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

[Sidereal Wraith]

Without the Shadow, a popular pulp magazine/road hero in the 1930s, Batman wouldn’t exist.

[ping]

The Egypt expy on Terry Pratchett's Discworld is called "Djelibeybi", "Child of the Djel" in their native language. A little surprised that Americans wouldn't get the joke, Pterry later introduced the country of Hersheba. The latter was only ever referenced as a neighboring country to the more importang Klatch (Discworld's Arabia), while the novel Pyramids mostly played in Djelibeybi.

Pyramids also happens to be the inspiration for Pratchett's nickname Pterry. Most likely referencing the Ptolemaic dynasty, names starting with "pt" seem to be fairly common in Djelibeybi: The main character's name is Pteppic, short for Pteppicymon, and the female lead is named Ptraci (it took this German butt way too long to recognize that second name). Fans started to use Pterry as a nickname, and Pterry himself seemed to like it too, even using it as his user name in a discworld newsgroup.

[ping]

Out of the three characters featured in the very first Peanuts comic strip, only good ol' Charlie Brown would remain relevant for the entire duration of the strip. The other two, Shermy and Patty (not the Peppermint one), slowly fazed out of the regular cast, mostly because their personalities were relatively generic. Snoopy, while certainly one of the originals, only made his first appearance in the third strip.

The first added permanent character did a little better: Violet distinguished herself as a more snobbish character, and while she didn't remain a main character (probably because Lucy could fill a similar role), she made the occasional appearance throught almost the entire run. The least successful added character was Frieda, whose character could mostly be boiled down to "I am superficial and very proud of my naturally curly hair".

[ping]

W. A. Mozart was baptizes as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus, or in a somewhat "germanified" fashion Joannes Chrisostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb. He would only sign with the last two of those names (or even just with Wolfgang Mozart) and didn't seem to particularly like the Greek or German form of his fourth given name (which means something along the lines of "love of god" or "loved by god"). During his tournee in Italy as a teenager, he called himself Wolfgango Amadeo; as an adult, he went half-French with Wolfgang Amadé. He only used the Latin Amadeus as a joke in a couple letters, but for some reason, that turned out to be the version that ultimately stuck after Mozart's untimely death.

[ping]

Paul Simon based his song American Tune directly on the choral Oh Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (Oh Sacred Head, Now Wounded | lit. 'Oh head full of blood and wounds'), whose most well-known appearance is in J.S. Bach's St Matthew Passion. In fact, it appears several times with different lyrics and harmonisation throughout the Passion.

The choral itself was initially a Latin hymn translated into German, on a (slightly simplified in rhythm) tune of a mostly worldly love song (Mein G'müt ist mir verwirret - something along the lines of 'My temper has been confused').

Only 'mostly' worldly, because despite the text basically being "I wish she would love me back" stretched out to five verses, the first letters of those five verses spell M-A-R-I-A, referencing the Virgin Mary.

[ping]

It's not really an exotic piece of information that Blitzball, an underwater rugby-like sport, is a huge "mini"game in Final Fantasy X's story, but I'll still quickly explain to set up the Random Fact (tm): The main character Tidus, a star player in his hometown, is recruited by Wakka into the Besaid Aurochs after Tidus is washed ashore at the island of Besaid. The Aurochs are famously the worst team ever, never having won a game in (iirc) twenty years.

The savvy video game player will probably expect them to be a group of Magikarps that will grow into top-tier players, but they would be severely disappointed - the Aurochs grow into adequate players, not terrible, but also far from the best in their respective roles. Instead, the "Magikarp team" comes from a neighboring island: The Kilika Beasts start just as bad, if not worse, than the Aurochs, but most of them end up with very good stats - eventually. It would take a lot of time to get to the XP regions where the Beasts become genuinely good.

The only Auroch (apart from TIdus) that is technically the best at something is their goalkeeper, Keepa (yes, really). At first, he goes from "shitty goalkeeper" to "reasonably good goalkeeper", but at very high levels (way higher than i ever got), his ability suddenly skyrockets - except it's not his goalkeeping ability, but his shooting score, which even reaches the maximum value of 99.

It doesn't make him the best striker, though, not even close. Other strikers can reach the shooting cap (or at least get close) by using special techniques, and they're much better at actually getting a good shot than Keepa, who is a slow swimmer, bad at breaking through defenders, and bad at stealing the ball. But it's still a funny easter egg for people with more patience for this game than I ever could muster.

And since I'm already on the topic - the teams other than the Aurochs and the Beast are:

• The Al-Bhed Psyches - by far the strongest team at the beginning, although most of them will worsen very slowly until they're about average.
• The Luca Goers - also a very strong all-around team initially, but they fall off harder and quicker than the Psyches
• The Ronso Fangs - Ronso are huge cat people and their Blitzball players are slow, but very tough.
• The Guado Glories - Guado are wood elves, kinda, and they're frail, but very good at passing and intercepting the opponent's passes.

Spoiler

A random ping fact would be that back when I was playing FFX for the fist time, I spent entirely too much time looking up what Blitzball players to recruit to get the best, most awesomest team possible. And then I realised that the game becomes really easy very quickly, even if you just stick to the Aurochs, and actually braindead if you actually have better stats than the opponent.

 

Edited September 17, 2021 by ping

[Benice]

Mozart most likely died of undercooked pork.

 

Bikinis (as in the clothing) are named after the atoll that was bombed! The bloke who made the swimwear was looking for a good name for his product, and he saw the news about the US's nuclear testing and decided that naming a clothing article after it would be shocking and would bring attention, and therefore money, to him.

[Lightchao42]

The NES classic Ninja Gaiden is called Ninja Ryukenden in Japan, because the developers thought the latter name would be too hard for English speakers to pronounce. "Gaiden" was picked for the title because it sounded cool, since it means "side story" despite the game not being a spinoff of anything. But oddly enough, Ninja Ryukenden was supposed to be called Ninja Gaiden to begin with, but was changed at the last minute because Tecmo's president felt it lacked impact.

On the other hand, the modern hack and slash trilogy is titled "Ninja Gaiden" even in Japan. The title fits better in this case, because those games are arguably a side story of Dead or Alive, which Ryu Hayabusa also appears in.

Edited October 5, 2021 by Lightchao42

[ping]

Antonio Salieri has been done dirty in the Film Amadeus, but the slander against his person has been around for much longer.

The idea that Salieri was "at fault for Mozart's death" was first brought up by the composer and writer Anton Schindler, who cited Salieri "fantasising" about this as a result of Salieri's deteriorating health. This was quickly refuted by Salieri's careworkers and physician, but apparently, the rumors still floated around - according to a former pupil, Salieri would directly object to them shortly before his death.

In reality, there isn't much cause to believe that there was much enmity between the two. Mozart was occasionally complaining about Salieri in letters to his father, but nothing points to anything worse than some professional disagreements. In is last known letter to his wife, Mozart writes about him and Salieri visiting a performance of Die Zauberflöte, proudly noting that Salieri seemed very impressed with the entire work. After Mozart's death, his younger son would learn composition from Salieri, and at a later time, Salieri would speak in favour of a memorial for Mozart in the Karlskirche of Vienna.

It's likely that Salieri's undeservedly bad reputation was amplified by early German nationalism - here the noble genius German composer, there the evil, petty Italian (nevermind that Salieri lived in Vienna for most of his life).

Edited October 6, 2021 by ping

[Sidereal Wraith]

Tokyo Mirage Session # FE caused me to question my faith in humanity. Tokyo Mirage Session # FE Encore caused me to lose my faith in humanity.

[ping]

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of the NBA's greatest players on the center position and to this day #1 scorer of all time, was a martial arts student under Bruce Lee. He also made an appearance in the movie "Game of Death" in a 5-minute fight against Bruce Lee's character.

[AnonymousSpeed]

Y'know, this is probably my favorite thread on the site. It's better than a university education.

[Benice]

There is a work of classical music titled the Toy Symphony; most often you will see it credited to being Haydn's work, but occasionally it will be listed as Mozart's instead; this is because some suggest that it was actually written by Leopold Mozart, the famous Mozart's dad. Other people theorize that it's a monk named Edmund Angerer who is the true author of the piece, owing to a piece that he wrote that both precedes the Toy Symphony and is nearly identical, other than the key it was in.

To further muddy the waters, multiple other people also wrote Toy Symphonies! The most recent one that I am aware of was written in the 1950s.

[ping]

While the Civilization series generally tries to give its civs an appearance based on actual history, some of the civs and their leaders are pure fantasy. Most infamous might be Sitting Bull leading a unified "Native American" civilization in Civ4, or the Hawaiian king Kamehameha leading "Polynesia".

Civ2 has a bunch of fictional leaders - all its civs have a male and a female leader, even if there is no known female regent in history, so the designers had to grasp at straws at times:

• The Aztecs are led by Montezuma (as they always are) - or by "Nazca", named after ancient geoglyphs in southern Peru.
• Hippolyta, a demigoddess in Greek mythology.
• Japan got Amaterasu, a sun goddess.
• Scheherezade, heroine and narrator of the Persian romance 1001 Nights.
• Shakaza is Shaka Zulu, but as a woman.

The newest games also have a handful of mythical or semi-mythical figures:

• Dido, the first queen of Carthage, appears in both Civ5 and Civ6.
• Gilgamesh, a legendary Sumerian king.
• Kupe, in Maori mythology the discoverer of New Zealand

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Not really related but it's the same video game series:

In Civ5, when you catch a spy sent by another civ to steal your tech, you have the option to forgive them for a little bonus to their attitute. What's a little funny about this is that when they ask for forgiveness, they use their defeat quotes, which makes them come across as big drama queens and kings, especially when you understand the voice lines.

[ping]

One of the surviving clay tablets from the iron age empire of Assyria contains this heartfelt message from a boy at a residential school to his mother:

Quote

 

Tell the Lady Zinnu: Her son, Idensen sends the following message.

From year to year, the clothes of the young gentlemen here become better. But you let my clothes get worse from year to year. The son of Adad Idinam, whose father is only an assistant of my father, has two new sets of clothes, while you fuss even about a single set for me. In spite of the fact that you gave birth to me and his mother only adopted him, his mother loves him while you, you do not love me.

 

(transcribed from audio, so the names are most certainly incorrect)

[ping]

In Super Smash Brothers Melee, Princess Zelda technically has had a sharp and abrupt decline in her position - because her initially good (#6 out of 24 characters) position was based on a misunderstanding. Because Zelda can transform into Sheik, some of the contributors gave them a combined vote, and Sheik was initially thought to be the best character in the game. In following tier lists, Zelda was then put into lower-mid regions and then proceeded to slowly go down even further. The latest tier list (from half a year ago, actually) had her drop to the 24th position, only beating Kirby and Bowser.

I was somewhat surprised to see that Sheik was considered to be the best character until as late as 2005/06, 4-5 years after the initial release of the game. As someone largely unfamiliar with the competitve scene of the game, my impression was that Fox has always been the dominant character ('member the "No Items, Fox Only, Final Destination" meme?), but apparently, it's not that clear-cut even now. I guess it kinda makes sense - I remember Fox being incredibly hard to control for young ping, so it's quite possible that even the top players initially came closer to Sheik's skill ceiling than to Fox's.

[Benice]

The reason that orchestas tune to the oboe, despite the fact that it is not the loudest instrument, is because it is the most piercing and can be heard even through significantly louder instruments, such as trumpets or a robust french horn section.

[Benice]

This post right here will be my 240th post that contains the word "Yakuza". The first one was on Novemberr 22, 2020. It has been 326 days since then, meaning that I make a Yakuza post on 73.62% of days. 

...I may be a little obsessive.

[ping]

The first two Pokémon games have a handful of quirks that I to this day find rather funny - I honestly don't know how well-known these still are.

• Male and female Pokémon were only programmed into the second generation of games. Because it's possible to trade between 1st and 2nd gen, a Pokémon's sex had to be based on values already present in 1st gen, to keep it consistent for a Pokémon traded from 2nd to 1st and back to 2nd. The developments decided on the "individual values" of the attack stat, those being an innate, unchangable bonus to that stat. Long story short, in 2nd gen Pokemon, female Pokémon always have a lower attack stat than a male of the same species (provided that the species isn't all-male or all-female).
• Mew, which was intended to be event-exclusive, can be encountered and caught through a series of obscure steps. There are several ways to do this, so I'll just describe the one I'm the most familiar with:
  • North of the Nugget Bridge of Cerulean City, skip one specific trainer (a Youngster with a Flegmon). Continue on until you've crossed the Rock Tunnel.
  • On the route west of Lavender Town, skip the trainer right below the entrance to the Underground Path (a Gambler).
  • Pass the Underground, get the Fly HM and teach it to one of your Pokémon.
  • Go back through the Underground. Save. After leaving, go down one tile and immediately open the menu by pressing START.
  • Use Fly to go back to Cerulean. The Gambler you skipped before should spot you (i.e. a (!) appears), but you fly away anyway. If you mistimed, reload.
  • Fight the Youngster. Make sure that he has to move a tile to speak to you, or the game will freeze.
  • Fly back to Lavender and leave to the west. As soon as you leave the town, the menu will open by itself.
  • You can change your first Pokémon if you want, because when you close the menu, a wild Mew will appear.

I love this method because it just sounds like something your friend at school would make up to play a trick on you - including the plausible deniability of "well, you didn't get the Fly timing right, or it would've worked". Apparently, you can execute this quite a lot earlier by using Teleport instead of Fly and using a different trainer to escape from, allowing you to catch a Mew before you even face Misty for the second badge. And if you use another trainer than the Slowpoke Youngster, you can make other Pokémon appear, as well.

• The MissingNo. item multiplication might be the most famous Pokémon glitch of all time, I think: If you encounter the glitch Pokémon MissingNo in the 1st generation, the 6th item in your bag will be multiplied so that you have 128 of it. The easiest way to do this in Red and Blue was to talk to an old man in Viridian City who would give you the catching tutorial, and then fly to Cinnabar Island and surf up and down its eastern shore without actually entering the adjacent route. Unlike the Mew glitch, this one was discovered very early after release and was fixed (more or less) in the Yellow edition - the old man will force the catching tutorial, fail to catch the wild Pokémon, and then leave to buy cigarettes new Pokéballs, never to be seen again.
  It's still possible to encounter MissingNo. in the Yellow Edition to the same effect by playing around with the Mew glitch, but I believe it's much more likely to corrupt your save data - in Red/Blue, the glitch is quite safe as long as you don't actually catch the MissingNo.

[𝐍𝐲𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐥]

The first modern fragmentation grenade was the Mills bomb, which became available to British front-line troops in 1915. William Mills, a hand grenade designer from Sunderland, patented, developed and manufactured the "Mills bomb" at the Mills Munition Factory in Birmingham, England in 1915, designating it the No.5.

The initials AK represent Avtomat Kalashnikova, Russian for “automatic Kalashnikov,” for its designer, Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov, who designed the accepted version of the weapon in 1947

The AR-15 design was licensed to Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company (later Colt's Manufacturing LLC) in 1959, and upon its adoption by the U.S. Air Force in 1962, the AR-15 was designated the M16 by the Department of Defense.
 

[Interdimensional Observer]

Almond milk is nothing new, it was popular in the Middle Ages in Europe.

The reason for this popularity likely has everything to do with Lent. As Shrove Tuesday's alternative names of Mardi Gras and Fat/Pancake Tuesday indicate, this relates to medieval Lent being stricter than modern Lent, requiring the forsaking not just of meat, but all edible animal products- veganism. Almond milk provided an alternative to traditional dairy. And making loads of pancakes the day before Lent began used all your eggs and dairy milk.

That said the meat prohibitions of Lent applied solely to land animals, fish were allowed. This said, some peculiar creatures counted as "fish". Whales and porpoises were considered fish, albeit limited by law to the royal stomach. Beavers were fish too, and at least one species of waterfowl thought to spawn from barnacles on driftwood, due to Europeans not knowing where the birds went to breed.

Another exception to the veganism of ye olde Lente was butter. A "butter indulgence" could be paid to the local church so you have your favorite animal fat during the holy weeks without burning in Hell for it. It brought in enough money in France to finance the construction of the titular "Butter Tower" in Rouen. This said, the butter indulgence might've been necessary if you wished to live to see Easter. While olive oil could provide a plentiful non-animal source of lipids (fat) in Southern Europe, the north was too cold for olives to grow, and animals were the only real source of significant fat around. Humans need fat to live, as they do carbs, and proteins, so doing without them for 40 days would've been hazardous for one's health.

Edited October 15, 2021 by Interdimensional Observer

[Benice]

The most-sold video game ever is Minecraft, with over 238,000,000 copies sold. The next closest game is GTA 5, with 150 million, followed by EA Tetris with 100 mil, and Wii Sports, at nearly 83 million.

[𝐍𝐲𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐥]

Kenichi Yamamoto (March 5, 1925 – February 4, 1982) was the founder of the Yamaken-gumi yakuza gang, who were based in Kobe, Japan. It is the largest affiliate of the Yamaguchi-gumi. It is known as the first Yakuza clan
 

[ping]

The song "Song 2" by the British band Blur was written as a jab at the Grunge genre, which was overbearingly popular at the time. Unfortunately, it also turned out to be very catchy and energetic, people didn't register that it was meant as a parody, it was used a fair bit in advertising and video games, and it became one of the band's most iconic songs despite not really being typical of their overall work.

[ping]

The metropolis Ankh-Morpork on Terry Pratchett's Discworld is ruled by the Patrician Havelock Vetinari, who is portrayed as exeedingly analytical and dutiful towards the city's interests, himself living a very frugal life despite his position.

In the very first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, the protagonist Rincewind meets an unnamed "Patrician" who is described as obese and much more decadent (he seems to be quite fond of candied jellyfish). Fans assumed that this was supposed to be one of Vetinari's predecessors, Mad Lord Snapcase or Homocidal Lord Winder, but Pratchett stated that this Patrician was in fact Vetinari, who just lost a lot of weight due to the stress that comes with the job. When pressed about the very different mannerisms of the unnamed Patrician, Pratchett clarified that still, that was Vetinari, but written by a worse, or at least less experienced, author.

--

In a similar vein, the timeline of the Discworld series is a bit of a mess - most notably, there's a group of Epheban (read: not-Greek) philosophers that shows up both in a book playing vaguely during the same time as the rest of the series, and in a book set in the distant past. This was acknowledged, in a way, in the Thief of Time novel: In-universe, an attempt to capture the antropomorphic representation of time literally shattered the entire timeline. It was then patched together by the "history monks", but they weren't able to recreate it perfectly.