Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Lil Wayne

all I know is he endorsed Trump, can't remember any of his music

I first heard the source of the “Amen break” about 90 seconds ago.

what a kookaburra sounds like.

or rather, that the sound of the "jungle" from old movies and cartoons isn't monkeys, as i had always thought, it's kookaburras!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3puMIfxm9fU

Sitcom maven Chuck Lorre wrote the theme song to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

There was television in the 1930's?

There was television in the 1920's.

But not yet broadcasting, right? Just like experimental demonstrations

In 1928, WRGB (then W2XCW) was started as the world's first television station. It broadcast from the General Electric facility in Schenectady, New York. It was popularly known as "WGY Television".

I was just reading about this fluke BBC broadcast that reached New York in 1938, I didn't realize that they were broadcasting TV images that early:

https://archive.org/details/BbcTelevisionReceivedInNewYork-1938

imagine watching TV before the wall st crash

The BBC started broadcasting in 1936. First outside broadcast, 1937!

Just learned that New York wasn't named after the city of York, but after the Duke of York of the time (later James II).

There's a whole plot point in Carl Sagan's Contact (both novel and movie) that revolves around the true story of Nazi Germany's television broadcast of the opening of the 1936 Berlin Olympics as the first tv transmission that probably cleared the ionosphere and made it into space.

the sound of the "jungle" from old movies and cartoons isn't monkeys, as i had always thought, it's kookaburras!

It is also the sound of Flipper the dolphin - dolphins do not make the noises he did, they were samples of kooka calls sped up.

In 1928, WRGB (then W2XCW) was started as the world's first television station. It broadcast from the General Electric facility in Schenectady, New York. It was popularly known as "WGY Television".

People back then said, "I can't believe there's a whole channel and nothing on"

I can confirm that staring at kookaburras at the zoo does not encourage them to make the funny noise, nor does mumbling "do the thing!"

"Little" is actually spelled "liddle'" (with the hyphen).

Chuck Liddle

how to make coffee

when I started working at Burger King I had to work mornings on weekends and we had to make coffee. myself and one of my buddies there were only 16 and had never drank coffee and didn't know how to make it, but he had seen his Dad make instant coffee, so he would put water in the machine and then pour the coffee grounds DIRECTLY into the pot. I remember thinking "hmmm that doesn't seem right" but I never made coffee either so I just did it the same way. god, I feel so bad for anyone we served that to.

TIL up to this date about a quarter of the total casualties of the Andrea Doria are not just the passengers who expired when it sank but divers who flocked there since, often looking for the ultimate symbol of diving prowess for their collection: Andrea Doria china. Also the depths they are going to get this 1st class crockery is way beyond what is safe for recreational divers with limited oxygen supplies. There is a condition referred to as nitrogen narcosis (Cousteau called it "rapture of the deep"!) that can dramatically effect your ability to make safe judgements, which could be a problem in a crumbling wreck 235 ft under the Atlantic in frequently rough conditions.

haha amazing

i was 19yo before i discovered that Jack Daniel's is not what British people would consider "whiskey". took a couple of weeks working in a pub before i got called out on that one

"smell this. it smells of bananas"

"come here, smell this. nigel, oy! it smells of bananas"

"what did you put in here, barman?"

lool

then pour the coffee grounds DIRECTLY into the pot

AKA 'cowboy coffee'... also how traditional New Orleans coffee was made, using egg whites to settle the grounds

bring back the Burger King Rodeo burger and have a special where it's served with cowboy coffee

i learned abt "raptures of the deep" surprisingly young bcz there was a cousteau book with nice pictures in my school library -- i doubt i read the main text particularly closely but there was a very striking photo of an underwater board attached to a rope with a kind of wild scribble on it, which was the enraptured final signature of cousteau's colleague (name long forgotten) as he proved to the world he had beaten some specific diving record (details also forgotten); sadly by then this fellow was so blissed-out on nitrogen that he forgot to continue to hold his facemask to his mouth, so that by the time they got down to him or pulled him up or whatever he had entirely drowned

this made a STRONG IMPRESSION on me! never give yr life for some dumb diving rercord! (or indeed go diving at all 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽)

nevertheless i was fascinated by how chaotic that scribbled sign-off looked, that guy was OUT OF IT :(

the sound of the "jungle" from old movies and cartoons isn't monkeys, as i had always thought, it's kookaburras!

Kookaburras: Australia's Wilhelm Scream

Lol

xxp

there is a measurement of "rapture of the deep" side effects that some divers call Martin's Law. Which is for every extra 50 ft you descend is like drinking a martini on an empty stomach. I was reading an account of a diver who got snagged on cables and died. They were still barely conscious when another found them in trouble but couldn't get them free and tank was running low. So they risked death themselves by "getting bent" with a dangerous fast ascent to the surface to raise the alarm and then back down again to decompress. The diver who died was apparently an arrogant dick and went down with lots of tools hanging from a tool belt that the rest of the party called "suicide snags" or something like that. But he had such a big rep and was such an unapproachable dick, nobody dared have a word with him about them.

lol martini's law I meant

i would simply drink an actual martini on an empty stomach while descending no feet

two feet is enough to lose under the influence of martinis

xxp

that's a much more sensible option than asphyxiating while hopelessly tied up by a spider's web of cables in a dark deep sea wreck location known as Gimbel's Hole!

also Gimbel almost died and had to be carried up unconscious whilst making the hole!

A Gimbel is just a Martini but with an onion instead of olive

that "mare's nest" is an actual expression and not just some random user name

Lol

That Marie and Pierre Curie's daughter, Irene, also won a Nobel Prize.

Nepo baby

that when Bosch's Garden of Earthy Delights is folded up, it has a painting on the outside depicting the creation of the Earth.
you can see some of the weird shapes starting to emerge, neat!

https://i.imgur.com/KspW8V9.jpg

The fold behind the arm/shoulder on a US bike jacket or field jacket is called a bi-swing.
I was looking up what it was called cos I was designing a jacket and thinking I'd incorporate a pair into the design. So thought I'd see if I could find a pattern for it.
It allows more arm movement/stretch.
I think it had been incorporated into some casual suit type jackets in the mid 20th century as well as things like golf jackets.

I just learned that Long Cool Woman isn’t by CCR, but the Hollies. I have heard this song one hundred million times in my life.

I only fairly recently learned why 'elevator pitch' is called that. Previously I interpreted the 'elevator' as meaning 'taking the pitch to the next level'.

the "tera" in like terabyte is the same as the tera in teratology

it means monster!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/af/Eric_Hall.jpeg

time for YOU to learn that this guy^^^ is who the song "killer queen" was written about