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!

@AthelstaneTheUnready

I'm in the knights camp. Maybe in the 60s or 70s it was attached to an advert, or some sort visual link that has stuck with an entire nation?

Just coming on to say that - can't remember what the ad was for but am CERTAIN the song played as a woman lay on bed in the moonlit night and a (none too shabby) man rode a horse to see her... like a knight, but he was in flowing white satin, as were her Bed sheets. Might have been chocolate? Or perfume?

Who the hell moved Pontefract???

@Bikingbear

Some of these are crazy, Piggy going to market, Seconds out, kidneys, that's weird.

But I've a question why is it THE Netherlands, we never say THE France or THE Germany, but people talk about THE USA or America, never THE America?

Because it's lands, it describes a geographical feature and is plural. So the Shetlands, the Faroes, the Maldives. All are plural groups of islands, the Netherlands is a group of something. It's like saying the United States. You wouldn't say the Iceland because it's singular.

@diddl

midnightstar66
My ex and his whole family call a rucksack a rack sack. Ironically it makes more sense 😆*
Why does it?*

Because your body frame could be the rack that the sack is for. I've no idea what a ruck even is (lighthearted remember 😆)

@CounsellorTroi

*i've been told by someone in the know that only scotch is whisky. any other origin, eg irish, american, is whiskey. only scotch is allowed to spell it whisky. so you were not incorrect.*

Welsh whisky is also spelt whisky.

So is Manx whisky.

Lessofallthisunpleasantness ours has a space saver tyre. Think it's the norm now? Think you have to have something?

In the uk you don't have to have something but if you do it must be road legal to pass the mot.

i've been told by someone in the know that only scotch is whisky.
any other origin, eg irish, american, is whiskey.
only scotch is allowed to spell it whisky.
so you were not incorrect.

Japanese call their's Whisky!

[quote OwlBeThere]@fishykettles but...I don’t have a uterus, where would it go??? [/quote]
It'd get reabsorbed by your body.

I really want to make Persian rice
We had some yesterday and it was so yummy

There's a fantastic website called thetruesize which lets you drag and drop countries to see how they compare in size to others. It's a real eye opener.

The Irish for whiskey is uisce beatha - ishka ba ha. The water of life.

@RubaiyatOfAnyone

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.

I did A level Maths and I only found out about BODMAS at University....didn't know why a number became negative either when it passed across the equals sign...we were just taught it did rather than you do the same operation to both sides.😬

@midnightstar66

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?

Umm I might have thought Fireman Sam lives there..... yeh, I googled and now I know So I guess blame him, he is forever associated with 'Ponty'

DH is convinced the saying is "an escaped goat" rather than scapegoat No amount of telling convinces him otherwise

@Rockbird

DH has just told me that a girl he was at school with and has just reconnected with (they're now 49!) is the daughter of Justin Hayward who bloody wrote Nights in White Satin!

Please make sure he receives a link to this thread

@nannybeach

A pony isn't a small horse, it's from the same family, but you can get small horses, quarter horses,minature horses, they aren't ponies. If you live in the UK, geese do fly to warmer climes in the winter, we watch them go from October, to find food and breed

Not only are they the same family, they're all the same genus and species. Horses and ponies are all just breeds of Equus caballus, just like all dog breeds are species Canis familiaris.

For the PPs above, lentils are the seeds of a leguminous plant, related to peas and beans.

@Tinkerbellflowers

I only found out a couple of weeks ago where wee comes out. I was laughing about how some women think it comes out of our vaginas. And I said surely everyone knows it comes out of our clitoris (thinking I'm so clever and smug). But it doesn't! 😲

It is mental how many women don't know how their own body works. I am a midwife and hear it all the time. Like if I advise a catheter, I often hear, but won't it annoy the baby's head?

For a long time I thought Dunkirk was doing n Scotland

First of all, replying to a post where someone pointed out that the alphabet song is the same tune as Twinkle Twinkle, so is Baa Baa Black Sheep.
And Little Bo Peep and Jack and Jill use the same tune as each other.

Second, if you haven’t found it, the website Sporcle is great fun at testing random stuff. I’ve learnt loads of geography from it.

Third, I’m always amazed by how little people know of the world around them. But I’m also aware that my degree is zoology, I worked in a zoo for 10 years and at the Eden project for another 10, and reading about wildlife is my hobby - it’d be weird if I didn’t know much. It doesn’t make me better than the next person. OTOH, I am not remotely interested in how my car works. It is a necessary evil in my life and if it needs fixing, I will pay for that, thereby giving employment to someone who is interested in cars. I feel it’s a sort of social good, me not knowing anything about them!

And on the note of feeling superior because someone has admitted to not knowing something, Gerald Durrell used to say “The three most useful words in the English language are ‘I don’t know’ because there will always be someone happy to tell you. And then you learn.” Don’t shame someone for what they don’t know- they will be afraid to admit it and that benefits no one.

Umm I might have thought Fireman Sam lives there..... yeh, I googled and now I know So I guess blame him, he is forever associated with 'Ponty'

Ah see, I never was a fan of fireman Sam. That must be where I missed that association 😆

I was quite old when I realised that the USA and Russia weren't that far apart...

Spent some fascinating time looking at an Eastern perspective map.

That the Sahara Desert isn't just a big patch of sand, but has entire countries in it.

Up until I was 25 or so I thought Australia was basically the size of Ireland

Because it's lands, it describes a geographical feature and is plural. So the Shetlands, the Faroes, the Maldives. All are plural groups of islands, the Netherlands is a group of something. It's like saying the United States. You wouldn't say the Iceland because it's singular.

Thankyou that makes sense. Its bugged me for years

First of all, replying to a post where someone pointed out that the alphabet song is the same tune as Twinkle Twinkle, so is Baa Baa Black Sheep

I thought that too - but then someone sang a different version that they were convinced was the only tune there could be.

Seems to be several ways of singing it (just to encourage those people who are singing the Alphabet song now and not getting it to the tune of Ba Ba Black Sheep)