Some insane facts about the world that you may not know!

Originally Posted by Raptor Reagan

I don't agree with this. Your facts are correct, but I don't think they support your conclusion necessarily that Churchill was a bloodthirsty leader (though note, I think it is possible to use other facts to support this conclusion--e.g. his views on imperialism), Churchill, during the course of his war time leadership, had witnessed the Soviet Union unilaterally invade Finland in order to annex more territory, had seen it launch a joint invasion of Poland along with Nazi Germany in 1939, and had witnessed it systematically undermine every non Russophile communist political party or ideology in Eastern Europe while local leaders and governments were suddenly replaced with Moscow loyalists. I think Churchill believed that this pattern of behavior evidenced that Soviet ambitions were not too dissimilar from German territorial ambitions--the two simply collided. I think he viewed this conflict as inevitable and decided that if the Soviet Union had to be fought, it should be fought while the Allies had a good army in Europe to do it with. I think Operation Unthinkable can be characterized as foolhardy and delusional (and certainly the British General Staff thought so), but I really don't think it can be characterized as bloodthirsty per se.

Churchill thus ended the Second World War depressed--feeling that a war fought over an autocratic dictatorship invading Poland had ended merely by seeing the dictators change, but the situation remaining the same. Though, I do feel that Churchill's intuitions and approach was vindicated by history far more than Truman's.

Yeah, I knew bloodthirsty was going to be a rather exaggerated term when I posted that. I'll try to make it something a little less extreme.

Here are some pretty creepy guillotine facts:

The last execution by decapitation was made in France, in 1977.

If you run up to the subject's head RIGHT after it's been cut off and scream the person's name in his ear, the head's eyes will actually open and look around, and then the head will lose function around 10 seconds later. Can you imagine seeing that?! I'd pee my pants.

Originally Posted by John

Someone likes QI.

Yes. Yes he does.

(It's me).

On another note, the great wall of china wasn't ever designed with the intent of making china 'airtight'. Instead, its main purpose was so that raiders would have to go around it, making any large raids impossible because you couldn't escape fast enough.

Organised militarys, however, either bribed guards or just plain climbed over. The wall garrison was never large enough to prevent concerted attack.

Also: it PROBABLY cannot be seen from space. (PROBABLY because the term 'space' is hard to define.) It is certainly invisible from the moon. In fact, the only manmade things that can be seen from the moon are on its surface. Eg lunar probes.

Originally Posted by John

They call them Fries Anglais or something, don't they?

Don't know if you're joking, but I'll say anyway--"french fries" in France are simply known as "frites", or "pomme frites" (literally, "fried")

Also, "french toast" is known as "pain perdu", or "lost bread"

Dunno why.

Originally Posted by Shinespark

Yeah, I knew bloodthirsty was going to be a rather exaggerated term when I posted that. I'll try to make it something a little less extreme.

Here are some pretty creepy guillotine facts:

The last execution by decapitation was made in France, in 1977.

If you run up to the subject's head RIGHT after it's been cut off and scream the person's name in his ear, the head's eyes will actually open and look around, and then the head will lose function around 10 seconds later. Can you imagine seeing that?! I'd pee my pants.

There's been all of one experiment about how long someone stays conscious after being decapitated, and it was hardly scientific. So with a grain of salt be taking it.

Originally Posted by John

There's been all of one experiment about how long someone stays conscious after being decapitated, and it was hardly scientific. So with a grain of salt be taking it.

How the hell could you do this scientifically?

Originally Posted by Nite and Deigh

John the Baptist was a leader of his own cult and still has followers to this day. Jesus had been a follower of him for a while before starting his own.

Your source?

Originally Posted by Shinespark

Fact: The battlefield on Lexington and Concord is (and was) a cricket field back even before the Revolution. Believe it or not, there was actually supposed to be a cricket game on the day of the battle, but instead the battle took place. They post-poned the game 'till three days later. xD

That's gross.

Originally Posted by The Rose

In the Caribbean there are oysters that can climb trees.

That's awesome!

The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

What happened to them in 1911?

The State of Florida is bigger than England.

Everything is bigger than England. My PSYCHE! is bigger than England!

Did you know that in Paul Revere's famous horseback ride across the colonies, he didn't yell, "The British are coming!", but rather "The regulars are coming!" because at the time, they were still a part of Britain, so if he had said what most people think he said, the people of the colonies would've been pretty confused.

Fact: Out of all the mammals, walruses have the second largest penis.


I have the first.

Originally Posted by Shinespark

Did you know that in Paul Revere's famous horseback ride across the colonies, he didn't yell, "The British are coming!", but rather "The regulars are coming!" because at the time, they were still a part of Britain, so if he had said what most people think he said, the people of the colonies would've been pretty confused.

He also didn't actually warn anyone, ending up being arrested and getting his horse impounded before he could do much.

The people who did go riding and warn everyone were William Dawes and several other, unnamed, riders. Longfellow just decided that "Paul Revere" sounded better and so changed history, as he did with most of what's now considered America's past.

Here are some very interesting facts on the universe from Ilya Bryzgalov.

21 of Russia's 83 territories are ruled by local governments, not their national government (except in military affairs). These regions autonomy often create international conflict because while the federal government might demand something of the local government to prevent conflict, the local government can often deny such depending on the status of the territory in question.

Common is that the federal government might demand the return of a child that is legally a foreign nation's citizen, but an autonomous Republic can overthrow the federal government's evidence and force an unfair trail.


Despite how common and complicated the problems in Russia are, Japan and Brazil (neither of which have anything close to the internal conflict Russia does) both have more citzens that are demanded to be returned to the USA than all of Russia does. Russia has to give certain territories autonomy in order to avoid constant conflict with them, Brazil and Japan both refuse to take the actions to return what are legally kidnapped American children despite not having such internal issues to prevent them.
Part of the problem with Japan is that they often consider such children to be Japanese citizens despite what are often unethical/shady means of transporting them to the country. I'm not sure what the issue is with Brazil, but I imagine ther's also a some-what reasonable reason with them as well.

Originally Posted by Shinespark

Did you know that in Paul Revere's famous horseback ride across the colonies, he didn't yell, "The British are coming!", but rather "The regulars are coming!" because at the time, they were still a part of Britain, so if he had said what most people think he said, the people of the colonies would've been pretty confused.

I thought it was "The redcoats are coming".

Much of the Italian mafia's image: suits, cars, right down to traditions and rules originated in gangster movies. The mob only adopted these traditions later because they liked them, as they portrayed them as driven by honor and a degree of class.

Also in Switzerland women is some parts of the country only gained the right to vote in 1990.

/cracked

Originally Posted by Cor Sicarius

Your source?

Mandaeism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Mandaeans may not be the original followers of John the Baptist, but they follow the teaching of John the Baptist, and treat him like Christians do to Jesus.

I'm not informed enough to know if his orignal sect is still around or I was given information that wasn't completely true. I coincidentally looked up the Manaeans a couple days ago, but originally I had heard that John the Baptist's original cult was still around from a documentary. They might have been thinkling the Mandaeans were the original cult or there might be another sect.

The Mandaeans aren't in good shape at the moment as almost all of them are refugees ever since the Invasion on Iraq.

The whole image of time travel where you get into some sort of machine and "teleport" to a different time is completely false. Not only is it limited to traveling to the future, but the only possible way to go about this on Earth is to go just below 186,000 miles per second, the speed of light. Since physics say that we can't go that fast, we can stay just under that speed in some sort of vehicle that can orbit the Earth all the way around. That way, with that speed, time will get slowed down inside of the vehicle, so if the people stay in that train for, say, a week, and then exit the train, over a hundred years will have passed.

Of course, as Stephen Hawking said, to build something that can go that fast is nearly impossible. If we were to build something that can, though, we could travel to the future.

Source

Originally Posted by The Rose

The State of Florida is bigger than England.

Yea, but England is a heck of a lot prettier. I live in FL. Bleh.

Half of this thread is gone? What the fudge?

Originally Posted by John

He also didn't actually warn anyone, ending up being arrested and getting his horse impounded before he could do much.

The people who did go riding and warn everyone were William Dawes and several other, unnamed, riders. Longfellow just decided that "Paul Revere" sounded better and so changed history, as he did with most of what's now considered America's past.

Longfellow, from what I understood, wrote this just when the American Civil War was about to break out, and wanted to bolster confidence to the Union side.

@ OneHungryHippo- I'm reading the poem online, but I'm not seeing any 'The British/Redcoats are coming!' line. And you know what's interesting? The real thing was likely rushing up to known rebel's houses and whispering to grab the muskets, because they were in a largely loyalist town, and screaming out a warning like that was a surefire way to get your ass busted, as happened to Paul Revere.

Oh, and apparently, during WWII, some American and German soldiers celebrated Christmas in a young family's farmhouse. I read about this somewhere on Cracked, but I cannot remember what it was called. 8[

And...South America and Africa looks like they fit together. xD

And...um...The Pacific Ocean is slowly getting smaller, and the Atlantic Ocean is slowly getting larger thanks to plate tectonics.

And during WWII, when FDR and co were enroute to Yalta or some other meeting with Churchill and Stalin, a US Destroyer known as the USS William D. Porter nearly killed him a grand total of three times. This wasn't some ship that spontaneously decided to defect, no! All those near-attempts were COMPLETELY ACCIDENTAL!

And when they were not trying to off their own leader, they were busy lobbing accidental shells at their commander's house, riddiling their own sister ship's hull, before finally loosing the ship to an enemy plane that they had already shot down.

The 5 Craziest War Stories (All Happened on the Same Ship) | Cracked.com

Enjoy! xD

Originally Posted by Tom Servo

Half of this thread is gone? What the fudge?

I don't see anything. =/ Must be the stupid server. >=[[[[