Most outrageously out-there random piece of trivia you can think of

[abolibibelot]

My “total posts” count[*] is currently at 991, I have to reach 1000 one way or another... (Sadly, it's unlikely I'll ever be over 9000.)

So here is a goofy poll, for a little bit of escapism from the madness of the world out there.

What is the most outrageously out-there random piece of trivia you can think of, “today I learned” style?

This was inspired by one of my latest posts before I went into “suspended animation” for over 4 years (here), saying:

(Today I learned... that the actor whose character got blown to pieces in that infamous scene [from Robocop] almost got his balls blown off by a misplaced blood squib...)

And just now, I stumbled upon a screenshot I made in March 2022 of the Wikipedia article on Mickey Rourke, stating that Mickey Rourke tried to save his dog, Beau Jack, by giving him 45 minutes of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Can you think of something both equally silly and equally awesome?
Side question: if you have a pet, would you give said pet 45 minutes of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation if push came to shove? (VCRs don't count as pets.)

[*] By the way, a minor glitch I noticed: when browsing through my posting history, the displayed total number of pages is wrong, for instance on page 1 I saw: “Page 1 of 5”, then that number increased as I reached further pages: “Page 8 of 12” ... “Page 15 of 19” ... only in the last few pages did it show the correct number: “Page 22 of 25” ... “Page 25 of 25”.

[ozymango]

Well here's a piece of trivia I learned many years ago from a friend from Alaska: There's a town in Alaska called "Chicken" that was supposed to be named "Ptarmigan," after the species of bird that nested there, but when they went to make the name official (dunno exactly how you make a town's name official), they didn't know how to spell "ptarmigan," so they settled on "Chicken" instead. True story! Well my friend was/is from Chicken, Alaska, so I just take her at her word.

[geek gift]

hmm that you can drive from blue ball PA to intercourse PA.

https://www.mapquest.com/directions/from/us/pa/blue-ball-282037623/to/us/pa/intercours...Type=leave-now

[abolibibelot]

@“ozymango”
Not bad, not bad, it would have been worthy of a Monty Python skit... There's the “squick” factor missing, though, compared with the example provided.
Another example: Iggy Pop is an expert in eating and farting. ([EDIT] And former professional bodybuilder Lee Priest too; he also once tied his penis to a coffee table with a shoelace while watching porn high on cocaine, then realized that his cat was watching him with a judgmental stare.)

@“geek gift”
Damn, if there is a place called Blue Ball in Pennsylvania, could there actually be a place called Frog Balls in Arkansas?
(I didn't make that one. I made this, this, this, this, and this one. Oh and this one too. Hearkening back to your reply in that other thread, reminds me of that chilling yet hilarious line from the Terminator T850 in Terminator 3 - Rise of the Machines: “Your levity is good. It relieves tension and the fear of death.”)

[thecoalman]

The SR-71 and A-12's leaked fuel while sitting on the ground. It's part of the design, while in flight the fuel tanks seal up as the the fuselage heats up and expands.

This brings us to fun fact number two, it expanded a full foot in length during high speed flight.

Above Mach 2.5 most thrust is from a bypass that is effectively a ram jet making it more fuel efficient at higher speeds.

Titanium the primary metal used to build these planes is not rare a metal, it's just expensive to produce. At the time the best source was Russia and the CIA through many front companies bought a lot of titanium from Russia.

The largest design hurdle for building these planes was designing and building the tools to manufacture it.

The most outrageous of them all.... Initial design concept for the A-12 began in 1955 and it first flew in 1962. While I'm sure there is something out there faster the SR-71 still holds the official record for fastest manned air breathing vehicle. Official record does reflect the actual top speed of A-12 which was probably Mach 3.5+.

If you are unfamiliar the A-12 was the initial design, smaller and faster than the SR-71 but it also had a more limited fuel capacity. The A-12 can be identified by it's pointy nose. there is also a YF-12 that was made in between.

Side question: if you have a pet, would you give said pet 45 minutes of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation if push came to shove?

I would if I thought it was going to make a difference, not for 45 minutes though. After 10 or 15 minutes survival is unlikely and brain damage is occurring.

[thecoalman]

hmm that you can drive from blue ball PA to intercourse PA.

Once you leave Intercourse you can drive to Paradise, PA.

"Outrageous" fact about your fact, those are Amish communities. If you are on a diet you want to avoid this area of PA like the plague.

[burnman99]

hmm that you can drive from blue ball PA to intercourse PA.

https://www.mapquest.com/directions/from/us/pa/blue-ball-282037623/to/us/pa/intercourse-282026205?scheduleType=leave-now[/url]

In Arkansas, you can also go from Blue Ball AR to Cherry Hill AR in about an hour

https://www.mapquest.com/directions/from//us/arkansas/blue-ball-ar-282921801/to//us/ar...Type=leave-now

[abolibibelot]

@“thecoalman”
Wow, that's a highly technical example! I barely know the basics about planes, so some details just... flew over mah head...
That sentence in particular:
“Above Mach 2.5 most thrust is from a bypass that is effectively a ram jet making it more fuel efficient at higher speeds.”

I would if I thought it was going to make a difference, not for 45 minutes though. After 10 or 15 minutes survival is unlikely and brain damage is occurring.

Yeah, perhaps Mickey Rourke had a bit of brain damage himself, from his short career as a boxer, for thinking that it would make a difference... (I don't know the circumstances, or if it actually happened as described – it could be as authentic as that story with Richard Gere and a gerbil, which is surprisingly not mentioned in his Wikipedia article, even though it's been referenced in several movies and television series; it's abundantly discussed in the talk pages though.)
Speaking of saving an animal... For a few years now I've had a habit of “visiting” nearby private swimming pools at night during the summer, and one night in September 2020, as I came by a pool, I saw something moving in the water, at first I thought it was a rat which got me squirming and cringing at the idea that I may have been swimming in a rat infested pool... but upon closer inspection, it was actually a hedgehog, which may have been struggling for hours trying to climb back to the shore... so I gently put it there and ended the ordeal... (I didn't perform mouth-to-mouth stuff, though – would've been both inefficient and hazardous with a hedgehog.)
And there was a cat that couldn't care less. (That cat became my best friend those past few years; she's a female cat, despite her quite ample size, I had “misgendered” her initially.)





Oh, and speaking of so-called personalities who are outrageously out-there, I recently found out about that guy (no I didn't know about him, haven't watched a single movie he starred in) who's off-the-scale in every possible way, shape, or form.
And I have a feeling that this is just the avant-garde, that's what the future holds in store for humanity. So we better brace ourselves, the second quarter of the 21st century has just begun.

[thecoalman]

I'm no expert on planes either but I guess I know more than most. There is many types of jet engines. A basic jet engine mechanically compresses air, mix fuel and ignite it. This spins blades that power the compressor on front end and it provides thrust out the back. Additional thrust can be provided with afterburner where more fuel is mixed after all the spinning parts.

Ram jet is simple as it gets. On the SR-71 during high speed flight the air is naturally compressed by channeling it into narrow ducts that bypass the compressor, it is mixed with fuel in afterbrner section and is used only for thrust. This provides about 80% of the power during high speed flight. The problem with this process is you need to be going very fast for it to work. They use the regular jets for low speed flight like taking off and the bypass is engaged when sufficient speed has been attained.

This is quite efficient because you don' have all those spinning parts, friction etc. It also overcomes another issue which is the heat in jet engines when they are traveling that fast. There is upper limit to how much heat an engine can take, this is why most military aircraft are limited to about Mach 2.5 which is something they were doing in the 60's. Once you cross that threshold it gets very expensive to go that fast with regular jet engine alone. For example the Russian's have the Mig25 that can go mach 3.0+ but it can only do it for short time as in minutes, the SR-71 can sustain that speed for hours.

[abolibibelot]

Through a chain of wise trades, a young man managed to get from a paper clip to a small house within a year.
No “squick factor” for this one but it's definitely impressive.
I was looking for that article the other day, then last night stumbled upon a mention I had made of it in an old post on Doom9.

If you do want a whole lot of squick, there's that fairly (in)famous story about a regular, well adjusted German man who consented to being slaughtered and eaten by a fellow regular, well adjusted German man... who, once in jail, became a vegetarian.
It's the first entry in the “List of unusual deaths in the 21st century” Wikipedia article, which features quite a few worthy examples (there are articles for former epochs as well). Also the “List of people who have died while on the toilet” article, which I mentioned earlier (and “Toilet related injuries and deaths”). The sheer number of entries (those are only cases deemed notable enough to have made the news or to have been mentioned in history books) makes you realize that it might be the single most dangerous room in your home, and makes you reconsider the true meaning of the phrase “taking a dump”. And adding fibers to your diet may spare you from both an untimely demise and some posthumous embarassment.

Also, from the “List of last words (21st century)” article, John Entwistle's last words were reportedly:
“Goodnight for the 4th time” — stated to groupie Alycen Rowse before going to sleep in bed with her.
Must have been quite an evening... He didn't know if he was coming or going...

[thecoalman]

During an underground nuclear test being conducted by the US they accidentally launched a manhole cover with an estimated speed of about 125,000MPH. It was never found, it`either burned up or was launched into space..... one month before Sputnik. LOL

[abolibibelot]

How could I forget that one, which I learned about just a couple months ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
In 1848, the man, then 25, had his skull fully perforated by an iron rod (over 3 centimeters wide), yet survived and lived another 12 years, obviously diminished but still a mostly functional individual.
(I remembered this while reading the Wikipedia article about a recent criminal affair in France, whereby a young far-right activist died as a result of head injuries, even though he was conscious for a while after being severely beaten, then the forensic examiner reportedly said that his injuries were beyond any kind of medical intervention and that he would have died anyway, even with immediate medical attention. Well, apparently, today's ICUs aren't able to proceed with the kind of craftsmanship and outside-the-box thinking that Edward Higginson Williams and John Martyn Harlow managed to pull off back in 1848, with considerably more rudimentary knowledge and equipment...)

[julitomg]

Ramón Bravo was a Mexican underwater cameraman. In the late 70s, he was very well known here in Mexico, made several documentaries, and a TV show where he proved to be the poor man´s Cousteau (in fact, he did collaborate with the famous French oceanographer). he also did underwater cinema After the worldwide success of the movie JAWS he wrote his own killer shark novel "Tintorera" which was later adapted into a movie in 1977 starring Andrés García (who was famous for the film adaptations of the comic book character "Chanoc"), Hugo Stiglitz (B movie fans may recall him from Umberto Lenzi´s "Nightmare City") and american actress Susan George, obviously Bravo provided the underwater cinematography (being famous for diving and swimming near real live sharks without a cage) In the film, a couple of rakish shark hunting playboys seduce an american tourist in a paradisiac caribbean island but when they they take her out to show off their skills in the opne sea, an unusually big and cunning tintorera shark manages to kill and eat one of them. Well, when they filmed the scene, they started with the usual low-budget special effects available (a stiff mannequin dressed in diver´s gear and some fake blood) it looked super cheesy, the director was not pleased (he was famous at the time for his violent action films with special effects as realistic as they were possible within the modest budgets) The crew paused trying to look for a way to make it look better but to no avail. A small crowd had gathered around them since García and Stiglitz were very well known back then, and one guy approached the production assistants, asking what the problem was. They told him they couldn´t get a real enough effect, and they had to come up with a solution fast. The guy (a local sailor) looked at the manniquin and said, "Why don´t you use a real one"? they were perplexed but also desperate and decided to hear him out. He happened to know someone in the local morgue, where they had several unclaimed bodies. The director and the production manager deliberated for a while and decided that, crazy as it was, it was a solution, and while it would cost money (especially in bribes) it´d be cheaper than hiring a new special fx crew, having them arrive at the location and rescheduling the whole shoot. So they went, got themselves a John Doe, dressed him up and the shark did the rest. The scene still looks a bit odd, the effect is not perfect (cinematically) but kinda works, and once you know what really happened, you´ll never see it in the same way.
You can watch the movie in youtube (it´s also known as "Killer Shark" or "Tintorera, killer shark")
By the way, Ramón Bravo also worked in Lucio Fulci´s "Zombie" shooting the famous zombie vs shark underwater scene.

[thecoalman]

I'll have to say a real dead body used as mannequin in shark movie is pretty hard to beat for outrageous.

Another cool plane trivia post... The A-10 is basically a flying cannon. The GAU-8 Gatling gun was designed before the plane. Then they built the plane around the gun. While not the largest by caliber ever put on a plane with a fire rate of 3900 rounds per minute of 30MM ammunition it's easily the most powerful cannon ever put into a smaller aircraft when considering overall effectiveness. It's capable of destroying main battle tanks, specifically built with the capability to destroy T-72's. The live barrel is directly on center otherwise it would drive the plane off course when fired. If you ever see a video/picture of one on the ground check out the front strut, its way off center to accommodate the gun. The gun itself is also slightly offset to center the live barrel.

[abolibibelot]

@“julitomg”

Ramón Bravo was a Mexican underwater cameraman...

Reminds me of a Bill Hicks bit about using terminally ill people as stuntmen in movies (as the only way to possibly top the special effects in Terminator 2, which was recently released and was considered as the gold standard back then – perhaps still is according to some).

“What? You want your grandmother dying like a little bird in a hospital room? Her translucent skin so thin you can see her last heartbeat work its way down her blue veins? Or do you want her to meet Chuck Norris?”

(And while looking for this I just learned that Death's been Chucknorrised – I mean, Mistah Chuck, he dead. Back in 2016, shortly after Lemmy died, I wrote to some chick I was awkwardly trying to interact with – a hardcore feminist this time... either I like impossible challenges or I have very bad luck – that the average level of manliness in the world had just dropped by 25%, and that the day Chuck Norris would finally roundhouse-kick the bucket, every single human male on the planet would have to be put on HRT, effective immediately, to avoid an extinction of our sorry species, plain and simple... Well, now that time has come... Mark my words – Children of men was just a realistic depiction of a future without Chuck Norris...)

(Would have been a bit easier to read with a bit more punctuation and line breaks. Building walls of text or otherwise is frowned upon on places like this, meant for sharing everything openly, be it knowledge or bits of goofiness. But I did read it all and it's a “dead on” example indeed.)

[thecoalman]

The Japanese lost WW2 because of ice cream! While Japanese soldiers and the Japanese population were starving the US was dragging ice cream barges across the Pacific ocean to the doorstep of the Japan to supply US soldiers with ice cream. I'm being facetious obviously but it's a great example of the overwhelming capacity of the US.

[Barrythecrab]

Did you know that a pitcher's mound and batting boxes are lined with bricks? Neither did I until I had to build one! The company I was working for was building a ball field and a few palettes of UNFIRED clay bricks were onsite and nobody knew what the hell to do with them. So I did an early internet search and found a single entry. You shape the mound to appropriate parameters with the bricks, cover the mound with damp burlap and tamp it into a hard shell. Only then do you install the rubber and cover the mound with loose clay. This allows the mound to be more resistant to being torn apart by a 200lb pitcher with cleats. Is that odd enough to qualify for this thread?