I have no idea whether this idea will “take off,” so to speak, but I’ve had the urge to start a miscellany-type thread just to post those odd little facts that everyone picks up from time to time and never gets the right opportunity to use them. Herewith, then, three facts you could easily have spent the rest of your life not knowing, but which are nonetheless bizarrely intriguing to know:
**1. The Canary Islands were named after dogs. ** Insulae Canariae, or the equivalent in Middle Spanish, to be precise: the islands of wild dogs, so called for the packs of feral dogs brought there by the original inhabitants. The little yellow birds found there, since you were wondering, were named after the islands.
2. The widow of Maj. Gen. James Longstreet, C.S.A. Army, built bombers during World War II. In the late 1800s, the elderly Longstreet married a sweet young thing, who continued living in Marietta, GA, after his death, and after Pearl Harbor volunteered, in her seventies, to work in the aircraft plant there building B-17s.
3. Raymond Moley, leader of FDR’s “Brains Trust” and the man who coined the phrase “New Deal,” endorsed Barry Goldwater for President in 1964. (Self-explanatory, but not a combination people would generally think likely.)
The nine-banded armadillo is the only mammal whose young are always born as identical quadruplets.
Carolus Linnaeus gave the blue whale the scientific name Balaenoptera musculus. “Musculus” is Latin for both “muscle” and “little mouse.” Linnaeus was a funny guy.
On Sept. 27, 1810, a narrow region of the Gulf Coast between present-day New Orleans and Pensacola rebelled against Spanish rule, drafted a Constitution, and declared itself the Free and Independent Republic of West Florida (officially named the ‘State of Florida’, although practically none of it fell within the modern state of Florida). The state capital was St. Francisville, in modern-day Louisiana. This new nation retained its sovereignty for 74 days under President Fulwar Skipwith, at which point it was annexed by the United States.
Ian Anderson admits to accidentally insulting Jimmy Page (or Plant. Who did most of the lyrics for Zep?) and kicking off a feud that possibly lasts to this day. In a converted church, Zep was recording in the smaller room and Tull was working on Aqualung in the bigger (possibly an indication of status, since the larger room was less desirable for a rock band) and, meeting in the hall, Ian said something along the lines of “You know, with your music and our lyrics, we could make a pretty good little band”, not realizing that he was talking to the person who wrote them.
Jeezus I’m a loser.
Um, how about - The stingrays kidneys allow them to live in waters of varying salinity.
Cows produce over 50 liters of saliva a day, but they don’t drool (much). The fluid is used to lubricate the contents of their first stomach compartment, the fermentation vat call the rumen, which doesn’t have any mucous glands of its own.
I sure believe that one, Pullet. I once let a calf suck on the four fingers of one hand. Dang!
I believe that my source on this one has an error and that the Fort referred to is Fort Duquesne which later became Pittsburg. Maybe Ducaine is an alternate spelling:
In the mid-Eighteenth Century, one of Adlai Stevenson’s ancestors was in command of an expedition to take Fort Ducaine, but he was killed on the way there. A young lieutenant took over for him. His name was George Washington.
I came in to mention the canal. Also, three POTUS have died on the 4th of July, John Adams,Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe. Jefferson and Adams in the same year.
Queen’sBohemian Rhapsody held the #1 spot on the UK Singles Chart in four different years.
Half-sisters Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine are bitter rivals who have not spoken in 30 years and each has promised not to die until the other one does.
I was even going to start a new thread about this until I saw this thread and I figured the impact of this data might be better suited to this thread. It’s a little too early to get really excited about anyway.
Unless I’m not reading the information correctly, this post is in the vicinity of Post #8396709, which is what appears in the URL window as I’m typing this.
When I noticed this piece of information a few moments ago it occurred to me that we will reach Post #9000000 within the next few months. Then I decided to check some past mileposts and came up with these fascinating figures:
Post #2000000 – Apr/15/2002
Post #3000000 – Feb/15/2003
Post #4000000 – Sep/18/2003
Post #5000000 – Jun/24/2004
Post #6000000 – Mar/29/2005
Post #7000000 – Jan/15/2006
Post #8000000 – Nov/26/2006
I was unable to get Post #1000000 because the numbering system for the software appears to have changed sometime before Post #2000000.
Somebody with more curiosity than I have at the moment might enjoy converting these month/day/year figures into Julian Dates so that the intervals between the posts could be calculated more easily. That piece of information might enable some statitical projections or some fancy guesswork to be able to predict at least the month, and perhaps the day when we’ll get to #9000000.
Just eyeballing the spread gives me the feeling we ought to get there sometime this year.
As I said, this probably doesn’t deserve its own thread just yet, but maybe attention and interest will pick up as D-Day approaches. Maybe not.
Oh oh oh oh oh, you don’t have to go, oh oh oh oh.
And who comes here to wish me well?
A sweetly-scented angel fell.
She laid her head upon my disbelief
and bathed me with her ever-smile.
And with a howl across the sand
I go escorted by a band of gentlemen in leather bound
NO-ONE (but someone to be found).
Dolphins never fully sleep. The hemispheres of their brains take turns sleeping.
In a survey of the baggage carousels in 376 airports, 44.8% travel counterclockwise, 29% clockwise, 7.5% go both ways, 3.2% other, 15.5% have no carousels . Cite
Led Zep credited “Oh Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” as traditional, arr. by Page. In fact it was written by Annie (Bredon) Briggs. She was unaware of the theft until years later, when she played it for a young family member. The kid said, “Wow, I didn’t know you played any Led Zeppelin!” http://www.furious.com/PERFECT/yardbirds2.html
The linked site shows several other songs lifted in full or part by the band.