The Thread for Useless, but Interesting Facts

[Azeem]

In 1960s US had a plan to create an alternate waterway to the Seuz Canal using 520 nuclear bombs.

60s was like a major prank war era, everyone was going crazy to one up each other

[MUFC]

 

[Azeem]

In 1950s there was a proposal by United States to merge Pakistan-Afghanistan into a confederation in amid of eminent Soviet expansion. The two being like the link between Middle East & rest of Asia was too costly to give in to Soviets, giving them a permanent station to monitor from Eurasia to Far East.

Confidential report was made public few years ago. According to some rumors Iran was also part of this plan with Reza Shah as head of confederation.

[Tommy]

Kalsarikännit is a relaxation method from Finland. The word Kalsarikännit literally means "Getting drunk home alone in your underwear". Finns even have an emoji for it. 

[CaaC (John)+]

46 minutes ago, Tommy said:

Finns even have an emoji for it. 

Any pics 

[Tommy]

11 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said:

Any pics 

 

[Azeem]

In CIA headquarters there are eight five star rated agents of the past whose names are not written but only their identity number on a wall.

[Guest]

An interesting fact is I just spent ten minutes trying to figure out who @Aladdin is

[CaaC (John)+]

13 minutes ago, Gunnersauraus said:

An interesting fact is I just spent ten minutes trying to figure out who @Aladdin is

I had a feeling it was Azeem but double-checked just in case, I thought it was a newbie at first until I checked his registration date. 

[Guest]

@Aladdin you should go back to stick with azeem. That was your best name

[Azeem]

Turkey is changing it's name to Türkiye to distant itself from the bird in English.

There was a also a Kingdom of Chutia, chutia means asshole here. Their ruler was known as chutia of chutia lol

 

[Waylander]

1 hour ago, Aladdin said:

Turkey is changing it's name to Türkiye to distant itself from the bird in English.

There was a also a Kingdom of Chutia, chutia means asshole here. Their ruler was known as chutia of chutia lol

 

I thought for a brief moment that Turkey was changing it name to avoid the bird and insult connection to now being called the equivalent of an asshole............

Yet no Turkey is changing its name yet the asshole point is related to another country or region in Assam.

[Spike]

On 15/01/2022 at 01:03, Aladdin said:

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.

 

On 14/01/2022 at 15:23, Dr. Gonzo said:

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 

I just watched a video on language and exonyms and learned something interesting. Persia = Iran because Persia is just the Greek exonym for it. Like Germany = Deutschland, in English and German respectively. Technically speaking there is no difference between the terms but it makes sense for Iran to call itself Iran over Persia because the latter is a foreign word.

So wouldn’t that mean that All Persians are Iranian and vice versa because it is the same word just derived from a different language? Or did a small part of Iranians adopt ‘Persian’ as a differing identity despite it being a Greek word?

[Azeem]

34 minutes ago, Spike said:

So wouldn’t that mean that All Persians are Iranian and vice versa because it is the same word just derived from a different language? Or did a small part of Iranians adopt ‘Persian’ as a differing identity despite it being a Greek word?

[Spike]

10 minutes ago, Aladdin said:

ok

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 hour ago, Spike said:

 

I just watched a video on language and exonyms and learned something interesting. Persia = Iran because Persia is just the Greek exonym for it. Like Germany = Deutschland, in English and German respectively. Technically speaking there is no difference between the terms but it makes sense for Iran to call itself Iran over Persia because the latter is a foreign word.

So wouldn’t that mean that All Persians are Iranian and vice versa because it is the same word just derived from a different language? Or did a small part of Iranians adopt ‘Persian’ as a differing identity despite it being a Greek word?

Persia derives from the region Persis, which is now the province Fars in Iran (and the way you say Persian in Persian is Farsi).

Persian is an ethnicity and the biggest ethnicity in Iran, but there’s a lot of different ethnicities in Iran so not all Iranians are Persian.

The Greeks probably just called it Persia because most of the people there were Persian.

But Iranian is the nationality and Persian is the ethnicity of most Iranians.

[Spike]

7 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Persia derives from the region Persis, which is now the province Fars in Iran (and the way you say Persian in Persian is Farsi).

Persian is an ethnicity and the biggest ethnicity in Iran, but there’s a lot of different ethnicities in Iran so not all Iranians are Persian.

The Greeks probably just called it Persia because most of the people there were Persian.

But Iranian is the nationality and Persian is the ethnicity of most Iranians.

Okay, makes more sense. The video made it seem that the word was Greek origin, rather than a Greek interpretation of another word

[Spike]

@Dr. Gonzokinda funny though when you think about it. A word is exported, changed, and then imported back in. I wonder what other examples there are of words leaving a culture and coming back as a different word

[Dr. Gonzo]

Just now, Spike said:

Okay, makes more sense. The video made it seem that the word was Greek origin, rather than a Greek interpretation of another word

I also think Ancient Persia was less ethnically diverse back then too - it was before there were Arabs & Azeris in Iran, for instance, and Azeris are the largest other ethnicity I think. So it would make sense Greeks would be think “let’s call the place that’s full of Persians Persia”

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 minute ago, Spike said:

@Dr. Gonzokinda funny though when you think about it. A word is exported, changed, and then imported back in. I wonder what other examples there are of words leaving a culture and coming back as a different word

I dunno if it’s so much imported back in changed as it was just the western name. Like saying “Achaemenid empire” I’m sure is the Greek name & that’s what we call that empire in the West - rather than the Persian name. Or the Spanish calling England Inglaterra but we call it England.

[Spike]

1 minute ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I also think Ancient Persia was less ethnically diverse back then too - it was before there were Arabs & Azeris in Iran, for instance, and Azeris are the largest other ethnicity I think. So it would make sense Greeks would be think “let’s call the place that’s full of Persians Persia”

I wonder if it was more like that an envoy or whatever met with he Greeks and when they asked him where he was from he replied ‘Fars, I am of the Farsi people’ and that got translated as ‘Pars, Persia people’ and since that was their first encounter they just called the whole region ‘Persia’. But it was also 3,000 years ago so maybe you are right too

[Spike]

Just now, Dr. Gonzo said:

I dunno if it’s so much imported back in changed as it was just the western name. Like saying “Achaemenid empire” I’m sure is the Greek name & that’s what we call that empire in the West - rather than the Persian name. Or the Spanish calling England Inglaterra but we call it England.

I was reading that the last shah said the two names were interchangeable. Not that he is the authority but it goes to show that the name left and came back to some degree, moreso than Inglaterra

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 minute ago, Spike said:

I was reading that the last shah said the two names were interchangeable. Not that he is the authority but it goes to show that the name left and came back to some degree, moreso than Inglaterra

Yeah true.

Although that was probably used against him as propaganda to pretty great effect, cos he wasn’t the brightest political mind in the world 

[Azeem]

Not all Ancient Egyptian rulers were Pharaohs or even Egyptian. The Hyksos Kings were the first foreign rulers to rule over much of Egypt, they hailed from Levant and invaded Egypt. They are portrayed negatively as evil foreign rulers by later Pharaonic dynasties but historical record suggests they brought many innovations and customs which we think about of ancient Egypt today.

[Azeem]

Doggerland was a landmass which connected Great Britain to rest of Europe.