• sploder@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    The dog that played specks girlfriend in Pee Wees big adventure is also the same dog that played precious in silence of the lambs.

    • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.works
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      8 hours ago

      This feels like one of those fun facts that theatres would have on screen with cheesy background music if you showed up to a movie too early

  • kittenzrulz123@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    16 hours ago

    Fun fact 1: Polish people are honoraribly black after they fought alongside the Haitians against the French (they switched sides as the only reason they were there was because France sent them there)

    Fun fact 2: Alaska was almost purchased by Lichtenstein

    Fun fact 3: Singapore was given independence against their own wishes

    Fun fact 4: Abraham Lincoln read some of the works of Karl Marx as he wrote for his favorite newspaper

  • WanderWisley@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    when the great pyramids were being built, there were still mammoths and sabertooth tigers walking the earth.

    • Machinist@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      I knew about the relict popularion of mammoths that was still around. Wasn’t aware of the tigers. Can you please tell me more?

      • WanderWisley@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        I can’t 100% give you facts. I just go off of the rough estimate of fossil records for both mammoth and sabertooth tigers roughly and this is just a random thing I like to tell people when I was younger to kind of blow their mind.

          • WanderWisley@lemmy.world
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            10 hours ago

            Another really good random “did you know” When the battle of Little Bighorn, a.k.a. custard‘s last stand happened the Brooklyn Bridge was just being completed in New York, and there were Native Americans who fought in the battle who were still alive to see Neil Armstrong step on the Moon so in the span of one lifetime we went from custard‘s last stand to one giant leap for all mankind.

  • fubarx@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    That REAL Pi actually ends at 7 digits. Discovered by a greengrocer named Dennis.

    There’s been an easy say to calculate it since 1800s using an abacus.

    Edit: thought the /s was implied with, you know, “Dennis.” I knew I should have gone with “Humperdink.”

    • WindyRebel@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      I would like to learn more about this. Wiki says:

      In the 5th century AD, Chinese mathematicians approximated π to seven digits, while Indian mathematicians made a five-digit approximation, both using techniques.

      So it looks like they were all approximations, but it actually is much longer like I was always taught.

  • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    One of the people that worked in Turkish translation of the “alice in wonderland” for Zambak magazine has the cool birthday “January 1st, 1969.”

  • Deestan@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    If presented with an old 1970-2000 era landline phone, I can call someone by rapidly hanging up in the pattern of their phone number.

    • rmuk@feddit.uk
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      11 hours ago

      In case anyone is wondering, this is how old phones with rotary dials worked: you wound the dial to the digit you needed and the built-in mechanism would automatically wind it back; as it did it would momentarily disconnect the line as it passed each digit generating pulses that the exchange would count. If you still live somewhere where landline phones exist odds are this still works because the exchange maintains backwards compatibility with pulse dialling.

      Up until about twenty years ago virtually every supermarket had a phone by the checkouts with a single pre-programmed button for a local taxi company; we used this trick all the time to call home, our mates, etc.

    • Lucy :3@feddit.org
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      13 hours ago

      You’re welcome to dial into my Modem on which Doom is listening for a connection at 40c3 :3

    • neidu3@sh.itjust.worksM
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      1 day ago

      Used to do this in payphones as a kid. The numpads were disabled when no coins were inserted, effectively disabling tone dialing. But pulse dialing still worked.

    • Deestan@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I am pretty sure I could do it sans phone and only the handle, by rapidly pulling the plug out of the socket and putting it back in.

      Never thought to try it when I had the chance.

      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        Often the rj-12 handset cabling would not plug directly into the rj-11 jacks. If they did, I’d be surprised to learn they’d work on the wire as-is.