things you didnt know, but should... mine is rice :/

[RainbowsAndFrogs]

i honestly have just had to google how rice is made. i wasnt sure if it was man made or grown. i know
i knew but wasnt 100%

honestly i have A levels and generally educated, although apparently not as much as i thought?

please tell me im not alone!

@Judashascomeintosomemoney

My one is, I genuinely always thought the song was Knights in white satin. It never occurred to me that satin would be really crap armour. Nights makes so much more sense. 🙄

Oh my! I thought this too light bulb just went on!

@ramblingsonthego

It wasn't until a thread on here that I realised a dandelion and a dandelion clock where the same plant in different stages

I had all the shame when I found out. I am normally reasonably intelligent.

My husband found this out this year! We were walking and he said ‘I wonder why there are two different types of dandelions...’ cue science lesson with my taking apart the yellow flower to show him the ‘clock’ parts waiting to come out.

@SusannahSophia

Raisins and sultanas are dried grapes, it’s true, but currants are dried currants, as in blackcurrants and redcurrants.

Every day's a school day.

Even though it's bleeding obvious now, though.

I think Feminist10101 has gotten out of the wrong side of the bed 😂

I've been driving for 12 years and while I can check oil and identify warning lights, I've never changed a tyre and can't be arsed to learn. That is my choice.

Mine are quite dangerous ones! Until I was about 28 I didnt realise that:

Sticking a knife in the toaster can electrocute you
You DO NOT pour water on an electrical fire!

I used to think ‘dilute to taste’ meant you had to dilute it in order to taste it. Which made no sense to me even as a child.

Re currants, I found out on the last trip to Greece that the word comes from Corinth (as in the Corinth Canal) where they mostly came from ages ago.

You never know, it might just crop up on University Challenge one day. 🙂

Because I am a stickler for the facts:
It's true that green peppers are just peppers that are harvested early. But yellow peppers and red peppers are grown from a different seed (i.e. it's not true that yellow peppers are unripened red peppers).

(Source: I used to live in a hot country and grew them in the garden!)

That the numbers on the toaster dial indicate time (ie minutes) rather than levels of toastiness.

Currants are not dried black/red currants, they are dried grapes. Just smaller varieties than those used for sultanas and raisins e. g. Corinth Black is a currant variety of grape.

I used to think (up until a significant adult age ), that rivers filled up from the sea!!!! I know that obviously sometimes the sea does have an influence on some rivers but I didn't actually realise that there was enough water coming from the land to keep a river flowing!

But why did the chicken cross the road???

I'd just like to point out that the Knights in White Satin clearly never reached the end because they were wafting about in dressing gowns while all the other knights were wearing plate armour. Satin doesn't give much protection against swords and arrows.

Just to repeat pp, dried currants are definitely a (smaller) type of dried grape, nothing to do with the fresh fruit black/red/white currants.

My example of “things i definitely should have known” is that i only found out recently that there is a set order for maths equations - BODMAS (brackets, orders (still not sure what these are), division, multiplication, addition, subtraction) and any complicated maths thing you come across should be tackled in this order.

I SWEAR my school never mentioned this. I am rubbish at maths, although have post-grad degrees in arts subjects. I mentioned this “new” fact to my DH, who has a PhD in maths and he looked at me utterly gobsmacked - “well...yes. Of course. I mean...obviously. How else would you do it!? I mean, if without that, how would you ever understand maths...?”
I DON’T. THAT’S THE POINT.
Ahem. I’m just saying it would have been helpful if this was mentioned at some point during my 13 years of school.

[quote Bythehairywartsonmywitchychin]@alexdgr8 you’re not that wrong. There is an old saying ‘From Hull, from Hell, from Halifax, ’tis this, From all these three, Good Lord, deliver us” criminals were decapicated by the halifax gibett (guillotine) the last being the late 1650’s.

schoolhistory.co.uk/notes/the-halifax-gibbet/[/quote]
There’s also a folk song: “from hull and Halifax and hell, good lord deliver me”

Thanks for all the belly button info. I was replying to another poster way up thread who said they thought it was where the cord had been and they were wrong? So that’s what puzzled me.

I have DC so I have watched it happen with the scabby stump. But still find it weird.

I don’t know if people know this, I used to work with a cosmetic surgeon and when people have a tummy tuck they lift and cut away the extra flesh and skin. Then the part with the belly button has gone, so they carve a new one, otherwise a tummy looks strange without it!

@DidoLamenting

And the lesser spotted woodpecker probably isn't less spotty than the greater spotted woodpecker

Oh. Is it to do with how often people spot them? I'm having trouble with this.

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.
It will be run over so die ie pass over, get to the other side.

@BunTooti

But why did the chicken cross the road???

To get to “the other side”

Two meanings-

the other side of the road

the “other side” = dead

NC for this as outing. This reminds me of when we used to get weekly fruit baskets at work. One of the young lads asked someone why they were washing the fruit before eating it. They explained why.

The following week same young lad comes in one morning looking indignant. He was not happy. He’d wasted a banana at the weekend following this advice. It had gone all mushy when he washed it 😂 he didn’t realise this wouldn’t apply to fruits you peel 😂😂

That the numbers on the toaster dial indicate time (ie minutes) rather than levels of toastiness.

That one did the rounds a couple of years ago and was debunked. Once the toaster is warmed up it toasts in half the time that it does the first slice. It's definitely toastiness.

Why do so many people think pontefract is in wales. I understand not knowing where it is but why assume somewhere random and different?

To add I thought the Knights in white satin were the letters I've written never meaning to send
I also have a vague memory of the song being used for footage of astronauts on the moon - and this is always the first image the song evokes!

My example of “things i definitely should have known” is that i only found out recently that there is a set order for maths equations - BODMAS (brackets, orders (still not sure what these are), division, multiplication, addition, subtraction) and any complicated maths thing you come across should be tackled in this order.

@RubaiyatOfAnyone orders are things like squared, cubed, square root etc.

Oh...but I knew that

That was meant to have a quote about chickens.

@Feminist10101

Really? Your 10 year old can change a tyre?

With someone finishing the tightening, yes.

I changed the oil in my dad’s car aged 6.

These are excellent life skills to have and the sooner the better.

(I refurbished a house - including plastering and replacing electrics at 18. I’ve fitted and tiled all 4 bathrooms in this house including the slate floors, fitted the wooden flooring throughout the downstairs myself. I learned from my dad and DD is learning from me. I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t give their kids these skills. See also cooking, cleaning....)

You mean you don’t know that the tyres are attached to the wheel and you are actually changing the wheel? It’s not like a bike. You can’t change the tyre on a car without equipment. And actually, you can’t really change the wheel nowadays either. The nuts are tightened with a machine and are almost impossible to remove by hand. My husband couldn’t do ours recently and the garage said they wouldn’t be able to do it without a machine either.

Perhaps you should teach your daughter to boast that she can change a wheel and not change a tyre. Best to be factually correct in case an intelligent, fully qualified car mechanic is listening.