SpooneyOdin,

Cleopatra was born closer to the invention of cellphones than the building of the pyramids

calhoon2005,
@calhoon2005@aussie.zone avatar

I’ve always thought this was amazing

rikudou,
@rikudou@lemmings.world avatar
  • Wombat feces are cube shaped.
  • Bananas are berries and strawberries are not.
  • Oxford university is older than the Aztec empire.
  • Humans share 50% of our DNA with bananas.
Psychobiologist,

Until recently the word “factoid” didn’t mean a small bit of trivia. It meant something that sounded true or was accepted as a fact even though it was incorrect.

Kodemystic,
@Kodemystic@lemmy.kodemystic.dev avatar

Russia is actually pretty small and it almost fits inside Africa. Try it out: www.thetruesize.com

EDIT: Ok I expressed myself in the wrong way. What I meant was, Russia is not as big as I thought it was. Of course, it’s still really huge.

andyMFK,

“pretty small”, it’s like 2 Canada’s.

datendefekt,
@datendefekt@lemmy.ml avatar

I think that says more about how unbelievably massive Africa is.

lagomorphlecture,

Africa is, like, huge. So saying Russia is small because it fits within Africa doesn’t make it sound small to me.

Kodemystic,
@Kodemystic@lemmy.kodemystic.dev avatar

Ok I expressed myself in the wrong way. What I meant was, Russia is not as big as I thought it was. Of course, it’s still really huge.

iamhazel,
@iamhazel@beehaw.org avatar

Wait so it’s purely projection distortion that makes Russia seem half the size of the old world?? This blew my mind.

Also fun fact Google seems to have stopped outlining Russia (not other countries) when you click them in Google Maps.

Velonie,

You got me clicking countries on the map now. I really can’t find a consistent reason why sometimes it shows the outline and sometimes it doesn’t…

  • Canada: yes
  • Russia: no
  • South Korea: no
  • China: no
  • Spain: no
  • France: yes
  • Iraq: yes
  • Kyrgyzstan: no
  • Mongolia: yes
  • Japan: no
  • USA: yes
  • Malaysia: yes

What pattern is there here???

iamhazel,
@iamhazel@beehaw.org avatar

Maybe if there are territorial disputes / conflicts (Ukraine also no) they do this instead of picking a side? No idea

Flannels9658,

All the planets in the solar system can fit in the space between the Earth and the Moon

darcy,
@darcy@sh.itjust.works avatar

this is actually a misconception! the gravity of the planets combined would cause them all to crash into each other!

intensely_human,

Or would they just stack up?

rmuk,

I just did a simulation with representative bodies that included spheroid objects of varying densities to approximate the makeup of the major solar bodies and all the fruit bounced everywhere and the lady behind the counter is really upset now.

yogthos,
@yogthos@lemmy.ml avatar

European settlers committed genocide in America on such an incredible scale that the global climate cooled.

zepheriths,

I don’t people consider the transmission of the black death a Chinese genocide of Europe. The vast majority of death in the America where cause by illness, not direct Europe action. Is it a travesty? yes. would it have happened with out Europeans? No. however It was not intended just like how the black death wasn’t intended.

yogthos,
@yogthos@lemmy.ml avatar

That’s just false. This was done with conscious intent, and this is actually documented. For example, Amherst said in a letter to Bouquet that ‘This is a good idea to spread smallpox just be careful you don’t get it yourself, You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race.’

The text of Amherst’s letter reads;

“You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race. I should be very glad your scheme for hunting them down by dogs could take effect, but England is at too great a distance to think of that at present,” wrote Amherst in a 1763 letter.

d’Errico wrote in his study of Amherst that “None of these other letters show a deranged mind or an obsession with cruelty.” Amherst’s “venom” was only directed at Indigenous peoples, he added.

JoeyJoJoJuniour,

While this person may have planned on using small pox blankets, what the original commenter, and the person you responded too are talking about is the fact that 55 million Native American died between 1492-1600. This introduction of disease was largely accidental

yogthos,
@yogthos@lemmy.ml avatar

55 million Native Americans died as a result of a systemic genocide by any means necessary, including intentional biological warfare. This is a pretty well documented historic fact. Here are a couple of more examples for you:

JoeyJoJoJuniour,

The Cherokee Round up that you reference happened in 1838 (200 years after the end of my statistic). I agree that there was systemic genocide, physical and cultural, but 90% of the indigenous population of North America died before those policies even started

Mugmoor,
@Mugmoor@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Drinking Water has a 100% fatality rate. Everyone who drinks it eventually dies.

(also a good example of why correlation =/= causation)

chtk,
@chtk@feddit.nl avatar

Drinking Water has a 100% fatality rate.

93%, actually.

good.is/…/the-population-of-the-dead-how-many-peo…

breadsmasher,
@breadsmasher@lemmy.world avatar

The country claiming to have the most “freedom” of any country has the highest incarceration rate of any country.

Asafum,

Not so fun fact: the constitution allows for slavery as long as it’s a punishment for a crime.

Hmmm… Nah, those dots don’t connect at all.

zkikiz,

And many plantations converted to prisons that are still in operation to this day.

And many states can’t reduce their prison populations because then they’d lose free labor.

And some states use prison labor to staff the governor’s mansion with butlers.

banana_tree,
@banana_tree@lemmy.ml avatar

I’ve noticed Americans tend to be surprised that Europe is bigger than the US

spechter,

As an European I’m also surprised that the US’ vertical Expansion is only around twice that of France.

cyberic,
@cyberic@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

What do you mean by vertical expansion?

Aiyub,

Not the one who said it, but it would imply distance north to south

cyberic,
@cyberic@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Thanks, I was trying to figure out if it was elevation or structure height

catshit_dogfart,

We might actually not know why magnets work.

The formula used to prove the functionality of magnets can also be used to prove the existence of a theoretical state called a monopolar magnet - positive or negative on both sides. So either monopolar magnets can exist, even if in some esoteric circumstance, or we don’t know why magnets work.

rikudou,
@rikudou@lemmings.world avatar

@ChatGPT Is the below text true?

We might actually not know why magnets work.

The formula used to prove the functionality of magnets can also be used to prove the existence of a theoretical state called a monopolar magnet - positive or negative on both sides. So either monopolar magnets can exist, even if in some esoteric circumstance, or we don’t know why magnets work.

williams_482,
@williams_482@startrek.website avatar

You realize that ChatGPT has no concept of “true”, right? It produces output which looks coherent and reasonable and tends to stumble into truthful statements on accident, by virtue of drawing from a dataset of people saying mostly true things. Of course, the bot is equally capable of spouting off outright lies in an equally convincing manner.

This is a very unreliable way to verify a surprising fact. I strongly recommend against it.

bstix,

The world’s two largest cities by area are both on Greenland.

worldpopulationreview.com/…/largest-city-in-the-w…

Gnubeutel,

That would be a diameter of about 800 km. Don’t they have multiple centers that could be called towns? With churches, administration and schools? They just can’t be bothered to split it up.

bstix,

The towns in this municipality on Greenland used to be split up. The main capital is among them, so it made sense to grasp the 800 km circumference even if it’s just a few people. Anyway it’s according to the topic, so as stupid as it might be, it is factually the largest cities by area, and goes to show that the question of which is the largest city is ambiguous.

Tokyo is usually considered the largest city, due to the largest population overall, but it doesn’t have the largest area (Greenland) nor the largest population of a single municipal (Chongqing, China) nor the largest density (Macau, China) nor the largest area of skyscrapers (Hong Kong), so it’s a thing depending on definitions.

It doesn’t really matter much. If you’re in the middle it, it’s all just city until the horizon. Well, except for Greenland. You can probably throw a stone across all the houses in the largest city by area.

DumbAceDragon,
@DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works avatar

A fairly large amount of traditional Italian dishes aren’t Italian. Many of these, such as carbonara, pizza, and tiramisu, were actually invented in the US, and only became known in Italy sometime in the mid-late 20th century.

source

Edit: I’ve been corrected, these dishes do originate from Italy. I should’ve re-read the article instead of going off of memory.

NorwegianBlues,

This is not stated accurately. The American versions of pizza and carbonara we’re invented in the US, but there were and are original Italian versions.

birdcat,
@birdcat@lemmy.ml avatar

In future space travel spaghettification will be a serious concern.

demesisx,
@demesisx@programming.dev avatar
aCosmicWave,

“This sentence is a lie” sounds false but is actually true. I think?

I_Am_Jacks_____,

Vsauce?

freundTech,

Every Rubik’s Cube, no matter how scrambled, can be solved in at most 20 rotations.

tieme,

I don’t think this is true for all of them. My cube takes at least a couple hundred rotations and then you have to take the stickers off and move them around to solve it.

norawibb,
@norawibb@sh.itjust.works avatar

nooooo dont peel the stickers

take it apart

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