The totally useless (yet facinating) triva thread

Post Reply New Topic

That is interesting. I live near a base that repairs and builds fighter planes for the air force and sometimes, you know when they got one finished cuz you will hear a sonic boom that shakes the house and the plane breaks the sound barrier. I wonder what it is like for the pilot when he/she breaks the sound barrier??

Anyway here is my other useless but facinating trivia
Savannah Georgia is also the 3rd most haunted city in the US...I went on a ghost tour once, and saw a ghost and told the tour guide and he recogniozed the ghost immediatly and told the group about who she was. That was pretty wild but not the first time I saw a ghost that others have seen as well, without my knowing beforehand.

OK, impress your date with this one:

The banana plant is not a tree. It is, in fact, the largest herbaceous flowering plant in the world.

Vespasian: Roman General, 9th Emperor, and founder of the Flavian dynasty.

Vespasian was a no nonsense kind of guy who tried to put the Empire back on sound financial ground after the excesses of the Julio-Claudians (particularly Nero).

He gained a measure of immortality with his tax on urine from public toilets. Urine was a valuable commodity in the ancient world—used in tanning and as a source of ammonia to clean and whiten woolen togas. Public urinals in France (vespasiennes), Italy (vespasiani), and Romania (vespasiene) still bear his name.

Vespasian was also a witty guy. In response to criticism of his urine tax he coined the phrase, "Pecunia non olet" ("Money does not stink") and his last words were reported to be “Væ, puto deus fio”( "Oh! I think I'm becoming a god!"), a parting shot at the Imperial cult he disdained.

Did you know that the Australian platypus is a mammal which breastfeeds its cubs, lays eggs, has a venomous sting at his feet (male only) and has a kind of organ which allows it to feel electric fields ?
Did you know that when a British scientist bring back to Great Britain the first naturalized platypus, people thought the animal itself was an hoax ?

The waterbear (or "tardigrada", latin word for "which walks slowly") is a really fascinating animal. Because of its toughness (it can survive harsh conditions that we can't meet on Earth), some people believe it's originally alien organism.

Dr. Joseph Mengele was a German physician and a SS Officer in a Nazi concentration camp. He had two doctorate degrees, one from Munich University in anthropology and the other from Frankfurt University in medicine. He was known for performing experiments on the inmates. He was called the Angel of Death. He liked to do experiments on twins and dwarfs.

Eye Color

He thought he could change the eye color of the children by injecting chemicals into their eyes. He would take a set of twins and use one of them to test his theory of eye color change on. Although, it never worked he kept trying.

Siamese Twins

He wanted to see what would happen if he created is own set of conjoined twins. He took a set of twins and sewed them together. He supervised the surgery, which included a resection done on the twin’s hands. Their hands became infected and caused them to have gangrene.

Sterilization

He wanted to test methods to sterilize young women. He subjected a number of them to shock treatments and surgeries. Most of them died, due to the infections the surgery caused or during the procedures.

Blood Transfers

He would drain the blood from one twin and transfer it to the other. He wanted to see if it would change anything in the other twin. He killed a number of them this way, because he would drain them too much.

Germs

He would inject a child with a lethal germ. He wanted to study the various stages of how they would react to it.

Sex Change

He would perform a sex change operation on one twin. He wanted to see if they would react differently being of the opposite sex then as the same sex.

Pregnancies

He wanted to see what kind of children would come from a brother/sister pair. He was interested in knowing if it was even possible to happen. Every girl that became pregnant while in the concentration camp, under Dr. Mengele’s care, was due to coincest.

Isolation Endurance

He wanted to know if twins could survive without each other. He would separate them to see which one could go the longest without the other one. He would lock them up separately without the company of anyone and wait it out.

Removal

For some reason the thought of twins fascinated him. He wanted to study every aspect of twins. He was known to pick a pair and put them on surgery tables, then he would inject their hearts with chloroform, instantly killing them both. He would then begin the removal of their limbs and organs for the purpose of studying them to the fullest extent

^^^ that was rather disturbing

The "Jack Jumper Ant" of Australia holds two unique records within the animal kingdom:
- One is for having the fewest number of chromosomes. They have just a single pair, which is the lowest amount even possible.
- They also have some of the most powerful venom of the insect world. In Tasmania, these ants cause more deaths than spiders, snakes, wasps, and sharks combined.

Oh, wow. He was certainly interested in twins.

Did you know that most of the fruits we call berries are not real berries? Some examples of real berries are watermelons, pumpkins, tomatoes, bananas, and grapes.

The islands of Socotra comprise the most isolated landform on earth that is NOT of volcanic origin.
Due to a rift in a tectonic plate, the archipelgo broke off from Africa some 10 million years ago.
Today it is something of a time-capsule for relict plant and animal species that are found nowhere else on earth.