I bet you didnt know that

Skylinehead

jimgoose wrote: »

...and about a third of the power of the mighty Tsar Bomba, or "Emperor Bomb". This was detonated by those pesky Russkies on Novaya Zemlya island in the Arctic Ocean in 1961, and with an estimated blast yield of 57 megatons it broke windows 500 miles away. It is the most powerful hydrogen weapon and man-made explosion ever by a country mile.

And they had the capacity to double that - although there's little chance the delivering plane would have escaped. Apparently the bomb was very clean fallout-wise relative to the power of it.

RobertKK

Berkeley in California is named after Kilkenny man George Berkeley.
The White House was designed and built by Kilkenny man James Hoban, who based the design on Leinster House in Dublin, when the British burned the White House, James Hoban oversaw the rebuilding of the destroyed portion.

jimgoose

Skylinehead wrote: »

And they had the capacity to double that - although there's little chance the delivering plane would have escaped. Apparently the bomb was very clean fallout-wise relative to the power of it.

Aye. Even as it was, Major Durnovtsev and co. were given a 50% chance of escaping the thing in the aircraft. Oh and, yes as a thermonuclear fusion weapon it would be relatively "clean" - most of the crap would have been thrown by the fission detonator stage.

Speedsie

RobertKK wrote: »

Berkeley in California is named after Kilkenny man George Berkeley.
The White House was designed and built by Kilkenny man James Hoban, who based the design on Leinster House in Dublin, when the British burned the White House, James Hoban oversaw the rebuilding of the destroyed portion.

James Hoban visited Lucan House, where the dining room is an oval, while he was training. The oval dining room there is said to be an inspiration for the Oval Office.

Kat1170

Eat a few Gorse flowers as a natural remedy for heartburn.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

I've always found this fascinating....

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

It's incredible to think that veterans of the Zulu War and US Civil War were still alive during the Second World War.

Red Kev

This slightly crazy looking woman with a gun is

Stalin's granddaughter.

Her mother was an interesting character, held Russian, American and British citizenship at some stage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_Alliluyeva

maudgonner

An engineer for Volvo invented the three-point seatbelt as part of their initiative to improve car safety.

They patented it and could have made rival car companies pay a fortune to use their design, or just made sure that their cars had the competitive advantage of being the only ones with three-point belts.

Instead they gave it away for free, allowed any car manufacturer to use the design and sent the engineer, Nils Bohlin, around the world to promote it. That generous decision saved millions of lives.

ScrubsfanChris

maudgonner wrote: »

An engineer for Volvo invented the three-point seatbelt as part of their initiative to improve car safety.

They patented it and could have made rival car companies pay a fortune to use their design, or just made sure that their cars had the competitive advantage of being the only ones with three-point belts.

Instead they gave it away for free, allowed any car manufacturer to use the design and sent the engineer, Nils Bohlin, around the world to promote it. That generous decision saved millions of lives.

They have boldly predicted that by 2020 no one will be fatility injured in a new Volvo.

http://jalopnik.com/this-is-volvos-bold-plan-to-eliminate-all-deaths-in-its-1668747230

karaokeman

Well for anime fans there's a Canadian dub of Dragon Ball Kai that started production over 7 years ago now that has still never seen the light of day on TV.

rarariot

karaokeman wrote: »

Well for anime fans there's a Canadian dub of Dragon Ball Kai that started production over 7 years ago now that has still never seen the light of day on TV.

haven't watched anime in years. i used to love it but my dad thought i was a weirdo. often if he saw me watching stuff like Naruto he'd beat me down with a set of meat tongs

DEFTLEFTHAND

Adolf 'Adi' Dassler and his brother Rudolf ran a sports shoe company together in Germany. 'Dassler Brothers'.

During the latter part of WW2 the brothers had a terrible falling out. Rudolf was picked up by Allied soldiers and accused of being in the SS, which he wasn't. He was convinced that Adi had set him up.

Owing to this, in 1947 Rudolf broke up their partnership and formed his own company which initially traded under the name 'Ruda' before rebranding as Puma later that year.

Adi renamed the original Dassler Bothers company, Adidas.

karaokeman

rarariot wrote: »

haven't watched anime in years. i used to love it but my dad thought i was a weirdo. often if he saw me watching stuff like Naruto he'd beat me down with a set of meat tongs

That's harsh man, no one deserves that kind of treatment :eek::eek::eek:. Heck, I've had friends who were Bronies but I still think no less of them for liking what they like. Society seriously needs to move past this idea that only children can enjoy animated shows.

I'm actually not big into anime myself, but I love myself some Dragon Ball.

Gwynplaine

RobertKK wrote: »

Berkeley in California is named after Kilkenny man George Berkeley.
The White House was designed and built by Kilkenny man James Hoban, who based the design on Leinster House in Dublin, when the British burned the White House, James Hoban oversaw the rebuilding of the destroyed portion.

Can I make a wild guess here? You're from Kilkenny? And you couldn't be prouder

junospider

Also a Kilkennyman named Walker invented the caterpillar track!

RiderOnTheStorm

There are 2 saints buried in Ireland with international holidays named after them. St Patrick, and St Nicolas. Yes, Santa did exist, and is buried in Kilkenny.... The Cats gettin all the news today!

Capt'n Midnight

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

There are 2 saints buried in Ireland with international holidays named after them. St Patrick, and St Nicolas. Yes, Santa did exist, and is buried in Kilkenny.... The Cats gettin all the news today!

And of course St Valentine down in Whitefriars

Capt'n Midnight

Squall Leonhart wrote: »

Mercury turns on it's own axis far far slower than earth does, meaning a day on mercury is equivalent to the length of 59 earth days. So that'd be a long, long, cold night.

Mercury also has the shortest year length, completing it's trip around the sun in 88 days.

Mercury's spin and orbit is synchronised so it's exactly three days every two years.


If you had the metal mercury on Mercury then by day it would be a gas and at night it would be a solid. In fact solid mercury is quite good for making bells, apart from the obvious problem of it turning back into a liquid.

Cartouche

Gregory Peck took his role in 1976’s The Omen as a way to work out his “personal demons” — his son had committed suicide right before he auditioned

mansize

The first county to win an all star in all positions in both codes was... (Not KK)

OFFALY

Capt'n Midnight

maudgonner wrote: »

An engineer for Volvo invented the three-point seatbelt as part of their initiative to improve car safety.

No, it was a cost saving measure.

http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-01-27

Red Kev

This is a Tatra T97 car. Built from 1936-39, it was designed by Hans ledwinka, an Austrian and was a development of the V570 concept car from 1930.

Look familiar? Well Hitler liked it and told Ferdinand Porsche that it would be perfect for German roads. Germany overran Czechoslovakia in 1938 and took the plans from Tatra for the car. Whilst Porsche was developing the KDF car (later called Beetle) through the 1930's they used so much of Tatra's ideas from 1938 on that VW agreed to pay Tatra compensation for stealing their plans 20 years later.

So the biggest selling car of all time was actually almost a direct rip off of a Czech design.

Cartouche

ET and Poltergeist were originally supposed to be the same movie, called Night Skies.

Steven Spielberg had originally conceived a project about a rural family terrorized by an alien invasion. Eventually, that evolved into the more benign arrival of "E.T.," while the invasive, ghostly force gave us "Poltergeist."

RiderOnTheStorm

Ireland was the first (modern) country to leave the British Empire / Commonwealth. India was the 2nd. For their new republic, the Indians adopted the Irish flag, but turned it 90 degrees and added a mandala. They thought it could become a thing. Each country leaving would create a new flag of green, white, and orange and personalise it.

It didn't catch on.

Chancer3001

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

Ireland was the first (modern) country to leave the British Empire / Commonwealth. India was the 2nd. For their new republic, the Indians adopted the Irish flag, but turned it 90 degrees and added a mandala. They thought it could become a thing. Each country leaving would create a new flag of green, white, and orange and personalise it.

It didn't catch on.

I don't get it. What about America leaving?

4068ac1elhodqr

Most folks think 3-sting blues crooner 'Seasick Steve' and his frantic drummer got their 1st lucky break in the music biz on Jools Holland's show.



Fact is the 75yo started touring and performing back in the 60's had many friends in the music scene including Joni Mitchell, and was signed to numerous labels (inc Majors) and worked as a Studio Producer & Session Musician for plenty of other folks too e.g. Modest Mouse.

jimbobaloobob

I bet you didnt know this morning that Ireland would suffer defeat today to Scotland in the six nations.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Chancer3001 wrote: »

I don't get it. What about America leaving?

Neither the empire nor the commonwealth existed then.

Chancer3001

The British empire didn't exist then? When did it exist then??

Chancer3001

Chancer3001 wrote: »

The British empire didn't exist then? When did it exist then??

Just googled it. Seems you might be totally wrong