Today I Learned...

[SkStu]

(the concept is stolen shamelessly from elsewhere, but a place to share with the foot.ie community the things that you were blissfully unaware of before very recently)...

I will start us off :)

There is a patron saint of work-related stress :D St. Walter of Pontoise and his feast day is today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_of_Pontoise

[SkStu]

I am reading a (fairly decent, actually) book called "The Bushmans Lair: On the Trail of the Fugitive of the Shuswap" and at the beginning of Chapter 4, there is an extract from a 1986 report entitled "A Suggested Remote Viewing Training Procedure" which was released with numerous other previously declassified documents by the US Government in 2017. The excerpt states:


Fifty years of laboratory parapsychology experiments have demonstrated that many people can perceive information inaccessible to the 'conventional five senses'...a few individuals have so developed this process that they can provide detailed descriptions of hidden or concealed events, places, people, objects, feelings, and color with considerable consistency.

The report also states that it is something that can be taught. Anyway, I found it extremely interesting! And obviously had no idea that it was even remotely possible.

https://documents.pub/document/a-suggested-remote-viewing-training-procedure-title-a-suggested-remote-viewing.html?page=13

[ontheotherhand]

I actually knew you were reading that already.

[dahamsta]

I knew that you knew that.

I learn new things from my kids constantly, because they're far smarter than me. I will be joining in on this thread.

[John83]

Frank Zappa's album "Jazz From Hell" was required to have an "Explicit lyrics" sticker.

It has no lyrics.

[pineapple stu]

When Werner von Braun was building rockets for Nazi Germany (before defecting to the US and becoming a key part of the space programme) he was having a problem with one of his early designs. It wouldn't land where it was supposed to, and he couldn't work out why.

So he said he'd stand exactly where it was supposed to land, the better to observe the end of its trajectory and try see what was going wrong.

Sod's law - that was the one time the rocket landed exactly on target. He just about managed to get out of the way, but still ended up in hospital with injuries from the accident.

(Space Race by Deborah Cadbury)

[tetsujin1979]

The "key" in "Key Lime Pie" comes from the Florida Keys, where it is a local speciality

[SkStu]

One of the major differences between "abduction" and "kidnapping" is that demanding a ransom will usually change an abduction to a kidnapping!

The word kidnap dates from the late seventeenth century and was derived from the process of stealing African and other children to provide servants to the American colonies [kid- (child) and -nap (seize, snatch away)]

[osarusan]

Can I add in cool stuff I did not actually learn about today, but did learn on equally random days in the past?

[John83]

Only if you lie about when you learned it.

[osarusan]

So today I learned that the word 'indentured' (indentured servants, etc) came from the French word endenture, meaning indentation.

When contracts about work were written, each party involved would receive a copy. To prevent forgery, the originals would be aligned perfectly, one on top of the other, and then a random jagged line would be cut (indented) into the corner.

If the issue of forgery ever arose, the originals (or supposed originals) would be aligned perfectly on top of each other again, to see if the original indentation matched or not.

[dahamsta]

Are we allowed to add things we learned not-today? :) EDIT: Ack, I see that was already asked and answered. I learned these things today. Definitely today!

I was surprised to learn that demesne is pronounced "duh-mayn".

And that the decorative blocks at the corners of houses are called quoins. I had to look that up so I could correctly direct my anger at the pretention.

[osarusan]

Another interesting thing I learned just today is that the length of a day is increasing at an imperceptbly slow pace. The dinosaurs that roamed the earth 250 million years ago would have experienced a day that was around 23 hours long, and whatever creatures roam the earth 250 million years in the future will experience a day of around 25 hours.

At the time of the formation of the moon, an earth day would have been only 2-3 hours long, but has lengthened ever since in an incredibly gradual process. This is because the gravitational interplay between the moon and the earth, and the transfer of angular momentum, is causing the moon to move farther away at a rate of approximately 1-2cm a year. Accompanying this is the earth's rotation slowing down by 1/500th of a second every century, leading to an increase of about an hour every 200 million years or so.

Billions of years in the future this interplay will finally end when an equilibrium is reached where the length of an earth day is the same length as a lunar month, which will be about 45 hours. At that time, the earth will always show the same face to the moon, as it now does to us (because the same process just described has already resulted in the earth's mass slowing down the rotation of the relatively smaller mass of the moon until one rotation on its axis lasts as long as one circle around the earth).

[pineapple stu]

Wham only released two studio albums.

[osarusan]

When planning the construction of Egypt's Aswan Dam in the 1960s, surveyors drilled down into the river Nile looking for bedrock. To their surprise, they had to drill down much farther than expected, as they found nothing but sedimentary rock for hundreds of metres. Further drilling and study revealed that the sediment had filled up what was a massive canyon under the Nile, as much as 1000 miles long and with a deepest point of as much as 2000 metres.

This canyon was formed during the Messinian salinity crisis, which occurred approx 5.9 million years ago, when the Strait of Gibraltar was forced closed through tectonic movement, and the Mediterranean Sea was cut off from the Atlantic ocean.

Over time, the Mediterranean gradually evaporated down to virtually nothing (causing it to become hypersalinated also). As the level of the Mediterranean dropped, the level of the Nile (which drains into the Mediteranean) began to drop also as it eroded the rock beneath it, carving out a canyon.

This erosion continued until the Zanclean flood (5.3 million years ago), which was the Atlantic ocean refilling the Mediterranean basin through the Strait of Gibraltar. As the sea level rose again, this caused the Nile to stop eroding its bedrock, and the entire canyon was eventually filled in with sediment.

[tetsujin1979]

The term potshot originated in California, during the gold rush. A prospector with a gun would shoot an animal to be thrown into the pot for food.

[pineapple stu]

Samuel Johnson of dictionary fame, fans of Blackadder will recall, was Dr Johnson.

He got that doctorate from Trinity College Dublin.

[John83]

I wouldn't take too much heed of the history in Blackadder. Johnson's honourary doctorate came some 20 years after his dictionary, so he was still Mr Johnson when Baldrick lit the fire with his manuscript.

Speaking of which, modern historians don't think Walter Rayleigh introduced the potato to Europe [1]: it wasn't grown in the regions he visited. He did popularise it in Britain and Ireland though. After he helped put down the Desmond Rebellions, he was granted around 1/500th of all the land in Ireland, including his home in Youghal, though he sold up after a couple of decades. Hugh Grant is descended from him.

Rayleigh sold his Irish estates (in Cork, Tipp and Waterford) to Lord Cork, who died having been chased off his lands by another rebellion, the one Cromwell put down.

[1] "To me, it's a potato. But to Sir Walter bloody Raleigh, it's fine estates, luxury carriages and as many girls as his tongue can handle!"

[dahamsta]

He didn't bring tobacco either.

He did live in Myrtle Grove (https://www.igs.ie/updates/article/from-wardens-house-to-myrtle-grove) in Youghal though, a ~450 year old house still occupied privately in Youghal, which I always find super cool. (Although I wouldn't like to be maintaining it!)

You can't really visit Myrtle Grove, however you can visit the Collegiate Church (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary%27s_Collegiate_Church,_Youghal) next door, which dates from around 1220, and that abuts the old town walls, which you can walk up to. There's a couple of people working in the church now, a touchscreen with info, maps kids can use to find all the interesting stuff, and little mice kids can be tasked with finding. Very well done, well worth a visit, and donation-only.

[dahamsta]

TIL that the green code in the Matrix was just sushi recipes.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-matrix-code-sushi-recipe/

[SkStu]

1518880925916057601

Hands up fellow ultracrepidarians!!

[dahamsta]

Are you looking at me?

[seanfhear]

1518880925916057601

Hands up fellow ultracrepidarians!!
Funnily enough I don’t know much about this, but should that really hold me back ? ?

[SkStu]

Are you looking at me?

:D there are too many ultracrepidarian candidates on this site to mention DaH! (but yes :))

[dahamsta]

TIL horses originated in North America, migrated to Asia and were domesticated, went extinct in North America, and were brought back over again by the Spanish thousands of years later.

Shamelessly ripped from a Reddit TIL I saved a year ago and just found.

https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/jve6j7/til_horses_originated_in_north_america_migrated/

[SkStu]

The recent anniversary of Brian Boru's death in 1014 sent me down a rabbit hole related to his reign and the internal fall out after his death which ultimately led to the dilution of the Dalcassian tribe (Na Dál gCais) as a serious force in Irish monarchy. We have such a powerful, interesting and rich culture and history, and i think it gets forgotten about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalcassians

On another note, can anyone recommend a good book or articles on the Annals of the Four Masters?

[SkStu]

The Antikythera Mechanism. The worlds oldest computer dating from 2 BC. It was used to track the moon and sun through the zodiac, predict eclipses and astronomical positions of the stars, sun and moon. Apparently it totally changed the way we look at the history of technology.

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p09pcwnz/unlocking-the-secrets-of-the-world-s-oldest-computer

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

Pretty cool.

[John83]

Not so much the position of the stars (on a human timeframe they pretty much just rotate in the sky daily as they're too far away for much paralax), but it could track the planet the Greeks knew of.

It's an amazing device. They pulled it out of a shipwreck over a century ago, but it just just junk in a drawer until x-ray tomography revealed the innards. People have spent decades figuring out what it could do. The bronze-work in it and the nature of the gearing is more intricate than anything we see again until the late middle ages. It can't have been an isolated device - the craftsmanship in it has to be built up over generations - but it's possible that other similar devices were melted down for their bronze later on. Sadly, written records from that far back are very fragmentary, and we'll likely never know the full extent of the technology they had. It's kind of a caution too: the march of progress isn't as relentless as they made it out to be in school.

It makes some approximations of the motions of the sun, moon and planets that have allowed people to find the time period where its approximations fit best, which I think has put the likely construction around 300 BCE.

[pineapple stu]

Nicotine and shrapnel are named after people. (I actually genuinely found out both of these yesterday, completely independently of each other)

One of Henry Shrapnel's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Shrapnel) early demonstrations of his new weapon was at Vinegar Hill in 1798.

Jean Nicot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Nicot) was the French ambassador to Portugal, who introduced tobacco to France in the 16th century

[seanfhear]

Nicotine and shrapnel are named after people. (I actually genuinely found out both of these yesterday, completely independently of each other)

One of Henry Shrapnel's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Shrapnel) early demonstrations of his new weapon was at Vinegar Hill in 1798.

Jean Nicot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Nicot) was the French ambassador to Portugal, who introduced tobacco to France in the 16th century
Somebody should have put some Shrapnel in the Nicotine Fella ~ ~ Would have saved a lot of misery.

[SkStu]

Somebody should have put some Shrapnel in the Nicotine Fella ~ ~ Would have saved a lot of misery.

were you not around then seanfhear? :D

[seanfhear]

were you not around then seanfhear? :d
~ ~ lol ~ ~

[pineapple stu]

A DeLorean's speedo only goes up to 85mph

[SkStu]

Jungholz Enclave
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungholz

Jungholz is a village in the district of Reutte in the Austrian state of Tyrol that is accessible only via Germany.

Jungholz forms a pene-exclave of Austria that is connected to the rest of Austria by a single point, which is the summit of the mountain Sorgschrofen (1,636 m, 5,367 ft). As well as housing border post number 110 on the normal international border between Tyrol and Bavaria, a second border starts and, having gone round Jungholz, ends there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungholz#/media/File%3AJungholz_im_Bezirk_RE.png

[OwlsFan]

..when you say to someone else "you pick the wine", check the price and don't leave it until the bill arrives !!

[A N Mouse]

The word robot came into English from a polish play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). The robots in the play were organic rather than mechanical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.

From the wiki entry it replaced older words android or automaton. Automaton or, automata have a long history going back to the ancient Egyptian and Greeks. From Mythical - like Daedalus or Hephaestus, to historical like Hero. But, just to tie it back in to somethign that was mentioned above, the only surviving example is the Antikythera mechanism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaton

[pineapple stu]

Cornwall has a pie called a stargazy. It's because the fish are baked into it so that they're gazing up at the stars.

https://www.rickstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/EP05-STARGAZEY-PIE-1.png

That's a no from me anyway.

[SkStu]

Cornwall has a pie called a stargazy. It's because the fish are baked into it so that they're gazing up at the stars.

https://www.rickstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/EP05-STARGAZEY-PIE-1.png

That's a no from me anyway.

barf!!

[John83]

The word robot came into English from a polish play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). The robots in the play were organic rather than mechanical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.

From the wiki entry it replaced older words android or automaton. Automaton or, automata have a long history going back to the ancient Egyptian and Greeks. From Mythical - like Daedalus or Hephaestus, to historical like Hero. But, just to tie it back in to somethign that was mentioned above, the only surviving example is the Antikythera mechanism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaton
Czech, not Polish, I think.

[A N Mouse]

Czech, not Polish, I think.

Today I learned about Amyloid plaques (don't go down this rabbit hole)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyloid_plaques

and Howard Cunningham :p , who is among other things one of the people we have to blame for poor workplace implementations of a reasonable idea (if you know you know, it's right there in his bio), and Cunningham's Law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law

[Crosby87]

Good thread, Stu. I can't believe this whole time (and having worked in restaurants) that until I saw the last episode of "The Bear" last night...I thought "Stage" was pronounced like it looks. When a visiting chef sets up a stage. I feel soooo stupid. It's "Stoge."

[osarusan]

In the Mexican-American war of 1846-48, there was a Mexican artillery batallion called St. Patrick's Batallion, led by Irishman John Riley and comprising mainly Irish Catholic soldiers, who had often defected from the US army. After losing the battle of Churubusco, they were subjected to the largest mass execution in US history.

Apparently there was a commemorative stamp issued in Ireland in 1997 but I don't remember that at all.

I learned this today while watching a youtube video of Mexico v Ireland in WC 1994, and there was a comment under the video from a Mexican (I presume) saying Mexico should have let Ireland win because of this batallion.

[SkStu]

Republic of Ireland have been the Unofficial Football World Champions twice in history, last held in from March 31, 2004 (when we beat Czech Republic 2-1) to May, 29 2004 (when we lost to Nigeria 3-0). We also held it in 1977.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unofficial_Football_World_Championships [this link says we have held it three times but the Ireland MNT wiki says twice and is supported by the article below]

https://www.balls.ie/uncategorized/ireland-unofficial-world-football-championship-351369

[John83]

In the Mexican-American war of 1846-48, there was a Mexican artillery batallion called St. Patrick's Batallion, led by Irishman John Riley and comprising mainly Irish Catholic soldiers, who had often defected from the US army. After losing the battle of Churubusco, they were subjected to the largest mass execution in US history.

Apparently there was a commemorative stamp issued in Ireland in 1997 but I don't remember that at all.

I learned this today while watching a youtube video of Mexico v Ireland in WC 1994, and there was a comment under the video from a Mexican (I presume) saying Mexico should have let Ireland win because of this batallion.
I worked in Mexico for a bit. They hear you're Irish, the San Patricios are the first thing a lot of them bring up. They tend to have a positive association with Ireland as a result. (Whereas they can be a bit chilly until they figure out you're not American.)

[joey B]

Jack and Bobby Charlton’s dad didn’t watch their World Cup semi final because he wouldn’t change his shift working at the mine!

[seanfhear]

Jack and Bobby Charlton’s dad didn’t watch their World Cup semi final because he wouldn’t change his shift working at the mine!
Must have been the bonus shift.

[OwlsFan]

...(or rather reminded me) that it was a Thierry Henry goal which condemned Wednesday to relegation from the Premier League in 2000. God I love that man.

[Mr A]

...(or rather reminded me) that it was a Thierry Henry goal which condemned Wednesday to relegation from the Premier League in 2000. God I love that man.

Am still boycotting Glilette razors all these years later

[A N Mouse]

TIL Janet Jackson's 'Rhythm Nation' could brick some laptops because of resonant frequencies with the HDD. As in not necessarily the machine playing the video, but one nearby.

Manufacturers had to add audio filters, which may or may not still be in place.

here's the original blog post with the story
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220816-00/?p=106994
but I see it's been been picked up by others including the daily heil in the last week.

[osarusan]

Sergei Krikalev was a Soviet cosmonaut who was on board the space station Mir when the Soviet Union collapsed. Thus, the country which had sent him into space didn't exist any more, and the landing zone for his scheduled return was now in newly-independent and now-not-Soviet Kazakhstan, so there was confusion about who was in charge. He ended up spending 311 days in space, twice as long as planned (Out of his 803-day total, which is the 3rd highest ever).

And him spending so much time away from gravity means that time dilation caused him to be 0.02 seconds older than he would otherwise be.