Groucho's Fact Hunt

[summerisle]

Used to happen to a lot of the condemned during hanging. Automatic response.

They used to cut the hand of people who were hung - known as the Hand of Glory (featured in the Wicker Man), for it's supposed magical properties.

http://myths.e2bn.org/mythsandlegends/origins15607-the-hand-of-glory.html

 

[Methuselah]

Harry Greb - greatest middleweight of all time (and up for discussion as THE greatest pfp fighter ever) fought half his career blind in one eye.

Although it would be hard to form a direct opinion of him nowadays, as no footage of any of his 300+ fights exists. Speculation that there must be some out there, stored in a forgotten attic somewhere, as he was a hugely high profile fighter in the biggest sport in the world at the time, but none has ever been found.

I'll keep an eye out for it.

 

[Nobby Nobbs]

Wyatt Earp the legendary law man from the Wild West once refereed a world heavyweight championship fight.

 

[summerisle]

Wyatt Earp the legendary law man from the Wild West once refereed a world heavyweight championship fight.

Tremendous fact.
Apparently, it was fixed, plus ça change.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jul/22/wyatt-earp-botched-heavyweight-boxing-championship

 

[Socrates]

..I suppose the world would be a very different place if it was an order from the brain!!

Just as well because as one organ fills with blood the other becomes starved of it.

 

[dholliday]

Reality requires our consciousness to exist in the way that we observe it to be.

Basically without our consciousness, reality as we know it doesn't exist.

A fact because it's proven by this famous mindblowing experiment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment

The many interpretations of how, why or what it means doesn't alter the fact of the result that the observed reality is different to the not-observed...at least on the quantum level, and as the realm of particles make up all matter it's fair to say it makes up reality as we know it.

Brings to mind the classic old musing about whether a tree falling in the forest makes a sound if no one is around to hear it. Hence why the simulation idea is gaining more ground as our own computing capabilities improves.

 

[summerisle]

And on that bombshell, goodnight.

 

[degsy]

Fred Pickering reckons he's the only person to score a hat trick in consecutive games at Goodison.

With Dixie banging them in, I'd limit that to 'since the war' but I think he may be right.

 

[Kurt.]

He apparently liked his lance a lot

 

[summerisle]

Stalin killed his parrot because he was a bit miffed at its imitating his pipe sucking noises.

 

[Black Belt Jones]

Xi Jinping - the most powerful man on earth, spent several years of his life living in a cave in poverty. His father, a powerful politician, was purged by Mao in the early 60s and imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution, and Xi was sent to a rural village for reeducation.

 

[summerisle]

 

[summerisle]

Conker is a nineteenth century word for snail shells. Originally used as conkers are today.

 

[Philw]

Gary Oldman is 13 days younger than Gary Numan.

 

[deipnosophist]

Gary Oldman is 13 days younger than Gary Numan.

Didn't Neil Young write a song about the younger Gary ?...