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Sun 18 Sep, 2005 11:09 am
The idea of this is to state something factual and historic that people probably won't know! If this goes well we'll get loads of pages of really random historical facts!!
I'll start us off....
Did you know....Kangaroos are called Kangaroos because when explorers landed in Australia; they pointed to a Kangaroo and asked a native what they were called. He replied "Kangaroo" which, roughly translated from his native tongue means "I don't know"?
If you think about it, would you bother to name something that you are going to kill for food, clothes and stuff to help you to survive? I don't think so!! You'd just say "Let's go hunting!"
More than 2,500 left-handed people are killed each year from using products that are made for right-handed people.
Evolutionary theory has long been puzzled by left-handedness. Southpaws are in the minority, and they get into many more accidents than do the right-handed; in the modern context, this is partly because so many quasi-lethal tools are engineered primarily for right-handed use. So the question is, given that left-handedness is so dangerous to one's health, why haven't southpaws evolutionarily vanished?
Possibly because southpaws are extremely good at one thing: Killin' people. In a recent Proceedings of the Royal Society, professors Charlotte Faurie and Michel Raymond published a study noting that left-handed people traditionally excel at combat sports, such as fencing and boxing, because their attacks so flummox the majority of opponents who are overaccustomed to right-handed attacks. They theorized further that this would mean that societies prone to violence would have an overabundance of left-handed people. When they gathered some data, it seemed to support their hypothesis; as The Economist summarized their findings:
One of the highest proportions of left-handers, for example, was found among the Yanomamo of South America. Raiding and warfare are central to Yanomamo culture. The murder rate is 4 per 1,000 inhabitants per year (compared with, for example, 0.068 in New York). And, according to Dr Faurie and Dr Raymond, 22.6% of Yanomamo are left-handed. In contrast, Dioula-speaking people of Burkina Faso in West Africa are virtual pacifists. There are only 0.013 murders per 1,000 inhabitants among them and only 3.4% of the population is left-handed.
ok im up for this
did you know we drive on the left in england because its easier for right handed people to whack people coming the other way?
In 1535, two Indian Youths told Jacques Cartier about the route to "kanata." They were referring to the village of Stadacona; "kanata" was simply the Huron-Iroquois word for "village" or "settlement." But for want of another name, Cartier used "Canada" to refer not only to Stadacona (the site of present day Quebec City), but also to the entire area subject to its chief, Donnacona. The name was soon applied to a much larger area: maps in 1547 designated everything north of the St. Lawrence River as "Canada."
Cartier also called the St. Lawrence River the "rivière de Canada", a name used until the early 1600s. By 1616, although the entire region was known as New France, the area along the great river of Canada and the Gulf of St. Lawrence was still called Canada.
Soon explorers and fur traders opened up territory to the west and to the south and the area depicted as "Canada" grew. In the early 1700s, the name referred to all lands in what is now the American Midwest and as far south as the present day Louisiana.
The first use of "Canada" as an official name came in 1791 when the Province of Quebec was divided into the colonies of Upper and Lower Canada. In 1841, the two Canadas were again united under one name, the Province of Canada
....that in Cornwall England they are having difficulty speaking their own language because there are at least two maybe three versions of Cornish, and they cant understand each other?
New England Native Americans did not use fish as fertilizer. When Tisquantum (Squanto) showed that little trick to the Pilgrims, he was showing them something he had learned while a captive in Spain. By the way, tisquantum means rage or anger, so when he met the Pilgrims he basically introduced himself to them as "Hi, I'm the wrath of God."
(1491, the world before Columbus)
Rolls Royce were going to introduce a model called the Sivler Mist, until they found (I think this is true) that in German it translated along the lines of silver sh1t
....there has only been 30 minutes of peace, in total, in the known human history (written) of the world!! Now if THAT ain't a bitch I don't know what is....
Only five percent of all the people sold into slavery on the West Coast of Africa in the 17th and 18th Centuries ended up on plantations in British America or what is now the United States. 60 percent went othe Spanish colonies of South and Central America. 35 percent ended up in Portuguese Brazil.
Thanks Dys. That's where the word sinister came from...left hand...implied the right was clutching a hidden dagger.
[Middle English sinistre, unfavorable, from Old French, from Latin sinister, on the left, unlucky.]
<Somewhere in darkest England, a left handed Ellpus sharpens his dagger......reading with interest>
Shark skin is made of a matrix of tiny, hard, tooth-like structures called dermal denticles or placoid scales. These structures are shaped like curved, grooved teeth and make the skin a very tough armor with a texture like sandpaper. They have the same structure as a tooth with an outer layer of enamel, dentine and a central pulp cavity. Unlike the scales of scales of bony fish (ctenoid scales) that get larger as the fish grows, placoid scales stay the same size. As the shark grows, it just grows more placoid scales.
These scales also help the shark swim more quickly because their streamlined shapes helps decrease the friction of the water flowing along the shark's body, by channeling it through grooves. Also, the shark's skin is so rough that contact with it can injure prey. All of the spines of the denticles point backwards (towards the tail), so it would feel relatively smooth it you moved your hand from head to tail (but rough the other way).
dyslexia wrote:Evolutionary theory has long been puzzled by left-handedness. Southpaws are in the minority, and they get into many more accidents than do the right-handed; in the modern context, this is partly because so many quasi-lethal tools are engineered primarily for right-handed use. So the question is, given that left-handedness is so dangerous to one's health, why haven't southpaws evolutionarily vanished?
Possibly because southpaws are extremely good at one thing: Killin' people. In a recent Proceedings of the Royal Society, professors Charlotte Faurie and Michel Raymond published a study noting that left-handed people traditionally excel at combat sports, such as fencing and boxing, because their attacks so flummox the majority of opponents who are overaccustomed to right-handed attacks. They theorized further that this would mean that societies prone to violence would have an overabundance of left-handed people. When they gathered some data, it seemed to support their hypothesis; as The Economist summarized their findings:
One of the highest proportions of left-handers, for example, was found among the Yanomamo of South America. Raiding and warfare are central to Yanomamo culture. The murder rate is 4 per 1,000 inhabitants per year (compared with, for example, 0.068 in New York). And, according to Dr Faurie and Dr Raymond, 22.6% of Yanomamo are left-handed. In contrast, Dioula-speaking people of Burkina Faso in West Africa are virtual pacifists. There are only 0.013 murders per 1,000 inhabitants among them and only 3.4% of the population is left-handed.
ok dys. I can spot a wind up when one catches me with a left handed sucker punch..
good joke though
Lord Ellpus wrote: All of the spines of the denticles point backwards (towards the tail), so it would feel relatively smooth it you moved your hand from head to tail (but rough the other way).
Had the pleasure of meeting a nurse shark head on as she exited a cave 80 feet below the surface on a moonless night.It's just as you say Lord.
Julius Ceasar was epileptic.
(watched Rome last night)
....and here's another one from the Squirrel!!
In Greenland (which is actually very cold!) the RAF put the rookies they receive on "penguin duty". This is because the pilots like to fly low over the land and penguins, being total idiots, watch them fly over but don't turn around thus causing them to fall over....so the rookies go around and pick 'em up!!
Lmao....imagine that....a penguin keeling over backwards....ha ha!
Super Squirrel wrote:....and here's another one from the Squirrel!!
In Greenland (which is actually very cold!) the RAF put the rookies they receive on "penguin duty". This is because the pilots like to fly low over the land and penguins, being total idiots, watch them fly over but don't turn around thus causing them to fall over....so the rookies go around and pick 'em up!!
Lmao....imagine that....a penguin keeling over backwards....ha ha!
I don't believe there are penguins in Greenland.
Penguins are native to the Southern Hemisphere.
Mostly of course in Antartica, however, they do live as far as the equator, in the Galapagos Islands....
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