Fun facts!

[Forgetful Gynn]

Speaking of chemicals found in trees, the resin of most pine trees can be converted to turpentine, which can be used in everything from soaps to paint thinners to disinfectants, by a simple process of distillation. Just get some copper pots and some tubing, and your new settlement in the middle of the wide, wild west could get some of the useful stuff.

Except for the Jeffrey Pine of the California mountains. Its resin includes a high proportion of heptane. Heptane is like the octane included in your auto fuel, only with one less carbon. And so, in the aftermath the Gold Rush in 1849, there were a number of mysterious and spectacular explosions at mining sites in the California mountains, as miners attempted to boil what amounted to low-quality gasoline.

SPEAKING OF explosive trees in California: During the Californian Gold rush thousands of investors were duped into buying and planting thousands of acres of Australian Eucalyptus trees. The Australians forgot to mention that it takes about a century for the trees to fully mature, causing said thousands of investors to go broke. Fast forward a century later and the eucalyptus trees have spread fucking everywhere and finally matured. Turns out the Australians also forgot to mention that the trees produce a highly flammable toxic oil that builds up in the tree, causing it to literally explode if it gets too hot out.

Can you guess what happened next?

Even funner fact: Around the same time that the Australians sold them to the Californians, they also sold them to the British, who planted them in what is now Israel.

 

[Captain Hastings Official]

SPEAKING OF explosive trees in California: During the Californian Gold rush thousands of investors were duped into buying and planting thousands of acres of Australian Eucalyptus trees. The Australians forgot to mention that it takes about a century for the trees to fully mature, causing said thousands of investors to go broke. Fast forward a century later and the eucalyptus trees have spread fucking everywhere and finally matured. Turns out the Australians also forgot to mention that the trees produce a highly flammable toxic oil that builds up in the tree, causing it to literally explode if it gets too hot out.

Can you guess what happened next?

View attachment 1530764

Even funner fact: Around the same time that the Australians sold them to the Californians, they also sold them to the British, who planted them in what is now Israel.

The '91 Oakland firestorm, in particular, was made vastly more devastating than it would otherwise have been because of the presence of dense patches of explosive eucalypts. Californians, alas, being Californians, attempts by foresters, ecologists, and firefighters to reduce the amount of invasive, foreign eucalypts in the Bay Area were met by accusations that they were 'Plant Nazis.' "You wouldn't try to remove foreign people, would you!?" was rhetoric deployed, almost word for word, at city council meetings on the subject. I really, really wish I were making this up.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

SPEAKING OF explosive trees in California: During the Californian Gold rush thousands of investors were duped into buying and planting thousands of acres of Australian Eucalyptus trees. The Australians forgot to mention that it takes about a century for the trees to fully mature, causing said thousands of investors to go broke. Fast forward a century later and the eucalyptus trees have spread fucking everywhere and finally matured. Turns out the Australians also forgot to mention that the trees produce a highly flammable toxic oil that builds up in the tree, causing it to literally explode if it gets too hot out.

Can you guess what happened next?

View attachment 1530764

View attachment 1530765

Even funner fact: Around the same time that the Australians sold them to the Californians, they also sold them to the British, who planted them in what is now Israel.

View attachment 1530751

When Australian shitposting goes way too far.

 

[A Grey Cat]

The first marvel comic to contain an uncensored use of the word "fuck," was the first issue of Alias aka Jessica Jones which initially started life as a mature reader's title before being rebranded with Marvel's first mature reader's label Max comics.

The first of arc of Akira toryama's dragon ball is a loose remake of the Asian folktale journey to the West. As such when the Dragon Ball game for the famicom, shenron no nazo was going to be imported to the US it's source material was virtually unknown about over here. So the familiar elements of DB were altered back into its source material to make a generic game based on journey to the west called Dragon power.

 

[Malagor the dank omen]

Turns out the Australians also forgot to mention that the trees produce a highly flammable toxic oil that builds up in the tree, causing it to literally explode if it gets too hot out.

Also, important to note is that when the leaves of the eucaliptus rot in the ground they end up acidifying the soil, making it unsuitable for any kind of underwood and it will take years for the soil to recover. Why doesn't this happen in Australia? Because they have packs of smooth brain animals that eat the leaves.

Also, massive forest fires due to large amounts of Eucaliptus also happened in northern Spain since the early 2000.

 

[Carnavoyeur]

Thanks guys, now I'm terrified of the eucalyptus trees in our yard.

 

[AnOminous]

Also, important to note is that when the leaves of the eucaliptus rot in the ground they end up acidifying the soil, making it unsuitable for any kind of underwood and it will take years for the soil to recover. Why doesn't this happen in Australia? Because they have packs of smooth brain animals that eat the leaves.

Also, massive forest fires due to large amounts of Eucaliptus also happened in northern Spain since the early 2000.

Trust fucking Australia to come up with a poisonous tree that literally explodes.

 

[Malagor the dank omen]

Thanks guys, now I'm terrified of the eucalyptus trees in our yard.

The moral of the story is to never trust anything that manages to thrive in Australia. Not even Koalas even if they are as retarded as panda bears

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

Lemme continue with the ninja autism, since I just played Shogun 2 Total War.
One of the DLC for the base campaign is the Hattori clan, who in-game own the province of Iga. The DLC caught criticism because it was day 1 DLC and because it was historically inaccurate - the Hattori clan never owned any land. Fans often suggest that the faction names Iga Confederacy or Iga Republic would have be more accurate. Why?

The lands of Iga and Koga, where formal ninjutsu training took place, were formally owned by the Rokkaku clan. However, both lands enjoyed autonomy in their governance and both had a form of government which more or less a representative republic. Representatives were drawn from both the samurai clans as well as the lower classes. The inhabitants of Iga would enjoy this position until the second invasion of Iga by the Oda clan, the first one in 1579 was led by one of Nobunaga's sons, Nobukatsu, and was an embarrassing failure. The second was led by Nobunaga himself and it resulted in the surviving samurai of Iga seeking refuge in other regions of Japan, with a large chunk of them settling in the lands of Tokugawa Ieyasu, as one of his trusted retainers was Hattori Hanzo Masashige, the head of the Hattori clan at the time who were one of the more influential samurai families in Iga.
The fate of Koga's autonomy is unknown. Their formal masters, the Rokkaku clan, had their lands seized by Nobunaga during his march towards the capital of Kyoto, but there are no indications that he abolished the autonomy of the Koga inhabitants, though he most likely did so as many Koga families also migrated to the lands of Ieyasu.

 

[cuddle striker]

Your fingernails and hair don't grow after you die. Your skin shrinks, and the flesh dessicates and shrinks back a little, so it can look like they did.

 

[Malagor the dank omen]

Lemme continue with the ninja autism, since I just played Shogun 2 Total War.
One of the DLC for the base campaign is the Hattori clan, who in-game own the province of Iga. The DLC caught criticism because it was day 1 DLC and because it was historically inaccurate - the Hattori clan never owned any land. Fans often suggest that the faction names Iga Confederacy or Iga Republic would have be more accurate. Why?

The lands of Iga and Koga, where formal ninjutsu training took place, were formally owned by the Rokkaku clan. However, both lands enjoyed autonomy in their governance and both had a form of government which more or less a representative republic. Representatives were drawn from both the samurai clans as well as the lower classes. The inhabitants of Iga would enjoy this position until the second invasion of Iga by the Oda clan, the first one in 1579 was led by one of Nobunaga's sons, Nobukatsu, and was an embarrassing failure. The second was led by Nobunaga himself and it resulted in the surviving samurai of Iga seeking refuge in other regions of Japan, with a large chunk of them settling in the lands of Tokugawa Ieyasu, as one of his trusted retainers was Hattori Hanzo Masashige, the head of the Hattori clan at the time who were one of the more influential samurai families in Iga.
The fate of Koga's autonomy is unknown. Their formal masters, the Rokkaku clan, had their lands seized by Nobunaga during his march towards the capital of Kyoto, but there are no indications that he abolished the autonomy of the Koga inhabitants, though he most likely did so as many Koga families also migrated to the lands of Ieyasu.

I'll follow on it, since Nioh 2 first DLC hit recently and i got to fight the Taira with Yoshitsune.

The arrival of portuguese traders to Japan, aside from bread, candy and castella, brought a new tool of war: Guns. Initially, guns were openly disregarded as most warlords saw them as terrible and clumsy weapons. You couldn't use them when it was raining, they were loud, very expensive (since japanese didn't knew how to make them, they had to trade) and armor could easily deflect a musket bullet at certain distances. The only warlord who took a linking to firearms was Oda Nobunaga, a warlord that other nobles saw as an eccentric fool for how he did things (among others, giving noble titles to commoners). Against the judgement of others, he commited to these new and exotic kind of weapons, which granted him the upper hand when he fought against the Takeda Clan. Soon after this, other warlords begun to purchase firearms from European traders and it wasn't until 4 years after the portuguese arrived that they brought smiths with them to teach japanese craftsmen to create the mechanisms needed to make the first japanese muskets: the Tanegashima (named after the island in which they were made). The rise of firearms as well was the rise of levied troops in Japan and warlords begun to recruit peasants in mass, creating the Ashigaru (literally translated, light footed) which was a staple of the sengoku period.

Meanwhile, ninja took a great liking to firearms since the very first second they got their hands on them. They were highly lethal, easy to use and very easy to conceal and dispose of. Gunpowder and firearms quickly became one of the most prized ninja tools for assasination.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

The assassination of James Stewart 1st of Moray in 1570 is often cited as the first recorded assassination by firearm, however there do exist earlier recorded examples of firearm assassinations, I'm going to mention 3.
First of them was the 1567 assassination of Mahmoud Pasha, Ottoman governor of Yemen and later Egypt. He was infamous for his cruel rule and corruption, for which he was first deposed as the governor of Yemen and for which he was assassinated as governor of Egypt. The assassination was performed by unknown hired bandits.
The second was the 1566 assassination of Mimura Iechika, a daimyo from Bitchu province. His assassination was ordered by his rival Ukita Naoie and performed by the Endo brothers, who were Naoie's retainers. It is possibly the first long-range firearm assassination in recorded history.
The third one was the 1536 assassination of Robert Pakington. The British Member of Parliament was assassinated by an unknown murderer who used a handgun, the assassination was later interpreted as a martyrdom and the Catholic clergy was accused of orchestrating his assassination.

 

[A Grey Cat]

Trust fucking Australia to come up with a poisonous tree that literally explodes.

How is Antarctica is the continent with no plant life, little wildlife, harsh temperatures and weather and almost no people living there yet it's Australia that gets all the unbelievably scary things?

 

[AprilRains]

How is Antarctica is the continent with no plant life, little wildlife, harsh temperatures and weather and almost no people living there yet it's Australia that gets all the unbelievably scary things?

In Antarctica, it's the land that kills the animals.

In Australia, it's the animals that kill you.

 

[Foltest]

We all know that Christopher Lee was a badass in both film and real life (hunted down nazi, fought in the winter war etc)
He was also into heavy music and sang The Little Drummer Boy

 

[Positron]

Heptane is like the octane included in your auto fuel, only with one less carbon.

With one fewer carbon atom, Hexane is a neurotoxin. There is something special about this six-carbon compound that allows its metabolites to disrupt microtubes, a property it shares neither with the 5-carbon pentane nor the 7-carbon heptane.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

We all know that Christopher Lee was a badass in both film and real life (hunted down nazi, fought in the winter war etc)
He was also into heavy music and sang The Little Drummer Boy
https://youtube.com/watch?v=hiRjmD9h-YY

He could have become an opera singer instead of an actor, at one point that path looked more fruitful. After the war in the late 40's he was in Stockholm and while singing student songs with the locals a small guy, Jussi Björling as it turns out, came up to him and said that he should come by the Royal Opera in the morning. Björling is a legend, a huge name in opera at the time, and he straight up told Lee that if he could support himself in Stockholm for a couple of years they would train him for free and with time he would absolutely become one of the big names in opera. It was a fine offer but he didn't have the money to live there and he was already pursuing acting.

Half a century later he acted in The New Adventures of Robin Hood, the worst thing ever put on TV.

The New Adventures of Robin Hood (TV Series 1997–1999) - IMDb

Created by Sandra Weintraub, Tom Kuhn, Fred Weintraub. With Martyn Ellis, Richard Ashton, Barbara Griffin, Matthew Porretta. The legendary outlaw and his Merry Men battle evil around Nottingham and Sherwood Forest.

www.imdb.com

 

[A Grey Cat]

Before new line cinema, Wes craven almost made a nightmare on elm street for Disney. They were willing to buy the script and produce the film because like Wes they were desperate for a hit to stimulate business and get them out of financial trouble but had two conditions for the film. One it had to be PG that meant no sex or gore which was what we'd was well known for and two, the movie had to have a happy ending. Ironically Wes would have been fine with the second condition he wanted nightmare on elm street to have a happy ending and been a done in one story but wasn't willing to tone down the violence and so took the story to new line.




Somewhere out there is a timeline where a nightmare on elm street is on Disney plus

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Before new line cinema, Wes craven almost made a nightmare on elm street for Disney. They were willing to buy the script and produce the film because like Wes they were desperate for a hit to stimulate business and get them out of financial trouble but had two conditions for the film. One it had to be PG that meant no sex or gore which was what we'd was well known for and two, the movie had to have a happy ending. Ironically Wes would have been fine with the second condition he wanted nightmare on elm street to have a happy ending and been a done in one story but wasn't willing to tone down the violence and so took the story to new line.




Somewhere out there is a timeline where a nightmare on elm street is on Disney plus

You mean to tell me that Nancy Thompson could have been a Disney Princess?

 

[A Grey Cat]

You mean to tell me that Nancy Thompson could have been a Disney Princess?

I wouldn't say princess, Nancy actually took action and was a genuine badass, if anything Jessie would have the first male Disney princess...but then again like I said there would have only been one movie maybe and Wes had nothing to do with any of the sequels save for writing 3 and new nightmare