Random fact thread

[Durandal 623]

In Victorian England, a commoner was not allowed to look directly at the Queen, due to a belief at the time that the poor had the ability to steal thoughts. Science now believes that less than 4% of poor people are able to do this.

 

[Catpone Cerberus 23,591]

When you take words Unicorn and Alicorn and brake them like this: Uni corn and Ali corn and then translate first part from Finnish you get ''Dreamcorn'' and ''Undercorn''

[I used to be a stranger 7,993]

A flock of crows is known as a murder.

Nearly three percent of the ice in Antarctic glaciers is penguin urine.

Dying is illegal in the Houses of Parliaments.

Human saliva has a boiling point three times that of regular water.

In the UK, it is illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas Day.

Sea otters hold hands when they sleep so they don’t drift away from each other.

New Jersey has a spoon museum that has over 5,400 spoons from across the world.

Anually over 2500 left-handed people are killed from using right-handed products.

Mel Blanc – the voice of Bugs Bunny – was allergic to carrots.

Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.

It snowed in the Sahara desert for 30 minutes on the 18th February 1979.

Slugs have 4 noses.

James Bond creator Ian Fleming also wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Over 1000 birds a year die from smashing into windows.

Hewlett-Packard’s name was decided in a coin toss.

Newborn white whales are black.

Cherophobia is the fear of fun.

Each year, there are more than 40,000 toilet related injuries in the United States.

None of the characters in Shakespear's plays smoke.

Allegedly, you can find out who "champ" is by reading the first letter of each sentence.

I signed in only to brohoof this comment.

 

Sine, Cosine and Tangent go on to infinity because the series formula that constitutes each of them is the sum of an unending series. Sine looks like this:

(π/180)*x - (π/180)³*(x³/3!) +(π/180)^5 *(x^5/5!) -(π/180)^7 *(x^7/7!) . . .

 

Before pocket calculators, engineers would perform trigonometry either by memorizing trigonometric numeral identies in common intervals (such as knowing sin(5), sin(10), sin(15)... by memory), or approximating therebetween.

 

Limitations on computation power such as this are why cars, planes and other vehicles were made of such simple angular or geometric shapes until around 1990, when computers came along that made precision curves and flows much easier.

Edited October 15, 2015 by Blue

[Star Racer 198]

Is this a destiny fan I see?

'Fraid not, good sir. I havent had the pleasure, mainly due to my lack of a reliable internet connection and time to invest in that game.

 

In tennessee, i hear its illegal to shoot a whale while in a moving vehicle. Sorry, rednecks.

(Dont say anything about me pointing out rednecks; i live with one, in tennessee, and i am just as trigger happy.)

[PenPal 121]

the sound Boos make in the super mario series are just a sped up bowser laugh.

[cmarston1 5,959]

The earth(and other planets) is/are round

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61L6hB7c1bg

[SugarfootWillie 383]

An optical illusion is created when reality contradicts the prediction your brain makes at 1/10th second intervals. 

[cuteycindyhoney 13,306]

Horses, like rats, can not vomit.

[Dawnchaser 🌄 8,088]

Fact - not all of these "facts" are true.

 

There is no proof that polar bears exhibit a "handedness".

They appear to use each paw equally.

 

 

However, polar bears are black.

 

 

 

They're black as in they have black skin. But the way light interacts with their transparent, hollow hair makes them look white

 

[Grtxkkyz 388]

Don't believe it? Take a look

[Dawnchaser 🌄 8,088]

 

Rüppell's griffon vulture is the highest recorded flying bird, unfortunately this was recorded at 37000' when one was ingested into an engine of an airliner

[MLPFanatic34 3,234]

Author Stephen King came up with the idea for Carrie while cleaning the women's locker room in his job as a school janitor.

[FancyHorse 1,209]

Feeling "In Love" has a similar brain chemical reaction as becoming high on cocaine.

[CheeryFox 23,821]

• By spring 2016, we may have a direct image of a black hole. 

Tea* has 10x the amount of antioxidants compared to that of fruits and veggies.

~ Long distances, humans can outrun almost any animal.

[Luna_tic 120]

Sheep are severely stupid and often commit suicide... Two common ways: Getting into a food storage and eating until their rumen or sometimes abomasum ruptures, causing sepsis.  When running they will slam into trees, fences, gates, houses, etc. and break their necks.

 

Dairy cattle tend to produce the most milk at temperatures between 40 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit, 4.4 to 10 degrees Celsius.

Edited October 17, 2015 by Luna_tic

[TerminalObsession 250]

There is a moth that looks like a bee for defense.

[I used to be a stranger 7,993]

Computer-generated 3D models are almost always made using one of two common media: Polygons or NURBS.

 

Polygons are interpolations of points. The locations of the points are what distinguishes the surface of the model in X,Y,Z coordinates, and can be "related" to one another using transformations, rotations and skeleton-like constraints. This type of model generation is often what people think of when they picture "3D models" because they are easy to texture and animate, and thus are nearly the only kind of 3D models ever seen in real-time applications, video games and movies.

 

 

NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational Basis Splines) are used in CNC design, computer-aided drawing, drafting, architecture, and other applications where the 3D model is turned into a real world object. 3D Printers convert polygon models into NURBS objects before they can be printed. NURBS are made with very similar tools to Polygon objects, except the computer works by connecting volumes (geometric objects) rather than interpolating points (lines and surfaces). The difference between a Polygon object and a NURBS object is that NURBS will have all of the points in space within its volume mathematically defined, whereas Polygons do not.

 

For example: look at the points on this character's face.

You can see that his nose looks smooth even though in the "wireframe mode", the smoothness is basically a computerized filter that is sub-dividing each square into smaller and smaller ones until it looks smooth.

 

A spline is actually smooth, rather than having the appearance of smoothness, since the curve is defined by a mathematical function.

Because every single point on the surface or inside the volume of a NURBS object can be calculated, machines can convert that precise information into movement in real-world space, and then instructions to machining tools, or as dimensions on a blueprint.

 

NURBS objects do not appear in animations very often because it is extremely difficult to make them calculate textures or deform them using a time-scale. Both of these tasks are very easy for Polygons.

[TerminalObsession 250]

These facts are not random. Each one was selected by a person.

[Chara 1,565]

Did you know that people discovered a new relative to the Human species????

[MoltenKitten 341]

The earth(and other planets) is/are round

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61L6hB7c1bg

False! The Earth and many other planets are oblate spheres meaning the are fatter on the equator

 

A group of ape are called a congress

It is illegal to play golf in the streets of Albany, NY

[icyfire 433]

The bumble bee bat is the smallest bat. It is super tiny and cute! 

This is not a joke! It is real!

Edited October 18, 2015 by icyfire888

[I used to be a stranger 7,993]

False! The Earth and many other planets are oblate spheres meaning the are fatter on the equator

 

You're both right!

Hydrostatic equilibrium is the internal forces of an object trying to "null" itself out in a gravity field. Aka, objects in space trying to take on a very lazy form, which generally consists of a sphere.

 

However, things in space aren't always going to form spheres because their own gravitational field is not the only gravitational force affecting them. (Structure of the object also plays its part, but planetary structural strength is often infinitesimal in comparison to its own Hill Sphere, which is why planets [and globs of juice] form ball-shaped objects, and spacecraft do not. The space shuttle's Hill Sphere is only about the size of a beach ball but the entire craft is larger than a private jet, and much more resilient than its own gravitational force, so it will never crumple into a ball.) Objects in orbit, as well as their own rotation will affect the shape of their hydrostatic equilibrium.

 

The Sun's gravity and mass are stupendous, which is why the Sun is actually the most spherical object yet observed in nature. If it had a surface, the highest mountain on the Sun would only be about an inch tall, and be spread over an area several times larger than the surface area of the entire Earth.

 

Haumea, a Trans-Neptunian dwarf planet, has an egg-shaped hydrostatic equilibrium due to its rotation, the influence of its moon, and its interactions with Neptune and Uranus. And it isn't alone with its surface irregularity.

 

It's fully possible for large planets and even stars to adopt unusual shapes as well.

[cmarston1 5,959]

As of right now (assuming you have seen every episode of FIM up to) we have watched 2420 minutes of MLP FIM or 40.33 hours of the show.

Edited October 19, 2015 by cmarston1

[MoltenKitten 341]

As of right now (assuming you have seen every episode of FIM up to) we have watched 2420 minutes of MLP FIM or 40.33 hours of the show.

But that assumes we only watched each episode once, and what about the movies?

[Star Racer 198]

A group of ape are called a congress

It is illegal to play golf in the streets of Albany, NY

Correction- Baboons.

 

A group of crows in known as a murder.

Being that a group takes three or more, only having two crows would be attampted murder.