Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Today i learned that Meatloaf was only 5'2"!! I always thought he was about 9ft tall

No way!

Haha no scratch that - I've been given false information. He was six foot

ppl out there just fibbing abt meat loaf, in 2024!

FAKE LOAF

Like a Gnat Out of Hell

5'2" ain't bad

We were barely seventeen and we were not so tall

Clock DVA, the sheffield band, who i have always called "Clock D V A" are actually "Clock Dva", Dva being russian for 'two'. it's a clockwork orange reference.

(still unconvinced by that)

Whoa really?

I heard that several years ago. The 2 o'clock bit at least. Thirst has a symbol on the front that appears to signify that too. irckle with a triangle corresponding to the clock hands position filled in.

circle with a triangle

I remember them talking about this in the Made In Sheffield documentary - iirc they gave up telling everyone it wasn't D V A after a couple of years and started calling it that themselves.

The difference between collision and allision, at least as far as maritime law defines it.

Railways existed before steam engines and locomotives - I mean, duh, why wouldn't they?

well a locomotive wouldn’t be much use without them Tom duh

allision-- my aim's untrue

well a locomotive wouldn’t be much use without them Tom duh

Wagonways!

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

... this is what I was shockingly old when I learned about.

I used to know this insane wingnut minor-league weedlord out of Cave Junction who had built a working wood gas car— it didn’t go very fast or far, but it worked! Saw it with my own eyes. Lost tough with him because he outed himself as a virulent anti-vaxxer a few years before the pando

I’ve driven something converted to run off natural gas

what’s wild is how many road vehicles were electric back in the early days. Or cities with full-on electric buses with the overhead electric line. Was widespread for a brief period

"Waiting for Guffman" per wiki:

The film's title is a reference to Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot.

oh. duh ...

What a "hospital pass"is. Saw this story and thought it must have something to do with the NHS

https://www.politics.co.uk/news/2024/03/28/rishi-sunak-i-inherited-worst-hospital-pass-for-a-new-pm-in-decades/

Not shocking, but I just learned the character in the drawings of nude woman in black gloves and stockings that appear in Playboy are called femlins, and that the character was created by LeRoy Neiman.

Femlins were created by sport illustrator LeRoy Neiman in 1955 when publisher/editor Hugh Hefner decided the Party Jokes page needed a visual element.[1] The name is a portmanteau of "female" and "gremlin." They are portrayed as mischievous black and white female sprites, apparently 10–12 in (250–300 mm) tall, wearing only opera gloves, stockings and high heel shoes.[2] They are usually drawn in two or three panel vignettes, interacting with various life-sized items such as shoes, jewelry, neckties and such.

An auction is happening today of stuff from the Hefner estate.

Americans call an umbrella a "bumbershoot".

a handful of americans, perhaps

i have never heard anyone call an umbrella a bumbershoot in my nearly 40 years.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bumbershoot

checks out

it's definitely a word, just not in common everyday use for most Americans. it's like folksy slang.

It's generally only used when one is adopting the voice of a pompous twit, for comedic effect.

Is bumbershoot like Lollapalooza, an out of use antiquated term used only to name a music festival?

^^^^^ yes

I've only heard bumbershoot used by Americans as a faux-Britishism

Extremely faux as no-one in Britain has ever heard of it.

Although there is (was?) a homophobic Jamaican variant that was popular in the UK when I was at school

if you mean bomboclaat, that one isn't homophobic, it's misogynist

in that it means menstrual pad. though it could also mean toilet paper, while bloodclaat is more clearly the former

and tbc none of these words are related to bumbershoot in any way

I think it mutated its meaning into north London! Anyway yes I guess from a different origin to bumbershoot.

ah right that is quite possible!

"He washed his hands of the whole thing"

Comes from Pontius Pilate (on Good Friday!).. he just wanted to give Jesus a flogging and let him go, but the crowd wanted blood, so he symbolically washed his hands to say that he didn't agree but do whatever you want. It's in the Stones song, don't know why I never made that connection

it’s weird to me that the voice of Garfield/Peter Venkman also co-created the Bob Newhart Show and co-composed its theme song

And was the voice of Carlton the Doorman on the Bob Newhart Show and Rhoda

Pontius Pilate Was the Voice of Garfield

huh never knew bumbershoot was american, totally thought it mysterious/british/lol.

well I just read a thing about Pontius Pilate and he didn't seem to give two shits about Jesus, for or against.. he certainly wasn't try to arrest him or hunt him down, that was news to me

I don't think we know anything much at all about Pontius Pilate and what he thought. Outside the gospels, which have their own agenda, there is almost no mention of him in the records.

I got my info direct from the Gospel of Wikipedia

According to Eddie Vedder, Pilate had a dog. So there's that much that we know.

The original Fido.