Most interesting fact you've found via web / Google

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  • hevipedal
    hevipedal Posts: 2,475
    Crapaud wrote:
    passout wrote:
    Surely the Earth doesn't have two moons?

    Strange, but true!

    Not really true and not actually that strange

    "Cruithne is not really a moon, because Earth and Cruithne are not gravitationally bound. "
    Hevipedal
    It's not only people that are irrational; 1.4142135623730950488016887242096980785696718753769480731766797379907324784621
  • Crapaud
    Crapaud Posts: 2,483
    hevipedal wrote:
    Crapaud wrote:
    passout wrote:
    Surely the Earth doesn't have two moons?
    Not really true and not actually that strange

    "Cruithne is not really a moon, because Earth and Cruithne are not gravitationally bound. "

    Strange, but true!
    Picky, picky, picky!!! :oops: OK, so it's not quite true.

    I first found out about Cruithne in a sci-fi book whose author tends to base things in his novels on reality; hence my web search. It was described in the book as Earth's second moon and in the linked article it also says:

    "Here are some simulations of Cruithne, also known as asteroid 3753, or 1986 TO, or "Earth's second moon". "

    It's still an interesting fact IMO.
    A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject - Churchill
  • jibi
    jibi Posts: 857
    111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

    george

    https://picasaweb.google.com/georgeidf50
  • ddraver
    ddraver Posts: 26,717
    cruithne was on QI so it must be true........ :?
    We're in danger of confusing passion with incompetence
    - @ddraver
  • DavidBelcher
    DavidBelcher Posts: 2,684
    grayo59 wrote:

    The City of Truro 4-4-0 steam locomotive was unlikely to have reached 100mph in 1904 despite this being treated as fact by many for over one hundred years.

    Apparently it was all down to a timing error by railway journalist Charles Rous-Marten. First authenticated British 100mph record was attained by no less a loco than "Flying Scotsman".

    My own contribution; the huge gong at the start of Rank films was actually a wood & plaster prop (so if Bombardier Billy Wells [1] - the Rank man - had ever hit it properly, it would've dropped to bits), with the sound effect added on.

    David

    [1] Another trivia snippet - Bombardier bitter is named after him; presumably he was a relative of the family that owned, and I'm fairly sure still owns, the Charles Wells brewery.
    "It is not enough merely to win; others must lose." - Gore Vidal
  • DavidBelcher
    DavidBelcher Posts: 2,684
    passout wrote:
    Baseball was invented in Yorkshire. There are still old leagues that play there. America has invented an alternative history/mythology to disguise this fact.

    Apparently it was a pretty popular sport in Victorian times. The only obvious legacy these days is the name of Derby County's old ground; the last recorded game of baseball was played there during the 1940s as a goodwill gesture between a team of Rams players and some locally-based US servicemen.

    David
    "It is not enough merely to win; others must lose." - Gore Vidal
  • DavidBelcher
    DavidBelcher Posts: 2,684
    Rob Sallnow wrote:
    Carbon Fibre was invented by....the British!!! 8)

    ....at RAE Farnborough, apparently. Is it true that we also invented WD40? One version of the WD40 story I've heard is that it was developed to help sensitive electronic equipment cope with the harsh Cumbrian weather - in particular the dampness - encountered at the site where rockets for the Blue Streak programme were test-fired.

    David
    "It is not enough merely to win; others must lose." - Gore Vidal
  • Jimbosome
    Jimbosome Posts: 57
    Jumbo Jets can glide:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9
  • JustRidecp
    JustRidecp Posts: 302
    I'd have thought all planes can glide, to some extent, as long as air as you have forward motion to keep the air going over the wings -so obviously you'd need to tilt the nose down and would thus lose height. At 35,000ft I'd imagine you could glide quite far.
    Real Ultimate Power

    "If I weren't a professional cyclist, I'd be a porn star" - Super Mario
  • passout
    passout Posts: 4,425
    Nearly 50% of searches on the web relate to porn.
    'Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible' Marcel Proust.
  • jibi
    jibi Posts: 857
    That it's only 50% of searches that relate to porn

    I have just learned that from the previous post

    george

    https://picasaweb.google.com/georgeidf50
  • mba007
    mba007 Posts: 95
    ddraver wrote:
    cruithne was on QI so it must be true........ :?

    It's on what is technically known as a horseshoe orbit, where it never passes the Earth when travelling around the Sun, although stays in roughly the same orbit as Earth. Orbital dynamics is fascinating, especially when you look at some of the fine structure in Saturn's rings :)

    [thus speaks a cycling astrophysicist!]
  • Nivacrom
    Nivacrom Posts: 111
    That money is debt; apparently.....

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279 :shock:

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