INTERESTING FACT OF THE DAY

Well there is the QI website

Originally Posted by Grinch

Well there is the QI website

cool.

Though who needs interesting facts or websites or tv when you can watch your pc/computer system go up and down quicker than a kid on a stannah stairlift. :P

Back though we'll see how long for.

1 more working day... 1 more working day... 1 more working day...

Did you know, that when fishing for Mackerel, you don't even need any bait on your line... they just come along and bite the hook anyway.

[Viney]

The land speed record for towing a caravan is 139 mph.

Now that i could beat. Anyone wanna lend me thier caravan and a car fast enough?

Napolean tried to poison himself but the poison was so old that it had lost its potentcy so he got hiccups instead!



I wonder if it was a monday morning?

Here's an interesting one for you...

An Albatross can cruise at 25mph while asleep!!

Sorry got diverted for a couple of days. Covered St George, Scooby Drew covered a bit about St Andrew. So not to leave our Welsh and Irish members out Ill give some "facts" about St David and St Patrick.

St David was an ascetic and lived a very simple life. He refused to eat meat so its probably unsurprising his symbol became that of the Leek which was an ancient symbol for Wales.

He was also the son of a King. Whether it was of Ceredigion or a smaller part of that area is unknown.

St Patrick is the patron saint of Nigeria as well as Ireland. This is because it was evangelised primarily by Irish missionaries.

Given post glacial Ireland never had snakes, it is suggested that the story of his banishing of snakes refers to the impact of his preaching. The pagan druids used the symbol of serpents and St Patrick is credited with the conversion of the whole of Ireland thereby "banishing" these serpent symbols.

[Richie]

Originally Posted by Quedos

Napolean tried to poison himself but the poison was so old that it had lost its potentcy so he got hiccups instead!



I wonder if it was a monday morning?

I though Napolean was poisoned by this wallpaper.... some thing to do with the colouring. arsenic..


Napoleon's Wallpaper

The story of Napoleon's wallpaper really begins in 1980 when Dr David Jones, a chemist at the University of Newcastle, was making a radio programme that was broadcast on the BBC. 'I wonder if anyone listening', David Jones asked the radio audience, 'knows the colour of Napoleon's wallpaper on St Helena. Because if we knew, it might just help to clear up a scientific mystery'.
Why did David Jones want to know the colour of Napoleon's wallpaper? He wanted to know if it could have contained arsenic!

The subject of the radio programme had been vapour chemistry, and one of the stories that David Jones, himself a chemist, had told was the intriguing one of Gosio's Disease. During the 19th century there had been a number of cases of arsenic poisoning that had rather puzzled everyone. Some people just became sick, but others laid low with a lesser malady became sicker still, and died. Arsenic was found, using the Marsh Test, foul play was sometimes suspected, and relatives accused. But in many cases it just didn't seem possible that the person had been deliberately poisoned. Until in 1893 an Italian Biochemist called Gosio worked out what was happening.

Scheele's Green was a colouring pigment that had been used in fabrics and wallpapers from around 1770. It was named after the Swedish chemist Scheele who invented it. The pigment was easy to make, and was a bright green colour. But Scheele's Green was copper arsenite. And under certain circumstances it could be deadly. Gosio discovered that if wallpaper containing Scheele's Green became damp, and then became mouldy (this was in the days of animal glues) the mould could carry out a neat chemical trick to get rid of the copper arsenite. It converted it to a vapour form of arsenic. Normally a mixture of arsine, dimethyl and trimethyl arsine. This vapour was very poisonous indeed. Breathe in enough of the vapour, and you would go down with a nasty case of arsenic poisoning.

Rasputin, who was the Siberian dude who they had a famously hard time killing might not have been poisoned at all.
Alledegly he was poisoned with cyanide, battered about the place, shot three times, and then posted into a hole in the ice of the Neva River, then "found" three days with evidence of him trying to "claw his way though the ice".

According to his daughter, he didnt eat sweet things, and thats where the cyanide was.

The reason they put the cyanide in with the sweet cakes is... it smells like almonds.

Someone who probably was poisoned though was Stalin. With Warfarin probably.
Stalin would invite all these govt people off to his house, and talk politics. But, what he would do is, invite you down there, and if he was about to off you, he would not invite you to the meal. You would just sit in your room, and food may be brought to you.

So, all the heads were out in his house, including a certain N Khrushchev, and Stalin retired into his room. No word for ages.

All the people started getting a little edgey, since no-one was being called for dinner. He had done this before, in a great purge, killed/lost an entire govt.

Anyway, someone, I forget who, maybe Khrushchev himself, went into his room. He saw Stalin on the floor, collapsed, ****ed himself, in a very bad state, but alive.
This is where its interesting. They closed the doors, and said he needed to rest or some rubbish. They left him in there for a good while, until the next day, and then thought about getting a doctor. But, the hilarious thing was, since Stalin HATED jews, and thought all his doctors were out to get him, he had them all banished to the Gulags.
So, the got some idiot medic, because that's all they had left, he may have been even still alive at this point, and he dispatched him in short order.

Ritchie - I agree with you. I was always lead to believe it was in his wallpaper.

Phillip Mac - not everyone can smell cyanide. Approximately 40% of the population cant and its genetic apparently. Im still trying to figure out why the ability to smell it would be genetic but numerous studies indicate it is.

Cyanide can also be found naturally. In plants, cyanides are usually bound to sugar molecules in the form of cyanogenic glycosides and serve the plant as defense against herbivores. In fact the Cassava roots have to be boiled extensively before they can be eaten. Cherries, apricots, peaches, and apples all contain cyanide in the stones/seeds.