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


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Fun fact I newly learned: in Chinese history, here used to have some coins made by clay. And they weren't something from a hundred or thousand years ago: They were made in pseudo-Manchukuo in 1945 (but the year on this coin is 1946).

Reason why I found that is I had just stumbled into an online auction of ancient coins within China.

O1CN01GSFu7N1hCQUnngODm_!!0-paimai.jpg_4 O1CN01ZjZ62N1hCQUfBY2W4_!!0-paimai.jpg_4

Bidding starts at one yuan. Somehow I kinda want to buy this :D

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Monetary facts? OK. The 1917 Kerensky rouble was so widely counterfeited and debased that eventually they gave up on cutting it into individual notes.

5237260.jpg

As to porcelain money, apparently it was one of the many surrogate media used in Weimar Germany.

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The opposite of the kerenki is the Constantine rouble, which as of last year went for $2.6 mln. There are eight, maybe nine coins, and their value stems from the wild political background.

Spoiler

Const.jpg

You probably haven't heard of a Constantine, Emperor of all Russias. In 1823, Alexander the Blessed signed a sealed manifesto confirming the abdication of his presumptive heir, Constantine, in favor of Nikolay. When Alexander died (some say went into voluntary exile - a whole 'nother layer of mythos) only three people in Saint-Petersburg knew of the arrangement, and so before it was brought before the State Council, preparations were underway for Constantine's accession.

One of the people attending was finance minister Georg Cancrin, who, despite having learned of the manifesto, nevertheless ordered the imperial mint to go ahead with prototype work for the Constantine rouble. It gets even more interesting when one considers the concurrent republican Decemberist uprising, which sought to exploit the confusion of the interregnum and prop Constatine up as a more pliable ruler. Ultimately, Cancrin ordered the work wrapped up, swore everyone to secrecy, and kept one of the coins for himself. The coins would only start to resurface in the 1850s, each with an increasingly wild story attached to it.

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Damn, someone's offer was higher than mine and now the price is higher than the historical price I checked, the coin is off the table<_<

History always crazy. And share a kind of "coin" that I personally think is cool and a bit crazy: Knife Money. Unlike something trash made by clay, this kind of money really comes from thousands of years ago: simply put, it was same period with the Art of War. 

O1CN01S2XstG26IFjKMyBe8_!!0-paimai.jpg_4

Actually, I'm thinking would there been an ancient Chinese version Jack the Ripper and his murder weapon is that...

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10 hours ago, steve9728 said:

Damn, someone's offer was higher than mine and now the price is higher than the historical price I checked, the coin is off the table<_<

History always crazy. And share a kind of "coin" that I personally think is cool and a bit crazy: Knife Money. Unlike something trash made by clay, this kind of money really comes from thousands of years ago: simply put, it was same period with the Art of War. 

O1CN01S2XstG26IFjKMyBe8_!!0-paimai.jpg_4

Actually, I'm thinking would there been an ancient Chinese version Jack the Ripper and his murder weapon is that...

Now it looks like it become a thing after the bronze age, they would made more sense back then 
You also had 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spade_money

 

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D5asuFpyOiA.jpg?size=1564x1116&quality=9

This multilocular O is found in exactly one 15th century rendition of the Psalter, and used in exclusively one word: "multiocular seraphim"

Cyrillic_multiocular_o_in_Psalter,_1429.

Looks like someone still saw it fit to incorporate the letter into Unicode, but bungled up the rendition.

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6 hours ago, DDE said:

D5asuFpyOiA.jpg?size=1564x1116&quality=9

This multilocular O is found in exactly one 15th century rendition of the Psalter, and used in exclusively one word: "multiocular seraphim"

Cyrillic_multiocular_o_in_Psalter,_1429.

Looks like someone still saw it fit to incorporate the letter into Unicode, but bungled up the rendition.

Well... 

Thanks to you, I got to read this descriptive:

Quote

A similar jocular glyph (called "double-dot wide O") has been suggested as a phonetic symbol for the "nasal-ingressive velar trill", a paralinguistic impression of a snort, due to the graphic resemblance to a pig snout.[2

From the associated binocular O.   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binocular_O

That said - I'm now wondering about these multi ocular seraphim... As that sounds much more Cthulian than Seraphin 

 

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"Selenium is right below sulfur on the periodic table, and in many ways it's a "sulfur but even more so" case. For example, got a sulfur molecule that smells awful? The selenium analog will almost certainly smell worse. It's an element that balances on a toxicological tightrope. It's an essential trace nutrient - you will get into trouble if you don't have enough selenium in your diet. It is also toxic - you will get into trouble if you have too much selenium in your diet. The dose really does make the poison"

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/selenium-who-d-have-thought

"the Lamentations on Chemistry blog referred to it as "The biggest stinker I have run across. . .Imagine 6 skunks wrapped in rubber innertubes and the whole thing is set ablaze. That might approach the metaphysical stench of this material." 

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-selenophenol

Fun! 

Edited by JoeSchmuckatelli
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13 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Well... 

Thanks to you, I got to read this descriptive:

From the associated binocular O.   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binocular_O

That said - I'm now wondering about these multi ocular seraphim... As that sounds much more Cthulian than Seraphin 

 

You got to go to the source.  The biblical seraphim are truly from the fringe.  The cherubim are no slackers either.  Definitely not little winged babies

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2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Fun fact? Creepy fact?

The oldest threads in this section of the forum are from 1969, or at least that is how it appears on mobile to me right now.

1969?  Should be safe from moderator action.  IIRC something 'on topic' happened that year! 

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5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Fun fact? Creepy fact?

The oldest threads in this section of the forum are from 1969, or at least that is how it appears on mobile to me right now.

Earliest I get is January 1, 1970, who is time zero for some system like the unix clock as I understand. I guess is that no date give that as default. Other option is current time who would leave the tread at the top of the page all the time sticky style who would be something who had to be fixed. 

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1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Earliest I get is January 1, 1970, who is time zero for some system like the unix clock as I understand. I guess is that no date give that as default. Other option is current time who would leave the tread at the top of the page all the time sticky style who would be something who had to be fixed. 

As of when I made that post, it was December 31st, 1969 for me.

EDIT- Nope, still 12-31-69. Guess it is a time zone thing and you are probably correct.

Edited by SunlitZelkova
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