Make Millions Of Coals Go In There.

[rionaleonhart]

A couple of nights ago, I dreamt that I was being strangled by a Furby. They don't even have arms!

Anyway, I have been musing on the wonders of the Internet. One of the things I like most about the Internet is the way you can learn all sorts of pointless trivia as you leap about from page to page.

Therefore, here is a pointless trivia entry! Tell me something interesting in the comments, and then everyone who comes by can read it and go 'ooh, I never knew that'. (If your interesting fact comes from a particular field, such as 'biology' or 'linguistics' or 'literature', you could put that in the comment title so people can see at a glance whether it's something in which they would be particularly interested, but that's entirely optional.)

A couple of things to start us off:

- The reason the letters 'i' and 'j' have dots: in Latin texts written in the first millennium AD, 'm' and 'n' were each formed entirely of downward strokes, called 'minim strokes': three for 'm', two for 'n'. 'i' was a single minim stroke, and so the dot was introduced, because otherwise an 'n' and an 'i' next to each other would look exactly the same as an 'm'. 'j' was derived from 'i' (it was originally simply 'I' with a flourish) and therefore kept the dot. (The dot over a lowercase 'i' or 'j' is called a 'tittle', incidentally.)

- It's recently been bothering me that many clock and watch faces inconsistently use 'IIII' rather than 'IV' to represent four whilst still using 'IX' to represent nine. It seems that nobody knows exactly why this is the case, but here is a page of interesting theories.


Feel free to link to this entry if you'd like to draw from a wider pool of knowledge (you should, of course, feel equally free not to link to this entry; there's no pressure). Let's make this the best collection of potential pub quiz answers ever.

Comments

[missnoface.livejournal.com]

Eleven out of the 12 men to have walked on the moon were in the Boy Scouts.

(I'm fiercely addicted to 'The QI Elves' (http://twitter.com/qikipedia) on Twitter.)

[rionaleonhart]

It's going to be difficult to beat this fact.

Literature

[thrennion.livejournal.com]

In his spare time, James Joyce used to sing opera. AS A HOBBY.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Today I learnt that the fearsome Angler fish is actually no longer than my thumb. And that Franz Magellen dropped a cannonball on a line from his ship, and when it failed to touch bottom after 700 feet, boldly declared that the ocean was bottomless.

[Today I have been to "The Deep" at the Natural History Museum, it was AWESOME, there were THINGS IN JARS and a BATHYSPHERE and a WHALE SKELETON]

Also, books are book-sized because of the size of the average sheep.

[dracothelizard.livejournal.com]

Isn't that the male Angler fish who is tiny and the female one is bigger?

[sashwizzled.livejournal.com]

OhmyGod I love this stuff so much

- The maximum number of friends you can have at one time is 150 (= Dunbar's Number). This is because of the size of the brain's neocortex - any larger than this and social cohesion in groups breaks down.

- The livers of many polar animals contain toxic levels of vitamin A - an Antarctic explorer who resorted to eating his huskies died of this, and polar bear liver contains such high levels it will even make the dogs seriously ill.

- In 1940, human bones, the remains of an aircraft, and navigation equipment identical to the type used by Amelia Earhart's navigator were found on an island just off their flight path. Some of the bones are believed to be of a woman the same height as Earhart. Officially, however, it's not her. Honest.

Linguistics - language acquisition (could get a bit long ^_^;; )

[hikari-datenshi.livejournal.com]

Oooh minims! I approve, maan. I approve~

Some basic things for my fact: a pidgin is a simplified language that's made up where two parties of people do not have one in common. They're mostly used for trading, etc.
A creole is when second-generation speakers of a pidgin grammaticalise and add rules and semantic shifts, as well as new vocabulary to it. It becomes a language in and of itself.

In Nicaragua, around 1980, deaf children were isolated and then placed in special schools away from non-deaf people (they thought of deafness as a sort of... abomination or something). The deaf children obviously had no language of their own, because they couldn't hear to learn it, and they didn't have the human contact necessary to provide the data input needed for language learning - not only that, but they also didn't have and sign language (SL) usage, because of the isolation no-one had taught them it. They therefore made up their own 'home signs' - forming a pidgin SL from them.

Soon after the school was formed, the second generation of deaf children had picked up the SL-pidgin from the older children and added their own grammar and rules to it, to evolve it into a full-blown creole SL. They took the pidgin to a higher level of complexity.

The interesting thing about this is that it gives linguists an opportunity to study the birth of a new language. This creation of ISN (the name of the language) is the only time anyone has ever witnessed a language being created, and in a relatively short period of time. It developed spontaneously and non-conventionally, and, more unusually, it was developed by children and not adults.

AND HERE I COULD GO ON ABOUT THEORIES OF LANGUAGE LEARNING BEING HARD-WIRED INTO THE BRAIN, BUT THAT WOULD GET RIDICULOUS, SO I WILL STOP. :D

Re: Linguistics - language acquisition (could get a bit long ^_^;; )

[rionaleonhart]

Feel free to continue if you want! I've already studied theories of language acquisition, but others might be interested. (And should be interested; language acquisition is fascinating.)

I'd heard the Nicaraguan sign-language pidgin story before, but the full significance of it hadn't occurred to me: this isn't a normal pidgin, formed by people who have native languages of their own but no common means of communication, but a language developed by people who haven't had any language exposure at all. That's incredible.

[yumiboo.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is a dream. I had an odd dream where I was chased around some weird video-game-esque dungeon by a weird blob thing.

Anyway, I don't know many useless facts (most of the stuff that I know is psych-based, and it might be uninteresting/a bit dorkish of me), but here are some ones I didn't know:

- all polar bears are left-handed
- Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors
- Walt Disney was afraid of mice. Apparently.
- If a month starts with Sunday, the 13th of that month will always be a Friday.
- 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321.

[rionaleonhart]

Don't worry about being dorkish! Part of the idea behind this entry is that people might learn things in areas they wouldn't otherwise study.

I sort of love that blood donor fact.

[faeries-bite.livejournal.com]

- In many cases, the bodies of people who committed suicide by jumping from buildings or bridges or cliffs show evidence of strain and tearing to the shoulder muscles, suggesting that after jumping they changed their minds and tried to cling to the edge.

- Aften 1956, due to the notoriety it gained because of the book, Lolita fell out of fashion as a name. However, in the book, 'Lolita' does not mean a sexually attractive young girl, that is a nymphet. Lolita is simply Humbert Humbert's nickname for Dolores Haze.

- Gamma rays are used to sterilise everything from surgical tools and implements to condoms.

[rionaleonhart]

That jumping fact is horrible, but it's also incredibly interesting.

'Dolores' isn't a very popular name nowadays, is it? I wonder whether that's just because of natural shifts in name fashionability or whether Lolita played a part.

Biology

[dracothelizard.livejournal.com]

Rats have two wombs.

Also, they don't menstruate. They do have an estrous cycle of about 4/5 days, but there's no menstruation part.

Lucky bastards.

English literature

[dracothelizard.livejournal.com]

I'm not 100% sure of this, but I think it's agreed upon that Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the first proper sex scene in English literary history in Troilus and Criseyde. Maybe there were earlier sex scenes written by anonymous authors.

Best part is that it's a bit unclear whether or not Pandarus (Criseyde's uncle) leaves the room Troilus and Criseyde are in, so it can be argued that there's voyeurism. Chaucer, you kinky sod.

Although that was also obvious from the fact that he had two people have sex in a pear tree in The Merchant's Tale.

[teh-kween.livejournal.com]

Trivia is one of my favourite things EVER. (Man, I wish that was an outright lie. Alas.)

Another of my favourite things ever?

Furbies The sinking of Titanic.

Titanic actually had more than the legally required number of lifeboats for a ship of her size. At the time, lifeboat allocation was considered on the basis of the ship's cubic capacity, not the number of people on board.

She had 20 lifeboats - 4 collapsibles, 2 small wooden cutters, and 16 large. The largest of the lifeboats could carry 65 people, but the first to leave the ship carried only 28.
Second Officer Lightoller adhered so stringently to the principle of 'women and children first', that when loading lifeboats, he denied men access unless oarsmen were required.
Lifeboat 5 left with only 7 people on board.

Had all of the lifeboats been filled to capacity, they would still only have managed to carry 33% of Titanic's passengers and crew.

[denorios.livejournal.com]

- Despite the fact that the English language has a perfectly servicable word for the concept of 'taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune', (the word is 'epicaricacy'), it is never used and we use the German term instead, 'schadenfreude'.

[rionaleonhart]

I'm learning so much! (Also interesting, now that I look it up: 'epicaricacy' has apparently never been in common usage. It's not a case of a word falling out of use; it's a case of a word that exists only in dictionaries.)

FILM

[dracothelizard.livejournal.com]

I just love trivia.

The first science fiction film is the French Le Voyage dans la Lune by Georges Méliès. It was made in 1902 and can be watched on YouTube. (http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D7JDaOOw0MEE)

Re: FILM

[rionaleonhart]

New favourite YouTube comment:

I was 5 years old when this came out. I remember seeing it at a private showing in Paris. Now at age 113, I don't know how I ever liked this crap.

[bubbles-san.livejournal.com]

I dreamed last night I had a cat named Pharaoh and that my friend's house was right behind mine so we could visit and talk and hang out whenever we wanted.

~This is my favorite: Carotenosis is the name for the medical condition wherein the body develops a yellowish pigment from eating and drinking too many foods with carotene; ie, carrots, sweet potatoes, egg yolks, etc. It's rarely fatal, a woman in London in the seventies died of it, and even she had to work at it.

~Also: Happy Birthday was the first song sung in space by Apollo IX astronauts in 1969.

~And: The elephant is the only mammal that can't jump, and is part of the same class as rhino's and hippo's, ie, that they're pacyderms. The word pacyderm refers to their thick skin.

[darkest-alchemy.livejournal.com]

I just had to get out my pocketwatch and check on the numbers. You're right, it has IIII instead of IV. I never noticed that. Odd. (Assuming I ever need to write anything in Roman numerals, which doesn't happen often, I would always use IV.)

I can't think of any worthwhile trivia on well known topics so have this random piece of useless information: my dog Dylan has phobias of sneezes, Christmas crackers and Terry's chocolate oranges.

[rionaleonhart]

I never noticed that. Odd.

That's something else I've observed: whenever I point this out to someone wearing a watch that uses 'IIII', they'll always say they never noticed it before. I suppose people don't really pay attention to the numbers on analogue watches; they just look at the positions of the hands.

...ahahaha, how does the chocolate orange phobia manifest itself?

[shark-hat.livejournal.com]

Squirrels can turn their feet round 180 degrees on their ankles (so they can run head first down a tree trunk and their toe claws are pointing in the right direction to dig in to the bark.)

[hikari-datenshi.livejournal.com]

Eeeeew that's... oddly disgusting!

[adraekh.livejournal.com]

Kangaroo rats don't ever need drinking water. Their loop of Henle is long long long so that they can concentrate urine more efficiently and thus conserve more water in the desert. And in fact, this water conservation method is so effective that they essentially urinate dust. They obtain most of the necessary moisture from seeds and metabolic water. If you give them drinking water, nine times out of ten, they won't know what to do with it.

Harris's hawks are one of the few "social" birds of prey out there, meaning that they hunt in packs. (Kinda like wolves of the sky, really.)

The fur of a silky pocket mouse smells like popcorn.

Reindeer are domesticated caribou. They're the only animals out there that have a name that distinguishes the domestic strain from the wild strain.

The leaves of a creosote bush, after you roll them up and crush them, smell like rain.

[picaropicara.livejournal.com]

Things I learned playing Trivial Pursuit (now on my phone):

The only European country to have bison is Poland
A scientific study was once done (can't remember the university) in which they discovered that dunking a ginger nut biscuit in tea for 3-4 seconds gives the most pleasure? That's worded very weirdly sorry.

[make-a-move.livejournal.com]

A cockroach can live for nine days without its head. Thanks, Rolf Harris, for telling me that. I can now never un-learn it.

[squeemu.livejournal.com]

It can actually live up to 14 days, I believe! Although this is only based on memory, so I may be wrong. This is because insects have multiple brains throughout their body; the one in the head controls eating, certain senses, and certain hormones. Insects can still walk around and mate without their heads until they run out of energy.

[amy-wolf.livejournal.com]

Contrary to popular belief, an embassy is not legally part of the country it represents.

Female marsupials have three vaginas each (two for sex, and one for childbirth).

In a stretch of land running from Malaysia to Samoa, the word for 'five' is lima. I don't know if this has anything to do with the capital of Peru or not.

[dracothelizard.livejournal.com]

TWO for sex?

That's... kinda brilliant.

[culf.livejournal.com]

The only countries where salty liquorice is common are Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the north of Germany.

If you're wondering, I always miss it when I'm in England.

Most of my trivia knowledge is film or TV related, so I don't feel it's as interesting as all the cool science and literary facts you guys have.

[urawrd.livejournal.com]

As a media student and all round geek, I'd be very happy to hear your film and tv facts!

[allwasnew.livejournal.com]

Cows align themselves according to the earth's magnetic field. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7575459.stm)

[emmarrrrr.livejournal.com]

Arthur Conan Doyle used to play in goal for Portsmouth football club.

Uuuuh. I used to know way more random trivia than this. It appears to have fallen out of my brain.

[rionaleonhart]

I was going to say WHAT THAT'S AMAZING and then realised that I was in fact picturing Sherlock Holmes himself, rather than his author. Still, that's pretty great.

(Come to think of it, did the Victorians wear hats when they played football? In ordinary circumstances, from the Victorian literature I've read, it seems that not wearing a hat outdoors was akin to forgetting one's trousers.)

[tangyabominy.livejournal.com]

I just realised I have one!

Children develop kneecaps between the ages of two and six. THERE ARE SIX-YEAR OLDS IN THE WORLD TODAY RUNNING AROUND WITHOUT KNEECAPS.

[culf.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine was born with legs facing the wrong way. They had to twist them around when she was a baby, and her knees now feel like there's a pouch of water inside them when you poke them. It's weird.

[culf.livejournal.com]

I just remembered something.

You can lead a cow up a flight of stairs, but not down one. Could potentially be problematic.

Linguistics-related

[inappropriately.livejournal.com]

In pre-19th century printed English manuscripts, the grapheme /s/ had four allographs - 'S', 'ſ', 's' and 'ʃ'. 'ſ' and 's' were the main lowercase ones, the former being used everywhere except at the ends of words, where 's' was used instead. ('S' was uppercase, like now; 'ʃ' was used in place of 'ſ' in italicised words.)

I mention this because it turns out something similar happened with lowercase sigma (equivalent to English /s/) in Ancient Greek - 'σ' was used everywhere except at the ends of words, where instead 'ς' was used. ('Σ' was uppercase.)

I don't know if anyone else finds that interesting apart from me, but there you go.

Re: Linguistics-related

[hikari-datenshi.livejournal.com]

Yaay ʃ! We still use that today, in the phonetic alphabet (the IPA). If I rememeber correctly (which I probably don't - I was fucking shit at phonetics), the sound it makes is the unvoiced 'sh', as in 'sheep'. I do believe it was called a 'long s', but the proper name for it as a letter is Esh.

The sigma lower-case looks a bit similar to the Old English ð (Eth), only backwards! Which is the voiced 'th' sound, as in 'them'.

[pumpkinart.livejournal.com]

I love airplanes!

The deadliest air crash involving just one airplane was Japan Airlines Flight 123. 520 people died after the tail of the plane snapped off in mid-flight. The plane continued to fly for over half an hour before it crashed on a remote mountaintop; rescuers weren't able to reach it until the next day. Interestingly enough, even though over 500 people were killed, there were four survivors--all women, including an eight year-old and a twelve year-old--who were seated in the very back of the plane.

BET YOU CAN'T WAIT TO FLY NOW.

The best time of the week to buy last-minute airline tickets is at 12:01am on Tuesday night (Wednesday morning) in the time zone of the specific airline's hub. I forget how exaaaactly it works, but airlines update their prices weekly at midnight on Tuesday, and if the plane isn't full, they'll reduce the price; sometimes by a LOT. But you have to be there when it happens because those seats go fast.

[rionaleonhart]

I WAS TERRIFIED OF FLYING EVEN BEFORE. THANKS FOR THAT. (Genuinely, though, thanks for contributing!)

I'm trying to think of a plane-related fact to respond with, but all I can think of is that we call airplanes 'aeroplanes' here in the UK, and I imagine there's a fair chance you knew that already. Still, there it is. Why don't we call airports 'aeroports'?