My SINGLE favorite piece of (NYC Building) information is:
In 1978, upon completion of the 59 story Citicorp Building, that’s cantilevered over a church - a major engineering flaw was discovered. As joint weld repairs were under way, Hurricane Ella made its way up the east coast. Had the storm not went out to sea after passing by Maryland, the building most likely would have been toppled by the strong winds. The incident was pretty much hushed up for 2 decades in a report called Project S.E.R.E.N.E. (Special Engineering Review of Events Nobody Envisioned)
Oh, I thought of another favorite bit: it is literally impossible to answer questions regarding rhyming and the lack there-of in anything other than a poetic fashion. It’s human nature.
(Just kidding, of course - I have found the replies funny so far, just slightly odd in their continued resemblence.)
Bananas are radioactive, and can be found by searching with a sufficiently sensitive radiac.
For the astronomically and linguistically inclined - I tried to convince my former housemate to register the name of the great dane pup she’d gotten when she bred her dog, with the nickname ‘Disaster’, to a bitch with the nickname ‘Calamity’, as ‘Shoemaker-Levy Nine.’ (Technically, I’ll admit it should be Shoemaker-Shoemaker-Levy Nine, but that’s going a little far, even to my mind. Besides if Mr. & Mrs. Shoemaker didn’t obejct to being combined into one name, why worry about it for the dog?)
Yes, I am a geek. I like being a geek, dammit.
I remember learning that the sailors on 19th century whaling ships were totally naked when they processed the blubber, sperm oil and ambergris they took from the whales. They did this so they wouldn’t waste any of the stuff; it was worth a lot of money.
I always loved the idea of all those naked sailors cavorting in whale oil, swearing a lot.
God…over my entire life, there are so many pieces of information I’ve collected that I’ve cherished, been surprised, or been fascinated by. A “favorite” would be almost impossible, I fear.
But there’s one that comes closest. Not very obscure, not hard to remember. Probably everyone else here knows it. But it’s still special to me, and has been indescribably useful. Arguably, on a number of occasions, it’s saved my life, my livelihood, and my sanity.
Sevastopol
English Author, D.H. Lawrence and German WW1 Flying Ace … were related by marriage ??? I never knew they led alternative sexual lifestyles. No problem with that but it’s just surprising !!!
Not exactly - the umbilical veins take oxygenated blood from the placenta to the heart as well. The pulmonary vein is the only vein in a non-fetal human to have the honor.
My own favorite fun fact to know and tell. The in-room porn films you can order in hotel rooms is played for an average of 8 minutes.
Iam Fleming, the author of the original James Bond books, also wrote “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”; a children’s book that was made into a film starting Dick Van Dyke.
There is only one US state, no part of which has ever been under the flag of a foreign power (Amerind nations excluded for the purpose of this trivium).
