Sir Andre Geim, who had been awarded an Ig Nobel Prize (a satiric prize) in 2000 for levitating a frog by magnetism, was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics in 2010 for his work with the electromagnetic properties of graphene. He is the only individual, as of 2023, to have received both a Nobel and an Ig Nobel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize

John McAfee (may he rest in peace) married a prostitute who was hired to rob him who he met in Miami Beach his first night back in the US after fleeing Belize in a boat under suspicion of murder and faking a heart attack to escape from custody in Guatemala.

The Anti-Tank Dogs were a Soviet military program where German Shepherds were trained to carry explosives to tanks and armoured vehicles. 40,000 dogs were intended to assist in curbing the German advance at the eastern front.

The first issues arose when the dogs wouldn't dive under the active enemy tanks as they'd only been trained on non-moving and non-shooting vehicles, so they would become scared return to their handlers... which could lead to explosive consequences!

Another serious issue was that the Soviets trained the dogs using their own diesel engine-powered tanks, however the German tanks used gasoline engines. Given dogs rely heavily on their keen sense of smell, they immediately sought out the familiar Soviet tanks, completely ignoring the strange-smelling German ones. As you can imagine, this wasn't particularly ideal for the longevity of the Soviet crews.

The program was started in 1930 and lasted until 1946 when, plagued by issues, it was unsurprisingly shut down.

The “German” part of German chocolate cake comes from an American man—not a European country. Specifically, it’s named after Sam German, who in 1852 created the formula for a mild dark baking chocolate bar for Baker’s Chocolate Company, which was subsequently named Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate. Fast-forward to June 13, 1957. The Dallas Morning Star published the recipe for the cake, invented and submitted by a reader identified as Mrs. George Clay, according to What’s Cooking America.

Lightning can do sub-satoshi payments: payments can be made conditional upon the outcome of a random event, allowing probabilistic payments. For example, Alice can pay Bob 0.1 satoshi by creating a 1-satoshi payment with 10-to-1 odds so that 90% of the time she does this she pays him 0 satoshis and 10% of the time she pays him 1 satoshi for an average payment of 0.1 satoshis.

The first flag had 13 stripes and 13 stars arranged in a circle. Both the stars and the stripes represented 13 colonies that declared independence from the Great Britain. Each new flag was the addition of new states. The 48-star flag stood for 47 years until the 49th version of the flag became official on 4th July 1959. Today it displays 50 stars that represent the 50 states of the United States of America.

These Alaskan frogs freeze almost completely at the start of winter, with two-thirds of their body water turning into ice. To all intents and purposes, they seem dead; their heart stops beating, and their blood flow stops. However, once winter starts to thaw so do they and they hop back to life.

DJ L, L M, H V, et al. Wood frog adaptations to overwintering in Alaska: new limits to freezing tolerance. J Exp Biol. 2014;217(Pt 12):2193-2200. doi:10.1242/JEB.101931

Fact: There’s enough gold inside Earth to coat the planet Turns out, there’s quite a bit of gold on—or, really, in—our planet: 99 percent of the precious metal can be found in the Earth’s core, Discover Magazine reports. How much is there? Enough to coat the entire surface of the Earth in 1.5 feet of gold.

PS : THERE IS NO SECOND BEST

Did you know that Satoshi already responded to the U.S. Department of Energy's concerns about Bitcoin's electricity use... in 2010?

In response to a post by gridecon, which reads in part: "I believe that the amount of energy input required to the bitcoin economy represents a serious obstacle to its growth."

Satoshi ⚡️ responded:

In other words, Satoshi said that Bitcoin is so useful to the economy that it would be more wasteful not to direct our electrical resources at it... 🧐

The poppy field scene in "The Wizard of Oz" became infamous over the years after viewers learned that the fake snow in the scene was 100% asbestos. Chrysotile, which is white asbestos, was also used for this scene. Despite the fact that asbestos' health risks were already known at the time, film sets started using one of the purest forms of asbestos on film stages because it was fireproof and looked close enough to snow that it could fool the audience.

Some Germany Railways still use Windows 3.11 to effectively manage railway displays boards for almost all of Germany. This super legacy OS is the responsible for the driver's cab display system on high-speed and regional trains, showing the driver the most important technical data in real-time.

...32 years are nothing for good, strong and reliable OS i guess! ;)

Clown world money manipulation! The S&P 500 is now 15% higher than where it was when the Fed started hiking rates in March 2022.

Median home prices are now contracting at levels NEVER seen since 1964!

Noting to see here!

The Butan tribe is in a remote part of Sulawesi in Indonesia. This is because of a rare genetic disorder called Waardenburg syndrome which causes congenital hearing loss and pigmentation deficiencies, which can include bright blue eyes. Your eye color results from the amount of melanin your body makes. Melanin is a pigment that gives color to your eyes, hair and skin. The colored part of your eye is called the iris. As many as 16 genes influence eye color by determining the amount of melanin inside the specialized cells of the iris. Different eye colors are caused by different amounts of pigment.

Maybe this is not such a fun fact for people affected, however I certainly learnt something this morning.

Buenos Aires Has the Widest and the Longest Street in the World The grand Avenida 9 de Julio is named after the country’s Day of Independence, celebrated on the 9th of July. This colossal avenue spans a staggering 459 ft in width and accommodates 16 lanes of traffic. The street is home to historic buildings, monuments, and landmarks like the Obelisco, making it worth exploring when you visit Argentina. While Av. Rivadavia has more than 35km of distance.

So, we Argentineans, have the widest and the longest! (if you know what I mean).

People often say if you were to represent pi with letters, every book ever written would be contained therein.

We do not know if this is true or not. In order for this to be true, a number has to be "normal", meaning each number has the same density as every other number. And not just single digit number, but two digit numbers, three digit numbers, and so on. In other words, 11 must have the same density as every other 2 digit number.

It has never been proven that pi is normal, and so we do not know if the initial statement is true. There are conjectures that it is true, but this has yet to be definitively proven. It could be that after some arbitrarily large number, 11 stops occurring with the same density as other 2 digit numbers.

Fun fact: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

Human beings can use only a small fraction of Earth’s water In school, we were taught that most (specifically, 71 percent) of the planet’s surface is covered in water. While that’s true, humans can use only 0.007 percent of that water, according to National Geographic. That’s because only about 2.5 percent of Earth’s water is fresh water, and only 1 percent of that is accessible. The rest makes up glaciers and snowfields. By the way, have you ever wondering why we can “smell” snow? https://www.rd.com/list/interesting-facts/

Jochebed, Mother of Moses was the only woman to ever get paid for nursing her own baby. Genesis 2:9

As I posted in the Saloon this morning regarding Snail Kings that have right handed threads... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_%28snail%29#Sinistral_snails

There's got to be a limerick in here about right headed threaded Snail King meeting a left handed threaded female snail. :)

really 10,000 Sats?(XD)

There is a growing movement of vegans and vegetarians in the Bitcoin space. This is due in part to the environmental impact of meat production, as well as the ethical concerns surrounding animal welfare.

Bitcoiners like their stake, like their money; rare!