TIL: Today I Learned

[bhsup]

Not to mention French.

 

[Cutlass]

TIL that they used to make table glasses out of uranium.......

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I assume you'll also serve them tonic water in those glasses before breaking out the blacklight.

 

[Arakhor]

Oh, they make for very striking varieties of yellow and green glass. It's really quite fascinating.

 

[bhsup]

TIL that my long held belief that the Prez and Veep had to be from different States is not actually true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_President_of_the_United_States#Residency_limitation

While it is commonly held that the President and Vice President must be residents of different states, this is not actually the case. Nothing in the Constitution prohibits both candidates being from a single state. Instead, the limitation imposed is on the members of the Electoral College, who must cast a ballot for at least one candidate who is not from their own state.

In theory, the candidates elected could both be from one state, but the electors of that state would, in a close electoral contest, run the risk of denying their vice presidential candidate the absolute majority required to secure the election, even if the presidential candidate is elected. This would then place the vice presidential election in the hands of the Senate.

 

[madviking]

At a party that same year held by fashion designer Fernando Sanchez, Ayer, then 77, confronted Mike Tyson who was forcing himself upon the (then) little-known model Naomi Campbell. When Ayer demanded that Tyson stop, the boxer said: "Do you know who the **** I am? I'm the heavyweight champion of the world," to which Ayer replied: "And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field. I suggest that we talk about this like rational men". Ayer and Tyson then began to talk, while Naomi Campbell slipped out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Ayer

 

[Phrossack]

TIL that deer are occasionally predatory.

Weird.

 

[bhsup]

TIL that deer are occasionally predatory.

Weird.

Spoiler :

 

[gay_Aleks]

Who's sheeple now, huh?!

 

[Tigranes]

TIL that ... uhm .... or rather , well ... read it on your discretion:

The Shinto Kanamara Matsuri celebration ( "Festival of the Steel Phallus") is held each spring at the Kanayama Shrine in Kawasaki, Japan. The exact dates vary: the main festivities fall on the first Sunday in April. The penis, as the central theme of the event, is reflected in illustrations, candy, carved vegetables, decorations, and a mikoshi parade.

The Kanamara Matsuri is centred around a local penis-venerating shrine once popular among prostitutes who wished to pray for protection from sexually transmitted diseases. It is said that there are also divine protections for business prosperity and for the clan's prosperity; and for easy delivery, marriage, and married-couple harmony. There is also a legend of a sharp-toothed demon (vagina dentata) that hid inside the vagina of a young woman and castrated two young men on their wedding nights. As a result, the young woman sought help from a blacksmith, who fashioned an iron phallus to break the demon's teeth, which led to the enshrinement of the item.

I hope this ... creative ... discovery was well within family-friendliness of Japanese readers of OT

 

[cybrxkhan]

Oh, I heard about that. Pretty tame compared to other things you hear about in other cultures. Sounds kinda fun, sexual themes aside.

 

[dusters]

TIL - There are so few world famous female mathematicians in history before 20th century i can count them on my hands. I hope to find more than Sofia Kovalevskaya, Hypatia and a woman with odd name from 18th century Italy.

 

[Tigranes]

Emmy Noether was born 1882

Full list here.

 

[dusters]

Emmy Noether was born 1882

Full list here.

Thanks. My books mention her with one paragraph each, yes. I forgot her.

Ada is pretty popular in programming circles, and she even has a programming language named after her

 

[cybrxkhan]

TIL the last Japanese veteran of World War I died in 1999.

 

[Hygro]

TIL that deer are occasionally predatory.

Weird.

Not photoshopped

Spoiler :

 

[Goodfella]

TIL the Curies won 5 nobel prizes.

 

[Tigranes]

TIL that...

... only miracle saved Bruno Kreisky from Dachau in 1936 (English wikipedia does not explain it). Born to a liberal Jewish family in Austria future Chancellor was arrested soon after Anschluss in MArch 1938. He was released after 6 months in September 1938. Before 1938 he has spent some time in the prisons of the Austrian Dollfuss regime in 1935, as a socialist. Many of his cellmates were Nazis and he accepted them as fellow political opponents of the Austro-Fascist government. It was one of these former cellmates who arranged Kreisky's escape to Sweden in 1938. This former cellmate was now working in gestapo and Kreisky's case was luckily or miraculously assigned to him. Unfortunately I could not find his name so far...

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

TIL to my great surprise that biomass supplies a larger portion of US energy than hydroelectric power. Yeah, it's 2004 data, but I haven't heard of new dams being built but I do know biomass energy can only have increased, so it's even more different now. I would've thought that all those rivers would be excellent for damming.

 

[Cutlass]

The thing is, the rivers which are good for hydroelectric, all those dams were built half a century ago. They aren't making new places which are good for dams.