The Thread for Useless, but Interesting Facts

[Toinho]

19 hours ago, Khan of TF365 said:

Jesus's name in Aramaic the native language spoken around Galilei was Yeshua. In Greek Yeshua was changed to Yeshus. When Latin replaced Greek as the language of liturgy Y was replaced with J rendering it as Jesus.

Christian denominations in Africa, Middle East and Asia still use Yasu/Yeshu

 

Didn’t know this! I managed to steer clear of any religious studies throughout my schooling (public school system). However, as I’ve got older I want to learn more. 

[Azeem]

The city of Aden is based in a volcanic crater

[Bluewolf]

[nudge]

Brussel sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, and cauliflower are all derived from the same plant through hundreds of years of selective breeding.

[Tommy]

1 hour ago, nudge said:

Brussel sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, and cauliflower are all derived from the same plant through hundreds of years of selective breeding.

No wonder I can't tell them apart. 

[Azeem]

Koh-e-Noor (Mountain of Light) is one of the largest cut diamonds in the world. Originally mined from India it has been in the hands of various dynasties of the subcontinent until finally it was surrendered to the British and placed in the crown of the Queen. Governments of India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan all claim it on the basis of relation to those dynasties but Brits show the middle figure to them.

There is said to be a curse with the diamond that it will bring calamity and unstability if owned by a male which is backed by historical facts that all male rulers who possessed it shortly met their doom after acquiring it, only a female can held on to it.

[CaaC (John)+]

Quote

Are most maps of the world wrong?

Thinking Alaska was as big as Brazil? You can thank the representation of the world printed onto maps.

Every map ever printed is wrong, by definition. The job of a map is to provide a simpler representation of the world. A completely accurate map would need to be life-size. Worse, the Earth is round and paper is flat.

Over small areas, the curvature isn’t noticeable, but to unwrap the entire globe, you either have to stretch it or cut it to make it fit on a flat sheet. There are lots of different ways of doing this, but the Mercator projection, invented by Gerardus Mercator in 1569, is still the most widely used.

Imagine a glass globe with the continents painted on it. If you wrapped a sheet of paper into a cylinder around the equator and shone a light from within, the landmasses would appear on the paper as shadows. This is the Mercator projection.

On this map, north points to the top, and the coastline is the right shape, which makes it useful for navigation. But because the cylinder is open at the top and bottom, the poles can’t be shown and north-south distances get increasingly stretched the further you get from the equator. Alaska looks as big as Brazil on a Mercator map, but is really a fifth the size, and Greenland appears 14 times too large.

In the map shown above, the outline is the Mercator projection. In green, you can see the Gall-Peters projection, which was designed so that all the countries have the correct area.

Although digital maps could now display the Earth as a globe (Google Earth does this), most still use a version of the Mercator projection.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/are-most-maps-of-the-world-wrong/

 

Edited January 11, 2022 by CaaC (John)
Spacing correction

[MUFC]

 

[Azeem]

Atoms never actually touch each other. When you sit on a chair, you are actually hovering 

[Tommy]

2 hours ago, Khan of TF365 said:

Atoms never actually touch each other. When you sit on a chair, you are actually hovering 

I'm pretty sure I'm sitting on my chair right now. I can feel my ass touching it. 

[Tommy]

This made me laugh. 

[MUFC]

 

[Azeem]

Iran means the land of aryans. It was always called Iran natively but Greeks called it Persia from one of its ancient region Fars which was united with Media by Cyrus the Great creating the Iranian nation. 

Persia and Iran were used interchangeably but Reza Shah I didn't like the idea of using a foreign name and sent letters to embassies around the world to only refer to it as Iran. Since then Persia is no longer used officially/diplomatically

[Tommy]

[Spike]

2 hours ago, Khan of TF365 said:

Iran means the land of aryans. It was always called Iran natively but Greeks called it Persia from one of its ancient region Fars which was united with Media by Cyrus the Great creating the Iranian nation. 

Persia and Iran were used interchangeably but Reza Shah I didn't like the idea of using a foreign name and sent letters to embassies around the world to only refer to it as Iran. Since then Persia is no longer used officially/diplomatically

Always wondered where ‘Iran’ came from. Most Iranians you meet in the west prefer ‘Persian’ because I think they feel it distances them from the Ayatollah 70s revolution. 

Such an interesting country and people, such a shame it is hidden behind a totalitarian religious state. What interests me is the Zoroastrian revivalism linked with anti-nationalism nationalism haha

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 hour ago, Spike said:

Always wondered where ‘Iran’ came from. Most Iranians you meet in the west prefer ‘Persian’ because I think they feel it distances them from the Ayatollah 70s revolution. 

Such an interesting country and people, such a shame it is hidden behind a totalitarian religious state. What interests me is the Zoroastrian revivalism linked with anti-nationalism nationalism haha

By the same token this can piss off a lot of Iranians that aren't Persian, because technically if you're Iranian you're not necessarily Persian. There's Azeris, Arabs, Armenians, Balochis, Gilakis, Loris, Kurds, etc... - I think Persians make up about 60%-ish of the country. So some people don't really like it when they're called "Persian" if they're from Iran - because they view it as sort of ignoring their culture.

The rise of Zoroastrianism is sort of a pushback of the Islamic Republic & their brand of nationalism as you say - because it's the "native" religion to Iran & the oldest monotheistic religion and some people view Islam as the "religion of the invaders" with the Arab conquests.

I think it's more common for Persian Iranians to be into this revival of Zoroastrianism, but probably some of the other Iranic people in the country would fall into that - Azeris are Turkic people, so they came to the region after it was Islamic already and I don't think would have the same connection to Zoroastrianism - meanwhile the Arabs of Iran, similarly, would find their roots in the country most likely tied to the Arab conquest... so while they're very much Iranian... I wouldn't say they have any ties to Zorostrianism.

For a lot of people, myself included, this sort of revival is more symbolic than being an actual believer of the religion. Iran's diaspora is increasingly atheist and there are more and more atheists in Iran (probably because of dissolution in living in a religious authoritarian regime and probably because religious conflict has led to a lot of bad shit happening in both Iran & the region generally).

But it, and Christianity, are also some of the fastest growing religions in the country as well.

But yeah, it's an absolute shame what happened to Iran.... although if the UK & US never removed their democracy in the 50s, and their puppet dictator was never ousted in 1979... I might not have ever been born. So from a selfish perspective, it's not so bad. But from a non-selfish perspective... me existing probably wasn't worth the suffering of 82m+ people 

[Azeem]

11 hours ago, Spike said:

Always wondered where ‘Iran’ came from. Most Iranians you meet in the west prefer ‘Persian’ because I think they feel it distances them from the Ayatollah 70s revolution. 

Such an interesting country and people, such a shame it is hidden behind a totalitarian religious state. What interests me is the Zoroastrian revivalism linked with anti-nationalism nationalism haha

As Dr.Gonzo said, every Persian is an Iranian but every Iranian is not a Persian. Every country/region has a center where the most defining people of that region come from in case of Iran its the Persian speaking heartland. Besides many places changed their names as part of the decolonization process in that period Burma -> Myanmar, Salisbury -> Harare so it should be seen in that context.

[Azeem]

[nudge]

 

 

[Azeem]

Kabbadi, the sport where players known as raiders enter opposition half to touch their defender(s) and run back without getting caught. 

The sport evolved in Punjab region from the practice of tribes where they raided into territories of other tribes to steal their cattles.

[Waylander]

5 hours ago, Khan of TF365 said:

Kabbadi, the sport where players known as raiders enter opposition half to touch their defender(s) and run back without getting caught. 

The sport evolved in Punjab region from the practice of tribes where they raided into territories of other tribes to steal their cattles.

They all look rather well built for a game about speed is there a wrestling element to this?

[Spike]

9 hours ago, Khan of TF365 said:

Kabbadi, the sport where players known as raiders enter opposition half to touch their defender(s) and run back without getting caught. 

The sport evolved in Punjab region from the practice of tribes where they raided into territories of other tribes to steal their cattles.

Give these guys a ball and they'd be a rugby team

[Azeem]

7 hours ago, Waylander said:

They all look rather well built for a game about speed is there a wrestling element to this?

Yes when an an opposition player grabs you have some time to grapple out and run bak

[Azeem]

These green areas are the grass highways of the world, vast flat grass lands from Far East into Eurasia which are easily crossable on horses. Many of the world's oldest horse breeds started from this region and spread to places where horses indigenously didn't existed like South Asia. The Mongols through these grass lands wrecked havoc on the whole world. 

[Azeem]

Battle of Karansebes, the most deadliest friendly fire event in histort. 

The Austrian army consisting of troops from different linguistic groups was stationed to defend from an Ottoman attack but the soldiers got drunk night before the attack, started fighting each other not understanding each other's language. Many died, more wounded and some deserted. 

Ottomans captured the city without a fight.