I bet you didnt know that

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Kat1170 wrote: »

IBYDKT ; The Irish Harp, Symbol of Ireland the country and Guinness the drink, face different directions because when the Harp was chosen as the Symbol of the Irish State, it was already copyrighted by Guinness, so in order to distinguish between them it was faced in the opposite direction.

To be more correct, Guinness turned theirs the wrong way to facilitate the new state.

Kat1170

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

To be more correct, Guinness turned theirs the wrong way to facilitate the new state.

Not according to This, This, This or even This

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Kat1170 wrote: »

Not according to This, This, This or even This

Well, Mr. Kennedy was wrong all those years ago in class.

Thanks. I learned something new today.

Kat1170

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

Well, Mr. Kennedy was wrong all those years ago in class.

Thanks. I learned something new today.

First time I heard about it was on the Guinness Storehouse Tour. I was hoping they hadn't got it wrong. :)

BrianBoru00

That yer man who played Fr. Deegan (one of Teds sidekicks in the lingerie department) also played Tommy from Trainspotting . . . and now plays "Owen" in Greys anatomy....blew my mind anyway while preparing to watch T2

Cartouche

An estimated 50-80% of all life on earth is found under the ocean surface and the oceans contain 99% of the living space on the planet. Less than 10% of that space has been explored by humans. 85% of the area and 90% of the volume constitute the dark, cold environment we call the deep sea. The average depth of the ocean is 3,795m. The average height of the land is 840m

Cartouche

Statistically, the deadliest job in America is … president. Of the 44 men who’ve held the post, four have been assassinated in office—a rate of roughly 9 percent (or about one in ten) killed on the job

stimpson

BrianBoru00 wrote: »

That yer man who played Fr. Deegan (one of Teds sidekicks in the lingerie department) also played Tommy from Trainspotting . . . and now plays "Owen" in Greys anatomy....blew my mind anyway while preparing to watch T2

The part of Fr. Brian Eno in the last episode of Ted is played by.... Brian Eno.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ00zZbfxd4

pickarooney

bnt wrote: »

Scotland has one of the highest, for some reason.

Speaking of Scotland: tonight is Burns Night, the birthday of the famous Scots poet Robert Burns, and people around the world are celebrating with a Burns Supper of haggis, tatties & neeps, and of course whisky.

Before you can cook a haggis for the supper, you have to catch one, but that isn't too hard. You see, wild haggis have evolved on Scottish hillsides, and have no trouble running around the hills, since thelr legs are longer on one side than the other. To catch one takes two people, then: one to stand in front of it, at which point the haggis will try to turn around. It falls over and rolls down the hill, to where the second person is waiting with a net to catch it.

More recently, it was discovered that haggis have evolved in to two separate sub-species. The common haggis runs around in a clockwise direction, but we now know that there is an anti-clockwise haggis that runs around in the other direction. These two sub-species are unable to mate, since as soon as a male of the one sub-species tries to turn around to mount the female of the other sub-species, it falls over and rolls down the hill ...

This sounds suspiciously like the dahu

Lady is a tramp

I used to work a lot in the aircraft leasing sector.

When you fly on a plane, the aircraft itself is worth feck all. Most of the value is actually in the engine, which has probably been split and/or swapped and/or substituted, with and/or between other aircraft, purely for financial reasons rather than out of any technical necessity.

I always found it a bit mad ... I wouldn't buy a car if the engine had been constantly swapped in and out like!

foxy farmer

Cartouche wrote: »

Statistically, the deadliest job in America is … president. Of the 44 men who’ve held the post, four have been assassinated in office—a rate of roughly 9 percent (or about one in ten) killed on the job

Don't forget the failed attempt on Ronald Reagan.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Cartouche wrote: »

Statistically, the deadliest job in America is … president. Of the 44 men who’ve held the post, four have been assassinated in office—a rate of roughly 9 percent (or about one in ten) killed on the job

Here we have lies, damned lies and statistics.


Statistically it's also one of the safest jobs with only 4 deaths in over 240 years.

Widdershins

I was a child when the Omagh bombing happened but I do remember watching my grandmother turning white as she read about it in the newspaper, and reading it myself later on.

Widdershins

Kat1170 wrote: »

What's even worse is tens of millions of these sharks are killed just for their fins. Their fins are cut off and the shark is thrown back, often alive to slowly drown, just so some ********* can have a bowl of soup with his Rhino horn powder and Bear bile whatever, and make him/her feel important/powerful (actually I can't fathom what these ******** feel to be honest). :mad::mad::mad:



IBYDKT ; The Irish Harp, Symbol of Ireland the country and Guinness the drink, face different directions because when the Harp was chosen as the Symbol of the Irish State, it was already copyrighted by Guinness, so in order to distinguish between them it was faced in the opposite direction.

They do the same with Rays here. I've found the bodies of Rays on the shore. I couldn't work out what it was, the first time.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Widdershins wrote: »

I was a child when the Omagh bombing happened but I do remember watching my grandmother turning white as she read about it in the newspaper, and reading it myself later on.

I'll bet none of us knew that for sure.

MyStubbleItches

Kat1170 wrote: »

IBYDKT ; The Irish Harp, Symbol of Ireland the country and Guinness the drink, face different directions because when the Harp was chosen as the Symbol of the Irish State, it was already copyrighted by Guinness, so in order to distinguish between them it was faced in the opposite direction.

King Henry VIII is responsible for the harp on Irish coinage.

Widdershins

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

I'll bet none of us knew that for sure.

Knew what..?

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Widdershins wrote: »

I was a child when the Omagh bombing happened but I do remember watching my grandmother turning white as she read about it in the newspaper, and reading it myself later on.

Widdershins wrote: »

Knew what..?

The above.

Widdershins

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

The above.

That I was a child at that point, that my granny turned white while reading about it? I'm assuming you're being sarcastic?

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Widdershins wrote: »

That I was a child at that point, that my granny turned white while reading about it? I'm assuming you're being sarcastic?

I don't get how it fit's the 'I bet you didn't know that' thread.

Widdershins

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

I don't get how it fit's the 'I bet you didn't know that' thread.

Oh God, sorry. I meant to comment on something somewhere else, I think. I'm not really awake.

jimbobaloobob

The first irish coins with a harp were introduced by the king of england

Cartouche

The American one-dollar bill contains several hidden images, including a spider in the upper right-hand corner.

Capt'n Midnight

Cartouche wrote: »

Statistically, the deadliest job in America is … president. Of the 44 men who’ve held the post, four have been assassinated in office—a rate of roughly 9 percent (or about one in ten) killed on the job

what about William Henry Harrison who died of pneumonia on day 31 of his presidency possibly as a result of a long inauguration speech on a cold wet day

Or Warren G. Harding , no autopsy, was heart attack or poison ?

Or Zachary Taylor , even it it was just food poisoning it was still at an Independence day do , so work related.

It's more like 16%


Credable near misses
Andrew Jackson , pistol misfire at close range and the president nearly caned him to death.

William Howard Taft, got within a few feet with a pistol

Theodore Roosevelt was shot, but finished the speech

Harry S. Truman ,a White House policeman was killed

Richard Nixon , one assassin shot a governor later, and predating Tom Clancy's novel - Samuel Byck planned to kill Nixon by crashing a commercial airliner into the White House

Gerald Ford , gun misfired

Ronald Reagan got shot

George W. Bush, grenade didn't go off.



At the sharp end of the wedge IIRC 95% of those in the Romanian army at the start of the war didn't survive WWI and the same happened in WWII.
By comparison being president was cushy.


In France after WWI there was a word that meant the only one who returned to the village after the war. Thierville was the only village in France with no men lost in WWI.

maudgonner

Estimated as the third deadliest war in history (death toll somewhere between 20 and 100 million, more than WW1) the Taiping Rebellion in China was the beginning of the end for the Qing Dynasty.

It was led by a man who repeatedly failed the entrance exams for the civil service, then had a series of visions which led him to believe he was the son of God, and adopted younger brother of Jesus Christ and had a mission to rid the world of demons. So he formed a religious group and let them into a peasant rebellion. Oh, he also had two giant demon-slaying swords forged for him, as you do.

They believed in communist-like principles such as communal ownership of land, which would be fairly distributed by the state. They also emphasised equality of the sexes (but prevented men and women from interacting), and sent women to fight in the front lines.

He once wrote to the British Empire asking for them to pay him tribute since he was (logically enough, as the son of God) the new head of their faith. After he died the Qing Empire had his body exhumed, cremated, and the ashes shot out of a cannon so that his followers would have no grave to worship. (So much cooler than Hitler's fate!)

hognef

foxy farmer wrote: »

Don't forget the failed attempt on Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan (elected in 1980) was the first US president elected in a year ending with a zero since 1840 who didn't die in office. The seven (of a total of eight) presidents who did were elected in 1840,1860,1880,1900,1920,1940 and 1960. Four were assassinated; three died of natural causes.

Red Kev

Willy Brandt was German Chancellor from 1969-1974. He was Mayor of Berlin when JFK gave his "Ich bin Ein Berliner" speech.

But his real name was Herbert Frahm. He fled from the Nazis to Norway in 1933 and took the pseudynom Willy Brandt to protect himself. He was in the Norwegian army when the Germans invaded Norway in 1940, was arrested but the Nazis never copped who he was.

He fled to Sweden and stayed there till the end of the war. After the war he was one of the few Germans who the Allies trusted and as he was so well known under his pseudynom by that stage, he decided to keep it.

Squall Leonhart

People from the landlocked African country Lesotho are known as Mosotho (singlular) or Basotho (plural) and speak Sesotho & English.

Boom_Bap

Squall Leonhart wrote: »

People from the landlocked African country Lesotho are known as Mosotho (singlular) or Basotho (plural) and speak Sesotho & English.

Landlocked completely by South Africa!

The word Lesotho means people that speak Sesotho.

Squall Leonhart

If you shuffle a deck of cards, and deal out all 52 cards, it is virtually a 100% certainty that that combination of cards has never been dealt out ever before.

The odds of the same permutation repeating are 1 in 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,
975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000.

To give you an idea of how many that is, here is how long it would take to go through every possible permutation of cards. If every star in our galaxy had a trillion planets, each with a trillion people living on them, and each of these people has a trillion packs of cards and somehow they manage to make unique shuffles 1,000 times per second, and they'd been doing that since the Big Bang, they'd only just now be starting to repeat shuffles.