Fun facts!

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There are probability distributions, such as the Cauchy Distribution, that don't have a mean or average. If you take increasingly large samples and compute the average, it won't converge to anything as shown in the simulation below:
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In a seemingly contradictory fashion, there are other probability distributions that also don't have a mean or average yet their sample mean does converge to some number.
 
Adding to what AnOminous said about the Collatz Conjecture, there's a Veritasium video about it if that's your thing.
 
There is a famous tale of the Chinese General Zhuge Liang who found his men short on arrows.

He ordered them to build straw men and line them up along the sides of his boats. He then crossed the Yangtze River in the dark of the early morning. As the sun rose and the mist began to clear the enemy raised the alarm because they saw an invasion force attempting a landing.

The archers came forward and peppered the boats with thousands of arrows. Then the boatmen rowed back across the river and the arrows were harvested for Liang’s archers.
 
The original Siamese twins (Chang and Eng Bunker) settled in the Appalachian town of Mount Airy, North Carolina, became slaveowners, and their sons fought for the Confederate States.

This is the same town that Andy Griffith was from and inspired Mayberry from the Andy Griffith Show.
 
Noisy things like instruments or some animals are almost always named for the sound they make. For example our word "owl" comes from the Proto-Germanic *uwwalon-, the diminutive of the Indo-European root *uwal-, which is imitative of a wail or an owl's hoot and the source of "howl" and "wail."

Far more interesting than its name is the owl's place in Western/English folklore. Unlike some creatures (loyal dogs, sneaky cats) the owl doesn't show its given traits of wisdom and benevolence. In Middle English the bird was referenced in sayings and figures of speech for its nocturnal habits but also for ugliness, creepiness, evil, and spiritual blindness - it was even a name for Satan. The connection with wisdom came after the revival of classical learning: A small brown owl is found in and around Athens and its Acropolis and so was taken in ancient times as an emblem of the city and its patron goddess (of wisdom) Athena. This is seen in the old saying "bring (or send) owls to Athens" meaning "to perform uneeded work." Another old use of the word "owl" is as a verb meaning "to carry on an unlawful or contraband trade at night" which dates to the mid 1500s.
 
The "AR" in AR-15 stands for "ArmaLite," the company that designed the rifle. There is a popular misconception in the anti-gun community that "AR" stands for "Assault Rifle," whereas there is a popular misconception in the pro-gun community that "AR" stands for "ArmaLite Rifle".

The AR-15 is a further development of the AR-10, the difference being that the former is chambered in 5.56×45mm and the latter is chambered in 7.62×51mm.

You're much more likely to be killed by falling out of bed than by someone using an AR-15.
 
Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
Hooded Americanism. It's really no big story. The local hayseeds thought (incorrectly) that the Pope would be passing through, on some dumb rumor, so they had a plot to catch him. Some time int he early 1920s.
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I don't doubt that it's not a huge story; it just sounds fucking hilarious and I wanted to know more lol
Thank you for the source!
 
Anonitolia said:
I don't doubt that it's not a huge story; it just sounds fucking hilarious and I wanted to know more lol
Thank you for the source!
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It's a book about the Klan focused on the 1920s. It's very boring but it documents tons of events all over the country, especially the way the Klan basically had a reign of terror against White Protestants, not just their professed enemies.

I took a glance and the passage I found said it was North Manchester, about a thousand people. A quick Google shows it may be an apocryphal story, local legend. Supposedly the townsfolk interrogated some frightened men at the station who had to convince them they weren't the Papal delegation in disguise. The passage didn't explicitly say lynch but I'm pretty sure I saw that in reference to it elsewhere; either way it was implicit they were going to do something to the Pope.

But yeah I thought it was goofy as shit.
 
Maybe this is some of that stuff that's just common knowledge to everyone else, but I thought it was really interesting.

What do syrup, opium, rubber, chewing gum and turpentine all have in common?
They're all created from bleeding plants.
If it's turpentine, syrup, or rubber, you "tap" a tree. That means, basically, put a goofy cartoon faucet on it so it seeps sap out into a bucket. That means you're basically collecting tree blood. Then you boil or otherwise process the sap to turn it into the desired product. Pine trees make turpentine. Maples make syrup. Rubber makes rubber. So the shit we make car tires from is basically the same basic idea as what you eat on your pancakes, and both are blood.

Opium is made by the same process, except you're bleeding an poppy bulb (like a little onion) and collecting its "milk" to boil. So same as syrup!

Chewing gum is basically various local types of rubber/rubber-like plants loaded with some sugar and other crap. Nowadays it often contains plastic. And it was introduced to the United States by General Santa Anna (you know, the one who lead the Mexicans during the Texan Revolution and Mexican War?) during his exile in New York.
 
Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
The good people, and by people I mean Ku Klux Klan, of Indiana once set an ambush to stop a train and lynch the Pope.
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Anonitolia said:
I don't doubt that it's not a huge story; it just sounds fucking hilarious and I wanted to know more lol
Thank you for the source!
Click to expand...
That would make a great short story, or plot point in a novel.

Anyway, here's a Spooktober fun fact for you: "Witch" and "wicked" likely come from the Proto-Germanic *wikkjaz "necromancer" (one who wakes the dead, waker), from Indo-European *weg-yo- meaning the same, a suffixed offshoot of the root *weg- "to be strong or lively." This root is also the source of "wake" and "watch." The Old English word specifically was wicca (masculine) and wicce (feminine) with CC making the palatal CH sound - the Neo-Pagans of the 60s misread these two letters as a hard K sound and took the word as the discipline's name, thus our modern word "Wicca" and its pronunciation. They should've went to Tolkien's classes.
 
Heathen is a dated term used primarily of someone who is not religious, or whose religion is not Judaism, Islam, or especially Christianity. It is also sometimes used disapprovingly of someone who is not cultured; this use is also dated.

Heathen likely comes from a term for a country inhabitant—in particular, a “heath dweller.” The Latin source of pagan, paganus, originally meant “country dweller” or “civilian;” it was used at the end of the Roman Empire to refer to people who practiced a religion other than Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, and especially to those who worshiped multiple deities.

It’s believed that the religious meanings of paganus developed either from the enduring non-Christian religious practices of those who lived far from the Roman cities where Christianity was more quickly adopted, or from the fact that early Christians referred to themselves as “soldiers of Christ,” making nonbelievers “civilians.”

(from Merriam-Webster)


Kinda funny how today neo-poganism keeps to the big cities while Christianity keeps to the sticks.
 
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