Weird things you never knew

stimpsonslostson

Wombats produce cubes of poo. 
Scientists only recently figured out how the wombats can make poo cubes using a round anus.

proggy

In the film 'Toy Story', Andy's mum also had two toys called Woody and Buzz.

I'm not certain that's the truth though.

EricTheWeary

Wazmeister said:

Robins red breats do, in fact, have orange breasts…

When they were named, their wasnt at the time, a word for the colour orange.

See… hasnt been a wasted day has it ?

There was an old English word geoluread which means yellow-red so there was a sort of word for orange - people could obviously see it as a distinct colour. However, it fell out of use in modern English and foxes and robins seem to have taken on their typical descriptions in the period between geoluread going and orange coming ( Shakespeare refers to the fruit but not the colour for example). So, for some reason we went back to seeing orange as a shade of red just for a few hundred years. 

If you didn’t know about orange and looked at a rainbow you’d go 
‘ Red, yellowy red, yellow, green…’
so were people in the Middle Ages looking at rainbows and going
’Red, err dunno, yellow, green…’

The colour orange and the fruit orange aren’t synonymous in all languages. Notably the Dutch ( who have orange as their national colour,etc) had two separate words although I think in modern usage oranje has come to mean both ( referring to an orange as a Chinese Apple probably seems a bit bonkers these days). 

p90fool

stimpsonslostson said:

Wombats produce cubes of poo. 
Scientists only recently figured out how the wombats can make poo cubes using a round anus.

You can imagine the faces I'm pulling right now in trying to learn this trick...

poopot

p90fool said:

stimpsonslostson said:

Wombats produce cubes of poo. 
Scientists only recently figured out how the wombats can make poo cubes using a round anus.

You can imagine the faces I'm pulling right now in trying to learn this trick...

Wombats are essential implements in a game of “wom”…

scrumhalf

stimpsonslostson said:

Wombats produce cubes of poo. 
Scientists only recently figured out how the wombats can make poo cubes using a round anus.

Never play dice games with a wombat. 

Hattigol

axisus said:

JerkMoans said:

The correct plural of ‘octopus’ is neither ‘octopuses’ nor ‘octopi’ but is, in fact, ‘octopodes’. 

sorry, but I'm only ever going to use Octopi, by far the coolest.

Does that mean that in culinary terms. octopi pie is a thing?

Cols

hywelg said:

rogd said:

Try folding a piece of paper 8 times.

To be pedantic you need to add the words "in half" otherwise it is very easy to fold a piece of paper  8 times. 

It can be done.  The world record of 12 folds was set by an American college student who wanted to prove her maths lecturer wrong.  She used a 4,000 ft long piece of paper and a very long corridor.

Longtallronnie

Sharks will only attack you if you’re wet. 

viz

Cols said:

hywelg said:

rogd said:

Try folding a piece of paper 8 times.

To be pedantic you need to add the words "in half" otherwise it is very easy to fold a piece of paper  8 times. 

It can be done.  The world record of 12 folds was set by an American college student who wanted to prove her maths lecturer wrong.  She used a 4,000 ft long piece of paper and a very long corridor.

Cool. 

Though I think the paper is supposed to be folded cross-ways every time, so it’s not just length but also girth that’s important, I mean width. 

stickyfiddle

On the subject of purple, brown doesn't really exist (it's dark orange). Neither does pink (light red)

Good vid from a good nerd: 

77ric

Sassafras said:

I learnt only recently that the male duck billed platypus has got a venomous claw on one of its back legs and that being an egg laying mammal that bears milk, it can make its own custard.
I think the custard making is limited to the female platypus.

I really hate to burst your custard bubble but, platypuses, and the other egg laying mammals are not able to make there own custard for 2 very basic reasons, firstly they are unable to use a whisk, and secondly they can’t get the lid if a tub or birds custard powder. 

That’s said they are still pretty cool. 

rogd

viz said:

Cols said:

hywelg said:

rogd said:

Try folding a piece of paper 8 times.

To be pedantic you need to add the words "in half" otherwise it is very easy to fold a piece of paper  8 times. 

It can be done.  The world record of 12 folds was set by an American college student who wanted to prove her maths lecturer wrong.  She used a 4,000 ft long piece of paper and a very long corridor.

Cool. 

Though I think the paper is supposed to be folded cross-ways every time, so it’s not just length but also girth that’s important, I mean width. 

Correct hywelg.
I very nearly did it with the foil inner wrapper of a Kitkat once.

rogd

rogd said:

viz said:

Cols said:

hywelg said:

rogd said:

Try folding a piece of paper 8 times.

To be pedantic you need to add the words "in half" otherwise it is very easy to fold a piece of paper  8 times. 

It can be done.  The world record of 12 folds was set by an American college student who wanted to prove her maths lecturer wrong.  She used a 4,000 ft long piece of paper and a very long corridor.

Cool. 

Though I think the paper is supposed to be folded cross-ways every time, so it’s not just length but also girth that’s important, I mean width. 

Correct hywelg.
I very nearly did it with the foil inner wrapper of a Kitkat once.

And for all you clever sods out there-----size don't matter!!

sev112

EricTheWeary said:

HAL9000 said:

That ‘ye’ (as in Ye Olde Shoppe) was pronounced ‘the’.

There was the letter Thorn in old English which was the th sound. It still exists in the Icelandic alphabet. As we started printing things in English we had mostly German printing sets that omitted the letter Thorn and Y was used to represent it. Hand writing it as a Y on something like a shop sign is a bit arse backwards as they could have used a Thorn but the original letter shape had fallen out of use. 
It takes about 1,000 years for a language to become unrecognisable. So the version of English in use when the Thorn was originally used would be unrecognisable to us today; Shakespeare for example is still modern English and that seems odd enough. 

Even the accents from 50 years ago are very difficult to understand. You can google audio clips of e.g cockneys (other cities are available) with transcripts and it is amazing how wordage has changed in such a short period during the post industrial revolution.  

I had a really crude (sound as well as language) as a teenager,  and I just could not recognise many /most of the words that my grandfather would have said

sev112

mrkb said:

skullfunkerry said:

I think about this reasonably regularly:

Due to the presence of pregnant women, the average number of skeletons per human body is more than 1

And the average number of arms (and legs) is less than two, but the average number of heads is greater than one!

I think it comes across better we’re you to say that the average person has less than one leg.  It prompts a much better argument

sev112

TheMarlin said:

The Rocky Horror Picture show is the only film in the Rocky series not to feature Silverster Stallone. 

Was he good in Rocky and Bullwinkle, I missed that one

stimpsonslostson

rogd said:

rogd said:

viz said:

Cols said:

hywelg said:

rogd said:

Try folding a piece of paper 8 times.

To be pedantic you need to add the words "in half" otherwise it is very easy to fold a piece of paper  8 times. 

It can be done.  The world record of 12 folds was set by an American college student who wanted to prove her maths lecturer wrong.  She used a 4,000 ft long piece of paper and a very long corridor.

Cool. 

Though I think the paper is supposed to be folded cross-ways every time, so it’s not just length but also girth that’s important, I mean width. 

Correct hywelg.
I very nearly did it with the foil inner wrapper of a Kitkat once.

And for all you clever sods out there-----size don't matter!!

Mythbusters did this one:

Nitefly

sev112 said:

TheMarlin said:

The Rocky Horror Picture show is the only film in the Rocky series not to feature Silverster Stallone. 

Was he good in Rocky and Bullwinkle, I missed that one

Ahem!  See page 2! 

dano

Hattigol said:

Last night, the current Mrs H said to me that a flame doesn't create a shadow. 

B*llocks I suggested back to her.

True enough, after a brief experiment with a candle and a torch, I got to eat some delicious humble pie as she was correct.

Anyone else discovered anything weird that they hadn't known previously?

Having thought about it, the answer is quite easy.

The flame is effectively  electromagnetic radiation, the light you can see and the heat you can feel. That has no physical properties, hence when illuminated with  torch there is nothing physical to absorb the light from the torch and hence cast a shadow on the wall.