Really TRUE odd factoids

[Joey Shabadoo]

The peak of TV attention can be assigned an exact date: Sunday, September 9, 1956, when Elvis Presley made his first appearance on television, on CBS’s Ed Sullivan Show. Its 82.6 percent share of US viewers has never been equalled or bettered.

 

[houblon]

Relying on GPS to navigate destroys your innate sense of direction, a skill that took our ancestors thousands of years to develop and hone.

When areas of the brain involved in navigation are no longer used, those neural connections fade away via a process known as synaptic pruning.

I heard that debunked earlier this year [citation required {I'll get my coat}]

 

[houblon]

Elvis Presley and David Bowie were both born on January 8th.

Gary Numan is thirteen days older than Gary Oldman.

 

[classic33]

I heard that debunked earlier this year [citation required {I'll get my coat}]

Don't use your GPS!

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/7/24/20697829/gps-nueroscience-hippocampus

 

[Blue Hills]

The word "gorilla" comes from the Greek word meaning, "savage hairy women."

intriguing.
Not a lot of gorillas in greece?

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

intriguing.
Not a lot of gorillas in greece?

From the font of all knowledge

The word "gorilla" comes from the history of Hanno the Navigator, (c. 500 BC) a Carthaginian explorer on an expedition to the west African coast to the area that later became Sierra Leone.[2][3] Members of the expedition encountered "savage people, the greater part of whom were women, whose bodies were hairy, and whom our interpreters called Gorillae".[4][5] It is unknown whether what the explorers encountered were what we now call gorillas, another species of ape or monkeys, or humans.[6] Skins of gorillai women, brought back by Hanno, are reputed to have been kept at Carthage until Rome destroyed the city 350 years later at the end of the Punic Wars, 146 BC.

The American physician and missionary Thomas Staughton Savage and naturalist Jeffries Wyman first described the western gorilla (they called it Troglodytes gorilla) in 1847 from specimens obtained in Liberia.[7] The name was derived from Ancient Greek Γόριλλαι (gorillai) 'tribe of hairy women',[8] described by Hanno.

 

[Blue Hills]

There were three german/german born pilots in the RAF during WW2.
One was Ken Adam, whose work many of you probably know - he went on to design many of those extravagant James Bond sets.
Apparently, seeing the horror of the Falaise Pocket at the culmination of the Normandy campaign he was more affected by the dead cattle than the many many dead Germans - he and his family had had to flee the country as they were Jewish.
One of the others was his brother.
The third was a fugitive from British justice who had adopted a false identity and then joined up. The false identity came in handy as he was later captured and held as a PoW by his former countrymen - if his real identity had been discovered he may have been shot as a traitor.

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

99.9% of Americans have never tasted blackcurrants.

 

[Beebo]

99.9% of Americans have never tasted blackcurrants.

Lucky gits. Black currants are horrible.
We used to have a black and red currant bush as well as gooseberries when we were kids. My mum insisted on making stewed fruit with them.
Horrible!
Although gooseberries are OK if left on the bush until very ripe.

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

Rabies often causes involuntary erections and hands-free orgasms, sometimes as many as 30-50 per day in the final phases before death.

 

[Blue Hills]

Rabies often causes involuntary erections and hands-free orgasms, sometimes as many as 30-50 per day in the final phases before death.

am slightly surprised that no one tried to isolate what was responsible for those two, moderate-fine-tune it, skip the troublesome death stage.

 

[matticus]

From the font of all knowledge

That's brilliant!

The one fun fact you didn't quote is this crazy latin naming:
western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla)

[This came up in a recent episode of the wonderful Rutherford and Fry radio4 show/podcast.]

 

[Beebo]

The diameter of a 50p is constant across any point. Just like a circle.

 

[Darius_Jedburgh]

The diameter of a 50p is constant across any point. Just like a circle.

The correct name for the shape is an equilateral curve heptagon.

 

[Eziemnaik]

Rabies often causes involuntary erections and hands-free orgasms, sometimes as many as 30-50 per day in the final phases before death.

Why are we not investing in this???