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Post a random fact people probably don't know! (And even if they did, they wouldn't care.)


Benice
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The German word for a hammock, 'Hängematte', is a funny little piece of etymology. The word can easily be read as "hanging mat", but it has the same origin as the English term: Hamáka, which is what Caribbean natives called it. The vile slaver Christopher Columbus initially brought the word to Europe, and as early as 1529, it had migrated to Germany as 'Hamaco' or 'Hamach' (ch as in Loch Ness). But because those words sounded unfamiliar to German ears, it then shifted to the coincidentally very fitting compound word.

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In Civilization V, there's a fair number of ways to boost a city's food output, which directly translates into population growth. Most percentage-based boosts apply to the food surplus, i.e. food produced minus food eaten by the already existing population, with only two sources applying their bonus to the entire food production: The Temple of Artemis, a world wonder, and the Aztec's unique building, the Floating Gardens. Interestingly, the Gardens are actually stronger than the Temple - +15% instead of +10%.

This technicality in itself isn't particularly interesting, but it leads to an unexpected "best playstyle" for the Aztecs, who in the hands of the AI are one of the most aggressive civs around. Because in Civ5, additional cities reduce how large you can grow each individual city, going around conquering your neighbors directly strangles the Aztec's biggest strength, the ability to have their cities grow faster than any other civ. A 15% bonus might not sound that impressive, but it has a great impact on the "produced minus consumed" difference dictating population growth.

In an ideal Aztec game, you happily sit on your four core cities, teching up and winning the game that way. Now, they do get something out of warfare - namely, killing enemy units provides them with a bit of culture gain - but the prudent way to go about warfare is to sit back, kill whatever the enemy sends at you, and not to bother capturing any cities.

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In an... interesting piece of marketing, the first-person shooter game Daikatana, directed by John Romero, was advertised with the slogan "John Romero's about to make you his bitch."

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b8/Daikatana_infamous_advertisement.jpg

Romero was involved in the development of famous games such as Doom, Quake, and Captain Commander Keen. Daikatana was the first game he worked on after leaving id Software, and unfortunately, it didn't end up particularly well. Until September 2000, it only sold about 40'000 copies, instead of the 2.5 million sales that the developer allegedly was calculating with, and it's sometimes brought up as a "worst game ever" contender, although given what you can find on Steam these days, this surely has to be said with a "compared to expectations" qualifier.

Because the game bombed so hard, a Game Boy Color version published by Kemco wasn't even released in the US. However, it was released in Japan and the EU - and actually considered to be quite good. The GBC game was more alike to the Zelda games of that time (top-down action adventure), i.e. quite different from the main title, which was noted to be a very good thing.

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4 hours ago, ping said:

"John Romero's about to make you his bitch."

I can't wait until Kaga makes Thracia 776 2 with this tagline.

 

The common saying "There's a sucker born every minute" proves itself, in a sense- It is often attributed to P.T. Barnum, when it was likely actually one of his competitors who attributed the phrase to Barnum in an attempt to discredit him.

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Contrary to most other vegetal sources of protein, nettle has all of the 8 acids the body can't produce itself (like meat) and is very rich of that stuff (40% when dry).

nettle-dried-herb-20g.jpg

(still stings tho, be careful when you gather those)

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Eleanor/Eleonore/Aleonòr/Aliénor/Éléonore d'Aquitaine, who you might know as a Civilization 6 leader of both England and France, had her marriage to the French king annulled on the ground of consanguinity: She was Louis' VII third cousin, once removed, which is to say that they shared great-great-grandparents. The pope initially refused to annull their marriage and even forbade the couple to talk about their familiar ties. It had been rumoured that the couple became estranged over an affair between Éléonore and her uncle - although according to medieval customs, Éléonore was already being untrue to her husband by disagreeing with him, so one doesn't necessarily have to put too much stock into the more raunchy rumours.

What reveals the entire "consanguinity" reasoning for annulling the marriage to be, well, technically true, but still just an excuse is both of the former husband and wife's choices in their second spouses. Louis married Constance of Castile, his second cousin, while Éléonore married her third cousin Henry, duke of Normandie and soon king of England. Apparently, two counts attempted but failed to kidnap Éléonore while she was traveling in order to enforce a marriage that way - as the Duchess of Aquitaine, such a marriage would come with a lot of land to rule over - but Éléonore avoided capture and sent envoys to Henry asking him for marriage. Because this happened very quickly after her first marriage was annulled (eight weeks), historians speculate that the two already had things arranged while Éléonore was still married to Louis.

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Not all crusades were called against Muslim states in the middle east, or even against non-christians in general. Specifically, the Albigensian Crusade was waged between 1209 and 1229 against the Cathar heresy in south France, and it turned out to be a full-blown genocidal affair, even though the number of victims to the crusaders has most likely been exaggerated. The commander instituted by the pope, Abbot Arnaud Amalric, reported that during the sack of Béziers, the entire population of 20'000 was massacred without discrimination - men, women, and children. Later, it was reported that when asked how to tell apart Cathars from Catholics, Amalric replied, "Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." - "Kill them all! The Lord knows those that are his own.", or "Kill them all; let God sort them out", as it's commonly quoted as. It would seem that the thought of a Cathar escaping death by posing as a Catholic was harder to bear by this man of the church than the thought of killing fellow Catholics.

That said, the extend of the massacre of Béziers is likely exaggerated. The population before the crusade is estimated to be between 10'000 and 14'000, and it seems that the city continued being a city (which, well, implies inhabitants) afterwards. Still, it was a murderous start to a murderous campaign. The next target was the city Carcassonne, which capitulated after a two-week siege. Most inhabitants (including a large number of refugees from the crusaders) had already fled the city through secret passages, but out of the 500 remaining people, 400 were killed. The year after, another 400 Cathars who refused to convert to Catholicism were burned to death in the city of Minerve.

This brutality ended up extending the war, since it turned many local nobles, who initially were loyal to the pope, against the crusade. Eventually, the crusade was "taken over", so to speak, by the French king Louis VIII (the grandson of the Louis from my previous post). His war was officially still part of the crusade against the Cathars, but realistically, he was looking to integrate Occitania into his domain.

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While we're on the topic of mass murder in French territories, authorised by the Powers That Were At That Time, in this case the Jacobin-led Committee of Public Safety...

The last words of the former Queen Marie Antoinette were, "Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Je ne l’ai pas fait exprès." - "Pardon me, sir, I did not mean to do that." - addressed to her executioner. When being led to the guillotine, she had accidentally stepped on his foot.

And while we're on the topic of La Terreur: Around the same time as Marie Antoinette's death, one of the many factional disputes of the French Revolution was fought: Between the Indulgents, led by Georges Danton, one of the instigators of the governmental terror, who now wished to end it as well as the raging revolutionary war, and the Hébertists, named after Jacques Hébert, who thought that more terror was what France was needing, alongside radical de-christianisation of the country.
The winner? Well, neither. Both groups were executed for treason, although "working against what Maximilien de Robespierre deemed appropriately revolutionary" probably would've been a more honest accusation. From the incorruptibe Robespierre's perspecitve (i.e. the correct one), the Indulgents were too conservative and the Hébertists too radical, so off all the heads went.

Robespierre defending the decision to have Danton executed brought us this beautifully ironic quote: "I tell you, whoever trembles at this moment is guilty, for innocence never dreads the public surveillance." As it turns out, Robespierre only survived Danton († 5 April 1794) by less than four months: On 10 Thermidor (or 28 July 1794, if you insist), he himself was guillotined, following the coup of 9 Thermidor, which marks the end of La Terreur.

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A wonderfully named region in western Germany is Ostwestfahlen, "East-West-phalia", located roughly 100-150 km south of Bremen.

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One of the closest competitions possible occured for the Handball championship in Germany 2014. There are no playoffs in the Bundesliga, so placement is decided by points (2:0 for a win, 1:1 for a draw, 0:2 for a loss) and then goal difference after every team has played everyone else twice. This tends to lead to season finales where the winner has been decided weeks in advance, but this was certainly not the case in the season 2013/14.

Leading up to the final matches, it was quite clear that the championship would be decided between the Rhein-Neckar Löwen (I personally prefer their old, old name, SG Kronau/Östringen, because it can be shortened to "Krösties". Plus, "Lions" is a little pretentious in my mind) and the "Zebras" of the THW Kiel. In the 29th match (out of 34) of the season, the Löwen managed to beat Kiel 29-26 in a home game, which allowed them to catch up in points (49:9) while having a significantly better goal difference (+184 vs. +161). At this point, the championship looked like the Löwen's to lose - as long as they would win all five remaining matches, they should be fine.

However, Kiel did not agree with that assessment. In match 30, while the Löwen got a convincing 34-26 win in an away game against the Bergischer HC, Kiel managed to decimate TSV Hannover-Burgdorf 37-20, helped a lot by Hannover being weakened by some player injuries. With that, the goal difference difference went down from +23 in favour of the Löwen to just +14. The weekend after that, the Löwen only barely managed to eek out a win against the HSV Hamburg (no relation to the Hamburger SV football club), while Kiel got another huge win: 46-24 in Lemgo.This actually put Kiel ahead of the Löwen by a 7-goal margin, and if I recall, it also lead to some grumbling from the Krösties if Lemgo really tried as hard as they ought to.

However, the win came at a price: Filip Jicha, Kiel's team captain (and today's head coach), injured his ankle after landing on his teammate's foot after a jump shot. He decided to grit his teeth and still play the remaining matches, but this turned out to be a poor (or at the very least very expensive for him) decision, since I think he struggled with that injury for the rest of his career.

The Löwen then struck back the following two matches: First with a 42-19 in Eisenach (who ended up relegated that season) while Kiel managed to beat their big Rival Flensburg 33-25, and then with a 41-28 against Melsungen. Kiel managed to answer that one (their match was a few days later) with a 35-21 in Lübbecke, but the Löwen still went into the final match with a +7 goal advantage.

On top of that, Kiel had - on paper - the stronger opponent for that final match, too. They were playing Füchse Berlin, who managed to win the cup (the less important competition, but still a big deal) a few weeks earlier, while the Löwen were matched against Gummersbach, a lower-mid tier team at this point. However, Gummersbach absolutely refused to be the fall guy for Kronau/Östringen: They only trailed by two goals (19-21, which is quite a lot of goals) at half time. Meanwhile, Kiel had a bit of a tough start as well, only leading 9-7 after almost 20 minutes (one third of the total playing time). However, Berlin, also riddled with injuries, then collapsed: Kiel managed a 8-1 run until half time, putting them at a 17-8 lead... and dead tied with the Löwen.

In the second half, the Löwen then managed to step up their game, increasing their lead to 29-21 in the first eleven minutes. However, Gummersbach then managed to fight back, keeping the game a bit closer. Kiel's second half against the Füchse took the opposite turn - Kiel again didn't have the greatest start, only gaining a single point of goal difference until the 48th minute, but then managed to increase their lead to 34-20. Kiel's coach Alfreð Gíslason took a time-out at this point, four minutes before the end of the game... at which point the race with the Löwen was dead tied again, with the Löwen being up 39-32 at that point in time. That game's score wasn't shown in the Kieler sports hall, but the team was informed by a replacement player (Dominic "Mini" Klein) that it's back to 0-0 at this point.

And Kiel then increased their lead even further, to 36-20 and 37-21. However, they then yielded two goals, going back to +14 with the end score being 37-23. Because that +14 was only enough to tie the Löwen four minutes earlier, the Kiel team did not think that it would be enough for them, that those two last yielded goals would've cost them the championship... but as it turns out, Gummersbach managed to not only prevent the Löwen to increase their lead, they even managed to close it by two goals, ultimately losing 35-40. Gummersbach's players even celebrated this loss after the full time whistle, much to the consternation of the Löwen, who lost their chance for their first championship title by only two goals.

As a bit of a happy end for them, though, the Löwen did manage to win two championship titles in 2016 and 2017, plus a cup win another year later. They have since fallen down the rankings a bit, only finishing 4th or 5th between 2019 and 2021, never really in a position to challenge the champions of those years, and having a pretty rotten season 2021/22, finishing 10th (of 18 teams). I haven't been following Handball as closely as I used to, but I think a large part of their decline is that their star player, the playmaker Andy Schmid, has been getting older. He went back to his home country of Switzerland after this last season, at an age of 38. He's always been the "brain" of the Löwen's offence, famous for his passing ability, but also a dangerous scorer in his own right.

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Civilization VI is the first game of the series that basically spread out cities over more than just the tile you plonk them down on. After setting a city, you then build districts and wonders in the territory around them. Districts are usually not restricted in where you can build them, but they receive bonuses from adjacent terrain - Campuses... Campi... SCIENCE DISTRICTS from mountains, reefs, and geothermal fissures; Commercial Hubs from rivers; Industrial Zones from dams and aqaeducts (which do have strict placement requirements).

Wonders, on the other hand, do have requirements where you can place them most of the time. Mostly, they're fairly straightforward, like Pyramids on a Desert or Desert Floodplains tile, or the Great Lighthouse on the coast next to a Harbour district with a smol Lighthouse already constructed. Occasionally, you do need to plan ahead a little, like with the Great Zimbabwe that has to be built on a tile adjacent to a Commercial Hub and a tile with the Cattle bonus resource.

Most of the time, those placement restrictions more or less make sense, but I have to make one exclusion. The Petra - a very satisfying wonder to build, but the AI really likes it, which makes it largely luck-based to build on high difficulties - can only be built on flat desert, which makes absolutely zero sense - the "real" city of Petra famously had burial temples literally carved from the mountains.

Spoiler

7pK8I7G.png

(picture from Wikipedia)

 

Edited by ping
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The Mainz Cathedral was first inaugurated on 28 or 29 August 1009. It was also heavily damaged by a fire on the same day (whichever it was), likely caused by the illumination during the ceremony. The inauguration of the rebuilt Cathedral happened almost 30 years later, on 10 November 1036.

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The Democracy Index has been published biannually between 2006 and 2010, and every year since. In the year 2021, North Korea was passed as the lowest-ranking country in the world for the first time.

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The yakuza originated during the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603 - 1868) with two separate groups of outcasts. The first of those groups were the tekiya, wandering peddlers who traveled from village to village, selling low-quality goods at festivals and markets. Many tekiya belonged to the burakumin social class, a group of outcasts or "non-humans," which was actually below the four-tiered Japanese feudal social structure. Since the end of World War II, yakuza gangs have rebounded in popularity after a lull during the war. The Japanese government estimated in 2007 that there were more than 102,000 yakuza members working in Japan and abroad, in 2,500 different families. Despite the official end of discrimination against burakumin in 1861, more than 150 years later, many gang members are descendants of that outcast class. Others are ethnic Koreans, who also face considerable discrimination in Japanese society.

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Stigler's Law of Eponymy, named after statistics professor Stephen Stigler, states that no scientific law is named after its actual discoverer. To make the law self-evident, Stigler credited sociologist Robert K. Merton, although that wasn't really necessary. Wikipedia cites a number of earlier formulations similar to Stigler's law, going back to Mark Twain and Stigler's own father.

The earliest known example (as far as I can tell) is Pythagoras' theorem. It's possible, but unlikely that Pythagoras was the first to find a mathematic proof for it, but the theorem itself has been found being used in Babylonian cuneiform over one thousand years older than Pythagoras. It was also in use in India at the time Pythagoras was alive.

A very recent example is the "Pfizer vaccine", which has been developed by the relatively small German company BioNTech. Pfizer (and the Chinese Fosun conglomerate) supported clinical trials, logistics, and manufacturing. In Germany, it's still most commonly referred to as "BioNTech Impfstoff", but I believe it's the "Pfizer vaccine" in most other countries.

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George Orwell (The pen name of Eric Arthur Blair) used that pen name due in part to the fact that he disliked the name Eric- It reminded him a of a "prig" in a Victorian boys' story.

...I have no idea what a prig is.

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