The "let me blow your mind" thread

[rumborak]

Post stuff you think people don't know.

My start: At no point in history was "ye" pronounced the way people pronounce it these days. Even when the "ye" spelling was still used, people pronounced it as "the". Reason being, the word had two spellings back in the day, the modern "the" but also "þe" (the letter "þ" coming from runic). In blackletter (i.e. Gothic) script the shape of the letter looked a lot like a "y", and when book printing came around, lacking the þ letter, typesetters just used the "y" letter as the closest one.

[Kotowboy]

Yes that was on QI and I forgot the name of the letter. An Acorn or something...?


At no point in history did anyone ever think the Earth was flat.




EDIT : It's called a Thorn

[hefdaddy42]

At no point in history did anyone ever think the Earth was flat.

https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/cms/

[jasc15]

Helium was discovered on the sun before it was discovered on earth.

[rumborak]

Helium was discovered on the sun before it was discovered on earth.

Ooh, nice one.
I'm assuming "discovered" means through spectroscopy

Both nickel and cobalt are named after Germanic mythical creatures. When people dug for silver, they blamed those creatures for putting the much less valuable, but similarly shiny, metals into the ground.

[El Barto]

The space shuttle Challenger never exploded. Separation of the port side SRB caused the entire stack to veer off axis of its direction of travel. At the speed it was travelling it disintegrated mighty fast as a result, thus making it essentially the same as the Columbia breakup years later. The fireball was simply the LOX/LH2 burning off after the tank ruptured.

[Sacul]

At no point in history did anyone ever think the Earth was flat.

https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/cms/

you kidding me

[jasc15]

The space shuttle Challenger never exploded.

It's also very likely that some of the crew survived all the way down to the ocean, though possibly unconscious.  Some of the supplemental breathing devices were activated when the wreckage was recovered.

As enamored as I am with human spaceflight, the more I read about challenger, the less I think we are really capable of managing an organization to do it properly.

[Skeever]

This is how you peel a banana:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBJV56WUDng

[jammindude]

When this shows up as the most recent thread posted in the General discussion thread from the main page....all it says is, The "Let me blow you...."

[Big Hath]

probably generates more traffic that way

[sneakyblueberry]

pound for pound, there is more sugar in a lemon than in a strawberry

[hefdaddy42]

At no point in history did anyone ever think the Earth was flat.

https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/cms/

you kidding me

It's complicated.

[Stadler]

The word "forte" - as in "my forte is providing useless information to otherwise relevant and entertaining threads" - was originally pronounced "fort", with one syllable.  It's from the French word for "strength".  Only later, when it likely got confused with the Italian word "forte" ("loudness", pronounced "for-tay", with two syllables) did people start using the alternative.   Both are standard now, but it's interesting how often I get corrected when I use the original.

[eric42434224]

Beavers have clear eyelids.  They act like goggles and allow them to see underwater when swimming.

[gmillerdrake]

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the 60,000-words-long "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" during a six-day cocaine high.

[lonestar]

The Chilean sea bass is not a bass, but a cod.

[bout to crash]

I have nothing to contribute right now, but keep em' coming...

(also I'm posting so I can see the "let me blow you")

[Evermind]

Beavers have clear eyelids.  They act like goggles and allow them to see underwater when swimming.

Actually, don't some birds like hawks have almost-clear eyelids too? It allows them to see clearly and protect their eyes from damage when they're hunting some small-sized prey like mice or hares in the forests and all that.

I could be dead wrong on that though.

[rumborak]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nictitating_membrane

[Evermind]

Yeah, that's what I was talking about. Nice to know how it's actually called.

[Chino]

The guy who invented the Pringles can has his ashes stored in one.

[lonestar]

Tsutoma Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima for work when the first A-bomb hit. He managed to make it home afterwards to Nagasaki just in time for the second. He lived to be 93.




Edit: One more, I'm just googling shit at this point, and coming up with some cool stuff, like....


The Arkansas school for the deaf's mascot is the Leopards.... The Deaf Leopards....

[TempusVox]

Okay...Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to METAL!!! 

But Ants work better as a unit when listening to Classical music.

It's all about the frequency and how it effects chemical signatures in their tiny nervous systems.

[bosk1]

Helium was discovered on the sun before it was discovered on earth.

Ooh, nice one.
I'm assuming "discovered" means through spectroscopy

Nope.  Field trip.

[rumborak]

* Puts on "Set the controls for the heart of the sun" *

[Chino]

Helium was discovered on the sun before it was discovered on earth.

Ooh, nice one.
I'm assuming "discovered" means through spectroscopy

Nope.  Field trip.

Lead by Ms. Frizzle

[gmillerdrake]

The English invented football (soccer in America) when kicking around the heads of slaughtered Danish invaders.

[rumborak]

The English invented football (soccer in America) when kicking around the heads of slaughtered Danish invaders.

The sport of dodgeball was invented in the 15th century by opium-addicted Chinamen.

[Orbert]

You guys are just makin' stuff up now.

[rumborak]

At least mine was a movie quote!

[Kotowboy]

It's physically impossible to lick your own brain.

[bosk1]

It's physically impossible to lick your own brain.

I'm going to try anyway.  Let's see...almost th-hjnl;akdjghaklg;dfklr;kladlikaf;di;iokla;oia;oiahr;oi

>bosk1 is offline

[Phantasmatron]

It's physically impossible to lick your own brain.

So I can't blow my own mind?  I have to rely on this thread?

[JayOctavarium]

racecar spelled backwards is racecar