The random interesting fact thread

I'll start us off with a fact that is a bit of a non fact (and an item of trivia about a TV star.)

Alan Turing, who helped shorten the war by breaking the German's Enigma code, was prosecuted for being gay (it was still illegal in the UK at the time) and was chemically castrated as an alternative to going to prison. He committed suicide some time later by eating an apple laced with cyanide. It had been suggested that the apple logo was a tribute to Turing but Steve Jobs, when asked about it by Stephen Fry some time ago, said that it wasn't true but that they wished to high heaven that it was.

Also, Anna Paquin, the woman who plays Sookie Stackhouse in True Blood, was the young girl with the geese in Fly away home.

Fact: This thread will contain at least one untrue urban legend by the end of the second page.

Spoiler:

I shall see to it personally!

My favorite is showing people how those are wrong, and watching them just deflate.

Computer mice have existed for almost 50 years.

Pope John Paul II was a Harlem Globetrotter, jersey #75.

Source

The Stig pees 98 octane gas.

The vocals to Radiohead's Planet Telex were recorded by a drunk Thom Yorke while he was lying down.

FACT: Black bears are best.

FACT: the first documented collegiate football game in the U.S. was played between Rutgers and Princeton (then called 'The College of New Jersey) on November 6th, 1869.

FACT: the greatest NCAA football team since 1900 is ALABAMA with 13 national championships. USC, Michigan, and Notre Dame are tied for second with 11.

Boxing promoter Don King has killed two people.

Concave wrote:

Boxing promoter Don King has killed two people.

So has former NFL runningback OJ Simpson.

Higgledy wrote:

I'll start us off with a fact that is a bit of a non fact (and an item of trivia about a TV star.)

Alan Turing, who helped shorten the war by breaking the German's Enigma code, was prosecuted for being gay (it was still illegal in the UK at the time) and was chemically castrated as an alternative to going to prison. He committed suicide some time later by eating an apple laced with cyanide. It had been suggested that the apple logo was a tribute to Turing but Steve Jobs, when asked about it by Stephen Fry some time ago, said that it wasn't true but that they wished to high heaven that it was.

Also, Anna Paquin, the woman who plays Sookie Stackhouse in True Blood, was the young girl with the geese in Fly away home.

He's on my list of historical figures I'd like to have dinner with, all of whom have last names starting with 'T':

Twain
Tesla
Turing
Tyson (Neil deGrasse)

A neutron star is so dense that one teaspoon (5 ml) of its material would have a mass over 5.5×1012 kg, about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza (from wikipedia). Neutron stars can rotate as much as several hundred times per second.

FACT: This new thread went from 0 to P&C in just 9 posts.

The main gases in a fart – nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and methane – have no smell. The unpleasant smell of a fart is due to very tiny amounts of sulphur-containing gases, which have a smell disproportionate to their volume.

Fact: Tim Tebow just wins.

Jayhawker wrote:

Fact: Tim Tebow just wins.

IMAGE(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g81/ziffel66/cry.jpg)

Spoiler:

Not always.

Jeff-66 wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

Fact: Tim Tebow just wins.

IMAGE(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g81/ziffel66/cry.jpg)

Spoiler:

Not always.

Fact: No one likes the SEC except themselves.

And I was talking about real football.

El-Taco-the-Rogue wrote:

The vocals to Radiohead's Planet Telex were recorded by a drunk Thom Yorke while he was lying down.

FACT: He was just emulating John Lennon, who was so strung out on drugs during the recording of "I Am the Walrus" that they had to record him lying down because he couldn't stand up long enough to sing the song.

Jayhawker wrote:

And I was talking about real football.

Fine, the answer is still 'not always'.

Fact: Take away Denver's exceptional defensive play and Tim Tebow is a struggling, sub-par QB fighting for his job, on an offense averaging about 18 pts a game since he took over.

I'll give him this though, he doesn't make many turnovers.

Jeff-66 wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

And I was talking about real football.

Fine, the answer is still 'not always'.

Fact: Take away Denver's exceptional defensive play and Tim Tebow is a struggling, sub-par QB fighting for his job, on an offense averaging about 18 pts a game since he took over.

I'll give him this though, he doesn't make many turnovers.

That's because they let him throw 8 times a game

Thin_J wrote:

That's because they let him throw 8 times a game :P

But that's a lot ... for a runningback.

Ahem. Anyway ...

Ok so I've heard a billion 1 dollar bills taped end to end will circle the earth 4 times.

Jeff-66 wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

And I was talking about real football.

Fine, the answer is still 'not always'.

Fact: Take away Denver's exceptional defensive play and Tim Tebow is a struggling, sub-par QB fighting for his job, on an offense averaging about 18 pts a game since he took over.

I'll give him this though, he doesn't make many turnovers.

Gotta give it to the SEC chump to ruin a good joke. Carry on.

How about this?

Parenting is not a word.

The father of Jack O'Halloran, who played the big, silent Largo in Superman 2, was the guy the Godfather movies were based on.

He is interviewed on the latest episode of How Did This Get Made?

The real story behind the horses head in the bed scene is a tad unsettling.

Spoiler:

Here's a clue: It wasn't the horses head.

Despite the fact that Watson and Crick are credited with discovering the structure of DNA, uncovering this little bit of scientific revelation was (and still is) considered all but inevitable by the time they got around to discovering it. There were many other scientists on the same track and most of them would have actually bet on multi-Nobel laureate Linus Pauling at being the first to finally crack the puzzle.

If you turn a swan upside down in water, it is unable to right itself, and will drown.

Jeff-66 wrote:

Ok so I've heard a billion 1 dollar bills taped end to end will circle the earth 4 times.

~ 3.8915876962 times

Assuming you have US dollar bills and you use the equator distance rather than the pole to pole distance.

Jeff-66 wrote:
Thin_J wrote:

That's because they let him throw 8 times a game :P

But that's a lot ... for a runningback single wing tailback.

Fixed.

The kiss between Charlton Heston and Rosalind Cash in The Omega Man was one of the first interracial kisses (and interracial sexual relationships) portrayed on the big screen. Also, her naked butt was shown more than once and it was wonderful. (Mercifully, Heston's was not shown.)

Jayhawker wrote:

How about this?

Parenting is not a word.

That's because it's a sentence.

So there is already a joke thread, and a number of "random" threads, mind avoiding "joke" facts and opinions on sports players?

There are so many joke answers already, I couldn't tell if some of the other facts interspersed (the Thom Yorke/John Lennon ones for example) were real without googling it, which defeats the purpose...

trueheart78 wrote:

Pope John Paul II was a Harlem Globetrotter, jersey #75.

Source

Methinks somebody watches Big Bang Theory.