Weird things you never knew

Offset

Jfingers said:

EricTheWeary said:

Richard Thompson ( solo artiste, Fairport Convention ,etc) and Hugh Cornwall ( solo artiste, The Stranglers,etc) went to school together for a while and in the same band briefly ( Emil and the Detectives, Hugh played bass). 

Again, probably not weird but interesting that a figurehead of punk and a figurehead of folk rock were very much contemporaries. 

https://louderthanwar.com/great-photo-of-hugh-cornwell-in-his-school-band-with-richard-thompson/

Hugh looks very like the young Charles Manson in the photo in the link. Great fact though, and interesting.

One of them (can't remember which) moved away and they totally lost touch until many decades later (post Stranglers, post Fairport etc) when Hugh went to see Richard perform in Italy.  They met backstage and I believe they now keep in regular touch.

Jfingers

hollywoodrox said:

Ooh lynsey de Paul. Quite...

EricTheWeary

Mangosuthu Buthelezi was a Zulu tribal leader who was one of the major figures fighting apartheid and was part of the government of national unity under Nelson Mandela. He had also played his own great grandfather in the film Zulu.    

fob

Farmers produce more crops than you might think:

Kittyfrisk

^  I never knew that you could 'grow concrete'   

Grumpyrocker

ronnyb said:

I didn't know that the black uniforms worn by the SS during WW2 were made by Hugo Boss. Boss became a member of the Nazi party in 1931 and after joining, the company sales increased tenfold. He was awarded the contract for supplying uniforms for the German military such as the Waffen SS and the Hitler youth. Party member being awarded lucrative contracts sounds a bit familiar to me.  

This isn't quite correct. Hugo Boss did not design any of the Nazi uniforms. But the myth persists.

The all-black SS uniform was designed by SS members Karl Diebitsch (artist) and Walter Heck (graphic designer).

The Hugo Boss company did receive government contracts to manufacture uniforms, but it was one of many clothing companies doing the same thing. 

HerbieTheRadDorklift

USA 10th President John Tyler, born 1790, has a living grandson

mart

HerbieTheRadDorklift said:

USA 10th President John Tyler, born 1790, has a living grandson

What? Still? Even 9 posts later?

HerbieTheRadDorklift

mart said:

HerbieTheRadDorklift said:

USA 10th President John Tyler, born 1790, has a living grandson

What? Still? Even 9 posts later?

I'll update it tomorrow whether he's live or dead

Blueingreen

thecolourbox said:

There was apparently no such thing as the colour blue in ancient civilisations - Romans and Greeks etc considered it basically a shade of green or "wine red" as quoted from Homers Odyssey when he was describing the colour of the sea.

The Egyptians were the first to have a word for blue, as they were the only civilisation that could produce the colour in dyes or paint.

It's not known whether people could even see the colour blue - there was an experiment with the Himba tribe in Namibia, who have no word for blue, where they showed them loads of green squares and one obviously blue square, and they could not tell which one was blue. 

The comedian Dave Gorman once had an idea for a novel called Hugh's Hew, whereby Hugh discovered a new colour but was unable to describe it to people as they had no concept of the colour this it's impossible to describe it (if you've seen/read his Googlewhack adventure you'll have heard him on about this). Perhaps this is what happened with blue?

There is a more general point, which is that our perception of colour is to some extent determined by language. There are no discrete points on the colour spectrum, and different languages divide it up in different ways.  We learn to see more marked differences between two colours if they are given different names in our own language, but they may just be different shades of the same colour to speakers in other languages.  Some languages and cultures identify fewer colours than ours but some identify more, so that their speakers arguably see more colours.

The Himbas in your example are not failing to identify an objectively existing colour called "blue";  our awareness of a separate colour called "blue" is itself a linguistic convention, one that isn't reflected in their language.

bertie

the earth is actually flat.................................................





I'll get me coat

Cirrus

Blueingreen said:

There is a more general point, which is that our perception of colour is to some extent determined by language. There are no discrete points on the colour spectrum, and different languages divide it up in different ways.  We learn to see more marked differences between two colours if they are given different names in our own language, but they may just be different shades of the same colour to speakers in other languages.  Some languages and cultures identify fewer colours than ours but some identify more, so that their speakers arguably see more colours.

The Himbas in your example are not failing to identify an objectively existing colour called "blue";  our awareness of a separate colour called "blue" is itself a linguistic convention, one that isn't reflected in their language.

Most starkly illustrated by the colour "brown" - it doesn't appear on the colour spectrum at all, it's just dark orange and therefore context dependent - an Orange in a poorly lit room might emit exactly the same wavelengths as a chocolate orange in a brightly lit room, but you'd perceive one as orange and the other one as brown.

Snags

I'd perceive a chocolate orange as something that used to be lovely but now tastes of greasy shite.

munckee

Snags said:

I'd perceive a chocolate orange as something that used to be lovely but now tastes of greasy shite.

But did the confectionary change or the man grasshopper?

bertie

Snags said:

I'd perceive a chocolate orange as something that used to be lovely but now tastes of greasy shite.

as are Thorntons,   greasy fat laden kack 

sev112

Depends if we are talking about light colours or paint colours 

brown comes from mixing the 3 primary paint colours red yellow and blue

i see lots of browns around me - birds, trees, leaves, soil, dirt - so must admit I’m surprised by brown not being “identified”

and then all the debate / history /myth about the colour and fruit orange 

All very interesting though 

stickyfiddle

sev112 said:

Depends if we are talking about light colours or paint colours 

brown comes from mixing the 3 primary paint colours red yellow and blue

i see lots of browns around me - birds, trees, leaves, soil, dirt - so must admit I’m surprised by brown not being “identified”

and then all the debate / history /myth about the colour and fruit orange 

All very interesting though 

It's all dark orange. Likewise pink is just light red. The only reason we don't have similar feelings about very dark or ver light blue or green is because we don't have standalone words for them - we have "navy blue or "sky blue", so they're defined in our heads as shades of another colour. 

Technology Connections has a good vid if you're a nerd like me.

HAL9000

Adolf Hitler’s half-nephew, Billy, was born in Liverpool and served with the US navy during WWII.

(This came up in a pub quiz the other night in a true or false round - it really is true.)

EricTheWeary

HAL9000 said:

Adolf Hitler’s half-nephew, Billy, was born in Liverpool and served with the US navy during WWII.

(This came up in a pub quiz the other night in a true or false round - it really is true.)

There is some evidence that Hitler had decided on the Shropshire town of Bridgnorth as the location for Nazi headquarters in the U.K. ( had they successfully invaded, obviously). I was watching an episode of Escape to the Country the other day whilst waiting for my car to be fixed and Bridgnorth was suggested to the couple as a lovely place to live yet the Nazi connection was never mentioned. Bloody BBC bias. 

HerbieTheRadDorklift

USA 10th President John Tyler, born 1790, has a living grandson