lapal_fan Posted June 12, 2020 Share Posted June 12, 2020 38 minutes ago, AVFC_Hitz said: As if you know that you thick b******! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
useless Posted June 14, 2020 Share Posted June 14, 2020 In the Victorian era, mourners were commonly hired for funerals to add to the atmosphere. These people were dressed in dull colors and stood near the entrance to the home or church, looking somber. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ml1dch Posted June 14, 2020 Share Posted June 14, 2020 Aibohphobia is a fear of palindromes. It is also itself, a palindrome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted June 14, 2020 VT Supporter Share Posted June 14, 2020 The Spanish for 'retirement' is 'jubilarse'. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
choffer Posted June 30, 2020 VT Supporter Share Posted June 30, 2020 Tomorrow is Scott and Charlene’s 32nd wedding anniversary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Follyfoot Posted June 30, 2020 VT Supporter Share Posted June 30, 2020 10 minutes ago, choffer said: Tomorrow is Scott and Charlene’s 32nd wedding anniversary. noted, need to change the other thread to 'Which famous people or soap characters do your share a birthday or fictional anniversary with on your birthday' and I'm in Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted July 3, 2020 Share Posted July 3, 2020 Liverpool are still on target for that rare achievement of topping 100 points in a nation’s top league. If they manage it, they’ll be joining Celtic, Juventus, Real Madrid, Man City, Barcelona and Barry Town. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Chindie Posted July 3, 2020 VT Supporter Popular Post Share Posted July 3, 2020 Probably something well known to VTers of a certain age, but not something I knew until recently. The last person to be killed by smallpox did so in Birmingham. Janet Parker was a biological photographer working at the University of Birmingham in 1978, a year after the last verified case of naturally occurring smallpox was recorded. Parker suddenly became unwell, suffering with a headache that soon was joined by a rash that covered her entire body. She was diagnosed with smallpox shortly afterwards, at what is now Heartlands hospital, and transported to Catherine-de-Barnes Isolation Hospital, near Solihull. She died there a month after falling ill. The outbreak caused nearly a thousand people to be either quarantined, placed under house arrest or given emergency vaccinations. Parker's mother caught the virus, but lived. Her father died of a suspected heart attack in quarantine and couldn't have a post mortem due to infection concerns. Parker's body couldn't be held in cold storage due to fears the virus could multiply in the mortuary so instead was left in a body bag filled with sawdust on the floor of a garage nearby. The funeral procession had a police escort to prevent any possibility of an accident on the road, and the body had to be cremated lest the virus survive in the ground, and even the crematorium was deep cleaned afterwards. But how did she get the virus? Nobody knows. She worked in an office and dark room which was on a floor above a lab at the uni which was studying a particularly nasty strain of smallpox, which it is largely accepted was what infected her. But nobody knows how she actually came into contact with the virus. An inquiry into the incident posited that she had contracted the virus through airborne transmission, most likely following a day where she had spent an extended period in a room immediately above the lab where the virus was being studied. But nobody actually believes this is what happened as the amount of the virus that would need to have been in the air for this to happen was so high it's impossible this is what happened - which formed the basis of the university's successful defence in the subsequent prosecution. The inquiry did make conclusions about the state of health and safety procedures at the university and lead to wholesale changes in how viruses were studied in the UK, but ultimately nobody knows how Janet Parker came into contact with the virus, only that she did and she did so at work somehow. The incident lead to all samples of smallpox worldwide being transferred to 2 WHO facilities, one in the US, one in Russia. And the debate has continued since then as to whether we should just completely destroy the remaining samples. Smallpox itself was announced as having been eradicated in 1980 (Parker's death contributing to this date as the WHO was preparing to announce its eradication at the time she died), and to this day is the only human contagious disease to be made essential extinct. The head of the university unit studying the virus, Henry Bedson, committed suicide shortly before Parker's death. He had been strongly criticised and effectively held responsible for the outbreak soon after it became public knowledge. He slit his throat in his shed on Harborne, leaving a note apologising for betraying the trust of his friends and colleagues. Oh, and the isolation hospital Janet Parker died in? The ward she was on was abandoned as it stood the day she died, and once smallpox was declared extinct it was decided the was no point keeping an isolation hospital open any longer. The building was fumigated and less than a decade after her death, turned into luxury flats. I suspect they don't mention smallpox thing. 6 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 I did know that story, but I only learned it a few weeks ago. It's very interesting, and funny how it seems quite well 'hidden', as stories go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted July 4, 2020 VT Supporter Share Posted July 4, 2020 I've never heard about it until now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Follyfoot Posted July 4, 2020 VT Supporter Share Posted July 4, 2020 My cousin who lost his leg from the knee down during a tour of the ‘sandpit’ still gets the feeling of itchy toes from his missing foot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
useless Posted August 11, 2020 Share Posted August 11, 2020 Hyenas are more closely related to cats than to dogs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KenjiOgiwara Posted August 11, 2020 Share Posted August 11, 2020 (edited) 'New' fully electric Porsche Taycan came with a 260 km/h top speed. Tesla had the same. On getting this information Elon Musk changed the central update for Teslas to be capped at 261. Dunno why, but it amused me. Edited August 11, 2020 by KenjiOgiwara Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted August 11, 2020 VT Supporter Share Posted August 11, 2020 On 24/05/2020 at 12:50, Chindie said: 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. This ending had now been achieved. The PS3 version of the game has an entire region reach 0 nukes, prompting the special ending cutscene to run. It's therefore the case that this ending had now been seen once. And for an idea of how unlikely to be seen it is, the PS3 version of this game, which came out 5 years ago (and the platform itself was outdated by then so hardly the most popular version anyway), quickly had its nuke count jump back to over 40. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KenjiOgiwara Posted August 17, 2020 Share Posted August 17, 2020 I find it fascinating that the sovereign wealth fund owns 1,5 % of all listed companies. Nuts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted August 17, 2020 Moderator Share Posted August 17, 2020 38 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said: I find it fascinating that the sovereign wealth fund owns 1,5 % of all listed companies. Nuts. Whose sovereign wealth fund? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KenjiOgiwara Posted August 17, 2020 Share Posted August 17, 2020 Norway. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted August 20, 2020 VT Supporter Share Posted August 20, 2020 There's a remake of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 coming out soon, and it provides a pretty nice comparison to highlight how much the gaming world has progressed. The original game was released on CD, to critical acclaim, in 1999. The entire game, including multiple levels, multiple characters, soundtrack, etc etc, was under 700mb in size. The remake has just launched a demo, featuring a single level and single character, and it's 5gb in size. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
choffer Posted August 20, 2020 VT Supporter Share Posted August 20, 2020 If anyone can substantiate this claim I’d be simultaneously grateful and depressed: “If you saved $10,000 a day since the pyramids were built in 2540 B.C. you would still only have one fifth of jeff bezos’ net worth” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted August 20, 2020 Moderator Share Posted August 20, 2020 11 minutes ago, choffer said: If anyone can substantiate this claim I’d be simultaneously grateful and depressed: “If you saved $10,000 a day since the pyramids were built in 2540 B.C. you would still only have one fifth of jeff bezos’ net worth” That amounts to approx $17,374,000,000 (4760 x 365 x 10,000) Bezos is supposedly worth $196,000,000,000 So true 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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