# 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:** 60
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1183 "2021-01-08T16:07:40Z")
“Uncopyrightable” is the longest word in the English language that doesn’t repeat any letters. ---
**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:** [January 8, 2021, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1184 "2021-01-08T16:41:26Z")
> [@Superdude](#): > > “Uncopyrightable” is the longest word in the English language that doesn’t repeat any letters.   The shortest word which does repeat is “oo”. ---
**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:** [January 8, 2021, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1185 "2021-01-08T16:56:57Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > The shortest word which does repeat is “oo”. or “aa” ---
**Author:** ![carnut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnut/32/3531_2.png) [@carnut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnut)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1186 "2021-01-08T22:23:22Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > or “aa” Isn’t that usually spelled “aah”? Or is it a usage I haven’t seen before? ---
**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:** [January 8, 2021, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1187 "2021-01-08T22:41:58Z")
> [@carnut](#): > > Isn’t that usually spelled “aah”? Or is it a usage I haven’t seen before? Knight: No, in the back of the throat, like this – Aaaaaaagh! Other Knight: Oooh! as in alarm! You need to do more crossword puzzles. _aa_ is a form of cooled lava, distinct from _pahoehoe_. The word is Hawaiian in origin, but it’s been abducted into English, now. [http://www.geo.cornell.edu/geology/GalapagosWWW/LavaTypes.html#:~:text=The%20pahoehoe%20flow%20has%20a,a%20resulting%20increase%20in%20viscosity](http://www.geo.cornell.edu/geology/GalapagosWWW/LavaTypes.html#:~:text=The%20pahoehoe%20flow%20has%20a,a%20resulting%20increase%20in%20viscosity). ---
**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:** [January 8, 2021, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1188 "2021-01-08T22:45:35Z")
I suppose ‘mm’ doesn’t count then. Or is that spelled ‘mmm’? ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1189 "2021-01-08T23:46:30Z")
AA sounds like the world’s laziest crossword puzzle word. ---
**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:** [January 9, 2021, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1190 "2021-01-09T01:02:45Z")
Q: Name two people without Twitter vacvounts. A: @kayaker and @realDonaldTrump. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1191 "2021-01-09T01:07:17Z")
Good one. 😆 👍 ---
**Author:** ![lobotomyboy63](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobotomyboy63/32/2900_2.png) [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1192 "2021-01-09T02:21:50Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Q: Name two people without Twitter vacvounts. > > A: @kayaker and @realDonaldTrump. I can think of a third. I’ve been wondering about leaving Facebook—honestly, I like keeping up with fam and all that but I don’t like the political shit. But I haven’t gone beyond it and I use it less and less. Hmm. My contribution: I’m referencing Chris Cuomo from today, 1/8/21. Rough quote: “[Trump] has the nuclear codes…but he can’t be trusted with a Twitter account.” ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1193 "2021-01-09T02:39:26Z")
Jesus’s disciples didn’t call him “Jesus”, as Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic don’t have "J"s. In Greek he would have been Iesus (YAY-soos), Hebrew would have been Yeshua (Yeh-SHOO-uh), and in the Aramaic which was spoken by most people, he would have been Yeesha (YEE-shuh). ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1194 "2021-01-09T02:54:11Z")
I have always believed that the song “George Washington Bridge (George Washington, Washington Bridge)” was somebody’s original composition, written to be sung by children who wanted to annoy their brothers and sisters on long car rides. [That certainly is its main and perhaps only use.] But today I learned that the melody is “real”–taken from a song called “When You Are in Love” or “The Loveliest Night of the Year,” a big hit for Mario Lanza back in the fifties. Who knew? Not me. Not my sister either, and she regularly inflicted it upon me on drives between Chicago and La Crosse, Wisconsin, back in the day. ---
**Author:** ![mikecurtis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikecurtis/32/3284_2.png) [@mikecurtis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mikecurtis)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1195 "2021-01-09T04:49:46Z")
You’re welcome! [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Pe4cen9sfvo/maxresdefault.jpg "George Washington Bridge Kids Demo") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe4cen9sfvo) ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1196 "2021-01-09T16:44:34Z")
You know that the first rule of this message board is “Don’t be a jerk,” right? just kidding… ---
**Author:** ![lobotomyboy63](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobotomyboy63/32/2900_2.png) [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1197 "2021-01-09T16:49:17Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > But today I learned that the melody is “real”–taken from a song called “When You Are in Love” or “The Loveliest Night of the Year,” a big hit for Mario Lanza back in the fifties. I’ve never heard the GW Bridge lyrics mentioned. I have heard the tune, though. FTR, jump in at about 40 seconds: [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2YvhEv7ykM) I can’t figure out why I know the melody. Maybe my mom used to play it on keyboards? ETA Wikipedia dates it to 1888. > **[Juventino Rosas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juventino_Rosas)** > > José Juventino Policarpo Rosas Cadenas (25 January 1868 – 9 July 1894) was a Mexican composer and violinist. > Rosas was born in Santa Cruz, Guanajuato, later renamed Santa Cruz de Galeana, Guanajuato, and still later into Santa Cruz de Juventino Rosas. Rosas began his musical career as a street musician, playing with dance music bands in Mexico City. In 1884-85 and 1888 he enrolled into the conservatory, both times leaving it without taking any examination. > Most of Rosas's compositions—among the... ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1198 "2021-01-09T17:22:26Z")
Today I learned about the **water integrator** , a.k.a. the hydraulic integrator. Very clever. The same was done with electronic op amps after they were invented… op amps were used to solve differential equations using analog voltage levels. > **[Water integrator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_integrator)** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > The Water Integrator (Russian: Гидравлический интегратор Gidravlicheskiy integrator) was an early analog computer built in the Soviet Union in 1936 by Vladimir Sergeevich Lukyanov. It functioned by careful manipulation of water through a room full of interconnected pipes and pumps. The water level in various chambers (with precision to fractions of a millimeter) represented stored numbers, and the rate of flow between them represented mathematical... ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1199 "2021-01-09T18:40:40Z")
This will be oddly familiar to anyone who has read the Discworld novel _Making Money,_ in which a tinkerer named Hubert has created a model of Ankh-Morpork’s economy using water moving through tubes, tanks, and bottles. (Of course, Discworld also has Hex, a computer that uses ants in place of electrons.) > The Glooper, as it is affectionately known, is what I call a quote ‘analogy machine’ unquote. It solves problems not by considering them as a numerical exercise but by actually duplicating them in a form we can manipulate: in this case, the flow of money and its effects within our society becomes water flowing through a glass matrix, the Glooper. I would have sworn that one of the collections of annotations to the Discworld novels had mentioned the Russian Water Integrator, but there’s no reference to it [here](https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Book:Making_Money/Annotations) (yet), and there are no annotations for the book at all at the [Annotated Pratchett File](https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/index.html). So perhaps I’m the first person (since Pterry) to make this connection? (Assuming he knew about it and wasn’t simply creating another fantastical analog computer out of his fertile imagination.) ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2021, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1200 "2021-01-09T21:11:07Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > This will be oddly familiar to anyone who has read the Discworld novel _Making Money,_ in which a tinkerer named Hubert has created a model of Ankh-Morpork’s economy using water moving through tubes, tanks, and bottles. (Of course, Discworld also has Hex, a computer that uses ants in place of electrons.) Pratchett would more likely have been familiar with [MONIAC - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC), the London School of Economics UK model. ---
**Author:** ![Mundane\_Super\_Hero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mundane_super_hero/32/6304_2.png) [@Mundane\_Super\_Hero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mundane_Super_Hero)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2021, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1201 "2021-01-10T01:48:55Z")
There was supposed to be a triple conjunction tonight at sunset. I missed it. Three stars were supposed to look like a really tight triangle. Did you get to see it? Do you have pictures? > **[Rare Conjunction! Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn Will Form Triangle In Sky This...](https://www.indiatimes.com/trending/environment/mercury-jupiter-saturn-conjunction-2021-531493.html)** > > Another exciting and rare conjugation is about to brace the post sunset skies this very weekend. ---
**Author:** ![carnut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnut/32/3531_2.png) [@carnut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnut)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2021, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/1202 "2021-01-11T23:03:38Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > _aa_ is a form of cooled lava Ignorance fought. Thank you. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674.md?page=59) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674.md?page=61)