Useless Facts (1 Viewer)

[statsman]

I will never complain about humidity again since visitting Japan. If you think it's humid where you live, you don't know anything!

Try Houston TX. 100+ temp with 100% humidity.
And thats a nice day.

 

[Matt Greatorex]

This thread is fast turning into the 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch.
Anyone remember it?

"We used to work 10 hours a day"
"That's nothing, we worked 15, if we were lucky"
etc.

Only now it's one-upmanship based on humidity.
Makes a pleasant change from political digressions, as per most other threads.

 

[Rich]

This thread is fast turning into the 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch.
Anyone remember it?

A classic from when we could actually write comic sketches.
Led to the birth of The Two Ronnies of course and some would even argue, Monty

 

[FoFa]

Try Houston TX. 100+ temp with 100% humidity.
And thats a nice day.

Naw, Houston does get triple digits, but only every now and then and they hardly last more than a day or two usually. Summer is usually 97 F and sunny with a 20% chance of afternoon thunder showers.
How ever that is Jun. through Sep.
Humidity is never 100% (unless it is raining), it is usually only like 96 or 97 percent.

 

[Ron_dK]

Another U F :

The Rolling Stones did the Netherlands in their bigger bang tour. The hall where they did their gig was not sold out, only some 3600 seats. Tickets were an unbelieveable high € 100,00 , which is 50% too much in relation to the performance they gave. Since Keith fall out of that palmtree, they have never been the same as in the 80's.

 

[Rich]

they have never been the same as in the 80's.

Who has ?

 

[Keith Nichols]

Elephants

Elephants are the only beast on the planet to have 4 knees. All other 4 legged beasts have knees in the back pair and the leg equivalent of elbows in the front pair (I wouldn't swear to the second statement, but 4 knees and elephants is definite!)

Elephants are believed to be able to 'hear' infra sound (very low frequency sound) through their feet which are incredibly sensitive. It is thought that this helps herds keep in touch by hearing the movement of others over great distances through the ground. If anybody is truly interested in this bit of trivia, I can get the reference to a New Scientist article of about 2 years ago.

Truly useless facts, to me at least, as I don't have an elephant or ever expect to own one.

 

[FoFa]

Fans collect guitar picks from their favorite rockers or costumes worn by the stars. THis harmless pursuit is a civilized derivative of the ancient custom of consuming the body of the dead warriors or kings to internalize their power and heroism.

 

[Tasslehoff]

I've heard that if you wear glasses that turn your vision upside-down long enough, your brain will correct this and you will be seeing everything normal again. So, if you took off the glasses, you would naturally see everything upside-down.

Don't try that, by the way. Just something I heard some scientist did.

Learned this one from Pop-Up Video:
When Michael Jackson was making the music video for "Beat it", a drop of blood from a stabbing-victim fell onto his shoulder from an emergency staircase above him. He didn't notice until later, apparentyl.
From the same video:
93% of males 'beat it' before the age of 13.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Tasslehof, I've heard that bit about the special inverting glasses. That is exactly why the "standard" definition of dyslexia is crap. If you always grew up seeing things "backwards," nobody will ever know the difference - and neither will you, because your brain will have learned everything it saw with the reversed orientation.

Kids don't read things backwards. They don't see things backwards. It has been shown in a study that the real culprit is HEARING. A computer was used to slow down certain plosives (yes, that is a type of sound occurring in speech - letter P or B, for example) and broaden the pattern. Turns out that because of problems in the brain part that decodes words, kids hear the plosive and the rest of the word almost at the same time. Thus they see the printed word but heard the pronounced letters in the wrong order.

This special computer program might become a recognized form of therapy for dyslexics. I read about it something like two years ago.

 

[KenHigg]

Tasslehof, I've heard that bit about the special inverting glasses. That is exactly why the "standard" definition of dyslexia is crap. If you always grew up seeing things "backwards," nobody will ever know the difference - and neither will you, because your brain will have learned everything it saw with the reversed orientation...

Then that's it - Rich has learned everything backward because of all the bad tv shows he's watched - He has a view of Americans that 180 degrees out of wack. We're not all evil, we're all real nice people. Instead of the 'inverted eyeglass syndrome' we can call it RS which would be short for the 'Rich Syndrome'.

 

[Rich]

Then that's it - Rich has learned everything backward because of all the bad tv shows he's watched -

And Americans accuse us of not staying on topic in a thread

 

[FoFa]

The historic ocean liner, the Queen Mary, was named by a slip of the ego.
The head of the company that owned the new ship intended to name it the Queen Victoria. But he was not specific enough when he told England's king George V that he was going to name it for the 'greatest of all English queens."
Before the businessman could clarify his intentions, the king remarked, "Oh my wife will be pleased." Georges wife? Queen Mary.

 

[pa3329]

Mailing an entire building has been illegal in the USA since 1916 when a man mailed a 40,000 ton brick house across Utah to avoid high freight rates.

 

[Keith Nichols]

Mailing an entire building has been illegal in the USA since 1916 when a man mailed a 40,000 ton brick house across Utah to avoid high freight rates.

"40,000 ton brick house"

Could you possibly mean a house made of 40,000 bricks? A 40,000 ton house would be pretty big, even for America. Not may mailboxes could cope with the wear and tear!

 

[pa3329]

"40,000 ton brick house"

Could you possibly mean a house made of 40,000 bricks? A 40,000 ton house would be pretty big, even for America. Not may mailboxes could cope with the wear and tear!

I'm not saying the bricks were 40000 tons but the whole house. I thought the same thing as you, I saw this in a desk calendar, but I looked it up and it's correct.

 

[Keith Nichols]

Pa3329,

I looked it up and it's correct.

Wow. Big house.

Not to doubt you, but I couldn't resist trying a Google search on this. There were a number of hits, all of the "useless Facts" listings such as this thread. The first 6 hits were word perfect to your quote. That really is a useless fact

The seventh, copied below sounds somewhat more plausible to me.

http://www.schnr-specimen-shells.com/Wierd3.html

Mailing an entire building has been illegal in the U.S. since 1916 when a man mailed a 40,000 pound brick house across Utah to avoid high freight rates.


If I have my US measures right, 1000lb = 1 ton which makes for a 40 ton house. This is somewhere in the region of how heavy I would expect a brick house to be, but as in other areas, I have no relevant experience here.

Having said that, I'm guessing the author of the quote above changed the tons to pounds because they felt that the tons were wrong, not because they knew the actual facts of the law in question or the issue that inspired it.

None of the lists gave any provenance to the story or references to further check. Maybe I should get out more!

 

[pa3329]

The seventh, copied below sounds somewhat more plausible to me.

http://www.schnr-specimen-shells.com/Wierd3.html

Mailing an entire building has been illegal in the U.S. since 1916 when a man mailed a 40,000 pound brick house across Utah to avoid high freight rates.

That does sound much more plausible. I always questioned it but because I found it in so many places (and one printed) I just figured it was a HUGE house.

Good investiagtive work!

 

[MrsGorilla]

If I have my US measures right, 1000lb = 1 ton which makes for a 40 ton house.

Actually, in US measurements 1 ton = 2000 lbs, so it would make a 20 ton house.

 

[Adeptus]

I will never complain about humidity again since visitting Japan. If you think it's humid where you live, you don't know anything!

I spent 24 hours in Japan, in September '94.
I think I spent about a minute of that outside
Step out of airport, gasp stagger gasp, get in bus, get out of bus, gasp stagger gasp, go into hotel. Repeat in reverse.
I did step outside the hotel once in between - saw it raining & thought that would cool it down & clear the air... nope... took a step or two then went back inside.