The totally useless (yet facinating) triva thread

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Is there some totally useless trivia that totally facinates you and you are dying to tell someone but cant seem to slide it into a conversation?

Well guess what you can post it here!

I will start:

Kudzu, which is an asian vine that grows very doctile in China and parts of Japan is a horticultural disaster to the deep south portions of the US. This vine because of hot humid climate and mild short winters has taken over the south eastern US. It is called, the vine that ate the south. It was brought in to prevent land erosion. Well it did achieve that, but where it was planted, it toppled trees and crushed houses and smothered the landscape with thick amazon-like vines. However the locals have found a few uses for it. Making baskets, making jelly out of the edible flowers and the roots can be used as a tonic to treat alcoholism.

During the construction of the Overseas Railroad in the Florida Keys, hurricanes greatly impeded progress and caused several bridges to have to be constructed more than once ...

... and so Henry Flager employed five different designs for the constructions of sections of the 7-Mile Bridge portion of his overall project there to be sure no single hurricane could ever destroy the entire thing!

Note: Many of the original bridges along that as-converted "Overseas Highway" (roadways added to former railroad bridges) still stand to this day because they have since proved too difficult to remove.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Railroad

Thats really interesting. Do people still travel on it??

Oh yes, but there is no more actual highway traffic on any of the old bridges. Today, the old bridges are only used for sight-seeing, fishing and as locations for occasional commercial-advertisement shoots.

Note: If you ever see a car on TV traveling along on a long bridge out over the ocean with no land anywhere within sight, that is almost certainly the old 7-mile bridge (with a camera crew possibly running alongside on the new bridge).

Henry Flagler built the railroad to Key West, but his funding could not outlast the hurricanes. So, he sold it to the US government, and then it got turned into a highway by using the railroad rails as guard rails along the sides and adding concrete surfaces to the bridges ...

... but then that resulted in two 8-1/2-foot-wide lanes -- rather narrow -- and trucks (and even cars) commonly either hit each others' mirrors or else scrubbed their tires on one side of the vehicle while trying to stay over as far as they could.

At the Bahia Honda State Park -- http://www.bahiahondapark.com/our-world ... aches.html -- Flagler had constructed a span bridge that did not have enough width for two traffic lanes inside, so the revised roadway was placed on top of the original structure (and is still a place where people like to go to (illegally) "high dive").

My "personal favorite" among the bridges in the Keys is/was at Jewfish Creek -- http://floridakeystreasures.com/bridges ... idge.shtml -- where it often used to get "stuck" in the open position (to allow sailboats to pass through) ...

... and then cranes would have to come from Miami and Key West, respectively, in order to lift the two sections slightly so the mechanics could get everything back into sync and working once again!

"Life's a breeze in the Florida Keys!"

Trivia question: What is the "Conch Republic" and how did it come to be?

Answer:

I wonder if they got the idea from a movie called "The Mouse that Roared." This is an excellent 1959 Peter Sellers comedy with this premise as its subject. The film involved a fictional European place called the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.

Did you know that a rhinoceros beetle can lift 800 times its own weight?

Here, in Poland, we often call wiener dogs not wieners as you do but ovaries. Why? Because a dachshund and an ovary sound here in Polish almost the same so those lovely doggies are often called for fun like the organs of female anatomy.

That is really funny!!

Did you know there is this micro organism that looks like a teddy bear under a microscope and is the world's most extreeme survivor since it can be frozen for thousands of years and just wake up when it thaws out, it can also survive deadly doses of radiation, can survive extreems in heat and cold, and even the vacuum of space?

Well that is one way to go about getting help. I never thought of that tactic.
Do you live in the Keys.

There is this Island off of the coast of Savannah, Ga that is inhabited by african american folks that were escaped slaves and they still practice their native african way of life. I forgot the name of the island though.

My wife and I moved back to Indiana in '89, and now we are in Louisiana.

I had not heard of the island near Savannah, and I wonder how/whether that might have changed over the years.

The 1883 eruption of the Indonesian volcano "Krakatoa" is regarded as the loudest sound in recorded human history.
It exploded with a force of 200 megatons, which is 4 times greater than the largest nuclear device ever detonated.
The eruption was distinctly heard more than 3000 miles away, and caused a shockwave that circled the globe 7 times.

My body has no use for corn.

Hitler's favourite drink was apple juice.

Velociraptors can run at speeds of up to 25m/s. The F-22 raptor can cruise at supersonic speeds on full military power.

Far as I know, it has changed very little and that is the beauty of it. It is a tourist destination and some great art comes out of there that is origional to that island.