Things you were shockingly old when you learned

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

Today, at the age of 48, I discover that a garden sieve is called a riddle. I found out from looking at the solution to last week's Observer crossword, seeing 'sieve' as the solution to the clue 'riddle' and being v. confused (there's a certain irony here!)

Yesterday I was chatting to someone with two rescue greyhounds and told me a few things I'd never heard before. They are the first dog breed mentioned in the old testament, in ancient Egypt they were considered a status symbol to wealthy people and they only need one twenty minute daily walk and will sleep like a babe for the rest of the day.

but in that 20 minutes they run 12 miles

Your not kidding, its a hell of a sight watching one of them beauties going full pelt.

She also told me they can run faster than a jaguar - factamundo.

Your not kidding, its a hell of a sight watching one of them beauties going full pelt.

I just found out that "full pelt" is an actual phrase--it means the same as "full tilt" but it's only circa 1900 as opposed to "tilt" being circa 1600.

I also only realised the two Kansas Cities thing and the Vancouver in Washington thing in the last couple of months, while trying to understand the apprently inexplicable geography in a couple of American TV shows/films.

To my knowledge, there isn't any U.S. town or city that is split between two states. Texarkana, Texas, and Texarkana, Arkansas, are two separate towns with different city councils, mayors, police forces, etc. They might have the same water utility. Same with Union City, Indiana, and Union City, Ohio. Or the Lookout Mountains in Tennessee and Georgia (not to be confused with the actual mountain called Lookout Mountain.)

And I do carefully say "any U.S. town" because there is crazy-ass Lloydminster, a single incorporated town that sits right on the line between Alberta and Saskatchewan. One mayor, one city council, but two postal codes and they prefer to jump back and forth between Mountain Time and Central Time, depending upon the season.

I remember being surprised to find out that KC MO was much larger than KC KS, but that was long ago. In California I don't think that cities can even span county lines.

The people we know as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were actors who auditioned for, and were cast as, the characters "Roy Rogers" and "Dale Evans."

xxp wbat about Texhoma?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texhoma,_Texas

Texhoma students are served jointly by two districts: kindergarten through fourth grade students by Texhoma Independent School District in Texas and fifth through twelfth grade students by Texhoma Public Schools in Oklahoma. For much of the 20th century, the divided town was served by a single school district. It is the only city in Texas where graduating students can attend either Texas or Oklahoma Universities and pay in-state tuition for either.

The village lies on the state line with Indiana, where it borders the town of West College Corner, Indiana. The public school, part of the Union County–College Corner Joint School District, is bisected by the state line and is operated jointly with the Indiana authorities.

I have probably mentioned it before, but US postal codes *can* cross state lines and I learned it the hard way

u OK hun?

IIRC the Pentagon and National Airport are located in Virginia while having DC zip codes.

There is a major airport in Australia where you cross the state line while taking off or landing (Coolangatta, crossing NSW - Qld).

and for several months of the year they are in different time zones

The people we know as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were actors who auditioned for, and were cast as, the characters "Roy Rogers" and "Dale Evans."

― Saint Buffy (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, October 10, 2019 1:10 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

wat