What's your trivially useful pieces of information

endacl

Esel wrote: »

Which one do you recommend?

Which kangaroo? Much of a muchness really...

PlamenDon

Dublin Mean Time was 25 minutes and 21 seconds behind the local time in Britain, GMT

Capt'n Midnight

keith16 wrote: »

Speaking of which, if you are ever unsure which side of your car the petrol tank is on, the fuel gauge has a little arrow (more of a triangle really) point to either the left or right side of your car, so you know which side to pull up to the pump at.

See attached.

Just drive a Jaguar XJS.

It has a fuel cap on both sides.



Which is very handy as some early Jags were so badly tuned leaving the factory they had very , very low MPG.

Capt'n Midnight

JCB make big yellow diggers. They tried making a car once.

It got 11 MPG









at 350 mph / 563 Km/h :cool:

Capt'n Midnight

PlamenDon wrote: »

Dublin Mean Time was 25 minutes and 21 seconds behind the local time in Britain, GMT

Before the founding of the state Dunsink Observatory had a master clock wired by the telephone system to other clocks all around Dublin so they were all synchronised. After the founding of the state phone charges went up so it was discontinued.

wakka12

...And Justice wrote: »

In 1967, Australia held a referendum to recognize aborigines as people, before 1967 they were classified as flora and fauna, you could kill one for the craic and nothing would happen to you.

Is that seriously true? Thats absolutely insane..1967

EDIT: Just looked it up, its a myth. The referendum was not about that. There was never a flora and fauna act, it was about counting aborigines in the census differently, and aborigines were counted as people before then..so you couldn't shoot them and get off scot-free. Don't understand how such a strange rumour could have ever started.

prinzeugen

ScumLord wrote: »

Corn is basically a type of grass. I can't find any page that corroborates this fact, where did it come out of?

Corn is not a grass. Its not a fruit and its not a veg.

My college lecturer told us this while studying horticulture. He once worked for British Seed Houses and could pull a lump of grass from anywhere and tell us the latin names for every blade.

KKkitty

The superstition that if you broke a mirror equated to 7 years bad luck derived from ancient times where if a servant broke their master's mirror it would take 7 years wages to replace it.

IvyTheTerrible

prinzeugen wrote: »

Corn is not a grass. Its not a fruit and its not a veg.

My college lecturer told us this while studying horticulture. He once worked for British Seed Houses and could pull a lump of grass from anywhere and tell us the latin names for every blade.

Yes it is a grass. It's one member of the Graminae family (the grass family, which includes wheat, rice and barley too, among thousands of other species). I seriously doubt your lecturer told you it wasn't a grass.
EDIT and on the DNA thing, maybe he meant a specific piece of the DNA? Because of course maize shares some of it's DNA with other organisms. (In part of my doctorate, I compared DNA sequences of lots of grass species, including maize, and yes, they shared DNA.)

DEFTLEFTHAND

The Greenland Shark is the one of the oldest living lifeforms on this planet.

This summer Marine scientists in the Arctic corralled a group of females and did Carbon dating on their eyes. The eldest of the group was nearly 400 years of age.

It was always known that they had massive lifespans but the extent of which was not known.

Giant Tortoises live incredible lifespans also.

The longest of the mammals is the Bowhead Whale. Their lifespane tends to range between 150 to 200 years.

The flying mouse

md23040 wrote: »

Of course that's the case based at 100kph. But because kilometres are metric it is possible to then apply time of arrival to any speed.

In the case of above, if you're 60km from home then based at

100km it will take 36 minutes but if you average speed on a country road was either 70km/h or 80km/h then

36 minutes divided by .7 (average speed 70 km/h) = 51.5 minutes
36 minutes divided by .8 (average speed 80 km/h)= 45 minutes


120 km from home will take you

1hour 12 minutes - 72mins divided by .7 (average speed 70 km/h) = 103 minutes or 1 Hour 43 minutes

1hour 12 minutes - 72 minutes divided by .8 (average speed 80 km/h) = 90 minutes or 1 hour 30 minutes

You can choose any average speed accordingly. Somebody might have an easier solution to work out (without GPS that isn't overly accurate)

Reading this can give you a headache :o:o

Amalgam

Robert Mallett started his experiments concerning Seismology, on Killiney beach, South County Dublin, in the early 1800s, it took another 50 years before a certain Mr. Richter, stole his thunder, so to speak.

RTE Radio 1 had a good feature on Robert Mallett, back in 2012, I don't know if there are active podcast links though.

https://www.rte.ie/radio1/the-history-show/programmes/2012/0520/351022-historyshow/

pajor

In the Dutch version of Sesame Street, Big Bird is blue (and isn't actually called Big Bird).

Ted111

pajor wrote: »

In the Dutch version of Sesame Street, Big Bird is blue (and isn't actually called Big Bird).

I remember that when I was in Holland, and he actually keeps changing colours. I heard them all do that.

harry Bailey esq

Strawberries are not actually classed as true berries,bananas however,are.

5rtytry56

The original IBM PC 5150 XT motherboard had a socket enabling data to be loaded by cassette tape. The corresponding tape recorders had to have this socket as well this is not the 3.5mm socket but an earlier standard.

MarinersBlues

Zaph wrote: »

mfceiling wrote: »

All polar bears are left handed.

If I'm being mauled by a polar bear I don't think I'll really care what hand he's using!


A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes.

Under what circumstances have you found that you cared about how long a pigs orgasm would last?
Was it a loving relationship or a two ships in the night scenario?

kleefarr

GTA the game is not made in USA as lots of people think, but in the UK.

GTA 5 grossed £1,000,000,000 (£1Bn) in it's first three days after release.

Steve F

maudgonner wrote: »

If you're watching TV and see a small box appear in the top right corner with vertical white & black bars, it usually means an ad break is coming up in 1 minute. So you should mentally prepare yourself to make the dash to the loo/kettle.

You get it often enough on ITV channels, although these days it's normally only used on live tv broadcasts. They use it because ad breaks are played out by the regional broadcast centres e.g. UTV, (they have different ads in different regions) so they need to give them the heads up to have the ads ready to go. It's pretty old school!

Yep...called a "cue dot"

MagicIRL

On September 13th, 2005, an in-game bug in World of Warcraft spread like a plague throughout the game, killing players in massive numbers. This was on such a scale that the conditions and reactions of the event attracted the attention of epidemiologists for its implications of how human populations could react to a real-world epidemic.

It's since been used as a model for Terrorism research and real-world Epidemic research!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident

BrokenArrows

MagicIRL wrote: »

On September 13th, 2005, an in-game bug in World of Warcraft spread like a plague throughout the game, killing players in massive numbers. This was on such a scale that the conditions and reactions of the event attracted the attention of epidemiologists for its implications of how human populations could react to a real-world epidemic.

It's since been used as a model for Terrorism research and real-world Epidemic research!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident

That was fun. Absolute chaos ingame.

corner of hells

On average a human adult consumes 16 pubic hairs a year from takeaway and restaurant meals.

RiderOnTheStorm

Steve F wrote:

Yep...called a "cue dot"

In the cinema, you sometimes see a white circle appear briefly in the top right corner. This was a cue to the worker in the projection boot that the current reel is about to finish and the next reel should be readied. Not sure if the still use it, being the digital age and all....

Ted111

corner of hells wrote: »

On average a human adult consumes 16 pubic hairs a year from takeaway and restaurant meals.

Are they frying chips in their jocks or something?

ohnonotgmail

Ted111 wrote: »

Are they frying chips in their jocks or something?

dont be silly. there is no way that jocks are a suitable container for frying in.

BrokenArrows

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

In the cinema, you sometimes see a white circle appear briefly in the top right corner. This was a cue to the worker in the projection boot that the current reel is about to finish and the next reel should be readied. Not sure if the still use it, being the digital age and all....

No, cinemas mostly use digital now.

Ted111

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

dont be silly. there is no way that jocks are a suitable container for frying in.

I use a frying pan myself.
I also have an actifry.

ChippingSodbury

Mickey Mouse was originally called Mortimer Mouse. They changed because they thought it sounded a bit pretentious.

jmayo

corner of hells wrote: »

On average a human adult consumes 16 pubic hairs a year from takeaway and restaurant meals.

That's what you get for eating out.

jmayo

Masala wrote: »

More people are killed by kicks from a Donkey every year than are killed in airplane crashes!

Interesting fact that!

Ehh what are they doing to said donkey at the time ?

Teyla Emmagan wrote: »

The average IQ in Ireland is slightly lower than in most countries. Through all those historical periods of emigration those who left were the ones who were most likely to succeed elsewhere - our best and brightest. The ones who stayed, our forefathers, were the blunter tools in the drawer. We are therefore a bit thicker than we would otherwise be.

I have no evidence of this, obviously, I just remember reading it somewhere and liked it.

The hot tap is on the left and the cold tap is on the right. This is a safety feature as more people are right-handed. It means you are less likely to scald yourself. And to waste the hot water. If your taps aren't like this they're plumbed wrong. And I don't want any plumbers to come along disagreeing with me.

I have seen a fair few taps wrong way round so what does that say about the IQ of the plumbers ?

Masala

On a wrist watch (or any clock actually) that has Roman Numerals as its display on the face - the Number 4 is always displayed as 'IIII' rather that the pure Roman Numeral of 'IV'.

ohnonotgmail

Masala wrote: »

On a wrist watch (or any clock actually) that has Roman Numerals as its display on the face - the Number 4 is always displayed as 'IIII' rather that the pure Roman Numeral of 'IV'.

its a nice story but its not true.

silverharp

Masala wrote: »

On a wrist watch (or any clock actually) that has Roman Numerals as its display on the face - the Number 4 is always displayed as 'IIII' rather that the pure Roman Numeral of 'IV'.

don't test me , that's actually pretty cool

http://images.asos-media.com/inv/media/4/4/8/3/4093844/black/image1xxl.jpg

Masala

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

its a nice story but its not true.

I could stand corrected...am not infallible!!!!

8-10

silverharp wrote: »

don't test me , that's actually pretty cool

http://images.asos-media.com/inv/media/4/4/8/3/4093844/black/image1xxl.jpg

The interesting thing about watch advertisements is that the time shown is always 10:10 or sometimes 1:50 when it's analog because at these times the hands make the watch face look like a smiley face.

One of the psychological advertising tricks that's been going for decades. There have been occasions of people going deliberately against it but trust me, keep an eye on billboards and magazine watch ads and you'll see the time set at 10 past 10

Kadser

In an old war movie called Hasty heart someone says "Yank knows a bit about politics". Then Ronald Reagan sticks his head in the door.

gumbo1

8-10 wrote: »

The interesting thing about watch advertisements is that the time shown is always 10:10 or sometimes 1:50 when it's analog because at these times the hands make the watch face look like a smiley face.

One of the psychological advertising tricks that's been going for decades. There have been occasions of people going deliberately against it but trust me, keep an eye on billboards and magazine watch ads and you'll see the time set at 10 past 10

Your wrong. The reason that watch advertisements display 10.50 is that the brand name is "framed" by the hands and puts emphasis on it.

8-10

gumbo1 wrote: »

Your wrong. The reason that watch advertisements display 10.50 is that the brand name is "framed" by the hands and puts emphasis on it.

I said 10:10 not 10:50

And it's really a number of reasons. The smiley face is definitely one and so is the framing with particular brands. And whatever about being "wrong" I still find it trivally interesting information that they're all set the same regardless of the reason but thanks for jumping down my throat for contributing anyway

gumbo1

8-10 wrote: »

I said 10:10 not 10:50

And it's really a number of reasons. The smiley face is definitely one and so is the framing with particular brands. And whatever about being "wrong" I still find it trivally interesting information that they're all set the same regardless of the reason but thanks for jumping down my throat for contributing anyway

I ment to type 10.10. My apologies if you felt that I was "jumping down you throat" as that was not my intention.

Amalgam

Loosey lefty tighty righty.

HS3

Probably more suited to the 'really obvious things you just realised' thread, but if you search for a location in Google maps on your phone, hit the car icon, a lovely lady will direct you right to your destination!

Cortina_MK_IV

HS3 wrote: »

Probably more suited to the 'really obvious things you just realised' thread, but if you search for a location in Google maps on your phone, hit the car icon, a lovely lady will direct you right to your destination!

And the place names are great... Port Láirge =port lar-jee.

bnt

This CJ de Mooi character who's in the news recently ... when I first heard his name I did a spit-take, since I understand a bit of Dutch, and it translates to "CJ the Pretty". Had to be fake, and sure enough, it turns out he's some bloke from Yorkshire who just happens to like Amsterdam. Though not as much, these days, as he used to, I imagine ... :eek:

byte

Steve F wrote: »

Yep...called a "cue dot"

I give you the double cue dot!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lh-ZnwOTrA

B.A._Baracus

MagicIRL wrote: »

On September 13th, 2005, an in-game bug in World of Warcraft spread like a plague throughout the game, killing players in massive numbers. This was on such a scale that the conditions and reactions of the event attracted the attention of epidemiologists for its implications of how human populations could react to a real-world epidemic.

It's since been used as a model for Terrorism research and real-world Epidemic research!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident

I find this fitting...

4068ac1elhodqr

The Moon and Sun have virtually the same size in our sky, because the Sun is about 400 times wider than the Moon, but it's also about 400 times farther away. This allows for perfect total solar eclipses.

A spooky coincidence?
Perhaps, or could just be a equilibrium terrestrial orbit (Unified Field Theory), 'reciprocal locks' and so on...

ohnonotgmail

Jolie Unimportant Applause wrote: »

The Moon and Sun have virtually the same size in our sky, because the Sun is about 400 times wider than the Moon, but it's also about 400 times farther away. This allows for perfect total solar eclipses.

A spooky coincidence?
Perhaps, or could just be a equilibrium terrestrial orbit (Unified Field Theory), 'reciprocal locks' and so on...

or maybe god designed it that way because eclipses are cool.

Alun

Some car adverts, notably Ford, feature cars with fictional registration numbers that are symmetrical about a vertical axis so that the video can be flipped horizontally to show either a LHD car driving on the right or vice versa, depending on where the ad is being shown. Something like WVM 808 for example.

razorblunt

Ted111 wrote: »

Are they frying chips in their jocks or something?

In Scotland? Yes.

MarinersBlues

When Croke Park is sold out approx 2% of the countries population is in there.

On All-Ireland Final day 1 of every 50 people in Ireland is in that stadium!