Fun facts!

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horrorfan89 said:
Before refrigeration became common, lager beers could only be enjoyed during cold months of the year. This is because lager is fermented and stored almost entirely at very specific and low tempetures which could only be obtained in cold climates like the alpine states and later the appilcaian and rocky mountains.
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Not entirely correct (I brew beer as a hobby so this is right in my area of interest). Lager yeasts, depending on strain, prefer temperature ranges below 66 degrees F/ 19degrees c. These temperatures are easily achieved in cellars, stable, all year round. Secondary fermentation in the barrel- ‘lagering’- can take anywhere from two weeks to two months depending on the desired final product. And barrelled beer can keep quite well for months or even years at a time.
 
Ricin is a potent toxin, most famously used to assassinate Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov with an injection. The legend is that it was from a poisoned umbrella tip, although the current consensus is this was likely not the method used.

Ricin naturally occurs in castor beans, with the ricin content in as few as two beans being in theory sufficient to cause death.

However, despite this, castor oil, from pressed beans, used to be a fairly common remedy and apparently did not itself contain significant levels of ricin. More fun, because the seeds are apparently indigestible, one could probably consume any number of them and they would simply pass through the body harmlessly, unless chewed.

Fun fact: you're a fucking idiot if you do this and get poisoned somehow, whether because you have stones in your gizzard or for any other reason. Other fun fact: humans don't actually have gizzards and probably don't have stones in their digestive systems.
 
AnOminous said:
humans don't actually have gizzards and probably don't have stones in their digestive systems.
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technically we do have "stones" in our bodies. The salt our bodies store to support our primary functions. (along with water, sugars, and fats) Salt is the only rock humans eat....well unless you're totally retarted and eat gravel like a moron.
 
When the Gauls put a siege on the Capitoline Hill in Rome during the 4th century BC Sack of Rome, one old guy grabbed his mystical paraphenalia, walked through the blockade and the Gauls were so impressed by his bronze cannonballs that they let him do his rituals unmolested and go back.

The patrician clan of the Fabii held an annual sacrifice on the Quirinal Hill. Gaius Fabius Dorsuo came down the Capitoline carrying the sacred vessels, passed through the enemy pickets and went to the Quirinal. He duly performed the sacred rites and returned the Capitoline. Livy commented, "Either the Gauls were stupefied at his extraordinary boldness, or else they were restrained by religious feelings, for as a nation they are by no means inattentive to the claims of religion".
 
Canibal! The musical is the only Trey Parker film that wasn't initially rated nc-17

The devil's rejects had to be resubmitted to the MPAA 7 times before it wasn't slapped with an NC 17 rating, unlike the previous film house of 1000 corpses, Rob zombie remembered to preserve an unrated director's cut for general release.

Orson Welles final roles included voicing Unicron in the 1986 transformers movie and a tv appearance on the show moonlighting.
 
The speed of light is always the speed of light relative to an observer. So if one goes near the speed of light, the speed of light is still the speed of light faster.

Also a "stationary" world appears to contract in the direction one is going, and time appears to slow down on it. But to someone on that world, it's the gotta-go-fast racer who's contracting in the direction of travel and who has the slowed down time. Some weird thing I don't know much about happens with acceleration and deceleration so the fastinator can experience a smaller amount of time in total than on the world they passed. It's how a ship can get to the center of the galaxy - by accelerating and slowing down at 1 g continually - in about 20 years, but with about 30,000 years over here.

Also if one could travel at light speed, they wouldn't experience time.

Warp drive or other FTL stuff gets around these odd physics limits though - if it works.

gotta go fast
 
horrorfan89 said:
Before refrigeration became common, lager beers could only be enjoyed during cold months of the year. This is because lager is fermented and stored almost entirely at very specific and low tempetures which could only be obtained in cold climates like the alpine states and later the appilcaian and rocky mountains.
Click to expand...
SITHRAK! said:
Not entirely correct (I brew beer as a hobby so this is right in my area of interest). Lager yeasts, depending on strain, prefer temperature ranges below 66 degrees F/ 19degrees c. These temperatures are easily achieved in cellars, stable, all year round. Secondary fermentation in the barrel- ‘lagering’- can take anywhere from two weeks to two months depending on the desired final product. And barrelled beer can keep quite well for months or even years at a time.
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There's also steam beer, which uses lager yeast but ferments at ale temps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_beer
 
South Africa's old flag has 3 flags in the middle, the Union Jack, the Orange Free State, and the South African Republic.

2560px-Flag_of_South_Africa_(1928–1994).svg.png
 
Ronnie Rocket said:
There's also steam beer, which uses lager yeast but ferments at ale temps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_beer
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Which can lead to some super weird flavors due to esterization and the lack of a diacetyl rest, risking the final product having a rancid/buttery flavor. Anchor's yeast has probably evolved into a heat-tolerant bottom-fermenting yeast with low diacetyls, but I wouldn't recommend the average home brewer tries to run lagers at yeast temperatures, because the final beer is probably going to taste like Yaniv's damp gusset.
 
SITHRAK! said:
Which can lead to some super weird flavors due to esterization and the lack of a diacetyl rest, risking the final product having a rancid/buttery flavor. Anchor's yeast has probably evolved into a heat-tolerant bottom-fermenting yeast with low diacetyls, but I wouldn't recommend the average home brewer tries to run lagers at yeast temperatures, because the final beer is probably going to taste like Yaniv's damp gusset.
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The last beer I brewed before I ran out of time for brewing was a schwarzbier. It felt weird to ferment the bucket nearly submerged in a cold water bath in the guest bathroom and lagering it in the garage, but it came out great.
 
John Larroquette was paid 18 Dollars and a weed joint to do the opening voice over for the original Texas Chainsaw massacre.

Betsy Palmer was offered to reprise her role as Mrs. Voorhees in Freddy vs Jason but hated the lines written for her and turned it down.
 
There are extensive rules around the use of subsurface landmines in contemporary warfare.
Chief among these is the absolute requirement that all minefields be surrounded by a fence of at least one strand and clearly signposted with multiple signs that say 'Attention: Mines' or similar and prominently features a skull and crossbones.

Where it gets really interesting is that there is no obligation to actually lay mines in a marked minefield.

In other words, if you can rig up a fence and a bunch of signs, you can very quickly create a 'phantom' minefield that requires the enemy to either clear it, or go around it. For bonus asshole points, you can bury a bunch of old cans or handfuls of brass at random locations to set off metal detectors. For extra bonus asshole points you can also bury one or two landmines anyway, just to keep bored sappers and assault pioneers on their toes.
 
anyone who has owned a cat knows they have a really, really stupid habit of horking down food way too fast, sometimes to the point of making themselves puke. this is an evolutionary leftover from how their ancestors (much like other wild feline species) would sometimes try to stock up on as many calories as possible in one sitting since food wasn't always guaranteed, thus necessitating the ability to survive lean times. they also did this as a way to avoid dealing with scavengers who might track down the dead thing's scent and use the opportunity to pick off whatever they could.

of course, this is completely unnecessary for the modern domestic cat when dinner is readily available and easily obtained. there's other food-related quirks they kept over the millennia too, such as trying to "bury" leftovers (safekeeping from scavengers), preferring to eat while their owner is in the same room (having a lookout to keep watch while they're vulnerable), or refusing to eat if their food bowl is too close to their water bowl (perceived contaminated water source and spoiled food).
 
A man who witnessed Abe Lincoln's assassination was able to live long enough to tell his story on live TV.

 
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His name was Hamid Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant convicted of murder and guillotined in Marseilles in September 1977.
Note: in four states, Utah, Mississippi, South Carolina and Oklahoma, inmates can choose firing squad as a method of execution. The last to choose this method was Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.
 
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