# 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:** 373
**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, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7451 "2023-09-01T17:12:05Z")
> [@Tripler](#): > > I learned today that: **X% (Y) = Y% (X)**. > > For example, 3% of 177 = 177% of 3 = 5.31. I saw that in a book all the way back in elementary school. I remember using the idea just once, and forgetting about for close to 60 years until reading your post. ---
**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, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7452 "2023-09-01T17:17:21Z")
Isn’t that what Al128 posted above (#7414)? ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7453 "2023-09-01T17:26:30Z")
@Tripler did say “today”, maybe that’s where? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7454 "2023-09-01T17:34:23Z")
> [@Treppenwitz](#): > > TIL that foxes will gorge on blackberries. This arose from an allotment animal shit ID question - _hmm, looks like carnivore but full of seeds_ - and our resident wildlife expert wised us up on this. As this isn’t much of a cite, I went a-googling - here you go: > > j Sorry, the video didn’t stay with the link. I use the jigidi site to work jigsaw puzzle from user-supplied images. One recent image was a fox standing on its hind legs to eat a bunch of cherries. I think foxes like fruit. [![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/ebLdIUV.jpeg "imgur.com") ](https://imgur.com/ebLdIUV) ---
**Author:** ![Dropo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce7236/32.png) [@Dropo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dropo)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7455 "2023-09-01T18:33:37Z")
“In Costa Rica, you don’t stop for trains to cross - you stop for bananas.” https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7269873080300784928 ---
**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, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7456 "2023-09-01T19:27:46Z")
> [@Treppenwitz](#): > > 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 (!) Anatolia aka Asia Minor was Greek for millennia. The virtually total replacement of the previously existing civilization there by Islamic Turks is a reworking second only to the replacement of native Americans by Anglos. ---
**Author:** ![Al128](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/al128/32/16541_2.png) [@Al128](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al128)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7457 "2023-09-01T21:35:45Z")
> [@Hypno-Toad](#): > > 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.** (bolding mine) interesting fact: many birds when walking do the “chicken walk”, that bobbing head thing … the reason for this is that the bird’s brain does not have enough bandwidth to process “movies”, just barely enough to process “photos”. that’s why they have the bobbing head thing going, wich is really a thing where the head stays stationary for as long as possible, while the remaining birds walks continously, thusly allowing to take a “sharp (as in unblurred) photo”. So, in a way, the chicken walks “analogue”, whereas the head moves “digital” (or integer 😉 ) > [@alovem](#): > > Isn’t that what Al128 posted above (#7414)? yes, it is … ---
**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, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7458 "2023-09-01T21:41:19Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Anatolia aka Asia Minor was Greek for millennia. … That’s a big oversimplification. ---
**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, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7459 "2023-09-01T21:49:49Z")
I was so excited, and only had five minutes to post, that I didn’t go through the whole thread. 😉 Tripler Caffeine may also have been a factor. . . ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7460 "2023-09-01T22:20:41Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > > [@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. When I read that post I remembered Umberto Eco, who in one of his books (probabaly Foucault’s Pendulum, but I could not find the precise quote yet) takes the piss of those numerology boffin’s infatuation with the measures of the great pyramid by getting a lot of nature’s contants and historical data and other seamingly significant stuff from the measures of Italy’s newspaper stands, which have (had?) a distinct shape and size. He took the length, the hight, the size of the front opening, the slope of the roof and so on and by juggling with the numbers he could get the precise date of the battle of Waterloo and the number pi to a lot of decimals to last week’s winning lottery numbers. When you put those numbers in units that did not exist at the time of the pyramids, like cm, inches, feet, seconds or whatever the meaning is as **Lumpy** wrote: exactly zero. Of course I cannot find the quote again, but I remember it quite distinctly, perhaps someone else has read the book I mean and remembers better than me. It was funny. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7461 "2023-09-01T22:32:23Z")
It is a charming language, and really easy to learn the basics. Aside from “orang utan,” I like “people” - “orang orang” and “ducks”, the beautifully onomatopoeic “bebek bebek”. “Jalan” means a way, or a direction or a street, “jalan jalan” means “to go” in the direction or on the street. Just never eat “ikan mas”, translated as “gold fish”, a type of bream, similar to khoi. Unless you are brave: typically these fish live in ponds below the small-scale family farm lavatory. Apparently formal Bahasa Indonesia is mind bogglingly complex, but the conversational language is easy - it took me just a couple of days to be able to converse and haggle in markets. ---
**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, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7462 "2023-09-01T22:38:27Z")
> [@Hypno-Toad](#): > > 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.** I read about the Heron’s skill at fishing. Placing itself with the sun behind it, stepping in shadowed areas of water. Something about swaying as it moved, might have been mimicking plant motion to avoid detection. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7463 "2023-09-01T23:42:14Z")
> [@Al128](#): > > the reason for this is that the bird’s brain does not have enough bandwidth to process “movies”, just barely enough to process “photos”. that’s why they have the bobbing head thing going, wich is really a thing where the head stays stationary for as long as possible, while the remaining birds walks continously, thusly allowing to take a “sharp (as in unblurred) photo”. I’ve heard this explanation before, but is there any real evidence that this is the actual reason behind the behavior? Moreover, if this is true, then how do they handle flying? ---
**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, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7464 "2023-09-01T23:46:29Z")
> [@garygnu](#): > > > [@Lumpy](#): > > > > Anatolia aka Asia Minor was Greek for millennia. … > > That’s a big oversimplification. Can you give me the Cliff Notes summation? ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2023, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7465 "2023-09-01T23:50:26Z")
Homer wrote a poem about it. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2023, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7466 "2023-09-02T00:50:58Z")
> [@Treppenwitz](#): > > 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 (!) The distance from the northern-most Torres Strait island (part of Australia) and Papua New Guinea, is less than 4km. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2023, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7467 "2023-09-02T01:09:14Z")
Greenland has the northernmost spot of dirt/rock in the world, which is about 430 miles (statute) from the north pole. Canada (Ellesmere Island) is a close second, losing by around 40 miles. Russia’s northernmost island is over 100 miles farther south. ---
**Author:** ![Al128](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/al128/32/16541_2.png) [@Al128](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al128)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2023, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7468 "2023-09-02T01:21:15Z")
When you move from Ushuaya, (the world’s southernmost city) some 10km to the south you come to Puerto Williams, the southernmost city of Chile 😉 .[Image — Postimages](https://postimg.cc/nj4PMRRq) ---
**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 2, 2023, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7469 "2023-09-02T01:23:03Z")
Yes, what’s amazing to me is some of these guys had way, way too much time on their hands. They spend quite a while trying to determine what the standard of measurement the pyramid builders used, which is sort of interesting. But then, they go on to all sorts of fanciful conjecture, claiming the dimensions and angles of the various internal features reveal the circumference of the earth, the weight or mass of the earth, the exact distance of the earth from the sun. ---
**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 2, 2023, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/7470 "2023-09-02T01:52:26Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > When you put those numbers in units that did not exist at the time of the pyramids, like cm, inches, feet, seconds or whatever the meaning is as **Lumpy** wrote: exactly zero. If you want to compare the size of a pyramid (which you know in pyramid inches) to the circumference of the Earth (which you know in kilometers), you’re gonna have to convert one number into the same units as the other. I didn’t check all their numbers, but the conversion from British Inches to cm appears to be accurate for the time (with one added digit of precision). I don’t think there’s any great cosmic significance to the size of the pyramids, but converting from one unit to another isn’t something they pulled out of thin air. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674.md?page=372) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674.md?page=374)