cover 2,200 acres and is 2,400 years old. Here’s another link.
Really? how very interesting.
And which is bigger would probably depend on how you define “bigger.” Covering more area? Weighing more? Taking up more space?
Whether or not GW is the first US president depends (I believe) on whether you count the articles of confederation. GW was the first elected president under the constitution. (Was there a temporary caretaker president after the constitution was adopted before the first elections?)
Blue Whales are definitely smaller (both in size and in mass) than really big trees. They are, however, the biggest ANIMALS, I think.
Wikipedia and the CIA world factbook both give Bangkok as the capital of Thailand.
The earth definitely only has one moon, barring some weird-ass definition of “moon”. Not everything orbiting around something is a moon. The Hubble is not a moon of earth.
Bell certainly was involved in the telephone-invention-process, even if he didn’t invent it all by himself.
Mt. Everest is earth’s tallest mountain by the generally accepted, and most reasonable, definition, which is, point highest above sea level.
Bagpipes did not originate in Scotland, but are/were popular there. I dunno much about Whiskey, or care
This Wikipedia page claims pretty clearly that Henry VIII had six wives.
And for that matter, how do you define “organism”? Physical connectivity? Ability to survive separation?