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Author Topic: Useless Fact's Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 05-24-2003 10:09 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Does a shark really smell blood from a long way away in the water? Definitely.Sharks have an extremely sensitive sense of smell for blood in the water.A few molecules can be enough to draw a shark. A shark has nostrils,called nares,connected to olfactory bulbs that go back to the brain. Just by studying the brain,scientists concluded that the shark was heavily dependent on olfactlon,with 70 percent of a relatively small brain,by weight and volume,devoted to smell. There is a difference between the sense of smell and the sense of taste, although the molecules being sensed are very similar. The organs doing the sensing stimulate different hormonal and physiological chains of response, generating very different kinds of behavior. Smell can trigger emotional or behavioral responses ranging from sexual behavior to searching for food, whereas the reaction to taste is simply to accept or reject the food. In fact, there is strong evidence that most shark attacks on people are cases of mistaken identity or reflex, action.Many such attacks occur where visibility is low,at night or in turbid water. The smell of blood might stimulate a shark to try to feed on a person it mistakes for a turtle or sea lion, but the taste of neoprene rubber or suntan oil might lead to rejection. Many more people are attacked by sharks than are eaten by sharks. But who wants to be tasted? ~source used: "The Book of Science Questions and Answers" by C. Claiborne Ray  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 05-25-2003 04:27 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - What do tornadoes have against trailer parks? A There's a lot of conventional wisdom about where tornadoes will and will not go,and virtually all of it is false.You'll hear that they do not cross rivers.You'll hear that they avoid cities and refuse to climb hills.The reality?Twisters have crossed the Mississippi and the Ohio, to name just two rivers. They've struck in Denver,St.Louis,Lubbock,Topeka,and Kalamazoo, among other cities.One resolute funnel in 1989 climbed the continental divide into Grand Teton National Park, devastating a forest along a sixty-mile path.It's hard to predict where they'll go. As for trailer parks:when you really look into it you find that the trailer park-tornado connection is only a misconstrued impression.Studies show that tornadoes,aimless wanderers that they are,don't hit trailer parks any more than they hit anything else.It's just that when they do,the death toll is nearly always high, because mobile homes are so dangerously . . . mobile.In 1994,40 percent of all Americans killed by tornadoes lived in trailers, though trailers accounted for only 6 percent of U.S. housing. Homes with good sturdy foundations stand at least a fighting chance of enduring a twister—all the more reason to build your existence on solid ground. ~source used: "Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison" by Hampton Sides~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 05-26-2003 08:10 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Is the Pacific Ocean's sea level really higher than the Atlantic's? How can this be? Strange as it sounds, it's true. Not only is the Pacific Ocean about twice the size of the Atlantic, but it's also, on average, twenty centimeters higher. To an islander in the South Pacific, this can mean the difference between a flooded cabana and a dry bed. Remember that sea level isn't an absolute, but merely an average of the changes in ocean level over time—as determined by a bunch of different variables, such as currents, wind, and tides. Most significant, however, is salinity. Due to generally higher evaporative rates overall, the Atlantic is saltier, denser, and thus slightly lower than the Pacific. As for what occurs at "transitional" zones such as off Cape Horn, where the Pacific and Atlantic collide, there's not much to see. The twenty-centimeter discrepancy, after all, is based upon measurements taken over some ninety-five million square miles of ocean. Columbia University oceanographer Arnold Gordon puts it this way: "If you're on a boat passing from the Atlantic to the Pacific, it won't exactly feel like you're going uphill." ~source used: "Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison?" by Hampton Sides~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 05-27-2003 08:31 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Why do we never see baby pigeons? WE DO SEE baby pigeons,just not newborns.This is because pigeons make excellent parents.To start with,they hide their nests well in crags and crannies.When the nests are well hidden and sturdy, they lay two eggs,then spoil their babies rotten when they hatch,until they leave the nest.As a consequence,baby pigeons quickly become plump and large,about the same size as their parents when they go off into the world alone.You've heard of the delicacy squab,I trust? That's a plump baby pigeon cooked just so. If you want to spot the young in a flock, here are some hints: Look for them in the summer and spring months.If you're feeding a flock,watch the ones that don't aggressively go after your bread crumbs;you may find your babies there.Beyond that,there may be fluffy down sticking through their regular feathers;they may show a little bit of lip around their beaks from being recently fed by their parents; and their heads may not be as broad. ~source used: "Just Curious, Jeeves" by Erin Barrett & Jack Mingo  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 05-29-2003 07:37 PM                        Rated G Useless Fact - Why does a Caesar salad go by that name? Caesar Gardini of Tijuana, Mexico, is the man responsible for the name of this famous salad. The salad itself was a spur-of-the-moment concoction, invented by Gardini to serve an unexpected influx of tourists one day in his restaurant,Caesar's Place. Using ingredients on hand, Gardini served the tourists salads consisting of romaine lettuce, grated cheese, croutons, and anchovies with a dressing made from olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and coddled eggs. The invention was a success, and when the salad was duplicated in other restaurants, it was called Caesar's salad. ~source used: "Ever Wonder Why?" by Douglas B. Smith~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 05-30-2003 06:02 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Why did writer O. Henry end up in jail? Like many writers,the short story author wasn't very good with money.That was a problem, because before he began writing stories,William Sidney Porter(O. Henry's real name) was a bank teller by occupation.In 1894, some of the money that passed through his hands turned up missing. He lost his job, but at first it looked like the whole thing might blowover.However two years later he was indicted on four counts of embezzlement. Porter fled to Honduras,but his wife was too sick with tuberculosis to join him.Six months later,he got word that his wife was dying,so he returned to the United States to be with her and face trial.She died;he was convicted and sentenced to five years in jail. It was sad for him,but a great day for American literature. From his jail cell,Porter began writing short stories and a New York daily paper eagerly published them. Porter had taken the pen name O. Henry, fearing that as he got progressively more famous somebody would dredge up his past and publicly humiliate him. While it didn't help support his proclaimed innocence that he had fled the country,his defenders depicted him as being basically honest, just not very good with money. There is some support for that claim. Read the first three lines of his most famous story, The. Gift of the Magi,in which he describes an impossible set of change: "One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And 60 cents of it was in pennies... " ~source used: "Just Curious, Jeeves" by Erin Barrett & Jack Mingo  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 05-31-2003 07:36 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Are glaciers really composed of ice? Glaciers are composed primarily of ice,all right;but they are not "ice" in the same sense as ice cubes or the substance hockey players skate on.Glacial ice is actually compressed snow;in any region where snowfall exceeds melting,the weight of the snow as it piles up compacts the snow beneath until it becomes ice. In other words,it's primarily the compaction,not the "freezing," that makes a glacier. ~source used: "More Misinformation" by Tom Burnam~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 06-01-2003 02:20 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - Are identical twins' fingerprints identical? The sound-bite answer to your question is no--identical twins have fingerprints that can be readily distinguished on close examination. However, the prints do have striking similarities. In fact, before the arrival of modern genetic testing, similarity of fingerprints was often used to determine whether twins were identical or fraternal. (Identical twins, you'll recall, are genetic duplicates who develop from a single egg. Fraternal twins develop from separate eggs and are no more closely related than ordinary siblings, except that they spend nine months sharing an extremely small bedroom.) Twin fingerprints are much beloved by scientists, who see them as a classic arena for the old nature-versus-nurture debate: What made you what you are today, your genes or your environment? Twin fingerprints clearly show that it's a little of both. If you compare palm prints and fingerprints of the Dionne quintuplets (born in 1934, they were the first quints of which all five survived), you find that the broad-brush pattern of lines, whorls, loops, etc., as well as what researchers call "ridge count," were quite similar for the whole crew. Nonetheless each kid had unique prints due to differences in detail. "There is as yet no evidence that the arrangement of the minutiae (ending ridges, bifurcating ridges, etc.) is in any way genetically influenced," writes fingerprint expert James Cowger. Presumably these minor but crucial differences arise from random local events during fetal development, the same kind of thing that makes each snowflake unique. ~blkberry_13603 contributed to this article~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 06-02-2003 08:07 AM                        Rated G Useless fact-What are footballs,baseballs,and bats made out of? Ah,the crack of the willow against the horsehide,the "thunk" of the punter's foot against the pigskin! So embedded in the American consciousness are these more or less immortal phrases that it seems almost a shame to point out that baseball bats are not made out of willow,baseballs are not horsehide,and footballs haven't been pigskin for lo,these many years. Actually,footballs never were made out of pigskin.A pig's *bladder* is said to have been employed long ago,when the game was in its infancy.Baseball bats are hickory or ash.And baseballs have a cowhide cover,as do footballs. Baseballs *were* covered with horsehide until the 1973 season, when,according to the A. G. Spalding Company,whose plant at Chicopee,Massachusetts,supplies baseballs for both major leagues,high-quality horsehide became in short supply.In 1969, Spalding engineers had begun the search for a suitable replacement.After many experiments with tanning processes, cowhide was finally rendered functionally equivalent to horse- hide as a baseball cover. ~source used: "More Misinformation" by Tom Burnam~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 06-03-2003 12:00 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - How many times can a stone skip on water? Virtually every culture has a term for stone skipping.The English call it "ducks and drakes";to Danes,it's "smutting". Eskimos skip rocks on ice,Bedouins on smooth sand. Currently,The "Guinness Book of World Records" accords the title to Jerdone Coleman McGhee,a Texas engineer who in 1992 scored(andvideotaped) an incredible thirty-eight skips on the Blanco River. Author of "The Secrets of Stone Skipping", McGhee has consulted with MIT engineering students,who've used strobe photography to analyze the fluid dynamics of a skip (which, by the way, involves releasing the stone almost parallel to the water,with enough velocity and spin to create a small wave on impact and then bounce off that wave and go airborne again). McGhee's mark is not without controversy, however.Purists insist that skipping prowess undergoes its true test only in a sanctioned competition, when the heat is on. The granddaddy of all such skip-offs is held every Fourth of July on Michigan's Mackinac Island.It was here in 1975 that John Kolar earned the all-time Mackinac record of "twenty-four-plus-infinity"(his stone vanished ominously into fog after two dozen skips).Kolar calls Mackinac, with its variable weather, disruptive boat traffic,and nearly constant chop, the "Wimbledon Centre Court of skipping—it quickly weeds out the competition." Indeed,when Jerdone McGhee made the pilgrimage to Mackinac,he was duly humbled by a score of only seventeen. ~source used: "Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison" by Hampton Sides~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 06-04-2003 08:00 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Why was Bloody Mary called that? We can assure you that it wasn't because she invented the tomato- based cocktail.Bloody Mary—Mary Tudor—was one of Henry VIII's daughters.She occupied the throne of England as Mary I after her half brother King Edward VI,but before her half sister,Queen Elizabeth I.Mary I earned her nickname not long after she came into reign.Her father had severed ties with the Roman Catholic Church,a move which Edward supported and continued under his crown.Mary,however,rescinded all of her brother's proclamations when she came into power and made it her crusade to bring Catholicism back to England.She began enforcing laws of heresy that resulted in the burning of more than 300 Protestants during the five years she held the crown.She became known as Bloody Mary,not to be confused with another fanatical Catholic of her era,Mary Queen of Scots. ~source used: "Just Curious about History, Jeeves" by Erin Barrett & Jack Mingo~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 06-05-2003 07:30 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Why are the lights on police cars now often blue instead of red? The blue lights are to clearly differentiate police cars from other emergency vehicles,thereby correcting a longstanding problem.It used to be that drivers who decided to flee from the police could later claim that they thought the red light behind them belonged to some other emergency vehicle. That meant that they could be charged only with failing to yield to an emergency vehicle. To avoid confusion and remove this as a possible alibi,the lights on police cars were changed to a different color. Blue was chosen because of its excellent visibility and uniqueness. ~source used: "Ever Wonder Why?" by Douglas B. Smith~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 06-06-2003 02:37 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - Why do we give names to hurricanes? The world is a big place and at any one time there can be more than one tropical storm or hurricane brewing. Obviously,it is important that the folks reporting storms from around the world have accurate data. In order to reduce the chance of confusing one storm with another,meteorologists decided to give each reported hurricane its own name.Before that they were referred to by their latitude and longitude positions,which were constantly changing.Names are easier to remember and less boring than simply assigning numbers. Since hurricanes were first reported via radio,during World War II,the names they were given were from the phonetic alphabet— Abel,Baker,Charlie,etc.Later,in 1953,hurricanes began being named after women,much to the later chagrin of the feminists!In 1979,the World Meteorological Association began using both women's and men's names,so as not to slight either gender. Hurricane names are now assigned alphabetically at the beginning of the year,alternating between male and female names. Every five or six years the names are recycled and used again. However,a storm of great notoriety,such as Andrew,which ravaged southern Florida in 1992,has had its name retired.Andrew was last used in 1986,for a tropical depression that left 300,000 homeless in Jamaica and Haiti. ~source used: "Thoughts for the Throne" by Don Voorhees~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 06-08-2003 09:27 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - Why did Samuel Clemens call himself Mark Twain? First,you have to know that Clemens once wanted nothing more in life than to be a riverboat captain.Having someone measuring and calling out depth in a river was a must for any riverboat captain trying to navigate the Mississippi.The call mark twain means "two fathoms," or 12 feet deep. "Mark twain" was just barely deep enough for a boat to navigate,indicating somewhat unsafe waters—suggestive enough to suit humorist and satirist Samuel L. Clemens just fine. ~source used: "Just Curious, Jeeves"by Erin Barrett & Jack Mingo~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 06-09-2003 09:51 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Exclusion from the Garden of Eden: It is commonly believed that Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They were not. From Genesis 3:22-23, King James Version: "And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep [guard, watch over] the way of the tree of life." Note that there are two trees involved—not one. Of the two, it's the second, obviously—the "tree of life"—that most concerns the Lord. The fruit of the first tree has given Adam knowledge of good and evil. But it's not until the Lord realizes that Adam can achieve immortality if he tastes the fruit of the second tree that expulsion from the garden occurs. Note also that Eve is not mentioned as being expelled—only Adam. However, the next chapter has them raising Cain together, so obviously she must have accompanied him. ~source used: "More Misinformation" by Tom Burnam~  |  IP: Logged

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