the State of Hawaii is actually 137 islands spread out over 1,500 miles
― Andy the Grasshopper, Tuesday, 26 April 2022 16:50 (two years ago) link
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.
― nickn, Saturday, 30 April 2022 05:06 (two years ago) link
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.
― Stevolende, Saturday, 30 April 2022 08:39 (two years ago) link
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.
― Stevolende, Saturday, 30 April 2022 08:52 (two years ago) link
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farthings did not still exist when decimalisation took place, they were withdrawn in the early 60s: however in the rural infant school i went to, there was a drawer full of cardboard coins for us to learn about money, and it still had little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
― mark s, Saturday, 30 April 2022 10:43 (two years ago) link
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
― Was Hitler a Hobbit? (Tom D.), Saturday, 30 April 2022 10:46 (two years ago) link
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
― mark s, Saturday, 30 April 2022 10:49 (two years ago) link
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.
― calzino, Saturday, 30 April 2022 11:10 (two years ago) link
could be another currency change to cover up the effects of inflation too though.
― Stevolende, Saturday, 30 April 2022 11:50 (two years ago) link
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
― Was Hitler a Hobbit? (Tom D.), Saturday, 30 April 2022 11:52 (two years ago) link
A hundred pound note will buy you a super deluxe Prince cd box set.
Although, depends if yr old or not
― Mark G, Saturday, 30 April 2022 13:15 (two years ago) link
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.
― Fifty Centaur (Ye Mad Puffin), Saturday, 30 April 2022 22:40 (two years ago) link
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?"
― Hans Holbein (Chinchilla Volapük), Saturday, 30 April 2022 22:58 (two years ago) link
Ridings means thirds
― Josefa, Saturday, 30 April 2022 23:45 (two years ago) link
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.
― The Hon. Christian Sharia (R - MO) (Hunt3r), Sunday, 1 May 2022 04:22 (two years ago) link
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!
― kinder, Sunday, 1 May 2022 11:06 (two years ago) link
― Eric B. Mash Up the Resident (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 1 May 2022 11:23 (two years ago) link
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 🦎
― mark s, Sunday, 1 May 2022 12:19 (two years ago) link
A nuncle
― Fifty Centaur (Ye Mad Puffin), Sunday, 1 May 2022 14:02 (two years ago) link
Oh and "nickname" comes from "an eke name."
― Fifty Centaur (Ye Mad Puffin), Sunday, 1 May 2022 14:04 (two years ago) link
and "mine anne" -> "my nan" -> "my nancy"
― Portrait Of A Dissolvi Ng Drea M (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Sunday, 1 May 2022 14:12 (two years ago) link
Mein Ewt seems so much smaller,. Do they get bigger if they're shared or sumfin?
― Stevolende, Sunday, 1 May 2022 14:21 (two years ago) link
I threw away my children's piggy banks a decade ago and no one noticed
I think I get what you're saying, but to me it reads like "... and they still haven't noticed!"
― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 3 May 2022 10:11 (two years ago) link
Anne Actor
― Mark G, Tuesday, 3 May 2022 10:48 (two years ago) link
India Standard Time is a half-hour time zone.
― Wile E. Is President (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 3 May 2022 23:58 (two years ago) link
James, that one is absolutely on point once you research australia time zonesI could figure out india time in my head the last year and it seemed slightly off, once I found out the reasons why and how weird other places did it…. india otm(happened before modi, india less otm since)
― mh, Wednesday, 4 May 2022 02:49 (two years ago) link
Nepal (and a tiny sliver of Western Australia) use a quarter hour offset - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC%2B05:45
― assert (matttkkkk), Wednesday, 4 May 2022 02:58 (two years ago) link
Wow. Did wonder if anybody did that. Always thought it was just the hour designated that did. So like the first digit.So somebody had to have the basic time everyone else was based around and was plus or minus to. Like GMT cos of British Empire etc. Does seem weird to be a fraction of an hour out though.
― Stevolende, Wednesday, 4 May 2022 04:40 (two years ago) link
Looking at the Wikipedia pages there were time zones that were e.g. 39m 12s off the hour - presumably referenced to local noon - but that most of them were regularised in the early 20th century,
― assert (matttkkkk), Wednesday, 4 May 2022 05:51 (two years ago) link
pre-gmt Bristol was 10 minutes behind London, the clock at the railway station had two minute hands
― koogs, Wednesday, 4 May 2022 06:34 (two years ago) link
I thought it was the railways that standardised time, and before that every town had its own time based on local noon.
― Zelda Zonk, Wednesday, 4 May 2022 06:51 (two years ago) link
Because of the half hour thing, if you fly from England to India, you don't have to reset your watch--just turn it upside down. Like, if it's noon in the UK, it's 6:30 in India.
― Hideous Lump, Wednesday, 4 May 2022 06:55 (two years ago) link
Japan dropped (incredibly ineffective) bombs on continental North America via balloon during WWII.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
― Hans Holbein (Chinchilla Volapük), Wednesday, 4 May 2022 07:50 (two years ago) link
"The deaths occurred when the victims decided to touch the balloon, thus causing it to explode."
such crap weapons of terror that it took some fools deciding to play with a bomb to get any results!
― calzino, Wednesday, 4 May 2022 08:11 (two years ago) link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_time
clock was on the corn exchange, not the railway station. seems like an effort to resist london's imposed time, at least for 5 years or so.
(that said, there are other pictures showing up with a GWR-branded version)
― koogs, Wednesday, 4 May 2022 08:14 (two years ago) link
All calico cats are female.
― Wile E. Is President (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 4 May 2022 12:14 (two years ago) link
Wow at Australian Time Zones.
― Wile E. Is President (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 4 May 2022 12:15 (two years ago) link
― gyac, Wednesday, 4 May 2022 12:21 (two years ago) link
Similarly, 80% of orange cats are male.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, 4 May 2022 12:41 (two years ago) link
i was looking for a cat earlier in the year and did run across a male calico, was wondering if they come with other genetic issues but forgot to look into it. i ended up adopting an orange female. she is very special indeed.
― towards fungal computer (harbl), Wednesday, 4 May 2022 12:44 (two years ago) link
seems like this is what causes male calico/tortoiseshell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome
― towards fungal computer (harbl), Wednesday, 4 May 2022 12:49 (two years ago) link
[Spock voice]: Human females have the same underlying invisible pattern on their skin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD6h-wDj7bw
― buffalo tomozzarella (ledge), Wednesday, 4 May 2022 13:32 (two years ago) link
Today I learned that "emoji" is from the Japanese words for picture and letter, "e" and "moji". Not a shortening of "emotion" as I had thought.
― adam t. (abanana), Thursday, 5 May 2022 14:21 (two years ago) link
I've been a bit sceptical that that's the entire story: given that "ji" (字) means "character", it seems that "emo-" + "ji" might have played at least a supporting role in the etymology, or at least in making it stick? I'm not by any stretch a scholar of Japanese, though, and could be entirely wrong.
― anatol_merklich, Thursday, 5 May 2022 23:25 (two years ago) link
I remember them being called emoticons long before they became emoji.
― Kim Kimberly, Friday, 6 May 2022 00:54 (two years ago) link
Ah, my bad
Emoticons were the precursors to modern emojis
― Kim Kimberly, Friday, 6 May 2022 00:56 (two years ago) link
the resemblance to the English words emotion and emoticon is purely coincidental.[4]
― Kim Kimberly, Friday, 6 May 2022 00:57 (two years ago) link
emoticons: :) ;) XD
emoji: 🙂 😉 😆
― Yul Brynner film festival on Channel 48... (sic), Friday, 6 May 2022 01:28 (two years ago) link
Emoticons 4evah ;-)
― The Hon. Christian Sharia (R - MO) (Hunt3r), Friday, 6 May 2022 18:29 (two years ago) link
THere's a Latin translation of Antoin De Sainte Exupery's The Little Prince called Regulus.I found it in a charity shop earlier. But didn't buy it cos i was too broke this week
― Stevolende, Friday, 6 May 2022 19:02 (two years ago) link