Random facts

[Fishbait]

Technically, (legally?) Doncaster is part of Scotland. Will be interesting when Scotland breaks free

There are no Chinese restaurants in China. They're just called restaurants.

 

[ubersonic]

Most of the time the human immune system keeps the parasites in check but they can cause serious illness in people with a reduced immune system (Aids sufferers, the elderly).

That's how Tommy died in Trainspotting.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

The first English National Lottery was in the 1580s and the prize included a bona fide fully functional get out of jail free card (a Royal Warrant granting immunity from prosecution for any crime below murder).

That's amazing. Not the prize, but you got that just for buying a ticket!

http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item102765.html

 

[Sasahara]

99.9999999 percent of you body is just empty space.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

The french still call them that. Except in french.

Pomme de terre

 

[SexyGreyFox]

99.9999999 percent of you body is just empty space.

and every human that has ever been and also living now could fit in the space of a sugar cube.

 

[Angilion]

99.9999999 percent of you body is just empty space.

You could add some more 9s to that, but it's a bit of a grey area because when you get down to a subatomic scale the idea of physical objects and their positions gets a bit unclear. If you think of it in terms of protons, neutrons and electrons as tiny objects, then the gaps in between are vast in comparison. The classical simplified models and diagrams are nonsense in that sense - if a proton is the size of a pea, the electrons should be tens of metres away, not a centimetre or two. But the classical simplified diagrams are so simplified that they're just basically wrong. It's not like moons orbiting a planet (or planets orbiting a star), as those models imply.

No walking through walls for us

 

[Sasahara]

You could add some more 9s to that, but it's a bit of a grey area because when you get down to a subatomic scale the idea of physical objects and their positions gets a bit unclear. If you think of it in terms of protons, neutrons and electrons as tiny objects, then the gaps in between are vast in comparison. The classical simplified models and diagrams are nonsense in that sense - if a proton is the size of a pea, the electrons should be tens of metres away, not a centimetre or two. But the classical simplified diagrams are so simplified that they're just basically wrong. It's not like moons orbiting a planet (or planets orbiting a star), as those models imply.

No walking through walls for us

True, I'm sure some people would have a few more 9's than others as well.

 

[nitram100]

Only female mosquitoes bite.

 

[Dis86]

99.9999999 percent of you body is just empty space.

Or not. Many of the subatomic particles exist both nowhere and everywhere at once.

 

[Angilion]

Technically, (legally?) Doncaster is part of Scotland. Will be interesting when Scotland breaks free

The legality was settled by the then common practice of bigger army diplomacy (which was how Scotland took Doncaster a little earlier while England was embroiled in a civil war).

England has a better claim to France than Scotland has to Doncaster. Seriously - King Edward III of England had a better claim to the throne of France than Count Philip of Valois did, but bigger army diplomacy prevailed as usual.

 

[Jean-F]

Technically, (legally?) Doncaster is part of Scotland. Will be interesting when Scotland breaks free

Christ, no matter what Scotland has done in the past, it
surely couldn't have been so bad that they deserve that.
That must come under the heading of:
Cruel and unusual punishment.

 

[Fishbait]

Christ, no matter what Scotland has done in the past, it
surely couldn't have been so bad that they deserve that.
That must come under the heading of:
Cruel and unusual punishment.

Aah yes, the other book by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

 

[krooton]

"Apple" used to be a generic word for fruit or things that look like fruit. So, for example, potatoes used to be called earth apples. It's also why English translations use "apple" in the garden of Eden story - at the time of the first English translations, "apple" by itself meant "unspecified fruit" or even "unspecified edible plant".

In Afrikaans they are also called that, aartappels (aardappels in Dutch).