meatrace |
The sun is 400 times larger than the moon, and 400 times further from the earth. This is why they appear to be the same size, and why total solar eclipses are possible.
Well the Earth's diameter is roughly 4 times that of the moon, and the sun's diameter is roughly 109 times that of the Earth. But the actual size (volume) is in the order of probably (off the top of my head) 70 million moons in the sun.
LazarX |
One mile of every 5 (or 10, I forget exactly) on the US interstate system is straight so that it can be used as an aircraft runway in case of emergencies or war.
The main purpose of the interstate was to move troops quickly.
Samnell |
Kajehase wrote:Hitler and Stalin (very briefly) lived in Vienna at the same time.
It's a little (but only a little) unfair to blame Franz Josef for WWI. His government wanted a small war with Serbia and might have been able to get away with that right up until the Germans decided that the Austrian war with Serbia was the pretext they needed to launch their long-planned war with France.
There's an interesting bit of parallelism involved, though. The German elites were pretty sure their time in the sun was soon to end as the way they'd unified was a huge mess that could not easily adapt to the times and would inevitably be a drag on their future progress. The way to forestall that was to get a big war going which could shake things up a bit domestically and, more importantly, get Germany more all-German territory (Which was how Alsace-Lorraine was governed.) to buy more time. And also probably give the Junkers a big boost in popularity, as their influence had been declining for a few decades in favor of other aristocracies.
...which isn't actually that far off from the shrinking South theory of a lot of the Slave Power guys, now that I think on it.
The Habsburgs had the same kinds of problems, except they arose from mutually antagonistic nationalisms. They bought off the Hungarians, but then the Hungarians immediately became the dire foes of any attempt to make a triple (or more) monarchy that would give their Slavic subjects more domestic sway and steal some of their nationalist thunder. Integrating Serbia into Austria-Hungary with a third crown and all might build some goodwill and would be harder for the Hungarians to resist after a great big victorious war. Or so they thought.
Evil Lincoln |
The oldest known vegetable is the pea.
The word "pea", singular, is a modern invention. The plant was for centuries known in England as "pease", as preserved in the rhyme "pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold..."
The eventual conversion is understandable, because of the need for a plural/singular distinction with this particular vegetable.
Dal Selpher |
The most fatal car accidents occur on Saturdays.
Dead is dead. It's hard to imagine how one fatal thing is deadlier than another fatal thing. =P /end symantics humor
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The Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire started in 1980 as a two-day jousting festival (read as: publicity stunt) to attract vistors to a winery.
Freehold DM |
Aberzombie wrote:The oldest known vegetable is the pea.The word "pea", singular, is a modern invention. The plant was for centuries known in England as "pease", as preserved in the rhyme "pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold..."
The eventual conversion is understandable, because of the need for a plural/singular distinction with this particular vegetable.
That doesn't rhyme.
Crimson Jester |
The members of the three Stooges were:
Moses "Moe Howard" Horowitz
Louis "Larry Fine" Feinberg
Samuel "Shemp Howard" Horwitz
Jerome "Curly Howard" Horwitz
Joe "The Fake Shemp" Palma
Joe Besser
Joe "Curly Joe" DeRita
Emil "The fourth stooge" Sitka who was to have replaced Larry as "Harry" before the death of Moe.
Aberzombie |
The members of the three Stooges were:
Moses "Moe Howard" Horowitz
Louis "Larry Fine" Feinberg
Samuel "Shemp Howard" HorwitzJerome "Curly Howard" Horwitz
Joe "The Fake Shemp" Palma
Joe Besser
Joe "Curly Joe" DeRita
Emil "The fourth stooge" Sitka who was to have replaced Larry as "Harry" before the death of Moe.
And Curly actually appeared briefly in a Stooges' short after his official retirement. He was largely unrecognized because he had grown his hair and beard out.
Evil Lincoln |
Evil Lincoln wrote:That doesn't rhyme.Aberzombie wrote:The oldest known vegetable is the pea.The word "pea", singular, is a modern invention. The plant was for centuries known in England as "pease", as preserved in the rhyme "pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold..."
The eventual conversion is understandable, because of the need for a plural/singular distinction with this particular vegetable.
"Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old."
Crimson Jester |
Crimson Jester wrote:And Curly actually appeared briefly in a Stooges' short after his official retirement. He was largely unrecognized because he had grown his hair and beard out.The members of the three Stooges were:
Moses "Moe Howard" Horowitz
Louis "Larry Fine" Feinberg
Samuel "Shemp Howard" HorwitzJerome "Curly Howard" Horwitz
Joe "The Fake Shemp" Palma
Joe Besser
Joe "Curly Joe" DeRita
Emil "The fourth stooge" Sitka who was to have replaced Larry as "Harry" before the death of Moe.
"Hold That Lion!" where he is briefly seen as a passenger in the, plane or is it train, and talks to Moe.
In his your Jerry (curly) was a competition ballroom dancer. He got his famous curly shuffle from a limp caused by a hunting accident when he shot himself in his leg.
Aberzombie |
Aberzombie wrote:Crimson Jester wrote:And Curly actually appeared briefly in a Stooges' short after his official retirement. He was largely unrecognized because he had grown his hair and beard out.The members of the three Stooges were:
Moses "Moe Howard" Horowitz
Louis "Larry Fine" Feinberg
Samuel "Shemp Howard" HorwitzJerome "Curly Howard" Horwitz
Joe "The Fake Shemp" Palma
Joe Besser
Joe "Curly Joe" DeRita
Emil "The fourth stooge" Sitka who was to have replaced Larry as "Harry" before the death of Moe."Hold That Lion!" where he is briefly seen as a passenger in the, plane or is it train, and talks to Moe.
Indeed. And I believe it was a train.
Klaus van der Kroft |
-Luminiferous Aether was still the dominant theory at the turn of the XX Century. Though Maxwell, Michelson, Morley (MMMmmmmmmmmm...) and company had been undermining it for a while, it was Einstein who finally toppled it.
-Contrary to popular belief, medieval scholars thought the world was round.
-It is believed that the Mediterranean Sea was originally a deep basin created as Europe and Africa split appart. At a certain point, a massive, massive waterfall is thought to have originated where the Straits of Gilbraltar now sit, eventually filling the region.
-If the world were to stop spinning, the equator would dry up and the oceans would pile up around the poles, sinking most of Europe, Russia, Canada, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand and parts of Australia. This is because the Earth's axial rotation has made the planet wider at its equator and thus gravity is not evenly distributed, being lower between the tropics and higher on the poles. It is that same axial rotation that pulls water to the equator and evens out the oceans. Without it, we would see one supermassive continent stretching around the planetary waist and two enormous oceans covering the poles (though the Southern Andes would create a chain of very tall islands).
Orthos |
-If the world were to stop spinning, the equator would dry up and the oceans would pile up around the poles, sinking most of Europe, Russia, Canada, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand and parts of Australia. This is because the Earth's axial rotation has made the planet wider at its equator and thus gravity is not evenly distributed, being lower between the tropics and higher on the poles. It is that same axial rotation that pulls water to the equator and evens out the oceans. Without it, we would see one supermassive continent stretching around the planetary waist and two enormous oceans covering the poles (though the Southern Andes would create a chain of very tall islands).
So... we'd look like a less-rusty, less-frozen Mars?
Klaus van der Kroft |
Klaus van der Kroft wrote:So... we'd look like a less-rusty, less-frozen Mars?-If the world were to stop spinning, the equator would dry up and the oceans would pile up around the poles, sinking most of Europe, Russia, Canada, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand and parts of Australia. This is because the Earth's axial rotation has made the planet wider at its equator and thus gravity is not evenly distributed, being lower between the tropics and higher on the poles. It is that same axial rotation that pulls water to the equator and evens out the oceans. Without it, we would see one supermassive continent stretching around the planetary waist and two enormous oceans covering the poles (though the Southern Andes would create a chain of very tall islands).
Well, we'd at least have water on the top and bottom parts. Roughly, the continent would span from near the northern US border to about the latitude of Uruguay. Everything else, with some minor exceptions, should be covered in water (now, there's also a lot of other things going on that would cause further changes, such as the new ocean floor collapsing due to the weight and thus further changing water distribution, but the rough outline should be that).
From what I remember of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, if Mars were to be flooded, the oceans would pile up in the northern hemisphere, mostly, which is the lowest part of the planet.
Klaus van der Kroft |
Klaus van der Kroft wrote:Well, if it makes things better for Canada, we also have milk in bags here in Chile.In bags?
Aye. Also yogurt. I remember once hearing a very reasonable explanation as to why those things exist, but I can't seem to recall it.
Kryzbyn wrote:Mt. Dew in Canada is brown.I can't speak for all of Canada, but here in Quebec, Mt Dew is yellowish. Like bubbly lemonade.
Ultradan
I'm gettin a whole dirty kind of vibe from these brown and yellow drinks here.
Kryzbyn |
Kryzbyn wrote:You're kind of right, but your reasoning is flawed. Until this year, Mountain Dew in Canada wasn't allowed to have caffeine in it because it wasn't a cola.Mt. Poo :P
From what I understand, there are govt guidelines that say if the soda has caffeine in it, it must be brown.
Ah! I see thanks for the clarification.
Klaus van der Kroft |
-The £ symbol used to represent the British Pound comes from the latin "Librum", meaning, literally, "Pound".
-The $ symbol used to represent money everywhere, comes from the Spanish Peso, which was known as "Pieza de Ocho" or "Piece of Eight". It is thought the symbol itself comes either from the notation "PS" fusing into a single letter, used in Spanish accounting since the Middle Ages, or from a slashed 8, representing the custom of splitting the coins to make change (as the coins were made of actual silver or gold).
-Said Spanish Peso was also the first global currency.
-The word "Dollar" itself came from the german "Thaler", which further back comes from the name of the region in which the first pure silver coins were minted, Joachimsthaler. The Thaler became the model currency for the Spanish Peso, and from there it eventually determined modern coinage standards.