Uncommon knowledge

[CBus13]

I really enjoy knowing weird tidbits of information about things that not everyone would know.

Like did you guys know Hippo milk is pink? Or Snails can sleep up to 3 years at a time? OR that President Gerald Ford was offered contracts with Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions?

Anyone else have some interesting bits of knowledge to pass the time during this off-season?

 

[HuskyNan]

My son informed me there are such things as blue carpenter bees. Who knew?

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

I'm a bit of a history buff, 3 favorites:

1 - The highest ranking Confederate General was Samuel Cooper, a paper-pusher in Richmond. Outranked Lee and anyone else you ever heard of, but he was a staff officer, not line.
2 - US Grant, regardless of how he got those initials, was born Hiram Ulysses Grant, or "HUG".
3 - Several presidents are known by their middle names. Stephen Cleveland and Thomas Wilson come to mind.

 

[John Glass]

Did you know the human head weighs 8 pounds ?

 

[RockyMTblue2]

A shark can extrude its stomach out its mouth, inside out, and wash it out!

 

[katiecrum1992]

You're more likely to be struck by lightning or killed by a bee than attacked by a shark.
Giraffes have 7 neck bones same as humans
Adolf Hitler's paternal grandfather was possibly Jewish, yet anyone who had even one Jewish grandparent was qualified to be put in a concentration camp.
Male seahorses deliver their babies.
The world's largest squid has eyes the size of a full size basketball.

 

[Wonkster]

Baloney exposed:

There are NOT 40 words for different kinds of snow (or snowfall) in the language of the Eskimos. They have just about as many words for the phenomenon as other langauges which are in climes with any snow at all.

That canard has been floating around for as long as I can remember.

 

[Wonkster]

Adolf Hitler's paternal grandfather was possibly Jewish, yet anyone who had even one Jewish grandparent was qualified to be put in a concentration camp.

Joseph Stalin (Djugashvili) was a great talent who was thought by many to be his native Georgia's future national poet.

Stalin was beaten not only by his father, but it turns out his mother often beat him as well!

 

[Wonkster]

... The world's largest squid has eyes the size of a full size basketball.

Run this one on the men's board, and don't forget to capitalize the word 'squid.'

I guarantee you'll get a response.

 

[Wonkster]

You're more likely to be struck by lightning or killed by a bee than attacked by a shark.

No surprise here. After all, you can't get attacked by a shark in Tuscaloosa or Wichita, whereas getting killed by a bee or hit by lightning could easily happen if you're standing in the wrong place in those two cities.

 

[Wonkster]

..
The Cyrillic alphabet used by the Russians today was NOT invented by the Christian proselytizer St Cyril. Saints Cyril and Methodius actually came up with an earlier alphabet referred to by Russians as Glagolitsa (in English, the Glagolitic alphabet).

 

[Wonkster]

.
Commander Fuchida, the Japanese pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, was given the assignment to fly over Hiroshima to investigate why the city did not respond to communications from Tokyo on the morning of August 6, 1945.

Talk about irony!

 

[Uconnrick]

I really enjoy knowing weird tidbits of information about things that not everyone would know.

Like did you guys know Hippo milk is pink? Or Snails can sleep up to 3 years at a time? OR that President Gerald Ford was offered contracts with Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions?

Anyone else have some interesting bits of knowledge to pass the time during this off-season?

I guess I have some snail DNA in me. When I sleep in, I sleep IN!

 

[Bobanozz]

The shell oil of the Cashew nut is poisonous. They are in the same family as Poison Ivy and Sumac, That's why you never see Cashews sold shell on. Also roasting them destroys the toxic oils. Makes you wonder, I mean someone was really determined to make a Cashew safe to eat.

If a statue in a Park named after a War hero is on a horse, and both front legs are in the air, then the person died in battle. If the horse has one leg in the air, then the person died of wounds from battle. If the horse has all four legs on the ground, then the person died of other (natural) causes.

 

[ThisJustIn]

Baloney exposed:

There are NOT 40 words for different kinds of snow (or snowfall) in the language of the Eskimos. They have just about as many words for the phenomenon as other langauges which are in climes with any snow at all.

That canard has been floating around for as long as I can remember.

In fact, the Eskimo–Aleut languages have about the same number of distinct word roots referring to snow as English does, but the structure of these languages tends to allow more variety as to how those roots can be modified in forming a single word.[1][2] A good deal of the ongoing debate thus depends on how one defines "word", and perhaps even "word root". The first exposure of the myth as such was by linguist Laura Martin in 1986, who traced the history of the myth and argued that its prevalence had diverted attention from serious research in to linguistic relativity. A subsequent influential and humorous, and polemical, essay by Geoff Pullum repeated Martin's critique calling the process by which the myth was created the "Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax". Pullum argued that the fact that number of word roots for snow is similar in Eskimoan languages and English proves that there exists no difference in the breadth of their respective vocabularies to define snow. Other specialists in the matter of Eskimoan languages and their knowledge of snow and especially sea ice, refute this notion and defend Boas's original fieldwork amongst the Inuit of Baffin island.[3][4]

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

If a statue in a Park named after a War hero is on a horse, and both front legs are in the air, then the person died in battle. If the horse has one leg in the air, then the person died of wounds from battle. If the horse has all four legs on the ground, then the person died of other (natural) causes.

Well, if we are debunking - the above is not true.

http://www.snopes.com/military/statue.asp

 

[Geno-ista]

.
Commander Fuchida, the Japanese pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, was given the assignment to fly over Hiroshima to investigate why the city did not respond to communications from Tokyo on the morning of August 6, 1945.

Talk about irony!

Never heard that- thanks!!!!

 

[katiecrum1992]

Run this one on the men's board, and don't forget to capitalize the word 'squid.'

I guarantee you'll get a response.

Done and done.

 

[DaddyChoc]

Marvin Gaye faked mental illness to get discharged from the Air Force

 

[arty155]

...Male seahorses deliver their babies...

- Good one. My understanding is, marine biologists began to suspect they must be males, after observing them quietly drifting away, whenever it was their turn to help change the diapers.

My son informed me there are such things as blue carpenter bees...

- Now, did he also happen to mention you might get to see all his 'blue bees', next time you defrost your freezer???? Please be careful, Nan.

...There are NOT 40 words for different kinds of snow (or snowfall) in the language of the Eskimos...

- Coincidently, Eskimos, who finally gained cable TV access this Spring, erroneously concluded from viewing the NCAA's, that the USA's unique environment apparently compelled us – nearly 40 times an hour - to find a way to squeeze into conversation, the word "comporting".

Joseph Stalin (Djugashvili) was a great talent who was thought by many to be his native Georgia's future national poet.

-Apparently there were no hard feelings toward his critics, who were even granted a leading role establishing the Soviet Peoples Poetry Reeducation Resort, in central Siberia.

...Stalin was beaten not only by his father, but it turns out his mother often beat him as well!

- Granted he may have been easy to beat, but...,yes, you know people are too serious about poetry competition, when even your own mom refuses to let you win a contest once in a while.

You're more likely to be... killed by a bee than attacked by a shark...

-Yes, katie, that whole bee thing scares me too, but I think we'll all be OK, as long as we stay clear of Nan's freezer.
- I know its Shark Week, but we all must stay calm. As Rocky reminded us, in the unlikely event of an attack, just keep your wits about you, reach in, and pull out its stomach (I'm talking sharks now, not bees).

 

[Icebear]

Well, if we are debunking - the above is not true.

http://www.snopes.com/military/statue.asp

Spending a good part of my life at Gettysburg I knew it was true there and Snopes confirms that. It simply cannot be generalized to all other sites and war statues which makes tremendous sense.

 

[meyers7]

Few people know that the Yugo was the first car to introduce driver side air bags....

of course you had to blow them up yourself.


Try and Snopes that one.

 

[Icebear]

Few people know that the Yugo was the first car to introduce driver side air bags....

of course you had to blow them up yourself.


Try and Snopes that one.

And it was a breathalizer test at the same time.

 

[ChicagoGG]

Giraffes have blue tongues.

 

[hoopingcrane]

Giraffes have blue tongues.

Only if they are in Nan's freezer.