Fun random facts thread

[DubiousLittleTyp0]

Share your oddest, most obscure, strangest pieces of information you know of on this thread so other people can learn about new things and you can learn too

Here I’ll start:

did you know that for the 25th anniversary celebration art gallery for JJBA, a special stand was created specifically for the event known as “Remote Romance”, whos abilities allow people to digitally view the art gallery via a live-stream in partnership with Google

Remote Romance originally belonged to a “legendary hacker” named Dixie Flatline, who uploaded this stand to the internet before their death in 2006.

the stand’s official artwork

the stand touring the gallery for online viewers

silly goofball

a more full display of the stand’s body

[TheFollest]

There’s a conspiracy theory that the titanic that had sunk was actually a ship called the olympic disguised as the titanic and it’s true purpose was to be used as an insurance scam.

[Mr_hyperspace]

There’s a condition which causes people to randomly hear loud noises when they are trying to sleep known as “exploding head syndrome”

[lucky_303]

Basketballs should be filled with heavy whipping cream. Over the course of the game, all the dribbling may eventually whip the cream into butter. This will surely make the basketball more difficult to dribble. However, the winning team will be awarded a delicious basketball filled with butter! Pretty neat!

[DubiousLittleTyp0]

Guys just a reminder but please only post genuine content and don’t spread misinformation, this isn’t a thread for trolling.

[westloonlake]

Why we actually don’t use airships anymore

Despite being known universally as the worlds worst airship disaster the Hindenburg explosion is actually not the worst. The disaster which killed 36 people is actually behind the sinking (yes sinking) of the USS Akron (Named after Akron Ohio home of a major airship base used still by goodyear today). Conceptually the USS Akron would have been safer as it was a helium airship which would’ve made it far less volatile than the hydrogen based Hindenburg. However, the volatile based gases inside of airships are not their only flaws.
Think of sailboats, you know how sails catch wind and move it around, now put a sail in the air and make it weightless. You now have every large airship ever. The Uss akron was one such airship at a whopping 785 feet only about 18 ft shorter than the record holders for the worlds largest flying machines.

Before I dive into the rest of this I’m going to talk about what the role of the USS Akron was. Unlike the Hindenburg, the Uss Akron was actually a Us Navy Vessel which operated as a recon ship which could carry and launch airplanes to assist in its goal. Yes you heard me right, airplanes took off from this thing.



Surprisingly as far as I know there were no incidents relating to these aircraft and the ahead of its time trapeze system was actually quite effective.
You may be asking, how can a plane land on an airship and to that I say they really didn’t.
I assume most of you have seen modern airplanes refuel mid air and that is essentially the same concept

The planes would match their speed with the USS akron before hooking onto the trapeze and being lifted up

pictured here.
Back to the disaster now. As I said, the issue with large airships are that they are essentially massive sails. You know where I am going with this. Put this giant weightless sail in a storm and this thing lasts no chance no matter how well designed it may be. On April 4th 1933 this exactly would happen and the USS akron would collapse into Atlantic. The uss akron itself was rather unequipped for such incident and since you don’t really expect a flying ship to be in the water they had nearly no supplies to provide flotation and warmth in the waters below. 73 on the airship would die not to a blaze like the Hindenburg but to quite the opposite. Then 2 more would die NOT in the airship but in a PLANE which crashed looking for them.

At this point they already had an identical sister airship (USS Macon named after Macon Georgia) in construction which would serve the same goal on the pacific end of the states. With the Macon they fixed a few minor design flaws ontop of adding valuable flotation devices which could help in a repeat of the events mentioned (foreshadowing).
Yeah you guessed it, the same exact thing happened, now this time rather than 70 people dying only 2 did, which just goes to show how absolutely valueable these flotation devices and life jackets were.

Also I got to see the one of the only surviving aircrafts that used to be on the USS Macon

Also I haven’t even mentioned the time 2 guys fell to their death during mooring and literally got pulled up on what is essentially an airship anchor without the weights.

I’m not going to go into detail but most of if not all major airships suffered the same fate (death)

Shenandoah

crashed due to storm
R-101 (The last Major British Airship)

Crashed due to storm and then caught fire and then exploded (Deadlier than hindenburg, 48/54 died
R-100

Scrapped because of aforementioned crash
Uss Los Angeles (A carrier like the USS akron)

scrapped also heres a photo of its worst disaster. You can probably guess why whats happening is bad
R-38

Crashed due to a piloting mishap and as all helium airships do, an explosion, 44 died
French Airship Dixmude

Blew up in a thunderstorm 52 died
Uss Army Roma

Rudder failed causing it to become uncontrollable before crashing to the ground.
34 died
Thats all the examples.
You can definitely see some patterns here and those patterns are why we don’t use airships anymore.

Also USS AKRON FUN FACTS!!!

The uss akron had propellors which could rotate to provide lift and forward momentum

The Uss akron is one of the major inspirations behind the Airship Featured in up.
It even features the same bi-plane trapeze system and previously mentioned propellor rotation.

The USS Akron actually had water condensers which would collect water vapor which would balance out the weight lost in the burning of fuel

Pictured here, the black strips are the condensers
Now finally the most obscure of them all, The spy basket. Do you want to be in a tiny little hanging observation chamber? Of course you do, meet the spy basket!

The fins here that make it look like a bomb are there to stop the Basket from violently being flung about by wind and becoming a really intense swing set. Something that did happen, obviously it wasn’t manned at the time which was good. You couldn’t pay me to get in that damn thing.

Ok now for the conclusion I aint writing more

Overall airships as a concept were really really ambitious and some of them were really innovative for the time but most had major flaws due to helium expenses causing many airships to use the much more volatile hydrogen gas as lift, and Zeus striking them down because he doesn’t like airships for some reason.

edit - I had to fix a statistic about the hindenburg casualties

[DubiousLittleTyp0]

Woah, really cool

(or I guess not cool since this was like a tragedy but you know what I mean)

[lucky_303]

woah, really cool

(it’s cool because it’s a tragedy if you know what i mean)

[westloonlake]

You can tell I maybe was a little obsessed over airships at a time

[LiterallyLoki]

I got a bunch of these hold on!

The Japanese maybe had a version of a Macuahuitl. Drawings were found of one that would’ve had obsidian blades, but it’s not confirmed (as far as I know)

Knife throwing isn’t accurate, most people with a dagger would use it as a last ditch effort. Plus, medieval weaponry was hardly made even all the time.

Very fucking obviously, having a dagger is considered fine. I don’t know where the idea of a dagger or how its bad for a knight to have one, but it was literally the common last ditch effort weapon someone had.

On the set of TWD, rick Grime’s actor and Daryl Dixon’s actor had a prank war.

And, the most true fact of all: Arcane is the best animated show OAT and anyone who disagrees is just scientifically wrong.

[westloonlake]

I forgot a fact. I didn’t really talk about the US Navy’s blimps much, only thing of note was that they had more success than the larger more illogical HUGEEE airships. They were actually used for quite some time after the age of huge airships ended. These blimps were kinda used for submarine warfare and overall navy recon. (up until about the 60s)
N - Class Blimp

K- Class Blimp


(These 2 are my favorites with the K - Class being my favorite of the 2)
Anyways, for some reason the Navy wanted to drop nukes from these guys and they had the really wonderful question of “what happens if we nuke these things”. I really just think they wanted an excuse to nuke something because like what do you expect?

Yeah so anyways it went as expected

So thats why we dont arm blimps with nukes to hunt submarines.

[TheFollest]

The US spent more money developing the B-29 Superfortress than they did the Manhattan project during ww2. I guess it was worth it though cause the B-29 was decades ahead of it’s time.

[Mr_hyperspace]

@westloonlake

thats why we dont arm blimps with nukes to hunt submarines.

[Zormego]

Only a local thing, but my older sister is the reason why my school district has a rule against anyone with a fever attending school. She went with a 104-degree temperature because she had a test that day.

Also in Stardew Valley, you can put Mayor Lewis’ shorts in a sewing machine with a gold bar to trim and wear them yourself.

[LiterallyLoki]

I got an interesting local fun fact:

There’s a church in Massachusetts that got a new railing because of me when I went for a wedding. Long story short, second story pew, I looked down and wanted to see if I’d die at that height, so I ran through the railing since I was too short to jump over it.

I regret nothing.

[Mr_hyperspace]

@LiterallyLoki

and wanted to see if I’d die at that height

“Is this fall lethal? only one way to find out-!”

[LiterallyLoki]

I was like 9 and was like “damn, lemme just-” goddamn

I just realized I’ve always had no sense of self preservation- damn, should I open like a topic that’s just telling insane stories of my childhood and life atp lmao

[CookieTank12345]

Grass is a type of plant with narrow leaves growing from the base. Their appearance as a common plant was in the mid-Cretaceous period. There are 12,000 species now.[3]

A common kind of grass is used to cover the ground in places such as lawns and parks. Grass is usually the color green. That is because they are wind-pollinated rather than insect-pollinated, so they do not have to attract insects. Green is the best colour for photosynthesis.

Grasslands such as savannah and prairie are where grasses are dominant. They cover 40.5% of the land area of the Earth, but not Greenland and Antarctica.[4]

Grasses are monocotyledon herbaceous plants. They include the “grass” of the family Poaceae, which are called grass by ordinary people. This family is also called the Gramineae and includes some of the sedges (Cyperaceae) and the rushes (Juncaceae).[5] These three families are not very closely related, though all of them belong to clades in the order Poales. They are similar adaptations to a similar life-style.

With about 780 genera and about 12,000 species,[3] the Poaceae is the fifth-largest plant family. Only the Asteraceae, Orchidaceae, Fabaceae and Rubiaceae have more species.[6]

The true grasses include cereals, bamboo and the grasses of lawns (turf) and grassland. Uses for graminoids include food (as grain, shoots or rhizomes), drink (beer, whisky), pasture for livestock, thatch, paper, fuel, clothing, insulation, construction, basket weaving and many others.

Many grasses are short, but some grasses can grow tall, such as bamboo. Plants from the grass family can grow in many places and make grasslands, including areas which are very dry or cold. There are several other plants that look similar to grass and are referred to as such but are not members of the grass family. These plants include rushes, reeds, papyrus and water chestnut. Seagrass is a monocot in the order Alismatales.

Grasses are an important food for many animals, such as deer, buffalo, cattle, mice, grasshoppers, caterpillars and many other grazers. Unlike other plants, grasses grow from the bottom, so when animals eat grass, they usually do not destroy the part that grows.[7] This is part of the reason why the plants are so successful.

Without grass, more soil might wash away into rivers (erosion).

[sock]

what’s the difference between a blimp and an airship?

[LiterallyLoki]

Hiya pooks :3 (I think airships can be more any type of air vehicle, while blimps are… well, blimps.)