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Random facts

The largest star thus far discovered, VY Canis Majoris, is so massive, that if it were to take the place of the sun in our solar system, the edge of the star would extend past the orbit of Jupiter.
 
elcap1999 said:
The largest star thus far discovered, VY Canis Majoris, is so massive, that if it were to take the place of the sun in our solar system, the edge of the star would extend past the orbit of Jupiter.
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were you watching the science channel yesterday ? lol
 
Nope :) Had to do a paper on supermassive stars in college for my Astronomy course

And here's another one for you, because the star is so unstable, the outer edge of the star pulses in & out, so much so, that occasionally, it'll nearly expand out to the equivalent of Saturn's orbit
 
Movie fact: Elizabeth Taylor became the first actress to have a million dollar contract, for her role in the 1963 film "Cleopatra". During production, she became so sick, she had to be rushed to the hospital, where they had to perform an emergency tracheotomy (the resulting scar is easily visible in some shots). While she recovered, the film production came to a grinding halt, and because of those production delays, a clause in her contract was triggered, which resulted in her salary ballooning to a total of $7 million, just shy of $50 million in today's money. This movie was also responsible for bringing her and Richard Burton together for the first time, which started their on and off affair, and caused quite the scandal. In addition to making Elizabeth Taylor's salary balloon, the production delays resulted in 20th Century Fox nearly going into bankruptcy.
 
Science fact: The Tsar Bomba, the largest thermonuclear weapon ever tested, was originally supposed to have 100 megaton theoretical maximum yield. For its first & only test though, the Soviets decided to reduce it to a "mere" 50 megatons, which is still the energy equivalent of a Richter 8.1 magnitude earthquake. Even then, the shockwave alone was so powerful, it rebounded from the ground, and prevented the resulting fireball from hitting the Earth. The mushroom cloud was almost 40 miles tall, windowpanes were broken as far as 560 miles away, and the Soviets calculated that anyone within 60 miles of the blast would have suffered significant third degree burns, with scientists over 170 miles away feeling the heat pulse from the bomb.

It was also considered one of the "cleanest" thermonuclear explosions ever, since nearly 99% of the bomb's energy came from fusion as opposed to fission, meaning it had a low percentage of fallout compared to its yield.
 
Mydriasis is the technical term for the dilation of the pupils in the eye, by non physiological causes such as: stress, trauma, use of drugs, and disease.
 
For more than 200 years in Rome, it was actually illegal for a Roman soldier of any rank to marry, but he could frequent prostitutes as often as he wanted, and medical care was provided for free by the state if he happened to catch an STD.

There was also a famous case where a newly recruited Roman soldier, Trebonius, was acquitted of killing his superior officer because of an arcane Roman law of "sexual integrity", where a soldier was within his rights to refuse to sexually submit to a superior officer, even if ordered to do so. The new recruit was on the receiving end of repeated unwanted sexual advances by the Roman general Gaius Luscius. One night, Gaius Luscius couldn't take "no" for an answer anymore, so he summoned Trebonius to his tent, and tried to sodomize the new recruit. Trebonius defended himself and killed the general, which is normally a death-penalty offense in the Roman army. However, multiple witnesses said that Trebonius maintained his "sexual integrity" and refused any and all advances from the general. Not only was he acquitted of all charges, he was given a medal for bravery.
 
A sodomiser called gaius.. It's like the monty python sketch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K8_jgiNqUc&feature=youtube_gdata_player
 
Here's another historical fact: Off the coast of Peru (near where the modern day city of Lima would eventually be founded), Sir Francis Drake captured a Spanish ship laden with so much gold and silver, its equivalent in British Pounds sterling would completely have paid off England's national debt, with enough left over to fully fund the British government for over a year afterwards. For this and other actions against the Spanish, he was knighted, and the Spanish increased the already hefty price on his head from the equivalent of $6.5 million to almost $10 million, a price on his head which remained until the day he died of dysentery in 1596.
 
elcap1999 said:
...the Spanish increased the already hefty price on his head from the equivalent of $6.5 million to almost $10 million, a price on his head which remained until the day he died of dysentery in 1596.
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Did the price on his head depreciate after he died? does it drop like driving a new car off the lot?
:)
 
US Fact: The US government has yet to officially retire any flag designed and approved, so technically, even the first flag ever designed & approved with 13 stars in it is still perfectly acceptable to display and have flown, even over a Federal building.
 
Beetles (Coleoptera) comprise 25% of all known life forms.
40% of all known insect species are beetles
There may be as many as 1 million individual species of beetles.
 
TV Fact: Fred & Wilma Flintstone were the first couple on TV to be shown sleeping in the same bed. It caused quite a stir because prior to this, it was considered too risque for even a married couple to be shown sleeping together on television.

Another TV fact: Babylon 5 was written & mapped out over its 5-season run almost entirely in advance by it's creator & main writer and director, J. Michael Straczynski. It was quite a risk, since most individual episodes on most other TV shows, sci-fi or otherwise with the exception of soap operas, didn't do much to advance a larger overall plot for their show (at least until B5 came out, which popularized the concept for non-soap operas and proved it was viable), not to mention the ever-present risk of cancellation. Because of this, he expressly forbade improvisation on the set, lest an improvisation by one of the actors on-camera necessitate a change in his overall story arc. Despite this, he still was able to implant "trap doors" or plot sequences for every major character to leave the show, should the actor leave for whatever reason, and which was actually used to great effect on several occasions to not only allow the actor to leave (and thus the character to either die or go elsewhere), but to still advance the show's overall story arc. Straczynski was also fond of inserting site gags (that usually had nothing to do with the plot except to break the tension in an episode), such as the "fasten/zip conversation", the Flying Elvis convention, and the captain shoving a stuffed teddy bear out of an airlock...
 
Random science fact: There were three elements that were created as a direct result of the Big Bang, in the process called nucleosynthesis: Hydrogen, Helium-3, and Lithium-7. Though the overwhelming majority of matter created were hydrogen and helium atoms, scientists discovered that lithium is produced only very briefly in the fusion process by very young stars, so brief a time in fact, that their calculations are in agreement over several orders of magnitude that the majority of the lithium present in the Universe came from the Big Bang...
 
Science fact: Boron is one of the only elements not made inside of a star. Because of this, it is also one of the rarest elements in the Universe.
 
I'm almost afraid to ask... but does that mean you drink your hot sauce after you get plastered? That's both cool and punishment for shoplifting in 37 countries...
 
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