Single Random Facts

  • When cotton candy made its big debut at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis (it had been invented only a few years prior), it was called “fairy floss.”
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They call it ‘candy floss’ in the UK.

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Flossing with it is not recommended, though.

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The perfect bed is a large coffin big enough for one person and the occasional friend. Easy to clean, and easy to keep free of pests.

And Costco, Walmart, and Amazon sell caskets at very reasonable prices.

And it can be put to good use in the future!

Good investment, and a unique gift idea for the person who has everything.

That’s a fact.

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At least you’d be getting some actual use out of it, instead of it just being an expensive storage box that literally gets buried and never seen again.

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bela

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I always wondered why they used to fold a corpse’s arms across the chest like that. Was it so they could make the coffin narrower, and thus cheaper? I would think the elbows would get in the way.

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Traditional coffins were wider at the top than the bottom for just this reason.

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Maybe it’s a holdover from ancient Egypt?

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Makes it harder to get out.

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An old bit of French slang for a woman having her monthlies is: “the English have landed!”

The term for “the English” used is just “les Anglais,” and not any other slang term for Brits, such as “les rosbifs [the roast beefeaters, basically, by metonym].”

In addition, I just recalled how “taking French leave” is called in French “flee/escape/slip away [filer] like an Englishman.”

That concludes todays information.

/* wait, there’s more: true fact. One cannot bend a 0.021 wound G-string on a guitar, at least not anywhere approaching a full step. */

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Meguiar’s 7 has an excellent reputation as not only a car something, polisher or whatever, but is apparently widely used among musicians who work with instruments made in part of wood. Such as guitars or pianos.

So, remember! Polish your wood like nobody’s watching! I know I will!

And sold in 16 oz containers, there’s plenty to share!

Also, that kid in that short who carved up a school desk with his stupid pencil could have polished that sucker too! Nah, who am I kidding: he couldn’t even open a can of varnish or whatever. Damn fool kids with their pencils.

Writing essays and carving graffiti and getting caught writing essays and such. Jack Elam’s characteristic fiend-eye is said to have been caused by a pencil.

That junk is no good, baby!

But Meguiar’s 7 comes highly recommended!

Jam Handy.

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Today I learned that YANNI was part of the Minneapolis music scene in the early to mid 80’s. That explains the few MST3K and Rifftrax Yanni riffs so well!

Also, what kind of magic was happening in the 1980’s Twin Cities where you could (probably) watch Prince, The Time, Hüsker Dü, YANNI and then catch a Joel Hodgson/Frank Conniff/Trace Beaulieu comedy show?

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Yes, it is I; Random Facts Woman!!!

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I am here to regale you with yet more facts I read in random places! I do not know when I will appear again, so this will have to suffice until then!

  1. In 2018, Barbra Streisand admitted in a Variety interview that two of her dogs were clones. When her Coton de Tulear died in 2017, Streisand reportedly had cells take from the dog’s mouth and stomach to create two clones. As per the New York Times, the cloning procedure probably cost between $50K to $100K. I mean, I love my cat, but that? That’s excessive.

  2. The beloved Christmas classic A Charlie Brown Christmas may have singlehandedly changed the artificial Christmas tree industry. The first fake trees rose to prominence in the late 1880s, and by the 1930s some companies were attempting to develop metallic trees; as a result by 1959 engineers developed a tree covered in foil needles that could retail for only $25, but they were a SIGNIFICANT fire hazard. After A Charlie Brown Christmas aired for the first time, however, companies noticed a significant drop in the market for aluminum trees and started to create artificial trees which resembled real trees, rather than the aluminum knock-offs. Production of aluminum trees was halted altogether around 1970, and the rest, as they say, is history.

  3. A man who lived near Florida’s Clearwater Beach in 1948 pulled off what was a fairly hilarious years-long hoax. A beachgoer discovered massive three-toed footprints in the sand on the beach one morning, and soon similar tracks were discovered at other local beaches. A New York zoologist named Ivan Sanderson confidently surmised that the prints came from… drumroll please… a fifteen foot tall PENGUIN. It wasn’t until nearly forty years later that the man, named Tony Signorini, admitted that he was behind the prints; he had decided to make a massive iron dinosaur footprint after seeing an article in National Geographic and attached the iron footprints to his sneakers to leave the tracks in the sand.

  4. Ever wonder how people found out about John Lennon’s death so fast? Turns out that when Lennon was rushed to the hospital after being shot by Mark David Chapman, a local news station producer was there after having been in a motorcycle accident. When he overheard that the patient being rushed into the hospital was Lennon, he phoned his bosses to tell them that Lennon was dead about an hour after the shooting, which lead to sportscaster Howard Cosell breaking the news to the U.S. during the Monday Night football broadcast. Talk about being in the right place at the right time…

  5. Ever wonder where that typewriter-like sound comes from on Dolly Parton’s iconic hit, 9 to 5? Well then wonder no more! It is not, as you might think, the sound of a typewriter; no, in fact the sound is actually Dolly’s acrylic nails tapping together. Dolly even credited the sound to her nails on the album! Just goes to show you, almost NO ONE reads the liner notes…

  6. Those of you who are women will appreciate this little fact; before heading to the moon in 1969, NASA needed to develop a spacesuit which could remain inflated, pressurized, be tough enough to handle extremes in temperature, and remain flexible. While many defense contractors entered bids to be the ones to develop the suits, one that no one expected was… Playtex. Yes, the bra manufacturer! They ended up winning the contest to develop the suits, but then were named as a subcontractor to Hamilton Standard, who was a leading defense contractor. In 1965 Hamilton removed Playtex from the project, wanting to design the suits on their own, but after Playtex’s firing, NASA decided to hold a competition to decide who would develop the suit. The only problem? They didn’t invite Playtex. It took company officials heading to NASA’s Houston HQ to ask for a shot at entering the competition to get them back in. Then, in just six short weeks, Playtex developed a version of the suit, complete with 21 layers that allowed the astronauts to complete all essential functions. They even tested it out by having a technician take the suit out to play football in it while it was inflated and pressurized. Playtex won the contest and began producing suits tailored to each astronaut. Neil Armstrong even called the suits “tough, reliable, [and] almost cuddly” and remarked that it was “true beauty” they worked so well. Maybe Playtex should get on making a few more; I’ve heard that NASA’s still using the original suits and what with time and wear and tear being a thing, they’re down to only a few left.

  7. Have you ever wondered why saffron is so exceedingly expensive? It has to do with the harvesting process. Only a very tiny portion of the saffron flower is used in cultivating the spice, and it must be harvested by hand, so it takes a long time accumulate enough to sell. It’s estimated that it takes nearly 75,000 saffron flowers to make one pound of saffron spice!

  8. If you’re scared of polar bears, don’t go to Churchill, Manitoba, Canada; it’s often called the polar bear capitol of the world. Town officials have even developed strategies to keep citizens safe in the event that they run into one of the massive carnivores; in 2000 the town closed their open air dump to discourage curious bears from coming into town to get food scraps, and residents will often leave their doors unlocked so if someone is confronted with a polar bear on the street they’ll have a place to run into to escape. The town is also testing out military radar systems to detect the bears, and uses loud noises and strobe lights to deter them. I dunno about you, but I’mma stay VERY far away from that particular town…

  9. If you’re the type to be adventurous in your eating, boy have I got news for you. There’s a possibility that some of the food that was left on the Titanic might’ve been edible still up until the 1980s. When the ship sunk, it’s speculated that there would’ve likely been some brie cheese and wine in the ship’s pantries, and so long as the brie was still boxed up it would’ve been okay to eat, most likely, in 1985. As for the wine, it’s also likely it would still be drinkable and possibly of excellent quality, as the normal aging process would’ve been slowed down during the years of deep-sea storage at 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Not sure I’m that adventurous, but if you are and you can get to it… bon appetit!

  10. In 1977, Mister Rogers filmed his one and only holiday special, which, although it was called “Christmastime with Mister Rogers”, also kept up Mister Rogers’ special message of inclusivity by including Hanukkah songs like “I Have a Little Dreidel”. For children who didn’t celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah, Mister Rogers created his own holiday, wishing everyone a Merry “Slopperysozafanoondapuck”, which, while it sounds vaguely naughty for some reason, translated to “what a difference one person can make”. RIP Mister Rogers…

  11. Throughout the 1960s, if you weren’t clean-cut and clean-shaven, you couldn’t enter Disneyland. While it was unofficial for guests, male Disney employees up until the 1970s were prohibited from wearing mustaches, beards, or long hair, allegedly because Disney officials associated those styles with hippies, beatniks, and those who promoted “un-American activities”. The unofficial dress code was lifted for guests by the 1970s though.

  12. And finally, if you believed Elvis Presley deserved all the credit for his hit song “Hound Dog”, well… think again. Five years before Presley swiveled his hips to the song, Big Mama Thornton, an R&B singer, recorded a version in 1952 which spend seven weeks at the top of the Billboard R&B charts, but lost notoriety once Presley released his cover of the song. Thornton was eventually inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1984 though, so all was not lost for her.

Random Facts Woman… AWAY!!!

the daily show no GIF by The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

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Woo! Thanks Random Facts Woman!

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The only lyrics in common between Big Mama’s and Elvis’s versions of “Hound Dog” are “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.”

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In regards to #8 and Churchill, Manitoba. I had a friend from there. More trivia about that place:

It’s so remote the Canadian government actually pays people to live there just to keep a human presence. It’s so remote in fact the British considered using the area to test their nuclear weapons before settling on doing it in Australia instead.

One of their main industries is polar bear tourism. People go there just to see the bears in the wild.

It’s illegal to lock your car doors there in cased a passerby needs to use your car as an emergency bear shelter.

Kids there do go trick or treating, but they’re escorted by an adult with a high powered rifle in case of a bear.

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One of my favorite bits of trivia, the Australian tank that was nuked and then was sent to war in Vietnam and shot with an RPG and still refused to die:

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Yay, Random Fact Woman has returned!

Also, number 9 sounds like a story for the Regrettable Foods thread.

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If we’re talking about eating ancient foods, archaeologists found and ate 3000-year-old honey from an Egyptian tomb. Honey can essentially never spoil.

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