Facts that are completely useless

biometrics

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“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”​

 

biometrics

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The new Rolls-Royce Ghost soundproofing was so over engineered that occupants in the car found the near-total silence disorienting, and some felt sick. Acoustic engineers had to go back and work on "harmonizing" various sounds in the car to add a continuous soft whisper.
 

satanboy

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Egyptian mummies wouldn’t be so rare today if the Victorian British didn’t eat most of them.

So back in the time of the crusades Europeans found out about this amazing miracle remedy, bitumen, also known as asphalt. Due to some sort of error in translation maybe, they believed the mummification process used bitumen and started using mummies as an easy source of medicine. As mummies became more scarce bodies were actually being mummified, added bitumen, aged and shipped to Europe. The 19th century rolled up and things got more interesting. Mummy brown, a paint made with ground mummy powder was all the rave (in use up to the 1930s) and mummy unwrapping parties were the pastime of the rich and richer, a macabre spectacle, all in the name of science, of course.
 

Dave

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Egyptian mummies wouldn’t be so rare today if the Victorian British didn’t eat most of them.

So back in the time of the crusades Europeans found out about this amazing miracle remedy, bitumen, also known as asphalt. Due to some sort of error in translation maybe, they believed the mummification process used bitumen and started using mummies as an easy source of medicine. As mummies became more scarce bodies were actually being mummified, added bitumen, aged and shipped to Europe. The 19th century rolled up and things got more interesting. Mummy brown, a paint made with ground mummy powder was all the rave (in use up to the 1930s) and mummy unwrapping parties were the pastime of the rich and richer, a macabre spectacle, all in the name of science, of course.

Almost true, it happened but was nothing to do with the Victorians (1837-1900).


The use of mummy as a drug was widespread in Europe from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries, and its employment lingered on for a hundred years later.

Its supposed virtue was originally based upon the medicinal properties of natural bitumen obtained from the Dead Sea and elsewhere. During the Middle Ages mummy was obtained from embalmed human bodies—in Egypt—which were believed to have been prepared with bitumen. Even at the present day the statement is current that the Egyptians used bitumen for mummification, but this is erroneous, for the embalming-material is resin, although its appearance often simulates that of bitumen.

The supply being obtained from mummified human bodies, the virtues of the drug were transferred to the bodies themselves. In course of time the term mummy lost its original association with bitumen, and was applied to medicated flesh in general.

The use of mummy in medicine did not finally become obsolete until the latter part of the eighteenth century.
 

Düber

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There is only one substance that remains a liquid at absolute zero.

Helium will remain liquid at absolute zero of temperature, while at a pressure of less than 25 megapascal, and there are none that are still a gas.
 

scudsucker

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The world record for underground aviation (yes, underground) is - 206m.

A hot air balloon descended into a sink-hole cave in Croatia

 

satanboy

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Unlike many other animals on this planet, crocodiles and alligators have no finite life span. Instead, they continue to live and grow unless affected by their environment through a lack of food, disease, accidents, or another large predator. Instead of aging biologically, alligators continue to simply grow in size.
 

scudsucker

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After the Battle of Shiloh (US Civil War) many of the casualties had to lie on the battlefield awaiting treatment.

A large number noticed blue light inside their wounds, and those that did were more likely to survive and heal faster.

The light came from bioluminescent bacteria that live inside nematodes, tiny parasites that infect insect larvae, eg fly maggots. These bacteria produce chemicals which kills different bacteria, thereby creating a natural, glowing, topical antibiotic.

 

biometrics

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World's First Photograph

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Centuries of advances in chemistry and optics, including the invention of the camera obscura, set the stage for the world’s first photograph. In 1826, French scientist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, took that photograph, titled View from the Window at Le Gras, at his family’s country home. Niépce produced his photo—a view of a courtyard and outbuildings seen from the house’s upstairs window—by exposing a bitumen-coated plate in a camera obscura for several hours on his windowsill.
 

satanboy

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Frequency illusion, also known as the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon or frequency bias, is a cognitive bias in which, after noticing something for the first time, there is a tendency to notice it more often, leading someone to believe that it has an increased frequency of occurrence.
 
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