Stuff you didn't know and probably don't care about

[Charmonium]

The 20 longest non-stop flights - https://www.thrillist.com/travel/na...ongest-flights-in-the-world-ranked-by-mileage

 

[Cappuccino]

My mom use to date Bill Gates.

 

[Charmonium]

Before or after he was famous?

 

[lxskllr]

A Lichtenburg scar is caused by lightning...

Found via this article...

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/05/i-was-struck-by-lightning-yesterday-and-boy-am-i-sore/

Pretty badass souvenir from being hit by lightning.

 

[Cappuccino]

Before or after he was famous?

When he was 13 years old.

 

[Charmonium]

In the UK, so many people follow soap operas and then go to make tea after the programs are over that it actually puts a burden on the power grid and power companies have to follow these soap operas so they can anticipate the spikes.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index...y-experience-power-surges-soap-operas-finish/

 

[KMFJD]

In the UK, so many people follow soap operas and then go to make tea after the programs are over that it actually puts a burden on the power grid and power companies have to follow these soap operas so they can anticipate the spikes.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index...y-experience-power-surges-soap-operas-finish/

Kinda reminds me of the Olympics back in 2002...

 

[Charmonium]

That's even funnier.

 

[KMFJD]

I was in northern BC working during those Olympics, was watching the game and remember looking outside from the hotel and not seeing a single car/person outside....

 

[Gerle]

Kinda reminds me of the Olympics back in 2002...

Am I reading that chart right, did it spike from one soda can's volume to about a can and a half, city wide? Do they use a different kind of milliliter in Canada?

 

[Charmonium]

I saw that too but I figured it was per capita. Although I can't think of any reason you'd want to it that way.

 

[KMFJD]

yeah that doesn't make sense..hmm

 

[Charmonium]

Commercial airliners have a secret engine in their tails.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/...of_that_hole_on_the_tail_of_the_airplane.html

 

[Red Squirrel]

Dandelion flowers close at night, and reopen at day.

And other fun facts: http://www.softschools.com/facts/plants/dandelion_facts/597/

 

[KMFJD]

https://arstechnica.com/science/201...is-new-rocket-launching-plane-today-it-is-big

The new plane is, in a word, bigly. The aircraft has 385-foot wingspan and, powered by six Pratt & Whitney engines used on Boeing 747 aircraft, has a maximum takeoff weight of 1.3 million pounds. The Stratolaunch's wingspan is the largest in history, blowing away the previous record-holder (Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose) by 65 feet. Vulcan Aerospace says its Stratolaunch airplane will have an operational range of 2,000 nautical miles. Serving as a reusable first stage for rocket launches, the Stratolaunch system will be capable of delivering payloads to multiple orbits and inclinations in a single mission.

 

[Thebobo]

https://arstechnica.com/science/201...is-new-rocket-launching-plane-today-it-is-big

The new plane is, in a word, bigly. The aircraft has 385-foot wingspan and, powered by six Pratt & Whitney engines used on Boeing 747 aircraft, has a maximum takeoff weight of 1.3 million pounds. The Stratolaunch's wingspan is the largest in history, blowing away the previous record-holder (Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose) by 65 feet. Vulcan Aerospace says its Stratolaunch airplane will have an operational range of 2,000 nautical miles. Serving as a reusable first stage for rocket launches, the Stratolaunch system will be capable of delivering payloads to multiple orbits and inclinations in a single mission.

Can you imagine the stresses on the middle wing.

 

[KMFJD]

Can you imagine the stresses on the middle wing.

Yeah no idea how they managed that, amazing feat of engineering imo

 

[Charmonium]

The real story behind Mary Had A Little Lamb.
http://www.wisegeek.com/do-nursery-rhymes-have-any-basis-in-reality.htm

On a spring morning in 1816, Mary Elizabeth Sawyer and her father found two newborn lambs in their sheep pen in Sterling, Massachusetts. One had been rejected by its mother and was nearly dead. Mary cared for the animal, nursing it back to health, and it became her companion. One day, when she headed off to school, the lamb followed along -- the real story behind the famous nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb." The best-known first 12 lines of the nursery rhyme were written by John Roulstone, who heard the story while visiting his uncle in the area, en route to Harvard University.

Mary, a lamb, and nursery rhyme history:

• Three additional stanzas were added later by Sarah Josepha Hale and included in her 1830 book Poems for Our Children.
  
• Hale’s contribution is written in a different style than Roulstone’s, and gives the poem a moral. The rhyme later appeared as a lesson in the McGuffey Readers.
  
• Mary Sawyer's mother made some stockings out of the lamb's wool for her daughter, who treasured them. Later in life, Mary donated the stockings to help raise money for the restoration of the Old South Meeting House in Boston.

 

[Charmonium]

Ketchup started out in SE Asia as a fermented fish sauce.

www.wisegeek.com/what-surprising-ingredients-were-found-in-ketchups-predecessors.htm

More than 500 years ago, the South China Sea was the hub of seafaring Imperial China. Chinese ships visited ports throughout Southeast Asia, including forays along the Mekong River. There they encountered Khmer and Vietnamese fishermen and a caramel-colored sauce concocted from salted and fermented anchovies. The Vietnamese called it nuoc mam, but the Chinese called it kê-tsiap or ke-tchup, which means “preserved fish sauce” in Hokkien, a dialect spoken in the southeastern province of Fujian. Ke-tchup was taken back to Europe by Dutch and English sailors in the 1600s, and over the years it was transformed with the addition of other ingredients, becoming an almost entirely different sauce. By the time Henry J. Heinz started producing ketchup in Pittsburgh in 1876, it was different still -- much more like the popular tomato-based condiment served today.

The evolution of a tangy sauce:

• Of course, Hokkien isn’t written with the Latin alphabet. Ketchup, catsup, and katchup are just a few of the many romanized transcriptions of the original Hokkien word. That word no longer exists in modern Hokkien, but the syllable tchup -- pronounced zhi in Mandarin -- still means “sauce” in some Chinese dialects.
  
• Fujianese settlers took ke-tchup with them to Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Today, in Bahasa Indonesia, the language of Indonesia, kecap just means “sauce.”
  
• Most 18th-century British recipes for ketchup called for ingredients such as mushrooms, walnuts, oysters, and anchovies. These early Western ketchups were mostly thin and dark, and were often added to soups, sauces, meat, and fish.

 

[Cappuccino]

did you know pizza is originally from Cape town?

 

[Thebobo]

 

[Thebobo]

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1729051744059521

 

[Charmonium]

@Thebobo Great info graphic. I read every one. Most are pretty interesting.

 

[Thebobo]

 

[KMFJD]

did you know pizza is originally from Cape town?

Lol no....Naples