Groucho's Fact Hunt

[Philw]

yes, I read this recently. They calculate about 105bio people have ever lived...so about 1 in 15 are currently still alive. Compare this to other mammals where it is more-like 1 in a 1000

Saw a cool image about this with an hourglass and birth/death rates the other day, but can't find it for the life of me now

Btw, for people who like this kind of thing, Bill Bryson's books are great - especially One Summer, which has loads of random little facts in it, and is a fascinating read all round

 

[degsy]

The space between the floors of The Dakota Apartments in New York ( yeah lennon and yoko's gaff, those apartments ) is 3 foot wide and filled with clay from the landscaping of Central Park...serious sound proofing.

 

[deipnosophist]

Can people just remove this from their vocabulary when posting on GOT???

...not if 'this' has currency beyond your supposed paradigm...expand your prose universe mate, and don't try to censor what you don't like just because it falls outside your limited conveyance.

 

[deipnosophist]

Nearly 1 in 10 soldiers who fought in the American Civil War were African-American.

Lincoln never liberated a single slave...his exalted legacy is one of the biggest 'haves' in history

 

[Dylan]

...not if 'this' has currency beyond your supposed paradigm...expand your prose universe mate, and don't try to censor what you don't like just because it falls outside your limited conveyance.

Or I could just ban you. Either way if fine with me.

 

[degsy]

( Some say ) the only truly accurate thing Nostradamus ever wrote was an excellent recipe for Cherry Jam.

 

[deipnosophist]

At birth, Frank Sinatra weighed 13lbs 8oz - that's half a pound under one stone.

For all you non-parents out there, that's absolutely massive.

I was 11 pounds...and was born on 12 December...same as Frank Sinatra (not same year!)

 

[deipnosophist]

If you had a big enough piece of typically thick paper and folded it over 103 times, it would be thicker than the obervable universe, 69 billion light years. That's exponential growth for you.

That is mind blowing

 

[TheFinnFan]

sparrow is the most common bird in the world

 

[deipnosophist]

I posted the pic above to demonstrate how Alaska can be the most Easterly, and Westerly state of the US. It shows how the Aleution Islands cross over the 180 degree line seperating East and West.

Thats the simple bit.

I think the confusion comes from when @Philw pointed out that the far East point of Russia in that pic also crosses over the 180 degree line, which should then make that part of Russia the most Westerly point (using the Alaska logic).

Yet when i look it up on google it says the most Westerly part of Russia is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad_Oblast

which is a small bit of land North of Poland.

interesting issue you raise...I would definitely say the most Westerly part of Russia is the bit that extends beyond the 180degree East line of longitude (and hence into the extreme western hemisphere.)

 

[deipnosophist]

I have just concluded reading the entire thread...thank you @Groucho...brilliant thread.

 

[SailorBlue]

Rapid Vienna won the German League in 1941 after Austria was annexed by Hitler.

 

[SailorBlue]

Throughout their various line ups English rock band Yes has included Russian, Swiss, South African, & American musicians

 

[SailorBlue]

The term freeze the balls off a brass monkey comes from the old days in the navy.
A brass monkey was a brass storage rack which stored the cannon balls. In extremely cold weather the brass would break and snap and the cannon balls would roll over the deck.

 

[WA Toffee]

I think it's right, it's not the pressure that matters, as astronauts will be at roughly atmospheric pressure unless something goes catastrophically wrong. Instead, it's the lack of a buoyancy force due to being in free fall, so the bubbles won't rise.

Lack of buoyancy I can understand, but that is totally unrelated to pressure (which will be virtually zero).
Pressure is essentially the weight of the air in the atmosphere pushing down. In space there is no atmosphere, therefore they are not at atmospheric pressure. Just like a plane, the higher you go, the less pressure there is