The 'Did You Know' Thread

[TheDarkReaver]

Did you know...

That champagne (the sparkling variety we know today) is an invention of the English and not the French.


(You get the idea, post some quite interesting facts)

[GeneralElectric]

A whale's penis is called a dork

[Araillac]

Did you know...

Caffeine reduces the risk of Parkinson's Disease?

Drink energy drinks.

[HollowBassman]

Did you know...

that when filming the "here's Johnny" scene in The Shining, they originally tried it with a thin prop door but Jack's axe handling abilities(former volunteer firefighter) lead to him destroying it too easily and a real door was brought in.

[Fassa Albrecht]

I can think of loads:

The Romans invented the take-away food stall, the flyover road, the postal service, shorthand writing and an early bass cithara.

The Bible's Book of Esther has no mention of the word God.

The Greeks had four words for love. They had no word for religion though.

You can eat gold.

Lachanophobia is a fear of vegetables.

The average person can sing in three octaves

[Araillac]

Originally Posted by Fassa Albrecht

I can think of loads:

The Romans invented the take-away food stall, the flyover road, the postal service, shorthand writing and

and...?

[Fassa Albrecht]

Originally Posted by Araillac

and...?

Read the edit. I pressed the post button too soon.

[Araillac]

Ha, you had to edit.

[wilser]

that I once read reports that Robin Williams was gay and repeated it as so, but he is in fact NOT gay?

[HollowBassman]

Originally Posted by wilser

that I once read reports that Robin Williams was gay and repeated it as so, but he is in fact NOT gay?

Didn't Clay Aiken say the same thing?

[cheesemonkey]

Before 1859, baseball umpires were seated in padded chairs behind home plate.

[Fassa Albrecht]

A kettle whistles in A and a bee buzzes in C.

[guamaniantree]

Horses evolved in the Americas, migrated to Eurasia during the last ice age, went extinct in the Americas, and then were imported back to the Americas when they were colonized by the Spanish and Portuguese.

[Otso]

The raised seventh of the harmonic minor scale wasn't raised after the "invention" of the so called natural minor, the idea of leading tones predates minor tonality and even played a role in the whole development of tonality.

[TheDarkReaver]

The driest place on earth is in Antarctica.

[Fassa Albrecht]

A penguin can climb stairs.

The world's oldest piece of playable sheet music is ancient Greek and can be found on the wall of the sanctuary at Delphi.

[Otso]

Originally Posted by Fassa Albrecht

A penguin can climb stairs.

The world's oldest piece of playable sheet music is ancient Greek and can be found on the wall of the sanctuary at Delphi.

Does anyone know how to play it then? From what I've read there seems to be a great lack of knowledge on the matter of properly comprehending old music notations.

[Fassa Albrecht]

Originally Posted by Otso

Does anyone know how to play it then? From what I've read there seems to be a great lack of knowledge on the matter of properly comprehending old music notations.

With ancient Greek texts it's hard but not impossible to work out what they sound like. There isn't one single ancient commentary of music but there are a lot of texts giving brief/general information and so archaelogists have pieced all these fragments together to form one body of text.

A lot of these texts are Roman- the Romans borrowed Greek music and prized the skill to play Greek instruments such as the kithara and the aulos.


The actual inscription is not too different to the chord charts we use today. The lyrics were written out with letters above this to represent note/chord names.

[mike phillips]

bob daisley is australian

[GeneralElectric]

Cars in America honk in F.

Up to a certain height (12 feet?) a piece of toast will always land butter side down.