Can we have an "OMG I can't believe I never realised that!" thread?

[TwigTheWonderKid]

Mine is Sandie Shaw. I can't believe it had never occurred to me until tonight that her name is a play on Sandy Shore.

Oh the person who said why would John Lennon not fess up if a song was about LSD in an interview just before he died, ...he was assassinated so what difference would that make? He didn't know he was going to die!

Needtoknow

I didn't realise that there's no such thing as a specific 'paprika' pepper, that it's a mix of different peppers. Whaaaaaat?!

I always thought that "several" meant "two or three".

Recently I read that Alaska is both the most easterly AND most westerly state in America... it goes so far west that it crosses the date line and is technically to the east of America.

Look how cashew nuts grow. Weird as fuck.

That different colour peppers aren't different types, they're the same type just more or less ripe.

Birds don’t pee.
Aubergines have got nicotine in them.

@womanthatfelltoearth it's been a long day! But that coffee tip - amazing

@WhenItIsOver

What load of scaremongering utter twaddle.

You can stop yourself gagging when taking large tablets by concentrating hard on the thought of something delicious.

The reason men have nipples is because early man could lactate and feed the baby if the woman was hunting etc

What ?!

Rhodri- do all flower heads turn to seeds?

I have a pear tree in the garden, I find it fascinating to watch it flower and then the petals blow off and leaves the area just behind it starts to swell and then brows into a pear.

On the 'righty tighty' thing, if you or one of your children is left handed you don't need a left handed corkscrew, you hold the corkscrew still and twist the bottle.

Overthegardenfence

Birds don’t pee.
Aubergines have got nicotine in them.

Birds do pee. The white stuff they splatter is uric acid. Unlike mammals they don't make urea. The black bits in the white are actually bird poo.

On the several debate
I always thought
1=1
2=couple
3=few
4-7=several
8+=many/lots

I am that person who thought you drove through the channel tunnel - I blame TopGear though because Jeremy Clarkson drove through a tunnel between countries and I always assumed it was the channel tunnel. 😂

Following on from my mind blown at Madagascar comment yesterday I googled it. I had no idea that it was that big!

The only things I knew about it up until yesterday were: near Africa, island, speaks mostly French, lemurs. Lots of lemurs. We have lemurs at our zoo here. And they are my fave.

If you have got a spare few minutes, acquaint yourself with the Peters projection map. Shows countries by true size. Completely blew my mind the first time I saw it.

This explains it: map is at end of the article.
www.oxfordcartographers.com/our-maps/peters-projection-map/

I've said it already on this thread but how maps are drawn has a lot to do with the misconceptions people have.

World maps are 2d representations of a 3d document and results in counties at the top and bottom looking bigger than they are by comparison.

This is interesting (type a country in at the top, then you can select it and hover it over another country to compare it):

thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTc0MTQ0MTQ.MjEzODczNgMjkxOTMwMDM(MTQ3MDE5MzE~!CONTIGUOUS_USMTE4MjY0Njk.Mjk4MDU5Nzg(MTc1)MA~!INNTI2NDA1MQ.Nzg2MzQyMQ)MQ~!CNMTY1MTMyOTk.MTI3Mjk5Mzg(MjI1)Mg~!MLMA.MTgwMDAwMDA)Mw~!MGOTYzNjcxNg.MTUyNzc5MjA)NA

It only occurred to me while watching the last series of the Great British Bake Off, that with the exception of the technical challenge, the explanation before each challenge is for our benefit as the audience not for the bakers. They have to know what the challenges are for them to be able to create their recipes. I'm not sure why it never clicked before!

For those who asked, not all flower heads turn into seeds, as some plants - Holly, for example - come in male and female and only the flowers carried by the female tree make berries (which have the seeds inside them). Some plants have distinct male and female flowers - I used to grow butternut squash and eagerly watched for female flowers because only they produced squashes.

The Peter's Projection is ace. It blew my mind when I first saw it at school.

Carrots are ripe courgettes

Something I learned over the weekend. Grass is grown in plastic netting.

Dh and I have been slowly remodelling our garden and I started digging up some turf to move it over the weekend. Kept finding bits of plastic netting. Complained to dh about it and he told me it was part of the grass.

Makes sense because the new grass place near to our house keeps the turf in rolls. So it holds it all together.

Just never knew that before.

”Carrots are ripe courgettes”

This blew my mind the first time I opened the fridge and saw that all my manky old courgettes had turned into lovely crunchy carrots. Also the time an old packet of hobnobs became a black forest gateaux.

Carrots are ripe courgettes

Every day is a school day.

@ememem84 - grass doesn’t have to be grown on plastic netting, But it makes it easier to move it once it’s grown, like for selling rolls of turf. If you are growing grass at home, you can out the seed directly into the soil.

Carrots are ripe courgettes

And horses are grown up dogs.