The "Useless Information" Thread

[KevinJS]

Madam, I'm Adam is Madam, I'm Adam spelled backwards.

Rotavator is the longest palindromic trade name in the world.

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[KevinJS]

The political map of the world has no respect for geography.


Point Roberts, in WA, USA is physically unconnected to the rest of the US. It is south of Vancouver, BC, and is US territory by virtue of the fact that it lies south of the 49th parallel.

Llivia, Spain is surrounded by France. Apparently, someone forgot to tell the residents that they were French, when the border was moved, so they carried on being Spanish.

Baarle-Nassau is Belgian, but is within the territory of the Netherlands, except those parts of the town that are Dutch. These are enclosed completely by Belgian territory. Complex, huh?

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[scifan57]

If we're talking about parts of the US unconnected with the rest of the country, there's the North-West angle in Lake of the Woods. You can reach it from the rest of the US only by boat or by driving through Canadian territory.

There's also San Marino, the only independent city state on the Italian peninsula that wasn't included in the unification of Italy, with the exception of the Vatican State, of course.

 

[zstairlessone]

Most people in California don't realize ALL of Florida is south of the southernmost part of California, neither do most Floridians

 

[Mickey330]

The only words with three consecutive double letters are "bookkeeper" and "bookkeeping."

Oh, and while double-checking the above fact, I came across this:

In the English language, "[T]he letter combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways, which can be heard in this sentence: A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed." (from the Brain Candy web site).

English is a scary crazy language!

Marilyn

 

[scifan57]

The letters of the constructed word GHOTI are pronounced the same as the word fish, due to the famous irregularities in the pronunciation of letter combinations in the English language.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti
An interesting but useless piece of info for most people.

 

[Pinkpoison]

my bit of useless information was that in this month there are 5 Saturdays,5 Sundays and 5 Mondays and it won't happen again until 2018.

 

[scifan57]

There is only one circumstance under which you can have a Friday the 13th in two consecutive months. That is when February 1st is a Sunday and it isn't a leap year. When this happens, there's also a third Friday the 13th in November. This is the maximum number of Friday the 13th's that can occur in a single calendar year. It last happened in 2009, and will happen again in 2015. Research has shown that the 13th falls on a Friday more often than any other day of the week.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/090312-friday-13th.html

 

[LannyC]

A meta-limerick is a limerick about limericks:

There once was a man from Peru
Whose limericks stopped at Line Two.

...or, in the same vein,

There once was a man from Verdun.

...or,

(Did you hear the limerick about the Emperor Nero?)

milliHelen: amount of beauty required to launch one ship.

 

[zstairlessone]

Dermatoglyphics and uncopyrightable are words in which no letter appears more than once and they each have 15 letters. That's fingerprinting, and free press to me

 

[zstairlessone]

More a reflection of me than anything else but definitely falling under useless information is the fact that I try to do things on my phone that are only iPad compatible. The biggest is the 4 finger swipe, I find myself trying it at least once or twice a day.

 

[scifan57]

Snow shoveling is one of those few tasks where, if you ignore it long enough, the problem will go away on its own.

 

[scifan57]

You don't buy beer, you just rent it for a while.

 

[nathan the ipad lover]

I adore my 64

 

[KevinJS]

What's that behind it? A Stone Age case fan, or are you teaching it how to fly?

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