Tell us an interesting random fact you stumbled across

Gravity on the International Space Station is 89% of that on Earth.

It was used over a montage in the TV version of Fargo. IIRC season 3 when some very bad men were doing some very bad things.

I’ve started seeing a non-porn ad recently that reminded me of this. It’s an image of someone pouring a bottle of Heinz ketchup into their gas tank, accompanied by text along the lines of “New fuel saving trick takes US”. Now, I haven’t done any research whatsoever, but I am 99.9% sure you shouldn’t put ketchup in your gas tank, and that doing so won’t help you save gas.

I did not click the ad, but I suspect the idea with both the penis/vinegar ad and the ketchup/gas tank ad is to get the viewer’s attention with a completely bizarre image, and hopefully get them to click it just out of sheer curiosity if nothing else, and once at their site pitch them something completely unrelated to what’s shown in the image.

And now I wonder if we’ll soon be seeing articles telling people to please stop putting ketchup in their gas tanks.

For a long time I thought Billie Holiday was a man. I was confused by the old Simpsons episode where Bleeding Gums Murphy died, and speaks to Lisa from heaven. At the end he tells her he has to go because he has a date with Billie Holiday. I wasn’t sure if Bleeding Gums was supposed to be gay, or if he just meant like a “man date”. That Billie Holiday was a woman never occurred to me, because I’d never heard of a woman named “Billy” – I’d probably never seen it written down before either, and I probably wasn’t really familiar with her music back then either.

Which reminds me that, in at least some kidney transplants, the new kidney is grafted into the pelvis. The kidneys are so difficult to get to that doctors tend to leave the old one in place unless removal is absolutely necessary. You can see a diagram of it in the wiki article .

Shut yarmouth!!

On the subject of meaningless lyrics, David Bowie did something slightly similar with The Bewlay Brothers (Hunky Dory).

Bowie himself is said to have told producer Ken Scott that it was a track for the American market, because “the Americans always like to read things into things”, even though the lyrics “make absolutely no sense”.

Source

Actually, I’ve always liked that song.

j

Sounds like I Am the Walrus.

Interesting!

Here’s another.

https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/24/health/severed-hand/index.html

And here’s one keeping a dog’s head alive by machine for a few hours in the USSR…freaky if it’s legit:

Actually, Billy Holiday’s real name was Eleanora Fagan.

More recently, there’s Billie Myers.

Exactly one US servicewoman became a p.o.w. to the Germans in WW2:

Billie Jean King

For all the Dr Who enthusiasts, Billie Piper. Who, Wiki says, was born Leian Paul Piper, which is a strange sidetrack - I’d never heard of a woman named Paul.

j

How about Billie Hayes, the woman who played Witchiepoo on H R Pufnstuf?

Or Billie Jo Bradley, a character on Petticoat Junction?

Or Billie Burke, aka Glinda The Good Witch?

Most male names have female counterparts. Robert, Roberta…Bobby, Bobbie.

For William, I guess Wilma or Wilhelmina would be most common. Or you could do like Will Smith and name your daughter Willow. Or Willa if you liked author Willa Cather.

Looking it up in Wikipedia, it seems at least a couple of these were born “Lillian,” and a lot of Lillians go by Lily, which isn’t too far from “Billie.” Rob/Bob, Will/Bill, Rick/Dick, Lily/Billie?

I’ve always thought it would be cool to name a daughter Lizard.

She’d go by Liz, of course. But when anyone asked if that was short for Elizabeth, she could say, “no, Lizard”.

Now that I think about it I work with a Belinda. That’s what I always call her but I notice on social media she goes by Billie.