# What totally useless facts have you learned recently? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 16, 2008, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571 "2008-04-16T09:59:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dante](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dante/32/9673_2.png) [@Dante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dante)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/21 "2008-04-17T13:59:00Z")
[QUOTE=SylverOne] Rugby shirts have rubber buttons. [/QUOTE] I just found out I can’t say that three times fast. Riding, dog and horse are all types of quirts. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/22 "2008-04-17T14:30:24Z")
Finger paint washes right out of clothes without staining. ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/23 "2008-04-17T15:14:46Z")
A stitch in time will jam your watch ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/24 "2008-04-17T17:41:02Z")
Russell, Cobain and Vonnegut are all Kurts. ---
**Author:** ![TommyTutone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c4cdca/32.png) [@TommyTutone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TommyTutone)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/25 "2008-04-17T17:47:19Z")
I just took a backstage tour at the Magic Kindgom at Disney World and learned all sorts of otherwise useless stuff. A couple of examples: - it takes 45 minutes to empty the water in Splash Mountain, which they do every night, and then 2 hours for the pumps to refill it the next morning. When the water is drained, the reservoir containing the water reaches 16 feet deep. In addition, the water is treated with bromine to keep it clean. - most people know that Main Street’s windows contain the names of many of the original imagineers that worked on the park, but there is one window that contains the name ‘M.T. Lott’ which was the pseudonym used for much of the acquisitions of the swampland for the park. Beneath that name are several corporate names of the companies that actually bought the land, names such as ‘Ayefour’ (as in I-4) and ‘South American Acquisitions’. - technically there are no bathrooms in Liberty Square, to match the way colonial city homes were. In addition, while most of the sidewalks are paved to match the old style, there is a brown stretch running in front of the houses that varies in direction and width. This is to match the stream of sewage that was tossed from the upstairs windows when chamberpots were filled. ---
**Author:** ![MadTheSwine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MadTheSwine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MadTheSwine)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/26 "2008-04-17T17:54:06Z")
[QUOTE=gigi] Russell, Cobain and Vonnegut are all Kurts. [/QUOTE] No need for the Kurt reply. ---
**Author:** ![Dervorin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/27 "2008-04-17T17:57:43Z")
[QUOTE=Dante] I just found out I can’t say that three times fast. Riding, dog and horse are all types of quirts. [/QUOTE] " ’ and ` are all types of quotes. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/28 "2008-04-17T18:01:42Z")
I recently read that a man was stuck in an elevator for 41 hours. The horror! ---
**Author:** ![Flander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8c91f0/32.png) [@Flander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flander)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/29 "2008-04-17T19:11:16Z")
[QUOTE=JThunder] I recently read that a man was stuck in an elevator for 41 hours. The horror! [/QUOTE] That must have seemed like days. Poor guy. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/30 "2008-04-17T20:04:16Z")
[Mary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mighty_Mary) the 10,000 lb circus elephant was publicly hanged in 1916 after stomping on a trainer who had poked her with a prod. ---
**Author:** ![Can\_Handle\_the\_Truth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Can\_Handle\_the\_Truth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Can_Handle_the_Truth)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/31 "2008-04-17T22:58:41Z")
[Copper alloys are germicidal.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect#Applications_of_the_oligodynamic_effect) Well, perhaps not totally useless… ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2008, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/32 "2008-04-18T00:12:44Z")
[QUOTE=FatBaldGuy] 32 ounces, 1/4 gallon, 2 pints and 4 cups are all quarts. [/QUOTE] Hey, that’s not useless. “We have a recipe calling for a cup of whipping cream, but the little boxes are all labelled 1/2 pint… Oh!” One of the earliest uses (I think _the_ earliest use) of Teflon was to coat components of the A-Bomb. I guess A-Bomb innards are quite corrosive. Evidently, Roy Plunkett discovered the stuff by accident and didn’t know what to do with it until the nice gentlemen from the Manhattan Project thought it would come in handy. ([Cite](http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=2665) ) ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2008, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/33 "2008-04-18T00:12:53Z")
Calembour and paronomasia are big words meaning Pun. My vocabulary is vast. Well, at least half-vast. ---
**Author:** ![lizardling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f4b2a3/32.png) [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2008, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/34 "2008-04-18T03:11:05Z")
A tannoy is a British PA system. ---
**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:** [April 18, 2008, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/35 "2008-04-18T03:55:56Z")
> [@](#): > > I recently read that a man was stuck in an elevator for 41 hours. The horror! And thanks to [security camera footage](http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=29053), you can enjoy it right along with him. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2008, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/36 "2008-04-18T05:29:43Z")
Not the useless fact but essential to set-up in case anybody doesn’t know: a mule is the 63-chromosomed hybrid offspring of a donkey father (who has 62 chromosomes) and a horse mother (horses have 64 chromosomes). The vast majority of mules (99.9%+) are believed to be sterile, but it is a documented and authenticated fact that some female mules have been born fertile, though as male mules are sterile the she-mule can only breed with a horse or with a donkey. Here’s the useless but for some reason, if only to me, interesting fact: the known offspring of mule mothers with donkey fathers have been chromosomally and genetically identical to a mule. The offspring of a mule mother and a horse father have been chromosomally and genetically identical to a horse. No offspring of fertile mules have ever looked like they’re part mule and part “whatever the other parent is”. * * * ## Recently learned useless information part deux: The American actor Edwin Forrest (1806-1872) was insanely popular in antebellum NYC but was booed and jeered in England, while the English actor William MacReady was very [not quite insanely] popular in England but nowhere near as much in America, and the two actors absolutely despised each other. At one point they were both in NYC portraying MacBeth in separate productions, Forrest at the Broadway Theater and MacReady at the Astor Place Opera House, when their respective fans each began going to the other theater to heckle the actor they didn’t like. It got increasingly destructive until, on the night of May 10, 1849, the fans booing MacReady got so out of control that a riot began called, naturally enough, “The Astor Place Riot”. It isn’t particularly interesting that hecklers at a theater got out of control but _how_ out of control they got: on that night a crowd of theater goers heckling an actor playing MacBeth escalated into a riot in which more than 30 people (several of them armed soldiers brought in to control the ruckus) were _killed_ or mortally wounded, and many more were seriously injured, all due to the rivalry over which was the better actor. (And yet some people have the nerve to say Americans don’t appreciate the arts…) Totally useless information: Billy Ray Cyrus and his daughter Miley have a common ancestor with Dolly Parton, a man named Fielding Hunt who died sometime during the Depression. They did not know it until they (Parton and Cyrus) had known each other for several years as neither had parents who were close to the man. A more interesting reason is _why_ their parents did not know their own grandfather (or great-grandfather or whatever he was to Billy Ray and Dolly’s respective parent) even though their lives overlapped by several years: Hunt was the father of more than thirty children, all of them legitimate and most of whom lived to adulthood. He had at least 15 children with his first wife, 16 with his second, and at least 1 with his third, and thus well over a hundred grandchildren and great grandchildren just in his own lifetime. (He is far from the most prolific American serial monogamist, and in fact there are women who have been confirmed as the mother of more than 30 children due to multiple-multiple births.) ---
**Author:** ![Noel\_Prosequi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b19c9b/32.png) [@Noel\_Prosequi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noel_Prosequi)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2008, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/37 "2008-04-18T06:08:36Z")
[QUOTE=uncle squeegee] There are a lot of splinter groups from the Mormon church (I thought there were only 2, there are a couple dozen). Some of the splinter groups split multiple times. [/QUOTE] Entirely coincidentally, I just learned today that there is a word for this - “fissiparous”, which means reproducing by fission. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2008, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/38 "2008-04-18T06:37:56Z")
[QUOTE=JThunder] I recently read that a man was stuck in an elevator for 41 hours. The horror! [/QUOTE] [Maybe he should have jumped](http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2814298.html?menu=) > [@](#): > > A German man survived a 25ft plunge down a lift shaft when he landed on a woman who had fallen down it a day before. Jens Wilhelms, 27, was unhurt after landing on the 57-year-old woman and managed to free himself from the shaft at the apartment block in Frankfurt am Main where he lived. ---
**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:** [April 18, 2008, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/39 "2008-04-18T09:36:16Z")
John Hethrington invented the top hat in 1797. The first time he wore it on the street it created such a commotion that he was convicted of disturbing the peace and a law was passed making it illegal to wear a top hat in public. ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2008, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571/40 "2008-04-18T10:52:17Z")
[QUOTE=Dervorin] " ’ and ` are all types of quotes. [/QUOTE] I’m afraid not: “, ”, ‘ and ’ are types of quotes. What you have there are an inch mark, a foot mark and a grave accent. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-totally-useless-facts-have-you-learned-recently/445571.md?page=3)