Tell Me Something I Don't Know

[EricKei]

Just one I came across recently:

Charlie Brown is NOT bald. The 2-3 hairs visible on his forehead and back of his dome represent his hairline. His hair is very light blond, and/or cut incredibly short. How could he easily keep it that way? Simple. His dad is the local barber, and at least one comic mentions that Charlie goes to Dad's shop quite often, if not, every day, to walk him home after work. Getting a regular trim would pose no difficulty for him.

[KhirasHY]

The human body contains a fun organic bit of matter called bulboid corpuscles. They are, however, also known by a wonderful name, "The End-Bulbs of Krause." The end-bulbs are a cutaneous receptor that translates environmental stimulus to determine if the air is cold. You have them in your eyes, mouth, lips, genitals, and in the epineurium of nerve trunks.

And, as noted by QI, "The End-Bulbs of Krause" is probably the most magnificent euphemism for testicles that there is.

[Food Lady]

Rats have been found to laugh when tickled. The sound is inaudible to human ears, but using a bat detectors (or similar device), the sound can be amplified to be heard.

It's also fucking adorable.

Totally looked that up on youtube and am becoming fond of them. I always liked white mice, but rat tails freaked me out for some reason.

--We learned in the first post that heterochromatic eyes means each eye is a different color. Dichromatic means there is more than one color in the iris. I have two colors (slate blue and olive green), plus one of my eyes has an orange spot on it.

--A human hair has a cuticle made up of scale-like segments. They lie (or lay? can never remember) relatively flat on straight hair, while they stick up due to the bends of curly hair. That's why curly hair tends to be more dry; it loses moisture through those holes in it's outer protective covering. Those spaces also allow humidity inside the hairs more readily, and they swell up somewhat. Having curly hair is like having a weather-reactive sponge attached to your head.

--Tea can be made mostly decaffeinated by steeping for one minute in hot water and then steeping in fresh water after discarding the first pouring. You're effectively pouring the caffeine (and unfortunately, the flavor) down the drain.

--Those skin tag remover products are largely thuja oil. You'd better off ordering that online because you'd get more use for the money out of the full-strength oil. Mederma's active ingredient is onion juice.

--That super-expensive face cream the celebs use--la mer--is similar to Nivea ingredient-wise (petroleum, mineral oil, wax, etc). At $100 an ounce, I think. It does have seaweed extracts, but still....

--Carrots were purple before they were orange. Orange is a variation from the original. In culinary history they were used as a sweetener in cakes along with honey in places that hadn't discovered how to process beets into granulated sugar and didn't know sugar cane existed, apparently.

[EricKei]

Just curious -- I have hazel eyes -- meaning, they alter colors based on the dominant colors around me (they're usually greenish-to-brownish with amber flecks). Is this considered a form of heterochromatic eyes, or is "hazel" its own special category, as it refers as much to apparent color *shifting* as to having multiple colors in the first place?

And, since ye asked It's "lie" -- "Lay" requires a direct object just keep in mind that lay is also the past tense of lie. Just to be confusing ^_^ Help from someone more qualified than myself, complete with charts and a mnemonic device, can be found here.

[Kit-Ginevra]

A lay is also a type of poem. I have in my possession the wonderfully titled 'Great Lays of Ancient Rome'

[EricKei]

Kit - Lay also has other meanings At least one of which, i'm sure, certain of our members would be all to happy to enlighten us about. The title of that work is one which can definitely be interpreted along those lines.

I'll not go that route -- too easy. So, here's another alternate: To "lay in" supplies means to stock up so that one is prepared for possible future emergencies or other events.

[dalesys]

... To "lay in" ...

Means "wait for the baby."

[Mytical]

Just curious -- I have hazel eyes -- meaning, they alter colors based on the dominant colors around me (they're usually greenish-to-brownish with amber flecks).

We just call them Autumn eyes. Because like the tree leaves, they change colors.

[firecat88]

Newsies trivia, for reasons of 'Kim has watched the movie 5 times within the past week'.

1) Originally, the movie was going to just be a drama. The script was rewritten to include several musical numbers.

2) Several of the movie's characters were inspired after real people. Anthony "Racetrack" Higgins, Louis "Kid Blink" Ballat, Nick "Mush" Meyers, and Crutch Morris (amongst others) were the names of actual newsies in 1899, several of whom were mentioned in the media coverage of the strike

3) Spot Conlon was real as well, but he wasn't actually a newsie. He was the District Master Work Boy of the Brooklyn Union.

4) Though the character of Jack Kelly was inspired by Mike "Jack" Sullivan, he wasn't the real leader of the strike. Kid Blink is largely attributed as having started the whole thing.

5) Dominic Lucero, Ivan Dudynsky, David Sidoni, and Mark David, as well as being cast members in Newsies, were all actors in the sketch comedy show 'Roundhouse'.

6) The beginnings of the strike were different in the movie from how it actually happened. In the movie, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst decided on a whim/because of their popularity war to increase the distribution price of their papers from 50 to 60 cents per hundred. In real life, the price increase was a move made by all of the major newspaper companies...during the Spanish-American War several years before the strike. The constant influx of stories from the battlefield meant that the newsies could still make a profit despite paying more for their papers. After the war, though, the news declined and most of the papers dropped the price down to 50 cents per hundred. The only ones that didn't were the New York World and New York Journal.

7) Three of the songs that appear on the soundtrack have bits cut out of them in the actual movie. From 'Santa Fe' in particular, they removed a scene in which Christian Bale does some cool lasso tricks. A portion of this deleted scene (and others) can be found in the Making Of feature on the DVD.

Oh, and one more thing that not many people know-

8) In 1992, Christian Bale starred in a live-action Disney musical called 'Newsies', which was based on the 1899 Newsboys' Strike in New York. The movie's villain, Joseph Pulitzer, was played by Robert Duvall.

[KhirasHY]

Totally looked that up on youtube and am becoming fond of them. I always liked white mice, but rat tails freaked me out for some reason.

Domestic rats are adorable, and their tails are nothing to be afraid of



Here's some more QI facts:

The part of a plant that sticks your finger is not called the thorn, it is called the prickle (which is a part of the skin). The thorns are modified branches or stems, not including the sharp prickle part at the end.

The original Geishas in Japan were all male.

Regarding flatulence, the average person produces three pints of gas per day released in 10-15...er...episodes. QI panelists noted that you can get the box set as well, or just have a feature-length episode

Leo Allatius, a greek astronomer, genuinely believed that the rings around Saturn are where the foreskin of Jesus Christ was put after his circumcision. He did not, during his lifetime, care to explain how they are 50,000 miles across (that's some foreskin).

Regarding Saturn's rings, there's an interesting fact about how they were formed: No one knows. Despite tons of research, no one has found any evidence to explain how and why they exist.

The standard QWERTY keyboard was designed back in the days of typewriters; its purpose was to slow down typing so that the typewriter would not be jammed by hitting the keys too quickly. Though it is no longer necessary in the modern age, people became so used to it that it remained the standard format. Oddly, it's been shown that people who are initially trained on a keyboard that runs alphabetically starting with A where the Q is are able to type quite a bit faster once they have practiced doing so, since the letters always follow in the correct alphabetical order.

A true Scotsman, when asked what he wears under his kilt would never tell you. He would, however, be all too happy to show you.

[fireheart]

A true Scotsman, when asked what he wears under his kilt would never tell you. He would, however, be all too happy to show you.

I thought it was lipstick.

[Sheldonrs]

I thought it was lipstick.

I don't wear lipstick.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Another quite interesting fact from QI--

The man who wrote the novel Ben-Hur (on which the movies were based), Lew Wallace, also signed legendary outlaw Billy the Kid's death warrant.

[wolfie]

Kit - Lay also has other meanings At least one of which, i'm sure, certain of our members would be all to happy to enlighten us about.

"Lay" can also refer to how a rope (term is normally used with wire rope) is made (do the "bundles" twist in the same direction, or opposite direction, from the individual wires within each "bundle"?). The 2 kinds are "regular lay" and "lang lay". One is stronger but less flexible (the combination of twists has the individual wires running parallel to the direction of the cable), while the other is weaker but more flexible (individual wires run more side-to-side). Can't recall which term applies to which combination.

A true Scotsman, when asked what he wears under his kilt would never tell you. He would, however, be all too happy to show you.

What's worn under a Scotsman's kilt? "Nay, lassie, 'tis not worn at all. 'Tis in excellent condition."

[El Pollo Guerrera]

What's worn under a Scotsman's kilt?

His shoes.