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Useless facts. Share yours. No googling allowed.

453 replies

SeasickSteveIsMyBoyfriend · 05/06/2011 12:57

Mona Lisa has no eyebrows.

Its illegal for a woman to eat chocolate on a bus.

111,111 x 111,111 = 12345654321

OP posts:
sherbetpips · 08/06/2011 07:11

'The same woman created Bliss Spa, Soap and Glory and fitflop'
I hate her.
My dad calls me 'the queen of crap' I cant however think of a useful fact at this time in the morning. Oh except for some reason:
If your car engine is overheating, turn the heat up to full and open all the vents and it will cool down enough to get you to a garage. Open the windows though or you will die of heat exhaustion.

Lunabelly · 08/06/2011 08:21

The guillotine was last used in 1978 on a man who murdered his wife.

I'm typing this on a phone, please bear with!

jbcbj · 08/06/2011 09:03

ohmeohmy you are actually right about cockroaches and the post-apocalyptic world; they are actually the only species that would survive a nuclear holocaust. nice.

we are literally stardust - every atom from which we are made was created in the centre of stars and supernovae; only hydrogen and a small amount of helium was created in the Big Bang, all heavier elements are fused in the centre of stars and elements heavier than iron can only be created in the extreme temps and pressures of a supernova.

the dust clouds where new stars are forming are called stellar nurseries (i love the mental images this conjures up! Grin)

many more astronomical useless facts if anyone wants them?!

jbcbj · 08/06/2011 09:04

oops, overuse of actually...Blush

Suncottage · 08/06/2011 09:25

King Arthur's sword Excalibur was made from 'an iron not of this world'. It was forged from the iron extracted from a meteorite.

Not quite a 'fact' but an interesting piece of trivia for Arthurians. Smile

skyatnight · 08/06/2011 09:55

'set' is the word in the English language which has the most meanings (strands of definition in the dictionary).

TheAtomicBum · 08/06/2011 10:30

The maximum distance light can travel is 15 billion light years befoere the photon no longer sends the light. That is why the known uiniverse is up 15,000 light years away, but the entire universe is estimated to be around 90 billion from end to end. It would take you 1,841,860,465,116,279 years to cross in a modern space shuttle. Just think of the electric bill if you left the bathroom light on as you left.

TheAtomicBum · 08/06/2011 10:35

jbcbj - Let's have them, then! I love obscure astronomical facts. Like, did you know that the centre of a netron star is so dense that the amount of matter it take fill would be the mass of the earth?

garlicbutter · 08/06/2011 11:25

Do stars all have centres, then? I'm now imagining some kind of scorching hot, pinprick-sized, heavy thing ... (Or dense, I suppose, since weight would be meaningless.)

If the universe has ends, what's outside them??

The circumference of a pint glass at the rim is just under twice its height.

TheAtomicBum · 08/06/2011 11:38

Stars are big round balls, so yes, there is a centre. It's the hottest, densest part. It's this heat and desity that causes nuclear fusion to occur because it's just so hot and dense.

What's outside the universe? Well, as I understand it, nothing exists. The universe itself expands, not just the things in it. Get you head aruond that if you can. Or possibly there's a really, really big alien playing marbles.

TheAtomicBum · 08/06/2011 11:39

A Black Hole has no size. It is compressed to an infinite density, and therefore the loads of sun sized stars worth of matter it takes is compressed into nothing. The black hole in space is the event horizen, the distance from the singularity from which light cannot escape due to the high gravity.

TheAtomicBum · 08/06/2011 11:51

garlicbutter - Here's one way to understand what's outside the universe. Imagine that the entire universe is nothing more than a single bubble in someone's bathtub. Except within each of the uncountable number bubbles is a universe. The laws of physics only exist within each bubble, and those laws may be completely different in each of those bubble. Outside of the bubble, nothing phyically exists from the persective of the inhabitants of the bubble, because outside of it there is nothing more within that reality. Our reality only extends as far the edge of the universe - out little 90b light year bubble. Does that make any sense?

CoteDAzur · 08/06/2011 12:10

That is of course only a theory.

CoteDAzur · 08/06/2011 12:22

Also, a black hole is a collapsed star, not an abstract concept. It has a mass and a size.

The blackness you would see in the sky is mostly just emptiness, of course, defined by the Event Horizon.

TheAtomicBum · 08/06/2011 12:24

Of course, Cote. But I make it a principle not to argue with something I only half understand.

What do you think is outside it?

I suppose the simplest idea would be that space exists as pure space, and therefore it's only the matter in it that matters. But I'm sure that that's not possible, it's got something to do with hte universe callapsing in on itself.

TheAtomicBum · 08/06/2011 12:27

I'm aware that a black hole is a collapsed star. But theorically, I've read on the subject that it is infinitely condensed and therefore it's size is null, but it's mass is still whatever mass made it.

BalloonSlayer · 08/06/2011 12:27

"An erect penis is the same length as the very start of the hand to the tip of his middle finger."

Thanks for that loopylou6

So has anyone else on here measured their own hand to see how big their cock would be if they were a man?

Just me then . . . Blush

I got SEVEN inches! < swaggers >

ALovelyBunchOfCoconuts · 08/06/2011 12:34

I love this thread :)

A guinea pig also cannot physically vomit.

I am usually the queen of useless facts, although cannot think of anymore.

Loved Pinot's 'gullible' one Grin

TheAtomicBum · 08/06/2011 12:44

The word "Peeping Tom" originates from the story of Lady Godiva. A wager was made that the taxes would be lowered if she rode through the streets naked on a hoarse. She asked that the entire town stayed in doors with their windows shut to save her dignity as she was doing this only to help them (she was a earless, I blieve, so money wasn't an issue to her). Everyone agreed, except for one man named "Tom" who snuck a peak through the window, but was apparently punished in some devine manor that I cannot recall. Hence the terms "Peeping Tom".

MixedClassBaby · 08/06/2011 12:55

Bees have no bumholes? How do they go?

hugglymugly · 08/06/2011 13:09

Seismic waves from large earthquakes circle the Earth for months, acting like striking a bell. Just as a bell has a fundamental note, so does the Earth ? an E, 20 octaves below middle E on a piano.

extremepie · 08/06/2011 13:17

Rubber bands last longer if you put them in the fridge.

Glow sticks carry on glowing if you put them in the freezer!

Salt does not actually make food taste better, it stimulates your taste buds to taste the food. The older you get the more your taste buds naturally deteriorate, so you need more salt to stimulate then, hence why older people usually use more salt!

Flour beetles would out-live cockroaches (and humans) in a nuclear disaster.

Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

I love this! I have many more....

ohmeohmy · 08/06/2011 14:03

I wonder what the moonwalking pig singing to woo a mate will do if she's on a balcony and he can't look up?

clenching your teeth to tense your pelvic floor... good reason to relax the face in childbirth- good snog works a treat.

You would never do anything under hypnosis that goes against your moral code.

CoteDAzur · 08/06/2011 14:25

Mass in a black hole is not "infinitely" condensed. It is just very condensed.

Google and you will see that black holes are actually classified according to their size.

CoteDAzur · 08/06/2011 14:29

That old "We only use 10% of our brains" is rubbish, as anyone who has ever seen a brain scan knows.