Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Every day before today is dim and gray in retrospect, because on all of those days, I did not know this:

Things I Did Not Know: After their defeat and loss at Copenhagen in 1807, the Danes responded by planting 90,000 oak trees toward the Navy’s rebirth. The Danish Nature Agency, successor to the royal forester, informed the Defense Ministry in 2007 that their trees were ready. pic.twitter.com/R2L2hrMn1k

— aniemyer (@aniemyer) November 1, 2021

Good time for them to challenge Spain, then

That reminds me of a story in the old The Whole Earth Catalog about some Cambridge students who noticed that some ancient oak beam in some ancient hall was showing signs of bug infestation. And then the campus forester reminded everyone that some replacement oaks had been planted in 1640-whatever as replacements, and they were ready to be harvested. We don't think in those terms anymore.

(xxp) It's good stuff but it really doesn't belong in this particular thread tbh.

It is pretty cool tho. Most major Japanese temples and shrines have nearby forests of carefully maintained trees timed to mature when the structure needs renewal, Ise being the most famous example because it’s entirely dismantled and rebuilt every 20 years. Transferring the kami is the key part.

Things I Learned Today

That I can resize this Add a Post text box area woooo

That Cybill Shepherd dated Elvis!

some truly mind-popping quotes about it here

ew

That there is an apostrophe in Jack Daniel's. I thought it was Jack Daniels. Only realized while reading this article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-police-lodge-jack-daniels-committee-investigation/2021/11/04/e035a92a-3377-11ec-a1e5-07223c50280a_story.html

Everyone knows how Jack Daniel and Evan William used to hang out together.

stop off with kroger for groceries or mcdonald for fast food

That "Chopsticks" was written by someone and didn't just emerge out of the public domain ether.

You can be too tall to serve in the US Armed Forces. Can't be over 6'6" in the Army and Marines, or over 6'8" in the Navy.

this was an issue for David Robinson:

At the time the Naval Academy had a height restriction of 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m) for all midshipmen, and in the autumn when the new academic year began Robinson had grown to 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m). Assuming that he was unlikely to grow much more, the academy's superintendent readily granted him a waiver. However Robinson continued growing, and by the start of his second year at the academy he had nearly reached his adult height of 7 ft 0 in (2.13 m), which later prevented him from serving on any U.S. naval ships.

And yet that military discipline he learned no doubt helped him when called upon to assemble in Precise Modern Lovers Order.

This is a mistake. Overly tall servicemen & servicewomen should be transferred to a unit of other really tall soldiers/sailors, as sort of a psy-ops cadre designed to strike terror in the hearts of enemy forces; modern day bezerkers, if you will.

Candlebox's "Far Behind" is about Andrew Wood. Originally the chorus was "Aaaaaaaannnddddy, I didn't mean to treat you oh so bad", and he changed "Andy" to "maybe"

It makes sense now but I never knew until I read a Kevin Martin interview

Mother Love Bone is pretty awful

Is that just a statement or just recently learned

I had a 12" years ago - not an album - and I remember trying to get into it, and then just deciding it was terrible. Like thirty years ago

I still have a Green River album from that era, and the last time I listened to it, it was pretty crummy as well

Green River were good. Mother Love Bone suuuuucked. A bunch of rain-soaked hicks who couldn't decide if they wanted to be the Red Hot Chili Peppers or The Cult, and couldn't manage either.

I'm not trying to be facetious. I remember reading the review of this album in Rolling Stone, and it was compared to Houses of the Holy. My high school buddies and I thought this record would sound pretty cool. Imagine my disappointment when I realized that I had been rooked.

A few years later, some guys in the dorm were raving about this band called Pearl Jam. I knew better and refused to get fooled for a second time.

― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Thursday, September 30, 2004 5:26 PM

I will also stan for Green River.

I have a feeling I was shockingly old when I found out the Elgin Marbles weren't actually marbles.

https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/toys-marbles-isolated-on-white-background-picture-id115923962?k=20&m=115923962&s=170667a&w=0&h=U9VUfyQseDte5OMU-KBRrluPL9LDNAM4Dh0kBRdd7iU=

Lol.

In Texas they also have Elgin sausage.

Which I used to think must be called so because of some marbling, but this turned out not to be the case.

I was very old when I found out Elgin is pronounced with a hard "g" rather than a "j."

"Gerrymander" should also be pronounced with a hard "g", but it ain't gonna happen.

hard "g" is the OG

It's hard out there for a g

For many years I could not handle which “g” was hard or soft, because “juh” sounds obviously harder than “guh” to me.

yes! i still have to think about it

relatable.

I am fifty muthaflippin years old and I can't alphabetize things without singing the song

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/irelands-red-troubadour

that Luke Kelly from The Dubliners was a cool as fuck commie.

I saw The Dubliners live when I was 7-ish and I think he was an absentee after a car crash. One of them said something like "quite unreasonable for the road to turn like that when he wasn't turning".

I've probably actually realised this before, but just doing it again for the hell of it.

I was shockingly old when I found out his grandmother was Scottish and seems to have had a considerable influence on him musically.

my mum says they lost their grit post-Luke

Today I learned Adele's last name

i learned her middle names last night but i've forgotten them again one of them might've been Blue?

I think I was taught "Elgin" with a soft-g/j sound in college Classics courses!

I just learned a couple of days ago that NONE of the types of bees that are native to North America a) make honey, any honey, at all, or b) live in hives. They burrow in the ground and live solitary lives and never make honey.

This is shocking. I had a garden full of native pollinators all summer long and I assumed they flew away to hives at night and that my borage was flavoring some honey somewhere. No.

Yeah, but can't we assume that some of the non-native bees have gone native and do just that (make hives & honey)?
I see wild honey bee hives in hollow trees fairly often, out on hikes

I also remember reading that the hive collapse syndrome or whatever it was called only happened to domestic bee hives (i.e. the white wooden boxes) and was never found in wild honeybee hives

Apparently European honeybees do go feral but they're a danger to native ones because they compete for pollen! But only native pollinators are able to pollinate some native plants, such as tomatoes, blueberries, and squashes. I read about one flower (tomato?) where the pollen is too hard to reach, so the native bees do a buzzing dance from inside the flower that makes pollen shake off and fall onto them!

That Gary Mapp, the mysterious bass player on most of the tracks that were eventually released as the classic Thelonious Monk Trio album on Prestige was a cop!

Defund the bass player.

Like, an undercover cop?