Uninteresting trivial facts, add yours

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But he wasn't.

Alfred Nobel is said to have invented ballistite while he cut his thumb and wanted something to put on the wound. He dissolved cellulose nitrate in acetone (or ether, I don't remember, but both methods are possible) and it formed a plastery texture, that he put on the wound. As a true inventor, he just had to try it's explosive/burning properties and found out that it would be an excellent gunpowder.

Alfred Nobel was the first one taking nitroglycerine for his heart problems. His doctor supposed it to him. Funny thing is, he wouldn't take it at first, thinking it was rubbish, while the advice came from the doctor and wasn't his own idea.

Alfred Nobel had no formal university grade. He was a true autodidact. Today he probably couldn't have been an inventor at all.

Am I the only person who is finding most of these facts interesting?

No, I find them pretty exciting, which is the reason I memorized them once in the first place.

This thread needs a new title!

"Interesting intricate facts, add yours!"

The highest level one can achieve in Neverwinter Nights is 40... thus making it inferior, in the eyes of some, to World of Warcraft, wherein you can get to level 60.

Trying to stay true to the subject header, hope that's boring enough for y'all.

The metal bismuth has almost the same properties as lead, but is non toxic. It can be used as shots in shot guns and as bismuth trioxide instead of lead tetraoxide in crackling fireworks.

One of the many ways in which smoking cigarettes is bad for you, is that nicotine supresses the action of the little tentacle-lookin things in your lungs called vili (singular = vilus). When they are working properly, they move in a rhythmic fashion, pushing mucus out of the lungs and up into the oesophagus, where said mucus is either swallowed, or goes up into the nose to be sneezed or snorted out. So smokers have more mucus in their lungs, but less in their stomachs.

When you smoke cigar, you don't have to inhale the smoke into your lungs, because cigar smoke has about the same pH as the saliva and its nicotine is thus absorbed into the blood already in the mouth.

Shakespeare's tombstone has some absolutely terrible poetry.

The Russian City of St Petersburg is built on territory that 1617-1721 belonged to Sweden.

During the 30th year war they extracted potassium nitrate from corpses to make gun powder...

Bismuth is that the same stuff that goes in Pepto Bismol?

My mom takes nitroglycerin for her angina.

Does anybody know how somebody originally came up with the idea that nitroglycerin could help heart problems?

I very much doubt that.

It's actually ridiculously simple. While it was an explosive, Nobel's doctor thought that it'd be proper to make the blood vessels expand or give more "power" to the heart. It was a French physician, I think.