# 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:** 177
**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:** [November 7, 2025, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3521 "2025-11-07T19:26:07Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > A stove in German is either “Ofen” in the sense of oven, or “Herd” (for cooking). But there’s a word that’s definitely a cognate to “stove”, and that’s “Stövchen”. It’s a device to keep a kettle of tea warm, like this: That’s a great idea! ---
**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:** [November 7, 2025, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3522 "2025-11-07T19:48:12Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > And the connection between “stove” and “Stube” is news for me. It isn’t obvious, and it clearly took literally decades before the penny dropped for me. But when you follow the cognates from standard German to Plattdeutsch to English it’s as plain as day if you are aware of the general pattern of sound changes. I forgot to mention that, in English as well, “stove” originally meant an artificially heated house or room, usually intended for some specific purpose such as bathing. If ski resorts had existed in early modern times, warming huts could also have been termed stoves. I wouldn’t have known about this usage if it hadn’t been mentioned in a completely unrelated book that I read years ago. Some non-cooking-related usages of “stove” survive; like the pot belly stove used to warm rooms in the early 1800s. Our house came with a “pellet stove” for warmth that we never use because it’s so noisy. ---
**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:** [November 7, 2025, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3523 "2025-11-07T19:54:23Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > I just eat a slice of toast or a Brötchen (Semmel, Schrippe, Wecke, bread roll) with my soup, no hifalutin croutons… You have good bread though. I miss eating rye bread without seeds, which barely exists here. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2025, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3524 "2025-11-07T20:06:40Z")
Stumbled across this quite a while ago and recently came across it again: [James Earl Jones used his “Darth Vader” voice on CB – and freaked people out!](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/james-earl-jones-hes-pretended-671862/) > I had to stop doing that,” Jones [told the _Times magazine_.](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/magazine/james-earl-jones-on-darth-vader-mufasa-and-natch-totes-mcgotes.html) ---
**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:** [November 7, 2025, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3525 "2025-11-07T21:07:47Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > That would tend to wet the fireworks (“crackers”) so they would be squibs. It’s interesting how some of these semantic variations seem to be related to heat, fire, or explosions. I understand that you have “torches” in your phones over there, which sounds terribly exciting although rather dangerous as well. ---
**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:** [November 7, 2025, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3526 "2025-11-07T22:04:35Z")
“Flashlight”; although it’s been decades now since I’ve seen one with an actual button for signaling in Morse code. (Checks online) apparently you can still get them. (Checks some more) and they now make a light with a keypad that you can compose a message and it will signal in Morse (hopefully someone more literate in Morse can read it). ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2025, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3527 "2025-11-07T22:49:21Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > “Stove” to mean what you cook on is a chiefly American usage; “cooker” is the usual word elsewhere. I already knew that people in the UK use the word “cooker” but wasn’t aware that “stove” is mostly not used there. > > The word stove brings up another thing that took me a long time to catch on to. Its cognate word in German is _Stube_, which means a cozy room, or a room where you would go to warm up. I guess that’s somewhat similar to “foyer” which means an entrance room in modern English but ultimately derives from a term meaning hearth or fireplace. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2025, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3528 "2025-11-08T00:57:54Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > (hopefully someone more literate in Morse can read it). Not necessary; there are apps that use a phone camera to watch a light flashing in Morse code and will decode it for you. ---
**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:** [November 8, 2025, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3529 "2025-11-08T01:09:59Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > “Stove” to mean what you cook on is a chiefly American usage; Agree. Though it should be mentioned stove manufacturers & retailers will not call it a stove. They will call it a range. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2025, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3530 "2025-11-08T01:53:24Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > They will call it a range. A range is a single, 2-in-1 appliance that has a stove and oven combined. But a stove can also be just a stovetop with no oven, such as built into a countertop. ---
**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:** [November 8, 2025, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3531 "2025-11-08T03:10:17Z")
I just did a search on a local appliance store. Entering “stove” brought up nothing but ranges. Entering “stovetop” brought up nothing at all. The piece that features just the burners is called a “burner rangetop.” That’s not what I was expecting. I wouldn’t have thought of it except that I tried “burners” as a search term. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2025, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3532 "2025-11-08T03:13:22Z")
The term I’ve most often seen in the US for the appliance with burners and no oven is “cooktop”. ---
**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:** [November 8, 2025, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3533 "2025-11-08T04:14:55Z")
That gets a different set of hits than rangetop. Interesting. ---
**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:** [November 8, 2025, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3534 "2025-11-08T18:32:00Z")
Interesting that the appliance-sellers would use such different terminology from the people using them. In my experience, most Americans would refer to the thing you boil a pot of water on as the “stove”, and the hot box you bake in as the “oven”, and if, as is common, both of those are found on the same appliance, you’d also refer to that appliance as a whole as an “oven” (like, “I paid the movers to carry the new oven up to my kitchen”). ---
**Author:** ![dougrb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/76d3ee/32.png) [@dougrb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougrb)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2025, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3535 "2025-11-08T22:56:13Z")
Any tangent line to the function y=1/x will make a triangle with the XY axis with an area of 2. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq6E8EeePVk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq6E8EeePVk) ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2025, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3536 "2025-11-08T23:19:24Z")
I would pay the movers to bring in the stove, which would have an oven for baking and a stovetop for frying. I’m a bit vague about what “range” means. ---
**Author:** ![fachverwirrt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/94ad74/32.png) [@fachverwirrt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fachverwirrt)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2025, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3537 "2025-11-08T23:33:19Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > I’m a bit vague about what “range” means. It’s where the buffalo roam. ---
**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:** [November 8, 2025, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3538 "2025-11-08T23:45:48Z")
If I heard someone using the word “range”, in this context, I would assume it meant the stovetop, the upper cooking surface. But I wouldn’t use the word myself. ---
**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:** [November 9, 2025, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3539 "2025-11-09T03:43:24Z")
Not at all cookware-nomenclaturative, a random fact debunked: the late Lisa Loring (who, at the tender age of six captured the public’s attention as Wednesday Addams, and then largely languished at the periphery of the entertainment industry) claimed to have discovered the body of Kelly Van Dyke (daughter of “My Mother the Car” Jerry Van Dyke and niece of Dick Van Dyke). Kelly Van Dyke was among the sad legion of unhappy Hollywood childhoods: born into a society of talented people, though bereft of that quality themselves; and not at the parental star-level of what we now call “nepo-babies,” where the difference was immaterial. Therefore that pernicious force which preys upon so many other Hollywood hopefuls and despondents sucked her up out of the Los Angeles basin through the San Gabriels into the porn studios in the Valley. And because it was the 1980s during the AIDS era, the public’s fixation on the Freudian nexus of Death and Sex ensured that the work would be degrading. Kelly met Jack Nance when both were in the same 12-step substance abuse avoidance program. In a sad coincidence, 12-step programs only have a 12% success rate, but to further diminish that, love-matches made there are faced against those recovery odds as well as the prospects of the matches themselves. “Work your program, not the room,” is solid Alcoholics/Narcotics Anonymous advice, but the flesh is weak; hence its presence in the room in the first place. Jack, who was paid $25 a week by David Lynch during the production of _Eraserhead_, and grateful for it though drinking away much of it, found a match in Kelly. In 1991 Jack was on location where the last few bucks were being squeezed out of a late-late era slash & burn comedy genre franchise with _Meatballs IV_ in Oregon (as if a shorter commute from Arrowhead wouldn’t suffice), when Kelly called to threaten suicide (an emotional blackmail gambit common to co-dependents, which she may not have made had the shoot actually had been at nearby Arrowhead). In a deu ex machina, a thunderstorm cut out the phone connection, and Jack lost almost an hour reaching a local sheriff’s deputy and thereby the LAPD to effect a heath & welfare call that discovered Kelly’s lifeless body. According to Jack’s brother, it was he and Jack’s mother who performed what Catholics term one of the Cardinal acts of Corporal Mercy, and cleaned up drunken pre-suicide vomitus and post-mortem stool. Jack never recovered from the incident and in less than five of those Los Angeles years that just bleed together since they don’t have distinct change-of-seasons, died perhaps as the result of a pointless fight outside a donut shop, or, that being an alcoholic’s bullshit bravado cover story, simply from a drunken slip & fall. Either way, his mother had had enough herself, and she too passed on a few months afterwards. Lisa Loring, for her part, had made a frustrating, on-again/off-again marriage with a male performer in porn; and had herself worked in a supporting though non-performance capacity in the industry. They appeared as guests on one of the tabloid talk shows of the era (Phil Donahue or Sally Jesse Raphael or whatever), as exemplars of their current version of the “can this marriage be saved?” shtick, for all the world to see. Because it’s Hollywood: where, if the whole world doesn’t see it, it’s invisible. And therefore worthless. Lisa’s life would end in 2023 from stroke from high blood pressure. To quote Thackeray, “good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now,” And so were the pressures that bore down upon their lives equal as well. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2025, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3540 "2025-11-09T04:47:35Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > And so were the pressures that bore down upon their lives equal as well. Wow, that was one helluva story, @Slithy_Tove. I hope “author” is your day job. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785.md?page=176) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785.md?page=178)