Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Which reminds me, when I was very young Tony Orlando & Dawn were always on TV and the name confused me because I couldn’t figure out which of the two ladies was Dawn. I finally got it at the shockingly old age of 8 or so.

I never knew Dick Van Dyke played the old banker in Mary Poppins until a rewatch with my kids some 20+ years later.

deferred interest

pull the other one, it's called Smith

As this is in the news, thought I’d look into its history. Anyway….

During the 1950s there was a prohibition on serving members of the armed forces standing for election to Parliament. A few National Servicemen stood for election in the 1951 and 1955 general elections in order to be dismissed from service.

Diana Ross has got a daughter called Chudney

The icon you see when a page or graphic is loading, usually a spinning ball or wheel, is called a Throbber.

medieval estonia was inhabited by a tribe called the chuds

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GOlgpWcXEAAoxUN?format=jpg&name=medium

“punic” in punic wars just comes from the latin word for phoenician (punicus).

also the place name “cartagena” is carthage tho it now seems sooo obvious. i knew ‘carthago delenda est,’ but never figgered cartagena.

Didn't know about Viking settlements in Sicily/southern Italy - although looking at the Wikipedia page, that map is a little disingenuous. It was the Normans who invaded Italy, around the same time as the Norman conquest of England. By that time, they were pretty much gallicised and spoke French.

The icon you see when a page or graphic is loading, usually a spinning ball or wheel, is called a Throbber.

More from the fun fact department, but… there are 41 (or maybe 42) buildings in Manhattan that have their own Zip Code. And that’s not the +4 Zip Code extension, that’s the traditional 5-digit Zip Code.

It's Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, not Bob Willis

how did you not know that?

I have no idea! I guess the double Ls threw me off, and while I have been aware of both the man and his music for most of my life (thanks, Bob Dylan), I'm not sure I have ever heard his name spoken aloud. I'd have gone on believing that his last name was "Willis" if I didn't notice the spine of some Rhino comp I just found

>>>Giorgio Moroder composed and produced "Danger Zone" and "Take My Breath Away"<<<

Perhaps everyone knows this; I didn't.

"I Want Candy" by Bow Wow Wow is a cover

yeah its by the Strangeloves 3 brothers from Australia

It was also a hit for the Count Bishops in 1978.

... well, not sure if it was a hit but they got on TOTP with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HntZDao0Tkg

Singer had been with these guys before. They were from Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0ZbENMWVzM

The Strangeloves were not 3 brothers from Australia. They were a fake studio band created by three NY songwriter/producers including Richard Gottehrer, who has one of the longest running careers in the music biz.

Bert Berns too. Insane careers. And not based on some dancer but the Terry Southern novel Candy.

that the count bishops had hits

They didn't.

A surprising place to learn some of the history of I Want Candy is the Astral Weeks episode of The History of Rock-n-Roll in 500 songs, because co-songwriter Bert Berns was deeply involved in Van Morrison's early career, from Them to Brown Eyed Girl. You also learn a bunch about Neil Diamond. All before getting to Astral Weeks itself.

https://500songs.com/podcast/episode-170-astral-weeks-by-van-morrison/

*eighteen minutes shockingly older* that the count bishops didn't have hits

The Strangeloves were not 3 brothers from Australia. They were a fake studio band created by three NY songwriter/producers including Richard Gottehrer, who has one of the longest running careers in the music biz.

― dan selzer, Friday, May 31, 2024 11:27 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

whose press bio was that they were 3 brothers who grew up on a sheep farm in Australia.
Apparently they couldn't do a good British accent convincingly.

Yup.

wow, so many versions of I Want Candy! We can add Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, Melanie C, Aaron Carter and the Candy Girls.

The Stray Cats are/were American.
I'd folded them in with all the terrible Ted-revival Brit-rockers at the turn of the '80s.

Except the Stray Cats were great!

How do you feel about The Polecats?

Brian Setzer (no relation) had previously been in an arty New York area new wave band called the Bloodless Pharoahs who played Maxs and similar clubs.

They were strayt outta Massapequa iirc.

"Font" is related to 'foundry', where early type sets were cast in metal

I listened to a History Hit podcast Gone Medieval talking about Whisky a few days ago that had various forms of spirits appearing as ersatz wines in the 11th or 12th century directly from attempts to market wine in areas that didn't have the main ingredients growing naturally and then introducing the distillation techniue due to similar local conditions.
I had thought that variation in local forms of alcohol were more natural and based on what had been observed to ferment through chance observation. So things would have evolved much earlier.

Fermentation definitely happened naturally lots of places, but distillation as we know it was an Arab invention that spread by trade and/or conquest: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/distillation-alcohol-invention-muslim

(Fun fact: "alcohol" is an Arabic word)

Tug McGraw started 39 games during his career--most of them his first two years (21), but then scattered around the rest of the way, including a start in 1983 for the Phillies. He wasn't very effective: 7-23, 4.81 (during a good era for pitchers; his lifetime ERA as a reliever was 2.86).

(Many people will die never having learned this.)

Apparently they couldn't do a good British accent convincingly.

How convincing were their Australian accents?

i was just washing dishes and for whatever reason Will Smith's "Men in Black" came on and i realized it was pulled from Patrice Rushen's "Forget Me Nots"

Despite being a regular cinema goer never spotted until tonight that Natasha Kaplinsky is president of the BBFC.

Diogenes was the original G.G. Allin

I know this has mostly turned into a thread for "fun ephemera we only just became aware of".

But recently there are a few things that I remember just assuming about the world when I was much younger that I was completely wrong about.
Mostly extremely naive stuff about pop culture, that was in my head but never really questioned.

For example:

- Until I actually got into reggae in my late adolescence, I assumed it was a long-standing folk tradition that went back centuries, and that Bob Marley etc were just part of that line. So I was surprised to read in a copy of Q one day that reggae as a style of music was younger than rock music. It's not entirely wrong: Reggae does come from a lineage that goes way back. Also that some of my earliest exposures to reggae-style music was stuff like "Rivers of Babylon" (which was written in the 70s but sounds like it should be a hymnal); and the children's song "Mango Walk".

- Speaking of which, I thought "Obladi Oblada" was some sort of Black spiritual song that the Beatles had repurposed and covered. This was based on us being taught to sing it in school assemblies next to a bunch of Christian hymns.

- In a similar fashion, there are songs like "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life", which I thought was an old Vaudeville or music hall tune from the 1930s. Even when I watched The Life Of Brian, I assumed Monty Python were covering it with some added risque verses.

- The first time I heard black metal (Emperor - Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk), it just didn't occur to me that this music could be made by humans. I didn't know how it was made, or who made it, but certainly not a bunch of young men only a few years older than me

BREWSTER'S MILLIONS (1985) was directed by the director of THE WARRIORS (1979)

Speaking of which, I thought "Obladi Oblada" was some sort of Black spiritual song that the Beatles had repurposed and covered. This was based on us being taught to sing it in school assemblies next to a bunch of Christian hymns.

Amongst the songs we had to sing at school were Yellow Submarine and Octopus's Garden. As a 5-year-old I assumed these were songs that had been around for ages. I had no idea they were by The Beatles and had only been released a decade earlier.

in the town where I was born
Lived a man from Gallilee
and he told us of his life
Then they nailed him to a tree

similarly growing up in Scotland I thought Flower Of Scotland was some old Burns era thing, not a 60s folk song

Or that "Scotland the Brave" was written by Cliff Hanley.