Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Yeah, met somebody from Washington State yesterday. & found out where the Puget Sound was. Not sure where i would have placed it other than thinking it was a good weird post hardcore band from Dublin about 10 years ago. Or at least they borrowed the name.
She said there were deserts in Washington State which I wouldn't have thought cos I thought a lot of that area was known for rain.

There's a mountain range bisecting the state! The western coastal part is probably better known

I hadn't realized until early this year that there's a Vancouver, Washington.

I'm surprised they don't try to pronounce it Van-COH-ver or something.

Let me tell you something that actually is germane to this thread: When I was a kid, I read about, and we studied in school about, the Salem witch trials.

I was aware that Salem was a place in Oregon. I was not aware it is also a place in Massachusetts. I was never really able to work out how women could have been persecuted as witches in a place that wasn't founded until 1842 but also I was an evangelical so I was used to believing in impossible things that didn't make sense, so somehow I just let it ride. ALL MY LIFE UNTIL ADULT-HOOD.

that was their witchery though, actually being also in the other Salem

i don't think that's so bad? the oregon one is much larger and is a state capital, and it's not like the witch trials appear everyday discussions. i can totally see thinking 'weird, but whatever'

as long as you can tell the difference between washington state and washington dc, you're good to go

I worked at a university archive and special collections in Washington state for years and had at least three conversations with scholars from the UK who were going to be visiting NY/Boston/DC and wanted to casually swing by one day and check out our Virginia Woolf collection. They were all super confused when I explained it would take them several days to get there by train.

The USAF survival training school is in Spokane, supposedly because Washington State has easy access to desert, rain forest, and high altitude snow conditions within a couple of hours.

truly a land of contrasts

i once knew an albertan who thought the white house, etc, was in washington state. it's understandable. i can't tell my rough riders from my roughriders

xxp My dad had to do that course. He said something about being left in the desert with a potato and an onion and iirc he won't talk about it beyond that.

i only learned last year that the redskins is washington dc. I'm from Virginia so I probably should've realized that even sooner.

On your left, Oregon. The state of Washington is on your right.

https://i.imgur.com/wI1RpP7.png

having the potato and onion seems like cheating imo

I thought the Washington football team was the Hatcats.

you were correct

My wife learned recently that a certain college (famous for its sports teams) is not "Yukon" but "UConn."

Haha, the Hatcats' location was a longterm point of confusion for me as well

not "Yukon" but "UConn."

this is wonderful

Ah, the Huskies.

Just like the football team in Washington.

hmm I think that team is Nebraska

wait till you hear about the wildcats

This week I learned that Willie Mays Hayes was the name of a character in the movie Major League and not the seldom-used full name of real-life baseball player Willie Mays.

I hadn't realized until early this year that there's a Vancouver, Washington.

it feels especially trolly bcz Vancouver WA is JUST over the border from Oregon, and Vancouver BC is JUST over the border from the US, on the same road

other vancouver facts:

north vancouver and west vancouver bc are not parts of the city of vancouver bc

anyone who names suburbs with a cardinal direction tacked on to the actual city's name should rethink what they're doing imo

If you drive due south from North Kansas City, Mo., you'll enter Kansas City.

And if you drive due north of North Kansas City, you'll enter... Kansas City.

From what I know about Vancouver WA it's basically a kinda methy suburb of Portland where tax dodging assholes live to avoid OR state income taxes and they have a huge chip on their shoulder about being THE FIRST VANCOUVER.

I hadn't heard of Des Moines, Washington until a few years ago and it really was started by someone who got funding from people in Des Moines, Iowa. Iowans know nothing of any of this.

There's a town in Michigan called Zilwaukee. I'll let wiki fill in the rest:

Zilwaukee was founded in 1848 when Daniel and Solomon Johnson, two brothers from New York City, built a saw mill here. Officially organized ten years later, the Johnsons gave the name Zilwaukee to the town purposely to cause people to confuse it with the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in hopes of luring settlers there to work.

lol

a thousand waukees is much preferable to zero waukees tho so why would anyone be lured

I totally would've done the Yukon/UConn thing

But I did know there was a Vancouver, Wa!

I never thought about any connection between Milwaukee and Des Moines suburb Waukee but now I’m thinking... single instance

A milwaukee is 1/1000th of a waukee, as anyone conversant with the metric system can tell you.

we are not conversant (except for two-litre bottles, for some reason)

In Vancouver BC we have a west end (of downtown), a west side (of the rest of the city), and West Vancouver (a separate city).

Vancouver, Wash. in the news tonight. :-(

The 49th Parallel is a consciously straight line or that is to say the Canadian border follows a straight line for about 2/3s it's length. & parts of territories/states that messed up that straightness were traded between the USA and Canada to make it straight.
Was wondering why it looked so close to being one since natural features would tend to work against an ideal straightness.

A milwaukee is 1/1000th of a waukee, as anyone conversant with the metric system can tell you.

Similary, a millihelen is, as a measure of beauty, a face that launched one ship.

While the news out of Vantucky, erm, Vancouver, WA, was terrible tonight, I will honestly say that it is a terrible shithole, having spent a day trying to get out of there during my vagabond years.

Also, western Washington is gorgeous, along with the mountains bisecting the state.

I've never been in a place that viscerally repelled me more than Spokane. Christ what a dump.

Actually, "Milwaukee" is pronounced "mill-e-wah-que" which is Algonquin for "the good land."

https://media.giphy.com/media/vMnuZGHJfFSTe/giphy.gif

not "Yukon" but "UConn."

this is wonderful

hadn't thought of this in years, but as a kid i was amazed that such a remote school could have such a perennially good basketball team!

i’m from CT originally, and i’m fucking amazed it happened there.

The language of 2000AD's Tharg emerged from a thing schoolkids did to vex various headmasters at a public school in London. One of whom went onto be among the writers who started the comic.
They started as intentionally nonsensical utterances taht just sounded effective echoing down an assembly hall.

The word scrotnig was a badly typed attempt at the word escorting in an episode of Invasion that initially seemed totally confusing then took on a life of its own.

THese 2000Ad Thrill casts have some interesting tidbits and stuff in them.

That Ram Jam were formed in 1977(!) in order to make an LP around 'Black Betty' which is actually a recording by the guitarist's previous band.

I has assumed they were some sort of Grand Funk Railroad style act from the early 70s.

Ha, I had assumed that too.

The original band was called Ewe Jelly

ba ba black betty, bambalam