Stuff (trivia) that you should have known but didn't...

[LikeDylanInTheMovies]

At the age of 36 I've discovered that

1. Shirley McClaine and Warren Beatty were brother and sister

2. Camels store fat and not water in their humps.

People I've told about my discoveries have universally responded with 'well yeah, everyone knows that'.

Any other factoids you were well behind the curve with?

I didn't believe the nostril thing either and did check. I am a scuba diver and one of the basic things you learn is to blow air out of your nose to clear water out of your mask. It definitly comes out of both nostrils.

You can conscientiously blow out through both nostrils but when you are not thinking about it you do only use one. Colds are really annoying because when you swap nostrils and it is the blocked one it you really notice it. When you blow your nose you often notice only one is blocked.

About chickens and hard or soft shells

When i got my chickens last year I was advised to feed the shells back to the chickens and this helps them to produce the new hard shells. I bake them for a few minutes and then crush into their food.

Nasal cycle is a known phenomenon regulated by our nervous system.

There's interesting yoga pranayama called Nadi Sodhana (Alternate Nostril Breathing) which I use when feeling like tension headache is coming up. it is quite effective and relaxes your whole head in around 90 seconds.

US - there are some kind of cordial things, but very few. Things like KoolAid get bought ready made.

Electric kettles can be bought but they take ages to boil water because of the lower voltage. I had an electric one in my classroom, but it kept blowing fuses so I threw it out. We have a whistling one for the hob now. Several people I know have a coffee machine, or they use the microwave to boil water if I want a cup of tea. This place is a coffee nation.

KickAss - thank you for that. Makes sense now. DH & I have often wondered why it was always the whistling kettle (eg was it a preference or just a 'Hollywood' thing for foley FX etc).

"What IS true about America: it would be pretty unusual to find a kettle in an American kitchen - whereas it's obviously pretty bizarre for us not to have kettles here"

That was certainly true when we moved here and there was pretty much only one electric kettle to be commonly had here and every Brit/Irish person I knew had that kettle. I don't think it is true now, not at least in my part of the world. Target, Crate and Barrel and Williams Sonoma all have multiple different kinds and I doubt they would stock them if people weren't buying them.

Kickassangel, we used to kick the fuse every time if we put the kettle and microwave on at the same time so when my DH redid the kitchen he put much beefier circuits in.

I thought that red and pink salmon came from the same fish, just different parts. A bit like chicken having white and brown meat

Re squash - you can buy little pods similar to the Robinson's Squash pods that you squirt into water, but large bottles of squash are very rare in North America. Kool Aid you can buy as a powder, also Tang, iced tea, etc. that you mix up yourself. You also buy frozen cans of concentrated orange juice or (still) lemonade which you mix up at home - for some reason you always add 3 cans of water to the OJ but four cans to the lemonade. Oh, also on lemonade - North Americans never refer to Sprite / 7UP as "lemonade". Lemonade is never fizzy here.

Toronto is on the same latitude as Rome.

I actually thought that a Hare was a male rabbit until quite recently.