Interesting stuff.

[Olly Buckle]

I guess eveyone knows some sort of interesting stuff, for example,


From my ex boss at the building firm where I worked as the driver came this.
One of the main symbols of hope and renewal after the fire was Wren’s new St. Paul’s Cathedral, and it was politically expedient for it to progress quickly. It only took ten years to produce a design that allowed such speed of construction it was all over in another forty. That may seem slow to us, but the great medieval cathedrals had taken hundreds of years to build.
One of the things Wren did was base the building on four supports for the main dome. This meant that four different builders could be employed, one on each. Plans in those days were not so precise in their specification, with the result that each builder achieved his objective differently, and the building is not quite symmetrical.


This information came from I know not where, but although the source is not memorable, the information certainly is. Another building put up after the fire was The Monument. A collaboration between Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke it was erected close to the start of the fire, it is a column with a viewing platform and bronze flame at the top. This, however, was the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, and the time of the founding of the Royal Society, of which both Wren and Hooke were members. The building reflects this. It is not simply a monument to the fire, it is also a scientific instrument. The steps in the spiral staircase to the top are all exactly six inches tall, to make barometric pressure experiments easy, and the centre of the staircase was left free to allow pendulum experiments; it is also a fixed telescope.


Scientific experimentation was beginning, and Hooke had produced some of the best lenses made to date. The distances of the planets had been worked out by triangulation; taking sightings from different points on the Earth and measuring their angle, but the stars are so far away that the difference in angle, even from observation points hundreds of miles apart, was too slight to measure. The solution? There is one star almost directly overhead, and by building a fixed telescope pointing at it it was possible to take readings at opposite ends of the Earth’s orbit, giving the triangle a base of just under three hundred million kilometres; and for the first time it was possible to work out the distance to a star. Impressive.

Interesting stuff is often just something you know, we don't require references.

So, anyone know any stuff, and it had better be interesting

[sas]

In the U.S. more cows kill people than the combined number of deaths from attacks by sharks, alligators, and bears.

Sorry, that's all I got.

[Bloggsworth]

It'll be at least 40 years till they decide about the third runway at London Airport, not to mention complete the lunatic HS2, which will immediately be closed for signalling updates and all passengers shovelled off onto a replacement bus service...

[Kevin]

One of the JPL founders ( space race, NASA) hung out for a time with Aleister Crowley, considered himself an alchemist, a-aaand ... accidentally blew himself up.

[Terry D]

40,000 tons of dust from space falls onto planet Earth every year. Much of the dust you clean off your furniture came directly from outer space.

[bobo]

One of the JPL founders ( space race, NASA) hung out for a time with Aleister Crowley, considered himself an alchemist, a-aaand ... accidentally blew himself up.

That's called ascending

[Olly Buckle]

It'll be at least 40 years till they decide about the third runway at London Airport, not to mention complete the lunatic HS2, which will immediately be closed for signalling updates and all passengers shovelled off onto a replacement bus service...

I said it had better be interesting, surely this is boringly predictable?

[Firemajic]

Did you know that unless food is mixed with saliva ...you cant taste it.... Ooo..!!
Did you know that an Ostrich's eye, is BIGGER than its BRAIN???? .... huh?
Did you know that each time you see the full moon, you always see the SAME SIDE!!!... reallllly..

[Pluralized]

In the manufacture of float glass, a continuous ribbon-like sheet of hot glass floats along a bath of molten tin, which is then sliced off in prescribed lengths and sent out to various fabricators and end users around the world. The production cycles are planned in large part to meet current demand, with little surplus actually built into the picture. These plants run all day, every day, for years, glass just flowing and flowing and never stopping. Every couple of years they must shut the whole works down and clean it out, re-tool, fix everything, since it's such a destructive process. The heat cools, glass hardens, and for weeks they chip and hammer at the solidified mess so they can actually clean it out. When I have a bad day at work, I imagine for a moment that I am one of the glass-chippers and things generally improve in my realm.

[LeeC]

When Mormon crickets (actually shieldbacked katydids that US westerners are familiar with) enter a swarming stage because of population density, the outer circle moves constantly forward to avoid being eaten by those behind them. The inner circle needs the critical nutrients protein and salt, which the outer circle is rich in.

These are large insects, reaching three inches in length, and were a food source of Native Americans. A pound of grasshoppers is three times more nutritious than a pound of beef, and I imagine Mormon crickets are similarly as nutritious. In the world we're leaving for our grand children they may be a necessary mainstay, and being they are a serious agricultural pest may be the source of more conflict between the haves and have-nots. [now there's a premise for a dystopian story]

We've plowed up and built on so much of the western prairie that they aren't the agricultural problem they used to be, but they can still be a traffic hazard if encountered swarming across a road.

They come to mind every so often when I think of them as an metaphor for another weedy species.