Little known facts

[pornoboy]

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[Kulindahr]

Israel uses "St. Peter's Fish", i.e. tilapia, to monitor water quality in their desalination plants -- the fish are as responsive as any technology to tiny changes, react just as fast, and are much cheaper . . .

Besides being good to eat!

 

[Kulindahr]

View attachment 2224525​

Not entirely accurate: destruction of the world's forests began well before the industrial revolution, in the "Age of Exploration" when maritime powers nearly deforested Europe to build ships.
Additionally, the area of the planet covered by trees has been growing sporadically over the last decade or so, especially with countries such as India and China competing to plant the most trees in a day, a week, a month, a season, or a year.
The critical issue at this point is that forests in the tropics are still shrinking -- those are the most important forests in the world in terms of moderating climate.

 

[gsdx]

In the 1963 Hitchcock film 'The Birds', there is no musical soundtrack, even during the opening and closing credits. Bird sounds supplied the only background soundtrack for the film.

The scene with the sparrows flying down the chimney and out of the fireplace was animated by Disney animators.

 

[gsdx]

The bell from the Great Lake freighter Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975 with the loss of its entire crew of 29 men. It was raised in 1995, restored, and placed on display in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Detroit, Michigan. The names and ages of the crew are on a plaque attached the display podium on which the bell rests. Each November 10th, the bell is rung 29 times - once for each member of the crew.

Canadian balladeer Gordon Lightfoot composed and recorded The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1976, donating all proceeds to a foundation assist the surviving families of the crew as needed. The fund still exists as far as I know.

On May 3, 2023, during a special ceremony, the bell was rung 30 times: 29 times for the crew plus one more for Gordon Lightfoot, who passed away at the age of 84 in Toronto, Ontario, two days earlier.

 

[gsdx]

'JAWS', the movie which launched the 'Summer Blockbuster' movie genre, was originally to be directed by director Rick Richards. However, Richards' insistence in referring to the shark as a whale annoyed the producers to the point where Richards was fired and Steven Spielberg was brought on board. The rest is history.

The shark has very limited screen time mainly because the mechanical shark (nicknamed 'Bruce') rarely worked properly.

In the movie, the shark is destroyed in spectacular fashion by a single rifle shot exploding a diving tank which is lodged in the shark's mouth. The Mythbusters were unable to duplicate the explosion and the 'myth' was busted.

 

[Alistair]

“ a 3kg cat has a heat output of 14.8 Watts.”​

Therefore if you wanted to heat your house with cats, If we assume a house of 150m2 the annual space heating energy demand is:

15kWh/m² × 150 m² = 2250kWh

The number of cats required is therefore:

2250kWh / 129.65kWh = 17.35 cats
It is probably best to round up to an
average of 18 whole cats to avoid complaints.

 

[Thad1527]

^I'd consider this, as it would insure the house stays mouse-free.

 

[Kulindahr]

The distance to Saturn has been measured using radar.

 

[gsdx]

^ Speaking of Saturn, when Galileo saw it for the first time through a telescope, he thought the rings were ears.

 

[gsdx]

All 4 gas giant planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, have rings. Saturn's rings are so visible because they are made of ice. The other three have rings made of rock and other minerals.

Uranus rolls around the sun having been knocked onto its side by a massive collision, probably with a rogue planet from outside the Solar System. When it rolled onto its side, its rings followed. When viewed from Earth, Uranus and its rings look like a bull's eye.

 

[LoveMyPeppermill]

^I'd consider this, as it would insure the house stays mouse-free.

Yeah, but just think of scooping the cat litter ...

 

[pornoboy]

Mystery of pop up cover resolved...




Over 50 years ago, Led Zeppelin released their album Led Zeppelin IV with this picture and nothing else on the cover, not even printed words or the band's name. The story went that Robert Plant found the hand colored photo in an antique store near his country home in Berkshire. Many, many people, including yours truly were taken by the picture and wondered about who it might have been. Well, after all this time the Wiltshire Museum found an original print and solved the mystery. The man was Lot Long (sometimes shown as Longyear) a Wiltshire thatcher who built and maintained those iconic thatched roofs. He lived from 1823 to 1893 and was a widower living in a small cottage when the photo was made. The photographer is believed to have been the well known Ernest Howard Farmer. The record sold 37 million copies, and now Lot Long is immortal. Here is the original:

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[gsdx]

Peterborough, Ontario (where I live), has a nickname: The Electric City. It was the first town in Canada to have streets lit by electricity instead of gas.

On May 24, 1884, the switch was pulled and the newly-installed street lights lit up Peterborough's main street (George Street) for the first time.

 

[Kulindahr]

If in 1985 someone started running a program on a fast research computer, and left it running until now; if he started running the same program today, on the fastest systems currently used in A.I., it would take less than a second to catch up.

Why the Godfather of A.I. Fears What He’s Built

Geoffrey Hinton has spent a lifetime teaching computers to learn. Now he worries that artificial brains are better than ours.

www.newyorker.com

 

[Kulindahr]

The Missouri River used to flow into Hudson's Bay.

 

[pornoboy]

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[gsdx]

^ I suppose it's like 'throw' and 'threw', but it's not common to say 'throwed' although I've heard it on Barnwood Builders on occastion. On the other hand, we don't say 'flow' and 'flew'.

No wonder people have such a tough time learning English. It doesn't follow the rules.

 

[Kulindahr]

View attachment 2281575​

We used to say, "What's snew with you?" And once built a snowman and called him Frosty Snewsome.

 

[gsdx]

One evening, while married to actress Britt Ekland, Peter Sellers inhaled a substantial amount of Amyl Nitrate (Poppers) and suffered 8 heart attacks within 3 hours.