Greeks used to vote using black and white beans that were held in black jars so no one could see the result until the final count. Occasionally some putz would knock the jar over and "spill the beans".
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FASCINATING FACTS, TRIVIA and INTERESTING THOUGHTS
- Thread starter Little Wing
- Start date
"Hell to pay" has something to do with making a boat water-tight.
I think the boat or a panel is called "the hell" and "paying" is the filling between the bits to make it water-tight. It was a punishment to do this job.
I think the boat or a panel is called "the hell" and "paying" is the filling between the bits to make it water-tight. It was a punishment to do this job.
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- An alternate reality.
The Canada and US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels, were first formed by Roman war chariots.
Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's backside came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question. Now the twist to the story..............There's an interesting extension to the story about railroad gauges and horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah.
The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a Horse's Backside! Think about it !!
Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels, were first formed by Roman war chariots.
Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's backside came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question. Now the twist to the story..............There's an interesting extension to the story about railroad gauges and horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah.
The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a Horse's Backside! Think about it !!
Where did you get that information from, Albob? Cause a lot of it is true, but some of it isn't entirely factual.
The trains were first developed by some dude who's name i forget because he didn't finalise the train designs and gave up (the loser). Then, ten years later, George Stevenson and some other dude were in competition taking the train designs further (steam powered engines we're talking here). I say some other dude because again, i've forgotten his name (seriously, who remembers who came in second place?)
At a competition in Darlington, they raced their engines. One of the main differences of the two designs, were that the other dudes utilised a narrow rail, whereas Geordie Stevenson's utilised a wide rail. During the contest, Stevenson's engine ran quicker, so it was these designs they went with (despite his engine actually falling off the tracks during the test run).
That's why the rail tracks are that wide.
The bits about ancient Rome seems like someone's just tagged that info on there for effect.
The two horses behinds thing is true though. Its also the reason why cars are as wide as they are. This is because before motorised vehciles, everything was transported via canals. The only reason for most roads even existing (although not all of course) was next to the canals so the horses had somewhere to walk along. Thus, the same design measurements were carried over to other roads and so on.
The trains were first developed by some dude who's name i forget because he didn't finalise the train designs and gave up (the loser). Then, ten years later, George Stevenson and some other dude were in competition taking the train designs further (steam powered engines we're talking here). I say some other dude because again, i've forgotten his name (seriously, who remembers who came in second place?)
At a competition in Darlington, they raced their engines. One of the main differences of the two designs, were that the other dudes utilised a narrow rail, whereas Geordie Stevenson's utilised a wide rail. During the contest, Stevenson's engine ran quicker, so it was these designs they went with (despite his engine actually falling off the tracks during the test run).
That's why the rail tracks are that wide.
The bits about ancient Rome seems like someone's just tagged that info on there for effect.
The two horses behinds thing is true though. Its also the reason why cars are as wide as they are. This is because before motorised vehciles, everything was transported via canals. The only reason for most roads even existing (although not all of course) was next to the canals so the horses had somewhere to walk along. Thus, the same design measurements were carried over to other roads and so on.
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Why can a woman man a station but a man can't woman one? 
WOW, that TCD guy is smart. 
and I'm not being sarcastic.
and I'm not being sarcastic.
I'd be a lot smarter if i could remember the names of the other two dudes i was referring to.
And less lazy if i could be arsed to search for the information on this here Internet thingy-ma-jig.
And less lazy if i could be arsed to search for the information on this here Internet thingy-ma-jig.
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TCD said:
Well damn. All I did was a simple search because I'd seen this letter before. Now I can't remember what I searched for. I've tried again so I could post a link, but can't find it. I'll keep trying.
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Oh no! ALBOB is online.. aaaahhh... my eyes.. my eyes...
i like the war chariot story better 
Right, did a search. The first dude to invent the locomotive was Richard Trevithick, but he was the loser who gave up when he couldn't get shit to work. Plus it was originally a road locomotiveand he couldnt get it not not break the brittle tracks he laid down to use it on.
Albob, i'm going to email him and ask where he got his info from.
Albob, i'm going to email him and ask where he got his info from.
General Interesting Facts
* No piece of paper can be folded more than 7 times.
* The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.
* Earth is the only planet not named after a pagan God.
* A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.
* Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
* Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning
* The first owner of the Marlboro company died of lung cancer.
* All US Presidents have worn glasses. Some just didn't like being seen wearing them in public.
* Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
* The inventor of the flushing toilet was Thomas Crapper.
* The average bed is home to over 6 billion dust mites.
* Plastic lawn flamingos outnumber real flamingos in the U.S.A.
* Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel with over 50,000 words, none of which containing the letter "e."
* Apples are more effective at keeping people awake in the morning than caffeine.
* The largest pumpkin weighed 377 pounds.
* The largest cabbage weighed 144 pounds.
* Pinocchio was made of pine.
* Alfred Hitchcock had no belly button for it was eliminated during surgery.
* A quarter has 119 grooves around the edge.
* A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
* Cranberry Jell-0 is the only kind that contains real fruit.
* The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
* Maine is the toothpick capital of the world.
* New Jersey has a spoon museum with over 5,400 spoons from almost all the states.
* There was once a town in West Virginia called "6."
* Singapore only has one train station.
* The parking meter was invented in North Dakota.
* Napoleon made his battle plans in a sandbox.
* Roman Emperor Caligula made his horse a senator.
* The green stuff on the occasional freak potato chip is chlorophyll.
* Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon with his left foot first.
* There are 333 toilet paper squares on a toilet paper roll.
* The Eiffel Tower has 2,500,000 rivets in it.
* "Jaws" is the most common name for a goldfish.
* On an average work day, a typist's fingers travel 12.6 miles.
* Every minute in the U.S. six people turn 17.
* 2,500 lefties die each year using products designed for rightists.
* Ten tons of space dust falls on the Earth every day.
* On average, a 4-year-old child asks 437 questions a day.
* Blue and white are the most common school colors.
* Swimming pools in Phoenix, Arizona, pick up 20 pounds of dust a year.
* In a normal lifetime an American will eat 200 pounds of peanuts and 10,000 pounds of meat.
* A new book is published every 13 minutes in America.
* America's best selling ice cream flavor is vanilla.
* Every year the sun loses 360 million tons.
* Because of Animal Crackers, many kids until they reach the age of ten, believe a bear is as tall as a giraffe.
* The Gulf Stream could carry a message in a bottle at an average of 4 miles per hour.
* The bulls-eye on a dartboard must be 5 feet 8 inches off the ground.
* The doorbell was invented in 1831.
* The electric shaver was patented on November 6, 1928.
* Japan is the largest exporter of frog's legs.
* There are seven points on the Statue of Liberty's crown.
* Napoleon was terrified of cats.
* The first Lifesaver flavor was peppermint.
* The typical American eats 263 eggs a year.
* The parking meter was invented by C.C. Magee in 1935.
* The oldest known vegetable is the pea.
* Jack is the most common name in nursery rhymes.
* The avocado has the most calories of any fruit.
* The first zoo in the USA was in Philadelphia.
* France has the highest per capita consumption of cheese.
* The shortest English word that contains the letters A, B, C, D, E, and F is "feedback."
* The state of California raises the most turkeys out of all of the states.
* George Washington Carver invented peanut butter.
* Iceland was the first country to legalize abortion in 1935.
* The dumbest domesticated animal is the turkey.
* Russia has the most movie theaters in the world.
* The most fatal car accidents occur on Saturday.
* The Eiffel Tower has 1792 steps.
* The mongoose was barred live entry into the U.S. in 1902.
* Goldfish swallowing started at Harvard in 1939.
* Dry fish food can make goldfish constipated.
* The stall closest to the door in a bathroom is the cleanest, because it is the least used.
* Toilet paper was invented in 1857.
* Alaska could hold the 21 smallest States.
* Before Prohibition, Schlitz Brewery owned more property in Chicago than anyone else, except the Catholic church.
* If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
* Kermit the Frog is left-handed.
* Nondairy creamer is flammable.
* The car in the foreground on the back of a $10 bill is a 1925 Hupmobile.
* If you can see a rainbow you must have your back to the sun.
* The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
* It's rumored that sucking on a copper penny will cause a breathalyzer to read 0.
* The ship, the Queen Elizabeth 2, should always be written as QE2. QEII is the actual queen.
* The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning to you," is "and the rest of the day to yourself."
* Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church.
* When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home to a sellout crowd, the stadium becomes the state's third largest city.
* Ohio is listed as the 17th state in the U.S., but technically it is Number 47. Until August 7, 1953, Congress forgot to vote on a resolution to admit Ohio to the Union.
* When Saigon fell, the signal for all Americans to evacuate was Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" being played on the radio.
* The pet ferret was domesticated more than 500 years before the house cat.
* The dome on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, conceals a billiards room. In Jefferson's day, billiards were illegal in Virginia.
* The most common speed limit sign in the United States is 25 m.p.h.
* At any one time, there are 100 million phone conversations going on in the United States.
* The world's record for continuous pogo stick jumping is 41 hours.
* The Ottoman Empire once had seven emperors in seven months. They died of (in order): burning, choking, drowning, stabbing, heart failure, poisoning and being thrown from a horse.
* You can make edible cheese from the milk of 24 different mammals.
* Sir Isaac Newton, who invented Calculus, had trouble with names to the point where he would forget his brothers' names.
* In medieval Thailand, they had moveable type printing presses. The type was made from baked oxen dung.
* By law, employees do not have to wash hands after sneezing.
* The average American consumes enough caffeine in one year to kill a horse.
* More American workers (18%) call sick on Friday than any other day of the week. Tuesday has the lowest percent of absenteeism (11%).
* Enough beer is poured every Saturday across America to fill the Orange Bowl.
* A newborn expels its own body weight in waste every 60 hours.
* Whales die if their echo system fails.
* Florida's beaches lose 20 million cubic yards of sand annually.
* Naturalists use marshmallows to lure alligators out of swamps.
* It takes a ton of water to make a pound of refined sugar.
* Weevils are more resistant to poisons in the morning than at night.
* Cacao, the main ingredient of chocolate is the most pest-ridden tree in the jungle.
* In deep space most lubricants will disappear.
* America once issued a 5-cent bill.
* The average person can live 11 days without water.
* In 1221 Genghis Khan killed 1,748,000 people at Nishapur in one hour.
* There are 35 million digestive glands in the stomach.
* In 1800 on 50 cities on earth had a population of more than 100,000.
* More steel in the US is used to make bottle caps than to manufacture automobile bodies.
* It is possible for any American citizen to give whatever name he or she chooses to any unnamed mountain or hill in the United States.
* King Henry III of France, Louis XVI of France and Napoleon all suffered from ailurophobia--fear of cats.
* Before 1850 golf balls were made of leather and stuffed with feathers.
* Clocks made before 1687 had only one hand, and hour hand.
* The motto of the American people, "In God We Trust," was not adopted as the national slogan until 1956.
* More Americans have died in automobile accidents than have died in all the wars ever fought by the United States.
* The ampersand (&) was once a letter of the English alphabet.
* The principality of Monaco consists of 370 acres.
* There are more than 40,000 characters in Chinese script.
* During the time of Peter the Great, any Russian man who had a beard was required to pay a special tax.
*The character on Ironmagazine "Min0 Lee" is actually played by Rockgazer69.
* The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time television was Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
* Coca-Cola was originally green.
* Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the U.S. treasury.
* No piece of paper can be folded more than 7 times.
* The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.
* Earth is the only planet not named after a pagan God.
* A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.
* Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
* Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning
* The first owner of the Marlboro company died of lung cancer.
* All US Presidents have worn glasses. Some just didn't like being seen wearing them in public.
* Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
* The inventor of the flushing toilet was Thomas Crapper.
* The average bed is home to over 6 billion dust mites.
* Plastic lawn flamingos outnumber real flamingos in the U.S.A.
* Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel with over 50,000 words, none of which containing the letter "e."
* Apples are more effective at keeping people awake in the morning than caffeine.
* The largest pumpkin weighed 377 pounds.
* The largest cabbage weighed 144 pounds.
* Pinocchio was made of pine.
* Alfred Hitchcock had no belly button for it was eliminated during surgery.
* A quarter has 119 grooves around the edge.
* A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
* Cranberry Jell-0 is the only kind that contains real fruit.
* The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
* Maine is the toothpick capital of the world.
* New Jersey has a spoon museum with over 5,400 spoons from almost all the states.
* There was once a town in West Virginia called "6."
* Singapore only has one train station.
* The parking meter was invented in North Dakota.
* Napoleon made his battle plans in a sandbox.
* Roman Emperor Caligula made his horse a senator.
* The green stuff on the occasional freak potato chip is chlorophyll.
* Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon with his left foot first.
* There are 333 toilet paper squares on a toilet paper roll.
* The Eiffel Tower has 2,500,000 rivets in it.
* "Jaws" is the most common name for a goldfish.
* On an average work day, a typist's fingers travel 12.6 miles.
* Every minute in the U.S. six people turn 17.
* 2,500 lefties die each year using products designed for rightists.
* Ten tons of space dust falls on the Earth every day.
* On average, a 4-year-old child asks 437 questions a day.
* Blue and white are the most common school colors.
* Swimming pools in Phoenix, Arizona, pick up 20 pounds of dust a year.
* In a normal lifetime an American will eat 200 pounds of peanuts and 10,000 pounds of meat.
* A new book is published every 13 minutes in America.
* America's best selling ice cream flavor is vanilla.
* Every year the sun loses 360 million tons.
* Because of Animal Crackers, many kids until they reach the age of ten, believe a bear is as tall as a giraffe.
* The Gulf Stream could carry a message in a bottle at an average of 4 miles per hour.
* The bulls-eye on a dartboard must be 5 feet 8 inches off the ground.
* The doorbell was invented in 1831.
* The electric shaver was patented on November 6, 1928.
* Japan is the largest exporter of frog's legs.
* There are seven points on the Statue of Liberty's crown.
* Napoleon was terrified of cats.
* The first Lifesaver flavor was peppermint.
* The typical American eats 263 eggs a year.
* The parking meter was invented by C.C. Magee in 1935.
* The oldest known vegetable is the pea.
* Jack is the most common name in nursery rhymes.
* The avocado has the most calories of any fruit.
* The first zoo in the USA was in Philadelphia.
* France has the highest per capita consumption of cheese.
* The shortest English word that contains the letters A, B, C, D, E, and F is "feedback."
* The state of California raises the most turkeys out of all of the states.
* George Washington Carver invented peanut butter.
* Iceland was the first country to legalize abortion in 1935.
* The dumbest domesticated animal is the turkey.
* Russia has the most movie theaters in the world.
* The most fatal car accidents occur on Saturday.
* The Eiffel Tower has 1792 steps.
* The mongoose was barred live entry into the U.S. in 1902.
* Goldfish swallowing started at Harvard in 1939.
* Dry fish food can make goldfish constipated.
* The stall closest to the door in a bathroom is the cleanest, because it is the least used.
* Toilet paper was invented in 1857.
* Alaska could hold the 21 smallest States.
* Before Prohibition, Schlitz Brewery owned more property in Chicago than anyone else, except the Catholic church.
* If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
* Kermit the Frog is left-handed.
* Nondairy creamer is flammable.
* The car in the foreground on the back of a $10 bill is a 1925 Hupmobile.
* If you can see a rainbow you must have your back to the sun.
* The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
* It's rumored that sucking on a copper penny will cause a breathalyzer to read 0.
* The ship, the Queen Elizabeth 2, should always be written as QE2. QEII is the actual queen.
* The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning to you," is "and the rest of the day to yourself."
* Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church.
* When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home to a sellout crowd, the stadium becomes the state's third largest city.
* Ohio is listed as the 17th state in the U.S., but technically it is Number 47. Until August 7, 1953, Congress forgot to vote on a resolution to admit Ohio to the Union.
* When Saigon fell, the signal for all Americans to evacuate was Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" being played on the radio.
* The pet ferret was domesticated more than 500 years before the house cat.
* The dome on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, conceals a billiards room. In Jefferson's day, billiards were illegal in Virginia.
* The most common speed limit sign in the United States is 25 m.p.h.
* At any one time, there are 100 million phone conversations going on in the United States.
* The world's record for continuous pogo stick jumping is 41 hours.
* The Ottoman Empire once had seven emperors in seven months. They died of (in order): burning, choking, drowning, stabbing, heart failure, poisoning and being thrown from a horse.
* You can make edible cheese from the milk of 24 different mammals.
* Sir Isaac Newton, who invented Calculus, had trouble with names to the point where he would forget his brothers' names.
* In medieval Thailand, they had moveable type printing presses. The type was made from baked oxen dung.
* By law, employees do not have to wash hands after sneezing.
* The average American consumes enough caffeine in one year to kill a horse.
* More American workers (18%) call sick on Friday than any other day of the week. Tuesday has the lowest percent of absenteeism (11%).
* Enough beer is poured every Saturday across America to fill the Orange Bowl.
* A newborn expels its own body weight in waste every 60 hours.
* Whales die if their echo system fails.
* Florida's beaches lose 20 million cubic yards of sand annually.
* Naturalists use marshmallows to lure alligators out of swamps.
* It takes a ton of water to make a pound of refined sugar.
* Weevils are more resistant to poisons in the morning than at night.
* Cacao, the main ingredient of chocolate is the most pest-ridden tree in the jungle.
* In deep space most lubricants will disappear.
* America once issued a 5-cent bill.
* The average person can live 11 days without water.
* In 1221 Genghis Khan killed 1,748,000 people at Nishapur in one hour.
* There are 35 million digestive glands in the stomach.
* In 1800 on 50 cities on earth had a population of more than 100,000.
* More steel in the US is used to make bottle caps than to manufacture automobile bodies.
* It is possible for any American citizen to give whatever name he or she chooses to any unnamed mountain or hill in the United States.
* King Henry III of France, Louis XVI of France and Napoleon all suffered from ailurophobia--fear of cats.
* Before 1850 golf balls were made of leather and stuffed with feathers.
* Clocks made before 1687 had only one hand, and hour hand.
* The motto of the American people, "In God We Trust," was not adopted as the national slogan until 1956.
* More Americans have died in automobile accidents than have died in all the wars ever fought by the United States.
* The ampersand (&) was once a letter of the English alphabet.
* The principality of Monaco consists of 370 acres.
* There are more than 40,000 characters in Chinese script.
* During the time of Peter the Great, any Russian man who had a beard was required to pay a special tax.
*The character on Ironmagazine "Min0 Lee" is actually played by Rockgazer69.
* The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time television was Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
* Coca-Cola was originally green.
* Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the U.S. treasury.
*The character on Ironmagazine "Min0 Lee" is actually played by Rockgazer69.
haha
haha
Well look at that, these fact finders are good. They found me out!
this is what happens when we forget to take my medication
RG69 n Mino are siamese twins attatched at the penis.
