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

[magnemoe]

On 6/29/2024 at 11:41 PM, Codraroll said:

For whatever reason, matters of air quality usually goes into the hands of the ventilation people. Building physics, at least as it's practiced in the Nordic countries, is about preventing fungal growth inside the building structure itself, often from the outside.

Ironically enough, doing thermal calculations that involve only snow is trivial. Your temperature will be 0 °C or colder. The question is how long the structure lasts.

The air can be hotter however, this smelts the top layer of the snow creating ice, an layer who can support quite some weight.  Now if you get lots of new snow on top of it the ice layer has low friction so its easy to get avalanches. 

[kerbiloid]

Mice.

They are hiding under the snow, making tunnels, and melt the snow from below with their warmth.

We need to know the mousification coefficient of the snow before starting the calculations.

[darthgently]

Check Your Staging Deployable Parts, OBH!  

 

(and China, Check Your Staging!)

[DDE]

Very late in WWII HMS Menestheus, originally a refrigerated meat freighter and converted into a minelayer, was then repurposed intoan "amenities ship" that throughout 1945-1946 would supply Royal Navy sailors (and lucky tagalongs) across the Pacific with, among other things, onboard-produced English mild ale at 9d per pint.

Spoiler

 

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

Very late in WWII HMS Menestheus, originally a refrigerated meat freighter and converted into a minelayer, was then repurposed intoan "amenities ship" that throughout 1945-1946 would supply Royal Navy sailors (and lucky tagalongs) across the Pacific with, among other things, onboard-produced English mild ale at 9d per pint.

  Hide contents

 

Morale is important in war 

[Codraroll]

56 minutes ago, darthgently said:

Morale is important in war 

By 1946, the greatest morale boost would be that the war was already over. Beer at nine dollars per pint would probably do more to harm than increase morale.

[AckSed]

19 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

By 1946, the greatest morale boost would be that the war was already over. Beer at nine dollars per pint would probably do more to harm than increase morale.

Ah. You're mistaking the notation for old British money for American: http://projectbritain.com/moneyold.htm

9d is nine pennies, or a sixpence and threepence. In WWII, a pint of milk was 2 1/2d, while a large loaf of bread was sixpence. So still high, but not ridiculous.

[Kerwood Floyd]

In a combat zone in those days cold beer could be hard to come by. My late father told a  story about selling cold beer to Marines on Iwo Jima. He had cold beer to sell because it was cooled while flying at altitude in an (unheated, of course) B-29 flying out of Tinian.

[He claimed (a claim I've never been able to corroborate) that the plane he was top gunner in was the first Allied plane to land on Iwo Jima safely enough to take off again under its own power.]

Edited July 8 by Kerwood Floyd
a little more clarity

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

3 hours ago, Kerwood Floyd said:

In a combat zone in those days cold beer could be hard to come by. My late father told a  story about selling cold beer to Marines on Iwo Jima. He had cold beer to sell because it was cooled while flying at altitude in an (unheated, of course) B-29 flying out of Tinian.

[He claimed (a claim I've never been able to corroborate) that the plane he was top gunner in was the first Allied plane to land on Iwo Jima safely enough to take off again under its own power.]

 

 

This one? 

[Kerwood Floyd]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

 

 

This one? 

I don't think so. I suspect my father was exaggerating. The post goes on to say that the plane in the picture was with the 9th Bombardment Group, whereas my father's plane was with the 3rd Photo Recon squadron, which I believe was directly attached to XXI Bomber Command and not to any Bombardment Group. My father's crew was a "floater" crew not associated with any particular plane, so I doubt he even would have remembered which plane he thought it was.

Thanks for finding that, though.

[kerbiloid]

11 hours ago, Codraroll said:

Beer at nine dollars per pint would probably do more to harm than increase morale.

"d" means "denarius".

It's Imperial system.

Spoiler

[boriz]

Kirk would kick Picard's ass.

[boriz]

[DDE]

The Molotov Cocktail started off as the Sazonov Cocktail

[Nuke]

On 7/8/2024 at 9:41 PM, boriz said:

Kirk would kick Picard's ass.

the sisko would whip both. he even punched q.

Edited July 19 by Nuke

[kerbiloid]

The only thing that I don't get, is why should the navigator of Enola Gay Van Kirk fight with the stratosphere balloon and bathyscaphe enthusiast.

Had their plane and balloon almost collided?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

10 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The only thing that I don't get, is why should the navigator of Enola Gay Van Kirk fight with the stratosphere balloon and bathyscaphe enthusiast.

Had their plane and balloon almost collided?

This is quite possibly the only place likely to 'get' this 

Chuckling and groaning in equal measure! 

[darthgently]

Coffee in good company is good combo

 

 

[magnemoe]

Turn out the Greenwich Meridian is not at 0.00  but at -0.0014333, or 100 something meter away using GPS.
Reason is that the meridian was defines using local gravity using an mercury mirror, who is corrupted a bit by earth rotation and uneven gravity. Its even older lines something apart as they added new telescopes but did not want stopping using the older until newer was tested. 
GPS uses an calculated line trough the center of earth who is that the satellites orbit, not affected much by earth not being an perfect sphere as much as high up and I assume this is compensated for. 

Who does this affect? Only tourists looking up their gps coordinates on their phones standing on the line and get annoyed. 
 

[DDE]

August 5 used to be a shared date when all Soviet military academies would publish their final admission rolls, including progress into the next year of training for existing cadets.

Therefore, it's still known as (Drunken) Cadet Day.

[kerbiloid]

After the August 2 paratroopers having bath in city fountains and breaking bottles against their heads.

August 6 is btw German Titov's flight day, the first orbital spaceman after the Gagarin's April 12.

P.S.
Not German Titov, but Russian German Titov.

That's why German Titov is written Gherman Titov in wiki, while "gh" means a colloquial South Russian sound instead of hard "g".

Edited August 5 by kerbiloid

[StrandedonEarth]

[darthgently]

7 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

We've been looking for life on planets and never noticed that one of the "planets" is actually a humongous space puffer fish staring at us like we are a tasty bug

[DDE]

Murphy's Law was popularized at a press conference by John Stapp.

Yes, the mad lad who tested extreme G-forces on himself.

[darthgently]

AstroForge finds lack of fulfillment from horizontal partners.  When it comes to integration, go vertical or go broke?  Seems like those succeeding fastest are those bringing things in house

https://spacenews.com/astroforge-raises-40-million/