Facts

[baruhara]

Because, to me, facts are fun. And fun is something to be shared. I think this is the right place for it, but I dunno.

〖Fact 01〗
Pure water is actually an extremely bad electrical conducter, and in some cases, it's actually used as an insulator. It's the things dissolved in water that conduct the electricity, not the water itself.

〖Fact 02〗
There are only four galaxies visable to the naked eye; the Milky Way and Andromeda in the Northern Hemisphere and the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds in the Southern Hemisphere. Some people claim to have seen up to seven, but it's unproven.

〖Fact 03〗
Chameleons don't change colour based on their environment, they change colour based on their emotional states. If a chameleon's colour matches their environment, it's a coincidence.

〖Fact 04〗
Copper isn't the best conductive metal, silver is. Copper is only the second most conductive. While silver conducts electricity and heat much better than copper, it's more expensive to produce, so copper wiring is the widely used substitute.

〖Fact 05〗
The first thing to break the sound barrier was actually a whip. The cracking sound isn't the sound of the whip hitting the handle, it's the sound of it going faster than the speed of sound. Chuck Yeager was still the first person to break the sound barrier, though.

〖Fact 06〗
The average person living in a city is actually 70 feet from a rat, not 6. Although they live off waste, they don't actually like to get too close to a human, so they generally tend to stay far away.

〖Fact 07〗
Tartan doesn't come from Scotland, and neither is the word Scottish. Tartan has been around in many cultures for a long, long time. Bagpipes aren't particularly Scottish, either; there's evidence to suggest that even the Roman Emperor Nero was talented at playing the bagpipes.

〖Fact 08〗
There is a species of jellyfish that can live forever. When it reaches an old age, it reverts to the stage of childhood and then grows into the same adult again. This cycle is repeated.

〖Fact 09〗
Speaking technically, there are only 46 states of America. Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are Commonwealths of America, not actual states.

〖Fact 10〗
Your fingers don't have any muscles in them. The muscles in your arm control the tendons in your fingers, and the tendons are what moves the fingers. You could argue that since there are thousands of retractors that affect the blood vessels in your fingers, there are thousands of muscles in your fingers, but the retractors don't actually move the fingers themselves.

〖Fact 11〗
The speed of light isn't actually 300,000km/s. It is in a vacuum, but as far as I know there's only one natural vacuum, and that's space. The speed of light depends on what you shine it through, and there's even been a team that has brought light to a complete standstill. That is, a point where light isn't moving at all.

〖Fact 12〗
Another fact about light; you can't actually see it. You can only observe light through the things it reflects off, so if you were in a vacuum, you wouldn't be able to see light, even if it was shining right at you.

〖Fact 13〗
The most common material in the world is perovskite. Half of the Earth's mass is supposed to be made from it, and it's a compound of silicon, magnesium and oxygen. Apparently, the Earth's mantle is made mostly of perovskite.

〖Fact 14〗
The Canary Islands are actually named after dogs. The name comes from the Roman 「insula canaria」, meaning 「island of the dogs」, because dogs were apparently a common sight there. Canary birds are named after the island, instead of the other way round.

〖Fact 15〗
The night sky should, in theory, be as bright as the daytime sky. Since the universe is infinite, and there are an infinite number of stars in the sky, there should be a star everywhere you look at night. There isn't because some stars are so far away from Earth that the light from them hasn't actually reached us yet.

[satty]

Nice facts, didn't know the majority of them. I have some facts, but they're mostly gun-related.

Fact 1:
When people refer to a "bullet", the majority of the time, they are referring to a cartridge or a round, where a bullet, gunpowder, and primer is packaged into a metallic case.

Fact 2:
A magazine and clip are not the same thing. A clip feeds a magazine or a revolving cylinder, while a magazine loads cartridges into the chamber of a firearm.

Fact 3:
A "bullpup" rifle is a rifle where the trigger group (grip, actual trigger, etc.) is ahead of the magazine and action, allowing the same barrel length of traditional rifles in a smaller weapon. The French FAMAS is a great example of a bullpup.

Fact 4:
The L85A2 rifle is not the first bullpup to be adopted by the British Armed Forces. The EM-2, made by the Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield, has that distinction. It was briefly adopted in 1951, but was dropped due to NATO wishing to standardize weapons to the 7.62x51mm round. (The EM-2 fired a .280 in/7mm round)

Fact 5:
The AK-47 is the most widespread assault rifle in the world. Technically, that is not true. The AKM, its upgraded version, is actually the most widespread.

Fact 6:
When a "forty-five" is mentioned, it usually refers to the Colt M1911 with its .45ACP cartridge.

Fact 7:
The Colt M1911 was developed in response to what happened in the Philippine-American War: the US Army's M1892 revolvers, chambered in .38 Special, were often not enough to stop charging Moro guerrillas who had high morale and were using drugs to block pain.

Fact 8:
The British Royal Navy actually had a project to make an aircraft carrier out of ice during World War II. Called Project Habakkuk, the aircraft carrier was designed to be built out of pykrete, a combination of ice and wood pulp. The mixture has the same density as ice, but has a lower melting point and vastly improved strength. The project was cancelled as there wasn't enough materials and the war was starting to be won by conventional means.

Fact 9:
The US had plans to make a supersonic high-altitude bomber capable of dropping nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Called the XB-70 Valkyrie, it would have reached a speed of Mach 3+ at 70,000 feet, enough to outrun interceptors. It was cancelled after the introduction of high-altitude surface-to-air missiles and ICBM's, costing more than expected, and one of two prototypes colliding with another plane in mid-air.

Don't have as much, but yeah.

[baruhara]

Nice facts, didn't know the majority of them.

I'm glad to have shared knowledge, then! Most of mine are scientific in nature, so some people think they're kind of boring.

Don't have as much, but yeah.

I didn't know any of yours. The one about the aircraft of ice was very interesting, and I liked the first two facts especially.

Uh, I'll post some more.

〖Fact 16〗
Most people associate 「vertigo」 as meaning 「fear of heights」. In truth, vertigo has next to nothing to do with heights, and is actually a sense of extreme dizziness where it feels like the rest of the world is disoriented around you. The actual word for a fear of heights is 「acrophobia」.

〖Fact 17〗
The smallest country in the world is Vatican City. Even though Sealand has been recognized by some places as a country in the past, it doesn't have a governing body, and is therefore not officially an actual country. Sealand is, however, the smallest nation in the world.

〖Fact 18〗
The country that first invented the concept of the 「concentration camp」 wasn't actually Britain, it was Spain. The Spanish needed a place to keep large groups of Cuban citizens during the 1895 war to make them easier to control, so they thought up the idea of the camps as that place. Britain and Germany stole the idea later.

〖Fact 19〗
Practically every species of spider is venemous, including the 648 recorded species in Britain. Thankfully, the fangs of the spiders are generally too weak to puncture human skin, so they're not a great danger.

〖Fact 20〗
There are either 13, 19 or 613 commandments in the Bible. The basic 13 found in Exodus are as follows;
1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.
3. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them.
4. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
5. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
6. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work.
7. The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.
8. Honour thy father and thy mother.
9. Thou shalt not kill.
10. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
11. Thou shalt not steal.
12. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
13. Thou shalt not covet your neighbour's house.

〖Fact 21〗
Coffee isn't actually made from coffee beans. It's made from the seeds of the so-called 「coffee cherries」 that grow on the coffee tree.

〖Fact 22〗
The most recent Ice Age isn't actually over yet. Generally, an ice age is a time when there are still polar icecaps present, so that would mean the world is still heating up naturally to the previous temperature prior to the last Ice Age. Human involvement, however, is speeding that process up, although it's debatable on how much effect it has.

〖Fact 23〗
The highest scoring non-German fighter ace is Eino Ilmari Juutilainen. He was a member of the 「Ilmavoimat」 - the Finnish air force - and has 94 confirmed aerial victories. To put it into perspective, the top 109 fighter aces of WWII are all members of the German 「Luftwaffe」.

〖Fact 24〗
Following from the above point, the highest scoring fighter ace of all time is Erich Hartmann, with 352 confirmed kills. He apparently got so infamous among the Allies that he eventually had to stop flying with his trademark black lily because enemy planes would see it and retreat immediately.

〖Fact 25〗
Another aviation fact: the Soviet Union has the only two female fighter aces in WWII; Lydia Litvyak and Yekaterina Budanova, getting 12 and 11 victories respectively.

Granted,〖Fact 20〗is more of a misconception, but I still think it's fairly interesting. And I have Strike Witches to thank for my interest in WWII aviation...

[satty]

Yay for Strike Witches, then.

Fact 10:
In firearms, a sub-machine gun is an automatic carbine that is designed to fire pistol cartridges.
-a: A carbine is basically a shortened rifle.

Fact 11:
In firearms, a silencer is a barrel attachment that suppress both flash and noise by trapping escaping gases. People call them "silencers", but that is a misnomer; the bullet can still be heard.
-a: There are also weapons with an "integral suppressor" (the suppressor is part of the barrel itself). Two examples would be the Heckler and Koch MP5SD sub-machine gun and the VSS Vintorez sniper rifle.
-b: Subsonic ammunition, designed to reduce the sonic boom a bullet makes when escaping the barrel, is recommended for suppressors. More quiet, but velocity is decreased.
-c: The Russians have developed a 30mm suppressed grenade launcher called the "Tishina" and a suppressed sniper rifle chambered in specially designed 12.7mm cartridges, the VKS Vychlop. For reference, 12.7mm cartridges are used on enemy materiel, like lightly armored vehicles and whatnot.
-d: "Materiel" is spelled right; it is used to refer to equipment in a military.

Edit: Continuing...

Fact 11:
Erich Hartmann had to crash-land his plane 14 times during his career. The cause? It was not enemy fire; he never had to crash-land because of it. It was either mechanical failure or the parts of the planes that he had shot down hitting his plane. Hartmann's style was to get as close as possible to enemy fighters, then open up with every weapon, causing the parts to fly at him.
-a: There is also a story about Hartmann and how he took Hitler's hat by accident. It goes like this: in 1944, Hartmann and other famous aces were invited to Hitler's house in the Bavarian Alps. All of them got drunk on cognac and champagne on the way, and while they all had time to sober up, Hartmann was still intoxicated. Realizing that he couldn't find his own hat, he took a hat from a stand and said it was too big. The Luftwaffe adjutant, Major von Below, immediately criticized Hartmann, saying the hat he was wearing was Hitler's and that he should put it back. Hartmann made a crack about how Hitler's head had to be big for his job before following the order.
--The episode of Strike Witches where Erica steals Lucchini's panties because she couldn't find her own is a reference to this event.

F. 12:
While the best fighter ace was Hartmann, the most decorated Luftwaffe pilot and German serviceman in World War II was Hans-Ulrich Rudel, a dive-bomber pilot. He managed to destroy about 2,000 targets, including a battleship and nine aircraft. To get an idea of how much decorations he had earned, the Nazi government gave him the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds. He is the only German serviceman to ever earn that distinction.

F.13
The Thach Weave, in aerial combat, is a maneuver developed by US Navy aviator John Thach as a way to counter the Japanese Mitsubishi A6M "Zero" and its better mobility compared to the slower-turning F4F Wildcats the US Navy was using. It needed at least two planes: one would be the "bait", and the other would be the "hook". If an enemy followed the "bait" plane, then both planes would turn towards each other. Once both planes had passed each other and had gained some distance, the two would repeat the same tactic again. When done correctly, it always allowed someone a perfect chance to shoot down an opposing plane while limiting how much room the enemy place had to fly. It was eventually adopted by the other branches of the US military in World War II, and it remains a viable tactic today.

Video on how it looks like ( From 7:21 to 7:27): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRGrrf20Hys

[baruhara]

〖Fact 26〗
In the past, the Mayan civilization used to attach boards to the front of a baby's forehead to flatten them and dangle objects in front of their eyes to make them cross-eyed. This was because the Mayans considered those characteristics to be attractive.

〖Fact 27〗
During the times of the colosseum, the "thumbs-down" signal wasn't used to order a gladiator's death. In fact, the "thumbs-down" signal wasn't used at all in Ancient Rome. If an Emperor or the spectators wanted to call for the death of a gladiator, they'd use a "thumbs-up" signal, which was used to represent a drawn sword. If a gladiator was to survive, the thumb would be tucked away in a fist, to represent a sheathed sword.

〖Fact 28〗
The Earth has at least seven moons, although Luna (the moon) is the only one to have a strict orbit, but there are several other moons that're invisible to the naked eye. One of these is Cruithne, which has a horseshoe-like orbit.

〖Fact 29〗
If you throw a cat from any floor above the seventh, it has an extremely high chance of surviving. This is because it has a non-fatal level of terminal velocity. Once they do reach terminal velocity they can parachute to the ground with little to no serious danger, kind of like how a squirrel does. I wouldn't recommend throwing any cats off buildings, though.

〖Fact 30〗
Henry VIII only had 2 wives, instead of the famous 6. Even though he went through the act of getting married 6 times, his second marriage was illegal because he was still married to his first wife, and then Henry VIII himself declared his first marriage invalid on the grounds of Catherine of Aragon being his brother's widow.
His fourth marriage to Anne of Cleves was annulled because Henry VIII said he never consummated the marriage, and for the fact that Anne of Cleves was already betrothed to someone else before Henry VIII.
His fifth marriage was annulled on the grounds of Catherine Howard being unfaithful.

That leaves two wives that he still had marriages to, since annulment is the act of saying the marriage never actually happened.

Yay for Strike Witches, then.

Definitely.

F.12 was my favourite, since it seems so paradoxical for the best to not also be the most decorated.

Edited For: A typo.

[Cael K.]

How about some science?

A vast majority of computer security algorithms, at their heart, rely on different variations of the same problem, for which (to date) there exists no efficient solution. However, if an efficient solution were to be given for this problem, then... well, get off the internet.

When the internet was first introduced, IP addresses were given to various groups to use. Some people got two octets (i.e. everything under 100.50.xxx.xxx), some people maybe got everything under three (i.e. everything under 200.100.40.xxx). MIT, I believe, got everything under one octet, 18.xxx.xxx.xxx. Do they use those 16 million+ IP addresses? Probably not by themselves.

We live in an expanding universe. All of it is trying to get away from Chuck Norris.

[satty]

F.12 was my favourite, since it seems so paradoxical for the best to not also be the most decorated.

Edited For: A typo.

Would have thought F.11 would have been your favorite. Oh well.

How about some science?

We live in an expanding universe. All of it is trying to get away from Chuck Norris.

Glad to see someone else contribute, and I laughed at this.

Some more military facts:

F.14:
The Australians have their own version of the British SAS, the SASR. They are regarded as a elite unit, and their record in Vietnam is an example. With the help of New Zealand SAS, the SASR possibly achieved 598 kills while losing 5 men during the entire war, with 3 of the fatalities due to friendly fire. In fact, the majority of deaths in the SASR were from training exercises rather than actual combat.

F.15:
The IJN Yamato and its sister ship, the Musashi were the heaviest and most powerful battleships ever constructed. There was going to be a third one, however. Named the Shinano, it would have been the third battleship in the Yamato line. However, the loss of the aircraft carriers Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, and Soryu during the Battle of Midway transformed the Shinano into an aircraft carrier, making it the largest aircraft carrier in World War II.
-a. It also holds the record of being the largest ship ever sunk by a submarine; the USS Archer-Fish sunk it on November 29, 1944, ten days after being commissioned in the Imperial Japanese Navy.

[baruhara]

As inspired by your facts about battleships...

〖Fact 31〗
Battleship Nagato was the only surviving Japanese battleship of WWII. She was at all the major naval fronts like Leyte Gulf and Pearl Harbour, as well as only being destroyed at the American BAKER bomb tests in 1946 as opposed to an actual naval battle. She was also the lead battleship of her class, although the Nagato class only had two battleships in it; Nagato and Mutsu, and she was the first battleship in the world to mount 16 inch guns.
I think the Battleship Yamato is more famous, though.

〖Fact 32〗
The theory that "humans always walk in circles when lost" is actually true. Research has shown that humans have no instinctive sense of direction, and without a visual point of reference, they really can just walk around in a huge circle.

〖Fact 33〗
Human beings have at least nine senses. The basic five are as follows;
1. Touch
2. Sight
3. Smell
4. Hearing
5. Taste
Then the other four are as follows;
6. Thermoception
     > the sense of heat on our skin
7. Equilibrioception
     > the sense of balance
8. Nociception
     > the sense of pain
9. Proprioception
     > the sense of where your body parts are in relation to the rest of you

〖Fact 34〗
Following on from the last fact and 「nociception」, the brain has absolutely no pain receptors in it, meaning you can't feel anything at all if your brain is damaged. Headaches and the such don't originate in the brain itself; rather, from collections of nerves and receptors that may be being pressed by a swelling in the brain tissue.

〖Fact 35〗
The hardest known substance isn't diamond anymore. A new material called 「hyperdiamond」 was made in 2005, and with it being able to scratch diamond, it has a hardness above MH10, which means that it's literally off the scale.

Would have thought F.11 would have been your favorite. Oh well.

Oh, I was speaking just about facts that I didn't already know. F.11 is one of my favourite facts, definitely, if just because of how Strike Witches handled it.

A vast majority of computer security algorithms, [...] Probably not by themselves.

I know next to nothing about computers and how they work, and I can barely run Paint without getting confused, so these were both very interesting.

Edited For: Formatting.