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

[rustler]

Originally Posted by cicciobuki

They also look like burnt turds.

Coincidence? I don't think so!

Oh if only I had paid more attention to science when I was at school..........


Now I see what I was missing!

[Greenman]

Did you know that British comic actor, mostly from Carry On, Jim Dale went to America and made a good career over there. He starred in a number of films including the Walt Disney live-action/animation film Pete's Dragon, where surprise, surprise he was cast as the villain. Jim also went on to play PT Barnum in 'Barnum' a role made famous by Michael Crawford, and he is now better known to American children as the voice of the Harry Potter books-here it was done by Stephen Fry.

[Mal Hombre]

Jim Dale also dabbled in the pop business indeed there's a video on YouTube featuring Him interviewing the Rolling Stones.

[Dr Pepper]

Originally Posted by rustler

A nick name for King Henry VIII, but not in his presence!, was 'old copper nose'.

One of the Royal Mints, I forget which one, used to save silver by mixing extra large amounts of copper with the silver that was to be struck into coins. After a while as the coins got worn during circulation, the nose of the king got worn slightly flat and appeared red! Hence 'Old copper nose'!

As an undergraduate at Otago Uni, in analytical chemistry, one of our practicals was analysing the composition of coinage using atomic absorption spectroscopy (particularly useful when analysing for various metal constituents)-I recall being somewhat flabbergasted to find that a NZ 10c piece-a 'silver' coin (introduced with decimalisation of the currency in 1967)....was something like 82% copper and queried the result with the lecturer supervising the lab that particular lab day-only to be told that I was right. The residual 18% component was IIRC, nickel. A bit of discussion followed about alloys. The surprising thing to me was how high the copper content was without introducing any 'copperish' tint to the coin. Subsequently (in 2006) the 'silver' coin was replaced by a copper one (copper plated steel actually) of very similar pattern

[rustler]

I was reading a book about silversmithing a few weeks back, and was surprised to read that silver is only allowed to be combined with copper ( in the proportion of 830-170 or 925-75 (+/- 4%), giving us either 830 silver or 925 silver).

However, evidently, there is no such restriction on which metal gold is alloyed with, the quantities yes, but not the actual alloy.

Strange that, you'd have thought it would have been the other way around!

[Dr Pepper]

During my year in Israel (99-00) on one occasion I visited a manufacturing jeweller in Jerusalem (it was part of a group tour)-and the info about gold was quite interesting-the use of red, yellow and white gold-and the metals they alloyed gold with to produce-copper for red gold, nickel for white gold. There was even a passing mention of something called 'green gold'...
Equally fascinating-especially to a modeller like myself who dabbles in model engineering, was the method they used for cleaning up gold castings-tumbling in a drum of crushed walnut shell pieces. [I asked them how long it took-and they said they normally left it running continuously over a weekend]

I also recall that none of the 'marriedies' (I was still single at the time!) on the tour managed to escape the place without opening their wallets.....

[rustler]

I forged some rings in gold for a jeweler here a few years ago. It is the first time that I have worked with actual gold (white gold in this case) other than electro-plating. Normally I work in iron, so suddenly switching to a piece of gold that is worth a small fortune was hair raising!
Most jewelers roll the rings into the required shape and size, but these I literally forged, hammered out on the anvil. At first I was so scared of ruining it that I was tapping it so lightly that I wasn't even marking it!
In the end I had to simply think of it as just another piece of metal - then it went smoothly first time!

I live near an old mine, and amongst the iron that they usually extracted, there was a small amount of gold, average about 5g per ton. Not enough to be commercially viable (at that time anyway). So I was interested to read that some of the mines in South Africa still only produce about 8g per ton, and that some of the gold mines in Wales produced up to 920g per ton!

[HugoHackenbush]

As of January 1, 2015, all of the James Bond books and short stories went out of copyright and into the public domain in Canada, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa and a few dozen other countries.

But not in the US, UK, Europe or Australia.

Wonder what kind of trouble this will bring?

[ManofKent]

In India 90% of the population have cellphones-and yet only 50% have access to a flushing lavatory.

(this was taken from the quiz show Pointless).

[GailFan]

Did you know...

That in 1986, British actress Elizabeth Bennett simultaneously played the same character in both the British sitcom "Home to Roost" and it's American version "You Again?"