Things you were shockingly old when you learned

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.

he just didn’t like the last supper, was hoping for lasagna

Well, we do know he was friends with Biggus Dickus.

lol table

Pilate was very flexible in his opinions

Charley Pride, baseball prospect. It feels like I'm learning this for the first time, but there's so much stuff on his Wikipedia page about his baseball career, I'm questioning that--I must have learned about this at some point. No recollection at all, though.

Though he loved music, one of Pride's lifelong dreams was to become a professional baseball player. In 1952, he pitched for the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League. In 1953, he signed a contract with the Boise Yankees, the Class C farm team of the New York Yankees. During that season, an injury caused him to lose the "mustard" on his fastball, and he was sent to the Yankees' Class D team in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Later that season, while in the Negro leagues with the Louisville Clippers, two players – Pride and Jesse Mitchell – were traded to the Birmingham Black Barons for a team bus. "Jesse and I may have the distinction of being the only players in history to be traded for a used motor vehicle," Pride mused in his 1994 autobiography.

Pride pitched for several other minor league teams, his hopes of making it to the big leagues still alive, but was drafted into the United States Army in 1956. After basic training, he was stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado, where he was a quartermaster and played on the Fort's baseball team. That team won the All Army Sports Championship. When discharged in 1958, he rejoined the Memphis Red Sox. He tried to return to baseball, though hindered by an injury to his throwing arm.

Pride played three games for the Missoula Timberjacks of the Pioneer League (a farm club of the Cincinnati Reds) in 1960, and had tryouts with the California Angels (1961) and the New York Mets (1962) organizations, but was not picked up by either team.

I'm sure that what led me down that path is obvious.

at least he had something to fall back on

Beyoncé won't have baseball if the country thing doesn't work out.

I was today years old when I learned Judy Garland is Liza Minelli's muva!! feels sacrilege to have gone this long unknowing of their bio tether

:-O

they even sound the same

We don't know how old you are, but that may indeed live up to the "shockingly" part of the thread title.