Tell me something useless but interesting I don't know. No googling allowed. Corrections welcomed.

[YourMaNoBraBackOfMyCar]

I love these threads so please tell me all manner of useless info. [Thanks]

Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a Friday the 13th.

Oh, also - I'm full of random cat facts! - a calico cat can only ever be female. This is due to the number of colour facets that can be held on a chromosome, or something (again, not great at science so only got the gist) so X chromosomes have 2 colour possibilities, and Y only have one.

The wool of one average-sized sheep could be wound around the globe 8 times.

Not sure I believe it myself but that's what I read the other day.

The human population was reduced to less than 10,000 and perhaps only 2000 people about 70,000 years ago, likely as a result of the climatic effects of the Toba supervolcano.

Yellowstone supervolcano is 40,000 years 'overdue'.

Yes yes, and one of the big splits between Eastern Orthodox and Greek Orthodox is the number of fingers you hold up when blessing - the Greek say three and the Eastern say two (or the other way around). There's still a group of Eastern Orthodox followers who follow the pre-split practices, and they have a community in the States, much like the Amish. They're called "The Old Believers".

For the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, different Christian denominations control different parts of the Church (e.g. Armenian Orthodox have the basement, Russian Orthodox have the tomb, Catholics have Golgotha) and it's so fighty fighty, a Palestinian Muslim holds the key as the different denominations are worried that the other are going to lock them out. There's a ladder that was left up after fixing a window in the late 18th/early 19th century that is still there as no one can decide who's responsible for taking it down.

You want to know random useless religious facts? I'm your guy. Want to know random useful religious facts? Ask LRD.

This one is quite cool - in Kiev there is a statue of a man on a horse, holding a sword up (near the Parliament). It was built by the Soviets, and the sword was supposed to point towards Moscow to show the Ukrainian's loyalty. It actually pointed to the nearest black market shop.

No, I find your religious facts most useful! It explains why the icon I'm looking at has the finger and thumb pinched together. I'd never noticed before.

(I'm not utterly convinced mine are useful either, but ...).

Love the black market statue.

The fact about frog eyes is revolting.

I did a history degree where I picked subjects by going "that sounds interesting", so covered things from the Russian Revolution to Fundamentalist movements to the Reformation to stuff on Utopias and Nationalism in Pakistan. Not very useful in my every day life but super interesting. I also studied Russian as a "minor" subject to the first two years of my degree (which also covered Russian history, literature and culture), hence the random knowledge about Russian stuff. If you look at icons from the Greek Orthodox vs Russian Orthodox churches you'll see the difference in the fingers. There was also a very deep spiritual reason behind it, which I can't remember.

Greek Icon - two fingers
Russian Icon - three fingers

Also, Russia and Scotland have the same Patron Saint (St Andrew).

The wool of one average-sized sheep could be wound around the globe 8 times.

Biscuitsareme, does that mean the total wool from the lifetime of the sheep?

I'm at Gary Oldman being Mo's brother.

snails can sleep for 3-4 years

Hitler was a vegetarian with a weakness for liver dumplings

William Tyndale, the chap who was translating the Bible in to English just before the King decided it was a good idea, lost the whole of his Old Testament in a shipwreck and started again. Right from the blooming beginning. If he hadn't bothered we probably wouldn't have phrases like "In the beginning was the word" etc.

Oxford University is older than the Incas.

Or Aztecs. I can't remember.

Calico cats - males are possible, but v v v v rare (and will be infertile).

There have been reported instances.

If you want to turn left or right on a motor cycle,above 10 miles per hour, you have to pull on the opposite handlebar, to the way you want to go.
It's due to the gyroscopic effect on the front wheel.

I like your sliced dot and original ? size of Universe one on page 1 Hettie .....

I don't know that much these days (have such a shocking memory, though loads of stuff I half know) Let me see ....

I think there are a billion stars in our galaxy and a billion galaxies in the Universe. Possibly more than one Universe too - we don't know?
Could be ten billion of each though, I'm not sure ....

just off to google it!

A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no-one knows why

The width of a horses arse determined the dimensions of the first railways in the USA. And the rocket boosters on the first spaceships had to get through tunnels built for said railway. So the size of a rocket is determined by a horses arse...

or something

According to QI the Union Jack/Union Flag thing was true but is no longer the case.

The oldest building in the world to house a McDonalds is in Shrewsbury - if you go down into the basement area to eat you are sitting among the pre medieval town walls.

liquorice can kill you

Fishandjam nice to both be right! I looked at one of the online dictionaries and it mentioned a 'fisting cur' or hound. Gets you locked up now.

well, I gave in and googled the flamingo thing.
Every single page said it was related to their food, so I have obviously picked that up wrong from somewhere

But it is the blue-green algae that they eat that contains the correct caratin, the shrimps only have it because they eat the algae.

Domestic cats purr on both the in and out breath so it's a continuous noise. Big cats only purr on the out breath (the way we do if pretending to purr).