# 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:** 404
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2023, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8071 "2023-11-10T20:06:00Z")
Today I learned that the Dutch translation for “spank me daddy” is “geef me een klap papa”. And they say social media has no redeeming value. ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Finn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Mark\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2023, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8072 "2023-11-10T22:30:18Z")
During WW1, the British military spent more on feeding their horses than on feeding their soldiers. ---
**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:** [November 10, 2023, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8073 "2023-11-10T22:37:23Z")
That figures, considering Brits love horses but have a idiosyncratic relation to [cooking](http://theslingsandarrows.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Asterix-Legionary-int.jpg). ---
**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:** [November 10, 2023, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8074 "2023-11-10T22:48:55Z")
Funny, but I’m pretty sure that that was because cheap mass produced food was a thing by the early twentieth century, while the sheer amount of fodder horses need was a significant burden. And both absolutely paled compared to what it cost to “feed” the artillery. ---
**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:** [November 11, 2023, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8075 "2023-11-11T01:37:45Z")
[Maxim 57.](https://schlockmercenary.fandom.com/wiki/The_Seventy_Maxims_of_Maximally_Effective_Mercenaries) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2023, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8076 "2023-11-11T01:57:34Z")
> [@Mark\_Finn](#): > > Strongman and wrestler “The Great Antonio” (1925-2003) was well known in Montreal for attaching a chain to a fully-loaded city bus and pulling it a couple of blocks. Which isn’t a feat of strength. The amount of force he was able to exert that way was limited by his weight and by the traction in his shoes, and that limit is quite low, by the standards of human muscular strength. So long as the bus has good bearings and is on a level road, I could do the same thing, and I’m a total weakling. And if it didn’t have good bearings or were even slightly uphill, Antonio couldn’t have done it, either. > [@Ignatz](#): > > There is such a word, reify, which I had never heard of before, 3 times in a book I’m reading and heard on NPR recently. It means: make (something abstract) more concrete or real: Yeah, it’s the same concept as in the expression “So that’s a thing now”. Taken literally, of course it’s a thing, but “reify” refers to the process of making something “a thing” in that sense. ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Finn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Mark\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2023, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8077 "2023-11-11T02:28:56Z")
Word of the day: GNOMON. The part of a sundial that casts a shadow. ---
**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:** [November 11, 2023, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8078 "2023-11-11T04:17:48Z")
I thought GNOMON is an island. ---
**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:** [November 11, 2023, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8079 "2023-11-11T06:00:00Z")
No, mon. ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2023, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8080 "2023-11-11T06:13:31Z")
CV-990 Tire Assault Vehicle (TAV) [![](https://i.imgur.com/gnIY6IM.jpg) ](https://i.imgur.com/gnIY6IM.jpg) [Tanks Encyclopedia](https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/modern-us-tire-assault-vehicle-tav/) (From another site with a tendency to show disturbing ads) > In the 1990s, NASA was stress-testing tires for their Space Shuttle, a very dangerous job that could end with a tire exploding with the force of a few sticks of dynamite. This was too hazardous for staff to approach, so they custom-made an RC drilling vehicle from a Tamiya remote control Tiger tank. > > Looking like it was pulled straight out of Small Soldiers, the tank, named the Tire Assault Vehicle, or TAV, would drive up to Space Shuttle tires and drill holes in them to release the pressure inside. ---
**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:** [November 11, 2023, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8081 "2023-11-11T13:23:12Z")
In Herstmonceux Castle Sundial and Rose Garden there is a sundial that you use by standing in it and acting as the gnomon. As I recollect, there are different places to stand depending on the time of year. j ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2023, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8082 "2023-11-11T14:38:29Z")
[Gno-Mont Saint-Michel](https://longnow.org/ideas/worlds-largest-sundial/) ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2023, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8083 "2023-11-11T14:50:03Z")
Interesting random fact. The lyrics of the song _Killing Me Softly With His Song_ were written (in part) by Lori Lieberman after she, in 1971, happened upon Don McLean performing his song _Empty Chairs_ in a small venue. The song so affected her that she grabbed a napkin and wrote much of the song. Her songwriting partner Norman Gimbel saw potential for the song, and basically stole it, fleshing out what she had penned and getting composer Charles Fox to write the music. Later when Lieberman tried to get some of her money from the song, Gimbel and Fox claimed she had only a small input. But Lieberman got Don McLean to come forward and say that he’d seen her poem that night written on a napkin. ---
**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:** [November 11, 2023, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8084 "2023-11-11T14:50:42Z")
> [@pullin](#): > > According to researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology, all mammals spend 21 seconds urinating. Size doesn’t matter. Elephants and rats spend the same time emptying their bladders. A first SWAG would be that it is determined by the Reynolds number setting the minimum diameter that avoids turbulence and everybody scales from that. There must be an exception for recreational pissers like Beagle Hounds. ---
**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:** [November 11, 2023, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8085 "2023-11-11T15:05:18Z")
> [@pullin](#): > > According to researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology, all mammals spend 21 seconds urinating. This [sow says hold my](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KxvLL31dvM)… whatever. Just hold it. Until you can’t. In other words, I believe someone at the Georgia Institute of Technology was either pissed or taking the piss. I have serious doubts on the veracity of their assertion. ---
**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:** [November 11, 2023, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8086 "2023-11-11T15:10:26Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > The lyrics of the song _Killing Me Softly With His Song_ were written (in part) by Lori Lieberman after she, in 1971, happened upon Don McLean performing his song _Empty Chairs_ in a small venue. The song so affected her that she grabbed a napkin and wrote much of the song. Lori’s version is better than Roberta Flack’s as well. 'Tis a pity more people aren’t aware of her work. I’ve been a fan since the 70s. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2023, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8087 "2023-11-11T16:19:53Z")
> [@Zyada](#): > > Burning hydrogen is almost invisible in daylight or regular indoor lighting. > > NASA has a problem with hydrogen catching fire, something you wouldn’t want to walk through. > The first method they used to detect the fire is called the broom method. Techs walked around holding a straw broom in front of them. > [The Broom Method - How NASA detects hydrogen leaks | Mini Museum](https://shop.minimuseum.com/blogs/cool-things/the-broom-method) This is also how we were taught to find a high-pressure steam leak in the engine room of a U.S. Navy ship. The sound of the leak would be unmistakable, but reportedly high-pressure steam would be invisible at the source of the leak. Presumably this would only apply to a very small leak (pinhole or similar) because anything larger would likely catastrophically fill the engine room with steam. So anyway, we were taught to locate the location of the leak with a broom. Presumably you’d then know how to isolate it and repair it. ---
**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:** [November 11, 2023, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8088 "2023-11-11T17:23:37Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > This [sow says hold my](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KxvLL31dvM)… whatever. Just hold it. Until you can’t. Somewhat related is “poronkusema”, an informal unit of length defined as the distance a reindeer can travel without stopping to urinate. It has no specific length, but Wiktionary says 7.5 km, at most. > **[poronkusema - Wiktionary, the free dictionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/poronkusema)** ---
**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:** [November 11, 2023, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8089 "2023-11-11T20:07:21Z")
> [@robby](#): > > > [@Zyada](#): > > > > Burning hydrogen is almost invisible in daylight or regular indoor lighting. > > > > NASA has a problem with hydrogen catching fire, something you wouldn’t want to walk through > > The first method they used to detect the fire is called the broom method Techs walked around holding a straw broom in front of them. > > [The Broom Method - How NASA detects hydrogen leaks | Mini Museum](https://shop.minimuseum.com/blogs/cool-things/the-broom-method) > > This is also how we were taught to find a high-pressure steam leak in the engine room of a U.S. Navy ship. > > The sound of the leak would be unmistakable, but reportedly high-pressure steam would be invisible at the source of the leak. Presumably this would only apply to a very small leak (pinhole or similar) because anything larger would likely catastrophically fill the engine room with steam. > > So anyway, we were taught to locate the location of the leak with a broom. Presumably you’d then know how to isolate it and repair it. How does that work, since the steam although hot isn’t actually combusting and would presumably displace oxygen in its vicinity? ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2023, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/8090 "2023-11-11T20:37:17Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > How does that work, since the steam although hot isn’t actually combusting and would presumably displace oxygen in its vicinity? Simple displacement. While it likely would not set the broom on fire (for the reasons you state), high pressure steam is very hot and contains a lot of energy. Detecting the location of the leak using a broom is preferable to using someone’s hand (even a gloved hand). After all, brooms are expendable. Hands are not. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674.md?page=403) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674.md?page=405)