OMG I'm thick as mince

[OopsInamechangedagain]

I was just doing an online trivia quiz and one of the answers mentioned that zebra crossings are so-called because the black and white stripes resemble a zebra's coat. I can't believe that not once in my 40-odd years on this planet did I twig the connection!

What else have I missed...?

The Alan Turing/ Apple connection is extremely satisfying, but, like so many other neat tales, it is an urban legend.

Axl Rose is an anagram? Wait. Whit?

Oh and Hiya BoF! I rarely see you about the place these days and we haven't spoken in years but Merry Christmas, heart (hun)

Axl Rose: Oral Sex.

Hi there, Charis! I've sent you a PM x

That the singer Flo-Rida actually spells Florida 😂

Spent 10 years pronouncing pseudonym like suede-o-nim as in suede the fabric. None of my family told me so clearly they thought it was hilarious.

BoF I can't find the PM 😕 but thank you. I was Ninkynork and knew you from the x-factor and Shiney asking about that eighties shampoo days 😅

Thank you (I think) to the pp who explained Axl Rose.

For the pp who want sure, the plural of platypus is... Platypus (like sheep) I know that wasn't the point of your post....

I didn't realise Diagonally or Nocturnally for a long time!

Groups of girls living together do end up having periods at the same time.

I was mid twenties when I realised that the th and rd and nd letters which come after numbers to indicate placement (1st 2nd 3rd 4th) were actually the last two letters of the words first second third fourth...

cauliflower

I didn't realise that untill well now when you just wrote it !!

The Alan Turin/ Snow White post is really interesting. I learned recently that Apple pips contain small amounts of cyanide.

Navy blue. Thanks now I feel incredibly stupid and it’s nearly Christmas. No one should be made to feel this dumb at xmas

Guess what colour the French Navy wear?

COnversation with a friend last week, I said the first video on MTV was, "video killed the radio star", my friend thought I was wrong and that it was, "money for nothing" due to the line, 'play the guitar on MTV'. I asked him why they would be singing about MTV before it existed.

He was part right, it was the first one shown on the UK MTV.

That the reason the bed was named 'bed' is because the word actually looks like a bed

Really? I thought beds would have existed before English was a language eg when the ROmans invaded I'm sure they would have had beds.

I’ve only just found out ( aged 62) that the Guterman threads I’ve used for years for sewing, have a screw off bit one end to store needles. Fascinating, not.

Whaaaaat?

ref the earlier Adam Ant who knew posts - DH has just woken up and informed me that he saw an interview with Adam Ant years ago. When asked where he got his name from he said that he took it from the name on certain manhole covers. Apparently there is an Adamant paving and stone company based in Aberdeen and Putney (how random!). In connection, Adamant comes from the Greek word Adamas meaning invincible. There was also a 1960s programme called Adamant! Who knew - clearly my DH but he is odd that way. ALWAYS wins trivia games etc

A colleague who is a Jehovah’s Witness has a few bits of marketing tat such as key rings, notepads a nd teddies that all had unicorns on them.

Before giving them to his kids he removed the horns as their religion doesn’t believe in mythical creatures.

He didn’t believe us when we told him that they were in fact narwhals and a real animal.

A quick google proved otherwise and also pointed out that no one believes in mythical creatures, such as unicorns, no matter their religion.

@ wowsers My contributions-
The name bell ringer and graveyard shift- (I learnt this in a taxi on the way to an airport)
In England a long time ago they started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer."

This post above by @WoWsers16 is absolutely correct! Who knew?!

JillScarlet - me too😂 i always wondered if the ones on the top tier felt superior in some way

Always thought the whole of Centre Parcs was under a giant bubble (is it?!)

And why do we say "Tuna Fish" so often - what else could it be? We don't say Haddock-Fish or Lamb Meat

@ManchesterMum63 I'm afraid not - the swimming pool and a few shops/restaurants are in a building called the plaza which has a domed roof (looks like a bubble from the outside) but most of the village ie the villas etc are out in the forest ☺️

Torsz - thank you

3out according to my theatre history lecturer at uni, the 'break a leg' thing comes from the music hall tradition. Don't know if he was correct but it certainly sounds plausible.

You only got paid if you actually made it onto the stage (not guaranteed depending on how things were going), the curtains that make up the wings side stage are also referred to as 'legs', and the point at which you can be seen by the audience is the 'leg line'. So when you step onto the stage you 'break the leg' and get paid.

It was basically people saying 'good luck - hope you get paid today!'

I missed the Harry Potter stuff completely. Clearly having a dumb decade. But the break a leg explanation, I'm off to tell people about stages having legs.

I am so disappointed to have reach the end of this highly entertaining thread. I did know most of them but I did not know that Portsmouth was on an island. My husband found this hilarious but he didn’t know that raisins came from grapes and he thought that cranola (a rapeseed oil crop) was called granola and that everything in granola came from this one plant, nuts seeds and raisins so....

Anyway just to add a piece of my own humiliation, when I was about 16 I suddenly said allowed to the whole room “oh my god afternoon! It’s after noon in the day!” And everyone looked at me like I was stupid but up until then i had just never thought about the word.

I was about 15 when I realised at Halloween you say trick or treat and not trickle treat. To be fair I lived in the middle of nowhere so never went “trickle treating” 😂.

I also once accused a colleague of trying to joke with me when she said her husband was from utoxeter. I thought she meant Eutopia and didn’t take her seriously.