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Actor Woody Harrelson's father was a contract killer.

Scarab Sages

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Approximately 70% of all Irish barley grown goes towards the production of Guinness beer.

Silver Crusade

Aberzombie wrote:
Approximately 70% of all Irish barley grown goes towards the production of Guinness beer.

Only 70% ?


Aberzombie wrote:
Moisture (not air) causes super glue to dry.

I knew that. That's why i keep constantly spraying the air with waer when i'm trying to super glue something on an arid day.


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Hypertext was originally developed by a Jesuit priest -Father Busa- in 1949 while trying to find a way to compile and interconnect the work of Saint Augustine. He had actually modelled the entire thing -which consisted of tens of thousands of panels and about 10 million words- by hand, before travelling to the offices of IBM in order to propose the development of such technology.

The CEO of IBM originally told him it would be impossible for machines to do such a complex thing, to which Father Busa replied "The difficult we achieve quickly. The impossible, that takes us a bit longer". Eventually, IBM accepted the challenge, though the CEO asked the priest "If this works, I trust you won't ask us to rename IBM into International Busa Machines".

The name Hypertext, however, was coined by Ted Nelson in the 60's.


Rysky wrote:
Aberzombie wrote:
Approximately 70% of all Irish barley grown goes towards the production of Guinness beer.
Only 70% ?

Gotta make a profit on the rest so you can afford to grow more.


Starting in 1884 and going on for 12 years after that, Sigmund Freud had a cocaine-habit. He even wrote an essay praising it.


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{lights cigar, waggles eyebrows} Wenn du willst sich aufhalten, du musst sie herausziehen; kokain.

Scarab Sages

One week.


The last ever speech by Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme before he was assassinated in 1985 was given at a TV-gala in support of ANC and Nelson Mandela.


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Yesterday, we Catholics celebrated the Day of the Immaculate Conception. For us Chileans, however, it holds the special significance of also being the day we commemorate the single worst disaster in our history: The Great Fire of the Church of the Company of Jesus.

In 1863, during the exact same celebration of the Immaculate Conception, more than 3,000 people were crammed into the temple controlled by the Jesuits. Filled to the brim with floral designs made from waxed paper, banners and more candles than anyone could count, the fire started when someone accidentally pushed one of the latter and set a piece of fabric aflame; within moments, the entire building was a roaring inferno.

Since two of the doors had been shut to allow more people to stand inside, everyone rushed to the central gate. However, most of the faithful were women, who wore, as per the custom of the day, huge criolines (those large skirts held wide with internal structures of metal or hardened horse hair), so when they started massing at the gates, their dresses turned into a deathtrap by creating a barrier of interlocked cages.

Over 2,000 people died that day when the roof and towers collapsed inward; that's 2% of the capital's population at the day, to the point that most estimates figured nearly 20% of the city's families lost a relative that day. It is considered one of the worst fires in human history, and the one with the highest death toll resulting from a single fire. It is also the event with most fatalities in the history of the country, only the War of the Pacific against Peru and Bolivia having a higher toll (not even the Great Earthquake of Valdivia, the strongest in history, managed to kill more people).

After the church was demolished, the bells were sold as scrap to a british merchant. His brother, however, noticed the fine metalwork, and decided to gift them to a church in the welsh town of Oystermouth. In 2010, in celebration of the Bicentenial of Chile, the people of Oystermouth gifted the bells back, which since then have been tolled every day at noon from their resting place in front of the former Palace of Congress.


Pants were invented ~15,000 years ago.


No doubt soon followed by underwear and cave wedgies.


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The British Library has released over a million images from their collections onto Flickr


Pulling up an o~~ld post here, because I actually know the explanation to this and I've just confirmed that it hasn't been clarified in all of this thread.

meatrace wrote:
Saint Caleth wrote:
Tirq wrote:
The Japanese do not call their own country Japan. They call it Nippon, which translates to Two Sticks.
I'm not sure how you are getting "Two Sticks" for 日本, but then again I don't really speak Japanese. I always thought that it meant "Root of the Sun".
You are correct. I don't know where two sticks comes from. /boggle

The Japanese name for Japan is indeed 日本, and yes, it can be read Nippon, but in modern speech it is more commonly pronounced as Nihon. Both are correct, the former is just more formal and/or dated.

Now, while Nihon written as 日本 means Japan, it has a homophone in the word 二本 (nihon). This 二本 means two long, thin objects. That could be two bottles, two rolled up scrolls, or, as the original post said, two sticks.

Example:
日本の筆ペン。(Nihon no fudepen)
A Japanese calligraphy pen.

二本の筆ペン。(Nihon no fudepen)
Two calligraphy pens.


Brad Pitt is fifty years old.


John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten) wrote:
I tell you, Sid Vicious loved ABBA.


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Ferrets were used to pull wiring through conduits during the building of the Large Hadron Collider.


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Christmas crackers, when first invented, were called 'Cossacks', so in Victorian times, the whole family would gather round the table, limber up, then simultanously pull a Cossack over the turkey


Limeylongears wrote:
Christmas crackers, when first invented, were called 'Cossacks', so in Victorian times, the whole family would gather round the table, limber up, then simultanously pull a Cossack over the turkey

That could shed an entirely different light on a certain Jame's Bond villain's backstory and motivations...

Spoiler:
Alec Trevelyan in GoldenEye

At the start of the year, Mohammed Ali Khan (known as "Mak" to friends) was 27 years. Today he is 25.

In his spare time he's an entrepreneur, giving lectures to teenagers at Swedish schools, and the driving force in an organisation for parents to kids with Down's syndrome in Gothenburg.

Professionally he plays football for BK Häcken in the Swedish premiership and the Lebanese national side (he's lived all but 2-3 years of his life in Sweden, but his mother always wanted to see him play for Lebanon, so when she died he accepted a standing invitation to do so).

Silver Crusade

Kajehase wrote:
At the start of the year, Mohammed Ali Khan (known as "Mak" to friends) was 27 years. Today he is 25.

... Wut?

Silver Crusade

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Rysky wrote:
Kajehase wrote:
At the start of the year, Mohammed Ali Khan (known as "Mak" to friends) was 27 years. Today he is 25.
... Wut?

I had to look it up here.

Silver Crusade

Celestial Healer wrote:
Rysky wrote:
Kajehase wrote:
At the start of the year, Mohammed Ali Khan (known as "Mak" to friends) was 27 years. Today he is 25.
... Wut?
I had to look it up here.

Ah! Okay, thankies.


Celestial Healer wrote:
Rysky wrote:
Kajehase wrote:
At the start of the year, Mohammed Ali Khan (known as "Mak" to friends) was 27 years. Today he is 25.
... Wut?
I had to look it up here.

Spoilsport. ;)

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Kajehase wrote:
Celestial Healer wrote:
Rysky wrote:
Kajehase wrote:
At the start of the year, Mohammed Ali Khan (known as "Mak" to friends) was 27 years. Today he is 25.
... Wut?
I had to look it up here.
Spoilsport. ;)

You have no room to talk! You're not actually a boat!


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Rysky wrote:
You have no room to talk! You're not actually a boat!

Yes he is. He weighs the same as a duck and is therefore made of wood... clearly a boat (or amphibious trojan rabbit).


Chebs is a Scottish slang word for breasts, as heard in the famous old ballad 'Sir Patrick Spence'

Spoiler:

The King sits in Dunfermline town
Considering a holiday to Zagreb
"Where can I find a bonny lass
With no inhibitions and muckle chebs?"

(...)

The King has written to Penthouse Forum
[blank] [blank] [blank] [blank] with his own right hand
Sending word to Dirty Morag
To [blank] [blank] [blank] at his command

(etc).


Limeylongears wrote:
Chebs is a Scottish slang word for breasts

Unless Scotland has an horrific incidence rate for breast cancer, that's unfortunate slang, insofar as Chibs is Scottish slang for "stab" or "slash," and Scots are not known for being comprehensible when pronouncing vowels.


Either that or it's just outdated.


I don't make these things up, you know EDIT: NSFW. Probably.


Limeylongears wrote:
Chebs is a Scottish slang word for breasts, as heard in the famous old ballad 'Sir Patrick Spence'

Tattie scones, however, is a pancake-like part of the full Scottish breakfast made from flour, potatoes, and milk*.

*:
Sometimes butter as well.


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On the 13th of January, 1898, Émile Zola published his open letter to Félix Faure, President of the French Republic, in the newspaper L'Aurore - accusing the French government of anti-semitism and the wrongful incarceration of Alfred Dreyfus.


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According to some scholarship, the aristocracy of the Khazar Khanate, in an attempt to resist socio-religious pressures from both the Byzantine Empire and Arab Caliphate to adopt Christianity and Islam, respectively, converted almost en masse ...

... to Judaism.


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Qatar has a migrant worker population of about 2 million, 1/6 of which are Nepalese.

Last year 185 of those Nepalese died due to injuries they got working on construction for the 2022 Football World Cup.


Kajehase wrote:
On the 13th of January, 1898, Émile Zola published his open letter to Félix Faure, President of the French Republic, in the newspaper L'Aurore - accusing the French government of anti-semitism and the wrongful incarceration of Alfred Dreyfus.

J'Accuse!


Jaelithe wrote:

According to some scholarship, the aristocracy of the Khazar Khanate, in an attempt to resist socio-religious pressures from both the Byzantine Empire and Arab Caliphate to adopt Christianity and Islam, respectively, converted almost en masse ...

... to Judaism.

Took me a while to ferret it out of my books and the internet, but:

Tub'a Abu Kariba Assad


By coincidence most likely, the names of two of the Pathfinder iconics happen to also be Danish words. These two are:

Harsk, meaning rancid or rank

Lem, meaning either a hatch or a limb, the latter most often referring to a certain male body part when used in the singular...

Lem is also the name of a Danish town that is either rather unfortunately named or lucky enough to share its name with an iconic.


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According to some scholarship, Basil II, Byzantine Emperor, got his nickname Boulgaroktonos ("the Bulgar-Slayer"), when, after defeating their main army in A.D. 1014 and capturing 15,000 men, he had 99 out of 100 blinded, while the last in each century was allowed to keep one eye and lead his group home. Upon seeing what had been done to his troops, the Bulgar Tsar Samuel had a stroke and died.


The Chinese word for assassin literally means "stabbing guest". For those of you keeping score at home it is 刺客 in charcters.

The word for mustache as distinct from other facial hair is 八字 since the first character looks like a little mustache (to be fair it looks way more like a mustache in most other fonts).


Batman used to use guns, and had no compunction about killing criminals.


Batman nothing, back in the original series of books Nancy Drew carried a gun! Truly, it was a different world . . .


But did she ever shoot anyone?

Liberty's Edge

The Lotte brand Choco-Pie is the number one Black Market item in North Korea.

This isn't new news, but it's nonetheless quite sad.

The choco-pie comes in two basic versions in South Korea--a mallow pie (Orion) and a cream pie (Lotte). They're about a third the size of an American Moon Pie, and only about 120 kcal.

In South Korea merchants routinely give them away to shoppers, and you can buy a box of 12 for 2200 won (about $2).

I'm trying to imagine, making minimum wage--say somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 a day before taxes--; trying to imagine any two-bite snack, any two-bite-and-it's-gone food at all that I love so much I'd pay $60 for it.

I think I'm glad I can't imagine such a thing; glad that my life is not so bereft that such a thing is so very special and unique.

Now I'm all sadders :-(


The monarch of Bhutan is the Dragon King.


Yup, I did know that.


When touring the US, the Beatles' contract included a clause that said they refused to play for segregated crowds.

Other items included (at the concert venues) a trailer with electricity and water, no less than 150 uniformed police (for protection), a special drumming platform for Ringo, and "In all dressing rooms for The Beatles, the purchaser must provide four cots, mirrors, an ice cooler, portable TV set and clean towels."


Don de Lillo (using the pen name Cleo Birdwell) has written a novel called Amazons about a pioneering female NHL player.


I am not certain if this one was posted...

Cats actually differentiate between each other and humans when communicating. For humans, they'll use the same meow all of their life. For each other, they have a lot of different sounds and ways of meowing they'll use to communicate.

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