Things you were shockingly old when you learned

I thought it was the railways that standardised time, and before that every town had its own time based on local noon.

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.

Japan dropped (incredibly ineffective) bombs on continental North America via balloon during WWII.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb

"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!

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)

All calico cats are female.

Wow at Australian Time Zones.

All calico cats are female.

Similarly, 80% of orange cats are male.

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.

seems like this is what causes male calico/tortoiseshell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome

[Spock voice]: Human females have the same underlying invisible pattern on their skin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD6h-wDj7bw

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.

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.

I remember them being called emoticons long before they became emoji.

Ah, my bad

Emoticons were the precursors to modern emojis

the resemblance to the English words emotion and emoticon is purely coincidental.[4]

emoticons: :) ;) XD

emoji: 🙂 😉 😆

Emoticons 4evah ;-)

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

Antoin and Warren Gé had to regulusssss

…but Didier Jazzy Geoffroy & the Fresh Little Prince said Mama Said Knock You Out

mater indicavit mihi reddere nescis

The guy who wrote Poldark also wrote Marnie.

a search after Jeopardy yesterday? Poldark got a mention -- I hadn't heard of it before.

Ha, no. Because of the opera Marnie.

popular bodice ripper about a rogue Cornish hero coming back to reestablish himself in his old home after years away soldiering i think.
Has been made a few times for British tv, most recently with Aidan Turner as the titular hunk.
I remember it from the late 70s in a previous make. Used to be on Sunday nights i think.
Hero sets up a mine in his inherited holding.

Diversity of subject matter covered by Author reminded me of Walter Tevis who wrote man Who fell To Earth, The Hustler and Queen's Gambit among others

Patrick Dennis was not merely a pseudonym, it was one of several pseudonyms used by a decidedly mercurial gay man who used to be Ray Kroc's butler

The robotic spider that crawls over Julien Temple's face in the Vienna video is the same one from You Only Live Twice

bullshit

Korean Age

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/20/everyone-in-south-korea-could-soon-be-getting-younger

...see also racehorses

something from about 6 months ago which i was reminded of watching TV earlier: pole dancing poles rotate

I guess Korean babies are shockingly old at birth

There was a thing not long ago about Koreans' drinking age. Every 20-year-old becomes of age at midnight on December 31, but a COVID curfew meant they had to wait.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/31/korean-new-year-covid-pandemic/

After misreading a timeline in my 4th or 5th grade history textbook as "King John sings the Magna Carta" (dyslexics untie!), it was quite a few years before I found out the Magna Carta was a document and not an opera or something.

Lol, good one.

Speaking of which, this exists: http://magnacartatrails.com/events/the-great-charter-magna-carta-community-opera/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ4mxOluXY4

I remember reading that in the Russian Revolution era some of the poor agrarian classes didn't know that The Internationale was some popular verse that people sung as a political anthem and thought it might be some kind of supernatural creature.

That Bridgerton is an adaptation of a series of novels written about 20 years ago, and not, as I assumed, something invented by Netflix to cash in on the success of Downtown Abbey.

I saw one of the books a few days ago but assumed it was a tv tie in and didn't look further.

I guess i’m astonishing old to learn bridgerton is a thing of any kind

John Peel's first wife was only 15 when they married (in Texas, where that was legal at the time). She later committed suicide.

Coincidentally and apropos of nothing I learned tonight that Leo Gorcey of the Bowery Boys's first wife was 15, and that after they divorced she married the 54-year-old Groucho Marx when she was 21.

Teenage Kicks

That people still really care about the Cure

"Downtown Abbey" sounds like an "In Living Color" parody.

Do that which you would like to do
in Downton Abbey

I nearly corrected myself with a Billy Joel themed joke but decided it wasn’t really working.

I'm a woman.