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

[ping]

"Perpetual Peace" between the Byzantine and Sassanid (Persian) empires lasted for about 8 years, between 532 and 540, following the Iberian war that those two powers had waged.

[joevar]

Indonesia founding president really likes women and open about it to the point that KGB and CIA attempt at blackmailing him at one time by "trapping" him in scandal with women actually backfired.

Instead of becoming scandal , it becomes infamous legend. Where he actually delighted when confronted about it and even ask if theres extra copies of any secret recording of him "doing it" to the blackmailer. Much to the surprises of the Russia. Similar event happen with CIA too

 

 

[𝐍𝐲𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐥]

In Japanese mythology, Izanagi and Izanami were a divine couple, brother and sister, who had a principle role in creating the islands of Japan and from whom many important and elemental kami had their birth. Izanagi bathed in the sea to purify himself from contact with the dead. When he bathed, a number of deities came into being. The sun goddess Amaterasu was born from his left eye, the moon god Tsukiyomi was born from his right eye, and the storm god Susano-o was born from his nose. 

 Izanagi and Izanami

 Tsukiyomi

 Susano-o

 Amaterasu

Edited February 14, 2023 by Chad Narukami

[𝐍𝐲𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐥]

Orpheus in Greek mythology was a Thracian bard, legendary musician and prophet. He was also a renowned poet and, according to the legend, travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, and even descended into the underworld of Hades, to recover his lost wife Eurydice. 

 

[Sidereal Wraith]

Chad Narukami thinks Star Wars is mid.

[Benice]

The government of Nigeria suggested that women should not wear miniskirts in public because it may cause drivers to become distracted.

[𝐍𝐲𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐥]

The pantheon of Ancient Greece contained hundreds of deities, and whilst today, the most famous of these deities are those based upon Mount Olympus, there was a whole plethora of deities who preceded the likes of Zeus and Poseidon.
 
One of these earlier deities was the goddess Nyx, a “dark” goddess, one associated with night, and one a powerful one at that. Nyx, according to Hesiod’s Theogony, was one of the Protogenoi, the primordial first born gods of the Greek cosmos. To this end, Nyx was considered to be the daughter of the goddess Chaos, the very first of all deities.
 
Nyx would effectively become the goddess of Night, and was depicted as a beautiful woman, dressed in black, surrounded by mist, and often in the company of some of her numerous children.

In the most common timeline of Greek mythology, Nyx was partnered with Erebus (darkness), and would produce to children also named as Protogenoi, Aether and Hemera. Conversely, Aether and Hemera as Light and Day, were the opposite of their parents, Night and Darkness. 

Nyx would reside in the depths of Tartarus, the dark recesses of the Underworld, and the dark misty air which swirled around Tartarus was said to be Erebus. Many of the other dark deities of Ancient Greece would also reside there.
 
Each night Nyx would emerge from her cave within Tartarus, and hand in hand with Erebus, would block out the light emitted from Aether, bringing night and darkness to the world. 

The next morning Hemera would then emerge from Tartarus, and sweep away the darkness of night, and Nyx would return to her abode. Thus mother and daughter were never in the same place at the same time.
 
In later Greek mythology, the likes of Eos, Helios, and Apollo would replace the roles of Aether and Hemera, but Nyx herself was never subjugated; an indication of the esteem which the powerful Nyx was held in. 

[Benice]

On 12/12/2022 at 5:44 AM, Orpheus Telos said:

Arsène Lupin is a fictional gentleman thief and master of disguise created in 1905 by French writer Maurice Leblanc. The character was first introduced in a series of short stories serialized in the magazine Je sais tout. The first story, "The Arrest of Arsène Lupin", was published on the 15th of July, 1905.

To my knowledge, Lupin's stories were the first to feature Herlock Sholmes! Leblanc tried to have Sherlock Holmes and Lupin clash in a 1906 publication, but after Doyle's (Sherlock Holmes' author) legal objection, Leblanc simply changed it to Herlock Sholmes, who would become a recurring character in the series. About a century later, Ace Attorney would reuse this wonderfully cheeky move!

[ping]

On 6/10/2022 at 9:43 PM, ping said:

The StarCraft II player Eo "soO" Yun-su is famous in the scene for reaching a lot of finals and then losing - he lost six finals of the Koran GSL without ever winning that competition, plus some international silver medals, most notably during the 2017 world championship. His first victory at a big global event was quite emotional as a result.

A bit of a follow-up to this post, about the 2023 edition of the "big global event" that soO was finally able to win in 2019. For a bit of context, IEM Katowice has become the "official" world championship of StarCraft 2 after the game was more or less evicted from Blizzcon in 2020, making it the instead of one of the highlights of the competitive SC2 calendar.

This year's Katowice tournament was held about 6 weeks ago, with a very surprising winner in Li Peinan, a Chinese Terran player who very recently changed his ID from "TIME" to "Oliveira". He came into the tournament as #21 in a ranking based on tournament results (although that has to be taken with a grain of salt because it's not easy for a Chinese player to participate in offline tournaments abroad), but managed to punch his way through the playoffs beating...

• HeRoMaRinE (German Terran player, #14, semi-finalist in Kato 2022)
• Reynor (Italian Zerg, #4, world champion 2021)
• herO (Korean Protoss, #2, won another premier global tournament as well as the Korean GSL in 2022)
• Maru (Korean Terran, #1, first player to win five GSL titles)

...on his way, succeeding soO as the Biggest Upset in this event's history.

An interesting parallel between soO and Oliveira's tournament runs is that their miraculous playoff runs were both preceded by incredibly close advancement from the group stage. They both finished their groups with two wins and three losses, but a good enough map score to put them ahead of three other players with the same 2-3 match score, allowing them to secure the third and last playoff spot of their respecitive groups.

Both of them beat the 4th place by a single point in the map score, and both of them lost the direct match against the 4th place, which means that had they won one match 2-1 instead of 2-0, or lost 0-2 instead 1-2, they would've had a disappointing early exit instead of an emotional triumph. Heck, had the respective 4th place gotten a 2-0 instead of a 2-1, or 1-2 instead of a 0-2, they would've kicked soO/Oliveira out of the tournament.

It might also be worth mentioning that for Oliveira's final opponent, Maru, this has been a pretty immense loss. Even though Maru is considered by many to be the best SC2 player of all time, he has been chasing an international offline tournament win for a good while now, and this playoff bracket was, honestly, taylor-made for him to finally exorcise that demon. He won his group, allowing him to skip the first playoff round, and his two opponents leading up to the finals were Solar and Ragnarok, two Korean Zergs who both have had terrible records against Maru. Ragnarok even did him the favour of removing Serral from the tournament, the reigning champion and the other guy who is considered by many to be the best SC2 player of all time. With his match-up against Oliveira also being highly in his favour - both players mentioned practicing with each other, and Maru kicking Oliveira's butt consistently - most commentators/analysts were probably already trying to find unique ways to express that "Maru had some bracket luck, but he still deserves the title".

Oh, and finally - last week, Maru and Oliveira ran into each other in the quarterfinal of a smaller tournament organised by a commentator/streamer. Evidently, Maru was still pissed, since he utterly crushed Oliveira in a clean 4-0 victory - but then he again lost in the finals, this time against the Danish Protoss MaxPax.

And, to heck with it, MaxPax fits this topic perfectly. Finally finally - MaxPax is, by far, the best SC2 player in the world who doesn't visit any offline events. He's a top contender in any online tournament (although he hasn't won a really big one yet), but nobody even knows what he looks like. At first, when he was still underage, people suspected that his parents didn't want him to participate, but since he turned 18 at some point in 2022, it appears that... he himself just doesn't want to. This has led to a bunch of meme-y suspicions - that he is part of the Danish royal family, that he's actually an A.I., or that he's Reynor playing Protoss (which he's genuinely extremely good at).

[ping]

Contrary to what appears obvious, the word "outrage" is not a compound word made from  "out" + "rage". Instead, it comes directly from the French language: Outrage is "outre-age", which literally translates to beyond-ness, as in "something beyond what's acceptable".

[𝐍𝐲𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐥]

First hinted at in early December 1999, Devil May Cry started out as the earliest incarnation of Resident Evil 4. Players also noticed a strong resemblance to Leon S. Kennedy due to Dante being a re-designed model of Leon from RE4.

 

[ping]

In the first Pokémon generation, there are more Ghost type attacks (three) than Rock type attacks (two: Rock Throw and Rock Slide).

[ping]

The term "Ferengi" in Star Trek, used for a people with a hyper-capitalist, misogynistic culture, shares its etymological root with the term "French", used for a people/country in Western Europe.

The common root is "Frank"/"frankish", referring to not what we now call France, but to the Frankish empire, which under Charlemagne span from Brittany to the Balkans. Crusaders in the 11th and 12th would often introduce themselves as "Franks", even if they were actually, say, Norman. In Arabic, this then became "Farang" or "Faranj", from where the word spread throughout Asian languages as far away from Europe as Thailand. Specifically, the Wikipedia article on Ferengi cites a ST writer referring to the usage in the Persian language.

[𝐍𝐲𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐥]

Half Life 2's Corpse01.mdl uses a real burnt human face as the texture, supposedly the person was taken out by the mafia and was burnt to make him harder to identify, the picture was taken from a medical book

Edited April 4, 2023 by 𝙇𝙤𝙠𝙞

[ping]

The currently ongoing ASL Season 15, the Korean StarCraft: Broodwar league had a funny little monkey's paw situation:

Spoiler

Between the round of 24 and the ro16, there's a group selection in which the semi-finalists from the previous ASL each pick a player to play against, then those players pick a third player for their group, then those third players pick the final players.

The important part is that the winner of the previous season then has the power to swap two players at the very end of the selection process, with some restrictions in play that don't matter for this story. This season, that power was held by RoyaL, a Terran player who, instead of making his own group easier, planned to screw over two of his biggest obstacles for another championship run, fellow Terran player Light (widely considered to be the best player right now) and the Protoss Snow (who is incredibly strong against Terran specifically). RoyaL's plan was to put both of them into the same group, to make it likely that at least one of them wouldn't be able to advance.

That plan worked out very nicely: During the regular selection, RoyaL ended up with three Zerg players in his group, a match-up that he was very confident in, so he didn't feel the need to change anything about his own group. Other players also assisted him in setting up a veritable group of death for Light and Snow: they picked Light into a group with SoulKey (a Zerg player whose only weakness is said to be the mirror match-up) and Best (another very strong Protoss player, although he tends to underperform in the ASL), which allowed RoyaL to then shove Snow into the mix.

And things went even better than planned on match day - Best somewhat surprisingly won the group by beating first SoulKey and then Light, and SoulKey then managed to eliminate first Snow and then Light from the tournament, following Best into the quarterfinals. Both players that RoyaL wanted eliminated, well, were eliminated.

However, you probably guessed it - RoyaL had already been eliminated himself when the group of death was played. Despite his confidence in the vs. Zerg match-up, he was kicked out of the tournament without a single map win - he first lost to Shine (a very tricky Zerg player) and then the elimination match against Action (a much more standard, but mechanically excellent macro Zerg).

 

[Benice]

Phantom of the Opera's Broadway run, which began on January 26, 1983, today closed after a mere 13,981 performances.

[𝐍𝐲𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐥]

Former POTUS Richard Nixon once spoke about his desire to become a rapper later in life. 

“I have often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics.” - Richard Nixon

[𝐍𝐲𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐥]

Apparently during WWII there was an SS officer that was so vile that even other SS members didn't want to interact with him. I won't describe what he did, but even other SS officers thought he went too far. His name was Oskar Dirlewanger.

[Benice]

During Phil Collin's Not Dead Yet tour, the tickets for the five concerts at Royal Albert Hall, which has a capacity of over 5,000 people, sold out in fifteen seconds.

[𝐍𝐲𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐥]

Last year in South Dakota, the skies turned green due to a derecho storm, a “widespread, long-lived wind storm associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms”

 

[𝐍𝐲𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐥]

Some tumors can contain pockets of hair, teeth & very rarely, grow more complex organs such as eyes, feet, hands as well as other limbs.

Make sure your tumor brushes its teeth every night before bed

Edited April 30, 2023 by 𝙇𝙤𝙠𝙞

[ping]

There's a medieval weapon, specifically a polearm, named the Bohemian Earspoon ("Böhmischer Ohrlöffel").

[𝐍𝐲𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐥]

Here's some random creepy facts I got from an r/AskReddit thread!

In the average persons life, they will walk past at least 10 murderers in their lifetime and walk past at least 50 sex offenders.

A couple went on a walk in the woods at night and stepped on something weird, kinda like skin. They heard a rustle in the bushes and left. A couple years later, there watching the arrest of Ted Bundy. He said the time he got closest to getting cought is right after he murderd somebody in the woods and a couple stepped on the body.

You can easily cut off the blood flow to your arm by using an object like a cricket ball to obstruct your armpit.

You are more likely to choke on your vomit while high and die than to overdose.

 

[ping]

In the first generation of Pokémon game, Hitmonlee had three signature moves that no other Pokémon could learn: Rolling Kick, Jump Kick, and High Jump Kick. The second generation kind of added a fourth move to that list: Mega Kick, although this was learnable via TM by a number of Pokemon in Gen 1, which could then be traded to Gen 2 games. Similarly, Pokémon other than Hitmonlee could only learn Mega Kick in the Gen 2 Kanto remakes (this time via tutor), again making it kinda-but-not-entirely a signature move for Hitmonlee in the following generations.

Another quirk of this sort is that while the move Meteor Mash is generally associated with Metagross, it has never been its signature move: Clefairy immediately got access to that move when it was introduced, too. Oddly enough, in the 9th generation, Meteor Mash is a signature move - but for Lucario, because neither Metagross's nor Clefairy's evolutionary lines are available, at least not yet. Lucario even managed to steal a second signature move in Bone Rush, initially exclusive to Cubone and Marowak, who also aren't present in the gen 9 games at this time.

i also want to mention Cross Chop here - personally, I very much associate this move with the Machop line and Machamp in particular (y'know, four arms, Cross Chop, I always pictured it as all four arms punching at the same time), so I thought it was kinda funny that this is now the signature move of the Mankey line. However, Mankey and Primeape were already able to learn this move per level-up when it was introduced in Gen 2, just like the Machop line, and there's even a handful of additional Pokémon that could learn it as an egg move.

[ping]

Every South Korean became one or two years younger just a few days ago, because the country officially switched their age reckoning to the western standard.

The traditional Korean (or East Asian, it used to be standard in China, Japan, and Vietnam, too) age basically counted calender years in which you were alive - the year in which you're born is your first year, so a newborn child immediately has an age of one, and on the next New Year (Jan 1, Korea adopted the Gregorian calender in the 1980s), your second year of life starts. This means that a baby born on Dec 31 would be "two years old" the day after its birth.