The "did you know" thread.....

[thunderfly]

Did you know that red peppers, green peppers and yellow peppers are actually all the same fruit but just in different stages of ripeness?

(I always thought the different colours were different varieties of peppers).

[thunderfly]

Originally Posted by Greenman

Wham's backing singer D.C.Lee had also appeared with Paul Weller in the Style Council and had her own individual hit See the Day.

I saw Paul Weller with D.C. Lee at a record collectors fair in the early 1990s (she was his girlfriend at the time). The look of utter disdain on his face suggested he was trying to say that if anyone dared to approach him for his autograph etc, they'd certainly wish they hadn't. That's the price of fame, Paul.

[rosestone]

Actor Woody Harrelson's father was a hitman who died in prison having been convicted of the murder of a judge in Texas in 1979. It was long rumoured that Harrelson senior was one of the "tramps" seen milling around on the grassy knoll when JFK was assassinated, and when apprehended in 1980, he claimed to have killed Kennedy, although he later retracted his statement and authorities did not give it much credence.

Interestingly, Woody Harrelson has gone on to play Lyndon Baines Johnson in a movie in 2016, Johnson being the man who became president on Kennedy's death. Yet further trivia, Harrelson also starred in 'No Country For Old Men' a Coen Brothers' movie based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, a novel in which the murder of the judge by Harrelson senior is mentioned in passing.

[tygrkhat40]

Originally Posted by ManofKent

The high-pitched squeal that a bagpipe makes is called a SKIRL.

(This comes from a question on the TV gameshow Pointless)

Do you know why it's called a "skirl?"

Because "eeeeeaaaghrahhneeeaaaah" is too hard to pronounce.

[Greenman]

In 2009 James May(he of Top Gear fame) along with his team of professional helpers and members of the public/residents that lived near Brooklands race track, created a 4.75km-long Scalextric track breaking the Guinness Book of Records world record. It was equally poignant as they laid track along the last bit of existing Brooklands race track-once the home to British motor racing.

[Greenman]

Origin of the Frisbee. Inventor Fred Morrison claims he first had the idea for a flying disc toy while tossing a cake pan around on a beach in 1937. The toy was also originally named the Flyin' Cake Pan, then the Pluto Platter before Morrison settled on the world-renowned name Frisbee. There is an alusion to how it came about in the film Back to the Future II or was it III ? anyway it was when Marty McFly picks up a 'pan' and throws it like a frisbee to try and stop a thief. Source:
A Century of Classic Toys-article Daily Express(30 top best selling toys) 29-12-2016 edition. More to come.

[tsunamiSD]

That the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech is owned by Martin Luther King’s family, and cannot legally be used by anyone without their consent.


Star version of article originally in the NY Times

Taylor Branch, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning trilogy of books that chronicles King’s life and the history of the civil rights movement, said a few years ago that it is harder for Americans to learn about the speech because it is not in the public domain and that he has, to no avail, talked with the King family about it. “They are making a mistake,” he said in 2013.
The King Center, which sells a DVD of the speech for $20 on its website, did not respond to phone calls and emails about the speech and licensing. Unless the family decides to put it in the public domain beforehand, it will happen in 2038, under copyright law.
There is, however, a copy of it on YouTube .

[gordian_knot]

Did you know that the woman who says "you have email" for AOL UK customers is none other than the delightful Joanna Lumley?

Now Joanna speaks to me whenever I get an email message, a step up from the default Windows sound.

[chris chunt]

Did you know
Propaganda in North Korea is given out for free .

But in Britain we're charged £150 a year for it and it's called the BBC licence fee .

Keeping Hampstead lefties in the style to which they've become used to tax is what it should be called

[ManofKent]

Cobalt is the only element on the Periodic Table that ends with 'T'.