I bet you didnt know that

mzungu

The phrase "there is no such thing as a free lunch" refers to the once-common tradition of saloons in the United States providing a "free" lunch to patrons who had purchased at least one drink. The foods provided were high in salt (e.g., ham, cheese, and salted crackers etc), so those who ate them ended up buying a lot more beer.

somefeen

Ipso wrote: »

Think that one is true.

Strontium is named after a place in Scotland (and technically the Banshee).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strontium

That is true. Passed through strontium loadsa times over the years

pleas advice

There is a Quartz and Feldspar mine near the village of Ytterby in Sweden. In the 1780s an unknown heavy black mineral was discovered there, later named gadolinite.

From Wikipedia

Many rare earth elements were discovered in the mineral gadolinite, which eventually proved to be the source of seven new elements that were named after the mineral ore and the area. These elements include yttrium (Y), erbium (Er), terbium (Tb), and ytterbium (Yb) and were first described in 1794, 1842, 1842, and 1878, respectively.

In addition, three other lanthanides, holmium (Ho, named after Stockholm), thulium (Tm, named after Thule, a mythic analog of Scandinavia), and gadolinium (Gd, after the chemist Johan Gadolin) can trace their discovery to the same quarry, making it the location with most elements named after it.

Evade

Of all the elements named after people only one wasn't named after a scientist, samarium. Technically it was named after the mineral it was isolated from, samarskite, which was was named after Vasili Samarsky–Bykhovets, a Russian mining engineer.

The shortage of house building in Dublin is not unprecedented: according to the article below from 1999, “only 60 houses were built in the suburbs of Terenure, Rathmines, Rathgar, Harold's Cross, Rathfarnham and Templeogue and Dartry between 1875-1914.” Or approximately 1.5 a year! However, “this figure jumped to 200 per annum between 1922 and 1960.”

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/look-in-amazement-on-a-century-of-sales-1.256803

It’s an interesting article, in particular how it outlines just how much inflation there had been, even by 1999, in house prices since the early 20th century.

blinding

mzungu wrote: »

The phrase "there is no such thing as a free lunch" refers to the once-common tradition of saloons in the United States providing a "free" lunch to patrons who had purchased at least one drink. The foods provided were high in salt (e.g., ham, cheese, and salted crackers etc), so those who ate them ended up buying a lot more beer.

I had curry like that in Galway approx; 35 years ago . I have been drinking since

Carry

Continuing from the odd laws post further up (I was actually looking up some other more relevant laws and stumbled across this weird and wonderful world of obsolete Irish common law):

The punishment for the crime of suicide was death by hanging. This law was only repealed in 1964. (Someone must have had a light bulb moment...)

There is a law that’s not been repealed yet. It states that when a Leprechaun knocks on your door you are obliged to share your dinner with him. (Who ever conceived that law?)

At last Ireland is not at war anymore. Declarations of war against Denmark (1666) and against France (1744) are now withdrawn (in 2015). Danish and French citizens in Ireland can finally feel safe now.

For the religious among you: You don’t need to provide a prayer of thanksgiving for the victory at the Battle of Waterloo anymore. This order from 1815 has been binned recently.

The Adulteration of Coffee Act was implemented in 1718 to counter “evil-disposed Persons” to add water, grease or butter to roasted coffee to increase its weight. Since that act was repealed in 2015 you can put all sorts of stuff into your coffee, apparently. Yuck.

joujoujou

Not Irish law alright, but... the last place in Europe (well, not a State as such, as it's Crown dependency, but still in Europe anyway) that rid of feudalism was an island called Sark, in the Channel Islands. And it happened on 4th of July 2007!

https://www.economist.com/britain/2007/07/12/democratic-revolution

Water John

I think I saw that the men of Sark joined the British Navy for World War 2 and the women ran the island.

joujoujou

I know that Sark was once invaded by a man. ONE man.

https://www.zmescience.com/other/the-best-single-handed-invasion-attempt-ever-09032011/

Skylinehead

Water John wrote: »

I think I saw that the men of Sark joined the British Navy for World War 2 and the women ran the island.

Maybe for a while, but for most of the war the Germans ran it.

Emmersonn

Carry wrote: »

Continuing from the odd laws post further up (I was actually looking up some other more relevant laws and stumbled across this weird and wonderful world of obsolete Irish common law):

There is a law that’s not been repealed yet. It states that when a Leprechaun knocks on your door you are obliged to share your dinner with him. (Who ever conceived that law?)

Yuck.

One of Michael D's ancestors maybe
Bet you did'nt know that.

Water John

Accept the Germans invaded, but the men had already gone to the UK. good programme on it, maybe BBC 2.

Professor Moriarty

Carry wrote: »

In our current decade the Irish state repealed some laws (without a referendum and probably without anyone noticing), which is a big relief in many cases:

Since 2015 there is no reward anymore for capture or death of “arch traitor” Hugh O’Neill Earl of Tyrone, issued originally in 1601.
(How much was it anyway?)

In 1665 an order was issued that the first Wednesday of every month is a day of fasting and penance in Ireland for the relief of the bubonic plague in London. That order was also expunged in 2015.
(Phew... finally. Is the plague gone from London so?)

Also in 2015 a proclamation from 1817 that the consumption of potatoes and oatmeal should be kept for the “lower orders” has been expunged.
(Now finally the “higher orders” can eat spuds and porridge openly and not in secret at night...)

Finally we are now allowed to criticise the marriage of Henry VIII and his second wife Ann Boleyn. Criticism of this marriage was prohibited in 1533 and a valid law until 2015.
(Shame on him, the old lecher or whatever. There, I said it! )


Edit: I have to correct myself here: Above mentioned laws/orders were expunged in 2006, not in 2015. Not that it makes any difference. Sorry about that.

Well, it mightn't matter to you. I've just been released from Mountjoy for eating chips in 2006.

Shpud2

joujoujou wrote: »

I know that Sark was once invaded by a man. ONE man.

https://www.zmescience.com/other/the-best-single-handed-invasion-attempt-ever-09032011/

That's brilliant

Grayson

I read today that the Freemasons will accept transgendered individuals into their organisation but still won't accept women. So they're both inclusive in a very modern manner and exclusive in a centuries old manner:)

blinding

Grayson wrote: »

I read today that the Freemasons will accept transgendered individuals into their organisation but still won't accept women. So they're both inclusive in a very modern manner and exclusive in a centuries old manner:)

Do women really really want to join ?

It must be a case of something ya can’t have !

Realt Dearg Sec

blinding wrote: »

Grayson wrote: »

I read today that the Freemasons will accept transgendered individuals into their organisation but still won't accept women. So they're both inclusive in a very modern manner and exclusive in a centuries old manner:)

Do women really really want to join ?

It must be a case of something ya can’t have !

The day women are allowed into the hallowed Halls of a Masonic Lodge is the day I continue to never darken the door of one again.

IvyTheTerrific

A sort of gross story to show that fashion is mad.

Louis XIV suffered from an anal fistula (basically a type of rectal infection that gets so severe it becomes external). Eventually, a surgeon called Charles François Felix repaired the fistula (after practicing for 6 months on poor people and prisoners). The operation (performed without anaesthetic... eep) was so successful that many French aristocrats wanted their own anal fistula to be operated on by Felix. Some people even wrapped their healthy behinds in bandages to make it seem like they had been operated on.

cdeb

On Sark, the feudalism issue there is very controversial.

Two rich media magnate brothers bought the island of Brecqhou off the coast of Sark. It's tiny; it fits the mansion and not much more.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Frederick_Barclay

They sued the European Court when one of them wasn't allowed will the property to their four sons in equal parts; it had to go to the eldest. They won the case, which is partly why feudalism ended.

The brothers have cars and a helicopter on their island, both of which are banned elsewhere on Sark. This is the island ambulance for example -



The brothers are hated there for just riding rough-shod over local traditions and rules, and for printing negative - borderline nonsense - articles about the island in their newspapers.

Sark is a fantastic place with an amazingly tight-knit community atmosphere. No cars, no streetlights. A dark sky reserve. Lovely scenery, lots of quietude, two welcoming pubs and lots of friendly locals. Some wonderful signs as well (I particularly liked the one about thieves being banned from the shop as penalty - a big penalty as it's the only shop on the island, or the one about the local drunk who had volunteered for the black book, which meant no-one was to serve him alcohol for three months. That would be obeyed too. Everyone knew who he was.)

It's well, well worth a visit.

Capt'n Midnight

The Bermuda triangle used to be known as the Bermuda rectangle,








until one of the sides mysteriously vanished ...

Capt'n Midnight

And there's the Sark Lark. The original one was that most of the residents were signed up as directors of thousands of companies so the names of the real owners could be hidden.

New Home

http://funsubstance.com/uploads/original/486/486069.jpg

Capt'n Midnight

^^^^

Much physics was wrong with that film despite all the science PR


They needed a huge booster to get the shuttle off earth,
the same shuttle that on it's own could make it out of the gravity well of a black hole close to the Schwarzschild radius ?

They didn't see the wave from orbit ?
ESA's Sentinel-3 is measuring wave heights to within a few cm.

The graphics for the black hole was sooooo scientific, like a Windows 95 screensaver :rolleyes:

And if your planet is dying, why waste YEARS checking out a planet with no radio contact.

[/rant]

Until scientists in Ontario managed to preserve the heart of blue whale intact, it was thought they were at least the size of a car and that the aorta was likely to be so big that an average person could swim through it. After studying the preserved specimen we now know that it is indeed the size of a car - assuming it's an IQ Smart Car - and that you'd probably only fit your head into the aorta. A whales blood pressure is comparatively low to a land animal and beats about 20 times a minute.

Compare that with the giraffe, who has to defy gravity to pump blood up that long neck to his brain. A giraffes heart chugs along at about 60 - 70 bpm but his heart is bigger and stronger than other mammals with similar mass because of the extra challenges involved with pumping the blood further distances and pumps more blood with every beat. A giraffe has the highest blood pressure of any land animal because of his length from head to toe.

At the other end of the scale is the mammal with the smallest and lightest heart, the White-toothed Pygmy Shrew. This teeny weeny guy is less than 3 grams and has a frantically high metabolic rate, which means his heart is very busy and beats over a thousand times a minute. His heart might be small but it's huge relative to his small size and to meet the metabolic price of his system, the pgymy shrew sleeps little and eats more or less around the clock. His heart weighs a fraction of a gram.

The human heart beats up to 100,000 times a day and men have a slower heartbeat than women. It pumps about 9,000 litres (of the same 5.6 litres of blood) every 24 hours. It never stops working until the end of our lives and keeps all 70 plus trillion of our cells alive, it has it's own electrical circuits and is made of muscle that never tires and it will beat over two and a half billion times over the average lifetime. The only part of the human body it doesn't service is the cornea.

Mens hearts weigh more than womens and although most people think it's located on the left side, it's larger on the left side and bulges to the left as it works and heart pain is more usually felt on the left side, but it is positioned in the centre of your chest between your lungs.

mzungu

Big Major Cay is an uninhabited island in the Bahamas populated by swimming pigs, aptly nicknamed Pig Beach by locals. Nobody knows for sure how the feral pigs got there, but some theories suggest they swam ashore after a shipwreck and others posit that they were left there by sailors that either intended to pass by again but never did, or just wished to dump them there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvgKw1bXfqE

We should try leaving pigs at a high altitude, maybe they can learn how to fly.

Ipso

mzungu wrote: »

Big Major Cay is an uninhabited island in the Bahamas populated by swimming pigs, aptly nicknamed Pig Beach by locals. Nobody knows for sure how the feral pigs got there, but some theories suggest they swam ashore after a shipwreck and others posit that they were left there by sailors that either intended to pass by again but never did, or just wished to dump them there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvgKw1bXfqE

Didn't sailors used to leave animals on small islands as s food source on return voyages?
That's what happened the Dodo, pigs (and other animals) ended up on these islands and as the Dodos were flightless and aid eggs on the ground, the other animals ate them.

The English slang term "Tickety-boo", meaning "Thats fine" comes from the Hindi "ṭhīk hai, bābū" meaning "Everything is fine, Sir".

mzungu

Ipso wrote: »

Didn't sailors used to leave animals on small islands as s food source on return voyages?
That's what happened the Dodo, pigs (and other animals) ended up on these islands and as the Dodos were flightless and aid eggs on the ground, the other animals ate them.

That would be the most likely reason. Apparently, when the British arrived in Bermuda pigs had been left there (by the Spanish presumably if true) so they did have form for doing that kind of thing in the area.