# 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:** 499
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2024, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9973 "2024-07-21T21:06:02Z")
The British television shows he appeared in are little known in the U.S., as are the movies he appeared in. Surprisingly, he now has a role in the American television show _Frasier_. That’s probably the only thing that most American viewers know him for. ---
**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:** [July 21, 2024, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9974 "2024-07-21T21:12:59Z")
He was in “New Tricks”, right? (One of the later season replacements.) ---
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2024, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9975 "2024-07-21T22:32:21Z")
That’s where I became aware of him. Very good at deadpan. ---
**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:** [July 21, 2024, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9976 "2024-07-21T23:28:54Z")
Well then, nice to be able to tell the story of a Frazier actor’s granddad! 😉 j ---
**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:** [July 22, 2024, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9977 "2024-07-22T07:15:58Z")
There was also a thriving early movie industry in [Holmfirth in Yorkshire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamforth_%26_Co_Ltd), which much more recently is known as the setting of the long-running sitcom (or Elderly Actors’ Pension Fund) _[Last of the Summer Wine](https://holmfirth.info/last-of-the-summer-wine/)_. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2024, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9978 "2024-07-22T13:32:30Z")
Tabby, a common and perhaps original color pattern in cats, is derived from a silk manufacturing area of Baghdad, Attabiya, which was named for the 5th century Umayyad governor of Mecca, Attab Ibn Asid, The name for this distinctively patterned silk from there made its way through Latin and medieval French to English by the late 17th century. ---
**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:** [July 22, 2024, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9979 "2024-07-22T20:42:27Z")
Two factors that cause time dilation in General Relativity are gravity and an object’s speed. If you are at the equator you are moving more quickly than someone at a more northerly or southerly latitude. However the Earth is not a perfect sphere so the amount of gravity a person experiences also differs depending on your latitude. It turns out that these two factors _exactly cancel each other out_ so time dilation is uniform across the entirety of Earth’s surface at sea level. > **[Hafele–Keating experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%E2%80%93Keating_experiment#Historical_and_scientific_background)** > > The Hafele–Keating experiment was a test of the theory of relativity. In 1971, Joseph C. Hafele, a physicist, and Richard E. Keating, an astronomer, took four caesium-beam atomic clocks aboard commercial airliners. They flew twice around the world, first eastward, then westward, and compared the clocks in motion to stationary clocks at the United States Naval Observatory. When reunited, the three sets of clocks were found to disagree with one another, and their differences were consistent with Ac... ---
**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:** [July 22, 2024, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9980 "2024-07-22T20:56:53Z")
That’s good to know. A while back, someone here linked to the Phrontistery website, full of obscure words including [this list of fabrics.](https://phrontistery.info/fabric.html) Unfortunately without their word origins. ---
**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:** [July 22, 2024, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9981 "2024-07-22T23:54:45Z")
Similarly damask fabric, and damascene patterning of fabric and steel, derive that name from Damascus. It’s not clear they were invented there, more likely it is where Europeans first came across it - in the same way they call numbers Arabic numerals when they came to Italy from North Africa, even though they were invented in India. They are called Hindi numerals in Arabic. ---
**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:** [July 23, 2024, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9982 "2024-07-23T00:21:11Z")
From Wikipedia, three rabbit islands: Spain, Coney Island, and Japan. “The etymological origin of the term Hispania is uncertain, although the Phoenicians referred to the region as _Spania_ (meaning "Land of rabbits, therefore, the most accepted theory is the Phoenician one.” “One possible etymology is from a Native American tribe, the Konoh or Konoi (the “Bear Band”), who once inhabited the island. A second theory suggests that it was distortion of the name of Henry Hudson’s second mate on the Halve Maen, John Colman, who was slain by natives on the 1609 expedition. A third posits that late 18th century Irish captain Peter O’Connor named it after Coney Island in County, Ireland, which has a rabbit population. In Irish ‘coinín’ (kun een) is the word used for a rabbit.” [Ōkunoshima, Japan.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Ckunoshima) “ It is often called _Usagi Shima_ (うさぎ島, “Rabbit Island”) because of the large population of free-ranging domestic rabbits that roam the island. The rabbits are rather tame and will approach humans.” ---
**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:** [July 23, 2024, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9983 "2024-07-23T00:24:01Z")
> [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](#): > > It turns out that these two factors _exactly cancel each other out_ so time dilation is uniform across the entirety of Earth’s surface at sea level. Not a coincidence, of course. Time dilation is a result of the gravitational potential. Sea level is an equipotential surface, because if any part of it were at a higher potential, it’d flow to the lower-potential spots. So any two spots at sea level will have the same time dilation. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2024, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9984 "2024-07-23T01:02:06Z")
Barack Obama and Kamala Harris are not the first people with significant non-European ancestry to have reached the the office of President or VP. Vice President Charles Curtis (1929 - '33) was three-eighths Native American through his mother and an enrolled member of the Kaw (Kansa) nation, speaking Kansa and English while growing up. ---
**Author:** ![Nars\_Glinley](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nars_glinley/32/8177_2.png) [@Nars\_Glinley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nars_Glinley)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2024, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9985 "2024-07-23T01:10:34Z")
> [@robby](#): > > > [@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 I work for an electric company and a co-worker who was known for his BS’ing swore that at one time, workers would walk around the coal plant waving a flag around to detect steam leaks. I never actually believed him but I guess it might have been true. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2024, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9986 "2024-07-23T03:02:31Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > speaking Kansa and English Martin Van Buren grew up speaking Dutch. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2024, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9987 "2024-07-24T12:04:28Z")
Yesterday I learned that Brent Strom is the pitching coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Strom was the second man to undergo Tommy John surgery. Were it not for Tommy John, it might be called Brent Strom surgery. ---
**Author:** ![Bookkeeper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bookkeeper/32/281_2.png) [@Bookkeeper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bookkeeper)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2024, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9988 "2024-07-24T16:04:07Z")
> [@Nars\_Glinley](#): > > I work for an electric company and a co-worker who was known for his BS’ing swore that at one time, workers would walk around the coal plant waving a flag around to detect steam leaks. I never actually believed him but I guess it might have been true. A high pressure superheated “live” steam leak is near invisible and can seriously injure you. I have read that ship’s engine room crews also use similar methods of detecting steam leaks when you can hear that it’s escaping but can’t see exactly where. ---
**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:** [July 24, 2024, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9989 "2024-07-24T17:05:20Z")
> [@Bookkeeper](#): > > A high pressure superheated “live” steam leak is near invisible and can seriously injure you. I have read that ship’s engine room crews also use similar methods of detecting steam leaks when you can hear that it’s escaping but can’t see exactly where. They could always do what physicists do when looking for leaks in pressurized pipe systems – squirt soapy water and look for any bubbles forming. > **[Leak Detector, 8 oz Size, Leak Detector](https://www.grainger.com/product/340LL9?gucid=N:N:PS:Paid:GGL:CSM-2295:4P7A1P:20501231&gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMImNyLqpTAhwMVPkpHAR26BwxuEAQYAiABEgJuefD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds)** > > Looking for SWAGELOK, Leak Detector, Leak Detector? Find it at Grainger.com®. With over one million products and 24/7 customer service we have supplies and solutions for every industry. > **[Making leak detection fluid](https://www.practicalmachinist.com/forum/threads/making-leak-detection-fluid.197768/)** > > I like using SNOOP as a leak detector, but it seems every time I need to use it the container is empty as it has evaporated. THis is likely because I forget to cap the little straw that comes out of the bottle, but alas it happens. > > So... does... ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2024, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9990 "2024-07-24T17:21:29Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > They could always do what physicists do when looking for leaks in pressurized pipe systems – squirt soapy water and look for any bubbles forming. Also used to find leaks in car tires ---
**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:** [July 24, 2024, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9991 "2024-07-24T19:08:41Z")
Or bike tires, though there it’s often easier to submerge the whole thing in the bathtub. ---
**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:** [July 24, 2024, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/9992 "2024-07-24T19:23:12Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > squirt soapy water and look for any bubbles forming. After I installed our gas dryer, my gf was concerned that maybe I should have called a pro. When a friend of mine was visiting, having a beer, she asked him if he’d check out my dryer installation (he’s a plumber). He gave me a wink and we all went to the basement. I’d checked the connections using soapy water and was certain everything was OK, plus I couldn’t smell gas. He checked with his Bic lighter, running the flame around all my connections. 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674.md?page=498) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674.md?page=500)