I bet you didnt know that

Riva10

Candie wrote: »

I'm starting to feel really stupid trying (and failing) to keep up.

I did'nt know that.

Thinking about my favorite life stories, I thought I'd posted this here but a search says I hadn't so this is copied from a post I made elsewhere. I love this guy and was lucky enough to hear him speak when I was a student.

Anthropologist, historian, War Chief, WW2 hero and all round legendary badass, High Bird Crow was born to the Crow tribe of Montana from a long line of distinguished tribes people, and one of those distinguished people was his step granddaddy who was one of a few NA scouts for Custer, making Mr Medicine Crow the last surviving person to have heard first hand oral accounts of the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Mr Medicine Crow graduated from college in Oregon and went on to graduate from USC with a Masters in Cultural Anthropology, his area of special interest being the influence of European culture on NAs. He has been a tribal historian of note all his life, bearing the title Keeper Of Memories, and has published many academic and popular works to great acclaim, even addressing the UN on tribal affairs. But it was his antics in WW2 that really show the measure of the man. He never finished his doctorate, as Uncle Sam had plans for him.

When Mr Medicine Crow joined the army he became a scout for the 103rd Infantry Division, and while he fought against the Germans he completed the four traditional tasks required to become a War Chief of the Crow Nation.

1. Touching an enemy without killing him: Mr Crow captured a German soldier but let him run away alive after hearing him cry for his mother, at great risk to himself.

2. Taking an enemys weapon: Not too tricky in WW2.

3. Leading a war party, and

4. Stealing an enemy's horse: Mr Crow went one better. Well known for always meticulously wearing his warpaint under his uniform and having an eagle feather on his person as required by his tribe whenever involved in conflict, Mr Crow led a party and stole no less than 50 horses from a German battalion.

Witnesses spoke of how he rode off leading the horses, singing a traditional Crow war song as he did.

After the war, Mr Medicine Crow was awarded the Bronze Star and the French Legion of Honour award. In 2009 President Obama also awarded Mr Medicine Crow the Medal of Freedom in recognition of his life and work. He spent his post war years working on behalf of the Crow Nation and with the bureau of Indian Affairs, pursing his academic work, and even writing a childrens book.

He died in 2016, aged 102.




Mr Medicine Crow, in full Crow dress and Warbonnet, the last of the Crow War Chiefs.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Fourier wrote: »

I'll try, might as well explain cardinals and the continuum hypothesis while I'm at it.

I think the diagonal theory can be explained to lay people, since I am one. I’ll try if you don’t.

Fourier

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

I think the diagonal theory can be explained to lay people, since I am one. I’ll try if you don’t.

I think so too, definitely go ahead. Might link in afterward.

facehugger99

Fourier wrote: »

The so called uncomputable numbers.

Like how much my wife would spend in Arnotts if given the chance?

Fourier

facehugger99 wrote: »

Like how much my wife would spend in Arnotts if given the chance?

No, money is always expressible as a rational. Go apologise to your wife.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

On 17th April 1986, the Three Hundred and Thirty-Five Years’ War between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly came to an end. It was the longest war with the fewest casualties - zero.

mzungu

When the temperature is high, the top of the Eiffel Tower leans away from the sun because the portion of the structure exposed to the sun expands more than the portion in the shade. To “get out of the sun”, the Tower can lean as much as 18 centimeters.

facehugger99

There are over 288 billion possible board positions in chess after just 4 moves apiece.

New Home

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

I think the diagonal theory can be explained to lay people, since I am one. I’ll try if you don’t.

Fourier wrote: »

I think so too, definitely go ahead. Might link in afterward.

I feel like I've stepped into a so-far-undiscovered chapter of "Flatland"...

Capt'n Midnight

Fourier wrote: »

No, money is always expressible as a rational. Go apologise to your wife.

So you're saying that money is rational, but wives are irrational

Tell me how

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

So you're saying that money is rational, but wives are irrational

I think Schrodinger's law applies here. They can be viewed as both rational and irrational, at the same moment, depending of course on your position of observation.

Capt'n Midnight

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

On 17th April 1986, the Three Hundred and Thirty-Five Years’ War between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly came to an end. It was the longest war with the fewest casualties - zero.

While a lot of people died at the start of the Crimean War nobody died during it's final century.

Please tell the Russian people through your newspaper that they can sleep peacefully in their beds
- Councillor Robert Knox of Berwick-upon-Tweed (Population 12,000) to Pravda* on 28th of December 1966 ending the Crimean War 110 years after the rest of the UK.

*At the time the Russian Tourist Board might as well have gone with the slogan
"Visit the Soviet Union, before the Soviet Union visits you."

Candie

Candie wrote: »

I'm dumbing the thread down substantially with this one!

I love extraordinary coincidences but my favorite coincidence story isn't really that extraordinary, it just sort of illustrates how we can choose to keep going when things go wrong.

The daughter of Irish immigrants to Argentina, Miss Violet Jessup found herself working on the postal shipping lines as a stewardess until she settled in the UK, where she was offered employment by the White Star Line on their new luxury liner, the Titanic. As the ship started to sink, she grabbed a baby apparently abandoned on the deck and managed to get to a lifeboat, and was happily able to reunite the baby with it's mother on the Carpathia, the ship that rescued survivors.

Traumatised and shaken from the experience, Violet then trained as a nurse with a view to staying on dry land.

After the onset of world war one Violet worked for the British Red Cross, and as fate would have it found herself working aboard the sister ship of the Titanic, the Britannic. Having survived one shipwreck, Violet found herself in the unenviable position of being aboard the Britannic when that ship sank in 1916. Again Violet survived, in spite of suffering a head fracture as she was sucked under the keel after she jumped into the water.

You'd think she would part ways with the sea at that point, but she spent a total of forty years on the waves in various capacities, and having also survived a brief and violent marriage, eventually retired to rural Suffolk where she wrote her memoirs.

What I like about Violet is just that she kept walking up that gangplank, she just kept going. It's kind of heroic, or stupid, or perhaps both.

Reminds me of the guy who survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. :P

New Home

And the chap that survived the sinking of three submarines, or something.

Life does seem to be out to get some people, but they keep surviving anyway. I love life stories like that.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Here’s a question that may have no answer. Are these multiple survivors unlucky or lucky?

Capt'n Midnight

dxhound2005 wrote: »

In South Africa in 2009 a pigeon beat the internet in a race.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8248056.stm

But snails are even faster :eek:





RFC1149 describes A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers

The first implementation of IP over Pigeon was back in 2001
The ping times were ... interesting ...
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=6165731.1 ms

Franz Von Peppercorn

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Here’s a question that may have no answer. Are these multiple survivors unlucky or lucky?

It depends on whether you're a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty person.

What they definitely are are examples of the ability of humans to overcome, survive and persist, which is kind of inspiring.

New Home

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Here’s a question that may have no answer. Are these multiple survivors unlucky or lucky?

I think it all depends on whether their life balance of happiness was greater than the amount of pain they had to endure.


Candie, I always say that whether the glass is half full or half empty depends on how thirsty you are.

Yes, was the purpose worth the struggle would be the question.

I like that one!

Skylinehead

New Home wrote: »

And the chap that survived the sinking of three submarines, or something.

And this lad (if he's definitely the same cat, it's a bit iffy):



Oscar was the ships cat on board the famous German battleship Bismarck. After the ship was sunk/scuttled in the North Atlantic, he was found on a board by the crew of the Royal Navy destroyer Cossack, and adopted as Sam.

We all know where this is going. 6 months later the Cossack was sunk near Gibraltar by a U-boat. Sam survived this too, and got the nickname Unsinkable Sam. He was transferred to the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and...guess what?

Ark Royal was sunk just 3 weeks later by another U-boat, all but one survived. Sam was reported to be quite angry. He'd evidently had enough of boats by this point, and went to shore duty for the remainder of the war.

Skylinehead

Skylinehead wrote: »

And this lad (if he's definitely the same cat, it's a bit iffy):



Oscar was the ships cat on board the famous German battleship Bismarck. After the ship was sunk/scuttled in the North Atlantic, he was found on a board by the crew of the Royal Navy destroyer Cossack, and adopted as Sam.

We all know where this is going. 6 months later the Cossack was sunk near Gibraltar by a U-boat. Sam survived this too, and got the nickname Unsinkable Sam. He was transferred to the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and...guess what?

Ark Royal was sunk just 3 weeks later by another U-boat, all but one survived. Sam was reported to be quite angry. He'd evidently had enough of boats by this point, and went to shore duty for the remainder of the war.

I never want to know if it's a different cat. I really want this to be true.

At least he still had a few of his lives left.

DEFTLEFTHAND

Pepsi Cola went bankrupt during WW1 when the price of sugar sky rocketed.

The owner and founder approached Coca Cola and offered them the company at a rock bottom price. Coke rebuffed the offer and missed the chance to kill off their only serious rival.


Pepsi didn't fold and got out of bankruptcy after the war and went on to become a billion dollar enterprise.

ohnonotgmail

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

Pepsi Cola went bankrupt during WW1 when the price of sugar sky rocketed.

The owner and founder approached Coca Cola and offered them the company at a rock bottom price. Coke rebuffed the offer and missed the chance to kill off their only serious rival.


Pepsi didn't fold and got out of bankruptcy after the war and went on to become a billion dollar enterprise.

On a similar note Fanta was invented ini germany during WW2 because the company that did produce coca-cola in germany couldn't get the syrup for it.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

The Pepsi concentrate produced in Ireland ks exported to 105 countries.

Kat1170

New Home wrote: »

I think it all depends on whether their life balance of happiness was greater than the amount of pain they had to endure.


Candie, I always say that whether the glass is half full or half empty depends on how thirsty you are.

Pessimist- Glass is half empty.

Optimist - Glass is half full

Engineer - Glass is the wrong size.

New Home

New Home wrote: »

And the chap that survived the sinking of three submarines, or something.

mzungu

The pictures above show a glacier called "Blood Falls" in Antarctica that regularly pours out red liquid, making it look like the ice is bleeding. This is caused by the oxidized iron in brine saltwater, and would be the very same process that causes iron to turn a dark red color when it rusts. Iron bearing saltwater comes into contact with oxygen the iron oxidizes and takes on a red coloring, in effect dying the water to a deep red colour.

Capt'n Midnight

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

On a similar note Fanta was invented ini germany during WW2 because the company that did produce coca-cola in germany couldn't get the syrup for it.

Fanta varies a lot world wide.

A lot of Fanta is just Coca-Cola buying the most popular soft drink in a market, which is usually orange and rebranding it as "Fanta".

Coke is the most popular soft drink in most markets , except for Inca Cola some down in South America, and Irn-Bru which is popular elsewhere.