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.

Carrots are ripe courgettes

And I'm the Queen of Sheba.

Carrots are ripe courgettes

And broccoli florets are edible bonsai trees

Carrots are ripe courgettes

That's made my Mir ing that has

Morning, not sure why I've put Mir ing or what that even means!

On the dandelion theme, dandelion clocks are flammable.

That the singer Will I Am is his name William! So embrassed I didn't realise this, so obvious.

Percentages work both ways: 12% of 50 is the same as 50% of 12 so if you're trying to find a tricky percentage, flip it around and see if it's easier. If it isn't, e.g. 67% of 394, then multiply both numbers together and divide by 100: 394 x 67 / 100 = 263.98

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

What? All mammal embryos, male and female, start out looking the same, but if the embryo carries an XY chromosome set, after a few weeks, a genetic switch is triggered that means the embryo will develop male sex characteristics.

If you get manky old grapes and shove them in a plastic tub in a dark place they will become wine which is comparable to the bargain bucket offerings in most supermarkets.

If you make bread using a recipe which involves sugar then it will taste like a not very nice cake instead of crusty bread.

I thought the reason men have nipples is due to the fact up until 2 weeks after conception, we're all females.

Early embryos have two tubes and set of cells that will become either male sexual organs or female sexual organs.
One develops while the other disappears. So, for a little while we're "hermaphrodites", rather.

But development of sexual organs is designed so that it's one or the other, and we can't develop both properly.

Until my early 30s I thought water polo was played on horses, like normal polo. I was amazed they could find a swimming pool anywhere that would put up with that!

The Doldrums is actually a place you can get stuck in if there isn’t any wind💨 💨 and you might be there a while

The Horse latitudes are an area of ocean where it is similarly very calm, and ships could be be-calmed for weeks going on months. It is also an area with no rain. Any ships carrying horses for transport would force the animals overboard to save water. The poor things were left to drown in the the ocean.

I can't imagine how dreadful it must have been for the poor things, desperately trying to get onto the ship again.

Carrots are ripe courgettes - she means Marrows.

@NeedToKnow101 - I wasn't suggesting Lennon knew he was about to die. The fact that the interview was three days before his death was just a piece of trivia. My point was that the interview was in 1980. Why would he be worried about the song being banned 13 years after it had been released?

I'm a bit ashamed of my 'I never knew that!'

The Paralympics are named as such, not because paralysed people compete in them (obviously as there are many disabilities which don't involve paralysis).
It's because they run parallel with the Olympic Games!

Obviously it makes complete sense now I know!

Carrots are ripe courgettes

I hope you are kidding!

However . . . parsnips are the ghosts of dead carrots who haven't had a chance to be eaten, and have just died a lonely death in the fields. Because their purpose on earth has not been fulfilled, they are trapped in the physical realm.

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.

When I was a child & someone asked me what I want to be be when I grow up I thought the choices were man or woman!

@abstractzebra - I thought the same as you, until just now

I think there are one or two people trying to infiltrate 'fake facts' onto this thread, like the inverse of The Absolute Truth.

I thought the reason men have nipples is due to the fact up until 2 weeks after conception, we're all females.
Well I think it is, but the lactating father one is more fun. Shame we lost the quality in shared parenting isn't it?

@whoami24 That the singer Will I Am is his name William!

I was similarly surprised when I realised what part of America Flo Rida was from...

Regarding the Mercator projection and the Peters projection, the thing that used to puzzle me about world maps was the wildly varying size of Greenland. On some maps it looked small, on others it looked about as big as Africa.

I used to think Brunei was in the Middle East and that Singapore bordered China.

A few days ago, I learned that the phases of the moon look different in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. For example, a waning crescent looks like a C - shape from the UK, whereas from Australia, that’s what a waxing crescent looks like.

DD loves space, and recently I wondered if it would be possible to paint a scale mural of the solar system on her bedroom wall. Er no. Absolutely no way. I found this map mind-blowing.

www.joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

@abstractzebra me too until I read your post

I always thought it was a bit offensive