So what gems have you come across here?
I first heard about Star Trek: New Voyages in an SDMB thread (here). Eventually, I probably would have come across this info elsewhere, but sooner is better than later. I’m grateful to Mr. Blue Sky for cluing me in.
The info that Random gave me in this thread got me a little over $3000 that I may have just ignored.
Man has visited the deepest part of the worlds oceans, Challenger Deep in the Mariana’s Trench, just once. In 1960. For 20 minutes.
Though located in England, the stones forming Stonehenge came from Wales.
However, whales are aquatic mammals, so that never happened. Stonehenge is merely the mental projection of psychotic English ESPers.
Without the SDMB, I would never have known the rest of the story.
Much to my shock, and this information is still in somewhat limited availability,
Vader is Luke’s father.
That Emily Dickenson’s poetry can be sung to the tune of either Yellow Rose of Texas or Gilligan’s Island.
Too bad I didn’t know this in the tenth grade: it would’ve helped in memorizing the boring things.
Just because whales are marine mammals doesn’t prevent them from providing stones for Stoneage - they could come from the petrified stomach contents of fossil whales! I hear druids always had a fond place in their hearts for petrified whales… or is it that petrified whale have a fond place in their hearts for druids?
No matter what you say, somebody is offended, so you have to check the percentage of complaints per views on a thread, before worrying about it.
That being a Republican and an American does not mean you’re a bat-shit crazy bush-hugger.
And, if we’re allowed a 2nd answer, that people can take a message board that seriously.
Think before you speak. (I mean I knew it already but I didn’t really know it, ya know?)
I think how people wipe the buts was a very interesting and useful thread :rolleyes:
I’m drawing a blank trying to remember the most interesting. It is all the slightly interesting things and the fact I improve my trivial pursuit skills each time I visit that keeps me coming back for more.
Most interesting that Lincoln’s freedman policy would have differed markedly from Johnson’s had he lived.
Most useful what that Microsoft User thing has made me look pretty sharp a time or two since
most useful? When tying shoes, instead of a double knot, go around the loop twice instead of once. It stays tied nearly as well as a double knot, and is easier to untie. That little bit of knowledge I use all the time, I have 2 kids.
Yeah, I’ve been doing this for a long time now as a result of that thread.
That an ounce of Bat-preparation is worth a pound of retribution.
Interesting, but not useful: There’s a little arrow hidden in the FedEx logo, nestled between the ‘E’ and the ‘X’ in Ex.
I never noticed it till someone mentioned it in a thread a while back.
Once you realize it’s there, it stands out like a neon sign.
I learned about the Fallout games here. I also learned that Activision had collected the Zork games onto one CD.
It was my baby brother, though, who introduced me to the evil timesucker that is Nethack.
I learned they used to make the cross-hairs in telescopic sights from strands of spider silk.
ummm, loads. lessee, with the search function kinda slow, it’s hard to link. I learned how to make sourdough bread, and someone was kind enough to post a link to a site about a guy that used to give out free sourdough starters from his Grandmothers starter from the Oregon pioneer days. Carl. And now that Carl’s yeast starter himself, a group of people keep up the website and will send you the sourdough starter in exchange for a stamped self addressed envelope. That’s just way cool.
I;ve learned tons of cool stuff here, but hard to think of them off the cuff. A lot of baking/cooking related but also on tons of other subjects. Heck, I live in a foreign land, if I need just about anything I’ll ask here first. Usually, by the time I’ve searched myself, someone has already pointed me in the right or better direction.