Did you know...

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I thought it'd be fun to start a trivia thread.

For instance, did you know that Jim Varney, famous for playing Ernest P. Warrell, was actually a very talented actor, recognized in his early life for his stage acting, including his ability to memorize entire scripts in just a small amount of time? It's rather sad, I think. He was typecast into the redneck character despite his skill. I'm only speculating, but I guess that this professional disappointment probably contributed to his young death. Shortly before his death, he said that his lifelong dream was to play Hamlet.
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Probably not a very secret piece of triva anymore, but:

James Avery, most known for Uncle Phil on Fresh Prince, also provided the voice of Shredder in the old Ninja Turtles cartoon.
 
TommiR

TommiR

Did you know,

that Erwin Rommel had initially been rejected for command of a panzer division and, when he was given command of one by Hitler in 1940, the german army high command objected vigorously on the grounds of Rommel's "inexperience with commanding armoured formations".
 
North_Ranger

North_Ranger

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Did you know,

that Herman Goering was a WWI flying ace? He developed his later portly shape as a result of an injury sustained at the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 and the subsequent addiction to morphine that was used as a painkiller.
 
TommiR

TommiR

Well, at least I didn't. I knew he was a WWI flying ace, but before this, I had thought his morphine addiction had been the result of the treatment of his battlefield injuries during WWI. But at least wikipedia serves to confirm your point, so thank you for that tidbit :)

Did you know,

that the Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engine of Spitfire and Lancaster fame suffered from an early problem of loss of power in high negative-G maneuvers, and that the stopgap solution to the problem, developed by a female british engineer, was nicknamed "Miss Tilly's orifice"?
 
North_Ranger

North_Ranger

Staff member
Did you know,

that the term "blue-blooded" as an adjective for nobility or royalty originated from the lack of exposure to sunlight? Unlike their subjects, noblemen and royalty did not have to toil under the hot sun and thus remained pale - which in turn made their veins shine through their skin as blue. Hence the expression.
 
TommiR

TommiR

Dd you know,

that the initial invention of dynamite by Alfred Nobel, who later went on to will the large property he got from his patent on the substance to the Nobel Foundation to be distributed for scientific and humanitarian achievements, was an accident?
 
North_Ranger

North_Ranger

Staff member
Did you know,

that the first manned spaceflight could have ended a disaster? Upon re-entry, Yuri Gagarin would land on land, instead of the ocean as US astronauts would later do. However, his ship's parachutes almost did not open. Had they not, Gagarin would have been turned into mush upon landing. But dispute the parachutes working, he landed in the wrong place - some 250 miles outside the designated landing zone. So the first thing he had to do was find a phone and report his location to mission control.
 
North_Ranger

North_Ranger

Staff member
Did you know,

that the Icelandic Phallological Museum in Reykjavik houses 272 specimens of mammal penises from 92 species, and has the stated goal of acquiring a specimen from each species of mammal in Iceland. In April 2011 the Museum acquired a human specimen, a penis donated by a former tourism worker after his death in the age of 95.
 
North_Ranger

North_Ranger

Staff member
Did you know,

that Christina Hendricks, the buxom redhead who plays Joan Holloway in Mad Men...



...also played the role of Saffron in Firefly?
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Did you know...

...that the initials of the designers of American coinage appear on the coins they designed? (They're often really tiny. Good luck finding them all)
...that laws had to be passed to prevent the wholesale dumping of useless gasoline as a waste product before cars were invented? (Nobody knew what to do with the stuff at first)
...that the signatures of the designers of the original Macintosh computer signed their names in the molds used to make the enclosures? (This persisted up through the SE series)
...that there are actually more than a dozen forms of ice? (And that's just ice made from water)
...that brushing your gums is just as important as brushing your teeth? (Or at least the juncture)
...that Maryann is the only castaway still being paid for the series? (Her husband/agent insisted on residuals, none of the other cast did)
...that you can make ordinary salt water out of drain cleaner and pool chemicals? (HCl + NaOH = HOH + NaCl, and all that)
...that modern CPUs under load generate more heat per square millimeter than pretty much any other non-nuclear source? (We're talkin' really small scale, here)
...that it is possible to encode pictures within sound waves? (Handy linkage here)
...that fire behaves like a liquid? (A liquid lighter than air, but still a liquid)
...that the entire Human Race was (probably) almost entirely wiped out and had to practically rebuild itself from scratch? (The "Toba event")
...that cleanser and toothpaste can be used to restore your foggy acrylic headlights to full brightness? (Or you could buy one of those expensive kits instead, if you really want)
...that you can also start a fire with toothpaste (or chocolate!) and a soda can? (Handy if you're stranded on a desert island near Hansel & Gretel's witch house, I guess)
...that cobalt and nickel will stick to magnets? (Iron isn't the only magnetic metal)
...that I spend waaay too much time learning unconnected* facts? (I have a very large reference library, but this is all I could do from memory in 20min).

--Patrick
*Not useless. Never "useless."
 
CrimsonSoul

CrimsonSoul

North_Ranger said:
Did you know,

that the first manned spaceflight could have ended a disaster? Upon re-entry, Yuri Gagarin would land on land, instead of the ocean as US astronauts would later do. However, his ship's parachutes almost did not open. Had they not, Gagarin would have been turned into mush upon landing. But dispute the parachutes working, he landed in the wrong place - some 250 miles outside the designated landing zone. So the first thing he had to do was find a phone and report his location to mission control.
Click to expand...
While Yuri was the first comfirmed person in space, did you know that there are a series of recordings from the same time period that are supposed cosmonauts that didn't make it, the Russian (USSR at the time) government is silent on these recordings.

http://www.lostcosmonauts.com/default.htm
 
General Specific

General Specific

Van Halen had a rider in their contract specifying that they wanted a bowl of M&Ms backstage at every show, but with no brown M&Ms at all or they had the right to cancel the show and still be paid in full.

The reason for this is that it was a test to see if the promoters were reading the contract thoroughly. If they found brown M&Ms in the bowl, then they knew other, more important things might have been glossed over or ignored as well, thus leading to possible safety issues or technical glitches.
 
Baerdog

Baerdog

That's pretty slick and it's good to know that there was an actual reason behind it instead of overblown rock star ego.
 
Null

Null

Speaking of rock stars with overblown egos....

...Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler is actually proficient in over a dozen classical instruments, and he designs bikes for Dirico Motorcycles (the bikes are engineered by Mark Dirico).

...The song during the "house of healing" sequence in Return of the King, where Eowyn and Faramir meet was sung by Liv Tyler.

District 9 trivia:

...The motion capture for the Combat Walker in District 9 was performed by Sharlto Copley. This was so that the machine would have his body language on screen, since Wikus was supposed to be inside the Walker.

...All of the shacks (save Christopher Johnson's shack) in District 9 were pre-existing. In an odd parallel to the movie, the residents of the shantytown on the edge of Johannesburg were being evicted and relocated by the government as filming proceeded. Even most of the mutilated animal carcasses were not props, but where already in place when filming began.

...The reason the alien Prauns love cat food is because the director wanted them to have a cheap junk food much like refugees he had seen had (apparently at one shantytown, cheese puffs were the in demand food). When trying to decide what it was, one of the producers mentioned using canned cat food as prawn bait while fishing in Vancouver.
 
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Staff member
PatrThom said:
Did you know...

...that it is possible to encode pictures within sound waves? (Handy linkage here)
Click to expand...
You can pretty much encode anything in sound waves. Or in any waves for that matter. You could probably modulate a signal onto ocean waves. One of the most interesting examples of modulation I've seen is the way petroleum engineers use the pulses in the drilling mud* due to drill rotation as a low bandwidth carrier signal.

*drilling mud is a lubricant for the drill, which as the name implies was once upon a time just mud. It forms a sheath around the drill bit that lubes and provides back pressure on formation fluids to help prevent blowback. Remember--those formation fluids are compressed a lot more than things we're used to on the surface. Ask BP for details.
 
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