I bet you didnt know that

Buford T. Justice XIX

During the Franco years in Spain, up to 30% of milk produced was traded illegally, mostly as cheeses, after the government declared any production under 10,000 liters illegal.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/spain-artisanal-cheese-black-market-franco?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=atlas-page

Funny thing that the making it illegal preserved many niche cheeses that are popular today.

RiderOnTheStorm

Beware of statistics....

As WW1 progressed, aeroplanes were used more & more. Bit when they crashed, the pilot often died, so the powers that be made the pilots wear helmets. Then they found an increase in head injuries ..... Weird, bring in helmets and head injuries increase. But the pilots with head injuries would have died if they weren't wearing helmets.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

That also occurred when the British infantry changed from cloth caps to steel helmets in 1916. Many soldiers wounded by shrapnel would have died outright without a helmet.

tomwaterford

Today is the 25th anniversary of the first text message sent between 2 phones

Ted_YNWA

Bin lorries are exempt from needing tachographs.

DivingDuck

The function of a Tachograph is to record the driving times, breaks and rest periods of individual drivers. Vehicle speed, distance travelled and other related metrics are also logged.

(I didn't know that until just now, either.)

david75

Once upon a time we didn’t have to pay private bin companies extortionate rates to collect refuse and it just happened every Tuesday morning out of the regular tax your parents paid out of their wages.

And you knew your bin men and your ma would give them a box of roses at Christmas.

fergiesfolly

david75 wrote: »

Once upon a time we didn’t have to pay private bin companies extortionate rates to collect refuse and it just happened every Tuesday morning out of the regular tax your parents paid out of their wages.

And you knew your bin men and your ma would give them a box of roses at Christmas.

Really?? And what did they give your ma for Christmas?

Purple Mountain

fergiesfolly wrote: »

Really?? And what did they give your ma for Christmas?

Your siblings..

david75

Charming.

dxhound2005

Greybottle wrote: »

The Corlea Trackway in Co Longford has been dated back to 147 BC, so at 2164 years of age it comfortably beats the Vikings by a thousand years or so.

What's more fascinating is how they managed to date it as precisely as that. They used dendrochronology which is one of the most fascinating sciences there is.

Ice core boring is also very interesting.

Oldtree

Somewhat linked to dendrochronology:

Bristlecone pines can be the oldest living trees. The oldest is around 5,000 years old. Some have been dated using a core bore method. And then removing the core and counting the trees rings.

In the early 60's while attempting to date a pine tree, a core borer got his borer stuck in one of these fine Bristlecone pine specimens. Suffice it to say they felled the tree to retrieve the borer. On counting the rings afterwards it turns out that this tree was one of the oldest recorded living Bristlecone pines at the time.

Times have changed somewhat and many trees can now be fairly acurately dated by simply measuring the girth and a site assessment. A lot of this is due to the strong storm in the 80's, where huge swathes of trees were knocked over in the UK and France, where records were kept of the trees girths and a ring count done to amass a database for comparison.

con___manx1

200'000 irish fought for brittan in ww1 while only 1600 fought in the 1916 rising.

Quazzie

con___manx1 wrote: »

200'000 irish fought for brittan in ww1 while only 1600 fought in the 1916 rising.

Wasn't much pay for fighting in the rising

RiderOnTheStorm

Ted_YNWA wrote:

Bin lorries are exempt from needing tachographs.

Ambulances are exempt too.

Also, Emergency Services personnel are exempt from all rules of the road (except drink driving & driving dangerously) while on duty .... not just while "on blues". So while it may look bad, for example, there is nothing illegal about a guard on the phone while driving.

Ipso

Duckworth_Luas wrote: »

That was Atlantean, by documentary maker Bob Quinn.

I saw it as a boy and I can remember the exact piece you mention. I tracked it down a few years ago on Dailymotion.

If I recall correctly, Quinn's hypothesis was that the first inhabitants of Ireland did not arrive over a land bridge from Britain, just as I was taught in Primary School. Instead they were Atlantean, part of a network of people from Ireland, down the west of France, Northern Spain, Portugal and North Africa. These people arrived by boat after the ice sheets retreated and continued to trade and interact across the Atlantic for millennia after.

His ideas were rejected by academics at the time. Not sure where they stand today with recent DNA discoveries.

One of his claims is that celtic languages descend from berber languages as they have the vso (verb, subject order) sentence structure.
I think he also made some claims about the languages being mutually understandable, according to JP Mallory the claims don't stand up.
A more reasonable explanation is that any similarity between both language groups maybe down to the pre-celtic language of Ireland having arrived with the first farmers. As farming originated in the middle east then Ireland and North African regions would have a link in that they share a common ancestral source, not necessarily one descending from the other.

DNA studies show Europeans being descending from three main source populations: post Ice Age inhabitants, Eastern Farmers and the Yamnaya/Bell Beaker/Indo European speakers. All European populations have some mix of these, the only difference being different populations got different components in different proportions in different times.
The last big upheaval seems to have been around the mid Bronze Age and correlates with the Bell Beaker period.
http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2015/12/ancient-genomes-from-ireland-point-to.html

In general genes mirror geography, the closer a population is geographically the closer they are genetically (Finns and Sardinians seem to be outliers).
I think Irish people want to see themselves as different and especially different from Britain.

Riddle101

There's a place in Sao Paolo, Brazil, called Snake Island. It is one of the most dangerous islands in the entire world. The site earned its moniker due to its insanely high density of golden lancehead vipers, some studies report an average of 1–5 snakes per square meter. When sea levels rose some 11,000 years ago and separated Snake Island from mainland Brazil, the newly isolated snakes became hyper evolved and hyper terrifying, to adapt to their changing environment. Without any ground-level prey on the island, the snakes learned to hunt in the treetops and strike at birds from the air. And because they couldn’t track down the birds and wait for the poison to kick in, their venom adapted to become five times stronger than that of their mainland counterparts, capable of killing their prey instantly, as well as melting human flesh.

quickbeam

^^ :eek::eek::eek:

Let's hope the sea levels don't drop again and they get off the island!!

Littlehorny

Shane Mc Gowan makes a half a million a year, every year, from royalties for writing Fairytale of New York.

Greybottle

Littlehorny wrote: »

Shane Mc Gowan makes a half a million a year, every year, from royalties for writing Fairytale of New York.

I think the song has come close to making that money a few years, but by no means every year. Either way it was co written with Jem Finer who shares half the writing royalties and the band, as well as Kirsty McColl's family get something out of it as well. I heard from somebody in the business a few years back that McGowan gets around £75,000 per annum after tax from Fairytale alone, which is a tidy annual pay packet.

The Performing Right Society put out a statement saying Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas’ is the most heard song in the world because royalties come in from more countries than for any other song. The estimate is that it’s been heard by 42% of the planet, more than three billion people, whether they wanted to hear it or not. Source

sbsquarepants

quickbeam wrote: »

^^ :eek::eek::eek:

Let's hope the sea levels don't drop again and they get off the island!!

I'd be hoping they don't get to watch snakes on a plane and start getting ideas:D

New Home

Has anyone thought of making Sharknado with snakes?

py2006

Dame St is named after a dam (should be Dam st) that was once on the Poddle by the side of Dublin Castle.

You can see it on the right hand side of this illustration.

Ipso

New Home wrote: »

Has anyone thought of making Sharknado with snakes?

Post responsibly, someone from the ScyFy channel could be reading!

valoren

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

Beware of statistics....

As WW1 progressed, aeroplanes were used more & more. Bit when they crashed, the pilot often died, so the powers that be made the pilots wear helmets. Then they found an increase in head injuries ..... Weird, bring in helmets and head injuries increase. But the pilots with head injuries would have died if they weren't wearing helmets.

Reminds me of survivorship bias.

During ww2 researchers looked to minimize bomber losses to enemy fire. So they inspected the damage on bombers that had returned from their missions and returned a recommendation that additional armor be places on the areas where the planes sustained the most damage. A statistician, Abraham Wald, then realized that the research only studied planes which had survived their missions. Those that were actually shot down obviously couldn't be assessed for damage. He suggested that the armor not be placed where the returning aircraft suffered most damage i.e. in the wings and in the fuselage but rather be placed in the areas where no damage was made to the surviving planes which was invariably the engines themselves, his logic being that the planes which didn't return more than likely took damage to those areas whereas the planes in the study could make it home after taking heavy damage in the areas initially recommended for protection.

Oranage2

Because the earth's cycle of the sun isn't exactly 365 days, in February usually around the 3rd clocks are stalled for the added hours unbeknownst to the general public thus creating the the 29 day month.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Oranage2 wrote: »

Because the earth's cycle of the sun isn't exactly 365 days, in February usually around the 3rd clocks are stalled for the added hours unbeknownst to the general public thus creating the the 29 day month.

What?????

Ipso

It's a leap of logic year.

Capt'n Midnight

valoren wrote: »

Reminds me of survivorship bias.

During ww2 researchers looked to minimize bomber losses to enemy fire.

Abraham Wald was the guy.



For low level attack aircraft a hit on a the cooling system was fatal. Air cooled engines were less vulnerable. But if the radiator was damaged or the antifreeze leaked out , the white smoke in old war movies, then you had about 10 seconds before the engine overheated and seized up. At which point you are too low to parachute.



Some aircraft had a weak wire limiting the throttle. So in a combat situation you could put more force on the throttle , break the wire and get even more power. The downside is that you'd need a complete engine rebuild afterwards.

Wibbs

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

For low level attack aircraft a hit on a the cooling system was fatal. Air cooled engines were less vulnerable. But if the radiator was damaged or the antifreeze leaked out , the white smoke in old war movies, then you had about 10 seconds before the engine overheated and seized up. At which point you are too low to parachute.

Aye. It's why pilots in WW2 were cautious of, but brave enough to do low level strafing runs on ground forces. Some were more vulnerable than others. As you say air-cooled were much better, but a couple of rounds into the engine or cooling systems of a P-51 Mustang or Spitfire was a big worry and could and did regularly take the planes down. A load of experienced pilots were lost to such runs.

Because of this threat the WW2 Soviet close support/ground attack aircraft the Sturmovik had armour on the fuel tanks, wings, radiator, engine etc. It was known as the "flying tank". It suffered hideous losses, but in air to air combat and because of green crews. Ground fire rarely took one out. The German Junkers JU 87 while less armoured was built like a brick sh1thouse and could and did take enormous damage and still get back to base. I've seen pics of 50% of the tailplane shot off and wings with more holes than wing. One guy while evading enemy fighters in low cloud went down too low and actually hit and flew through a forest, as you don't, somehow wrestled control back and returned to base with six feet of pine tree sticking out of his port wing. And it wasn't even Christmas. Both directly inspired the American A-10 ground attack aircraft. The head designer of the project insisted that all members of his team read the memoir "Stuka Pilot" and the author of same and other Stuka crews were asked directly for their personal experiences and advice. One big fear of the Cold War was Soviets massing assaults of tanks across Europe and how to counter such a threat and the guys who had the only real world experience of such things were ex WW2 German pilots. After all these were guys who had fought at Kursk the biggest tank battle in history(8000 tanks IIRC).

On that score; Tanks got their name because the British(among others) were developing what they called "Landships"(among other similar names) and wanted to keep it secret, so initially called them "Water Carriers" internally in case anyone was listening. WC(water closet) is also another name for a toilet so that was unfortunate. soon after they were renamed "Tanks" and that name stuck in the English speaking world. Leonardo DaVinci has thought of similar way back in the day. No better man.



Though like many if not most of his ideas, it was incompletely thought through and would likely not have been effective.

Some aircraft had a weak wire limiting the throttle. So in a combat situation you could put more force on the throttle , break the wire and get even more power. The downside is that you'd need a complete engine rebuild afterwards.

The old Emergency War Power setting. Though I've not heard of the wire part? It was generally just an extra step on the hand throttle. Usually meant that more fuel and extra boost pressure on the superchargers which gave you the kick up the pants required. It certainly reduced engine life and the pilot had to log every use of it for the ground crew, but generally speaking most WW2 engine types could handle it for limited periods(IIRC 2-3 minutes was the pilot's notes advice?) without too much damage, or requiring an engine rebuild/refit.