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Random facts

Music fact: "Bohemian Rhapsody"  by Queen is one of the few western rock & roll songs that was never banned by Iranian authorities after their revolution in 1979 because the word "Bismillah" was sung several times in the song.
 
World famous Science Fiction author Isaac Asimov, born in the Soviet Union, raised in the USA, died in 1992 reportedly from heart failure. When in fact, he died from complications due to HIV/AIDS infection, again, reportedly contracted from a blood transfusion while undergoing heart bypass surgery. Ten years later in a biography, his late-wife revealed the true cause of his death, although the validity over the transfusion allegations was never proved. When asked why the information was covered up, his late-wife stated the estate was trying to protect the reputation of Asimov's doctors, although it is widely suspected the stigma of HIV/AIDS in the 1990's and its perception as a homosexual disease might have harmed the family's reputation and legacy sales of Asimov's novels.
 
Physics fact: Warp Drive, the faster-than-light mode of travel made famous in Star Trek, was mathematically proven as possible by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre. He proved that while objects cannot move faster than the speed of light, space itself can move at whatever speed it damn well pleases, even many times faster the speed of light, and which he also proved why light cannot escape a black hole past its event horizon. His math proved that by warping space-time to set up a sort of standing wave, a ship can ride the wave from one place to another. The ship will remain completely motionless surrounded by a completely static bubble of space-time, thus also side-stepping the problem of time-dilation first described by Einstein concerning anything that travels at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
 
Random fact: During the occasional nighttime power outages in Los Angeles, it is not uncommon for 911 Operators to be flooded with calls, not to report the power outage, but because people saw lights up in the sky, unaware that those were stars...
 
Music fact: The Beatles decided early-on to do fewer stadium concerts, but not because of money or venue issues. All the screaming teenagers were so loud and high pitched that they could never get their speakers loud enough to broadcast over the screaming. In addition, they were informed by a doctor that the combination of being forced to put the music up so loud and nearly nonstop intense screaming would result in all of them having near-total permanent hearing loss well before any of them reached 40. 
 
And speaking of hearing loss... By the time he died, Jimi Hendrix had hearing loss so severe that when he was in the studio listening to tracks he was recording with his band, he was frequently the only person who could stay in the booth because of how loud he had to listen to his own music to hear it clearly.
 
Food fact: Most archaeological research points to areas in motern-day Iran as being the birthplace of beer-making. The research suggested that the discovery was made by accident, but once made, farmers were able to use the discovery to create beer, both because they had some years where they had an overage of grain, and didn't want it to spoil, and also because it provided a safer alternative to local water supplies, water which may be contaminated by infectious diseases.
 
Fast fact: Bob Ross, the painter who held a public access TV show teaching people how to paint, was originally a drill sergeant with the Air Force, and made a vow that if he ever left the military, he would never yell or scream at anyone ever again, a promise he kept upon being honorably discharged from the Air Force.
 
TV fact: The choice of Las Vegas as the setting for the original CSI show was deliberate. The Las Vegas Crime Lab handles more cases and related evidence than any other municipal crime lab, and is only surpassed in annual case loads by the FBI Federal Crime Lab in Quantico, VA.
 
Rescue fact: A dog in India named Zanjeer saved countless lives in Mumbai as a bomb sniffing dog by sniffing out over 3300 kilos of RDX, 249 hand grenades, and over 6400 rounds of live ammo during the Mumbai bombing scares in March 1993. When Zanjeer passed away, he was buried with full military honors.
 
If you have 3 quarters, 4 dimes, and 4 pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.
 
 
The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.
 
President Kennedy was the fastest random speaker in the world with upwards of 350 words per minute.
 
In the average lifetime, a person will walk the equivalent of 5 times around the equator.
 
Odontophobia is the fear of teeth.
 
Military fact: Giving someone the finger evolved from a cross between events in the 100 Years War during mideval times and the Romans & Greeks in the classical era. During the war, the French threatened to cut off the middle finger of any English longbowmen they captured, rendering them incapable of drawing back their longbows. Eventually, after each battle which the English won, they would proudly display their middle finger at the French in defiance. The gesture merged with the Roman and Greek concept that extending the middle finger was considered a phallic gesture.
 
elcap1999 said:
Military fact: Giving someone the finger evolved from a cross between events in the 100 Years War during mideval times and the Romans & Greeks in the classical era. During the war, the French threatened to cut off the middle finger of any English longbowmen they captured, rendering them incapable of drawing back their longbows. Eventually, after each battle which the English won, they would proudly display their middle finger at the French in defiance. The gesture merged with the Roman and Greek concept that extending the middle finger was considered a phallic gesture.
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You are partially correct. The English would display their pointer and their middle as both were needed to shoot a bow.
 
22 Completely Random Facts
 
1.  A blue whale’s heart is so big that a small child can swim through its veins.
2.  The combination of an exclamation point and a question mark is called an “interrobang.”
3.  When you yawn and stretch at the time, you are “pandiculating.”
4.  The dot over a “j” or an “i” is called a “tittle.”
5.  And the metal part on a pencil is called a “ferrule.”
6.  Tupac danced ballet in high school and ended up portraying the Mouse King in a production of The Nutcracker.
7.  Elephants use the skin folds on their backs to crush mosquitos.
8.  “Booby trap” spelled backward is “party boob.”
9.  -40 Celsius and -40 Fahrenheit are the same temperature.
10. A Flamboyance is a group of flamingos.
11. And a group of pugs is called a grumble.
12. The Humpty Dumpty rhyme never says he’s an egg.
13. The groove located in the middle of the place above your lips is called a “philtrum.”
14. And the sleeve on the outside of a coffee cup is called a “zarf.”
15. A strawberry is not actually a berry, but a banana is.
16. The Ottoman Empire still existed the last time the Chicago Cubs won a World Series.
17. “Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia” is the scientific term for brain freeze.
18. Armadillos give birth only to quadruplets.
19. It’s impossible to hum while holding your nose.
20. You are more likely to die from a falling coconut than a shark attack.
21. All the water in Lake Superior would cover North and South America in one foot of water.
22. The difference in time between when the Tyrannosaurus rex and the stegosaurus lived is greater than the difference in time between when the Tyrannosaurus rex lived and now.
 
Now, let go of your nose and stop trying to hum :)  Don't you feel better now that you know all this :cool:
 
Medical fact; Cardiologists developed a device that can permanently replace the human heart. The only downside is that anyone who has it, must wear a special medical bracelet indicating that they have no pulse...
 
RocketMan said:
Now, let go of your nose and stop trying to hum :) 
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That's it, I'm putting tape over my webcam.
 
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The Rafflesia is the world's largest flower and it is also a parasite. It is native to Malaysia and is the State Flower of Indonesia. 
 
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There have been several challenges in studying the rafflesia for 190 years now since its discovery. The reasons behind this are:
  1. Rafflesia grows entirely embedded within the body of the host plant that they parasitize, and are only visible when they erupt from within the host body as a flower bud. Although other means of studying Rafflesia, like anatomical sectioning, could be performed, this method would likely result in death of both the host and parasite.
  2. Rafflesia is rare in occurrence and can only be found in remote lowland forests of Southeast Asia. Much of its habitat in these regions have been converted to farm land or timber concessions and in some parts of its range, the buds are harvested and sold for their intended medicinal qualities.
  3. Rafflesia become visible as flowers, and only survives a few days before decomposing.
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Physics fact: Cerenkov radiation describes the eerie blue glow found most commonly at the bottom of the cooling pools in nuclear reactors. The glow is the result of the radiation diffusing in the pool because it is only being 75% as fast in water as it is in a vacuum, which allows the excited electrons to travel faster than the radiation's phase velocity through the water.
 
During the cold war, the American CIA attempted to implant listening devices into a cat - dubbed "Operation Acoustic Kitty" - sadly ended in failure on day one, when the kitty was run over by a car outside the Soviet embassy in Washington DC. The project was estimated to have cost more than $14 million.
 
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