The QI thread of things you found reasonably arresting, mildly intriguing, & yes, quite interesting. - The Bear and Badger

Blue Swirl

The place for something random you found out that you reckon is a neat little nugget of fact.

To get the ball rolling:

In the early 90s, the Yugoslav dinar underwent a period of runaway hyperinflation. Inflation hit 8.51x10^29 %pa, and at one point, a 500 billion dinar note was printed. It was worthless within a fortnight. Similarly afflicted, the Zimbabwe dollar was killed off and relaunched three times before it was abandoned completely. During the second incarnation, a $100 trillion note was printed. Zimbabwe now uses a variety of currencies, including the US dollar, Euro, and Pound Sterling.

The emblem for the Armaments Bureau of Taiwan is a winged camel.

The parent company of Renault Trucks is Volvo.

Go go badger factoids!

Jaco

Nice idea Swirl!

The phrase "having kittens" (in regard to being worried / upset about something) comes from the mad old belief that pregnancy pains were caused by actual kittens in the womb. Witches would prey on this belief by selling potions to "get rid of the kittens". This was still believed as late as the mid 17th Century.

Source: How Did It Begin?" by R. Brasch (Pocket Books, New York, 1966)

Blue Swirl

That, sir, is an excellent fact.

The Daddy

The name for the game Pool originates from a french game of lobbing stones at chickens (courtesy of The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth):

Gambling in medieval France was a simple business. All you needed were some friends, a pot, and a chicken. In fact, you didn’t need friends – you could do this with your enemies – but the pot and the chicken were essential.
First, each person puts an equal amount of money in the pot. Nobody should on any account make a joke about a poultry sum. Shoo the chicken away to a reasonable distance. What’s a reasonable distance? About a stone’s throw.
Next, pick up a stone.
Now, you all take turns hurling stones at that poor bird, which will squawk and flap and run about. The first person to hit the chicken wins all the money in the pot. You then agree never to mention any of this to an animal rights campaigner.
That’s how the French played a game of chicken. The French, though, being French, called it a game of poule, which is French for chicken. And the chap who had won all the money had therefore won the jeu de poule.
The term got transferred to other things. At card games, the pot of money in the middle of the table came to be known as the poule. English gamblers picked the term up and brought it back with them in the seventeenth century. They changed the spelling to pool, but they still had a pool of money in the middle of the table.
It should be noted that this pool of money has absolutely nothing to do with a body of water. Swimming pools, rock pools and Liverpools are utterly different things.
Back to gambling. When billiards became a popular sport, people started to gamble on it, and this variation was known as pool, hence shooting pool.

cockbeard

I like that, apart from the bit about swimming pools, rock pools, and liverpools being different. I'm pretty sure they are all small bodies of water. Unless of course it was named after a liverchicken not a liverbird

Blue Swirl

cockbeard wrote:

I like that, apart from the bit about swimming pools, rock pools, and liverpools being different. I'm pretty sure they are all small bodies of water.

They have a different origin to the "pool" in gambling games. They are not different to each other. I.e., they are all bodies of water. As you, and Daddy's post, states.

Blue Swirl

Talking of pools, I think this is correct, that Blackpool and Dublin both translate as "dark water".

cockbeard

Aaah, comprehension was never a strong point

I am warming to the idea of a French community setting up in the North West about 100 years ago, and the liver-chicken, and how different the city would be nowadays

SpaceGazelle

All gold was formed in a supernova.

The closest planet to Earth, on average, is Mercury. Venus makes the closest pass.

Buzz Aldrin snuck some wine aboard and it was the first thing drank on the moon.

Blue Swirl

I would move to Liverchicken.

[Deleted User]

I think it would be especially cruel to have a placename that its own occupants can’t pronounce.

g.man

*chuckle*

poprock

Andy wrote:

I think it would be especially cruel to have a placename that its own occupants can’t pronounce.

I come from ’ull.

cockbeard

SpaceGazelle wrote:

The closest planet to Earth, on average, is Mercury

Really?? Is that something weird like we're more often on the same side of the Sun as Mercury? Just it sounds mental? I mean given the amount of revolutions all three planets have made round the sun surely it averages out to orbit distance at some point?? My brain's doing weird things? Thanks for firing my curiosity

SpaceGazelle

When the planets are on the other side of the Sun it's the closest, being the most inner planet. Averaging it out makes it the closest overall.

Raiziel

46,000 square miles are turned into desert every year on planet Earth thanks to - you guessed it - climate change and human activities like clearing rainforests. What champs we are.

yourfavouriteuncle

Ever wondered why Easter Sunday can be in March one year and then late April the year after?

It’s nothing to do with the laughable and vague discrepancies of basing our whole yearly timelines off a make believe magic man it is simply this;

It’s the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring and that is why it can be spread over a four week gap from one year to the next. Retailers hate it as it can have a big bump on their year on year sales reports and shareholders blindly panic every year.

SpaceGazelle

I remember an old QI thing that has always stayed with me. 250,000 bullets are fired per kill (insurgent) in Iraq.

That's a lot of panic firing, poor aim and pissing about.

GooberTheHat

I don't believe that.

cockbeard

That could easily be 249985 from the insurgent but I wouldn't believe that either. Or it's a play on amount of ordnance, or even only a miniscule amount of casualties have been confirmed as comabatants

Diluted Dante

GooberTheHat wrote:

I don't believe that.

It includes the firing into the air in celebration after the kill.

GooberTheHat

Diluted Dante wrote:

GooberTheHat wrote:

I don't believe that.

It includes the firing into the air in celebration after the kill.

Is it including afghan national army and police? Because coalition troops don't do that.

cockbeard

We don't get issued enough rounds to

edit: I know that's changed somewhat in recent years, twas merely (mostly) a joke

edit2: I hope it's not the Afghan forces, they're a long way from home if so

GooberTheHat

Ah yeah, Iraq. Oops.

It sounds like nonsense to me, or it is accounting for the rounds fired by the rocket/mortar protection system, which you can see in this video.

cockbeard

I did wonder about cannons on aircraft as they lay huge amounts of suppression down

SpaceGazelle

I'll try and find a source if I can. Hang on...

SpaceGazelle

Can't find the QI episode but found this fairly quickly.

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/us-forced-to-import-bullets-from-israel-as-troops-use-250000-for-every-rebel-killed-28580666.html

SpaceGazelle

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3fcdqy/til_us_has_fired_250000_rounds_for_every/

Diluted Dante

The Department of Defense's increased requirements for small- and medium-calibre ammunitions have largely been driven by increased weapons training requirements

I thought it might be something like this.

SpaceGazelle

Still, it's 5 times higher than Vietnam.

b0r1s

The final aerial shot in the original cinema edit of Bladerunner is taken from footage Scott got from helicopter footage from Kubrick, from Apocalypse Now. He had something like 17 hours worth of footage and said Scott could use some of it for the new ending (which came from studio pressure).

Got that nugget from The Hollywood Reporters roundtable on YouTube. Brilliant show where they sit down actors and directors to talk about film.

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