Amazing But True Facts (1 Viewer)

[Leroy Hoard]

Karl Marx’s last words were: “Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough."

 

[17seconds]

This is the one that got me:

If every star in our galaxy had a trillion planets, each with a trillion people living on them, and each of these people has a trillion packs of cards and somehow they manage to make unique shuffles 1,000 times per second, and they'd been doing that since the Big Bang, they'd only just now be starting to repeat shuffles.

That was copied from this QI article.

The number of ways to shuffle a deck of cards is 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766, 975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000.

Damn.

Fantastic list. Thanks for sharing.

I was thinking, isn't it just 52 factorial? It is, but I had no idea 52 factorial was so huge.

 

[daddo39]

Honey is the only consumable food made by insects

 

[DSP]

Honey is the only consumable food made by insects

Dew

 

[tdoss]

There's a part of Fulton, Kentucky, from where, no matter which direction you travel, it's impossible to get to the rest of the state of Kentucky without passing through another state first... it's completely surrounded by Missouri and Tennessee.

I'm not seeing this one...I'm looking at a map and it looks like you'd simply travel 9003 North to Mayfield, KY...and everything opens up just North of that...

 

[tdoss]

There's a part of Fulton, Kentucky, from where, no matter which direction you travel, it's impossible to get to the rest of the state of Kentucky without passing through another state first... it's completely surrounded by Missouri and Tennessee.

I'm not seeing this one...I'm looking at a map and it looks like you'd simply travel 9003 North to Mayfield, KY...and everything opens up just North of that...

Ah..West of Fulton...that little enclosed circle of whatever...

 

[tdoss]

I want to pimp out orangutans. is there a law against that?

Just read that story...the town fought to keep that orangutan in sexual captivity...it took automatic weapons to get this town to give up that prime tail...

 

[Officer Pete Malloy]

Once you go primate...you'll never migrate.

 

[Wingnut]

"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

aegilops

Well I was almost right.

Your post was very almosty.

 

[Wingnut]

Honey is the only consumable food made by insects

It also doesn't spoil.

 

[Brony]

Disappointingly, Johnson City was named after a guy named Henry Johnson.

 

[Sarnoff]

There's a point in the 48 Continental United States from which, if one traveled 90 miles in a straight line any direction, one would have to adjust their clocks by an hour to have the correct time...

Interesting. Where is this point?

The Hopi Nation Reservation within Arizona observes Daylight Savings Time. It is completely surrounded by the Navajo Nation, which, along with the entire rest of the state of Arizona, does not.

 

[bostonfred]

Honey is the only consumable food made by insects

bug turds

 

[AhrnCityPahnder]

"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

"billowy"

 

[Sarnoff]

Most common trees are equally thick up their entire height. That is, if you took a cross-section slice of a tree at any height, the total width of the tree parts is constant (or, if you could fold all the branches straight up and squeeze them together without any air in the middle, the tree would just look like a telephone pole, the same thickness all the way from top to bottom). The first person to discover this may have been Leonardo Da Vinci.

 

[Honus]

The Pacific end of the Panama Canal is east of the Atlantic end.

 

[chet]

The lighter was invented before the match.

 

[chet]

Can openers weren't invented until 50 years after the invention of the can.

 

[Sarnoff]

The fax machine was invented before the telephone.

 

[T Bell]

Honey is the only consumable food made by insects

Don't people eat the insects themselves?

 

[T Bell]

The entrance to the Panama Canal from the Pacific Ocean is located farther east than the entrance to the canal from the Gulf of Mexico.

 

[Guest]

There's a point in the 48 Continental United States from which, if one traveled 90 miles in a straight line any direction, one would have to adjust their clocks by an hour to have the correct time...

Interesting. Where is this point?

The Hopi Nation Reservation within Arizona observes Daylight Savings Time. It is completely surrounded by the Navajo Nation, which, along with the entire rest of the state of Arizona, does not.

Tricky. But the time would only be wrong certain times of the year, correct?

Why don't the Navajos wipe out the Hopis? They already have them surrounded. Sounds like poor strategic planning on the Hopi's part. Or is is more like one long siege?

 

[Mr. Retukes]

The lighter was invented before the match.

Match invented in 1805 (with origins dating to China in 577)

Lighter invented in 1823

 

[Idiot Boxer]

This is the one that got me:

If every star in our galaxy had a trillion planets, each with a trillion people living on them, and each of these people has a trillion packs of cards and somehow they manage to make unique shuffles 1,000 times per second, and they'd been doing that since the Big Bang, they'd only just now be starting to repeat shuffles.

That was copied from this QI article.

The number of ways to shuffle a deck of cards is 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766, 975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000.

Damn.

Fantastic list. Thanks for sharing.

I was thinking, isn't it just 52 factorial? It is, but I had no idea 52 factorial was so huge.

Now imagine it was a California Hold Em deck.

 

[Leroy Hoard]

Al Gore's roommate in college (Harvard, class of 1969) was Tommy Lee Jones.

So it may be possible that Tommy Lee Jones actually invented the internet.

 

[Limp Ditka]

This is the one that got me:

If every star in our galaxy had a trillion planets, each with a trillion people living on them, and each of these people has a trillion packs of cards and somehow they manage to make unique shuffles 1,000 times per second, and they'd been doing that since the Big Bang, they'd only just now be starting to repeat shuffles.

That was copied from this QI article.

The number of ways to shuffle a deck of cards is 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766, 975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000.

Damn.

Fantastic list. Thanks for sharing.

I was thinking, isn't it just 52 factorial? It is, but I had no idea 52 factorial was so huge.

Now imagine it was a California Hold Em deck.

 

[Ilov80s]

I did this quickly, but I believe my calculations are pretty close. If you filed off a piece of Nickel as small as 1 grain of table salt (0.065 g) and every person on earth removed 1 atom from the tiny piece of nickel each day, (not counting for population growth or decline), it would take over 23 million years before the last atom was removed.

0.065 g Ni ( 1 mole Ni/58.6 g Ni) (6.02x10^23 atoms/1 mole)(1 person/1 atom)(1 day/8 billion people)(1 year/365 days)

 

[Sarnoff]

Al Gore's roommate in college (Harvard, class of 1969) was Tommy Lee Jones.

So it may be possible that Tommy Lee Jones actually invented the internet.

What's weird is that the main character of the novel "Love Story" is based half on each of them. The author, Erich Segal, had met the two in college and combined their personalities in creating 'Oliver'.

 

[Flying V]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etoro_people

I apologize for this link. Once you read it, you can never unknow it.

I saw a documentary about this on TV, probably on NATGEO or BRAVO.

 

[the moops]

I did this quickly, but I believe my calculations are pretty close. If you filed off a piece of Nickel as small as 1 grain of table salt (0.065 g) and every person on earth removed 1 atom from the tiny piece of nickel each day, (not counting for population growth or decline), it would take over 23 million years before the last atom was removed.

0.065 g Ni ( 1 mole Ni/58.6 g Ni) (6.02x10^23 atoms/1 mole)(1 person/1 atom)(1 day/8 billion people)(1 year/365 days)

that's not real interesting

 

[Idiot Boxer]

Bathing with your children causes cancer.

 

[Ilov80s]

I did this quickly, but I believe my calculations are pretty close. If you filed off a piece of Nickel as small as 1 grain of table salt (0.065 g) and every person on earth removed 1 atom from the tiny piece of nickel each day, (not counting for population growth or decline), it would take over 23 million years before the last atom was removed.

0.065 g Ni ( 1 mole Ni/58.6 g Ni) (6.02x10^23 atoms/1 mole)(1 person/1 atom)(1 day/8 billion people)(1 year/365 days)

that's not real interesting

Fair enough, I think it is interesting to think of both how infinitely large and infinitely small the universe is.

 

[Keerock]

I did this quickly, but I believe my calculations are pretty close. If you filed off a piece of Nickel as small as 1 grain of table salt (0.065 g) and every person on earth removed 1 atom from the tiny piece of nickel each day, (not counting for population growth or decline), it would take over 23 million years before the last atom was removed.

0.065 g Ni ( 1 mole Ni/58.6 g Ni) (6.02x10^23 atoms/1 mole)(1 person/1 atom)(1 day/8 billion people)(1 year/365 days)

that's not real interesting

 

[Ilov80s]

Maybe this is more interesting, Earth is smoother than a billiard/pool ball.

 

[Keerock]

Maybe this is more interesting, Earth is smoother than a billiard/pool ball.

of this chick they call "Earth", please.

 

[17seconds]

This isn't really an amazing fact because somebody just decided to make it so, but since we're talking about large numbers...

IPv6 is the new internet addressing scheme taking over for IPv4.

There are enough addresses available in IPv6 to have an IP address for every atom on the surface of 100+ earths. So we'll be using that as long as there's an internet with addresses.

 

[Wingnut]

How about some facts we can actially understand, nerds? And by we I mean I.

 

[The_Man]

When Anne Bancroft played Mrs. Robinson in the "The Graduate" she was 36 years old (less than 6 years older than Dustin Hoffman).

 

[Wingnut]

Ryan Gosling was asked to be in the Backstreet Boys but turned down the offer to pursue his acting career.

 

[Thorn]

"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

aegilops

Well I was almost right.

Your post was very almosty.

"Facetiously" has all the vowels in alphabetical order. Not sure if it's the only one.

 

[Thorn]

Honey is the only consumable food made by insects

It also doesn't spoil.

Also doesn't get digested by the human body, just absorbed. It's already been digested by the bees.

 

[nysportsfan]

Roald Dahl told us to lick ****-flavored wallpaper.

 

[Mr. Retukes]

"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

aegilops

Well I was almost right.

Your post was very almosty.

"Facetiously" has all the vowels in alphabetical order. Not sure if it's the only one.

abstemiously

 

[Billy Bats]

Ryan Gosling was asked to be in the Backstreet Boys but turned down the offer to pursue his acting career.

In other entertainment facts:

Al Pacino turned down the role of Han Solo.

And Jack Nicholson turned down the role of Michael Corleone.

 

[T Bell]

The lighter was invented before the match.

Match invented in 1805 (with origins dating to China in 577)

Lighter invented in 1823

Ok... Then the lighter was invented before match.com.

Suck it.

 

[T Bell]

Al Gore's roommate in college (Harvard, class of 1969) was Tommy Lee Jones.

So it may be possible that Tommy Lee Jones actually invented the internet.

What's weird is that the main character of the novel "Love Story" is based half on each of them. The author, Erich Segal, had met the two in college and combined their personalities in creating 'Oliver'.

How do you "combine" Al Gore's personality? That's like asking someone how they made water and having them tell you well I just mixed water and air.

 

[Skylord]

Honey is the only consumable food made by insects

It also doesn't spoil.

Also doesn't get digested by the human body, just absorbed. It's already been digested by the bees.

Can you expand on this or supply a link? Preliminary searches show that honey is easily digested by the body

 

[Thorn]

Honey is the only consumable food made by insects

It also doesn't spoil.

Also doesn't get digested by the human body, just absorbed. It's already been digested by the bees.

Can you expand on this or supply a link? Preliminary searches show that honey is easily digested by the body

something I heard somewhere along the line and just regurgitated

 

[17seconds]

Ryan Gosling was asked to be in the Backstreet Boys but turned down the offer to pursue his acting career.

In other entertainment facts:

Al Pacino turned down the role of Han Solo.

And Jack Nicholson turned down the role of Michael Corleone.

If only Harrison Ford had turned down the role of R.P. McMurphy

 

[B-Deep]

. Although possessing mammary glands, the platypus lacks teats. Instead, milk is released through pores in the skin. The milk pools in grooves on her abdomen, allowing the young to lap it up