Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Apparently there's no such thing as a tree:
https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2021/05/02/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-tree/amp/

omg

The actor who played Trapper John in "Trapper John, M.D." also played Adam, the often-absent brother on "Bonanza." I always thought he had the coolest name: Pernell Roberts.

Interestingly, I just learned, having looked up his Wikipedia page, that he was an activist, and participated (among other things) in the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965.

Good looking hunk a man, too

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ee/c3/d3/eec3d36816918603302d7bc120d43219.jpg

saw him recently as a mercenary in an episode of mission: impossible

The Going for Gold theme tune was written by Hans Zimmer?

lol, fuck sake

that was still later than him doing a Band-Aid-style charity single complaining that although Dr Who’s cancellation had been cancelled, it was still going to take too long to restart production, so they should cancel something popular to make room for it

Bone china contains bones. Always thought it was called that for the ivory white colour of it.

that Merchant & Ivory were life partners as well as film making partners

that the little arrow on the fuel gauge tells you which side of the car the gas tank is on

third time that's turned up!

haha i am now dazzling all my colleagues and friends with this new knowledge

I am always excited when I rent a car and can exercise that knowledge.

not shocking as such, more interesting:

i watched The Art Of Persia ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k48j ) and The Warriors, the film about the gang trying to get back to coney island, within a couple of days of each other recently and they both mentioned a guy called Cyrus. turns out it's the same guy - the film was based on a book which was inspired by Anabasis of Xenophon which is a history of the persian leader.

would try and dazzle my colleagues with this new knowledge but they are too young to know of the film, let alone anything else.

You might be surprised. The Warriors has a surprising amount of traction among the younger generation.

The General Belgrano - sunk by THATCHER - was formerly the USS Phoenix and survived Pearl Harbor unscathed.

Blimey.

that was on QI. it's also the only ship to be sunk by a nuclear submarine.

been thinking about that recently because it's been the 40th anniversary (and it's all over forces tv between episodes of Watching). it was good for thatcher, iirc, gained her another term.

Is it true there are no battleships anymore?

(xp) Wars will do that for Tories arseholes. Apart from Churchill, of course.

From Wiki: "The single version [of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?"] contains background vocals by Robert Englund, Rick Astley, Gary Barlow and former collaborator Kiki Dee."

Probably not in the true spirit of this thread, but I was shocked (and I am old).

lol, now imagining the chorus delivered as a mocking one-liner from Freddy himself.

The source ofg base 60 in mesopotamian mathematics being a multiplication of various joints of various digits of the human hand.
Heard it on a podcast a week or so ago then heard it referred to at a talk on Gilgamesh last night.

Also the story of the ark seeming to be a repeat of a story from Gilgamesh including the sending out of the 2 birds at teh end of the story.

& George Smith the Victorian era translator apparently being so disgusted by teh idea of Enkodu the wildman in the story being tamed by a prostitute/priestess of ishtar fucking him tame.Which turned up in a talk on Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts by Kate Lister which happened to be on early yesterday afternoon. I haven't quite worked out how this works though since Smith seems to have been the one person able to translate the Cuneiform that the table he was translating was written in , So would appear he must have translated at least some of teh story in that section before his Victorian prudishness mean he felt he couldn't work on it any further. Somebody did translate it later though since teh contents are now known.

& the versions of the story keep changing over the time that its written form have been unearthed. It was continually developing apparently. I think I need to actually read it.

One fo the more interesting comments the panel doing the talking brought up yesterday was about Gilgamesh's destruction of his environment for profit . Seemed to be relishing in capitalism according to them but I think I need to see things for myself.
Like how much of a complete antihero the protagonist was and how much sensibilities have changed since it was written seem fascinating.

another notable thing related to lion king single versions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VskdGNwi-c

That it's ophthalmology, not opthalmology.

It me.

the State of Hawaii is actually 137 islands spread out over 1,500 miles

The penny farthing bicycle (big front wheel, tiny rear wheel) was named for the English coins penny and farthing, because of the ratio of sizes between the wheels resembles the size ratio of the coins. I'm American, but still.

Well it's long defunct currency so maybe not that surprising. Decimal currency came in in 1970 and the farthing is earlier. Actually not sure it was still in use at that time.

I'm not sure I was aware of it being 1/4d as in a quarter of an old penny. Hence it being a fourth and the name referring to that. Not sure how that had escaped me.
Seems like the kind of etymological thing I'd've noticed. Oh well.

farthings as a quarter also turn up in tolkien (the shire is divided into four of them, probably a little joke on the fact that yorkshire is divided in ridings aka "thirdings")

farthings did not still exist when decimalisation took place, they were withdrawn in the early 60s: however in the rural infant school i went to, there was a drawer full of cardboard coins for us to learn about money, and it still had little cardboard farthings in it in c.1965 -- they were very small even if you were five and had a tiny wren on them

Elgin Marbles

https://i.inews.co.uk/content/uploads/2020/02/GettyImages-855720-scaled-640x360.jpg

NOT

https://www.topendsports.com/sport/unusual/images/marbles-blue-pixabay.jpg

they never mention the elgin jacks

https://cf.geekdo-images.com/s4UtfT5JU43_2iDKnx5nHg__imagepage/img/HJF2l3G792BPO3zdNHBJf2w9WKM=/fit-in/900x600/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic268047.jpg

I can remember as a kid my mum had a jar full of old currency like farthings, the old big half pennies, threepences, sixpences, queen Vic pennies etc. And while inspecting them on a dull dreary Sunday I thought if you could buy expensive goods with pennies back in the day and now you can only buy penny sweets with them, then QED - this gradual but unstoppable inflation will mean I will be using a hundred pound note to buy a can of pop by the time I'm old.

could be another currency change to cover up the effects of inflation too though.

I remember finding a farthing once in the back court when I was a kid and keeping it for years. A nice little coin.

https://www.royalmintmuseum.org.uk/siteassets/journal/curators-corner/halfpenny-and-farthing/farthing-teaser.jpg

A hundred pound note will buy you a super deluxe Prince cd box set.

Although, depends if yr old or not

I threw away my children's piggy banks a decade ago and no one noticed. In the US, there is nothing I want them to have that costs less than a dollar, and saving up change just takes too long and accomplishes nothing like the economic and/or moral education that it was supposed to be. We barely use cash, let alone coins. Frankly I'd rather just buy them stuff.

Fetlocks are horse joints (ankles, essentially), not horse hair. I was fooled by the presence of the word "locks", as well as by "My Lovely Horse", a song from Father Ted, which includes the line "Where are you going with your fetlocks blowing in the wind?"

Ridings means thirds

Kipling lived in VT for a while and wrote The Jungle Book among other books there. Like my hs friend lived in the same town, Brattleboro, and I had no idea.

I don't think this is on here already, and I found it out a while ago, but Jenette Goldstein who plays Private Vasquez in Aliens is also John Connor's stepmom Janelle in Terminator 2.
Two recognisable characters yet I never realised it was the same actor!

Ridings means thirds

lol i looked up orange bcz i had heard a slightly different origin story (the colour is named after the fruit and i thought it also involved the french town of orange)

anyway in the course of this i read that an adder used to be a nadder (which i already knew) and discovered that a newt used to be AN EWT (so this last one is my entry for the thread)

AN EWT 🦎

A nuncle

Oh and "nickname" comes from "an eke name."

and "mine anne" -> "my nan" -> "my nancy"