# Uncommon Knowledge
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [October 13, 2011, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477 "2011-10-13T00:45:11Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/1 "2011-10-13T00:45:11Z")
The passive voice is literally impossible to use in the English language; the prohibition we have on it now comes from the Romans, when they used it to erase the Etruscan culture in seventh century France. The Romans made it a whipping offense to use the passive voice, which made it grammatically impossible for an Etruscan to buy food; they spoke Latin or they died.
Rightfully considered, ‘pluperfect’ is an adverb; however, it is never used this way in a sentence.
Declension was outlawed under the Nazis, as they considered it a vulgar Hebraism of the German tongue.
Out of all the languages on Earth, Russian is the only one where pounding things is considered a grammatical necessity. Russian also has twenty declensions and five regular verbs, all of them vulgar.
Ibogaine Coca, the famous dancer, wrote a novel without using any words derived from the Dutch. This made it impossible for her to refer to anything that goes on in the bathroom in that story, which was, of course, the point.
A man in Holyoak, Maryland went a year talking backwards. He was once confined to a mental institution and twice mistaken for a German diplomat, during which time he accidentally dictated the Zimmerman telegram while attempting to order a hoagie from a slightly deaf Italian pushcart vendor.
None of our common pronunciations of Latin are correct. To get a better idea of what Cicero sounded like, imagine Sean Connery trying to imitate Elmer Fudd with a somewhat swollen tongue. For Julius Caesar, imagine Sean Connery trying to mock Paul Lynde with his two front teeth missing.
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### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/2 "2011-10-13T00:49:58Z")
I see
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### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/3 "2011-10-13T00:51:23Z")
> [@Derleth](#):
>
> The passive voice is literally impossible to use in the English language;…
The passive voice is capable of being used in English.
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### Author:  [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MPB_in_Salt_Lake)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/4 "2011-10-13T00:55:16Z")
> [@Derleth](#):
>
> A man in Holyoak, Maryland went a year talking backwards. He was once confined to a mental institution and twice mistaken for a German diplomat, during which time he accidentally dictated the Zimmerman telegram while attempting to order a hoagie from a slightly deaf Italian pushcart vendor…
I would be willing to bet $1000 that this never actually happened. (at least that he never actually went an ENTIRE year while saying EVERY SINGLE UTTERANCE that came out of his mouth backwards)
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/5 "2011-10-13T01:09:30Z")
Humor is occasionally affected by tropospheric ducting. When this happens, it is moved to a position much higher than is normal and a distinctive sound is associated with it.
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### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/6 "2011-10-13T01:11:11Z")
Reported for promoting illegal drug use.
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/7 "2011-10-13T01:14:06Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#):
>
> Reported for promoting illegal drug use.
Reported for knowledge unbecoming an officer (legally, anyone who lives in the District of Columbia is an officer for purposes of moral laws; certain knowledge is therefore prohibited under the Code Annotated).
Besides, how is this promotion? What group of people would want to imitate this poor caffeine freak you see before you?
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### Author:  [@Sunshine\_and\_Smiles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunshine_and_Smiles)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/8 "2011-10-13T01:56:20Z")
Because of the rotation of the earth, you can actually jump much farther (say, for long jump purposes in track and field) if you go east-west, like the sun. The last 8 long jump world records were set using this orientation.
In children, whose bodies aren’t fully developed, one of the by-products of sugar digestion is meth. That’s why kids always seem so hyper after eating sugary snacks.
A person can survive on wax alone for about 7 days. A wax-eater bat, on the other hand, is the only animal that feeds exclusively on it. They are found only in the Amazon rainforest and are considered a nuisance.
If you take any standardized test with a no. 6 pencil, the scanner can’t tell what the difference is between its own ink and the pencil. So, it assumes everything is correct and you pretty much always get a perfect score. You want to use a no. 2 for your name and codes and stuff though.
A 3,000 ft. mountain was stolen overnight from Great Falls National Park in the Appalachians. In its place was a note that simply said “Paul Tremblant” - a reference to an 18th century french painter of lewd women who was eventually drawn and quartered. The mountain was never recovered, although when Tremblant’s grave was exhumed investigators found a PEZ dispenser which did not exist at the time of his 1781 death.
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### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/9 "2011-10-13T02:04:39Z")
Back in 1990, a bunch of drunken teenagers in Topeka reprogrammed a Compaq 386 computer so that error messages would include disparaging sexual remarks about the user’s mother. Later, they got angry and knocked the computer off the desk. They were later arrested and charged with making an obscene clone fall.
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/10 "2011-10-13T02:17:14Z")
**robert\_columbia** : In Saigon, there’s a noodle restaurant that doubles as a pet store. The gimmick is that once you buy an animal, you decide whether you take it home or have it killed and served to you in a noodle dish. The place is called Friend Or Pho.
The Vietnamese, ever willing to experiment with capitalist ideas, have recently tried out fast food joints. Of course, they don’t eat nearly as many hamburgers as bowls of noodles, so their most popular fast food restaurant is Pho King, where “It isn’t just delicious, it’s Pho King delicious!”
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/11 "2011-10-13T02:25:42Z")
The Castle Doctrine is the only law named after a comic book character.
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### Author:  [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/12 "2011-10-13T04:47:05Z")
The most beautiful phrase in the English language is “ **Cellar door**.”
> **[Cellar door](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellar_door)**
>
> Cellar door may refer to:
You thought I made that up, didn’t you?
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### Author:  [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/13 "2011-10-13T05:18:33Z")
> [@Sunshine\_and\_Smiles](#):
>
> Because of the rotation of the earth, you can actually jump much farther (say, for long jump purposes in track and field) if you go east-west, like the sun.
This is of course in one sense true. If you jump due East at the equator and remain in the air for one second, you will (relative to a fixed point in space) travel about 465m East before you land. The stranger thing is that if you jump due West at the equator and remain in the air for one second you will (relative to a fixed point in space) travel somewhat less than 465m _East_ before you land.
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### Author:  [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/14 "2011-10-13T05:48:35Z")
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the US president to install a video tape recorder (a reel to reel monochrome model made by RCA) in the White House for entertainment. On Sept 22, 1963 he showed a tape of a Red Sox game to the visiting Prime Minister of Canada with the implied oral consent, but not the expressed written consent of Major League Baseball. He was assassinated two months later.
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### Author:  [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/15 "2011-10-13T05:57:47Z")
> [@Derleth](#):
>
> The Castle Doctrine is the only law named after a comic book character.
I think you must have made this one up. Everybody knows the Castle Doctrine came from the TV show.
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### Author:  [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/16 "2011-10-13T06:30:09Z")
The TV show “Castle” is based on the [Marvel comics](http://www.amazon.com/Castle-Richard-Castles-Deadly-Storm/dp/0785153276/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318487092&sr=1-1) of the same name, which are themselves loosely adapted from the long form novels of Richard Castle. The novels chronicle [Nikki Heat](http://www.amazon.com/Heat-Wave-Premium-Nikke/dp/0786891416/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318486796&sr=8-1) a character based on real life detective Kate Becket, who has a reality show on ABC.
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### Author:  [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/17 "2011-10-13T10:42:26Z")
The garden gnome was originally a commemerative tribute to Louis XVI’s innovative head groundskeeper. Falling out of fashion in the immediate aftermath of the French revolution, it’s popularity today is due to it’s introduction to English gardens by exiled French aristocrats.
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### Author:  [@Jackknifed\_Juggernaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackknifed_Juggernaut)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/18 "2011-10-13T11:25:18Z")
Is this thread a Netflix commercial?
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### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/19 "2011-10-13T11:44:11Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#):
>
> I think you must have made this one up. Everybody knows the Castle Doctrine came from the TV show.
No no no, it was originally the White Castle Doctrine and came about in a case involving a night manager in the ghetto. The term became known as the “Castle Doctrine” when it spread to areas where people had no idea what the crap “White Castle” is.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2011, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uncommon-knowledge/599477/20 "2011-10-13T12:44:56Z")
A female crow is called a raven. People think they’re different species, but they’re not.
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