Odd factoids

[Drago]

The Force was originally a catholic thing, but was stolen from them by the Jedi in the great cassock war of 1981.

 

[ClichéGuevara]

The first vaccines were introduced in Persia. The more effective method was to have it in the arm, but females were forced to have it in their feet rather than expose their shoulders. This lead to a mass campaign where people used cloths to hide their gender, and the Low Jab ceased to be applied in favour of the hi jab.

 

[PeteXXX]

Cassius Clay had the fastest jab known to man. In fact, those who'd been jabbed by him didn't actually realise until they came round in the hospital.

 

[Drago]

Cassius Clay was made from clay. Following the long hot summer of '76 his head dried out and solidified, and the effects were mistaken by many for dementia, when in actual fact his face was simply too stiff to allow him to speak properly.

 

[Threevok]

In 1983, The Style Council were responsible for the UK's biggest river environmental disaster

Whilst filming the video - Long Hot Summer, Paul Weller's hair accidently came in contact with the water and caused a massive oil slick.

This made the river Cam a "no go zone" to the lower classes for the next 30 years

 

[PeteXXX]

The River Cam runs through Grantchester Meadows where you can be simultaneously gored by a bullock and eaten by stinging flys!

Wrong thread: This is a really true factoid!!

 

[Drago]

Paul Weller fellmon hard times before his misic career took off, and appeared in a porn fim, the River Cum. This is about a Cambridge batman who gets to punt a lot of ladies on the water, which fixing their plumbing and cleaning the windows.

 

[Threevok]

The first "What the Butler Saw" machine featured a man-servant cutting various lengths of wood.

 

[Drago]

Butler, from In the Buses, was indeed a Butler in real life. He turned to acting after having been mistaken for Laurence Olivier at the gents toilets at Hampstead Heath at 3am one night.

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

Another origin of musical instruments factoid.

The balalaika was invented in a small town in North Wales by a Russian incomer who couldn't speak Welsh or English very well. "Me Bala Like ah" he would say in answer to any question he was asked.

 

[Drago]

Welsh is simply English, but spoken with a mouth full of peanut butter.

 

[PaulB]

The nation now known as the United States of America was created by the British in the 1700s as a buffer state to separate the fanatical ice hockey-loving nation of Canada from the football-mad nation of Mexico. The United States of American people (later shortened to just 'Americans') in their need to create sports games of their own to show they wanted no truck with those 'mad foreign sports' invented padded rugby, netball and hoop-ball, games rejected by the civilised world but venerated in the United States of America (later shortened to 'the USA', 'the U.S' or even just 'America')

 

[PeteXXX]

Merkins are light relief from looking at the real thing...

 

[Drago]

Merkins were originslly made from male gherkins.

 

[ClichéGuevara]

America got it's full name due to the citizens not understanding the Yorkshire accent.

When it was announced that 'Us nation is taking shape' some people mistook the initial pronoun, and had to invent 'United States' rather than admit their ignorance.