Totally useless information/trivia

[sidcow]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

I think vhat you have here, is a minor spelling in the original post, and smartarse drunks with time on their hands.

HMV 

[sidcow]

1 hour ago, Seat68 said:

Messing with you. 

 

 

HMW. 

[chrisp65]

Ever wonder what seagulls ate before there were chips and bin bags?

 

 

 

[Xela]

He'll have indigestion the way he wolfed that down

 

[Troglodyte]

September, October, November and December were originally the seventh to tenth months of the year, hence their nomenclature. During the Roman era, the months were known as Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December. Quintilis and Sextilis were later renamed as July and August in honour of Julius and Augustus Caesar.

The ruler Nuna Pompilius is believed to have added Ianuarius (January) at the start of the year and Februarius at the end of the year. February was later moved to its current spot, during the fifth century BCE.

However, the Roman calendar was still based on cycles and phases of the moon, so was not equivalent to a solar year - it lasted 355 days. Every so often, an extra month was added between February and March to keep the calendar in line with the seasons. However, the calendar was often altered for political reasons - largely by pontiffs deciding to either add or omit this intercalary month to either extend or reduce a political term - resulting in further confusion as this would take it back out of alignment with the tropical year. Consequently, the average Roman citizen often did not know the date, particularly if they lived away from the city.

Eventually, Julius Caesar, informed by Greek mathematicians, reformed the dating system and established the Julian calendar, ending what later became known as the "years of confusion" prior to this. This stabilised the calendar and ensured that it remained in line with the sun and the seasons, allowing for events such as the winter solstice to be marked on the 25th December.

The Julian calendar was later replaced by the Gregorian calendar across much of Europe and northern Africa in the late 16th century, largely due to issues relating to how leap years were calculated; this seemed of little significance at the time of Caesar's reform but meant that over time, further days needed to be added. It's currently 29th March 2020 according to the Julian calendar.

[Troglodyte]

Genghis Khan inadvertently removed 700m tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere, equivalent to a year’s worth of global petrol use today, as the settlements he destroyed during his military campaigns returned to being carbon-absorbing forest.

[mjmooney]

[il_serpente]

2 hours ago, mjmooney said:

In other news, everyone is 41 years older than they were in 1979

[choffer]

[Troglodyte]

I really want those things to be true. Are they?

[Stevo985]

2 minutes ago, Troglodyte said:

I really want those things to be true. Are they?

I've seen it referenced in an episode of QI, which I know isn't necessarily verification that it's true, but they definitely mentioned most of those things.

[TheAuthority]

On 10/04/2020 at 06:33, chrisp65 said:

Ever wonder what seagulls ate before there were chips and bin bags?

 

 

 

[Tegis]

 

[il_serpente]

8 hours ago, Tegis said:

 

[mjmooney]

The German word for 'palindrome' is 'Retroworter'. Think about it. 

[blandy]

9 hours ago, mjmooney said:

The German word for 'palindrome' is 'Retroworter'. Think about it. 

I thought about it and it’s poop.

[Seat68]

Germans say this is schwachsinn. 

[BOF]

On 10/04/2020 at 11:47, chrisp65 said:

I think vhat you have here, is a minor spelling in the original post, and smartarse drunks with time on their hands.

Or to put it another way, what you have here is a time-honoured and treasured VT tradition of utter smartarsery

[LondonLax]

[Chindie]

There is an ending to the (excellent) game Metal Gear Solid 5 that nobody has ever legitimately seen.

Metal Gear Solid 5 takes place during the Cold War, you play as the head of a private military company undertaking covert operations. The game has a multiplayer aspect where players develop their PMC, investing in their capabilities and equipment, and then sending them out to fight other players. Part of that build up of equipment is to develop nuclear weapons...

The ending nobody has seen then... It's nuclear disarmament. If every player in your region agrees to disarm, you get a special ending. The problem? You're never going to get every player to agree to disarm, obviously. And they never have.

The ending has only been seen by people who data mined the games code, and by people when a bug lead the game to think the requirement had been met, which was quickly fixed.

There's something quite cool about this.