Fun Fact Thread! (previously fun fact for the day, not limited to 1 per day anymore.)

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

alcohol free

Such an insidious hypocrisy in using of the "freedom" word...

Calling the "alcoholless doomed" or "told sober" - "alcohol free"....

***

In the SU/RU fleet they receive red wine daily dose on the nuke subs.

In the early XX it was vodka. But no nukes.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

16 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

hypocrisy in using of the "freedom" word

... well, don't forget that 'Freedom of Religion' originally meant 'freedom to discriminate against non-Puritans'.  Catholicism was illegal in many Colonies and in New England the Sheriff could arrest you for not going to church. 

Somehow we survived all that. 

[Superfluous J]

4 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Somehow we survived all that. 

And hopefully we'll never need to survive it again.

[darthgently]

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

... well, don't forget that 'Freedom of Religion' originally meant 'freedom to discriminate against non-Puritans'.  Catholicism was illegal in many Colonies and in New England the Sheriff could arrest you for not going to church. 

Somehow we survived all that. 

The anti-Catholic laws in the English  colonies were a direct application England's schism with the Vatican and being at war off and on with the Catholic countries of Spain and France, often over new world claims.  While the Puritans were fleeing both the Church of England as much as the Catholic Church as they had been subject to pogroms in Europe from all sides.  I think at that point in colonial US history "freedom of religion" assumed that Catholics were free to practice their religion among their own in their own far away lands and the Puritan and related colonies were going to do their thing among their own in their lands.  By the time of the RW this had changed quite a bit and as the US formed into a nation you see more public discourse about religious tolerance and living peacefully in neighboring enclaves if not exactly rubbing shoulders side by side.  And for the most part this was the common sentiment.

The use of the phrase grew during those formative years, and enshrined in the Bill of Rights, to mean that the government would not endorse or repress one religion over another, though individual members of the government were expected to have moral scruples and taken to task if they fell short, whatever their religion.

All that said, I'm fairly certain the phrase goes way back into England in Cromwell's time.  Not sure though

[magnemoe]

On 2/22/2024 at 4:50 AM, darthgently said:

The anti-Catholic laws in the English  colonies were a direct application England's schism with the Vatican and being at war off and on with the Catholic countries of Spain and France, often over new world claims.  While the Puritans were fleeing both the Church of England as much as the Catholic Church as they had been subject to pogroms in Europe from all sides.  I think at that point in colonial US history "freedom of religion" assumed that Catholics were free to practice their religion among their own in their own far away lands and the Puritan and related colonies were going to do their thing among their own in their lands.  By the time of the RW this had changed quite a bit and as the US formed into a nation you see more public discourse about religious tolerance and living peacefully in neighboring enclaves if not exactly rubbing shoulders side by side.  And for the most part this was the common sentiment.

The use of the phrase grew during those formative years, and enshrined in the Bill of Rights, to mean that the government would not endorse or repress one religion over another, though individual members of the government were expected to have moral scruples and taken to task if they fell short, whatever their religion.

All that said, I'm fairly certain the phrase goes way back into England in Cromwell's time.  Not sure though

Agree, now as I understand the Church of England is mostly Catholic except the king is the ruler not the pope so he own all the church land who was quite the money grab.
But they did not want to go protestant as it was to radical, just the money pls. 
And the years after Luther had loads of extremists groups, think ISIL level active while it was multiple religious wars in central Europe. 
The 30 years war is why you don't want an no rules war but extremist always go for it as they think they always success. 
 

[tomf]

TIL that the British navy no longer issues a rum reason, but sailors are allowed to purchase up to 1.5 pints of beer a day

[DDE]

4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

And the years after Luther had loads of extremists groups, think ISIL level active while it was multiple religious wars in central Europe. 

And before. Basically, every hundred years or so the various gnostic heresies like the Cathars would erupt in a massive, bloody insurrection. The Medieval was an absolute madhouse with regards to this, and modern historical scholarship seems to increasingly rehabilitate the Inquisition - in that they were hardly hunting innocents and shadows.

But I'd better stop before I roll out my canned thousand-word criticism of the theological origins on the United States...

Spoiler

...and that would be terrible.

 

[magnemoe]

8 minutes ago, DDE said:

And before. Basically, every hundred years or so the various gnostic heresies like the Cathars would erupt in a massive, bloody insurrection. The Medieval was an absolute madhouse with regards to this, and modern historical scholarship seems to increasingly rehabilitate the Inquisition - in that they were hardly hunting innocents and shadows.

But I'd better stop before I roll out my canned thousand-word criticism of the theological origins on the United States...

  Reveal hidden contents

...and that would be terrible.

 

LOL yes the Inquisition was the good guys, yes it was some abuse of power as usual but the other side was insane. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

thousand-word criticism of the theological

If it doesn't include 'Deism' (as understood by the 18th century rationalists) then it's not complete. 

[kerbiloid]

As one informed man said (and this has been proven several times more), the only essential question is: who gets the Chrism from whom; everything other is just a smokescreen and handwaving.

When you see, who is preparing the Chrism, and distributes it to others, the picture gets very plain.

As the Chrism is used in almost every sanctifying ceremony or sacred artifact, including the most common "holy water", the only question is: where do you get the Chrism?

And look, it perfectly illustrates the difference between the Protestant and Catholic view on the ceremonies.
The Catholics have their own Chrism (as well as the Orthodox have

Spoiler

https://ru-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Мироваренная_палата?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp

(not "Peace chamber", but "Chrism-cooking chamber")

https://ru-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Алавастр?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp

).
What about the English and Protestant Churches? Do they have, or do they get it somewhere? Are the Protestant rituals same sanctified and using the Chrism as ingredient, or treated as traditional and based only on verbal declaration on the "sanctified" object _{due to the Chrism source current absence}?

The word "anointed" is based on that. And why were the French kings anointed in Reims, rather than Paris? (See the Ampulla Remensis).

Edited February 24 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

Barbed wire is bad.

Barbed wire electrified with fatal amounts of current is worse, and it can be left disguised to be indistinguishable from regular wire. It was used in WWI and potentially even during the Russo-Japanese War (the Japanese accused the Russians of using weaponized lightning and the Russians accused the Japanese of using ship-to-ship chemical shells... both claims are a bit shaky).

This is a 1941 Red Army combat engineer copper-shielded suit for obstacle breaching, developed based on experiences with the Mannerheim Line.

However, as the manual indicated, the preferable way was to drive a tank.

Shower thought: places like Wikipedia seem to sell the technology short. This sort of an underreported history could explain why so much fiction has various forms of electrical barriers...

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

Barbed wire is bad.

Barbed wire electrified with fatal amounts of current is worse, and it can be left disguised to be indistinguishable from regular wire. It was used in WWI and potentially even during the Russo-Japanese War (the Japanese accused the Russians of using weaponized lightning and the Russians accused the Japanese of using ship-to-ship chemical shells... both claims are a bit shaky).

This is a 1941 Red Army combat engineer copper-shielded suit for obstacle breaching, developed based on experiences with the Mannerheim Line.

However, as the manual indicated, the preferable way was to drive a tank.

Shower thought: places like Wikipedia seem to sell the technology short. This sort of an underreported history could explain why so much fiction has various forms of electrical barriers...

You can see its probably electrical because the insulators, now if you use plastic poles you don't need that. 
But as your don' used barbed wire alone, it's supported by machine guns and preferably minefields. 
The stuff you use to clear mine fields would make tatters of electric fences anyway. 
Now it make sense for lower threat bases in location you can not use mine fields. Like bases in cities. 
Pretty easy to take out however, but this would send an alarm and all the hull down tanks and AFV goes active. 
 

[DDE]

35 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

You can see its probably electrical because the insulators, now if you use plastic poles you don't need that. 

Yeah, but those seem to be pretty small.

35 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

The stuff you use to clear mine fields would make tatters of electric fences anyway. 

At the time, "stuff" amounted to manual clearing. The Soviets had to play catch-up with their hithero-experimental mineclearing roller designs. And according to Military History Visualized, manual clearing is still preferred whenever possible due to its stealthy nature, relative reliability, and noncommittal nature.

[Vanamonde]

Reminder from the moderators: religion and politics, while interesting and of concern to us all, tend to cause arguments on the forum. Please keep the fun facts funner than those serious topics. 

[Codraroll]

All right, time for a short one.

Every high school student knows the measure of pH for the acidity of aqueous solutions. The H is always upper-case because it stands for "Hydrogen ion exponent". It's essentially a measure of how much free Hydrogen ions there are going around in the solution.

Interestingly, whatever the p stands for has long been lost to history, or was never clear to begin with. The Danish chemist who introduced the term never gave any explanation why he chose the letter p in particular, why it was lower-case, or whether he meant it to stand for any word. It has even been suggested he picked the letter arbitrarily because he liked to use the letters "p" and "q" the same way mathematicians use "a" and "b".

Modern chemistry has scrambled to ret-con the p into meaning something like "power" or "potentiality", or the like, but neither has gained any definite dominance. We've just accepted that there is a little p there, without fully understanding why. And now it's too ubiquitous to replace with something more sensible.

Edited February 27 by Codraroll

[StrandedonEarth]

2 hours ago, Codraroll said:

All right, time for a short one.

Every high school student knows the measure of pH for the acidity of aqueous solutions. The H is always upper-case because it stands for "Hydrogen ion exponent". It's essentially a measure of how much free Hydrogen ions there are going around in the solution.

...

Modern chemistry has scrambled to ret-con the p into meaning something like "power" or "potentiality", or the like, but neither has gained any definite dominance. We've just accepted that there is a little p there, without fully understanding why. And now it's too ubiquitous to replace with something more sensible.

I learned it as "power of Hydrogen" which makes sense to me given  the   "Hydrogen ion exponent." I never realized there was any debate as to the actual meaning.

[farmerben]

I thought it was "parts hydrogen"

[kerbiloid]

Actually,

Spoiler

 

[farmerben]

Fun fact of the day:  For sailing vessels on the sea, trimarans are faster than catamarans and monohulls.  And catamarans are generally faster than monohulls.  Multihulls do not rely on ballast for their righting moment so they do not need to displace as much water.

If you load multihulled vessels with lots of mass their relative advantage compared to monohulls is diminished.  The idea of sailing cargo again is interesting but suffers very serious challenges.  If you want to sail fast, sail light.

[darthgently]

3 hours ago, farmerben said:

Fun fact of the day:  For sailing vessels on the sea, trimarans are faster than catamarans and monohulls.  And catamarans are generally faster than monohulls.  Multihulls do not rely on ballast for their righting moment so they do not need to displace as much water.

If you load multihulled vessels with lots of mass their relative advantage compared to monohulls is diminished.  The idea of sailing cargo again is interesting but suffers very serious challenges.  If you want to sail fast, sail light.

But if you really want to sail fast go hydrofoils

 

 

 

Edited March 4 by darthgently

[magnemoe]

32 minutes ago, farmerben said:

Fun fact of the day:  For sailing vessels on the sea, trimarans are faster than catamarans and monohulls.  And catamarans are generally faster than monohulls.  Multihulls do not rely on ballast for their righting moment so they do not need to displace as much water.

If you load multihulled vessels with lots of mass their relative advantage compared to monohulls is diminished.  The idea of sailing cargo again is interesting but suffers very serious challenges.  If you want to sail fast, sail light.

This sailing ships tend to flat out at 5k ton. Yes you have heavier ships but it tend to be ironclads with sail for cruise as early steam engines was very inefficient. 
And  cruise ships with sails who help a bit. 
Also SS Great Eastern  But that thing deserves its own page here. 

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, farmerben said:

trimarans are faster than catamarans and monohulls.  And catamarans are generally faster than monohulls. 

It makes sense.

Spoiler

 

37 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

This sailing ships tend to flat out at 5k ton.

And btw, it's indeed 5k t, lol.

Edited March 4 by kerbiloid

[darthgently]

You know someone who could benefit from this vid.  It doesn't mention it, but unless you do a lot very heavy acceleration and rear wheel braking, this vid also implies why the front tire wears quicker than the rear; a lot of scrubbing where the rubber meets the road up front

 

[DDE]

Fact 1: bullet casings are a thing because they act as an expendable way to seal the breech. Thus all caseless rifles keep having serious obturation issues - the gas keeps leaking through the breech.

Fact 2: the prototype German G11 caseless rifle with its exotic action was quite mechanically complex, and so its plastic hull was made virtually airtight to avoid dirt ingress; it had a pressure relief valve due to the issue above

Fact 3: the immediate reaction products of gun propellants are rich in CO and, when concentrated, are quite explosive; and facts 1 and 2 have ensured that this concentration inside a recently fired G11 rifle was rather high

Fun fact: the G11 was, among all the many other issues, liable to explode in your hands

P.S. the G11 bombed so bad the British were able to easily buy Heckler und Koch afterwards

[magnemoe]

30 minutes ago, DDE said:

Fact 1: bullet casings are a thing because they act as an expendable way to seal the breech. Thus all caseless rifles keep having serious obturation issues - the gas keeps leaking through the breech.

Fact 2: the prototype German G11 caseless rifle with its exotic action was quite mechanically complex, and so its plastic hull was made virtually airtight to avoid dirt ingress; it had a pressure relief valve due to the issue above

Fact 3: the immediate reaction products of gun propellants are rich in CO and, when concentrated, are quite explosive; and facts 1 and 2 have ensured that this concentration inside a recently fired G11 rifle was rather high

Fun fact: the G11 was, among all the many other issues, liable to explode in your hands

P.S. the G11 bombed so bad the British were able to easily buy Heckler und Koch afterwards

It was an very cool and interesting concept. But one who only works if significantly better than other guns. also the G11 was too complex probably as it needed the 3 round burst before recoil function. Drop that and its  much easier. Also the cold war ended and the cold war weapon investment ended with it. This was an good thing even if killing an awesome gun  
Seriously growing up during the cold war nothing later come close in tension by order of magnitudes. 
You probably want to be able to switch between open an closed bolt dependent on chamber temperature. 
If shooting a lot as in suppressive fire you want open bolt as chamber get hot but this reduces accuracy and you want close bolt for accurate firing but this could be done mechanical. 

You could get reapeating