# 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:** 461
**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:** [March 19, 2024, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9211 "2024-03-19T18:03:52Z")
I’d looked him up after he appeared on Svengoolie last Saturday: IRL he was twice Royal Army fencing champ. Also contrived his own ghillie suit so he could prowl no-man’s land in daylight. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2024, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9212 "2024-03-19T18:09:28Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > Also contrived his own ghillie suit so he could prowl no-man’s land in daylight. That’s on the blurry edge of between being awesome and Batman-level psycho. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2024, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9213 "2024-03-19T18:51:18Z")
A post was merged into an existing topic: [Controversial encounters between law-enforcement and civilians - the omnibus thread #2](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/4005) ---
**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:** [March 19, 2024, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9216 "2024-03-19T18:25:34Z")
Michael Jackson’s pet chimpanzee Bubbles is still alive and can be symbolically adopted at the Center For Great Apes in Florida. > **[Bubbles - Center for Great Apes](https://centerforgreatapes.org/chimpanzee/bubbles/)** > > Bubbles was reportedly born in a biomedical laboratory. While still an infant, he was taken from his mother and given to a Hollywood trainer, who then gave him to be a pet chimpanzee for the world-famous pop singer Michael Jackson. In such a... ---
**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:** [March 19, 2024, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9217 "2024-03-19T18:30:01Z")
Another Rathbone fact I stumbled upon-he was once arrested onstage! They were doing a play called _The Captive_ about a lesbian love affair, and since this was the 20’s it was deemed obscene. [“On 9 February, while Rathbone and Menken were in the middle of the second act of _The Captive_, police marched onto the stage and arrested the pair. With the rest of the cast, they were thrown in the back of a police van with the cast of _SEX_, who had also been arrested and taken to jail.”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Rathbone#Theatre) ---
**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:** [March 19, 2024, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9218 "2024-03-19T19:07:24Z")
So he ventured into no-man’s land in more than one sense of the phrase. ---
**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:** [March 19, 2024, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9219 "2024-03-19T19:26:21Z")
> [@OttoDaFe](#): > > I, for one, welcome our new DB-THG overlords. Jearl D. Walker suggested this some 40 years ago in his **Flying Circus of Physics** ---
**Author:** ![fachverwirrt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/94ad74/32.png) [@fachverwirrt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fachverwirrt)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2024, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9220 "2024-03-19T21:35:51Z")
Two people have died on the Metropolitan Opera stage. The first, Leonard Warren (1960), had reportedly just finished singing Don Carlo’s Act III aria from _La forza del destino_ which begins “Morir, tremenda cosa” (to die, a momentous thing) when he suffered a massive heart attack and collapsed on stage. The second, Richard Versalle (1996), was performing Janáček’s _The Makropulos Case_ and had just sung the line “too bad you can only live so long”, when he too had a heart attack and fell ten feet off a ladder. Don’t sing about death at the Met. ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2024, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9221 "2024-03-20T00:00:03Z")
I’m looking forward to the day they can scale them up and have DB-THG farms covering the countryside like we have now with wind farms. ---
**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:** [March 20, 2024, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9222 "2024-03-20T09:42:27Z")
Or reuse the quintessential oil pumpjack I see in movies set in Texas and the 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:** [March 20, 2024, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9223 "2024-03-20T11:18:07Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Do we know how many _real_ sword fights he won? did he fare better in _word-fights_…?? ---
**Author:** ![Chad\_Sudan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chad_sudan/32/4509_2.png) [@Chad\_Sudan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chad_Sudan)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2024, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9224 "2024-03-20T12:03:48Z")
Today I learned that a ship carrying 30 tons of priceless Assyrian artifacts – statues and reliefs and gold and silver objects – sank in the Tigris River in Iraq in 1855. All efforts to recover this cargo have failed. > **[The Qurnah Disaster](https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/the-qurnah-disaster/)** > > In April 1855, a convoy carrying thousands of antiquities from French and British excavations in Mesopotamia set out from the city of Mosul, in modern-day ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2024, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9225 "2024-03-20T14:13:29Z")
> [@Love\_Rhombus](#): > > They were doing a play called _The Captive_ about a lesbian love affair, and since this was the 20’s it was deemed obscene. [“On 9 February, while Rathbone and Menken were in the middle of the second act of _The Captive_, police marched onto the stage and arrested the pair. With the rest of the cast, they were thrown in the back of a police van with the cast of _SEX_, who had also been arrested and taken to jail.”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Rathbone#Theatre) And did the newspapers have a field day with headlines like “CAPTIVE - SEX TRIAL LATEST!” ? PS: In one Sherlock Holmes movie, Rathbone did a highly convincing and utterly un-Holmes like turn as an end-of-the-pier song and dance man: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/VCHQzmU77IE/maxresdefault.jpg "Basil Rathbone singing "I do love to be beside the seaside"") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCHQzmU77IE) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2024, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9226 "2024-03-20T21:43:21Z")
> [@PatrickLondon](#): > > And did the newspapers have a field day with headlines like “CAPTIVE - SEX TRIAL LATEST!” ? A quick search found that the _Daily News_ bannered “ARRESTS FOR 3 SEX PLAYS” across the front page and “3 BROADWAY SEX PLAYS RAIDED” on the inside article on Feb. 10, 1927. (The third play was _The Virgin Man_.) A crowd of 40 people were taken to Night Court. I bet Dan Fielding had, ahem, a field day. The raids were front page news in Brooklyn, Tampa, Danville, VA, and a dozen other cities, mostly because of an AP syndicated report. Only a few of the largest U.S. cities had tabloid newspapers in 1927, so all the headlines were pretty straightforward and didn’t use the word “sex.” _The Times_ didn’t appear to say anything about it until later, but covered the cases under the banner of censorship. The plays reopened and closed and reopened elsewhere and got hit by more raids. Mae West, the star and writer of _Sex_, went to jail for a week, and she milked the publicity to become a superstar. ---
**Author:** ![Eric1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3bc359/32.png) [@Eric1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eric1)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9227 "2024-03-21T22:52:46Z")
I read this article about soluble bead toys that kids swallow and get obstructions from. The toy designer seems not to have seen it coming. > **[New health warning issued about the dangers of water bead toys](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/health-warning-water-bead-toys-danger-rcna144152)** > > The absorbent beads can grow to the size of a marble or golf ball when immersed in water. If swallowed, they can cause gastrointestinal blockages. ---
**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:** [March 21, 2024, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9228 "2024-03-21T23:45:34Z")
I can completely relate to that, having fished out about 20 of those from the syphon (P-trap?) of our kids bathroom in the day … I can only imagine what a handfull of those swallowed would do in the stomach, once getting hydrated and growing to the tune of 5x^3 on all 3 dimensions … ---
**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:** [March 22, 2024, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9229 "2024-03-22T12:30:26Z")
After her husband, Albert, died in 1861 (age 42), Queen Victoria didn’t make a public appearance for the next 13 years. She also wore black for the rest of her life (she died in 1901). The rooms that Albert had occupied in his various palaces and other residences were kept as they were at the time of his death, with sheets and towels changed daily. He didn’t want to be memorialized in any way - but he got places like the Royal Albert Hall, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Prince Albert (Saskatchewan) named after him. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2024, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9230 "2024-03-22T12:36:44Z")
> [@Eric1](#): > > I read this article about soluble bead toys that kids swallow and get obstructions from. The toy designer seems not to have seen it coming. Small magnets can also present a problem. ---
**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:** [March 22, 2024, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9231 "2024-03-22T12:59:27Z")
> [@Mark\_Finn](#): > > Prince Albert (Saskatchewan) named after him. Heh, imagine having a piercing carry your name. ---
**Author:** ![Reeses\_Monkey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reeses_monkey/32/2885_2.png) [@Reeses\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeses_Monkey)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2024, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9232 "2024-03-22T16:06:44Z")
Imagine having _that_ piercing carry your name! 😵‍💫 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674.md?page=460) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674.md?page=462)