Odd, entirely unrelated facts

October 15th, 2008

Neither birds nor naked mole rats are sensitive to the heat (capsaicin) in chili peppers.

Few people have ever read a real King James bible (1611). The one you normally see is a 1769 modernization of it.

Icelanders like to eat shark meat that’s been fermented for six months. They call it hakarl. In this sense they have something in common with the Japanese, who before the era of modern refrigeration made their sushi this way.

From her roles and persona most people assumed that character actress Nancy Walker was Jewish, but she wasn’t. Also, she was very small at 4′10″ (1.5m) — a fact to which I can attest because she walked past me once on a sidewalk.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has detected a mysterous underwater noise called “the bloop” on several occasions. Researchers say it appears to be biological, but any animal producing it must be many times larger than a blue whale.

Jerome “Curly” Howard of the Three Stooges hated having a shaved head, so each year during the summer hiatus he would let it grow out.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s native language was Corsican. He learned French in school beginning at the age of nine.

A tossed penny isn’t perfectly fair. The obverse (“heads”) is slightly heavier so the coin lands with “tails” up about 50.5% of the time.

Actor Khigh Dheigh, best remembered as the North Korean brainwasher in The Manchurian Canidate and recurring arch-criminal Wo Fat in the TV series Hawaii Five-O, wasn’t even Asian. His real name was Kenneth Dickerson, he was born in New Jersey of north African ancestry, and he lived out his retirement years in Arizona.

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Thank you very much indeed

October 8th, 2008

Lists of US versus UK terms for various items are pretty easy to find, but here are a few you don’t hear of as often.

US		UK

cotton swab		cotton wool
crib death		cot death
drunk driving		drink driving
[illegal] dumping		fly tipping
[football] field		pitch
flashlight		torch
legally blind		registered blind
[police] lineup		identity parade
liquid detergent		washup liquid
[highway] median		reservation
nail polish		nail varnish
[highway] overpass		flyover
riding lawnmower		sit-on lawnmower
run [for office]		stand
shopping cart		trolley
steel wool		iron wool
takeout [food]		takeaway
thread		cotton
trailer		caravan
trash bag		bin liner
yarn		wool

(In other words, some cotton is made of wool and some wool is made of cotton.)

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Odd, entirely unrelated facts

Thank you very much indeed