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100 Things We Didn't Know Last Year
gollum123 writes "The BBC news magazine is running a compilation of the interesting and sometimes downright unexpected facts that we did not know last year, but now know. some examples — There are 200 million blogs which are no longer being updated, say technology analysts. Urban birds have developed a short, fast 'rap style' of singing, different from their rural counterparts. The lion costume in the film 'Wizard of Oz' was made from real lions. Online shoppers will only wait an average of four seconds for an internet page to load before giving up. Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 litre bottles. For every 10 successful attempts to climb Mount Everest there is one fatality. Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobiacs is the term for people who fear the number 666. The egg came first."
Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 litre bottles.
That doesn't sound very surprising, given that a gas always fills its container, just like a liquid always takes its container's shape.
Oh, and by the way, if, like me, you went straight to the bird one, you couldn't but snicker at the picture's caption: "There are an estimated 1.7million great tit pairs in the UK."
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
It's not "things we didn't know last year," it's "factoids the Beeb's own magazine liked from their lists this year."
Still interesting, tho, even with a misleading headline.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Though the 666 term of 'Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobiacs' is true, in 2005, "a fragment of papyrus was revealed, containing the earliest known version of that part of the Book of Revelation discussing the Number of the Beast. It gave the number as 616, suggesting that this may have been the original."
FYI: Port 616 is officially registered to SCO System Administration Server.
I thought The Devil Wears Prada.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
BullShit! The Rooster came first.....
The research focused on great tits in ten major European cities, including London, Paris, Amsterdam and Prague, and compared them to forest-dwellers.
I'd be singing faster rap style songs too rather than longer melodies if it attracted mates with great tits.
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
Donald Rumsfeld, Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
We know the egg came first because it was the first to light up its cigarette and ask "how was it, baby?"
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
43. There is only one cheddar cheese maker in Cheddar, even though cheddar is the most popular hard cheese in the English-speaking world.
Not 'round here, sir.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
In the old days, people would scream "the Devil!" when they pronounced the number 666. These days we have a long word to wrap our tongues around to pronounce the number 666. I guess Word Nazis rule hell.
30. The brain is soft and gelatinous - its consistency is something between jelly and cooked pasta.
You mean that we didn't know that years prior?
Well, they didn't know how well it was cooked. It was previously thought to be al dente. They've now confirmed that it is closer to Kraft Dinner.
--sugarman--
They say that last year we didn't know that... Panspermia is the theory that life came from other planets???
I scanned down the list for a bit, but when I saw that, I just had to reread it in surprise, then close that browser tab. I knew that a long, long time ago, as did a lot of other science or science-fiction fans. The wikipedia article on panspermia cites its usage as early as 2000.
I was kind of disappointed.
For every 10 successful attempts to climb Mount Everest there is one fatality.
e restAAJ_03.pdf
This is per expedition. See:
http://www.americanalpineclub.org/pdfs/aaj/HueyEv
1 in 54 climbers dies. 1 in 10 expeditions will experience a fatality.
For any climbers out there the above reference has good statistics of risk, including vs denali and k2.
Actually, birdseed came before the chicken OR the egg ;)
I thought birdseed was what was released when the chicken came.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Flushing a toilet costs 1.5p, but the cost of requiring flushing is, of course, only 1p.
The one I found most useful was:
79. The best-value consumer purchase in terms of the price and usage is an electric kettle.
I wonder what the worst is?
The original report said that the urban birds have shorter songs with an upshift in frequency, all the better to compete with traffic noise. You can read a more sciency report on it at Science Daily. The paper's abstract:
From Current Biology here and you can even listen to the songs yourself.
henry -- the human evolution news relay
Ouch. You'd think they could've phrased it a little better.
Oh, sorry...
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
This article would more accurately be captioned "100 Interesting Things". Perusing the entire list, there are more than a few factoids therein that I did know.
Come to think of it, the name "100 Things That Some People Might Not Know" would be even more accurate.
This isn't "100 things no-one knew last year", it's "100 things we didn't know last year". The "we" doesn't refer to the human race, it refers at the very most to "the average person in the street", and quite possibly only to the person(s) who pick the things that go in the articles.
This isn't meant to be a list of 100 new discoveries, so can everyone stop commenting on it as though it is?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
"30. The brain is soft and gelatinous - its consistency is something between jelly and cooked pasta."
Not to jump on the bandwagon late, here - but I'm pretty sure that's NOT something we didn't know last year...
Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobiacs -
translated in Greek -
Hexakosio - 600
hexekonta - 60, but I don't know if this is a spelling mistake, should be hexenta.
hexa - 6
phobia - fear of
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
6. The late Alan "Fluff" Freeman had trained as an opera singer.
Because it was a non-story? Or did people really care?
7. The lion costume in the film Wizard of Oz was made from real lions.
I'm assuming they knew this when they made it.
9. Fathers tend to determine the height of their child, mothers their weight.
Maybe scientists didn't know this, but tall men have probably known it for a while.
11. An infestation of head lice is called pediculosis.
An infestation of inaccurate headlines is called ridiculosis.
15. Donald Rumsfeld was both the youngest and the oldest defence secretary in US history.
I'm guessing someone figured that out three years ago when he surpassed George Marshall as the oldest.
17. Coco Chanel started the trend for sun tans in 1923 when she got accidentally burnt on a cruise.
Does that even warrant a comment?
20. Sex workers in Roman times charged the equivalent price of eight glasses of red wine.
Even assuming "things we forgot" counts as things we didn't know, that brothel was discovered in 1862.
24. One third of all the cod fished in the world is consumed in the UK.
Only 1/3?
28. More than 90% of plane crashes have survivors.
If you count the crashes that don't involve falling out of the sky. Anyway, the story appeared on CNN in 2005, and the report is from 2000.
32. Barbie's full name is Barbie Millicent Roberts.
This is from 2003..
35. There were no numbers in the very first UK phone directory, only names and addresses. Operators would connect callers.
Someone just finally got around to opening the very first UK phone directory?
37. Pavements are tested using an 80 square metre artificial pavement at a research centre
You mean they test materials now?
41. Some Royal Mail stamps, which of course carry the Queen's image, are printed in Holland.
Insert prior evidence here.
42. Helen Mirren was born Ilyena Lydia Mironov
2004.
48. Allotment plots come in the standard measure of 10 poles
2001
49. When filming summer scenes in winter, actors suck on ice cubes
1978
50. There are 60 Acacia Avenues in the UK.
Didn't know, or didn't care to know?
I'll let someone else do the last 50.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
William Henry Harrison --- elected 1840, died April 4, 1841 at Washington, D.C.
Zachary Taylor --- elected 1848, died July 9, 1850 at Washington, D.C.
Abraham Lincoln --- elected 1864, died April 15, 1865 at Washington, D.C.
James Garfield --- elected 1880, died September 19, 1881 at Elberon, New Jersey
William McKinley --- elected 1900, died September 14, 1901 at Buffalo, New York
Warren G. Harding --- elected 1920, died August 2, 1923 San Francisco, California
Franklin D. Roosevelt --- elected 1944, died April 12, 1945 at Warm Springs, Georgia
John F. Kennedy --- elected 1960, died November 22, 1963 at Dallas, Texas
Of 42 people who were elected, 8 died in office, almost one in five...
> 48. Allotment plots come in the standard measure of 10 poles
Good, I much prefer my land measured in poles than russians
*queue loss of karma*
ba dump bump!
*I* find it funny\ironic\interesting because, when Rummy was just rooting around trying to find a way to dodge a reporter's question, he accidentally made a profoundly poetic, even zen, philosophical statement. When properly spaced out like parent did, I truly believe that could stand alongside the great insights of the great writers of the world. In terms of form, composition, and truth, it is nearly perfect.
Which means just about the LAST place you'd expect it to come from is the mouth of the man whose job otherwise was to blow up as much of the known world as he could.
And that's what makes it funny.
And just for the record, the A.C. parent posted no commentary. Just the moment of zen. And others modded it as funny (and insightful!). Why did you automatically assume he was ridiculing it?
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.