# 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:** 229
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4561 "2026-05-01T14:57:47Z")
Plus, being it’s US-1 in Maine, you’re going to experience an eerily accurate feel of interstellar space travel as it will take you roughly 150 years to journey between Portland and Portsmouth. 🤪 ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4562 "2026-05-01T17:00:56Z")
Montgomery, Alabama is located in Montgomery County. But they are named after two different people. The city of Montgomery is named after Richard Montgomery, a Revolutionary War general. Montgomery County is named after Lemuel Montgomery, an officer in the War of 1812. ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Finn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Mark\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4563 "2026-05-01T17:05:39Z")
Coincidentally - the Eris “planet” is displayed in Maine in a town also called Topsfield - 300 miles away from Topsfield MA. [Topsfield, Maine, USA to Topsfield, Massachusetts 01983, USA - Google Maps](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Topsfield,+Maine,+USA/Topsfield,+Massachusetts+01983,+USA/@44.0216377,-70.6789557,8z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x4ca59c81ba5ae119:0xfd73e5c205e6dbc5!2m2!1d-67.7357917!2d45.4188893!1m5!1m1!1s0x89e40bee412d0c99:0xa431d5f306d316bc!2m2!1d-70.9504706!2d42.6418168?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDQyOC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D) (at the same scale, Alpha Centauri would be 13,000 miles away). ---
**Author:** ![billy-jack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@billy-jack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billy-jack)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4564 "2026-05-01T17:09:22Z")
Years ago in the Journal of Irreproduciible Results, there was an paper on a doppler laser radar. If I remember correctly, the paper was about using it to measure the speed of a snail. We had earlier done research on building a doppler laser radar for police use. It sounded like a good idea, but it became clear that at anything more than about a mile per hour, the signal overwhelmed the processor so much that we were unable to process the signal. That’s why when the police use a laser to measure your speed, they are measuring time of flight rather than a doppler shift. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4565 "2026-05-01T17:12:10Z")
> [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](#): > > By sheer coincidence, the young lady seen in the opening credits montage of “Hawaii Five-O” is a Hawaiian model named. . . “Elizabeth Logue,” inexorably conflating those two names everywhere. Pics of Mrs. Betty Logue Duggan are few and far between. Her findagrave entry actually shows the Hawaiian model, at least at this time. No idea whether the Hawaiian Elizabeth Logue is still living. The hula dancer in the opening credits is Helen Kuoha. She went on to get a doctorate and become a college professor in business technology. Kuoha also had a cameo in the 2010 reboot series. She was interviewed at that time and said she believed she was the last living person from the original series’ opening credit sequence. (Kuoha herself died in 2018.) ---
**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:** [May 1, 2026, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4566 "2026-05-01T18:04:14Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Montgomery, Alabama is located in Montgomery County. But they are named after two different people. > > The city of Montgomery is named after Richard Montgomery, a Revolutionary War general. Montgomery County is named after Lemuel Montgomery, an officer in the War of 1812. That’s funny to me because I grew up in Montgomery County Maryland and Richard Montgomery High School was one of my high schools’ rivals. My high school, Thomas Sprigg Wootton HS, is named after the guy who founded the county and named it after RM himself. ---
**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:** [May 2, 2026, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4567 "2026-05-02T06:15:19Z")
> [@Mark\_Finn](#): > > (at the same scale, Alpha Centauri would be 13,000 miles away). That’s cool. They could put a 70-foot-diamter Alpha sphere (or circle) in Perth, Australia and that would be pretty close to correct (it’s a little less than 12,000 miles away – as far as you can get on land, and even the true antipode doesn’t quite get you to 13,000). (Yes, technically, it would only be a little less than 8,000 miles away…but the point is to experience the distance analogically, and one would do that by traveling along the earth’s surface.) ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2026, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4568 "2026-05-05T22:44:09Z")
Olive Oyl’s brother Castor appeared in only one cartoon. Sorry, I didn’t catch the title, but it aired on MeTV yesterday or today. ---
**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:** [May 5, 2026, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4569 "2026-05-05T22:47:03Z")
I just learned on CBS Sunday Morning that on today’s date (May 3) in 1978, the first spam email was sent. I didn’t even realize that email existed at that time, so I Googled it. On that date, Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corporation sent a message to about 400 users on the US Defense Department’s ARPANET. The message advertised a demonstration of the new DECSYSTEM-20 computer. The response was mostly negative, and Thuerk was reprimanded and instructed never to do it again. However, the message generated about 13 million bucks in sales for DEC. So the first spam message proved that spam works. Dammit. ---
**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:** [May 6, 2026, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4570 "2026-05-06T00:28:18Z")
When King Features put their stamp on the made-for-television Popeye cartoons in the early 1960s (the ones where Popeye’s nemesis is “Brutus”), they frequently worked in a few background cameos of the original strip characters. I recall seeing Tor, Ham Gravy (look it up) and Cole Oyl for examples. Any blink-and-you-missed-it appearances for Castor there? ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2026, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4571 "2026-05-10T15:41:11Z")
Yesterday I learned that nostalgia for a simpler, more prosperous past took hold in America in the 1920s and 30s, when people harkened back to the last decade of the 19th century. The term “The Gay Nineties” was used to refer to this period. > **[Gay Nineties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Nineties)** > > The Gay Nineties is an American nostalgic term and a periodization of the history of the United States referring to the decade of the 1890s. It is known in the United Kingdom as the Naughty Nineties, and refers there to the decade of supposedly decadent art of Aubrey Beardsley, the witty plays and trial of Oscar Wilde, society scandals and the beginning of the suffragette movement.\[citation needed\] > Despite the term, part of the decade was marked by an economic crisis, which greatly worsened whe... > [@](#): > > You see, back in the earlier half of The 20th Century, people became enamored with the 1890s. It was where what we now recognize as “decade nostalgia” was born, and The Gay Nineties became a popular setting for films of The '30s, The '40s and, to a lesser degree, The '50s and The '60s, by which time it was seen as that innocent age before the World Wars and the atomic bombs. This is the earliest decade which historiography regards as a distinct time period; prior to this, history is generally divided into “ages” or “eras” which lasted for a generation, or for the reign of a monarch. Since this reckoning of time by decades was retroactive, it didn’t catch on until The Roaring '20s and The Dirty 30s, which is one reason why there is no widely-accepted term for either of the first two decades of the twentieth century — and thus why there wasn’t for the first two decades of the twenty-first century, either. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheGay90s](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheGay90s) ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2026, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4572 "2026-05-10T17:13:20Z")
This is probably well known all around, but yesterday I was reminded that the name of the computer HAL is a Cesar cipher -1 for IBM. ---
**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:** [May 10, 2026, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4573 "2026-05-10T17:19:29Z")
I knew the IBM \> HAL thing, but I didn’t know “Cesar cipher -1.” ---
**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:** [May 10, 2026, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4574 "2026-05-10T17:32:15Z")
FWIW, Kubrick always denied that it was intentional. But I never believed him. ---
**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:** [May 10, 2026, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4575 "2026-05-10T18:16:22Z")
Yeah, I think what he was really denying was wanting to be sued by IBM. ---
**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:** [May 10, 2026, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4576 "2026-05-10T18:21:52Z")
Was that ever a real consideration by IBM at the time, to sue Kubrick over the name? I couldn’t say, I was born in the year the movie came out. ---
**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:** [May 10, 2026, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4577 "2026-05-10T19:00:33Z")
Clarke himself named HAL and said often that the IBM coincidence never occurred to him. > …about once a week some character spots the fact that HAL is one letter ahead of IBM, and promptly assumes that Stanley and I were taking a crack at the estimable institution … As it happened, IBM had given us a good deal of help, so we were quite embarrassed by this, and would have changed the name had we spotted the coincidence. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2026, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4578 "2026-05-10T19:34:29Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Clarke himself named HAL and said often that the IBM coincidence never occurred to him. Maybe, but if there are 26 letters in the English alphabet the chances for that coincidence are 1 to 26³ = 17,576 ---
**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:** [May 10, 2026, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4579 "2026-05-10T20:11:35Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Clarke himself named HAL and said often that the IBM coincidence never occurred to him. I still don’t buy it. These were two well-respected and intelligent creators, an author and a filmmaker, and they both had collaborators, other writers, editors and so on, and nobody in the whole deal caught the HAL-IBM thing before the film was released? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2026, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/4580 "2026-05-10T20:34:49Z")
Why would they bother? It’s not obvious. And it wasn’t until many years later that anyone came up with that explanation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785.md?page=228) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785.md?page=230)