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Found this one after getting curious about the origin of a common proverb after hearing it used in a conversation:
The proverb "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" is often attributed to Confucius or the Bible, but actually most likely dates to the 19th century.
The oldest English-language version of the proverb can be found in Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie's 1885 novel Mrs. Dymond, as "If you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good turn." (Source: Wiktionary)
David Bowie received a serious injury at school in 1962 when his friend George Underwood punched him in the left eye during a fight over a girl. The damage could not be fully repaired and Bowie was left with faulty depth perception and a permanently dilated pupil. Its why he looks as if he has two differently colored eyes.
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The "Every Sperm is Sacred" musical number from the Monty Python movie The Meaning of Life was mostly shot in Rochdale.
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Found this one after getting curious about the origin of a common proverb after hearing it used in a conversation:
The proverb "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" is often attributed to Confucius or the Bible, but actually most likely dates to the 19th century.
The oldest English-language version of the proverb can be found in Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie's 1885 novel Mrs. Dymond, as "If you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good turn." (Source: Wiktionary)
"Build a pinkskin a fire, and he's entertained until it goes out. Set a pinkskin on fire, and he's entertaining for the rest of his life."
This is my 500th post.
In Sweden, 1 mile = 10 kilometers.
Both The Fly and The Elephant Man were produced by Mel Brooks.
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Rod Taylor had completely retired from acting when Quentin Tarantino offered him the role of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Inglourious Basterds (2009). At first Taylor declined the part, suggesting that Tarantino should cast Albert Finney (who had played Churchill to great acclaim in The Gathering Storm (2002)), but eventually the director talked him into it.
Today is SCB's (Statistiska Centralbyrån) "prognosis day."
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Today is Martin Luther King's birthday. It is also my father's birthday.
Which means that, growing up, I would always get my father's birthday off from school, while he always went to work.
Ironic? I think so.
After a volcanic eruption shortly before Christmas, Tonga has 177 islands rather than the previous 176.
After his tennis career ended, Stefan Edberg became one of Sweden's best squash players.
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Robert Duvall's father was a Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy.
Heh heh. Rear admiral.
According to my grandfather, during WW2, Swedish privates kept lists of which officers should be shot if the Germans invaded. (The thought being that they were too pro-German to be trusted in that situation.)
Dave Bautista is a keen collector of steel lunchboxes.
Probably for bashing people over the head with, like in that one Marilyn Manson song.
Of the almost 700 people that have served as Lord Mayor of London, two have been women.
DeForest Kelley was known for playing villains in both film and television before taking on the role of beloved Dr. Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy on the original Star Trek series.
There are around 11,000 registered and unregistered tartans in existence, regulated by the faintly sinister sounding Scottish Tartans Authority
The Wug Test was invented by Jean Berko Gleason to investigate if small children have absorbed and learned how to use grammatical rules by using nonsense words to describe what is on cards shown to the children.
This man knows how to zib. What is he doing?
This is a wug, , what are these?
Wugs.
The first confectioneries that closely resemble what we call lollipops date to the Middle Ages, when the nobility would often eat boiled sugar with the aid of sticks or handles.
Workers at the Kirunavaara iron ore mine has to travel over a kilometer down into the mountain before reaching their work stations.
Because of the way the iron lode is shaped, the whole town of Kiruna will be moved to avoid people's houses crumbling into the mountain as cracks start to form below the town's current position.
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Magnesium monohydride is a molecule known only as a gas and is found on the sun and other stars.
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There is no coronation ceremony in Spain. Ever since the XIV century, kings are proclaimed, not crowned. The crown and scepter are still expected to be present, though, sitting on a cushion in front of the new monarchs, like some sort of royal Sorting Hat I suppose.
"You'll be the King of... Panama"
"But Panama has no king!"
"WHO'S THE CROWN HERE?"
According to writer Mark Evanier, Jack Kirby modeled Darkseid's face on actor Jack Palance.
The Complete Calvin and Hobbes hardcover was the most expensive book to make it onto the New York Times Best Seller list.
Nintendo has so much money banked that they could operate at a 250 million dollar loss every year and still be in business until 2052.
During Operation Desert Storm, a soldier's Game Boy survived a bombing on the barracks. The Game Boy is still functional, and is currently on display at the Nintendo World Store in New York City.
Scott Cawthon, the developer of Five Nights At Freddy's, mostly made bible and Christian-themed games. When a critic savaged one of his games, saying the character animations looked like "creepy animatronics," the seed was planted for his breakout title featuring murderous animatronics.
Scott Cawthon has said that, when working on the first game, Bonnie the Bunny animatronic was the scariest, being the one that gave him nightmares.
Tigers can be trained to use litter boxes. Big litter boxes.
Mosquitoes kill over one million people annually. And yet you'll never see "mosquito week" on Discovery Channel.
Most victims of shark attacks are only bit once before the shark swims away. Those who do die tend to die from blood loss or drowning due to being unable to swim from injuries. This is not because Sharks hate the taste of human flesh, but rather because of our boniness.
Julius Caesar was bored of gladiator matches, and often did paperwork in his box seat while the games went on.
Gladiators in Roman times often had sponsorship deals, and matches were often prefaced with advertising spots where a gladiator would hawk a product.
There are about five reported cases of the Bubonic Plague in the US every year.
Abraham Lincoln was an accomplished wrestler, and was known for trash talking in the ring.
The myth of pirates burying their treasure pretty much came about with Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. Most pirates preferred to spend their wealth, while those with foresight put it in banks or invested in land. The only recorded case of a pirate burying treasure was Captain Kidd, who was a special case. He hid his treasure in hopes of using it as a bargaining chip to avoid punishment for piracy. (It didn't work. He was tortured into revealing where he hid it.)
Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, would put lit matches in his hat (And in some reports, his beard) to increase his fearsome appearance during boarding actions.
Before dentistry was a profession, you would go to the barber to get a tooth pulled.
There is no historical records of any lord enforcing a "law of the first night" or the right for the lord to have the first night of pleasure with any newlywed women. There are, however, many reports of the nobles 'over there' having such a law. In other words, it was a rumour spread to make the lands of other lords sound more miserable.
The 2010 Olympic Gold Medal Game against the US (which Canada won in a 3-2 overtime thriller) set - and still holds - the record for the single most-watched television broadcast in Canada ever. 26.5 million people (or about 80% of the population) tuned in to watch at least part of the game. Just to reiterate that - that's four out of every five people in the country.
The Schrodinger's cat paradox outlines a situation in which a cat in a box must be considered, for all intents and purposes, simultaneously alive and dead. Schrodinger created this paradox as a justification for killing cats.
John Stuart Mill died from Erysipelas.
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Albert Einstien's last words are a mystery. He spoke them in German, which his attendant nurse did not understand.
The merger between AOL and Time Warner was such a colossally mismanaged, embezzeled mess that the merged company reported an operating loss of nearly one hundred billion dollars, and stock values plummeted to less than 10% of their starting value. Adjusted for inflation, it is the largest operating loss ever reported by a company.
Like celery, eating rabbit meat burns more calories than it provides.
When Napolean swept over Europe, he decreed that people should drive on the right side of the road. Because he never took Britain, this is why the British drive on the left.
The earliest known codified writing system was developed and used for tax receipts. (Says something about humans, doesn't it?)
Cavemen didn't live in caves. While drawings have been found on cave walls, there is no evidence that our ancestors actually lived in them.
There are only a handful of animals capable of recognizing their reflection. Aside from many primates and some cetaceans (dolphins and such), other species include elephants, and European Magpies.
Cheddar cheese is yellow in Europe.
Studies have found that a person can survive on one hour of sleep per day. The catch is that it must be in 15 minute increments every six hours.
Contrary to poular depiction, Cleopatra was rather plain looking, at best. Coins showing her visage, which would likely try to flatter her, showed her with a fleshy face and a hook nose.
Cleopatra lived closer to Elizabeth Taylor's movie role as her than she did to the founding of the Great Pyramid.
The phrase "warts and all" is believed to have originated with Oliver Cromwell. To show how different he was from the nobles at the time, he ordered his portrait be as realistic as possible, hiding no blemishes.
B.J. Blazkowicz (Wolfenstein) is Billy Blaze's (Commander Keen) grandfather.
The Atacama desert in Chile is the driest place on earth, with an average annual percipitation rate of less than 1mm, and some years getting no rain at all. Because of that, it became an ideal place for observatories, and several are located there.
Much of interior Antartica is technically a desert, as it has very low percipitation.
The Bently subglacial trench in Antartica is the deepest surface depression not underwater. Technically.
Alongside the myth that humans use only 10% of their brain is the new age belief that true enlightenment (Or awesome psychic powers) will come about by using your whole mind. However, your whole mind working at once does already happen. It's called a Grand Mal seizure.
Charles Schulz's (The creator of Peanuts and Charlie Brown) first published work was a drawing of a dog he sent in to Ripley's Believe It Or Not column.
Charles Schulz was a machine gunner during WW2. He was stationed away from the front lines. In fact, only once did he even see a German soldier, who surrendered at the sight of his gun. It was a good thing, as Schulz had forgotten to load his gun that day.
At Schulz's funeral, restored Sopwith Camels performed ariel maneuvers in his honour.
The comic strip Peanuts is possibly the largest body of work made by one person. Charles Schulz wrote and drew every strip for 50 years
Geologically speaking, India has a better claim to being a continent than the relatively political division between Europe and Asia
India is the world's largest democracy, with roughly 714 million eligable voters.
Eratosthenes, a greek mathematician circa 240 BC noted a story that in one city, you could look down your well at noon during the Summer Solstice. Noting that was'nt possible where he lived, he measured the lengths and angle of shadows during the solstice and used the data to estimate the circumference of the earth. Due to uncertainty of his unit of measurement, we are uncertain how accurate his estimation was, being off by 1.6% to 16%. Still impressive.
Along many other reasons, one big cause for Atari's collapse and the Great Video Game Crash of '83 was that Atari produced more cartridges of particular games (notably E.T. and Pac Man) than there were consoles in the market. Asked about this questionable marketing decision, Atari said that people would buy two copies, one for their summer home.
Contrary to what certain fundamentalists might say, people who play role-playing games have a lower rate of suicide than the average.
Independent of all other factors, there is a correlation between listening to country music and increased suicide rates.
During WW2, the Allies turned down several opportunities to assasinate Hitler, including one time when he was dangerously close to the Russian front, and a single strike could have killed him. The Allies realized that Hitler's insanity and mismanagement was doing more damage to the Nazis than his death would.
Nintendo was formed in 1881. It started making Hana Fuda cards. Other products in Nintendo's history include RC vacuums and love motels.
The air we breathe consists of about 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen.
Wood Buffalo National Park, a forest preserve in Northern Alberta, Canada, is larger than Switzerland.
Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first Prime Minister, was such an alcoholic that he frequently went to parliment drunk. Once, he puked on the leader of the opposition during caucass.
When Nunavat was divided from The Northwest Territories in Canada, during discussion on if The Northwest Territories should change its name alongside it, the name Bob was proposed, and made considerable headway as a potential name before being shot down.
Did You Know overload.
<Queue russian lady's final scene from Indiana Jones 4>
