It’s common knowledge that on May 3, 1954, Roger Bannister became the first man to run a mile in less than 4 minutes.
Less well known, and unknown to me until yesterday, is that fellow Brit Diane Leather became the first woman to run a mile in less than 5 minutes, just 26 days later and not all that far away.
I learned today that “Game of Thrones” is (apparently) a TV series. I saw something connecting it with an Emmy, but I wasn’t sure if it was a video game or a movie or a book or what, so I looked it up on Wikipedia…
Uhhhh… I don’t understand. Just about every house I’ve ever seen has separate faucets for hot and cold water. For the bathroom anyway. Then again, I don’t know anyone who lives in ultra-new housing. Is this becoming obsolete or something?
I think he’s talking about two completely separate spigots, with the hot and cold not mixing before coming out in single stream. but rather two separate streams.
Common in older houses in America when I was growing up, too.
When I visited a friend in 1970 who had recently moved to England, he told me that mixing faucets were illegal there. Apparently, there was a fear that microbes could develop in the hot water tank, move into the mixing faucet, move into the cold water supply and contaminate the neighborhood. All this in a moving stream of water. I kid you not.
I learned recently that “gaol” and “jail” are pronounced the same way. I’m 42 and had always thought “gaol” was an archaic spelling and pronunciation of today’s “jail”.
Edit: I included the quote because I figure mine is also in the category of things everyone else knew but I had just found out.
Well I’ll be damned. It didn’t know that either but it is a little disappointing. I want the pronunciation to be something like “gall”. It sounds disturbingly medieval that way.
I learned that there are people stupid enough to write enterprise level data conversion software without documenting it in an Interface Control Document.
Not that it makes any difference, since the enterprise is too stupid to have a place to store documentation, so when I wrote one (out of the goodness of my heart), I had to email it to the likely suspects and tell them to pass it along.
I found out that Firemen (at least in my city) can write tickets just like policemen. I was working with a Fire/Rescue Captain at the local high school when we encountered someone’s car parked in a fire lane. He insisted the owner move his car and clear the lane. The owner objected until the firemen began writing a ticket and called on his radio for the city to send a tow truck.
It makes sense I suppose, but I hadn’t realized a fireman could actually write tickets for parking violations.
According to Wikipedia, the James Bond theme is based on a song called “Good Sign, Bad Sign.” It was written for a musical called A House for Mr. Biswas, based on a novel of the same name.
If you’re eating pistachios and can’t open the nut because the slit is too narrow or too tight to open using your nails, take a used shell half, insert it into the opening, turn it like you would a key and “Viola!” you got yourself some fresh pistachio innards!