Did you know...

[pacmania_2001]

A bowling pin only needs to tilt 8 degrees to fall over.

[CoasterCreator]

In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.

[yoda313]

Hello,

Did you know that on home games for Michigan football Ann Arbor becomes the 4th largest city in Michigan?????

[CoasterCreator]

Accounts from Holland and Spain suggest that during the 1500s and 1600s urine was commonly used as a tooth-cleaning agent.

[yoda313]

Hello,

Did you know the PIXAR animation company started with Industrial Light and Magic????

It was created to work on computer animation and was later spun off.

Kevin

--also some of the earliest computer animation was in Star Wars - A new Hope - The death star trench run animation used to show the pilots how to destroy it before the battle began --

[CoasterCreator]

dam yoda I can not keep up


Excavations from Egyptian tombs dating to 5,000 BC show that the ancient Egyptian kids played with toy hedgehogs. sonic???

[yoda313]

Hello,

Sega did not exist before 1985 (I believe)

Kevin

[Tool Man]

Did you know that Sega was started in post war Japan by an American buisnessman to import basic arcade games for US servicemen living in Japan? It was origanally called Service Games, but later shortened to SEGA.

Quote from the net....

Founded in 1951 by American David Rosen, who moved permanently to Japan after WWII, Sega (originally dubbed Rosen Enterprises) started out as an art export company. By the late 1950's Rosen had moved on to importing instant photo booths and coin-op games from the United States.
Rosen Enterprises continued to expand. In 1965 the company purchased a jukebox manufacturing company, which was then merged into Rosen Enterprises. Upon completion of the merger, the company was renamed to Sega, which was a contraction of "Service Games." Sega soon began producing their own coin-op games and competed directly against American imports. In 1970, Sega was bought by Gulf & Western.

Throughout the late 70's and early 80's, Sega produced arcade games and software for early home videogame consoles, such as the Atari 2600 and the ColecoVision. Sega wasn't exactly an industry powerhouse yet, but they had scored a few hits with games like Turbo (which was packaged with the ColecoVision's driving controller), Frogger, and Zaxxon.

By this time Sega had an American division dubbed Sega Enterprises, which primarily dealt with console software. This division was sold to Bally, a large pinball and arcade game company, in 1983. Soon, Sega of Japan was sold to a group of Japanese investors, and Sega officially became Sega Enterprises, Ltd.

Sega released a string of arcade hits in the mid-80's, strengthening its position in the U.S. market especially. Games like Out Run (1986), After Burner (1987), and Shinobi (1987) not only raked in cash for future arcade development, but also gave Sega a recognized stable of successful games that could be ported to Sega produced home consoles.

You learn something new everyday.

[yoda313]

Hello,

Did you know after burner was one of the only non licensed games for the Nintendo entertainment system??

It was hacked I believe and sold to run on the NES even though it wasn't "officially licensed".

Kevin

[Faustus]

Never saw afterburner for the NES pesonally.

I assume everyone knows there were 2 versions of Tetris for the NES right? One by Nintendo and one by Tengen.

many say the Tengen version was better.

[CoasterCreator]

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

[Heywould3]

November 2, 2004 is Election Day in the USA. November 2, 2004 is the "Day of the Dead" in Mexico.

Also speaking of the texas and population thing

90% of the continental United States is still open space or farmland.

[Heywould3]

Did you know that the Great Pyramid of Khufu is the last survivor of the ancient seven wonders of the world? Only the one pyramid has been given this honor - not all three of the Giza pyramids.

It was constructed with voluntary labor, and not slaves as was previously thought. Pyramids started in the 3rd dynasty of the old kingdom, reached their peak (NPI) in the fourth dynasty when the great pyramids were built (about 2500BC), then died out due to labor and resource issues.

It took as many as 30 years of labor from 30,000 - 50,000 workers to build Khafre's pyramid. They worked on the pyramid while their crop land was inundated from the annual Nile flood.

It was originally 146 metres tall (is now 137 due to erosion and vandalism) and 235 metres on each side, with 2,300,000 blocks each weighing an average of 2-1/2 tons. The sides have a mean error of only 0.6 inch in length at the base

Until the mid 14th century (the pyramids were some 3800 years old then) it had a smooth white limestone casing. After an earthquake in Cairo that destroyed most of the city, the muslim clerics ordered the pyramids cannibalized so the white limestone casing could be used to rebuild their destroyed mosques, so they stripped Khufu's (largest), Menkaure's (smallest), all but the very top-most section of Khafre's pyramid. It was probably the grandest case of defacement and vandalism in history.

Did you know that If you disassembled the Great Pyramid of Cheops, you would get enough stones to encircle the earth with a brick wall twenty inches high.

[offline]

More people are killed annually by Charlie Chaplin look alike contests than die in a whale's penis.

http://members.shaw.ca/mcramer1/weirdfacts.htm

[yoda313]

Speaking of brick walls....

Did you know that you CAN'T see the Great Wall of China from Space????

And the Chinese gov't was supposed to admit that this year....

Kevin

[snafu099]

did you know I still have a 386 that still works????

Yep dos 6.2 and windows 3.1 Those were the days

Kevin

And I still have my first pc, a Sanyo MBC 1000
z80 chip
64k memory
no hdd
ext. floppy
cpm os

[Capmaster]

Did you know ...
The Russians now know how good the Finns are at fighting - especially on skis. In 1939 they didn't know it and attacked Finland with overwhelmingly superior numbers in The White Death:The Battle For Suomussalmi 7 Dec 1939 TO 8 Jan 1940.

The Finns responded quickly, with a sense of optimism, and conducted "hit and git" raids on the Soviets while they sat around their camp fires at night. The Finns skiied out of the darkness and dropped satchel charges onto the campfires, skiing off while the Russians were blown to bits. They also came swarming out of the hills on skis, wearing all white, with machine guns blazing. The Russians were cut down like weeds.

The Finns had an advantage being highly-skilled skiiers, while many in the Red Army had never worn a ski.

The outcome: Finland prevailed and drove out the Russian invaders ...what was left of them.

Russian dead: 27,500
Finnish dead: 900

Booty from the retreating Russians: They had captured, intact, 65 tanks, 437 trucks, 10 motorcycles, 1,620 horses, 92 field guns, 78 anti-tank guns, 13 anti-aircraft guns, 6,000 rifles, 290 machine-guns, and a large quantity of precious communications equipment.

My grandmother was full-blooded Soumilainen (Finnish) and she hated Russians with a passion all her life because of that incident. I remember growing up, how she used to love to quote statistics from that invasion, and the outcome

One time I was with her shopping when I was a little boy, and she was looking for an indigestion remedy. The two big selling brands were Bromo Seltzer and Brioschi. She picked the Bromo and I asked why not the other one. She said "the name sounds too Russian"

[yoda313]

Hello,

Did you know Henry Ford didn't invent the assembly line... He just put it to the most efficient use that no one else had...

Kevin

[offline]

Did you know that the great wall does not exist.
It was torn down centuries ago and most of the stones
used to build houses. What you are seeing is a
20th century reconstruction which was supposed to
have been completed by 1940.

By the way.. you can see the "wall" from orbit, but
just not with the naked eye.

[waheed]

Did you know there are more stars in the sky than there are grain of sand on earth.

[thayne]

Did you know that if you drink too much beer yeast you will get the squirts?

[Heywould3]

Did you know that if you drink too much beer yeast you will get the squirts?

Yes :P lol

for us Michiganders here.

Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan carries the designation M - 1, named so because it was the first paved road anywhere.

and for you cheaters out there

85% of the guys who cheat on their wives die while having sex.

[Doramius]

OK, let's try for some interesting "Did you know?" facts here in this thread. I'll begin:

Did you know that elephants are the only animals than cannot jump? They lack knees.

I think you mean ankles. Elephants are the only quadraped with 4 knees. Check it out.

[Tommyknocker]

Did you know that if you drink too much beer yeast you will get the squirts?

Yes :P lol

for us Michiganders here.

Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan carries the designation M - 1, named so because it was the first paved road anywhere.

and for you cheaters out there

85% of the guys who cheat on their wives die while having sex.

Dummies should always know where the wife and their gun is, when they cheat.

[Doramius]

Sit down and make clockwise circles in the air with your right arm and right leg. now reverse the direction of just the arm. It's a fact you have to make them move in the same rotation without making special effort to force them in opposite rotation.

[SquirrelDip]

Did you know that the most southern point in Canada is farther south than the most northern point in California.

[Doramius]

Clear plastic ball if dropped into a bowl of clear oil of it's identical pH factor, the ball will disappear from view.

[Cobra]

Oil can't have a pH can it? Acid relies on water molecules to take on an extra proton from a donor (eg. HCl), becoming H30+ (Bronsted-Lowry theory) and producing the base of a salt (Cl- from HCl).

[Capmaster]

Did you know that the northernmost point in Minnesota is farther north than the northernmost point in Maine? There's a little squarish notch that extends Minnesota up a little bit into Canada. That notch made the difference and was probably intentional at the time, so Minnesota could claim the title of the northernmost state of the contiguous 48.

Everyone knows that Alaska is our largest state, with Texas a distant second place, and all other states waaaaaayyyy smaller than that. But did you know that California is third, followed by Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Oregon and Wyoming finishing out the top ten?

Rhode Island is 50th at 1545 sq. mi., Delaware is 49th at 1954 sq. mi., the next largest is Connecticut at 5544 sq. mi.

Alaska is so large, you could fit the following into it:

2.4 Texases, or
4 Californias, or
424.9 Rhode Islands, or
22% of Australia

[bazooka]

Did you know that if you took the world's entire population, they would all fit comfortably (space-wise) within the state of Texas?

Hello,

I heard that awhile backup. Texas is HUGE!

Kevin

Yes, but contrary to popular opinion, we do not all ride horses and wear ten gallon hats.

Most people think if you are from Texas, you are a cowboy.