Things you were shockingly old when you learned

OK thats a worthy one! what'dye think they did?

OK, I've just found out what RT means - re-tweet - I thought it meant Russia Today. I'm right naive, me.

I make that mistake all the time.

i knew that, i win!

this is a spectacularly foolish one: i hadn't realized that the "dye in the pool that activates if you urinate" thing was an urban legend until this week. i am 33. in fairness i had assumed that it was either: a) something that was done in the past but not anymore, or b) something that was done in other countries (like maybe the US where it features as a plot line in movies and tv sometimes) but not in the UK.

This summer I told my children this lie and intend to keep it going for as long as possible.

there's always the candiru fish fallback plan

Just found out this week that the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean is named after the group of islands 200km away from it which I think I'd only heard of individually. Guam being one of them.
Just turned up in Ken Burns The War I think tied in with the story of the Indianapolis. Ship that after being repaired from a kamikaze attack was tasked with a secret mission. Kept secret from its 1000+ crew some of whom thought it was delivering scented toilet paper for McArthur's use. But turned out to be the bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima. I wondered if there was any record of radiation poisoning among the crew afterwards. But this was the ship that went on to be torpedoed and have the survivors floating in open ocean for days being picked off by sharks. I then remembered Robert Shaw in Jaws which I haven't seen in years. It's the ship he was supposed to have been on.

Plus, as Robert Shaw and his shipmates floated in the water, some of them had to pee. Unfortunately, there was a special dye in the ocean that activates if you urinate. And the color attracts sharks. [CUE TWILIGHT ZONE THEME]

I don't think I'd realised quite how many people died in that incident,. Only 316 out of a crew of 1000+ were eventually saved.

0203 phone numbers for London exist.

?!?

Kept secret from its 1000+ crew some of whom thought it was delivering scented toilet paper for McArthur's use

if you're gonna lie, lie big!

i'd not seen a 0203 telephone number before last week and now i've seen 2. they are geographical numbers for london (like 0207 and 0208).

(actually, londonist points out that london area code is 020 and the above are more correctly (020)7 and (020)8 (and (020)3))

They've been around since 2005!

iirc the geographical thing is no longer a hard & fast rule so some 020 7 numbers are in outer london and some 020 8 in inner. /telephonesplaining

Look here is a whole fascinating page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_telephone_code_misconceptions#London_numbers_added_in_2005

nobody calls me, what can i say?

koogs, I am surprised you thought the code was 0207 and 0208 rather than 020. That's a classic! It mattered more when people actually bothered dropping the local area code when calling from a local landline. Or when people called from landlines at all.

I still think the code is 0171 / 0181

01 till I die.

xp
the 0171 and 0181 changes kicked in when I was living in Woolwich, so same here!

I learned something last week that I really should have known long before: but I'm now so shockingly old that I've forgotten what it is...

That "varsity" is short for "university"

agh that's terrible

The characters of Elmyra and Montana Max in Tiny Toons are surrogates for Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam

the basic skills of treating and dealing with cracked calluses on my fingers. With the simple combined use of a file and some moisturising cream. Nobody ever taught me this stuff!

That "varsity" is short for "university"

This reminds me of weird things like "gubernatorial" like what even is that word.

the adjective of governorship based on the same latin root.

That "varsity" is short for "university"

― i know kore-eda (or something), Monday, September 25, 2017 2:58 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this can't be true

*visits oed*

Etymology: Colloquial abbreviation of university n.

The hell

Yeah, varsity is new one for me, especially because I associate it more with high school

that the word painstaking is pains-taking, as in taking pains to do something well, and not pain-staking

I just got why "fruit flies like a banana" is funny

This reminds me of weird things like "gubernatorial" like what even is that word.

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Monday, 25 September 2017 23:38 (three days ago)

the adjective of governorship based on the same latin root.

― Stevolende, Tuesday, 26 September 2017 00:44 (two days ago)

Fun fact (or maybe not): also from the same root, or the root of that root I guess, being from the Greek = cybernetics.

calzino's post reminds me that there's loads of basic everyday stuff (start brushing your hair near the bottom if it might be tangled and work your way up, how to use various kitchen implements, more I can't remember right now) that I never worked out until well into my adulthood and then went "nobody told me this!!1" to my parents, who immediately said that they totally had told me that repeatedly as a child but I never listen

probably I really do never listen, though there's also lots of stuff that they never bothered telling me because "everyone just knows" and apparently I'm the only person who ever needed to be told it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Acclimatization_Society

oh god

I also knew nothing about this.

Dunno if there was a society/body per se but similar happened in Aus - the invading brits decided they wanted to have fun hunting in their new lands. So they let loose a bunch of fucking rabbits, and now we have rabbit plagues.

maybe you can get them to fight the cane toads

cane toads also an introduced species, brought in to fight native beetles

I knew an old lady who swallowed a fly...

the Chinese needle snakes will take care of the cane toads

I did always wonder where our mynas and sparrows came from, that said.

I only recently learned that the female singer (Merry Clayton, btw) in "Gimme Shelter" was singing: "Rape! Murder!" Her voice may have been electrifying, but her enunciation was a bit unclear.

what did you think she was singing?

AAAY! UUUUR-UH!

Crape Myrtle

https://www.fast-growing-trees.com/images/D/Sioux-Crape-Myrtle-2-450w.jpg

i just realized that we use a base-10 counting system most likely because we have 10 fingers to count on

It wasn't until I read a book about surveying that I realized why imperial measurements so didn't follow any rules of ten.

Yeah, if only we had eight fingers and toes everyone would be happy.

It's funny how hard it is to shake off the idea that ten is an intrinsically special number.

With that introducing species to countries being colonised the book Ecological Imperialism by Alfred crosby covers the idea in pretty great depth. Seems that anybody arriving anywhere by a traditional sea faring vessel would unintentionally take some unexpected flora and fauna with them. & that would subsequently fight for dominance of the area.
Also if the travellers were expecting to settle anywhere they would probably try to bring some of the food stuff they were used to at home with them and try to get it to flourish in the new area and things would subsequently spread.

Also did I hear that myxomatosis the rabbit euye disease that was going rampant across the UK in the mid 70s was actually released in Australia in ana ttempt to control the growing rabbit population. Think somebody said that to me at the time.

I only recently learned that some socks are fitted for L and R feet.

I'm currently reading 1493 by Charles C Mann which is all about how humans introduced species to different to different continents (both intentionally and inadvertently). I think the one fact that surprised my the most is actually that there were no earthworms in North America before the arrival of Europeans. So I just learned that a couple of days ago.