The "Did you know" thread.....

[Greenman]

Steven Wright the American comedian said he was a Caesarian-born baby and when he leaves his house he goes out the window instead of the door

[richardoe]

The Atlanta Braves are the oldest professional sports team in the USA. Yes I know theyve been in three cities!

[MrInBetween]

Originally Posted by henryf

Apparently the average speed of a snail is 1mm/sec or 3.6 metres/hour. It is 1,545,000 metres from Lands End to John o Groats. I make that 48.99 years, travelling non-stop! (I have not allowed for leap years). To do it in just over 3 years, it must have hitched a lift.

That's the kind of fact-checking I like. I made my own calculation - in Imperial measures, I'm not making a political point - and I reckon that for a snail to do it in the time available, it would have to travel three-quarters of a mile in a day: the traditional route of 874 miles divided by 1,155 days = 0.75 miles. That's 0.03 miles an hour (assuming it drives all night and never stops at a Snail Service Station), which turns out to be the traditional speed of a garden snail, at least according to an entry here. But that's over ten times the speed you're using, which is itself 3.6 times faster than the one mentioned as a recent discovery here. So you pays your money and you takes your choice.

[theequestrian]

Ummm, that didn't sound quite right. According to this site:

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/usa/states/area.shtml

Michigan, Florida and Wisconsin are larger in area than Georgia. Did you mean "largest" in some other way?

The site is wrong.
Only 57k of Michigan's 97k are land. The rest is Lake Michigan.
Only 54k of Florida's 65k is land. The rest is in the Gulf of Mexico bordering the the Keys.
Only 54k of Wisconsin's 56k is land.
Georgia is 58,910 square miles of which 58,056 is land.

[DTravel]

Originally Posted by MrInBetween

That's the kind of fact-checking I like. I made my own calculation - in Imperial measures, I'm not making a political point - and I reckon that for a snail to do it in the time available, it would have to travel three-quarters of a mile in a day: the traditional route of 874 miles divided by 1,155 days = 0.75 miles. That's 0.03 miles an hour (assuming it drives all night and never stops at a Snail Service Station), which turns out to be the traditional speed of a garden snail, at least according to an entry here. But that's over ten times the speed you're using, which is itself 3.6 times faster than the one mentioned as a recent discovery here. So you pays your money and you takes your choice.

Were any of these snails drug tested for steroids?

[henryf]

The speed quoted by the World Almanac and Book of Facts 1999 is nearly 5 times the Guinness Book of World Records 1998. Either it was a trial run for Lance Armstrong, or being American, they got confused about the metric system (with apologies to our trans Atlantic cousins.

As a side issue, I have always viewed slugs a just homeless snails, yet the indication from the site quoted is that a slug is 100 times slower than a snail!

[tygrkhat40]

Originally Posted by richardoe

The Atlanta Braves are the oldest professional sports team in the USA. Yes I know theyve been in three cities!

The Atlanta Braves are one of two American sports franchises to win three championships based in three different cites. The Braves were World Series Champions in 1914 in Boston, in 1957 in Milwaukee and in 1995 in Atlanta.

The other franchise is the St. Louis Rams. The Rams were NFL Champion in 1945 in Cleveland, in 1951 in Los Angeles and 1999 in St. Louis.

[NIN]

Originally Posted by henryf

...
As a side issue, I have always viewed slugs a just homeless snails, yet the indication from the site quoted is that a slug is 100 times slower than a snail!

Maybe that is what gives rise to the adjective description for referring to slow things as 'sluggish' ?

[theequestrian]

The Atlanta Braves are the oldest professional sports team in the USA. Yes I know they've been in three cities!

Actually the Cincinnati Red(leg)s are the oldest professional team in American sports - founded in 1869. The Braves were founded in 1870. The Reds however did not become a member of a league (American Association) until 1890. The Braves were one of the original teams in the National League - founded in 1876 - and were named the Boston Red Stockings (not to be confused with the current Boston Red Sox)

[Greenman]

Just seen on The One Show the film ZULU is 50 years old tonight. One of the 'actors' in the Zulu group was one Chief Buttalezi(sp?) a real life Zulu.