# Tell us an interesting random fact you stumbled across (Part 2) **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 25, 2024, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785 "2024-07-25T15:06:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 163
**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:** [September 29, 2025, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3241 "2025-09-29T22:50:22Z")
[Nirvana’s first fan newsletter from 1991](https://flashbak.com/nirvana-first-fan-newsletter-1991-478368/) included this bit of trivia: “_Incidentally, if anyone was wondering what happened to Chad Channing, Nirvana’s drummer on Bleach, he and his mother, Stockard (of “Grease” fame) have opened Rizzo’s Bar and Grill, a wonderful rib house_.” ([Chad Channing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_Channing) is no relation to [Stockard Channing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockard_Channing)) ---
**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:** [September 30, 2025, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3242 "2025-09-30T19:26:51Z")
Hello from Provence (France, on the Mediterranean, if you didn’t already know). _La course camarguaise_ is a big thing around here - it’s the local version of bullfighting. The animals aren’t harmed - _raseteurs_ attempt to snatch things like pom-poms and ribbons off the head and horns of an annoyed bull. So it’s not harmful but it is impolite. Stick with me. There’s a competition (several, actually) between raseteurs, as you might expect. What’s harder to get your head around is the fact that as the bulls live to fight another day, they also develop a reputation for excellence, and indeed are in demand for bullfights. This leads to the bizarre situation where, on posters advertising bullfights, the bulls are billed above the humans. - _You’re shitting me, Trep_ - _No I’m not_ [![Google Photos](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AP1GczMp5PRlBvd6kkj8aOLWWOtmcFL2rtYUgolaNFPnR1mpk_P_w6vEmhYL_JBMslGLI_YLcRbFGo0_6lQYI0LEgJmB4PkvRfGwkTkFLdOypOw7HBMndvI=w600-h315-p-k "New photo · Tuesday, Sep 30 📸") ](https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPnIpxkYTMJ_siCAQH8hdeIYmU4s2cFVS76CaQSo8z7jKXLRZWwr3vja7zBkkQ8rw?key=NUdsMllxMWM1YksycHdaVTM5VnIxWWttalpQZ0lR) Sigh. Click thru for the full image. See? Weird, huh? j ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3243 "2025-09-30T19:34:06Z")
@Treppenwitz , what does “_Manade_” mean underneath the bulls’ names? In context, it seems to be something like “ranch” or maybe “corral” in the sense of a specific place that breeds cattle for the sport. But Google Translate\*\* returns nothing in French for “_manade_”. \*\* _people bag on Google Translate, but 99 times out of 100 I get useful results_ 🤷‍♂️ ---
**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:** [September 30, 2025, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3244 "2025-09-30T19:39:03Z")
My guess is that it means Breeder or something like that. So presumably the “Team” which provided the bull. j ETA - googling _manade taurau_ gets o “ **Une manade est un groupe de chevaux ou d’autres animaux, généralement domestiqués et vivant en liberté**.” A manade is a group of horses or other animals, generally domesticated but living free ---
**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:** [September 30, 2025, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3245 "2025-09-30T19:50:18Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > Yesterday I learned that George Orwell/Eric Blair’s wife Eileen Blair (who it is argued at least came up with the idea for Animal Farm, and possibly wrote some of it) studied at Oxford University under J.R.R.Tolkien. Today I learned that George Orwell is actually a pen name for Eric Arthur Blair. Having read many of his writings going back to reading _1984_ and _Animal Farm_ in high school, I’m not sure how I missed that before…or if I did previously know it, I’d evidently forgotten that fact. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3246 "2025-09-30T20:19:55Z")
> [@Treppenwitz](#): > > Weird, huh? I dunno. Professional Bull Riders rodeos make stars of individual bucking bulls and has many in their hall of fame. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3247 "2025-09-30T20:27:56Z")
When the Grease movie was filmed in 1978, Stockard played a 17-year-old at the age of 33. The film’s story takes place in 1958, when she was 13, only four years younger than her character (as portrayed 20 years later). ---
**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:** [September 30, 2025, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3248 "2025-09-30T21:00:42Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > OK then, the first robot in modern fiction. Since I literally wrote the book on the subject - _Robots in American Popular Culture_ - I get to say, not by a long shot. A case can be made for Charles H. Bennett’s _The Surprising, Unheard of, and Never-to-Be-Surpassed Adventures of Young Munchausen_ in 1865. The young genius inventor first produces a robot schoolteacher and then a full household of robot servants. These are just passing mentions among his hundreds of inventions and play no major role, unfortunately. I believe the first modern robot appeared in 1868, in Edward Ellis’ _The Steam Man of the Prairies_, a dime novel, #45 in Beadle’s American Novels series. The Steam Man was a powerful robot who could act like a locomotive but didn’t need tracks, so a carriage could be pulled at high speed even where there weren’t roads. Many more steam men, and in the late 1800s electric men, followed in dime novels and in magazine story weeklies. By the end of the century, robots were regularly appearing in stories in the better mainstream magazines. Even if you don’t consider the 19th century modern fiction, consider that Tik-Tok didn’t appear in 1907. My choice for the first truly modern robot novel in America - a style of dialog, constant action, and cliffhanger chapters rather than Wells’ plodding paragraphs in frame stories - is William Wallace Cook’s _A Round Trip to the Year 2000; Or, A Flight Through Time_, serialized in 1903 and then published as a book. This utterly remarkable tale is a satire of a future in which robots have replaced workers, who are suffering “a demoralizing expenditure of idleness.” Kurt Vonnegut wrote essentially the same book in his first novel _Player Piano_, from 1954. Cook, who followed the book with many more serials and was in every issue of the leading pulp, _The Argosy_, for about five years, is the unsung founder of all American science fiction. Baum had a huge number of examples to copy, including himself. Few people consider the Tin Woodsman a robot - rightly, since he’s more properly a cyborg with a human brain - but almost everyone forgets that Baum put a giant mechanical man in his very first novel, _Adventures in Phunnyland_, a pre-Oz failure. The cast-iron man is a minor character who appears in only one chapter and historically a footnote. ---
**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:** [September 30, 2025, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3249 "2025-09-30T21:06:14Z")
An interesting point. Being British I know next to nothing of rodeo, but yeah, I guess I can see parallels with course camarguaise. Do the individual bulls in rodeos make it onto promotional posters? j ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3250 "2025-09-30T21:06:41Z")
Wow! Stockard Channing is 81 already. I saw her live on Broadway in 1991. Very impressive in the lead role of _Six Degrees of Separation_. She was nominated for a Tony. Years later, when she starred in the film version, she was nominated for an Oscar. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3251 "2025-09-30T21:08:48Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > When the Grease movie was filmed in 1978, Stockard played a 17-year-old at the age of 33. The film’s story takes place in 1958, when she was 13, only four years younger than her character (as portrayed 20 years later). Found out yesterday that Nirvana, in their first fan club notes, talked about how their drummer Chad Channing opened a restaurant with his mom, the actress Stockard. Except the two are in no way related. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3252 "2025-09-30T21:33:35Z")
[Apparently](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BerLLlwCUAA9Hsb.jpg:large) [so.](https://sbfiestarodeo.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/PBR-Poster-2014.jpg.webp) ---
**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:** [September 30, 2025, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3253 "2025-09-30T21:55:39Z")
Wow. Just wow. Ignorance fought. But may I just point out, I said “Weird, huh?” Still true, right? Rodeos included. j ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3254 "2025-09-30T22:24:10Z")
> [@Treppenwitz](#): > > I said “Weird, huh?” Still true, right? Rodeos included. Oh, yeah. Weird. Hell, dog shows are weird when you step back from their commonality, and they make stars of animals. FWIW, most of the posters I found just had an unlabeled picture of a guy on a bull, or had country musicians as headliners. ---
**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:** [September 30, 2025, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3255 "2025-09-30T22:37:20Z")
Even aside from all of the examples @Exapno_Mapcase posted, any statistic of “the first \_\_\_\_\_ in modern \_\_\_\_\_” is always iffy, because you can make anything the first, with a suitable definition of “modern”. ---
**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:** [September 30, 2025, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3256 "2025-09-30T23:26:09Z")
Yep, that’s why I carefully qualified my statements as personal opinions. Nevertheless, they are informed opinions. How many people in the world have actually read every known early robot story? We’re probably a group of maybe a dozen. I can guarantee that none of us wrote that Wikipedia page. ---
**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:** [September 30, 2025, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3257 "2025-09-30T23:29:30Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I believe the first modern robot appeared in 1868, in Edward Ellis’ _The Steam Man of the Prairies_, a dime novel, #45 in Beadle’s American Novels series. Was that a robot that could for example act on verbal instructions, or was it something closer to a mecha? > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Few people consider the Tin Woodsman a robot - rightly, since he’s more properly a cyborg with a human brain Uhh…, as far as I know the Woodsman was all tin; he had somehow retained a human personality by a sort of Ship of Theseus method of gradual replacement. Now that I think back, there was a later novel where he encounters the still-living head of Nick Chopper, the original woodsman. Only disembodied heads aren’t quite the same thing as the intact human they came from (see for example Princess Langwidere from “Ozma of Oz”). The Chopper head is later incorporated into a composite person who isn’t exactly Nick Chopper either. ---
**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:** [September 30, 2025, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3258 "2025-09-30T23:57:28Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Was that a robot that could for example act on verbal instructions, or was it something closer to a mecha? Basically a locomotive in the shape of a human. I suppose that’s equivalent to a mecha. > The lines which the driver held controlled the course of the steam man; thus, by pulling the strap on the right, a deflection was caused which turned it in that direction, and the same acted on the other side. A small rod, which ran along the right shaft, let out or shut off the steam, as was desired, while a cord, running along the left, controlled the whistle at the nose. > [@Lumpy](#): > > Uhh…, as far as I know the Woodsman was all tin; he had somehow retained a human personality by a sort of Ship of Theseus method of gradual replacement., Yeah, that sounds right, if something that isn’t made clear in the first book, only in the sequels Baum ground out against his will. Ku Klip replicated The Woodsman’s memory and identity in tin, which is mostly cyborg-like, if magical. Oz is an enchanted land with magic-infused characters. Baum didn’t care about continuity and certainly not realism. The Woodsman is turned into a tin whistle at one point. By the time I got to Chopfyt my brain was broken. Apparently Baum invented not only the robotic voice ([Tik-Tok’s words were] “uttered all in the same tone, without any change of expression whatever,” indicated in the text by syllable breaks: “From this time forth I am your o-be-di-ent ser-vant. What-ev-er you com-mand, that I will do will-ing-ly.”) but also meta and maybe modernism itself. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2025, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3259 "2025-10-01T12:04:48Z")
I just learned that Edward G Robinsons last scene he ever filmed was his death scene in “Soylent Green.” In fact, he died for real ten days after shooting wrapped. ---
**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:** [October 1, 2025, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3260 "2025-10-01T12:20:14Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > Found out yesterday that Nirvana, in their first fan club notes, talked about how their drummer Chad Channing opened a restaurant with his mom, the actress Stockard. Except the two are in no way related. I like a good, harmless hoax as much as a random, interesting fact. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785.md?page=162) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785.md?page=164)