1. Post what you think are fascinating but little known facts here.
2. Put your facts in BOLD and all other text and comments in normal font. (see 1st example below) (use < b > Text < / b > to set text to bold)
3. Facts must be something you personally know, and not something random googled from the internet.
4. If you have a few to post, keep it to one fact per post and space out your posts so that we can continue and keep this gaming going with as many people posting interesting facts as possible.
You can comment on the posts of course but the aim is primarily to post facts.
Have fun!
Human babies are ALL born prematurely (ie. unlike animal babies, they are born unable to run/crawl/climb etc. but are born underdeveloped and helpless).
ReplyDeleteThe reason for this is extremely draconian evolution. Our homid ancestors developed larger and larger brains from Homo Erectus and Homo Ergaster to Homo Sapiens. If Homo Sapien mothers (ie. humans) waited for their babies to mature sufficiently to take care of themselves before giving birth, their heads would be too large to exit the womb and the mother would have died giving birth.
Singapore was a crucial part of the Opium war that humbled China and forced the Qing government to open its ports and allow opium into China.
ReplyDeleteSingapore was the central naval staging ground and coaling depot for British naval ships headed to China during the war. Without Singapore, the British would probably not have been able to mount a successful fight without the logistical support and repair facilities of Singapore.
Singapore had the heaviest defensive concentration of land-based artillery anywhere in the world during WW2, eclipsing even the defensive artillery of the whole of Britain at the time.
ReplyDeleteThere were a total number of five 15 inch guns and eleven 9.2 inch guns arrayed in defense of the island. This was only eclipse by the armaments of a few Battleships at the time;
Japanese Yamato Class - IJN Yamato (1941-1945) & IJN Musashi (1942-1944)
Nine 18.1 inch guns, Twelve 6.1 inch guns & Twelve 5.0 inch guns
USN Iowa Class - USN Iowa, USN New Jersey, USN Missouri & USN Wisconsin (1943–1992)
Nine 16 inch guns & Ten Twin 5 inch guns
US South Dakota Class - USN South Dakota, USN Indiana, USN Massachusetts & USN Alabama (1939-1965)
Nine 16 inch guns & Sixteen or Twenty 5 inch guns
German Kriegsmarine Bismarck Class - Bismarck & Tirpitz (1940-1944)
Eight 15 inch guns, Twelve 5.9 inch guns & Sixteen 4.1 inch guns
French Dunkerque class - Richelieu & Jean Bart (1940-1967)
Eight 15 inch guns & Nine 6 inch guns
British Admiral Class - HMS Hood (1920–1941)
Eight 15 inch guns & Sixteen 5.5 inch guns
British Queen Elizabeth Class - HMS Queen Elizabeth, HMS Warspite, HMS Valiant, HMS Barham & HMS Malaya (1913–1945)
Eight 15 inch guns & Sixteen 5.5 inch guns
Being Female, is the default option. Males are modified Females.
ReplyDeleteIts the hormone thing.
The Codex Leicester (dated around 1510) is not only a fascinating collection of scientific writings from Leonardo da Vinci, but it has also been written in a very specific way...
ReplyDeleteYou might know that Leonardo was left-handed but did you know he wrote most of his personal notes in mirror ? The mirror writing is formed by writing in the direction that is the reverse of the natural way for a given language, such that the result is the mirror image of normal writing: it appears normal when it's reflected in a mirror. Leonardo was only using standard writing if he intended his texts to be read by others.
(Bill Gates bought this manuscript for approximately 31 millions of US dollars...)
The words "awesome" and "awful" once had the same meaning
ReplyDeleteThanks to a phenomenon known as semantic drift, they eventually ended up having pretty much diametrically opposite meanings of, respectively, "super duper good" and "ultra mega bad".
The Brontosaurus is one of the most well known and recognisable dinosaurs in the world, probably second only to the T-rex, but there is no such thing as a brontosaurus.
ReplyDeleteBrontosaurus, which means "Thunder Lizard", was "discovered" in the late 19th century, and was perfect for such a gigantic animal who must have shook the ground with every step. Thousands of children knew the brontosaurus and it has appeared in numerous films and even as the symbol of Sinclair, a major US oil supplier. Many paleantological museums had their displays mislabeled for decades.
The brontosaurus however, was a fake. The head of a Camarasaurus was placed on top of an Apatosaurus skeleton and a new dinosaur was created. Exposed as a mislabelling in the early 20th century, and the wrong head confirmed in 1970, the brontosaurus however, continued to stay in popular imagination until recently when dinosaur enthusiasts accused the US Postal Service of promoting scientific illiteracy when the brontosaurus was featured on US postal stamps in 1989. Since the 1990s, the brontosaurus was quietly dropped from text books and children's books.
Recent studies show that the brains of baby boys and baby girls are wired differently, showing that some adult gender traits are inborn.
ReplyDeleteIn one study, when a piece of glass is place between a mother and her baby and the baby encounters the glass while trying to crawl to his or her mother, a baby girl would more often than not, start trying to interact with her mother by wailing and crying for her mother to help, while a baby boy would more often than not, start pushing against the glass or try to find a solution to get around the glass by himself first before resorting to crying and attracting his mother's attention.