I bet you didnt know that

Capt'n Midnight

Tell me how wrote: »

That was debunked though.

Capt'n Midnight

wexie wrote: »

The Netherlands have a land border with France!!

Confused...?

Watch this :

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

Also the reason that there are lots of EU citizens in the Caribbean

Denmark used to have an island in the Caribbean and they treated their slaves there badly.

wexie

Ipso wrote: »

As they say, God made the Netherlands but the Dutch made Holland.

Conchir wrote: »

Did that phrase come about due to the numerous polders and reclaimed land from the sea in the Netherlands? Or did that explanation just get applied retroactively to an existing phrase?

I think the saying is actually : God created the world but the Dutch created the Netherlands/Holland (or at least that how I've always known it). And it is indeed because of the amount of reclaimed land.

For obvious reasons (the amount of reclaimed land, much of the land being below sea level and the amount of large rivers flowing through the Netherlands to the North Sea it was always very vulnerable to flooding, especially from the seaside during storms and high tides.

In 1953 the last large flood occurred killing many (1835) and flooding 150000ha of land.

While a project to prevent these things happening was already in the making but was ramped and scaled up enormously. They were completed in 1997(I'd imagine they'll never really be finished)



https://www.vvvzeeland.nl/over-zeeland/deltawerken/

The largest dam is actually not so much a dam as a storm barrier, it's usually open as they realised there would be a huge environmental and economic cost to closing off such a large body of water. There are 62 individual doors which are open normally but they can be closed for storm or high tide conditions. They vary from 240 to 480 tonnes each and the whole thing is about 3km long.

That is only one of the 13 dams (but easily the most impressive one and sometimes referred to as one of the modern wonders of the world)

wexie

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Denmark used to have an island in the Caribbean and they treated their slaves there badly.

....I'm not sure there was ever a colonial power that doesn't have a lot to account for. I know Holland sure has a lot of it's own dirty secrets in both of the Indies (google 'Dutch police actions in Indonesia).

Capt'n Midnight

Ipso wrote: »

As they say, God made the Netherlands but the Dutch made Holland.

At one point the Frisian islands were the coast but centuries of digging peat out meant than when the storms breached the coast the land behind was inundated.

IIRC the White Cliffs of Dover are eroding a mile every thousand years. So when Julius Caesar landed he had a much shorter journey.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

IIRC the White Cliffs of Dover are eroding a mile every thousand years. So when Julius Caesar landed he had a much shorter journey.

Brexit cliffs.

Realt Dearg Sec

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Ipso wrote: »

As they say, God made the Netherlands but the Dutch made Holland.

At one point the Frisian islands were the coast but centuries of digging peat out meant than when the storms breached the coast the land behind was inundated.

IIRC the White Cliffs of Dover are eroding a mile every thousand years. So when Julius Caesar landed he had a much shorter journey.

33 miles as opposed to 31?

Capt'n Midnight

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

33 miles as opposed to 31?

There's cliffs on both sides

Greybottle

The Roamns landed at Richborough some distance north of Dover. It's flat, and has no cliffs to climb. It was also a well known port at the time. Travel by sea was far, far faster than travel by land back then. It was only when the railways opened in the 19th Century that it became faster for an army to travel by land.

Fourier

19th century Tinder

https://twitter.com/DigiVictorian/status/871744370772463617

My favourite:
https://twitter.com/DigiVictorian/status/866322426178801666

Wibbs

Greybottle wrote: »

The Roamns landed at Richborough some distance north of Dover. It's flat, and has no cliffs to climb. It was also a well known port at the time. Travel by sea was far, far faster than travel by land back then. It was only when the railways opened in the 19th Century that it became faster for an army to travel by land.

Yep. When Julius Caesar wrote his memoirs of his travels and general thoughts he noted that Ireland was "off the coast" of Spain. Some have thought his geography was crap, but it was much more about the mindset in play at the time. That by sea was the fastest and often safest mode of transport and Ireland would have been "closer" to Spain than Rome would have been from say present day Warsaw. You can sometime see this in ancient maps. Their marine/coastline maps weren't half bad, especially where distances were concerned, but their inland maps were all over the place. Rome was among the first to try and tackle the overland movement thing with their vast road network. The general idea was that it was for the army, but it was much more about trade, the lifeblood of the empire.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Fourier wrote: »

19th century Tinder

https://twitter.com/DigiVictorian/status/871744370772463617

My favourite:
https://twitter.com/DigiVictorian/status/866322426178801666

Ruby was a catch though.

Lily_Aldrin7

When you call a hotel to make a reservation and you make comments on the price it’s useless and unnecessary- if you don’t like it, don’t book it.
When you say it’s a special occasion so you can get something for free, we don’t believe ya, everyone says that
When you say you’d love an upgrade we don’t care, everyone loves an upgrade
When you ask for a discount because you can book it online for the same price but you chose to call and waste our time, we don’t really want to book it directly, we prefer online bookings and commission doesn’t come out of our pockets so don’t even go explaining how much commission we’re gonna pay, it’s just ridiculous

Had a bad day at work, sorry if I sound bitter. People treat hospitality staff like ****

Shemale

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

In Apollo 13, nobody said: "Houston, we have a problem."
In Field of Dreams, nobody said: "If you build it, they will come."
Darth Vader never said: "Luke, I am your father".
In no movie has James Cagney ever said: "You dirty rat!."
The line "Beam me up, Scotty" appears in no Star Trek episode or movie.
Pacino didn't say: "I'm out of order! You're out of order! This whole courtroom is out of order!"
Bob Geldof never said “Give us your fucking money”
Bogart never said: "Play it again, Sam."

Mr T as BA Baracus in The A Team never said "I pity the fool", that was Mr T as Clubber Lang in Rocky 3

Graces7

Lily_Aldrin7 wrote: »

When you call a hotel to make a reservation and you make comments on the price it’s useless and unnecessary- if you don’t like it, don’t book it.
When you say it’s a special occasion so you can get something for free, we don’t believe ya, everyone says that
When you say you’d love an upgrade we don’t care, everyone loves an upgrade
When you ask for a discount because you can book it online for the same price but you chose to call and waste our time, we don’t really want to book it directly, we prefer online bookings and commission doesn’t come out of our pockets so don’t even go explaining how much commission we’re gonna pay, it’s just ridiculous

Had a bad day at work, sorry if I sound bitter. People treat hospitality staff like ****

((((HUGS)))))

normanoffside

The marathon is an iconic distance. 26.2 miles or 42.2 km as we know it today..

The original marathon was however based on the distance between the town of Marathon and Athens, approximately 25 miles or 40km.
The marathon was ran for 3 Olympic cycles based on this original distance from 1896-1904.

At the 1908 games in London a 25 mile course had been planned out but Queen Alexandra requested that the race start on the lawns of Windsor palace thus extending the planned course by 1.2 miles leaving it at 26 miles 365 yards or 42.195km. This became the standardised distance for the next several Olympics and all marathons today.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

normanoffside wrote: »

The marathon is an iconic distance. 26.2 miles or 42.2 km as we know it today..

The original marathon was however based on the distance between the town of Marathon and Athens, approximately 25 miles or 40km.
The marathon was ran for 3 Olympic cycles based on this original distance from 1896-1904.

At the 1908 games in London a 25 mile course had been planned out but Queen Alexandra requested that the race start on the lawns of Windsor palace thus extending the planned course by 1.2 miles leaving it at 26 miles 365 yards or 42.195km. This became the standardised distance for the next several Olympics and all marathons today.

The standard distance of 26 miles 365 yards was not set however until 1921.

wexie

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

The standard distance of 26 miles 365 yards was not set however until 1921.

Dya remember it like it was yesterday Anders Shy Aircraft?

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

wexie wrote: »

Dya remember it like it was yesterday Srameen?

Cheek.

I wasn't born until much later - 1944.

evolving_doors

MikeyTaylor

The nearest Irish county to London is County Wexford (which is also nearer to Wales than it is Northern Ireland).

Also, Cork is nearer to Plymouth than it is Belfast.

mzungu

Wisconsin is the Badger State because the area's lead miners used to spend winters in tunnels burrowed into hills.

New Home

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

Cheek.

I wasn't born until much later - 1944.

But if you take 1.9 away from 44, you get 42.1, which is damn close to the distance of an actual marathon. :pac:

mzungu

New Home wrote: »

But if you take 1.9 away from 44, you get 42.1, which is damn close to the distance of an actual marathon. :pac:

mzungu

In 1999, the U.S. government paid the Zapruder family $16 million for the film of JFK's assassination.

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/04/us/zapruder-heirs-get-16-million-for-dallas-film.html

Fourier

New Home wrote: »

But if you take 1.9 away from 44, you get 42.1, which is damn close to the distance of an actual marathon. :pac:

We're through the looking glass here people.

RiderOnTheStorm

Standardised time for the whole of UK came about because of trains. Back in the day, each city could have a different time, probably based on local noon. If Liverpool was 15 minutes different to London, it wasnt an issue if you posted a letter or took a carriage journey. But then trains came along, and if you left London at noon, for example, and arrived 3 hours later in Birmingham, the time might not be 3pm, but 2.45! Watches were common and accurate. And then you have serious problems if you try to timetable an entire network of trains, with connections needing to be coordinated and junctions needing to be uncluttered. So a single time was set for whole country.

Quazzie

Tullamore is exactly a half hour behind London. When the sun sets in Greenwich it'll set in Tullamore exactly 30 minutes later

Graces7

According to one toddler, "The thing in the toothpaste tube is as long as the settee.. "

Anyone care to verify that?

Emmersonn

Graces7 wrote: »

According to one toddler, "The thing in the toothpaste tube is as long as the settee.. "

Anyone care to verify that?

Surely it depends on the size of the tube and also the size of the settee. It's (not) all about size you know.