Tell us an interesting random fact you stumbled across (Part 1)

TIL about the contributions of Spain to the Revolutionary Army against Britain. If this is common knowledge, then blame my American schooling! The random fact is that the guy who ran it, Bernardo de Gálvez, was the successor and brother-in-law of Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga, the Spanish imperial governor who actually came up with the name “United States of America” and suggested it to George Washington.

Sure it does, if she was emphasizing the fact that it was a “literal” bug rather than a figurative bug.

Did you never watch Schoolhouse Rock? Lyrics from “Shot Heard Round the World”:

Well, they showed such determination
That they won the admiration
Of countries across the sea like France and Spain,
Who loaned the colonies ships and guns
And put the British on the run
And the Continental Army on its feet again.

I didn’t know until now that the “coco” part of “coconut” comes from a Portuguese word meaning “bogeyman” or “grinning face” (because of the 3 dots on a coconut kind of resembling a face).

I doubt Bernardo de Galvez is common knowledge in most of the U.S., but the Spanish-British battles along the Gulf Coast are taught in Louisiana History classes to 8th graders in my state.

North Galvez Street and South Galvez Street in New Orleans are both named after Galvez.

What I meant was if there was not already usage of “bug” as a programming/hardware problem then saying she found an actual bug makes no sense.

I’m in PA so we just learned about Quakers and Gettysburg.

I was aware that a goodly bit of US military terminology follows Spanish conventions rather than British. We don’t say “leftenant” for example, and we put an “r” in “colonel” because the Spanish is “coronel”.

Sorry, I parsed your statement differently than what you intended.

Pearls don’t come from a grain of sand irritating them. The secret the gem industry doesn’t want you to know about is that pearls are produced when parasitic worms squirm inside defective shells with openings. “The mussel realizes it’s there and tries to get rid of it. The parasite panics and starts working away and rolling back and forth…” and “then begins to cover it with nacre to smooth its edges and soothe the irritation.”

Worse, cultured pearls are made by slicing open an oyster’s gonads and inserting an irritant into them and hoping that the oyster survives the trauma.

Also Galveston, TX (Galvez-town).

That one actually comes from French.

And the Tango is big in Finland, or at least was for a good part of the Twentieth Century.

But the British say “kernel” too.

That’s from well before the Revolutionary War. Spain basically invented the modern military structure during its golden age in the 16th Century.

Here’s something I just learned:

The rock song Hound Dog was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1952, and first recorded by Big Mama Thornton a year later. Elvis recorded it in 1956, and changed some of the lyrics. “You ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine” was one of the changes. Leiber and Stoller didn’t like this change, since it implied the song is about a literal dog. They said, “The change in the lyrics was nonsense. Thornton was singing to a man. Elvis was singing to a dog.”

Sadly, Thornton only made $500 from the song.

Her version of it is fantastic IMO. And great guitar work. That’s real Rock and roll.

That’s a crime(figurative).

There seem to be more blacksmiths in the world than ever before. Blacksmithing has become a popular hobby and backyard smiths and small shops abound here in the US and worldwide also. There have always been some smiths making knives and other tools and weapons, and plenty of farriers (horse shoeing, etc.), but the local smith in every community was replaced by hardware stores long ago. The hobby has been greatly popularized by TV shows like Forged in Fire so that there are likely a number of smiths near where you live. I do a little bit of it myself, but ended my plans to set up a real forge because of physical problems. Based on sales on anvils, forges, and other smith’s tools the number of smiths today seems to exceed those even from the times when many farmers were smithing themselves. One result of this has been tremendous inflation in the price of used anvils. Not long ago old anvils were selling for $2-$3 a pound, now $6-$7 a pound is common and more in some cases. Many of these are found in old barns, the remnants of that time when so many farmers did their own smithing. The skyrocketing costs have popularized the term ASO, a TLA for Anvil Shaped Object.

Interesting. I was led to believe the American southwest was practically littered with them.

Those Acme anvils don’t last very long.