the interesting fact thread

[Ratrace]

A peanut is niether a pea nor a nut. Its a seed. The fruit of a peanut plant is commonly called the shell.

[ducheval]

Furlongs per Pint is an exactly equivalent measure of gas mileage to Miles per Gallon.

Chimpanzees are thought to be our closest living relatioves on the grounds we have 98% the same DNA only by people who dont know we share 99% DNA with mice. Take that evolution.

I call urban legend. Reputable link?

[Technomancer]

Furlongs per Pint is an exactly equivalent measure of gas mileage to Miles per Gallon.



I call urban legend. Reputable link?

This is pretty well-known stuff. The exact estimates vary though between 95 and 99 percent depending on what exactly is being measured.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3042781.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2278733.stm
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB144.html
You could probably turn up more by doing a PubMed search.

As far as weird facts go:
Canada has the longest coastline of any country in the world.

[ducheval]

I definitely believe that chimps are genetically close to us. I was doubting the mice part of his 'fact'.

It sounds like YEC disinformation to me.

[Technomancer]

I definitely believe that chimps are genetically close to us. I was doubting the mice part of his 'fact'.

It sounds like YEC disinformation to me.

My mistake. That part is indeed nonsense; the whole field of phylogenetics pretty much demonstrates that.

[dyzzispell]

Don't peel your apple. Two-thirds of the fiber and lots of antioxidants are found in the peel.

As are 90% of the toxins used to keep insects of it.

Yes, yes, very true. This is why I buy organic though. No pesticides, no unnatural treatments, no genetic engineering...

It seems that some organic growers do this thing where they plant other plants nearby, plants that will attract insects that eat the insects that bother the fruit. I forget what they call that type of thing, there was a name for it... Acts sort of as a completely organic pesticide that way. Pretty cool idea, if you ask me.

[Bobtheduck]

There are laws as to how many bug parts can be in chocolate. A dont remember the details, but its no a bodypart to weight basis. The pieces are so small you cant see them.

I checked the gov't (FDA, I think, or health department, it was a long time ago) and it has nothing to do with a legal amount of "bug parts" but a legal amount of "non chocolate" and that is so small that it barely accounts for bits of dust that get in the chocolate... So, it was never "how many bug parts" in the chocolate... Oh, and it is VERY dependent on the weight of the chocolate... They test it in batches.

It was by accident mostly because that kind of camera was banned in the 80s

What I'm not getting about your statement here is that I didn't think consumer (key word here) IR camcorders EXISTED in the 80's... I'm almost certain they were released in the 90's. What was banned, in the 90's after this discovery, was cameras that could activate their IR when it was still light out, because that's what allowed for the "x-ray" quality...

http://www.kaya-optics.com/products/experiments.shtml

of course, while they stopped the release of consumer camcorders with this feature built in, they can't stop the release of higher end filters...

[Doubleshadow]

Nuclear Terms

Broken Arrow: the seizure, theft, or loss of a nuclear weapon or component.

Bent Spear: any significant nuclear weapon incidents other than accidents or war risk detonations.

Dull Sword: a nuclear weapon incident other than "significant" incidents.

[mitsuki lover]

John Tyler was the only former U.S. President elected to the Confedertate Congress.When he died the Federal government refused to acknowledge his death.

Bad timing department:Benedict Arnold cemented his treason on the morning of the same day that Washington arrived at West Point to give him his coveted battle
field commission.

Jacob Arminius' actual name was Harmens.Arminius was the Latinized version of it.

Scotland has only been part of the United Kingdom since 1707,before that time the
Stuarts reigned over England and Scotland as two seperate countries.

Speaking of Scotland,the songs Skye Boat Song and My Bonnie are both references to Bonnie Prince Charlie,The Young Pretender.

[jon_jinn]

a peanut is one of the ingredients used in dynamite.

[Ratrace]

I call urban legend. Reputable link?

Smaller and cheaper to feed isnt the only reason people experament on mice. will this do?

What I'm not getting about your statement here is that I didn't think consumer (key word here) IR camcorders EXISTED in the 80's... I'm almost certain they were released in the 90's. What was banned, in the 90's after this discovery, was cameras that could activate their IR when it was still light out, because that's what allowed for the "x-ray" quality

It might not have been the same tech, but the effect it causes is the same. any camera with that capabiliaty was banned. Ill see what I can find on this as well.

Nuclear Terms

That reminds me, only one nukelear missile has ever been launched by a sub. By mistake, in the arctic or antartic, by accident, at an ally. If you want I'll find a site on this too.

Its posable to win a court case for injures you've aquired while robbing the persons house.

[jon_jinn]

did you guys know that:

a cockroach can live for nine days without it's head before it dies of starvation?

[Technomancer]

Smaller and cheaper to feed isnt the only reason people experament on mice. will this do?

Not exactly. What's being measured is the presence of genes. However, how those genes are coded, what order they're in, and how they are expressed is a different matter. In other words, while we share certain genes with mice, the actual DNA base pairs that make up those genes may be quite different. If we instead measure the similarity of those base pairs, we find that humans and chimps are considerably closer to each other than either of them are to mice. In addition, the research cited above only concerns genes, not introns, which play a role in how individual genes are regulated.

[Artist4Jesus89]

Ok i have a lot for you...

In the Manga "Return to the Labyrinth" Toby is all grown up and the story is focused on him however the guy who wrote it is adding a j/s thingy to it!

and for the fruit lovers in us all

* Strawberries are the only fruit that grows seeds on the outside.

* There are over 200 seeds on every strawberry.

* 12 ounces of strawberries = 97 calories if no sugar is added. A great food for diets.


* Ancient Romans used strawberries as medicine. They believed the fruit could cure fever, bad breath, gout, sore throats, depression, fainting and diseases of the blood.

* Iroquois Indians grew strawberries, which was one of their most important crops. They used strawberry leaves to brew tea and the berries to season meats and soups.

* In Bavaria, farmers harvest strawberries and tie small baskets of the fruit on their cow's horns. This is an offering to the elves, which they believe can help produce healthy calves and increase the milk supply of cows.

* If strawberries grown in California were laid together side-by-side, they would circle the globe 15 times.

* The California Strawberry Association awards 99 scholarships to the children of farmers each year.

* Eight strawberries contain more Vitamin C than a medium sized orange.

* One serving of strawberries daily will decrease systolic blood pressure.

* Strawberries are high in folic acid, fiber and potassium.

* That people once believe if a pregnant woman craved strawberries and didn't eat them, her baby would be born with a strawberry birthmark.

* The second wife of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, had a strawberry birthmark on her neck. Some people claimed that this proved she was a witch.

* Strawberries are a member of the rose family.


and of course you know i had to add it...

Interesting Facts about OKlahoma!!
BUTTERFLY: black swallowtail
PERCUSSIVE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT: drum
COLORS: green and white
MEAL: fried okra, squash, cornbread, barbecue pork, biscuits, sausage and gravy, grits, corn, strawberries, chicken fried steak, pecan pie, and black-eyed peas.
MOTTO: Labor Omnia Vincit (Labor Conquers All Things)
FOLK DANCE: Square Dance
MUSICAL INSTRUMENT: Fiddle
GAME ANIMAL: White-tail deer
GRASS: Indiangrass Sorghastrum nutans
INSECT: Honeybee Apis mellifera
COUNTRY & WESTERN SONG: "Faded Love"
BEVERAGE: Milk
SOIL: Port Silt Loam cumulic haplustolls
THEATER: Lynn Riggs Players of Oklahoma, Inc.
WALTZ: "Oklahoma Wind"
NICKNAME: Sooner State
POEM: "Howdy Folks"; by David Randolph Milsten

[Ratrace]

Not exactly. What's being measured is the presence of genes. However, how those genes are coded, what order they're in, and how they are expressed is a different matter. In other words, while we share certain genes with mice, the actual DNA base pairs that make up those genes may be quite different. If we instead measure the similarity of those base pairs, we find that humans and chimps are considerably closer to each other than either of them are to mice. In addition, the research cited above only concerns genes, not introns, which play a role in how individual genes are regulated.

I can get other sites. As with much scientific info what results are given varies. direct similarity is at least 85%, up to 99%.

William Wallis' sword was longer than he was tall. In the film Braveheart the Battle of Sterling Bridge takes place in a field with no water.

[jon_jinn]

[quote="Manga_Artist_4_Jesus"]Ok i have a lot for you...

In the Manga "Return to the Labyrinth" Toby is all grown up and the story is focused on him however the guy who wrote it is adding a j/s thingy to it!

and for the fruit lovers in us all

* Strawberries are the only fruit that grows seeds on the outside.

* There are over 200 seeds on every strawberry.

* 12 ounces of strawberries = 97 calories if no sugar is added. A great food for diets.


* Ancient Romans used strawberries as medicine. They believed the fruit could cure fever, bad breath, gout, sore throats, depression, fainting and diseases of the blood.

* Iroquois Indians grew strawberries, which was one of their most important crops. They used strawberry leaves to brew tea and the berries to season meats and soups.

* In Bavaria, farmers harvest strawberries and tie small baskets of the fruit on their cow's horns. This is an offering to the elves, which they believe can help produce healthy calves and increase the milk supply of cows.

* If strawberries grown in California were laid together side-by-side, they would circle the globe 15 times.

* The California Strawberry Association awards 99 scholarships to the children of farmers each year.

* Eight strawberries contain more Vitamin C than a medium sized orange.

* One serving of strawberries daily will decrease systolic blood pressure.

* Strawberries are high in folic acid, fiber and potassium.

* That people once believe if a pregnant woman craved strawberries and didn't eat them, her baby would be born with a strawberry birthmark.

* The second wife of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, had a strawberry birthmark on her neck. Some people claimed that this proved she was a witch.

* Strawberries are a member of the rose family.


and of course you know i had to add it...

Interesting Facts about OKlahoma!!
BUTTERFLY: black swallowtail
PERCUSSIVE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT: drum
COLORS: green and white
MEAL: fried okra, squash, cornbread, barbecue pork, biscuits, sausage and gravy, grits, corn, strawberries, chicken fried steak, pecan pie, and black-eyed peas.
MOTTO: Labor Omnia Vincit (Labor Conquers All Things)
FOLK DANCE: Square Dance
MUSICAL INSTRUMENT: Fiddle
GAME ANIMAL: White-tail deer
GRASS: Indiangrass Sorghastrum nutans
INSECT: Honeybee Apis mellifera
COUNTRY & WESTERN SONG: "Faded Love"
BEVERAGE: Milk
SOIL: Port Silt Loam cumulic haplustolls
THEATER: Lynn Riggs Players of Oklahoma, Inc.
WALTZ: "Oklahoma Wind"
NICKNAME: Sooner State
POEM: "Howdy Folks"]

wow. that's a LOT of stuff on strawberries. really cool!

anyways...a snail can sleep for three YEARS.

[Radical Dreamer]

A shark has to swim for 24 hours a day. If it stops swimming, its lungs will fill up with water. :O

[beffi90_09]

A shark has to swim for 24 hours a day. If it stops swimming, its lungs will fill up with water. :O

How do they sleep??? O.o]
A big, hungry tiger can eat about 100 pounds of meat (45 km.) at one sitting. This is about 1/5 of its weight.[/b]

[mitsuki lover]

Abraham Lincoln was the Congressman who recommended George Pickett to West
Point,he was also friends of a Georgian Congressman named Alexander Stephens.
Pickett later became famous as a Confederate general for the charge he was ordered to make at the Battle of Gettysburg while Stephens became the first and only Vice President of the Confederate States.

[mitsuki lover]

Hitler was never named Schikelgruber,rather Hitler was in fact his birth name.
However Schikelgruber was the birth name of Hitler's father Alois Hitler.Alois changed it to Hitler after his supposed father.

[Radical Dreamer]

Hitler was never named Schikelgruber,rather Hitler was in fact his birth name.
However Schikelgruber was the birth name of Hitler's father Alois Hitler.Alois changed it to Hitler after his supposed father.

Well that's good; I think having teachers teach about Hitler would be far more difficult had his name remained Schikelgruber. XD

[Kkun]

I used to think that dogs laid eggs, but I found out they don't and....I learned something today.

[dyzzispell]

Interesting Naruto connection:

Naruto just loves ramen, right? Well I found out that a common type of topping for ramen noodles is a kind of kamaboko known as naruto. Basically kamaboko is pureed white fish molded into a log, then steamed until it is firm. (Sounds a little like a fish version of SPAM, to me.) It is then sliced up and served with dipping sauces or in soups.
Anyway, sometimes the kamaboko is shaped to resemble something, the most common being a spiral. They call the spiral one a "naruto", named after the Japanese city of Naruto, which is well-known for a tidal whirlpool by the city.
Thus, Naruto's last name, Uzumaki (which means spiral), and the spiral symbol on his outfit. His whole name and love for ramen is a play on Japanese culture, if I'm seeing that right!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamaboko

[boerseun]

"Afrikaans is die jongste taal in die wêreld."

It is Afrikaans (my native language) for: Afrikaans is the youngest language in the world.

Links:
http://www.answers.com/topic/afrikaans
http://zar.co.za/world.htm

[ducheval]

Afrikaans is the youngest language in the world.

Are you not counting Esperanto?

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

[Animus Seed]

Dig the Family Guy reference, Jamie.

Interesting Naruto connection:

Naruto just loves ramen, right? Well I found out that a common type of topping for ramen noodles is a kind of kamaboko known as naruto. Basically kamaboko is pureed white fish molded into a log, then steamed until it is firm. (Sounds a little like a fish version of SPAM, to me.) It is then sliced up and served with dipping sauces or in soups.
Anyway, sometimes the kamaboko is shaped to resemble something, the most common being a spiral. They call the spiral one a "naruto", named after the Japanese city of Naruto, which is well-known for a tidal whirlpool by the city.
Thus, Naruto's last name, Uzumaki (which means spiral), and the spiral symbol on his outfit. His whole name and love for ramen is a play on Japanese culture, if I'm seeing that right!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamaboko

Most of the characters in Shonen Jump anime have puns for names, in fact.

[BaiLong]

Lobsters mate for life. So don't settle for the tuna in the ocean... Find your lobster! Haha

[boerseun]

Are you not counting Esperanto?

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

Esperanto is a constructed language and it is not officially recognized by any country. Also, there are many constructed languages that are much younger than Esperanto. If you want to be technical, Klingon and the languages that JRR Tolkien created in his books, are constructed and younger than Esperanto. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language) But I don't deny that it is a genuine language.

So I'll rephrase: Afrikaans is the youngest natural lanuage in the world.

And here is another fun fact about Afrikaans: Afrikaans is the only language in the world to have a monument dedicated to it.

Links:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Afrikaans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans_Language_Monument

[mitsuki lover]

Afrikaans is a descendant of Dutch since the ancestors of the Boers were Dutch.

[Doubleshadow]

Japanese Waltzers (you can bet the otaku in me perked up when my genetics professors said that) are a breed of mouse very important in the history of genetics and tissue transplant experiments. (I am digging this out of my memory from last semster, if I misremember anything, let me know.)

In the Victorian era, mice become popular pets, and people known as Mouse Fanciers bred them like cats or dogs. As certain types and traits came in to vogue, people mass bred the particular mouse for profit. A breed of mouse was introduced from Japan that continuosly walked in circles, and they Mouse Fanciers said, "Oh look! They're waltzing!" The result was a new fad for Japanese Waltzers.
As different types of mice went in out of demand, strains of mice were highly inbred to ensure the appearence of a particualr trait for market, resulting in lines of mice with near identical heredity, virtual clones of each other. There are lines of mice that exist to this day from these original true-breeding strains that are used by scientists.
THAT is why mice were chosen over other animals, such as the docile rabbit, for genetic experiements. These true-bredding lines are essential to experiements. For example, if you breed two white mice, and get a black one, but you don't know the parents heredity, you can't make any conclusions. White might be recessive, or mixed dominant, or the result of a random mutation in that mouse. Without the parents background you can't know and the cross was useless.
So, what's special about Japanese Waltzers? In addition to the epononymous "waltzing", the mice always developed tumors in their shoulders. An early scientist (I forget who, shame on me) wondered if the tumor in one mouse would grow in the shoulder of another Waltzer. He put a sample of the tumor from one mouse into another, and the tumor grew. This was the first ever tissue transplant of its kind, eventually, after many more experiements and many years, leading up to our modern organ transplants.
And in case you were wondering, eventually, it was discovered the "waltzing" that charmed the Victorians was the result of a inherited inner ear defect. The poor mice couldn't keep their balance.