TIL Thread: Today I learned...

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Fri Dec 24, 2021 12:36 am

On a side note, James Whitcomb Riley's 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" inspired the names of both Little Orphan Annie and Raggedy Ann.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Wed Dec 29, 2021 4:06 pm

TIL the word "cobalt" is derived from "kobold", because of a superstition that its ores were planted there by goblins to trick miners—they look like silver or copper ore until you try to smelt them, at which point they give off toxic arsenic gas.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Wed Dec 29, 2021 4:37 pm

intersting
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Wed Dec 29, 2021 4:49 pm

That moment when you realize chemistry grew out of alchemy and still retains etymological baggage from the age of goblins and ghosties.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Wed Dec 29, 2021 5:10 pm

fantasy breaking bad au where walter white the alchemist creates meth potions
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Wed Dec 29, 2021 5:42 pm

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Orange Fluffy Sheep (?) » Sun Jan 02, 2022 3:16 pm

DaikatunaRevengeance wrote:
Wed Dec 29, 2021 5:10 pm
fantasy breaking bad au where walter white the alchemist creates meth potions
this would be easy to do in elder scrolls games if they let you actually in on the process that turns moon sugar into skooma

you can peddle a shitton of the stuff regardless
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Sun Jan 02, 2022 3:38 pm

holy shit
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Fizzbuzz (?) » Tue Jan 11, 2022 3:04 pm

I just learned about the "Pfeilstorch", or "arrow stork," referring originally to a stork shot in 1822 and found to have a central African spear stuck in its neck. It was a key piece of evidence that birds migrated across vast distances for the winter, and did not hibernate, transform into other animals, fly into space, or other outlandish theories as to where they went.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Wed Jan 12, 2022 1:27 am

It's wild how recent some seemingly-obvious scientific discoveries were. Almost makes you question how much we really know about the world even now.

TIL those "Buy Me a Coffee" links you see on people's websites may lead to one of two completely different sites—one of which is named Ko-Fi and the other of which is literally just called Buy Me a Coffee. Is it possible for a third party to sue both sites for trademark infringement on the grounds that they've created brand confusion and neither one seems willing to deal with it?
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:06 pm

a funny thing i remember reading about heliocentrism is that copernicus' evidence for it was flimsy at best

so people having doubts about it at the time wasn't that weird
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:00 pm

TIL Namco made a game called Tinkle Pit.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by PonyHag714 (?) » Wed Jan 19, 2022 2:03 pm



Interesting, I didn't know that.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by stonecutter (?) » Fri Jan 21, 2022 12:29 pm

Friends of mine were working at Antarctic Press when it published Shanda the Panda. They told me Mike Curtis would call every day to ask if Shanda had yet been sent to the printers, despite the fact that AP always gave him a date when his comic would go to the printers. :-I

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Sun Jan 23, 2022 3:28 am

Fizzbuzz wrote:
Tue Jan 11, 2022 3:04 pm
I just learned about the "Pfeilstorch", or "arrow stork," referring originally to a stork shot in 1822 and found to have a central African spear stuck in its neck. It was a key piece of evidence that birds migrated across vast distances for the winter, and did not hibernate, transform into other animals, fly into space, or other outlandish theories as to where they went.
I finally got around to clicking that second link, and holy shit. TIL not only was Cyrano de Bergerac a real person, he basically invented an even more absurd version of the "cover yourself in oil" meme from a couple years back.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Wed Jan 26, 2022 9:08 pm

TIL the dark side of the moon is only “dark” in the sense that we can’t see it from earth. It gets sunlight just as regularly as the near side.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Thu Jan 27, 2022 8:27 am

especially if it's between the earth and sun
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Adiwan (?) » Thu Jan 27, 2022 9:15 am

I'm a flat-mooner I strongly believe that the moon is flat. As flat as a billboard object in an old 3D video game, that always orients towards the viewer. There is no backside! :tinfoil: :gotcha:
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Thu Jan 27, 2022 10:31 am

the skybox is real
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Wed Feb 09, 2022 4:29 pm

TIL the "raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirt" tweet wasn't by Dril. It was by some guy named Mike Ginn.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Wed Feb 09, 2022 4:38 pm

I don’t blame you, it’s an extremely dril gag
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Fri Feb 11, 2022 8:43 pm

Mechanical Ape wrote:
Wed Feb 09, 2022 4:38 pm
I don’t blame you, it’s an extremely dril gag
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Mon Feb 28, 2022 3:16 pm

TIL comedian Yakov Smirnoff (famous for the "In Soviet Russia" jokes) is from Ukraine.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Mon Feb 28, 2022 4:47 pm

For a long time I assumed Smirnoff was a fictional character like Borat or Father Guido Sarducci. Then I saw a TV special where he visited his home town and I was like, he's for real!

I think I'm bad at distinguishing between a real Russian/Ukrainian accent and a parody of one.

EDIT: Today I learned it's Dr. Smirnoff: "[He] earned his Master’s degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD in Global Leadership from Pepperdine University in May 2019."
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Wed Mar 02, 2022 4:00 pm

TIL there's a city called Ontario in California. I found this out because my Maglite flashlight says "ONTARIO, CA, USA" which made me do a double take. I wonder if all mail addressed there has to be written that way to avoid confusion.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Wed Mar 02, 2022 5:46 pm

There’s also a Sydney in Nova Scotia. If you want to get there, make sure your plane ticket says Sydney, NS and not Sydney, NSW.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sun Mar 06, 2022 11:51 am

Today I learned that there was a woman was crazy enough to stuff dead rabbits into her womb and tell and show the world that she has birthed rabbits (dead and in pieces).
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Sun Mar 06, 2022 9:35 pm

Reading that article, ick.

This is not the sort of stunt you’d want to try during the witch persecution era.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Orange Fluffy Sheep (?) » Mon Mar 07, 2022 8:14 am

There's a dollop episode about this lady.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Thu Mar 10, 2022 10:16 am

apparently argentina's laws are very trans friendly
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Mon Mar 28, 2022 4:55 pm

TIL shrapnel was named after a guy named, no joke, Henry Shrapnel.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Thu Mar 31, 2022 5:47 pm

TIL Will Smith's name is short for "Willard". Which I didn't even know was a real name!
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Tue Apr 12, 2022 10:13 am

TIL platypuses glow teal under UV light. Yeah, they're nature's blacklight posters. Even more bizarrely, this was not discovered until 2020, meaning it's a complete coincidence that Perry from Phineas and Ferb and Norm from My Cage are that same color.

Flying squirrels, meanwhile, glow pink. We discovered this only a year earlier.

Boy it would have been nice to know this back when furries were obsessed with drawing their characters at raves.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Tue Apr 12, 2022 6:38 pm

TIL that Ken Penders worked on "King of the Hill" as a storyboard artist.

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(yes, the Chuck Austen also credited is THAT Chuck Austen. Two infamous comic book creators in one)

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sat Apr 16, 2022 8:11 pm

TIL that "laser" is an acronym, for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation"

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Sun Jun 26, 2022 3:18 pm

TIL the name "Idaho" was completely made up. George M. Willing, who was something of a conman, traveled to Washington DC posing as a delegate from Jefferson Territory (a position he'd actually lost the election for; Wikipedia doesn't say what happened to the real delegate) and suggested the name, falsely claiming it to be based on a Shoshone word.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Fri Jul 22, 2022 12:58 am

TIL the iPad I've had for five years now had a built-in barometer all along.

I have no idea why anyone would want that, or at least not enough anybodies that it would be worth Apple's while to put one in. A digital thermometer and hygrometer would be way more useful but maybe you can't put that into a device that has its own source of internal heat.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Wed Jul 27, 2022 10:57 pm

TIL that Australia was very late in switching to color television. It didn't occur until March 1, 1975.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Madeline (?) » Thu Aug 18, 2022 10:38 pm

TIL that Janet Jackson’s song “Rhythm Nation” exposed a design flaw in a model of 5400 rpm HDDs that laptop manufacturers liked to use.



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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Fri Aug 19, 2022 8:20 am

I didn't know resonant frequencies were a real thing, I thought they were like just for comic books and stuff.
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