This is the thread for unusual details in wikipedia articles.

In the Star Wars series, part of R2-D2's beeps and whistles are Burtt's vocalizations, also made using an ARP 2600 synthesizer, as are some of the squawks made by the tiny holographic monsters on the Millennium Falcon spacecraft. In Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005), Burtt's provided the voice for Lushros Dofine, captain of the Invisible Hand cruiser. The heavy breathing of Darth Vader was created by recording Burtt's own breathing in an old Dacor scuba regulator.[citation needed]

Today (after a round of Travle) I learned that Botswana and Zambia share the shortest border in the world, 135 meters

In 1997 Martin invented and filed a patent application for a drum with a three-part rim that could be used to make three different rimshot sounds. He received patent 5,834,667 on this drum on Nov 10, 1998; the patent was issued to him under his legal name, Walter M.D. Midkiff. In 1997 Dewey was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with Buffalo Springfield.

Although Davis admitted to disliking the song, finding it too saccharine, it became his only number-one hit, spending three weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart starting 10 June 1972, and two weeks at the top of the easy-listening chart.[3]

“Google, what is Bebe Neuwirth’s real name?”
“Beatrice “Bebe” Jane Neuwirth.”
“Yes, but what is her REAL NAME”

o-levels (uk equiv of sats roughly) had a logo.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OLevel.svg

i'm seeing Obituary for like the 7 millionth time Saturday, so I'm bored and reading their Wikipedia pages, and I come to the one for their live album Dead, and one of the songs "Rewind" is attributed to some bizarre dude with the last name Klavinger. Ain't never been nobody with that name in the band, and Google turns up nothing for his name and Obituary other than the Wikipedia article. The song is also officially credited to the band on the studio album it appears on. Dude is also listed as a one-time touring guitarist from 1999 on their page, but only in one place.

I figure it was someone's recent cute vandalism. through some digging, I found out this motherfucker added his name to the page and changed the songwriting credit to his name back in *2007* and the vandalism has remained there for 15.5 years, even through several revisions.

well, until now at least.

I added a friend's name to a Spanish variety show on wikipedia once as an inside joke. It got corrected but not before imdb copied the info, and there he still is.

Lol that's awesome

it's not so much unusual, but nowadays I've become fascinated by wikipedia pages that must be heavily monitored by the subject in question - i.e. Robbie Robertson

https://i.imgur.com/q2VICVk.jpg

I once updated the page for Ally McBeal (the character not the show itself) to state she was known for fighting for her client, wearing sexy miniskirts, and being self-reliant. It stayed for about a year.

wikipedia pages that must be heavily monitored by the subject in question - i.e. Robbie Robertson

Haha, I've never looked him up, but I can only imagine. Serves him right.

"I thought most wikipedia pages were created and edited as a group effort?"

"Not this one."

"Take Me Like I Am" was written by Peter "Spunk" Willis and Sterling Jarvis in 1988 but released somewhat accidentally in California radio markets in 1990 where it received airplay.[2]

the critical reception section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Gate_at_the_Stairs (which I have checked out on the coffee table to read next after Anagrams)

Most of the players believed they would be back on the field by Labour Day (celebrated on the same date in the U.S. as Labor Day) at the latest.

Quite the sentence here.

Whilst being way beyond over the limit from some sheer violence is scary in some matches, hardcore technician gimmicks are also another popular choice for gimmicks, due to the fans being over with getting used to watching sheer violence as they don't shy away from it either.

new user name just dropped

lol

It doesn't really belong in this thread maybe but I'd never heard of "cargo cults" before, until last night, when reading up on active volcanoes

whoa!

Yeah, there’s a very-long-standing active cone on Tanna in Vanuatu, and a particular cult (John Brum I think?) is associated with it. Fascinating stuff, I was like, why haven’t I read about this before? Then I clicked the “in popular culture” section and it said “what, you haven’t seen The Gods Must Be Crazy?” and I replied “I did when I was a kid and it seemed like a weird problematic fantasy, not like something that had any basis in reality”

less an 'unusual' detail than a fucked-up one

Disregarding her daughter's desire to go to Oxford, her mother arranged an encounter with Donald Ferguson, her mother's former lover. Helen Emily Woods married him in 1920, a few months before he took a position with the Railway Company in Burma.

RE: Cargo cults, I've read a few articles about that tribe in Papua New Guinea that 'worshiped' the late Prince Phillip, kind of a cool story

https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article10357477.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/princephilip-group.jpg

Not unusual, necessarily, but I admire the attempt to summarize the sheer zaniness that is the video for El Debarge's "Who's Johnny?"

The music video features El DeBarge singing in a courtroom, where a judge is presiding over the trial of Johnny 5 (the robotic protagonist of Short Circuit). A representative of NOVA, the government defense contractor that created Johnny, sits at the prosecutor's table as El DeBarge sings his testimony from the witness stand. Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy) and a cardboard cutout of Newton Graham Crosby, Ph.D. (Steve Guttenberg) are also in attendance as adversarial witnesses for the prosecution, implying that El Debarge is playing the co-lead role of Ben Jabituya, played by Fisher Stevens in the film. The prosecutor's sole question during these examinations is the titular line of the song "Who's Johnny?" She plays a VHS tape, labeled "Short Circuit", containing various clips from the movie. Meanwhile, Number 5 wreaks havoc in the courtroom (only his robotic hand is visible to the viewer) with various hijinks, including giving the prosecuting attorney a pair of funny nose glasses, turning up the ceiling fan to create a windstorm of papers, swapping the judge's gavel for an exploding one and calling the fire department, resulting in the judge being sprayed with water. Stephanie and El DeBarge sneak out of the courtroom at the end, covering the camera with a slate on their way out. The prosecutor, still wearing the trick glasses, pops up to deliver the last "Who's Johnny?"

A classic! See this discussion from a while back: This is the thread for unusual details in wikipedia articles.

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

Bruno Jean Cornil Metsu (After believing to Islam change his name to Karim)

Today I learned that Christopher Nolan split at least some of his childhood between London and Chicago (where his mother was from), with him spending more time in London and his younger brother spending more time in Chicago. Jonathan (who I guess used to go by Jonah?) Nolan apparently even has an American accent.

From a botanical point of view, the strawberry is not a berry but an aggregate accessory fruit, meaning that the fleshy part is derived not from the plant's ovaries but from the receptacle that holds the ovaries. Each apparent "seed" (achene) on the outside of the fruit is actually one of the ovaries of the flower, with a seed inside it.

Sheard portrayed Adolf Hitler five times in his career: in Rogue Male (1976), The Tomorrow People (1978), The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (1985), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and the documentary Secret History: Hitler of the Andes (2003).[10] He also portrayed Heinrich Himmler three times, in The Death of Adolf Hitler (1973), The Bunker (1981) and Space (1985). Although Sheard never played Hermann Göring, he did play Göring's double in the 'Allo 'Allo! episode Hitler's Last Heil.

Godard remains a busy and creative artist, but no more popular (or better) than he was 40 years ago.

xp Anyone know if Rogue Male is any good? I quite enjoyed the book (via NYRB Classics) but have trouble seeing how the climactic standoff would translate to film.

I liked it a lot, but cw for cat death :(

Cast member Gavin McInnes confirmed that Soul Quest Overdrive was cancelled, and incorrectly blamed its cancellation on the other cast members not being "as funny" as he.[56]

The hip hop duo Insane Clown Posse took issue with the album, feeling it copied their style. The American rapper Violent J referenced this in their song "Everybody Rize" by rapping 'Fuck Gene Simmons you make me sick, psycho circus you stole my shit! Spit your blood out and do your dance but I'ma kick that ass through your leather pants.'

In September 2000, the Millionaires released a soundtrack album to Baller Blockin' in which they starred. In 2001, the group disbanded due to monetary issues.

Nick Lowe had initially written the song while in the pub rock band Brinsley Schwarz. He has said that Judee Sill's "Jesus Was a Cross Maker" was an influence on the song

Munich was found dead outside Number 10 on 5 August 1943. In newspaper reports covering his death, it was revealed that Munich had produced a son with another cat. He was described by the Birmingham Post as "disagreeable", "unfriendly", and "how one imagines Ribbentrop would have been had he been a cat", and by the Evening Chronicle as a "detestable quisling"; the Huddersfield Daily Examiner instead stated that he "had a great reputation for 'ratting'".

Not specifically in wikipedia, but close enough:

The "lil" nickname originates in American gangs; a nickname given to members who aren’t at the top of the hierarchy, and rap (as it has done with many street codes and expressions) has appropriated it. The first recorded "lil" rapper came from Texas, a former drug dealer named Troy Lane Birklett who became Lil’ Troy and had a career with the group Mass 187 and as a solo artist since the late 1980s.

Steele imagined the first aspects of video's plotline when he was running around his house chanting "La la la!" repeatedly, then quickly envisioned the rest of the plotline shortly thereafter.

hahaha

Months before the 2005 reunion, a person named "P.J." called into the radio station WFMU in New Jersey, claiming to be a former member of Old Skull. "P.J." stated that he was re-forming Old Skull as a jazz fusion band without the input of any of the other former members. The call turned out to be an elaborate comedy sketch set up by Tom Scharpling, a supervising producer and writer for the Monk television series, and Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster, for their radio show, The Best Show on WFMU.

This is the last sword and sorcery movie that Roger Corman produced in Argentina during the 80s.

Thomas Pablo Croquet was born on 21 November 1976 in Versailles, France. Croquet was originally inspired to learn English by his uncle, Horst.

When Croquet was ten, he formed the band Phoenix with schoolfriends Chris Mazzalai and Deck d'Arcy. Mazzalai's older brother, Laurent Brancowitz, also joined the band after the break-up of Darlin'. Croquet says that he "destroyed every single other option that would lead me to any potential career other than music", attending college for only four days, studying economics.

Just seemed like an odd thing to mention for someone who only attended four days of college

I was hoping he'd be credited with developing the game that bears his name.

Yeah his real name is another funny detail I learned in a previous wiki search

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

The rhythm and tempo of this song is often used to teach people the rhythm of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The recommended rate for CPR is 100 chest compressions per minute. A study at Coventry University compared the effectiveness of this song in maintaining this rhythm with an alternative of "That's the Way (I Like It)" and no song at all. The version used for the study was from a Little Acorns brand children's record, and was found to have a tempo of 105 beats per minute. Singing the chorus of the song twice, with a compression on each beat, results in exactly 30 compressions, which is the international standard for CPR.[7]

The use of "Nellie" resulted in correct timing for 42 out of 130 cases, as compared with 15 for no music and just 12 for "That's the Way (I Like It)". However, the depth of compression was found to be inadequate in most of those cases, and the use of "Nellie" was found to increase this inadequacy slightly, as compared with the use of no music (56% too shallow with "Nellie" and 47% without).[7]

More recently Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" has been promoted as an alternative.[8][9]

A+