What's your favourite fact?

[GlitterSquid]

Fill me full of your favourite facts. The more obscure, the better!

My favourite all time fact is that two halves of a supermarket sandwich are never from the same sandwich and are each another half of another pair. Unbelievable.

I met a grown man who didn't know peanuts grew underground recently too, which pleased me.

Enlighten me further!

Blood donors in Sweden receive a thank you via text when their blood is used

We're in the UK - DH gets a text, too, and where it's been sent.

Ooh - the plot thickens! (although most of the other brands have now been taken over by Walkers, which may or may not have some bearing on it?!)

They definitely don’t make the cheapo onion rings my husband buys from the wee shop 😆

Just admit you're wrong!

Or, you could admit you didn’t actually read what I wrote. And do some research instead of just googling Dracula.

@Leftbutcameback

I interviewed someone recently who had studied river sinuosity on another planet - amazing!

That should allow for investigation of how close the natural average is to pi - many/most terrestrial rivers have had their courses modified in various ways, usually straightening them.

I know someone who studies evidence of exoterrestrial glaciation ... so my newly minted fact is that definitions of geography/geology still in terms only of studies of the earth need updating.

It won't - you have the rule slightly wrong. It's not a leap year if it it's divisible by 100 but not by 400. 2400 will be the next turn of the century year that is also a leap year. 2100, 2200 and 2300 won't be.

No, apologies - you're right and I'm now veeeery confused

@BoredZelda

I didn't need to 'google it'. I did my dissertation on the novel.

The green code in the matrix films is made up of recipes from a Japanese cook book

@WomanStanleyWoman

Only virgins are allowed to become admins of local Facebook groups.

Yep, I got a text when my blood donation was used (I’m in england)

The term ‘riff-raff’ came from the Anglo-Saxon and originally meant ‘sweepings of rags’

‘Ugsome’ is an archaic form of ‘ugly’. (Ugsome wins IMO).

There used to be a London Street called Gropecunt Lane.

For the last two I have to thank Bill Bryson’s book, ‘Mother Tongue’.

Another wordy one I like, is that my Swedish friend’s son’s surname - Aker (a little circle thing over the A) means ‘field’ which made me think of ‘acre’ (obviously the same root) and my big fat Oxford dictionary told me that ‘acre’ originally meant the amount of land that could be ploughed by two oxen in a day.
Also that the same word goes back in similar forms and meaning through Latin (ager) and Greek (agros) all the way back to Sanskrit (ajra)

I love this sort of stuff.

Have we mentioned wombat poo yet? It comes in cubes.
Platypus and echidna are the only two existing monotremes, so they lay eggs, but feed their young milk. And male platypus have poisonous spurs on their back legs.

Over 90% of all UK blackcurrants go to make Ribena.

When I had a holiday job in a sandwich factory, the two halves were put in the same packet. We never mixed them.

@BoredZelda

If you give birth on a London Underground station, the baby gets free travel for life.*

Noooo. Really????!!!

I think this is an urban myth. There’s only ever been 5 babies born on the underground (although there are likely to have been some more in WW2 when the stations were used as shelters Jerry Springer claimed to be one of those) But there in nothing in TFL’s policies that state this.

People always say the same for airlines, but none have ever confirmed that policy.

And marks and Spencer’s. When I was due to have my twins I had to sit down in there once. A shop assistant was very excited to tell me if I went into labour there they would send me loads of stuff. I used to haunt the place!

Loads of these are bollocks!

Australia is a greater width than the moon.

Difference between a millionaire and a billionaire if you turned their money into seconds (time). A million seconds is 11.5 days a billion is 35 years.

that there is a word for the smell of the earth after rain.......petrichor

Think the athletics one is roger black

That knowing lots of facts does not equate to being very intelligent. So luckily that ‘grown man’ you met who didn’t know peanuts grew under the ground isn’t such a Wally after all! Great thread btw 👍🏻

At least 25% of the 'facts' on this list are wrong!

Loads of these are bollocks!

Why not put the correct fact then?

@wusbanker

WeeWeeMe sorry if I'm being thick but could you break that down please? I don't get it

Roger black was the other athlete

Vampires were around in poetry, if not novels, well before Frankenstein.

I only found out this week that a defibrillator does not restart a heart. It actually stops it so that it can then restart naturally.

When a haggis is born, it cries for iron bru for its first drink. Later it will accept the mothers milk.

And they have two longer legs on one side so that they can run around the hills without falling over. True. My dad told me.