Useless Facts

[The Lord Of Wednesday]

Time for more.-The Nazis developed a prototype stealth jet, but it lacked the funding to be implemented in the war, it never left the prototype stage, though at least 2 were built.-The Japanese, as one of their last ditch efforts to strike at America late in the war, launched around 9,000 balloons (carrying a payload of sorts) that were supposed to be carried over by the jet stream to the American west coast. Why have you not heard of this? It is probably because the few that made it did not work, it only claimed the lives of 5 children and 1 adult and that was because it was tampered with after landing.-Marathon was the first FPS game to have a story in the game, it was also the first to have vertical aiming, clips (though no reload button), dual wielding, and having an assault rifle with a grenade launcher mounted beneath it.-Porsche is the most profitable auto-maker in the world.-The best selling car in America is the Ford F150.-Bungie held a "Be a Hero" campaign to help the recently devastated Haiti by saying they would donate up to $77,000 dollars, in the end they said that they made it but decided to double the amount afterward.-Bungie recently got Paul McCartney to help them, but fans are not yet sure for what (I sure am curious though).

[Tenebrae Invictus]

-Marathon was the first FPS game to have a story in the game, it was also the first to have vertical aiming, clips (though no reload button), dual wielding, and having an assault rifle with a grenade launcher mounted beneath it.

Really, Doom didn't have a story at all?Anyways, I knew all the other facts besides vertical aiming. Fun game.

[SgtPanda]

I got a few-The famous "Soup Nazi" episode of Seinfeld was actually based on a real strict soup guy.- Sting got his name from a black-and-yellow sweater he wore in a gig in his early days.- The recommended seating in a movie theater is "34 degrees from the screen"- If you make an O-shape with your thumb and fingers, squeezing the meaty part of your palm will determine how a steak is done, starting with index finger for medium rare and pinky for well-done.- The Red Solo Party cup was invented in the '70's.- The official sport of Canada is not hockey...it's lacrosse.- Attempting to skateboard wearing Converse Chuck Taylors will twist your ankle.- Apparently there is no rule governing the size of photos on your BZP profile page.

Edited August 26, 2012 by SgtPanda

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

I got a few- If you make an O-shape with your thumb and fingers, squeezing the meaty part of your palm will determine how a steak is done, starting with index finger for medium rare and pinky for well-done.

Another fun fact:Attempting to compare the baseline feeling obtained by this method with a steak you are cooking for someone else, while they are watching, is likely to earn you the beating of a lifetime.

[The Lord Of Wednesday]

-Marathon was the first FPS game to have a story in the game, it was also the first to have vertical aiming, clips (though no reload button), dual wielding, and having an assault rifle with a grenade launcher mounted beneath it.

Really, Doom didn't have a story at all?Anyways, I knew all the other facts besides vertical aiming. Fun game.

It was the story being in the game that I was referring to. Doom's story was only told in the game's manual, not in the game itself. I find it fun as well and happen to love it.-The [recent] movie I Am Legend was originally going to have a different ending, but when screened to an audience they removed it over complaints that it was "too cynical".-The philosophical movement of Enlightenment focused on things like conformity, science, the idea of eternal advancement and things of that nature.-The philosophical movement of Romanticism was opposed to Enlightenment, it focused on things like individualism, art, existentialism, and things like that.-Egoism is when you do something for your benefit at the expense of others (usually), whereas Altruism is when you do something for the benefit of others at the expense of yourself (usually).-The terminators (from their respective movies) were based on a dream. Edited August 26, 2012 by Proud Stigma

[SgtPanda]

-Egoism is when you do something for your benefit at the expense of others (usually)

So egoism =! showing off, and vice versa...?- The Leica M system's first M "digital" model was not a Leica M.- The Police's song "Every Breath You Take" makes up 1/3 to 1/4 of their publishing income.- George Orwell simply reversed the numbers 4 and 8 in 1948 (the year of the publishing of the novel) to get the title Nineteen Eighty-Four- The "A" in "AE86" denotes the 4AGE engine in the car, the "E" is the designation for all Corollas, the "8" is the code for the fifth Corolla, and "6" is the variation of the model.- The original design for the Porsche 911 goes back to the Volkswagen Beetle, which in turn was developed by engineer Ferdinand Porsche for the Nazi regime of Germany.- Seinfeld was the third ever television program to ever end while being no. 1 on TV rankings.- Dubstep was originally more popular for female audiences than other genres of EDM because of its meditative nature.- It is illegal in Toronto, Ontario to own a tarantula.- You can legally kill your cheating husband with your bare hands in Hong Kong.-Seinfeld did not originate Festivus, rather the writer's father first wrote of it in a Reader's Digest. Edited August 26, 2012 by SgtPanda

[The Lord Of Wednesday]

-There is a legend about a Native American Curse that involves the president in office every 20 years to die (or something similar, as I do not know what the curse actually entailed, but it was something similar). This actually held true until Ronald Regan, however both Ronald Regan and George W. Bush did have assassination attempts on them.-Another curse involved the supposedly cursed cars of James Dean and the limousine of Franz Ferdinand. However all we have to go by are the accident reports, as neither one can be technically tested (The limo is now a museum piece and no one knows the location of James Dean's Porsche, which mysteriously went missing when being moved).-There was the case of a train wreck in California where a train passenger was killed and loved ones received calls from his cell phone, only to discover when they got to his body that such a thing was impossible, as he was determined to be dead when the calls were made. Though it does add to the eldritch nature, the calls were apparently static and any attempt to call back was immediately sent to his voice mail.-The movie "The Exorcist" was seems to have been inspired by an exorcism around 1949 or 1950 of someone whom people generally refer to as "Robbie Manheim" or "Roland Doe" (his real name is not known since church law dictates that they cannot disclose his real name).-Contrary to what some may think, I was told that the first step in an exorcism for at least some churches is "please see a psychologist first".-H.P. Lovecraft encouraged people to write fanfiction for his mythos.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

-H.P. Lovecraft encouraged people to write fanfiction for his mythos.

He also tended to heavily revise said fan-fiction, so that many of the Cthulhu Mythos stories published under the names of other authors were written, either fully or in part, by him.

[The Other Kholin]

Only one Bionicle character's name has a Latin origin.

Gelu, Malum, Umbra...

[UltraHau]

Only one Bionicle character's name has a Latin origin.

Gelu, Malum, Umbra...

Er, yeah... Oops.

[T-Dawg]

-The original game of "Monopoly" was circular.-The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime at night.-"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".-Barbie's full first name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.

[Alex Humva]

Just a bit of a pet peeve, but when are people going stop posting the eight spiders 'fact'? I mean seriously, I figured everyone had figured that one out by now.

[T-Dawg]

Just a bit of a pet peeve, but when are people going stop posting the eight spiders 'fact'? I mean seriously, I figured everyone had figured that one out by now.

Really? I never went through the topic to figure that out. I assumed no one posted it.

[Alex Humva]

Well, it's less that people keep repeating it (this topic is filled with massive lists, can't expect everyone to read everything in it) and more that people keep repeating a fact that is rather obviously false. If people ate spiders in their sleep, first that presumes the spider is daft enough to climb in there, then there's the whole problem that spiders rather generally don't like being eaten alive, and you'd expect to see a lot more spider bites on the tongue or throat, which coincidentally is very bad for you.Really, the list of reasons why eating eight spiders in a lifetime in your sleep is probably longer than this topic.

[Transcendence]

You can legally kill your cheating husband with your bare hands in Hong Kong.

IF he cheats on you first

[SgtPanda]

You can legally kill your cheating husband with your bare hands in Hong Kong.

IF he cheats on you first

But of course, I'd not live in Hong Kong in case (this despite my family hailing from there, since I think it was a British colony, or waaaaay earlier.)

[The Lord Of Wednesday]

Here are some more examples.-Paranoia, along with simply referring to the feeling that people are out to get you or that you are being watched can also refer to a type of Schizophrenia. -The new Dodge Dart is based on the Alfa Romeo Giuliuetta.-In America there is a Corvette Z06 police car that was originally confiscated in a drug bust and repurposed for pursuits, said car also beat a racing motorcycle in a race.-A satellite was launched to look for Type 3 civilizations on the Kardeschev Scale (a scale which measures how advanced a race is based on their ability to harvest energy, going with the belief that the more advanced your race becomes and the more members of it there are, the more energy you need), it was mostly looking for Dyson Spheres, which should have been fairly easy to spot, but found nothing.-I heard that on gun safety tests in the US, if one says that they would draw a gun as a threat then they immediately fail you because it can also show the, say, robber, that you are unwilling to actually use it.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

-A satellite was launched to look for Type 3 civilizations on the Kardeschev Scale (a scale which measures how advanced a race is based on their ability to harvest energy, going with the belief that the more advanced your race becomes and the more members of it there are, the more energy you need), it was mostly looking for Dyson Spheres, which should have been fairly easy to spot, but found nothing.

That probably has something to do with how impractical, in terms of uses and the materials needed, Dyson Spheres are. If we found a Dyson Sphere in a system, that would confirm the absence of intelligent life in that system.

[Alex Humva]

Yeah, Dyson himself realized this. As put by one of my favorite sci-fi reviewers (paraphrased), "any species advanced enough to make a Dyson Sphere is intelligent enough to use other ways to gather energy. It's like trying to go to the moon with a giant catapult today; it's possible, but it's better to simply use a rocket."

Edited September 19, 2012 by Void Prophet Alex Humva

[SgtPanda]

Got a few.- The first Swiss Army Knife had a blade, a reamer, a can opener, and a screwdriver.- The upcoming Mclaren P1 hypercar is rumored to have 936 brake horsepower.- The last person to die in an F1 race was Ayrton Senna.- Saab had a prototype for a car controlled via joystick.- In the 70's British Petroleum had a board game about operating an oil pump. One of the cards read: "Blow-out! Rig damaged. Oil slick clean-up costs. Pay $1million."- Pigs are actually relatively clean animals, organizing their sleeping areas from "business" areas and bathing when possible.- Pigs roll in mud because they don't have sweat glands.- There exists a theory where Ferris Bueller doesn't actually exist; he's all imagined by Cameron.

[Wyrd Bid Ful Araed]

While its sharks who get the bad rep, its actually dolphins you need to worry about. A shark will only take a chunk out of you because it thinks you're food and biting is the only way it can test you out since it lacks hands, a dolphin will bludgeon you to death purely for fun. Pods of older dolphins will batter lone younger dolphins simply because they're bored, and will sexually harass female dolphins equally violently. Sometimes they'll do it to human women who get in the water with them.Suddenly that clicking laughter of theirs (which, incidentally, can be used as a sonic weapon to stun smaller fish) sounds very sinister, doesn't it?

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

It should be noted that dolphins can also use sonar to see the internal organs of animals, which allows them to know exactly where to hit you to cause the most damage.

[The Lord Of Wednesday]

Time for more.-In Gaelic, Halloween is called Samhain, but it is pronounced "Sow-in".-U2's song "Sunday Bloody Sunday" is about an incident called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_%281972%29 where British troops opened fire on protesters in Northern Ireland.-To the Americans, the War of 1812 was cause by issues with Maritime Rights, not the desire to annex Canada.-In the same war, I have heard, though have yet to confirm, that American forces on the sea were allied by Pirates.-It was proved in a study that you are less likely to do something wrong if there is an image with an eye in it in the room, even if said eye is crudely drawn or even painted.-Medical studies have shown a link between Suicide and the drug Prozac (for those who don't know, Prozac is sometimes used to treat depression).-One suicide victim who committed suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge left behind a note saying: “I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump."-The Id in psychology is your unconscious desires, fears, drives and things of that nature, it has no grasp of "realism" or "morals".-The Ego in psychology is essentially your consciousness.-The Super Ego in psychology is essentially your morality.-There is a being in philosophy called "The Interpreter" who is a being which makes up excuses to make sense of the reality around you.

[Alex Humva]

-In the same war, I have heard, though have yet to confirm, that American forces on the sea were allied by Pirates.

Gotta be careful about that, because the pirates we think of today aren't always the case back then. There were a lot of Privateers, which were a lot like pirates but generally more of a militarized force than a band of marauders.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

-In the same war, I have heard, though have yet to confirm, that American forces on the sea were allied by Pirates.-The Id in psychology is your unconscious desires, fears, drives and things of that nature, it has no grasp of "realism" or "morals".-The Ego in psychology is essentially your consciousness.-The Super Ego in psychology is essentially your morality.-There is a being in philosophy called "The Interpreter" who is a being which makes up excuses to make sense of the reality around you.

Privateers, not pirates, and hiring such people for maritime warfare was common practice back then.The Id, Ego, and Super ego are part of Freudian psychology, which has largely been discredited in modern times, because Freud's methods were about as scientific as a bag of hammers, and most of his theories made less sense.Similarly, you're a bit vague about which philosophy that concept is from. Philosophy isn't one unified thing, it's just an area of thought in which many different philosophies reside.

[The Lord Of Wednesday]

I am aware of what philosophy is and how it works, anyway The Interpreter is a Metaphysical entity that is in the Philosophy of Psychology, as it is immaterial it could also go into Philosophical Idealism and most likely present in Coherentism too. Also I heard that Freudian Psychology is only not used in modern science since they are more concepts that one really cannot apply to the scientific method (I like to think of them like emotions in that sense, but greater), but I think it still has some use in the Philosophy of Psychology.

Edited September 21, 2012 by Proud Stigma

[Alex Humva]

Well, there's also that Freud's ideas were, ah, rather interesting but generally speaking not very reliable or testable. It's less you can't apply the scientific method to it and more that parking in the disabled slot illegaly doesn't mean one has a secret thing for their mother or was abused in their childhood.

Edited September 21, 2012 by Void Prophet Alex Humva

[Phovos]

And then we get onto numbers.Numbers such as Graham's Number, which is so big that there are not enough atoms in the universe to make ink so we can write it down.

[Alex Humva]

If you wanted to go for a number that isn't quite as large but still absurdly large, a googolplex (smaller than Graham's number) is similarly impossible to write in longhand. However, it does have the plus side that you can represent it on paper as 10^{10^100}, whereas Graham's number is a bit tricky without more advanced mathematics.

[Phovos]

You can write pretty much any number as a power of ten. Even numbers like 3. Such as 3x10^0. Since 10^0 = 1.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

0⁰ is one mathematical value on which mathematicians and high school teachers disagree- the teachers say that 0⁰ is undefined, because the function y=x⁰ has a discontinuity at that point. The mathematicians say that 0⁰=1, chiefly because they find it useful to define the value as such. There are proofs supporting the official position on the matter, of course, but the value does tend to change depending on how you define what a value raised to the zeroth power actually means.

[CHTrilogy]

Michael Dorn and Jim Cummings worked together in at least one other production before Bionicle: The Legend Reborn! Yeah - they were hired by Sierra On-Line for voice acting in Gabriel Knight 1.

[Rausaro]

• A Sea Otter has over 500,000 hairs per square inch on it's pelt.
• It takes 5-8 minutes for Sunlight to reach the earth.

Edited October 2, 2012 by Rausaro

[Phovos]

Jaffa Cakes have apricot in them rather than orange. It would also take a 90 minute game of football to work off the calories from eating a whole pack of them.

[The Lord Of Wednesday]

Here are some more.-Immanuel Kant became a philosopher after reading David Hume's work, he hated it and set out to show he was wrong.-A possible (though not always true) sign that a depressed person will commit suicide is that they appear happy.-Your survival instinct is (at least said to be) your most powerful instinct.-Friedrich Neitszche essentially said that the thought of suicide can reduce stress.-The human mind does not argue to "seek truth" it does so to "win", everyone does this, and it is believed that arguing was merely another way to show some sort of social dominance, even if the point was ludicrous.-Contrary to what some are comfortable believing, most delinquents are actually extroverts, not introverts.

[Transcendence]

I am aware of what philosophy is and how it works, anyway The Interpreter is a Metaphysical entity that is in the Philosophy of Psychology, as it is immaterial it could also go into Philosophical Idealism and most likely present in Coherentism too. Also I heard that Freudian Psychology is only not used in modern science since they are more concepts that one really cannot apply to the scientific method (I like to think of them like emotions in that sense, but greater), but I think it still has some use in the Philosophy of Psychology.

Freudian psychology summarized:Oh, you have a headache? This is caused by repressed trauma that most likely happened in the early stages of your life! I can't prove this however, I'm just a big man with an unwarranted ego who's obsessively focused on unconscious desires (and I also love to lie to my patients!). Well, good luck with your headache! Edited October 4, 2012 by Vespertine

[Great Being Velika]

In San Fransisco, it is illegal for your elephant to stroll down Market st. without a leash.

[Sybre]

In San Fransisco, it is illegal for your elephant to stroll down Market st. without a leash.

Drat! Looks like I'll need to get a leash.President George W. Bush has a massive collection of signed baseballs. He kinda hoards it.

[The Hip Historian Iaredios]

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 is often considered the end of the Middle Ages, as Greek and non-Greek smarties fled before and after the siege of Constantinople to avoid Ottoman rule, most going to Italy. It's often discussed that these intellectuals helped fuel the Renaissance, and thus gave birth to the Modern Period.Also, the fall of Trebizond ended the Roman civilization that had been around for more than around 2200 years (753 BC - 1453 AD). ...Unless you count The Russian Empire as the third Rome, falling in 1918 with the first Russian Revolution.

Edited October 14, 2012 by RC15O5

[Alex Humva]

How can Russia be considered a third Rome? Comparatively speaking it has a lot less Roman influences than the rest of Europe, and no where near enough to be heirs of the empire. By the same logic Britain would be a lot better of a candidate for a third Rome.