# Tell us an interesting random fact you stumbled across (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 13, 2020, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674 "2020-04-13T03:19:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 372
**Author:** ![Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiendish_astronaut/32/3295_2.png) [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiendish_Astronaut)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7431 "2023-09-01T09:14:54Z")
In 2003 a flock of sheep in Wales were quarantined because they had worked out how to cross cattle grids and the British government didn’t want other sheep around the country to learn about how they did it. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7432 "2023-09-01T10:41:41Z")
I want to know how the hell he smuggled the suit on board. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7433 "2023-09-01T10:43:32Z")
He painted the inside silver and wore it inside out. ---
**Author:** ![alovem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@alovem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alovem)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7434 "2023-09-01T11:33:03Z")
That isn’t a joke video? I thought they were very strict about reducing weight to an absolute minimum. Maybe they’re not as as strict about “shuttle” flights to and from the ISS? ---
**Author:** ![Common\_Tater](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/common_tater/32/13846_2.png) [@Common\_Tater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Common_Tater)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7435 "2023-09-01T11:36:33Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > Under the heading of things done while trying to fall back asleep, I was curious about why does 8 times a triangular number yield an integer square minus one. Dude! I wanna party with _you_ Something I’ve noticed reading about early surveys of the great pyramid in Egypt, they sure spent a lot of time convinced all sorts of mathematical proofs were contained therein. Just the thing for incipient insomnia - thank me later! If the Base perimeter of the Great Pyramid was by design meant to represent 36,524.3 Pyramid Inches then multiplied by 1.0011 this would be equal to 36,564.477 British Inches. This value multiplied by 2.53999779 would equal 92,873.690 cm or .92873690 km. By multiplying this measure by 43,200 the product is 40,121.434 km. We shall see the importance of this distance a little further on in this paper. The number 43,200 has been suggested in various sources as the factor by which one may multiply the size of the Pyramid to arrive at the size of the Earth to within a reasonable approximation, however, it shall be seen that the use of this number was purposefully chosen to convey highly accurate knowledge of the Earth. It should be noted that 43,200 x 2 = 86,400 which is the number of seconds in one Solar day. [http://www.thegreatpyramidofgiza.ca/book/TheGreatPyramidofGIZA.pdf](http://www.thegreatpyramidofgiza.ca/book/TheGreatPyramidofGIZA.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7436 "2023-09-01T12:02:35Z")
> [@alovem](#): > > That isn’t a joke video? I thought they were very strict about reducing weight to an absolute minimum. Maybe they’re not as as strict about “shuttle” flights to and from the ISS? “Mostly true”. The main exaggeration was that the gorilla suit was not smuggled aboard—it was allowed and apparently no big deal. > **[Fact Check: Did an Astronaut Smuggle a Gorilla Suit Into Space?](https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-international-space-station-gorilla-suite-smuggle-nasa-scott-mark-kelly-1668520)** > > A video clip of NASA astronaut Scott Kelly chasing a fellow ISS crew member as part of birthday shenanigans has gone viral this week. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7437 "2023-09-01T12:20:53Z")
Renowned attorney Jackie Chiles was in an episode of “Star Trek” (TOS) as one of the children in “Miri.” ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7438 "2023-09-01T13:31:26Z")
I’m about 2/3 of the way through the obscure Jules Verne novel **Mathias Sandorf**. The reason this isn’t in the “Books you’ve read” thread is because a.) I’m still not finished and b.) I learned something interesting through it. This novel , like many of Verne’s novels, doesn’t have anything superscientific in it, like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or From the Earth to the Moon or Robur the Conqueror. Most Verne novels don’t, in fact. They were _Voyages extraordinaires_, and often it was the voyage itself and what they encountered that was the attraction. **Mathias Sandorf** certainly had a lot of science and technology in it. There’s an elliptical whispering gallery that plays a part, and a secret enciphered message – Verne, a big Edgar Allen Poe fan, loved ciphers-- but m ost of the story is a tribute to Alexandre Dumas’ _Count of Monte Cristo_. (Verne was good friends with the younger Dumas, who wrote a brief intoduction to the book.) What surprised me was something that I thought was super-scientific, but wasn’t. He has electrically-powered boats plying the Mediterranean. Verne, of course, was a big fan of the uses of electricity, and his submarine _Nautilus_ was powered by batteries. But when I saw that his story was set in 1867, I thouight he was being over-enthusiastic in having electric boats being freely used. He wasn’t. The bulk of the story takes place 15 years later. And by 1882 electric boats WERE common in the Mediterranean. In fact, this was the start of a sort of Golden Age of electrically-powered boats that lasted about forty years, at which point gasoline-powered boats took over. It’s true – see here – > [@](#): > > It took more than 30 years of battery and motor development before the electric boat became a practical proposition. This method of propulsion enjoyed something of a golden age from about 1880 to 1920, when gasoline-powered [outboard motors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outboard_motor) became the dominant method. [Gustave Trouvé](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Trouv%C3%A9), a French electrical engineer, patented a small electric motor in 1880. He initially suggested that the motor could power a set of paddle wheels to propel boats on the water, and later argued for the use of a [propeller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propeller). I would never have guessed that electric boats were in wider use at first than gasoline-powered ones, but that’s the case. Verne, an enthusiastic reader of technical literature (and a yachtsman himself) was simply reporting on the latest high tech of his time. There was all the infrastructure of present=day electric cars, charging stations and all: > [@](#): > > The world’s first fleet of electric launches for hire, with a chain of electrical [charging stations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charging_station), was established along the [River Thames](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Thames) in the 1880s. An 1893 pleasure map of the Thames shows eight “charging stations for electric launches” between Kew The company built its headquarters on the island called Platt’s Eyot. Later in the book Verne has a harbor mined with naval mines (“torpedoes”, back then) that were detonated by electric signals. I thought he was jumping the technological gun with that, too. But such electrically-discharged naval mines had been used as early as 19812 (!!), and were heaviily used during the Crimean War, and later during the American Civil War. Verne was just keeping up with the times. > **[Electric boat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_boat)** > > An electric boat is a powered watercraft driven by electric motors, which are powered by either on-board battery packs, solar panels or generators. > While a significant majority of water vessels are powered by diesel engines, with sail power and gasoline engines also popular, boats powered by electricity have been used for over 120 years. Electric boats were very popular from the 1880s until the 1920s, when the internal combustion engine became dominant. Since the energy crises of the 1970s, in... ---
**Author:** ![alovem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@alovem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alovem)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7439 "2023-09-01T13:45:48Z")
Thanks, bordelond! ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7440 "2023-09-01T13:45:57Z")
Ample grist for the midnight mill. Thanks in advance. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7441 "2023-09-01T14:06:53Z")
About a month ago I realized that Canada and Greenland are **really** close. How close? I measured it today and the shortest distance from Canada to the Greenland mainland is 16 miles. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7442 "2023-09-01T14:26:52Z")
I learned that while hunting, Herons will mimic the motion of nearby plants. I was out walking and a great white heron was on a neighbors lawn walking along the edge of some ferns. It was stalking carefully and whenever the breeze moved the ferns and other plants, the birds’ neck moved to match the motion. But the head stayed rock steady, which made it ever cooler to watch. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7443 "2023-09-01T14:58:27Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > About a month ago I realized that Canada and Greenland are **really** close. How close? I measured it today and the shortest distance from Canada to the Greenland mainland is 16 miles. That’s not from _mainland_ Canada to _mainland_ Greenland is it? Wasn’t that just the distance between a couple of glaciers? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7444 "2023-09-01T15:13:53Z")
> [@Common\_Tater](#): > > Something I’ve noticed reading about early surveys of the great pyramid in Egypt, they sure spent a lot of time convinced all sorts of mathematical proofs were contained therein. Given that they’re using arbitrarily defined units of distance and extremely irregular multiplication factors to get the results they cite, I see exactly zero significance. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7445 "2023-09-01T15:24:43Z")
Canada and Greenland share a land border on Hans Island. It’s often called a land border between Denmark and Canada because Denmark handles most of Greenland’s foreign relations, but it is considered a part of Greenland. The closest I could find from a small peninsula in northernmost Newfoundland and Labrador to a point on Greenland between Avigait and Qeqertarsuatsiaat\* was roughly 490 miles. \*: say that five times fast, or once. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7446 "2023-09-01T15:27:08Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > That’s not from _mainland_ Canada to _mainland_ Greenland is it? Ellesmere Island, Canada. It is so big I felt it counted. My fact is more about geographical region to geographical region which is why I didn’t get as pedantic as Hans Island or distinguishing mainland from very big islands. That sort of stuff is for the trivia thread (for me). ---
**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7447 "2023-09-01T15:28:25Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > About a month ago I realized that Canada and Greenland are **really** close. Along the same lines, I only recently realized\* just how close some of the Greek islands are to the Turkish mainland. Samos is only just over 2 km away (!) j \* - realized as in _wondered what the hell I was looking at._ ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7448 "2023-09-01T16:51:31Z")
I learned today that: **X% (Y) = Y% (X)**. For example, 3% of 177 = 177% of 3 = 5.31. Forty six years on this blue marble, and with all of the math I’ve taken, I cannot believe I never learned this one. The substitution could have save me _hours_ over the course of life . . . Tripler And I’ve taken lots and lots of math. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7449 "2023-09-01T16:53:38Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Given that they’re using arbitrarily defined units of distance and extremely irregular multiplication factors to get the results they cite, I see exactly zero significance. I was thinking the same thing, but then I did a little research. > [@](#): > > …this would be equal to 36,564.477 British Inches. This value multiplied by 2.53999779 would equal 92,873.690 cm or .92873690 km. According to Wikipedia, prior to 1930 the UK inch was equal to 25.399977 mm. I can’t vouch for the other conversion factors, and someone added a significant digit. I wouldn’t attach any great cosmic significance to the sizes of the pyramids, but they may not have pulled all the numbers out of their asses. The interesting random fact I just stumbled across is that in 1930 the UK defined the inch to be exactly 2.54 cm, and other countries followed suit over the next few decades. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7450 "2023-09-01T17:08:24Z")
I always think of percents as fractions, so > [@Tripler](#): > > **X% (Y) = Y% (X)** is just (X•⅟_100_)•Y, and therefore (Y•⅟_100_)•X. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674.md?page=371) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674.md?page=373)