Consider this your opportunity to spout off all the useless information you can think of (just not all in one post). Hopefully, this will be a stream-of-consciousness kind of thing where one person's piece of trivia reminds you of something similar (but not necessarily).

What do the movies: The Rundown, Surf Ninjas, and Red Sonja, all have in common?
Actor Ernie Reyes Junior

He was born in San Jose, Ca

The 'spot' on 7UP comes from its inventor who had red eyes. He was an albino.

This post is completely useless.

I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves.

How do you get "on" a nerve?

I don't know. It's an expression

"It" is an expression?

so is "hotter than a tin roof" or something like that.

Aren't the posts supposed to be tied into each other?

Not necessarily.

I was just trying to get on Emperor's nerves so I could use that as one of my trivial facts.

They don't have to be tied to each other, no.  It's cool if they do, of course.

I have to deal with my obnoxious 8 year old cousin on a weekly basis, getting on my nerves is significantly harder.

A bone cell is called an osteocyte

That fact is too useful!  :)

I had an anatomy professor who had cancer and they had to cut out his vagus nerve; that is the nerve that tells you when you are hungry, so he could not ever tell if he was hungry or full.

The vagus nerve does a lot more than that.  It controls quite a bit.  crazy that he had it removed.  Was it a partial removal or full?

The Vagus nerve is the X cranial nerve, unless I forgot that.

let me rephrase as, "that's one thing it does..."  He didn't seem to have any other side effects, and besides, it was have it cut or die of cancer.

what type of cancer would only effect that nerve?  Usually if cancer is in the nervous system you're SOL

It has been 22 years since I took that class so I really don't recall the details; but he was one of the most well respected doctors in the country with connections, and I think it was experimental surgery done by a top surgeon...

This is going back in my memory, but as I recall, they had to cut the vagus nerve to access the cancer in the brain.  I don't recally exactly where the cancer was located or if it was attacking the nervous system.

oh okay, that makes a little more sense.  If it was in the brain it'd be different enough, in my understanding.  Still kind of crazy what they can do with medicine, and that was 22 years ago

It was more like 30 years ago because he had long since recovered by then.

Back to happier trivia:

An iron maiden had a drain built in to drain the blood of its victim.

well I guess it'd be rather messy otherwise.

A rat can last longer without water than a camel.

Hiphopmonstrosesequipedaliophobia is the fear of long words.

The steroids if ancient Rome were dried boar’s dung; Chariot racers often took a drink made from the dung before major events

I'm afraid of trying to pronounce Hiphopmonstrosesequipedaliophobia

My room has been nicknamed Ground Zero.

violets are blue

I can't sleep at the moment.

My Birthday was yesterday

I wasn't aware it was Ari's birthday yesterday.

No one here was, I think.

Every time I remember a piece of useless trivia, I forget what it was by the time I post a reply to this thread.

Ari finally hit 10 Royalty claims.

Recently, China outlawed any movie, book or other media that has time travel in it because such things may distort and disrespect the past.

(Funny, and here I thought all time travel stories were supposed to 100% fact based...)

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks, otherwise it will digest itself.

The name Santos means "Saints", and yes.. I am... _{If you're not a villager...}

A raisin dropped in a fresh glass of soda will bounce up and down continually from the bottom of the glass to the top.

The oldest Z-ombie in the cast list who has actually logged on / posted is:

Name       Group     Last Logon          Last Post            # of Posts
SoulCR     Z NPC     Thu 27 Mar 2003     Mon 10 Mar 2003      80

This message was last edited by the player at 07:22, Sat 16 Apr 2011.

I thought you were removed from ASWoT if you didn't post in a year?

nope, just zombified.

He stopped posting 3 days after I joined, and he was delicio... er... no I don't know what happened to him.  Why do you ask?

There are four cars and eleven light posts on the back of a $10 dollar bill.


It just seems odd to memorialize people who've only posted 80 times.

I think Memorializing people who have only posted 80 times is pretty useless.

have to agree

Glad to hear it.

Santos has a brain the size of a peanut, it's 17 meters and something.

12 feet across and 700 lbs actually.

ahh thanks, I forgot that useless piece of trivia

The movie Highlander is being remade. Huzzah!

...but by the Lady who wrote the script for Twilight. :(

Last year, I took the deposition of one of the actors in the upcoming movie "Water for Elephants."  I had to work around the shooting schedule and do it on a Saturday.

Hawaii is further south than Florida.

There is a lot of water in the ocean

315 entries in Webster's 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.

The full name of Prince William is:  His Royal Highness Prince William Arthur Philip Louis, Duke of Cambridge, Early of Strathearn, Baron Carrickfergus, Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Master of Arts.

That's a mouthful!

A shrimp's heart is in its head. :O

The way to a man's heart is through his stomach.  :)

And here I thought it was through the rib cage... shame on me for trying to think! lol

Mmmm...ribs.  I'm getting hungry.

Brownies are the root of all hunger.  So says I.

The Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2 didn't make it to America on the NES.  Instead America got the Japanese game Doki Doki Panic reskinned with Mario characters as Super Mario Bros. 2.  On the American version of the SNES game Super Mario All-Stars America finally got the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 with upgraded graphics titled as Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels.

Interestingly enough some abilities and baddies introduced in the American version of Super Mario Bros. 2 carry over into other games.  Birdo, Snifits, and Shy-guys were all introduced in the game and were truly never intended for the Mario universe.  Luigi's high and difficult to control jumps carry over into most of the games and Peach's powers make up the majority of her special moves in the smash bros. series.

What is it with us and Japan with video games? I mean, just look at the Final Fantasy series: they sent us FF1 just fine, sure, but then what happened? Did they send us FF2? Nope. Or FF3? Not that one either. Nope, they sent us FF4 and titled it FF2. Okay, I suppose that makes a little bit of sense.

So then you figure they'd send over FF5 and call it 3. Wrong again. They skipped 5 and sent us 6 labelled 3 instead. Did they think we wouldn't notice? I mean really, sure, the internet wasn't as booming a source of new information as it is now, but we still had telephones. And airplanes.

Have you noticed that kids today barely know how to look at a globe, but can text at warp speed?

Osama Bin Laden is dead.

The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

Bugs like cockroaches and silverfish (along with plenty other smaller ones) like to eat the sticky part of the envelope and the glue on the inside of books.

Think of that next time you lick that envelope!

I don't lick those... ewwwww.

The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.

The pokemon episode "Electric Soldier Porygon" induced seizures in thousands of Japanese people.  When reports were made about the incident the scene that caused the seizures was shown causing even more seizures.

Now that was a brilliant move...

Yitzhak Rabin never served a full term as Prime Minister of Israel.  3 years into his first term he resigned and 3 years into his second term he was assassinated.

Only two U.S. presidents have been impeached:  Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton

The tv show ER was originally planned as a movie to be directed by Steven Spielberg. When plans fell through and the project eventually became a series, Spielberg became interested in another Michael Crichton creation: Jurassic Park.

A traditional bread box is usually large enouh to house two loaves of bread.

Canned bread does in fact exist.

The burrowing boodie of Australia is the only kangaroo in the world that lives underground.

The Ottoman Empire existed until the end of World War I when the Young Turk movement took power of the country.

Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches

The average chimp is 5 to 7 times stronger than the average human

The last time the United States officially declared war was against Japan in 1941.  It has been 70 years since America was at war.

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history; Spades - King David; Clubs - Alexander the Great Hearts - Charlemagne; and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

Then why is the King of Hearts always committing suicide?

For the last 10 years the only Chinese food menu item I have ordered is chicken egg foo young

The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."

Great Expectations originally had an entirely different ending but since the book was released in serial format Dickens changed it just before it was released.

The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

Humans are closer genetically to chimps than gorillas.

An ostrich's eye is bigger that it's brain.

I found the chimp trivia while trying to find out what the true average strength of a man is.

In Cleveland, Ohio, it's illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.

The Wii was created because Nintendo's Gamecube didn't make enough money to allow for the creation of a next generation console.  Instead they made a gimmicky console with last generation graphics severely limiting the third party content.

Humans are the only primates that don't have pigment in the palms of their hands.

In Pa if a married woman gets pregnant by another man. It is the husbands legal responsibility to pay for the child's upkeep.

On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.

Paizo publishing released information that they will be creating a Beginner's Box for Pathfinder!

If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

Now I am holding my lighter in the toes of my other foot.

Five Jell-O flavors that flopped: celery, coffee, cola, apple, and chocolate

The NES was originally sold as a toy because there was a videogame crash after the fall of Atari and stores refused to shelve videogame consoles.

Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.

Now I am holding my lighter in my left hand.

In the original script for Star Wars Han Solo was not meant to be human.

I just got the facepalm award in question tennis. So I read the rules.

Rip you might want to use this thread for trivia.  This does not usually include what just happened to you.  For example:

Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment describing an event which creates a paradox.  The paradox is a bit complicated but it ends up creating a cat that is simultaneously alive and dead.

In marvel superheroes normal is the average strength of a human.

Superman did not always the ability to fly.  For part of the golden age he could only hop really high. I always wondered what the scene in the original Superman movie (where he flies with Lois Lane) would be like if he only had that power.

The longest word in Albanian is Kundërzhurmëkrijuesabërësave.

Today the Egyptian pyramids are actually located more than 3 miles south of where they were built due to the earth's shifting surface.

Their is a squid that has biological immortality.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t...ve1B9K4Q&cad=rja

The phrase 'Mind your P's and Q's' stems from old times when ales were sold by the pint or quart. Minding your p's and q's meant not to drink too much.

Bill Clinton made it illegal to talk to aliens.

Elvis just went home.

Tom Hank's acting career debuted with Mazes and Monsters a movie essentially about Dungeons and Dragons!

The percent of colors in M&M candies: 30% brown, 20% yellow and red, 10% orange, green, and tan.

Vulcans almost didn't have pointed ears because the studio thought people might associate them with demons.

Leonard Nimoy is rumored to voice Smaug the dragon in the Hobbit.

Anne Hathaway is playing Catwoman in Dark Knight Rising.  Not sure if that will be good or bad.

there are 5 elements in Naruto earth,wind,fie,lightning and water

Those are the base elements.  If I remember correctly some people can combine two and form new elements such as wood or ice.

And here I thought the base elements were Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, Heart.  Go Captain Planet!

According to Avatar their are 4 elements. (Earth, Water, Air, and Fire)
However, each element has dominance over other natural things such as plants, lightning, blood, ice, and metal.

In Legend of the Five Rings, the elements are Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Void.  Each has their own dragon.

In Erfworld the three elements are life, motion, and matter.

My D&D campaign has over 10,000 posts.

I walked to a breakfast diner this morning.

Achievements have been added to minecraft without me knowing!

The CDC has now posted how you can properly prepare for a zombie apocalypse on their official site.

This is a true fact:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...he-cdc_n_863900.html

In reply to Heath (msg #124):

In all honesty, that's just a cover for a legitimate weather or natural disaster preparedness kit. Still, pretty funny that someone as credible as the CDC is using zombies as a means to get people to listen to what they're saying.

You had to go and blow it!  Yeah, it's all a big comedic stunt to tell you how to be prepared for natural disasters.  That's why there's an asterisk that says these preparations are also useful for earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.  CNN had a story on it this weekend.

I watched that same (for lack of better words) episode today

Christopher Robin was an actual person who lost his stuffed animal 'Piglet' in the Hundred Acre Woods (Ashdown Forest).

My friends and i played Gurps until 2 in the morning

1/100 of a second is called a "jiffy".

there are many different types of peanut butter

Order of the Stick's goblins are medium sized.

i have a lot of debt

I like pie

Pikachu comes from two Japanese onomatopoeias.  "Pika" is the sound a squeaking mouse makes and "Chu" is the sound of thunder.

Sean Connery is secretly still a spy for the British Government

The number of digimon is unclear since they are not numbered or released in generations like Pokemon are.

Mace Windu's lightsaber is the same color as Jaina Solo's in the expanded universe

Paper is not canon is Star Wars.

Stars are pretty

Harley Quinn was originally created for the Batman Animated series but proved so popular she was imported into the comic books as canon.

I just lost the game

Blizzard's Starcraft was the first RTS game to try and create teams with very different playstyles but balance.

Blizzard's WoW is one of the most made fun of MMO's

the sun is very very very hot

(Can we try to get some actual trivia?)

Ariel was the only episode of Firefly not to have all 9 core characters.  Shepherd Book played by Ron Glass was missing.

my feet smell like cows

(real trivia? is not really useless)



To make green you add yellow and blue.

Battlestar Galactica's "Eye of Jupiter" plot was made up after season two and the foreshadowing for it was unintentional.

there are two different versions of Battlestar Galactica

(I just meant something like "My feet smell" isn't really trivia.)

Technically there are 3 Battlestar Galactica continuities..

(what are the 3?)



a lot of TV series are being remade as well s movies.

The first was in 1978, the second in 1980, and the third in 2003 (2005 for the series).

You also forgot Caprica, so that makes 4.

(I think it is an undisputed fact that the 1980 one was the worst.  Just love those flying cycles.)
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:59, Tue 07 June 2011.

Does Caprica really count?  I never watched it but does the battlestar itself make an appearance?

And yes I agree that 1980 was the worst.

The point was that it's part of the continuities, so I think it counts.

I hear that they're making a new mini-series this year and are hoping it will evolve into its own series like NBG.

In Chrome, clicking the button that purports to take you to the bottom of an RPoL thread actually only takes you about  quarter of the way there.

TNT = Trinitrotoluene (An explosive)

There are 0010 types of people in this world. Those who know binary and those who don't.

The Playstation Vita will only be $250!

Each year, the average American consumes nearly two 14-ounce bottles of ketchup. Ketchup is found in 97 percent of U.S. households, beating salt, pepper, and sugar.

Captain America was not one of the original avengers.

Matsushita Electric was promoting a Japanese PC for internet users. It came with a Japanese Web browser courtesy of Panasonic. Panasonic had licensed the cartoon character "Woody Woodpecker" as the "Internet guide."

The day before a huge marketing campaign was to begin, Panasonic stopped the product launch. The reason: the ads featured the slogan "Touch Woody - The Internet Pecker." An American at the internal product launch explained to the stunned and embarrassed Japanese what "touch woody" and "pecker" meant in American slang.

The term "sniper" is derived from "snipe", which is a bird that was difficult to hunt. The term dates back to the 18th century.

Sending people on snipe hunts is a fun way to watch people make fools of themselves.

Stephen King threw out Carrie, and he nearly gave up on the project when his wife fished it out, read it, and told him he should write it.

I heard about that actually. There was another famous book that almost got thrown out I remember hearing about... I think it was something by Poe? I can't recall anymore.

I don't know but Poe's most famous poem The Raven made him only $9.

In the song "Chasing Cars" by snow patrol,

He only says the phrase "chasing cars" once...

In The Crucible by Arthur Miller the word Crucible is never used.

Clowns often scare children...

Koumpounophobia is the fear of buttons.

Amish people don't use buttons -- too sexy or too sexual!

Georgia is the most literate country in the world rounding to 100.0%.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:10, Tue 06 Sept 2011.

I'm confused on the statement above.  You type "county."  Do you mean the country Georgia in the former USSR or the state Georgia in the U.S.?  Then again, I know you can't mean the state Georgia...

Sorry about that.  I meant the country but I had a typo and got county.

That says a lot about how literate you are.  :)  (Just joking!)

iPhone auto-correct autocorrects my name!  And I can't correct it to add my name to the dictionary/lexicon!
Thanks Apple!

England: A pregnant woman can legally relieve herself absolutely anywhere she wants; even, if she so requests, in a policeman’s helmet.

Many new 3D feature films are shot 2d and made 3D in post-production, which generally looks bad AND adds approx $10k per minute (!) to the cost.

I'm not really a fan of 3D yet, anyway.

The reason Trigun has underlying Christian meaning is because the creator converted from Buddhism to Christianity shortly before making the series.

Did you know, that in ancient Greece there was a tradition in some city-states where once a year the people would get together and vote out the most hated person in the city? Sorta like Survivor: Athens, or something like that. They would break pottery into shards and each person would get one shard to write a name on, and the winner (or loser) would be banished! This is why the Greek word for pottery was Ostrakon, which is where we get our word Ostracize.

There, doesn't knowing that make you feel more complete?

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii is completely flipped from the Gamecube version.

FourLegged was the first poster in the 25,000 Post Club, the 10,000 Post Club, and the 5,000 Post Club.

Both the Elder Scrolls and Ultima series of games were originally based off the D&D campaigns of the creators.

The new Conan movie had *no* really good Gothic instrumental orchestral pieces -- making it musically inferior (along w/acting & writing inferior) to the Arnold Schwarzzenegger Conans of yore.  And that's a pretty sad statement!

Pikmin 3 has been officially announced but no information has yet been given.

Toward the beginning of the movie "127 Hours," there is a reference to a party at the "park" near the "old motel" in Green River, Utah; that old motel was established by my great grandparents during the depression, and they ran it for over 50 years until their deaths, and my mother as a child used to play in that park (and I'd go there for family reunions as a young child) -- talk about perking my ears up during a movie!

Peanuts are one of the ingredients to dynamite.

Mustard gas is not good on hot dogs.

A scientist recently argued that they'd proven that male ejaculate has anti-depressent qualities for women.

Karaoke means "Empty Orchestra" in Japanese.

the world is gonna end this year.

Superman appears in every episode of Seinfeld.

Real Steel was a movie about virtual robots fighting as though they were real -- except lacking the reality of physics.

Seinfeld appears in no episodes of Superman.

Unless you count The Adventures of Seinfeld & Superman, of course.

According to Arkansas legal code 1-4-105, Arkansas must be pronounced "Ar-kan-SAW."

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

Actual court transcript:

Judge: Any erason you can't serve as juror?
Juror: I don't want to be away from my job that long?
Judge: Can't they do without you at work?
Juror: Yes, but I don't want them to know that.

Starcraft was originally supposed to be a game set in the Warhammer 40k universe.
Terran - Space Marines
Protoss - Eldar
Zerg - Tyranid

Diablo III comes out soon

The Avengers comes out soon!

The Avengers is out!

Hauntings, ghost sightings, and "unexplained feelings of dread" are most likely explained by infrasound.

That's right, science solved ghosts!

To praguepride: High EMF frequencies can also cause paranoia, the feeling of being watched and similar explanations for ghosts and hauntings, at least in some cases.  (Of course, neither your explanation nor mine explains ghosts caught on video or audiotape.)

New one:

In 1967, 36 year old Maxcy Filer took the California bar exam and failed.  He took the test again...and again...and again.  Finally, on his 47th try, he passed it in 1991.

A refinery caught fire but Chevron announced, while it was burning, "everything is fine" but at the same time, "if you live nearby, stay inside and close your windows."

Does ANYONE trust Chevron?!??!

Every episode of the big bang theory is titled with a physics reference melded with a sub plot to the concurrent episode

It is illegal in Tennessee for an atheist to hold a public office.

From roughly the 11th to the 19th century a group of French people known as the Cagots were a prosecuted and despised minority similar to the Dalits of India.  However, unlike other oppressed minorities the only marker of a Cagot was Cagot ancestry.  They were not distinguished for any physical marker or religious reason.  Historians have been struggling to understand why this group even exists and have come with a variety of explanations as to why they came to be hated but none of them are widely accepted as possible let alone true.

The first President to drive in a vehicle was William McKinley. After being shot, he was taken to the medical center in a 1901 Columbia electric ambulance.

Pound for pound, a pound weighs roughly a pound.

Children are hereditary.  Don't believe me?  You were born from parents, right?

Say a couple chooses not to have children, or they only have children of one sex. They will have ended a successive line of men/women which goes back to the beginning of life on this planet.

Sadly, my family suffers from a long line of parents.

If you add up the post count of all the players in The Cast, (both active and inactive,) you have far too much time on your hands.

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
442,378  Thank you, spreadsheet.

---

I was just wondering about that.  Nice way to figure out a solution!  Almost half a million posts for ASWoT (not counting the posts of people who were removed).  Surely, that's a record.

Relative to the half million post count, my post count isn't that much.

It's less than 9% of the total.

But taken by person, we've had upwards of 300 players here over the years, which means the average is about 1500 posts per person, and this means you are equal to about 27 other players on this board.

But if you eliminate the players with fewer than 100 posts, my ratio isn't nearly as extreme.

The average post count of everyone with 100 or more posts is about 3,300 and that puts me at the combined post count of about 12 other players on this board.

Still, not too shabby...

By the way, everyone should avoid clicking on Heath's name too.  That's one sad looking dog(?)

The tissue box next to me is blue with flowers on it.

The U.S. government has shut down 17 times in the past 38 years.

USPS is not affected by government shutdowns.

Politicians still get paid during a government shutdown.

And so do all government employees, even though they're not working.

And so does Lois Lerner, even though she's not working and still taking the Fifth.

In Dice Wars, one can have up to eight dice stored up on a territory.

In Vietnam, the Vietnam War is referred to as the "American War."

If you microwave Ivory soap, it looks really cool.

You've done this?

If you put a bullet in the fire it will explode...or so I'm told.

The tip of hollow tipped bullet are not hollow, they are filled with polymer.

The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.

The chess timer style where each player is given a starting amount of time and then additional time for each move completed is called a Fischer timer.

Not myself, no. My mom won't let me make that big of a mess. :)

Youtube it, it looks so cool.


Also, the Non-Newtonian fluid made by combining cornstarch and water, when placed on top of a speaker, will dance.

I think I saw them doing that on the Big Bang Theory.


The 'spot' on 7UP comes from its inventor who had red eyes. He was an albino.

Albinos tend to have vision problems.

Water absorbs light at wavelengths near six microns.

John Wilkes Booth's brother once saved the life of Abraham Lincoln's son.

Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

within the years 2003 to 2005, the first two years of the ASWOT birth, Despyzer only ever took the throne with his second non-rule based post, he held it for precisely 13 minutes, and then never attempted to claim the throne again.

Though Despyzer created the throne, I was the first to ever take it.

Though GPT is both considered unusual and far to long, it is not the first abnormally long name, nor the most confusing.  In reality Leah (disorder M. Goddess) is the longest name of ASWOT, and there are plenty of names with just as much oddness as GPT, Qyv, and Yzma being just two of them.

I miss Leah.

I wish I had known Leah, and Rubberduck, and Doulos, and Despyzer, and Raz, and Confused.brit, and all those ASWOT actives whom made everybody else seem simply boring.

It was a gold plated age.

Yoss joined ASWOT in 2005, and immediately began to challenge FourLegged for first place on the throne.

In reply to Just a girl passing through (msg # 248):

Doulos is still around.  He posts occasionally on a religion board I'm at.  He also was a player in my long-running (15 years now) D&D game here on RPoL.  He decided to leave his character in a tavern drinking his worries away, so a couple years later I NPC'd him.  He was finally killed by a demon called a Bonedrinker, and his body was burnt to ashes by lightning.

Yoss was given access to ASWOT by Leah.

Despyzer once sent Heath a message saying Heath's creation of the "God Game" was in his opinion the best game ever created on ASWoT.

Despyzer seemed to want a much more serious waste of time.  (Meaning, more thought put into each post.)

It was weird to get a private message from him, even back in 2005.

Before 2007, the Wanted Players forum did not allow more than one post per thread per week.

This recently recorded fact was eye-popping news to me:

The CIA has conducted 378 drone strikes in the program’s 10-year history. Of those, 326 are classified as “Obama strikes.” The total number of people killed by drones is estimated at 2,528 to 3,648. Civilian casualties are estimated at 416 to 948, with 168 to 200 of those being children. As many as another 1,545 are estimated to have been injured in those strikes. Obama told aides in connection with the CIA's drone program that he is “really good at killing people.”

Source?

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.  http://www.thebureauinvestigat...nes/drones-pakistan/

Apparently, it is also the subject of a new book coming out.

I wonder how out of context that statement was, though. I could easily picture even the most kind-hearted of people saying something like that, if it was in the context of them feeling regret that they had to make a hard decision. It could be, in his mind, that it was the lesser of two evils.

Now, don't think I'm defending everything Obama does - far from it. I am, however, going to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

I don't know the complete context, but it was made directly regarding the drone program.  It's a gaffe, I'm sure, but no less so than some of Bush's.

Useless Fact: I bought my first sports car for my birthday last week.  I can never go back to 4 or 6 cylinders again.

We currently have 50830 posts.

Here's the full article on zedonks, with several other versions of the name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebroid

You know that there is a type of currency based on time, and a type of currency that is more digital based than anything else?

Time Dollars; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_currency

Bitcoins; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

Also there is a story in song form about some guy killing some other guy as revenge on his mother, it isn't all that important but it is kind of cool; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0CR1IJKMPo

There is no evidence that an iron maiden was ever actually used for torture or execution, and it is widely believed that it was not.

Really? Wow, I was completely oblivious to that

In reply to Heath (msg # 265):

So what was it for?

I had heard of the Bitcoin before, but not time-based dollars - I think that is the best currency ever invented, as it requires people to actually work in order to get something.

In reply to PrettyBirdie (msg # 268):

I think you missunderstand how currency works.  Just because it's backed by time doesn't mean that you personally put in time.  Just like a Federal Reserve Note means that someone is in debt, it doesn't mean that YOU are in debt.

True. The same way the dollar used to (technically does) represent gold, but now it's the green paper itself that is the currency... I get that. But if we could somehow make it so that it did mean actual work, it would be much nicer.

In reply to PrettyBirdie (msg # 270):

Well, the time-currency DOES represent time, but you have to ask WHOSE time?  And the FRN (that we call Dollar even though it's not) has not been connected with gold for a very long time.

In reply to Yoss (msg # 267):

The iron maiden is fictional; it is believed that they were pieced together from artifacts found in museums to create spectacular exhibition pieces, and probably resulted as a misinterpretation of a medieval schandmantel ('mantle of shame').

Interesting.  Makes you wonder what else we're wrong about.

The systems for economy obviously, though it doesn't seem we're ever going to get that one right

Did you know, Alex trebek has never really left jeopardy, having been on even the first ever episode in 1984 (my parents were just getting into highschool back then @.@

1984 was a good year; Reagan beat Mondale by a landslide, and luckily the year didn't turn out as George Orwell had predicted.

I loved that book - I really enjoy the "prediction" type books, when the time period the "predicted" has already passed. I think my favorite author of the type is Jules Verne - the "man who invented the future".

Did you know that Jules Verne predicted many kinds of technology that eventually came true? Some of those include the electric submarine, newscasts, solar sails, lunar modules, splashdown spaceships, videoconferencing, and tasers.

And H.G. Wells predicted a Time Machine and an invasion from Mars...oh, wait, those haven't happened yet. :)

uh good luck on the invasion from mars, although an invasion from somewhere else is quite possible...

Maybe Pluto, haha, sorry, ummm, trivia:
The real fairytale stories from our past, the original versions anyway, are a lot more grim than the newer generations' versions tell

A standard "Letter" size paper measures 11" by 8.5"

Reagan made 8.5" x 11" the paper size for U.S. federal forms in the early '80s

"The Godfather" is considered the #2 best movie ever made, beat by "Citizen Kane" at #1.

Don't you mean a lot more... "Grimm"?

Okay, I'm sorry, that was horrible, but I couldn't resist...




Yeah...




Uh... most American car horns honk in the key of F.

I knew about CK, but didn't know what #2 was.

All the computers in the world put together between the years of 1964 and 1968 would not equal the computing power of one iPhone 5.

Really?
People who watch Doctor Who are petitioning that the new Doctor keep his original Scottish accent, and it worked! *Squeal*

Since sleep talking (somniloquy) happens outside of conscious awareness, it isn't admissible in a court of law.

You know there's a musical construct that happens in the middle of a harmonica and a piano; Melodica!

Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand while drawing with the other.

You will not find Mountain Dew in Japan.  The reason is not because they hate it (for most have probably never tasted it); instead, the reason is because a chemical in Mountain Dew is illegal in Japan.

Woah, do you know what the chemical is and what it does?  I drink Mountain Dew...

I forgot--it's got one of those long chemical names that is banned in Japan and several European countries.  I drink it too, one of the few diet sodas I like.

Keep in mind that many medicines available in the U.S., like cough medicine, as well as the Pill, are also not available in Japan for similar reasons.

But you can go buy a dead snake immersed in a jar of some bizarre concoction that looks a bit like Mountain Dew; it's supposed to help with arthritis.

Super Mario 64 war originally planned to be a co-op game.  It would take 17 more years for a co-op 3D Mario platformer to be released in the form of Super Mario 3D World.

Valentine's Day Fun Fact: By law in Florida, only the missionary position is legal.

Shockingly (or not so shockingly) Kim Jong Un got 100% of the vote in North Korea.

Los Angeles' full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula."

The Japanese world cup team's mascot is Pikachu!

Oculus Rift was just sold to Facebook for 2 billion.  I thought Sony was screwing Oculus over when the Sony VR goggle was just announced, when PS3/4 developers have already been looking at what they could do with Oculus, but perhaps Sony knew what was in the wings.

Stephanie Meyer and I graduated from the same school in the same year, and Aaron Eckhart graduated a year before me.  I sometimes wonder if I took classes with them and never even knew it, particularly in literature and the arts...

I'm certain that your grades in English class were higher than those of Ms. Meyers.

Probably.  I got all A's in English classes, but I was pre-med then, so science was more my focus.  On the up side, i got to work with human cadavers.

That's not a nice thing to say about your coworkers.

Back then, I was young, and working with the bodies sometimes gave me very vivid and disturbing dreams.

I had strange and disturbing dreams about salmon.

Google Chrome spellcheck doesn't natively recognize "quesadilla".  I thought Google was from California?  Also, in unrelated news, it apparently doesn't recognize "spellcheck" or "natively" either.

The median annual salary for economists is $93,070, which they’d probably say is more meaningful than their average salary of $101,450.

Thanks Heath.  I immediately felt embarrassed after finding that funny.

Both that median and average salary are the actual numbers, by the way.  I didn't post it only as a joke...well, maybe, but as a "true" joke.

My embarrassment is in no way eased by the unintentionally humorous nature of the trivia.

As I understand it, there is no occupation where the median salary is higher than the average salary.  That's just the way payscales tend to be in this world.

That's why you should be paid in WOTs. :)

WOTs sure would make life a whole lot easier.

The question mark came from a monk habit of writing the Latin word for question, quo, at the end of sentences. Over time, the letters were written vertically to save space and morphed into the ? we write today. Similarly, the exclamation point came from the Latin word "Lo", meaning something important that should be heeded. (Lo and behold...)

Tipping comes from back in the day when you would bribe criminals not to physically hurt you.

Emperor Justinian of the Byzantine Empire was born a peasant.

All twelve of Marvel's MCU films are currently rated fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

Two men were brought up on federal hacking charges when they exploited a bug in video poker machines and won half a million dollars. His lawyer argued, "All these guys did is simply push a sequence of buttons that they were legally entitled to push." The case was dismissed.

On IMDB, there is one and only one movie which is judged on a scale of one to eleven to eleven stars. Every other movie is rated on a ten point scale. That movie is "This Is Spinal Tap".

Huh, is that a reference to something in the movie?  I've never seen it.

A key moment in the mockumentary is when the guitarist shows how the amplifier goes from 1 to 11, instead of the normal 1 to 10, for volume.

EDIT:
Wow, believe it or not, there's a Wikipedia article about it.  Enjoy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_to_eleven
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:33, Fri 24 July 2015.

That's cool.  I'd heard the phrase before, but I never knew it was from a movie.

Also, I guess just about everything has a wikipedia entry.  And if someone complains about there not being an entry for something then an entry gets made.

Arguably the first superheroine to appear in American comics was Olga Mesmer the Girl with X-Ray Eyes. She first appeared in a comic near the back of a pulp magazine titled Spicy Adventure Stories, printed in August of 1937. She performed heroic actions and had multiple super-powers including super strength, immortality, and x-ray vision.
http://pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Olga_Mesmer

Bonus useless trivia:  Olga's clothes are always torn. No known illustration of Olga still exists which depicts her in intact clothing. The sole possible exception is this single piece of fan artwork I found, and even in it, it seems that most of her outfit is missing.
http://heroes-of-the-domain.de...ice-Agents-377138578

I wouldn't call her a superhero, but I also don't consider characters like Zorro to be superheroes.  To me Superman arriving the following year was the first superhero and the original Red Tornado in 1940 was the first superheroine.

Of the 52 launch titles for DC's linewide reboot the New 52 only 12 have not been cancelled.  They are:
Justice League
Aquaman
The Flash
Green Arrow
Wonder Woman
Batgirl
Batman
Catwoman
Detective Comics
Superman
Action Comics
Green Lantern

I'm a bit surprised that Green Arrow has maintained enough sales to stay on the market.  I think it has to do with the success of CW's the Arrow tv show.  I'm also really surprised that both Teen Titans and Green Lantern Corps were cancelled.

I have a hunch involving what happened to Teen Titans. The very successful animated series had a Super Friends effect on this particular franchise. It solidified an iconic roster of this team and iconic versions of these characters. The audience of the show never really migrated to the comics because the experience did not match. At least in the DC canon comic books, the characters had all grown up and bared little resemblance to their on-character counter parts. By the time that the tv show premiered, the team in the books had been disbanded for nearly a decade. Young Justice was the teenage team in the books when Teen Titans was on the air. Potential comic-readers who found out that their Robin was now Nightwing, Raven (I think) was dead, Starfire was a sex pot, etc. Due to the way their beloved characters were presented, those potential young readers never transitioned.

I don't have any hunch regarding Green Lantern Corps.

Teen Titans was still selling well.  It was cancelled and renumbered because they made a new incarnation of the team and wanted to attract new readers.  I was surprised they took a book that was selling well and ended the team just to make a new one the next month.  And I see what you mean about the shoe but my iconic roster for the Titans will always be:

Robin/Nightwing
Wonder Girl/Troiya
Kid Flash/Flash
Speedy/Red Arrow
Aqualad/Tempest

In reply to jioan (msg # 316):

Emperor Justinian of the Byzantine Empire was born a peasant.

Also, the great love of his life, Theodora, and fully equal partner in ruling as his Empress, was a former prostitute.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:11, Mon 31 Aug 2015.

Justinian's reign is really bizarre.  It seemed more eventful for the Byzantines than entire centuries were.

Also, Marvel is currently undergoing a large continuity shift which is being primarily done through the megaevent Secret Wars.  However, newcomers might find this somewhat confusing as the event shares a name with 1984 series Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars usually shortened to Secret Wars.  The 2015 series also can't just be called "the second Secret Wars" or something because of the 1985 series Secret Wars II which was marketed as a sequel.  To make things more confusing there's a 2004 limited series called Secret War.  On top of all this the words secret and war are used in many Marvel events such as Secret Invasion, Infinity War, and Civil War to name a few.  Hopefully newcomers are able to make sense of all of this.

August of 1941 was a magical month in genre of comic books. Several publishers were rushing into this new genre and introduced dozens of new superheroes all at the same time. Most of these pioneer characters were quickly forgotten, but several record firsts were records. For example, the first red haired superheroine in comic books is a tie between Wildfire and the Black Cat. Wildfire made only a few appearances in the pages of Smash Comics, but Black Cat went on to star in her own comic for several years. Both characters are now in the public domain. https://www.facebook.com/Super.../?type=3&theater

Other characters who premiered into 1941 include Phantom Lady, Nelvana of the North Winds, and Plastic Man.

Also some bigger names like Wonder Woman, Captain America, and Aquaman all first appeared in 1941.

Another superhero trivia bit.  Most people consider the beginning of the DC Universe to be with Action Comics #1 in 1938, however, the character Dr. Occult introduced with New Fun Comics #6 in 1935 is the oldest character to be used having shown up in All-Star Squadron, Crisis on Infinite Earths and a lot of Vertigo books.

41370 is the zip code for Sebastians Branch, Kentucky.

91 is the smallest pseudoprime in base 3

Zero divided by Zero is not Zero.

But one divided by one is one.

Eucalyptus is the most widely planted type of tree in plantations around the world.

Don't know a lot about plants, but I recently found Succulents stretch and grow towards sources of sunlight. I found this interesting, as I figured succulents were always low and stubby, and couldn't stretch like i have witnessed as of late...

Matthew Santoro is the Lord of Useless Trivia. praise him!

DUDE THAT IS SO REAL!!!

Side note, did you know he was abused by his first fiance?

yeah, nicole arbor..

not a very nice person, i don't hate her bcus what she did, i dont find it fair to hate on somebody because a celebrity has a problem with them..

i dislike her because she is an attention hog, she'll do anything for it, signs point to it, maybe look up GradeAUnderA's video(s?) on her, it was well done and researched.. also funny

Children of identical twins are genetically siblings, not cousins.

I actually didn't think about that. I have a twin brother, so I have all sorts of useless trivia on the topic... Here's one:

Since twin siblings are genetically identical, if one commits a crime and the prosecution relies on forensic evidence, things can get messy really quickly.

So if the identical twins also marry identical twins and they have children, then the resulting children are also full blooded siblings instead of half-siblings.

The first man to urinate on the moon was Buzz Aldrin, shortly after stepping onto the lunar surface.

Even identical twins each have their own unique fingerprints.

The longest period of birth between two twins was 87 days according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

As an individual that has gone into labor twice, and in behalf of all others who have as well...

OOWWW!!!

The first was very premature: https://mysteriousfacts.com/tw...-born-87-days-apart/

And this would be my worst nightmare, dying in a cave where I couldn't move, almost like being buried alive for over a day: https://mysteriesrunsolved.com...utty-putty-cave.html

Nineteen people have died in the last 3 years believing that Christmas decorations were chocolate.

Never in any Star Trek show or movie has anyone ever said, "Beam me up, Scotty," and nowhere in any official story has Sherlock Holmes ever said, "Elementary, my dear Watson."

Similarly, people have also gotten the 'I'm yo daddy' line from Star Wars often wrong... perhaps misquoted movie lines are a prime cache of mandela effects?

The inventor of the Pringles can had his ashes buried in a Pringles can.

You can get your ashes buried with the seed of a tree so the tree will be a living memory of you.

I love this idea, except I'm fairly sure that's how we get haunted forests..

I mean, you can have your funeral however you like it, if you know who to talk to.

I've been thinking of having my ashes mixed in with batter from a pastry factory. Because it's the most spiteful thing I could think of leaving in my earthly wake.

That's a very literal "eat me"

And now I'm cackling like a bog witch again. :D

RIP Froggychum

He was petty even after death

RIP SilentMouse

Cackled themself to death

Sunglasses were originally designed so Chinese judges could hide their facial expressions in court.

ONLY 10% of what you see on the internet is true.
A WHOPPING 40% of what you see on the internet is fabricated lies.
AN ASTONISHING 50% of what you see on the internet is (un)intentionally misleading.
AN UNBELIEVABLE 60% of what you see on the internet is made up statistical commentary!

Wake up, sheeple!

100% of people with the most birthdays live the longest.

That's not necessarily true if you don't count people born on leap years. They may live longer but have fewer birthdays than other people.

So, your statistic should say Approx. 99.99%

Or 1460 out of 1461 people...
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:04, Sun 17 Jan 2021.

Fractions of 9 can be multiplied by 11.1 for a %

I've not only been out of school for too long to not know how to use that, but also to not understand it even a little...

This is actually increasingly common knowledge, but I've found it interesting since I first heard about it a few years ago: Did you know there is more than one kind of infinity? Furthermore, some infinities are actually bigger than others! Look it up if you like cool math facts and have no girlfriend :wink:

Like if you divide one by infinity, the pieces are infinitely small, but if you add them back together you get infinity?

Maybe? I don't think that's exactly it, I'm not good at explaining it and only have a surface understanding but IIRC it has more to do with 'countable' infinities versus uncountable ones.

It's impressive not because it exists, but because of the proofs that showed it to be true. That sort of thing would be really hard to do, if you think about it.

I think the most famous example is about a hotel with infinite rooms running out of space.

Here's two (highly popular) videos on the subject: The  first one has the proof i was talking about, and the second one goes more in depth on even higher levels of infinity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxGsU8oIWjY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrU9YDoXE88
This message was last edited by the player at 23:42, Wed 02 June 2021.

Roller coasters were invented to distract Americans from sin:
In the 1880s, hosiery businessman LaMarcus Thompson hated that Americans were tempted by hedonistic places like saloons and brothels. So he set out to straighten up one of the most immoral places he could think of: Coney Island in New York. There, he built America’s first roller coaster to give New Yorkers some good, clean fun—away from seedier pastimes.

That's actually really awesome trivia. I don't know what part of that I like so much, but something tickles my fancy (not in a sinful way, mind you)!

I like that kind of stuff also. I am a fan of listening to the podcast "Lore." You might try it out (free on Spotify).

Ice pops were invented by an 11-year-old by accident
In 1905, an 11-year-old boy named Frank Epperson left soda powder and water outside overnight with its wooden stirrer still in the cup. The mixture had frozen in the chilly nighttime weather, and so the Epsicle was born. He sold the treat around his neighborhood and a nearby amusement park and even patented the recipe. Years later, he changed the name to Popsicle because that’s what his kids called their pop’s concoction.

Thank heavens his name wasn't Frank Testerson. The story would be drastically changed, then.

Thanks for the recommendation! I'm a bit impatient with podcasts, but I'll give it a try when I get some time :)

They turned several of his podcasts into a television series called "Lore" on Amazon Prime.

People used to say “prunes” instead of “cheese” when having their pictures taken:
In the 1840s, a big—dare we say, cheesy—grin was seen as childish, so one London photographer told people to say “prunes” to keep their mouths taut. And that look predated today’s “fish face” selfie by, oh, about 180 years.

Time is a flat circle.

No really; there's a 2 dimensional clock hidden deep underneath Bosnia by the KGB that is actually the source of all of reality's chronology

Salvador Dali might disagree with that.