MisEntropy

ten things i didn't know until last week

1. The Swiss Army Knife's original name was 'Offiziersmesser.' US soldiers who couldn't pronounce that gave it its current name.
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2. Canary Islands don't get their name from the canary birds. Canary Islands are actually named after dogs - getting their name from the latin 'Insula Canaria', meaning 'Islands of the Dogs.' Canary birds are actually named after the islands.
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3. The Spanish city of Granada gets its name from the pomegranate, literally 'Granada' in Spanish.
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4. The original name given of The Taj Mahal as given by Shah Jahan was Rauza-i-Munavvara - 'The Illumined Tomb.' The name Taj Mahal was given to it later, probably by a Englishman.
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5. Philately - the hobby of stamp collecting - was initially named 'timbromania' ('stamp madness' in French.)
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6. A capitonym is a word that changes pronounciation and meaning when it is capilatised. Examples can be found in the following poem entitled 'Job's Job' : In August, an august patriarch/Was reading an ad in Reading, Mass./Long-suffering Job secured a job/To polish piles of Polish brass.
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7. Originally, a cobbler was one who repairs shoes. Those who actually make footwear were known as "cordwainers." That distinction however has gradually eroded.
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8. Lethologica is the disorder that causes the person afflicted to forget the very word he/she wants to use at the moment. It's derived from Greek 'letho' (forgetfulness) and 'logos' (word). In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of the five rivers in Hades. Its water caused forgetfulness in those who drank it.
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9. Wrangell-St.Elias National Park in Southern Alaska - and not Yellowstone - is the largest national park in the United States.
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10. The first public anti-smoking campaign in modern history was initiated in Nazi Germany.
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[Original pic by hyperspace328]

ten things i didn't know until last week

1. Madame Tussauds is currently housed at Marylebone Road - moving its premises there in 1884. Before that, it was located on Baker Street - later made famous by the fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes.
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2. Number One Observatory Circle is the name of the official residence of the US Vice President.
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3. With 34.8 percent salt concentration (even more than that of the Dead Sea), Lake Asal in Central Djibouti is the most saline body of water on Earth.
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4. All the books in the New Testament were originally written in Koine Greek - a common ('Koine' literally meant 'common' in Greek) vernacular dialect prevalent in the Roman times. This prompted Nietzsche to say "God spoke bad Greek."
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5. Kingsley Amis - under the pseudonym 'Robert Markham' - wrote the first James Bond novel not to be authored by Ian Fleming. It was titled 'Colonel Sun' and was published in 1968.
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6. Cushy is derived from the urdu word 'kushi' meaning pleasure.
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7. In the first half of the twentieth century, pink was considered a boy's colour and blue was for girls. The reverse became the standard only from the 1950s.
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8. Fireflies are actually beetles.
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9. Voltaire never really said "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." His original quote was “Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.” The misquote actually comes from a 1907 book called Friends of Voltaire, by Evelyn Beatrice Hall.
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10. The continent of Australia was known as New Holland until 1824.
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[Original pic by haydnseek]

ten things i didn't know until last week

 1. In the US, a water-tight denial by a politician – as opposed to one that leaves room for any later maneuvering - is known as a Sherman pledge. The other sort is called a non-denial denial.
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2. The word to describe the method of slaughtering animals which conforms to Jewish law is not kosher. It's shechita.
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3. Brazil has more people of African descent than any country outside of Africa. Half of Brazil's population is said to be either black or of mixed race.
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4. Swiss army knifes are officially manufactured by two manufacturers - Victorinox and Wenger.
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5. June 12th is observed as Loving Day - an unofficial celebration of inter-racial marriage. The day marks the anniversary of the 1967 United States Supreme Court decision 'Loving v. Virginia' which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws remaining in 16 states.
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6. The different postures of Buddha statues represent different stages or aspects of the Buddha's life. The two lotus positions symbolize that Buddha, like the lotus plant, emerged from the mud to achieve enlightenment. The reclining Buddha usually represents his death, passing into nirvana and escaping the tedious cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
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7. Modern calculations show that Jesus Christ was born in 4 BC - a defect in the Christian system of year numbering caused by miscalculation during the calendar's inception.
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8. Indiana Jones was named after George Lucas' pet dog.
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9. The Leaning Tower of Pisa had already begun to lean mid-way through its construction. The builders just carried on, after making minor adjustments - building taller walls on the leaning side and shorter walls on the opposite side (first on the north side of the tower and again, when the tower started leaning south.) This is the reason for its squashed-layer-cake look.
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10. Lions once roamed around Europe - becoming extinct there only in 100 AD.
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[Original pic by capitan-patata]

ten things i didn't know until last week

1. The 'Evel' in Evel Knievel - world famous motorcycle stuntman - was originally 'Evil', a nickname bestowed on him by the police in his early life. He continued using the nickname, misspelling it to soften it and to rhyme with his last name.
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2. The term 'sniper' was first attached to sharpshooters who could shoot the most challenging of game birds, the snipe.
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3. Soviet era training jets had limited range by design - to prevent pilots from defecting.
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4. In the 17th century, a country's nautical reach was governed by the so-called Cannon Shot rule - giving countries control of water up to 3 miles offshore, roughly the range of the cannon in those times. That rule held until the mid-20th century - though artillery saw great advancements - largely because nations saw no advantage in claiming more.
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5. Richard Nixon was a ace poker player. In fact, most of the funding for his first congressional run came from poker winnings.
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6. Built in 1956, the Southdale Shopping Centre in Minnesota is considered the world's first true shopping mall.
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7. The myth that it is unlucky to light three cigarettes from the same match is supposed to have been propagated by Swede Ivar Krueger - who ran a pan-European monopolistic matchmaking firm between the World Wars.
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8. One - or even a few - bullets puncturing the skin of an airplane is no big deal. The cabin of the airplane is pressurized and the hole creates a small leak, but the pressurization system will compensate for it.
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9. Though officially Route 66 ended a block away, Santa Monica Pier in Santa Monica, California is symbolically viewed as its west end.
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10. Originally, football and baseball players daubed a black stripe on their cheekbones to improve contrast sensitivity. The black stripes supposedly minimised the skin's reflectivity and cut down on glare - helping them see better, particularly when looking at the sky or bright lights.
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[Original picture by Iguana Jo]

ten things i didn't know until last week

1. Tornadoes occur most frequently in the United States - averaging about 700 every year. Australia comes in a distant second at 200.
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2. The De Havilland Comet was the first commercial jet airliner - flying its maiden flight in 1952. Though frequent crashes ultimately grounded the Comet, its military derivative - the Nimrod - is still in service.
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3. Florence Nightingale - better known as the mother of modern nursing - was an accomplished statistician. She in fact used numbers and data (presented innovatively and visually) to successfully campaign for better conditions in the barracks. In 1858, she became the first female fellow of the Statistical Society of London (now Royal Statistical Society.)
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4. In poker, the Nut hand - or simply 'the nuts' - is a term for an unbeatable hand of cards.
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5. Until a couple of centuries ago, carrying out a census was known the 'sin of David' (and was therefore avoided) - from a story from the Bible where God punishes King David and the Israelites for counting the number of people in the land.
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6. Pareidolia is the name given to the psychological phenomenon where random and vague stimulus - often images or sounds - are perceived as being significant. Examples include seeing images or words in clouds/fire/smoke/toasted bread and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse.
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7. Human-bred, or human-dependent, plant varities - like seedless grapes - are called cultivars. Cultivars have their own code for nomenclature - distinct from the nomenclature code for natural plants.
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8. Tanks were originally intended to be named landships - but tanks, which was the cover name, stuck instead.
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9. In 1962, Brian Epstein accepted - but, refused to sign - a contract to manage The Beatles, saying their mutual regard for one another was enough.
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10. Worcestershire sauce is made from dissolved fish.
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[Original pic by Whatknot]

ten things i didn't know until last week

1. Facebook has a 5,000 friend limit.
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2. Britain's wealthiest sportsperson is not David Beckham, but Eddie Irvine - best known for partnering Michael Schuamcher at Scuderia Ferrari between 1996 and 1999.
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3. Blighty - a slang term for England used by English troops serving abroad - is derived form the Urdu word 'bilayati' meaning 'foreign.'
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4. Sheffield FC is the world's oldest football club.
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5. Marilyn Monroe had been due to re-marry her second husband, Joe di Maggio, on 8th August 1962; she was found dead three days before that.
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6. Dolly Parton has written more than 3,000 songs.
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7. Even if only 51% of a mutilated dollar bill remains and can be proved to be genuine, the US Government will refund it.
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8. The first British census, in 1801, was to find out how many men were available for conscription; the first American census, 11 years earlier, was to count people so that they could be more fairly represented in government.
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9. It's the first time in 50 years that neither the president nor his deputy will be seeking re-election in the United States.
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10. There is mobile phone reception at the summit of Mount Everest.
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[Original pic by brainware3000]

ten things i didn't know until last week

1. Mithridatism/Mithridatization is the practice of protecting oneself against poison by gradually self-administering non-lethal amounts. The word derives from Mithridates VI, the King of Pontus, who so feared being poisoned that he regularly ingested small doses, aiming to develop immunity.
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2. Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes cartoon series was a blatant rip-off of Disney's Silly Symphonies series.
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3. The Foley artist - named after Jack Foley, chief sound effects guru at Universal for many years - is the person who recreates many of the natural, everyday sound effects in a film.
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4. Arcelor - the steel company that Mittal Steel took over - was formed out of the merger of Arbed from Luxembourg, Usinor from France and Aceralia from Spain.
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5. "Fischer chess" - a variant of standard chess - is a game in which the pieces are placed on the board in random order before the start of the game.
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6. The very first version of Microsoft Office was released in 1989, not for Windows, but for the Apple Mac.
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7. It is possible to donate half a liver.
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8. Redheads are also known as 'gingers'.
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9. Despite breaking up more than 25 years ago, Abba still sells between two and three million albums a year.
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10. The peace symbol was originally designed as an emblem of the British anti-nuclear movement. It, in fact, is a combination of the semaphore - or flag-signalling - alphabet, super-imposing N (uclear) on D (isarmament) and placing them within a circle symbolising Earth.
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[Original pic by Vaguely Artistic]

ten things i didn't know until last week

1. The capital of Bhutan, Thimpu, doesn't have a single traffic light.
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2. Wolverine first made his debut in Hulk #180 (November 1974) as a throway character for an adventure in Canada.
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3. According to music historians - 'Rocket 88' a 1951 record by Ike Turner and 'The Fat Man' by Fats Domino in 1949 - are two records that can legitimately claim to being the first rock 'n' roll record.
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4. The Keeling Curve - first tracked 50 years ago - shows the upward climb of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Considered now to be a scientific icon alongside E=mc2 and the double helix, it was the Keeling Curve (and Dr.Keeling's tireless efforts) that first established the connection between the burning of the fossil fuels and rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
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5. When constructed, the pyramids at Giza were white in colour - because of the highly polished limestone casings that covered their entire surface. All the stone casings have now been stolen leaving exposed the underlying step pyramid core structure.
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6. The word algorithm comes from the name of Persian astronomer and mathematician, Al-Khwarizmi. A misunderstanding of the title of a Latin translation of his work, led to the latin word 'algorismus' meaning 'calculation method.'
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7. Columbus never set foot on the North American mainland.
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8. Hylozoism is the belief that all matter has life.
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9. The words mickle and muckle mean the same thing - 'a large amount.' However, the phrase 'many a mickle makes a muckle' (originally a misquotation) has led to the misunderstanding that mickle means 'a small amount.'
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10. The cups in 'The Last Supper' are transparent.
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[Original pic by tschneider]

ten things i didn't know until last week

1. The Musée d'Orsay in Paris was originally a train station before it became unsuitable for longer trains and was eventually converted to a museum.
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2. In the airline industry, tango routes are longer routes flown by some airlines to by-pass the expense of flying through several air traffic zones.
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3. Though it geographically spans across 5 time zones, officially all of China has only one time zone - 8 hours ahead of Co-ordinated Universal Time.
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4. Leonardo da Vinci actually left the painting we now know as 'Mona Lisa' unnamed. The title for the painting was derived from a description in the biography of the painter by Giorgio Vasari - published 31 years after Leonardo's death. Therefore, the claim by author Dan Brown (in The Da Vinci Code) that Mona Lisa is an anagram code (involving the Egptian gods of fertility) by Leonardo is a fictional construct.
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5. Around 1792, there was a serious movement afoot to rename the United States of America as Columbia - after Christopher Columbus. It was partly to satisfy those asking for the name change and partly to honor the discoverer of the continent, the nation's capital was given the name District of Columbia, King's College in New York City was renamed Columbia University, and several cities across the United States were named Columbus or Columbia.
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6. There are 17,897 comic strips of Peanuts - and Charles Schulz drew every single one of them himself and by hand.
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7. In Japan, sleeping on the job is called inemuri - literally "to be asleep while present." It's accpetable as long as certain unwritten rules are adhered to - like, one should remain upright to show one is socially engaged in some way.
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8. Napoleon measured 5ft 6.5in (or 1.6 m) which made him slightly taller than the average Frenchman in the 19th century. The rumour that he is short resulted from a confusion between Frech feet and Imperial feet, two different standards of measurement. Napoleon's  height turns out be 5ft 2in in French feet.
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9. Contrary to popular Internet lore, duck's quacks do echo. However, the echo is very soft.
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10. Both incumbent President Gerald Ford and his running mate in the 1976 US Presidential elections, Robert Dole, were Freemasons.
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[Original pic by only alice]

ten things i didn't know until last week

1. 'Sputnik' is the Russian word for satellite.
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2. A three-dimensional pixel is referred to as voxel. It's a portmanteau word combining 'volumetric' and 'pixel' and represents a value on a regular grid in three dimensional space.
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3. His defeat of Hannibal earned the Roman general, Scipio Africanus, the unprecedented honour of being named after the the people he conquered - the Africans. The victory title 'Africanus' in his name is an agnomen - a name attached to an individual's full titulature after birth and formal naming by the family.
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4. Winifred Wagner - daughter-in-law of the composer Richard Wagner - used to refer to Adolf Hitler as USA (for Unser Seliger Adolf or our blessed Adolf).
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5. Trailers are called so, despite preceding movies by weeks or months, because in the early days they were shown after a movie show and announced forthcoming movies or movie installments. Therefore, in its original usage, trailer "refers less to when the clip was screened within the sequence of the program than to how the actual piece of film was used – it was stuck on the end of the main attraction and thus trailed behind."
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6. The first virus for personal computers was called Elk Cloner, and was created and distributed on an Apple II computer in 1982.
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7. Lewis Hamilton is named after the US sprinter, Carl Lewis.
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8. According to Albert Uderzo, Rene Goscinny chose the name Asterix for the Gaulish hero to ensure that their work would appear first in an encyclopaedia of comics.
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9. The full name of the Knights Templars was 'Poor Fellow-soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon'.
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10. China has actually banned Tibet's living Buddhas from reincarnating without permission from the government. “The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid,” said a government order, which came into effect from September 1st 2007.
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[Regular readers of this blog will know, ten things i didn't know until last week is a regular-ish series I write on this blog. In addition, this particular installment of the series has been written to take part in Litemind's lists blog project. First time visitors might also want to check out the complete ten things i didn't know until last week along with its tandem project, The Ignoramus' Quiz.]

ten things i didn't know until last week

1. Porsche is the world's most profitable automaker with net profits of $2 billion (last FY) and an operating margin of 19.8% - double that of Toyota's.
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2. The first Olympics to be broadcast live on television were the 1936 Berlin games.
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3. The Zero - the Japanese WWII aluminium-body fighter aircraft and once a symbol of Japan's military air power - was manufactured by Mitsubishi.
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4. Six of the top 12 public companies on Fortune's Global 500 list sell oil. And four of the 12 companies sell the cars that consume it.
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5. The last words spoken on the moon were "I believe history will record that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow." The words were spoken by Astronaut Eugene Cernan during the Apollo 17 lunar landing mission.
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6. The minimum number of moves needed to solve any disordered Rubik's cube is called 'God's number' - because God would only need the least number of moves to solve any disordered Rubik's cube. Theoritical work suggests the God's number is in the "low 20s."
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7. The physical size of the CD was dictated by the duration of longest recording of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in Polygram's archive, which was 74 min. The CD, originally drawn up to be 11.5 cm, had to be increased in size to 12 cm to accommodate the extra data.
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8. More pop stars have been called Paul than any other name.
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9. The $100 laptop costs $176.
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10. Ben and Mena Trott named their blog publishing company Six Apart because their birthdays are six days apart.
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ten things I didn't know until last week

1. The inventor of the Polaroid camera, Edwin Land, held 535 patents and is second only to Thomas Edison in the number of U.S. patents granted for inventions.
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2. The Beluga whale is also known as the "Sea Canary" because of the high-pitched squeaks, squeals and whistles it makes.
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3. The sports drink Gatorade is named for the Gators, the University of Florida football team.
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4. Words that are derived from the same root, like beautiful and beauteous for eg., are said to be paronymous.
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5. The roadrunner is the official state bird of New Mexico.
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6. The word gas is derived from the greek word for chaos.
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7. Amish men shave until they marry; then they grow a beard.
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8. Ben Jonson, the Elizabethan playwright (and contemporary of William Shakespeare) is buried at Westminster Abbey, but in an upright standing posiiton.
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9. An epithalamium is a poem written to celebrate a wedding.
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10. No woman has ever won an Oscar for Best Direction. And only 3 women have been nominated for the best director Oscar: Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties (1975), Jane Campion for The Piano (1993), and Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation (2003).
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ten things I didn't know until last week

1. Las Vegas calls itself the 'wedding capital of the world.'
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2. Liz Claiborne Inc. is the first company founded by a woman to make it to the Fortune 500 list.
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3. Abracadabra is supposedly derived from the Aramaic phrase "avrah kedabra," which translates to "I will create as I speak."
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4. Known as Budai in Chinese and Hotei in Japanese, the "Laughing Buddha" is based on an eccentric Chinese Chan monk from the sixth century AD.
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5. The city of Cincinnati (Ohio) is named after the Society of the Cincinnati which was formed to honour George Washington, considered a latter day Cincinnatus - the Roman general who saved his city, then retired from power to his farm.
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6. Britain is the largest importer of wine in the world. Lacking a significant wine industry of its own, this puts Britain in the strange situation of having more green glass than can be recycled. It is to address this problem that some wine is now imported in 24,000-litre containers and then bottled in Britain.
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7. There are about 45,000 flights that take off in the US every single day. That number is set to rise to 61,000 by 2016.
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8. In some Spanish-speaking countries, R2-D2 - the droid from Star Wars - is frequently referred to as Arturito ("little Arthur"), since it sounds similar to the English Artoodeetoo.
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9. The organisers of the 1937 Soviet Census were sent to the Gulag by Stalin because the census showed much lower population figures than anticpated.
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10. In motor-racing, the colour red was initially assigned to American cars, while yellow was associated with Italian cars. Since America failed to make any impact on European racing, the colour red was eventually usurped by the Italians.
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ten things i didn't know about the number 3 until now

1. Tripoli - the capital city of Libya - literally means 'three cities' in Greek.
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2. In base 10, a natural number is divisible by three if the sum of its digits is divisible by 3.
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3. Three is the number of the famous NASCAR stock car that Dale Earnhardt drove for nearly 20 years before his death in 2001. He won 6 out of his 7 championships while driving the #3 car. No one has driven the 3 car since his death.
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4. In leet - a form of written slang/cipher used on the Internet - the number 3 is used to substitute for the letter E.
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5. Plato split his utopian city into three populations: laborers, guardians (warriors), and philosophers (rulers).
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6. The number 3 is often used as a literary device to provoke a feeling of unnaturalness, as twos are much more common in nature (limbs, hemispheres, eyes, etc). For eg. the aliens and their machines in War of the Worlds (2005) have features recurring in threes: eyes, legs, fingers, etc.
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7. Trinacra (a symbol consisting of three bent human legs) serves as both, a symbol of Sicily and an alternate name for the city.
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8. Three Mile Island - the site of the worst nuclear disaster on US soil - is so named because it is located 3 miles downriver from Middletown, Pennsylvania.
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9. The Rule of Three is a tenet of Wicca, which claims that whatever energy a person puts out into the world, be it positive or negative, it will be returned to that person three times.
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10. The Tsars of Russia considered Moscow as the Third Rome.
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[This post is a part of a blog project about the number 3.]

ten things I didn't know until last week

1. John Lennon was the first person to be featured on the cover of Rolling Stones magazine.
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2. The name Polo is derived from the Tibetan word "pulu", meaning ball.
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3. The first organ to be successfully transplanted in humans is the kidney. The first such transplant was performed at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts on Dec. 23, 1954 by Dr. John P. Merrill. The patient, Richard Herrick, aged 23, received a kidney from his identical twin, Ronald.
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4. MAD Magazine named Pac-Man "Man of the Year" in September 1982 and put it on the cover of the magazine. It is one of very few MAD covers that does not feature Alfred E. Neuman.
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5. Christmas was made illegal in Massachusetts in 1659 - and remained so for 22 years.
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6. At 1 min and 37 secs, 'Stay' by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs is the shortest # 1 song ever on the US charts.
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7. In Ireland, the year 1847 is known as 'Black forty-seven' because it was the worst year of the potato famine.
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8. It takes just 14 one-year calendars to make a perpetual calendar.
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9. Tom Selleck was initially cast as Indiana Jones but couldn't take up the role.
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10. Elvis Presley recorded only one commercial in his entire life - a radio commercial for Southern Maid Donuts that aired on the Louisiana Hayride radio program.
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ten things i didn't know until last week

1. Dr.No's first name is Julius.
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2. Mary Shelly's 'Frankenstein' was subtitled 'or The Modern Prometheus'.
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3. John F Kennedy is the only US president to have won a Pulitzer prize. He won it in 1957 for his book 'Profiles In Courage.'
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4. Wings, a 1927 silent movie about World War I fighter pilots, is the only silent movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture.
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5. Hector (Prince of Troy) and Lancelot (the Arthurian Knight) are the knave of diamonds and the knave of clubs respectively in a deck of cards. The other two knaves are : La Hire (Etienne de Vignoles, Knight and Hero of France) as the knave of hearts and Ogier (one of Charlemagne's knights in the Chansons de Geste and the knight who is carried off by the witch Morgan la Fay in Arthurian legend) as the knave of spades. (The associations of cards with kings, queens and knaves, it must be pointed out, were popular in France between the 15th and 18th century - modern playing cards represent no specific people.)
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6. Beatrice Straight's 5 min 40 seconds role in Network (1976) is the shortest performance ever to win an Oscar - she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
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7. In the US, odd-numbered interstates run north to south and even-numbered ones run east to west.
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8. Joan Crawford, the Oscar-winning actress from the golden age of Hollywood, was elected to the board of PepsiCo in 1959.
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9. Kung Fu is a colloquial chinese term that means 'hard work.'
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10. 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol', a poem by Oscar Wilde that explored the harsh nature of prison life was published under the pseudonym 'C33' - Wilde's prison number.
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ten things I didn't know until last week

1. Dismas and Gestas are the apocryphal names given to the two thieves crucified along with Jesus Christ. In some sources, they are also referred to as Dumachus and Titus.
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2. The first Bishop of Rome to bear the title of "Pope" was Boniface III in 607 - earlier Bishops of Rome are customarily extended the title Pope as a courtesy, except in strict historical discourse.
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3. Bock's Car is the name of the US Army Air Forces B-29 Bomber that dropped the second atomic bomb - Fat man - on Nagasaki.
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4. Susan B. Anthony, the women's suffrage campaigner, is the first non-fictitious woman to be portrayed on circulating US coinage. Susan Anthony and Sacagewa - the Shoshone  woman who was a part of the Lewis and Clark expedition - are, in fact, the only two real women to be depicted on circulating US coins.
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[UPDATE: As Jo points out in the comments, Helen Keller has been portrayed on the Alabama quarter released in 2003, making the second part of the above statement incorrect. Thanks, Jo.]

5. The title role of Dirty Harry, 1971, was originally intended for Frank Sinatra - who pulled out because of injury. It was subsequently refused by John Wayne and Paul Newman before being finally accepted by Clint Eastwood.
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6. Hawai'i is the only US state that grows coffee commercially.
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7. In earlier days, law dictated that all gondolas in Venice be painted black unless they belonged to a high official. The custom continues till today.
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8. Europe has no deserts.
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9. Greater Tokyo has 35 million residents - more than the entire population of Canada.
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10. The term Ouija is supposedly derived from the combination of the French and German/Dutch words for yes - 'Oui' and 'Ja' respectively.
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ten things i didn't know until last week [UPDATED]

1. Alaska accounts for about one fifth of all land in continental USA. It's also more than twice the size of Texas - the next largest state.
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2. The very first patent issued in Thomas Edison’s name was for an electric voting machine.
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3. Atlas - the first cervical vertebra in the spine - is named after the mythical figure because it supports the globe of the head.
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4. Alexander Graham Bell disliked the use of "hello" as a greeting on the newly invented telephone. He preferred and tried to popularise "Ahoy" instead.
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5. The hypocenter is the point inside the Earth's crust where an earthquake originates. The epicenter is the point on the Earth's surface that is directly above the hypocenter.
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6. Cows can sleep while standing but they only dream if they lie down.
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7. The smallest muscle in the body is the stapedius, a tiny muscle in the ear which controls movement of the stapes or stirrup bone.
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8. The seven rays in the Statue of Liberty’s crown represent the Earth’s seven seas and continents.
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9. In the US, radio and television station call letters in the western half all begin with the letter K; east of the Mississippi River, they begin with W.
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[UPDATE: Rory Sutherland points me to this Wikipedia lInk which mentions the exceptions to the rule, "such as KDKA in Pittsburgh and WFAA in Dallas, but these are historical artifacts from a rule change in the 1930s, and most of the exceptions are located in the states immediately to either side of the river. The westernmost station in the continental United States beginning with W is WOAI in San Antonio. WVUV in Pago Pago, American Samoa, is the westernmost station with a W call-sign. KYW in Philadelphia is the easternmost station with a K call sign."]

10. The sea spider's body has so very little room inside of it that its intestines can be found in its legs.
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ten things i didn't know until last week

1. Indonesia is the only Asian country through which the Equator passes.
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2. The bald eagle isn't bald at all. Bald is actually a derivation of “balde,” an Old English word meaning “white” and referring to the colour of its head and tail feathers.
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3. A collector of transportation tokens is called a vecturist.
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4. The flag used by the International Red Cross was originally designed to be the reverse of the flag of Switzerland - to commemorate Jean Henri Dunant and his native country Switzerland, historically a neutral nation.
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5. Orogeny - Greek for mountain generating - is the process of mountain formation, especially by a folding or faulting of the Earth's crust.
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6. The thinly woven cotton or linen curtain used for special effects on the theater stage is called scrim. When lit from the front, scrim can appear as a solid wall. When lit from behind, shadows and shapes of objects or people are visible through it.
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7. The IATA abbreviation "ORD" for Chicago's O'Hare airport comes from its original name, Orchard Field.
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8. Olympus Mons on Mars is the largest mountain in the solar system; it's almost three times as tall as Mount Everest.
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9. It is indeed easy to hold a crocodile's mouth shut - the muscles that open its jaws are much weaker than those used for snapping them shut. However, it's not something unique to crocodiles - most animals have stronger muscles that shut the jaws compared to the ones that open them.
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10. Though it was known by that name unofficially for almost a century before, the White House officially gots its name in 1902 when Theodore Roosevelt adopted it.
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digg this : The Complete 'ten things i didn't know until last week'

ten things i didn't know until last week

1. About 75% of the pencils sold in the US are painted yellow. Pencils were first painted yellow in the 1890s to signify the use of Chinese graphite, which was considered superior to ordinary graphite.
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2. Barology is the science of weight or gravitation.
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3. Minnesota is called the land of 10,000 lakes. That is no exaggeration - the state, in fact, has close to  12,000 lakes that are ten acres or larger.
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4. Reykjavik literally means Smoky bay.
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5. The hyoid bone in the neck is the only bone in the human skeleton not connected to any other bone. It is supported by the muscles of the neck and in turn supports the root of the tongue.
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6. Although Scotland and England had shared the same monarch since 1603, in was only in 1707 that the Act of Union united both states to create Great Britain. The Act dissolved the countries' separate sovereign parliaments and replaced them the new Parliament of Great Britain based at Westminster.
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7. The distress callsign 'Mayday' is derived from the French words 'm'aider' meaning 'aid me' or 'help me'.
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8. Because the brain has no pain receptors, open brain surgery is possible using only local anesthetics.
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9. The koala bear doesn't belong to the bear family and in fact is a marsupial - like a kangaroo.
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10. There are approximately 100,000 hair on the average person's scalp. Blondes tend to have more hair (about 120,000 strands) and redheads usually have less (about 80,000). People with brown or black hair fall in the middle, with about 100,000 hair strands.
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digg this : The Complete 'ten things i didn't know until last week'

ten things i didn't know until last week

1. The collective noun for kangaroos is a mob or a troop.
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2. An anadromous fish is born in fresh water, spends most of its life in the sea and returns to fresh water to spawn. Salmon, smelt, shad, striped bass, and sturgeon are common examples. A catadromous fish does the opposite; it lives in fresh water and enters salt water to spawn. Most eels are catadromous.
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3.The skin of a polar bear is black. This helps them to absorb more of the heat from the sun.
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4. Synaesthesia is a condition in which the five senses intermingle, so that stimulation in one sense may give rise to a stimulation in another sense. In some cases, synaesthetes may associate certain letters of the alphabet with certain colors, or see shapes and colors when listening to music.
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5. The word November means “ninth month” in Latin. It was indeed the ninth month in the early Roman calendar, which began with March.
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6. Of the fifty states of the USA, Louisiana and Alaska do not have counties. The political subdivisions in Louisiana are called parishes and those in Alaska, boroughs.
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7. Each number on the Richter scale represents an Earthquake ten times as powerful as the number below it.
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8. The brain has has no pain receptors and open brain surgery is possible using only local anaesthetics.
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9. Each Olympic gold medal is made up of 210 grams of silver and is coated with 6 grams of 24 carat gold.
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10. The calorie listed on food packages is actually a kilocalorie, or 1,000 calories. A calorie (kcal) is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius.
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ten things i didn't know until last week

1. Carom billiards is a family of billiards games played on pocktless tables.
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2. Deep ravines that run through much of the city are a distinctive feature of Toronto's geography and for this reason the city has been referred to as 'San Francisco turned upside down.'
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3. A Cephalophore saint is one who is depicted carrying his head in his hands; in art this signifies that the subject in question had been martyred by beheading.
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4. When not in use, military custom mandates that the American flag be folded down to a triangular shape - invoking the image of the three-pointed hats popular during the American Revolutionary War.
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5. The name Channel 9 - for the Microsoft discussion forum - was derived from the United Airlines open audio channel on which passengers can listen to the pilots during the course of the flight.
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6. Slavery was outlawed in Saudi Arabia only in 1962.
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7. The term "surreal" was first used by the poet Apollinaire to describe the experimental ballet "Parade."
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8. Though between 50,000 and 150,000 Irishmen served in the Second World War with the British Armed forces, Ireland itself remained neutral in the conflict.
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9. The circle is the simplest member of the mathematical structures known as Lie groups. The largest and most complicated of the Lie group structures is known as E8 and was recently mapped my mathematicians. Its surface has 58 dimensions.
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10. William S Burroughs - the Beat Generation author - shot and killed his wife, Joan Vollmer, during a drunken game of William Tell.
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digg this : The Complete 'ten things i didn't know until last week'

ten things i didn't know until last week

[ten things I didn't know until last week and its tandem project - the ignoramus' quiz - were off air the last couple of weeks as I was finishing another project. Postings will be back to regular now.]

1. Prolific and influential industrial designer Raymond Loewy - whose work includes the Lucky Strike cigarette pack, the Coca-Cola bottle, Air Force One, Coldspot refrigerator, the K4S and GG1 aerodynamic locomotives, the Studebaker Starlight coupe and the interiors of NASA's Skylab - was known as the father of streamlining.
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2. The famous book in which Pierre de Fermat added a note that he had the proof to the problem that bears his name was Claude Gaspar Bachet's translation of the Arithmetica of Diophantus.
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3. George Bush Sr. was nicknamed The Resume because of his long and varied experience.
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4. 'Aliyah' (meaning ascent) and 'yeridah' (meaning descent) represent the banishment and return of Jews from their homeland and these twin recurring themes form the backbone of the Jewish historical narrative.
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5. Astroturf, the brand of artificial turf that has now become a generic name, was originally sold as Chemgrass. It was renamed AstroTurf after its first well-publicized use at the Houston Astrodome stadium.
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[UPDATE: I am informed by Textile Management Associates, Inc., the owner of worldwide trademark rights to the ASTROTURF trademark that Astroturf has not become a generic for artificial turf -  the company having successfully defeated every instance where a third party infringer has attempted to convince a court that the trademark is generic.]

6. Thanks to the phenomenon of midnight sun, parts of Antarctica receive more solar energy per day in summer than do lands near the equator, making sunburn and snow-blindness (from intense glare) serious risks.

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7. Helen Mirren's birth name is Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov.
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8. The colour of 'White' diamonds is graded on a scale of "D" to "Z" - where "D" is colorless and "Z" is yellow.
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9. Contrary to what you see in action movies, dropping a lit cigarette onto a trail of gasoline won't ignite it, assuming normal oxygen levels and no unusual circumstances. The gasoline has limited contact with the hottest, glowing part of the ash - as the outer ash layer is much cooler and prevents much heat from reaching the gasoline.
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10. Clint Eastwood is also an accomplished musician. He has composed the the theme songs for 'Unforgiven', 'A Perfect World', 'The Bridges Of Madison County' and 'Absolute Power'. He has also composed the score for 'Million Dollar Baby', 'Mystic River' and 'Flags of Our Fathers."
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digg this : The Complete 'ten things i didn't know until last week'

ten things i didn't know until last week

1. In 1457, King James II of Scotland banned football and golf because these distractions were stopping his subjects from practicing military skills such as archery.
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2. Virga is rain or snow that evaporates before hitting the ground.
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3. The Fenian Brotherhood, an Irish Nationalist organisation, first commissioned John Phillip Holland to develop submarines as a way to sink Royal Navy ships. Eventually the two parted company on issues of payment and time delays - and Holland ended up selling his prototypes to the US Navy first and then to the Royal Navy.
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4. 'Fat Man' - the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki - was named for Winston Churchill.
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5. Hank Williams Sr was nicknamed the 'Hillbilly Shakespeare' for his narrative approach to songwriting.
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6. Slave trade was the middle passage of what was then known as the "triangular trade." Slave ships left European ports for west Africa with rum, guns, textiles and other goods to exchange for slaves, and then transported them across the Atlantic to sell to plantation-owners, and then returned with sugar and coffee.
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7. All revellers at Venice's carnival are addressed by the same name - Sior Maschera (Mr.Mask.)
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8. An economic model, dubbed as Extinction vortex, has found that placing a species on an endangered list might cause its value to go up and speed its disappearance, thanks to the human thirst for rarity.
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9. Ben Lomond Peak, a 9,712-foot mountain that dominates the skyline in Ogden, Utah, is supposedly the inspiration for the mountain in the Paramount logo. William Wadsworth Hodkinson, the man who started Paramount and came up with the logo, originally hailed from Ogden.
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10. Steve Allen - a comedian, musician and entertainer - is credited with inventing the TV talk show. It was his show on NBC, named Tonight!, that forged the template for late-night talk shows: the set of a desk and chairs, the opening monologue, a stunt or skit, and a series of guest interviews.
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digg this : The Complete 'ten things i didn't know until last week'

ten things i didn't know until last week

1. The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, exhibits historic films, photographs, artifacts and interpretive displays that document the events around President Kennedy's assasination. It is located at the old Texas School Book Depository - the location from which Lee Harvey Oswald reputedly shot the president on November 22, 1963.
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2. Pablo Picasso and Apollinaire were suspects when the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911. Both of them had earlier purchased stolen artifacts from the Louvre from a man named Gery Pieret. They were released after questioning - Picasso immediately (after he returned the stolen statues he had bought earlier) and Apollinaire, after he spent 5 days in jail.
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3. Lotto carpets are handwoven carpets from Turkey which were popular during the 16th and 17th century. They are characterized by a lacy arabesque repeated field pattern, usually in yellow upon a red ground. They are so named because they appear in several of the works of the Venetian painter Lorenzo Lotto.
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4. Foundations Edge, the fourth book in the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, was written thirty years after the Foundation trilogy was originally written. Asimov agreed to write it only after intense and sustained pressure from his fans and because of the amount of money offered by his publisher. It was also his first novel to make it to the New York Times best-seller list - after 262 books and 44 years of writing.
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5. In the Nix v. Hedden case of 1893, the US Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether a tomato was a vegetable or a fruit. The Court ruled "that because in the common language of the people [tomatoes] are vegetables," they should be so considered under the Act, even though botanically they are defined as fruits.
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6. The game in which one attempts to extricate straws - one at a time, and without disturbing any other in the heap - is called spillikins.
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7. The trimmed tree trunks used in the Highland games of Scotland are called cabers.
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8. San Salvador literally means Holy Saviour.
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9. The Roman Senate kept state treaties with foreign countries at the Temple of Fides at the Capitoline Hill. Fides was the Roman goddess of loyalty and was believed to protect them.
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10. Tamerlane - a Mongol warlord and founder of the Timurid dynasty - was reputedly so proficient at Shatranj (the precursor of chess) that he created his own more complicated version, called Shatranj-a-kamil (meaning perfect chess) or Tamerlane Chess. His version of the game employs 28 pieces of 11 different types on a board of 112 squares - against the standard version's 16 pieces of 6 types on a board of 64 squares.
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digg this : The Complete 'ten things i didn't know until last week'