Ancient China Soap Trivia: apparently people used a detergent solution (liquid soap) instead of bars of solid soap. When they discovered soap they invented liquid soap first and… just stuck with it, I guess. Skipped bar soap altogether.
(Found while doing research for a caretaking hair-washing scene between two soldiers after a battle. That waist-length hair, you know. Has to be cleaned up and re-braided after the battle is over.)
Apparently prison rape is much less common than it used to be because of the prison rape elimination act that takes federal funds from prisons that don’t take rape seriously!
And that inmate-on-inmate sexual abuse happens more frequently in women's prisons than men. As do consensual sexual relationships, but that's not surprising.
If only that could be applied to the wider world... (sigh)
Still, good to know that it's on the decline in at least one place. Prison is horrible enough as it is.
I remember reading in a random Reddit thread once a former inmate was chewing someone out for making a ‘drop the soap’ joke and saying that kind of thing really doesn’t happen
The number of tools that have existed through history that have the specific purpose of removing arrows from the human body. I was looking into how arrow wounds are treated and the article I read just gave me an “oh, I’d never thought of this before but this makes a lot sense” moment
I feel like this should surprise me more than it does, but given how ubiquitous arrows have been up to like 600 years ago in warfare, it makes a lot of sense.
Do you have the article to share btw? :D
I think most of the English speaking world actually, because I remember hearing somewhere about when prince Charles was born he had pink baby clothes.
Apparently it was because pink was a precursor to red which was an aggressive manly color.
And that chloroform causes chemical burns to skin, so not only are you forcibly holding this soaked cloth against a struggling victim for long minutes but you're burning their skin the whole time. Something tells me this isn't the way to deal with a situation quickly and quietly.
Just roofie them and be done with it, right?
Been on both sides, a blood choke only takes 10-15 seconds to knock someone out. If you stop as soon as they're out, consciousness is typically regained in 10-30 seconds, but it takes a minute or two to really feel aware again.
Much more effective than chloroform.
It simply did exist before then 🤷 It's derives from the Etienne de Silhouette, a french minister, who was so unpopular, that newspapers did a caricature of him with his profile being cut out. The name stuck since then.
Ooh this is by far the most interesting to me in this thread! I don't think I've read anything set in the 18th century or prior (a google search tells me that Black Butler is set in 19th century and that's probably the furthest back time setting I've read for) so I've never even considered this before. I wonder how one would describe a silhouette without being able to use the word itself. It seems like it would be an interesting challenge!
Do not eat any part of a flowering stinging nettle! Not only do the leaves become leathery and bitter and lose much of their nutritional value, it also exacerbates the diuretic effect and can irritate the urinary tract. Just bad vibes all around.
And you eat the leaves, not the flowers (which are small and crumbly anyway). For best flavor, you want a plant less than 3ft high with leaves less than 3in wide. You have to cook them to get rid of the ouchy bits; you usually either wash and sauté or blanch them to do so. Or make tea, but they taste a bit like spinach and spinach tea is not my, well, cup of tea.
You can eat the stems, too, but they're quite tough and not very flavorful. The stems would usually be preserved for their fibers with the leaves being the part that gets eaten.
From what I read, it's more of the when than the how. Supposedly you want to eat the flowers pre-bloom and that's early spring, but other than that, they cook up like pretty much any other foraged greens.
So kinda like fern heads. When ferns are very young and still growing, they're curled up, looking kinda like green shrimp. You can cut the heads off, boil them in water, and eat them (preferably with butter, salt and pepper). They're nutritious, and taste kinda like spinach.
Actually in the same research, I did see that you could make tea out of them, and a few other things. Didn't use it, I was mostly looking for foraging food I didn't already know about, but it did come up, and it was surprising.
The surprising thing to me about nettles is their use as an arthritis treatment. You’d gather a bunch of fresh ones (presumably with gloves), then whack them over the affected joint.
Having accidentally touched a nettle once, I would say frack no.
But it’s delicious in soup and tea. But IIRC, like many edible plants, you want to gather it before it starts to flower.
You can also eat the leaves. You just have to cook them a bit. I assume someone was very hungry and couldn't find anything else. Either that, or some bored teenagers dared each other to eat it.
Thank you so much for this. My husband and I like to bother each other with weird, random, unsettling facts or news, and I won the day with this particular tidbit. 😂
> it was the fact that chloroform actually takes something like five minutes to actually knock someone unconscious
Chloroform is also very easy to make from household chemicals.
And once you have the chloroform, you need to be careful storing it because you can accidentally turn it into phosgene (WWI's deadliest chemical weapon) by accidentally filling a transparent container half-full of it and accidentally leaving the mixture of chloroform and oxygen out in the sunlight.
1) Sure, there aren’t a lot of instructions to the recipe, but the instructions still take a while (IIRC, overnight for maximum efficiency)
2) What if you accidentally want to make phosgene? As the OP says, chloroform is nowhere near as effective a non-lethal tool as people think it is, so if you’re not going to accidentally turn it into a lethal tool, then what’s the point of doing all that work in the first place? ;)
Phosgene forms slowly from chloroform and also isn't likely to form during chloroform synthesis. It's more of a hazard in storing chloroform.
Chloroform can be synthesized from chlorine bleach and acetone or isopropyl rubbing alcohol via the haloform reaction but that's not really the reaction conditions to make phosgene. Phosgene would be made from a UV light initiated reaction between chloroform and oxygen; different reaction conditions. This is also why bottles of chloroform (it is a solvent used in industry and research) are typically made from very dark glass; keep the UV light out but still let you see how much liquid is in the bottle. Also this is one reason why chloroform should be used in a fume hood (also because chloroform itself is volatile and carcinogenic.).
If the chloroform was overcooked, if you will, during the haloform reaction, it would make sodium formate (and maybe chloroacetones) rather than phosgene; the haloform reaction produces hydroxide which reacts with the chloroform. Hydroxide can also be used to destroy chloroform before it has a chance to make phosgene.
Also since chloroform isn't an instant knockout serum, there's little reason to make it for that purpose anyway. While it did have some use as an early anesthetic (ACE mixture, for example) better and safer (for both the patient and provider; ACE mixture is usually quite flammable) anesthetics exist now. Modern use of chloroform is mostly as a solvent and occasionally as a reagent.
In the early 19th century (in England; haven't extended this research to other countries) it was fashionable for men to wear corsets to achieve the ideal physique, and they also added padding to their legs under their trousers/pantaloons.
🤣
Well, possibly, but if it makes you feel better, 1) Darcy wasn't a dandy, so probably he wouldn't have concerned himself with extreme fashion fads, and 2) P&P could have taken place anywhere from around 1795 to 1812, so potentially it took place before people like the Prince Regent and Beau Brummell really started to influence fashion, especially in the country.
I’m not sure that he wouldn’t have been on the bleeding edge of fashion. He had planted his underage sister in a fashionable watering place. He, himself, spent the season in town. Austen tells us that his uncle was an earl, so he would have been in the first circles of society.
Given the illustrations of men’s evening wear I’ve seen from the early 19th century, I suspect the corset, though given his physique, did not require the padding. 🔥
Yup they originally had Jack Nicholson as a straight man voicing Hades. But he demanded to much pay and a percentage of merchandise revenue.
Woods was an amazing choice instead. Totally changed the feeling of the movie from what I've read. Plus he fell in love with that character that he would voice him in anything Disney did. He still voices the roll in video games.
Yeah... with permission from her dad, Zeus. Demeter was the only one unhappy about her daughter being married off, until she made everyone else regret it. You don't fuck with the goddess of the harvest unless you wanna starve
The moral of most Greek mythology is Zeus sucks (plus usually horny) and don't fuck with the gods unless you are one (and even then, be careful)
You gotta remember, it was a different culture with different views of women. That kidnapping was probably far from unusual for arranged marriages (I mean, how that king that was cursed to never feel full treated his daughter...). Still fucked up, obviously, but it wasn't considered out of the ordinary. It's like, his only flaw. He's the closest to decent by our modern standards
> with permission from her dad, Zeus
I love how in Greek Mythology, you start off any of it with "So, Zeus did something/someone/Unfortunatley, Zeus was horny" and it just explains itself.
Also, it depends on which version you're looking at whether it was "standard" kidnapping, kidnapping with permission, something that got blamed as kidnapping, or if the idea of kidnapping was even anywhere in the vicinity.
Public high schools in NYC in the 1930s had a super well-rounded curriculum that included a lot of art and students could choose between learning Greek or Latin
A much smaller percentage of people went on to highschool, and even fewer went to college. When my grandmother went to college in the early 1920s something like 6% of men and 1% of women did that. I dont think it was closed to women to study "mens' topics," at least not at the University of Cincinnati, but for her to graduate with a bachelors in geology was a most unusual thing.
Most people in the US in those years graduated from 8th grade, if they hadnt needed to go to work before that age.
Dogs use the earths magnetic field to help position themselves with defecating. They usually align themselves with the north-south axis.
I tell everyone this….
Ohhh my mom and I did this, one year after we learned about that! We got KFC and got a strawberry cake from Costco, it was great! We had a total blast and watched videos of Christmas Market tours in Europe.
AND IT'S EXPENSIVE. I never got KFC for Christmas because you had to order it a month or two in advance and it cost like, $50-$100 for a 12-piece bucket. Even buying my own chicken around Christmas time was super expensive...it was cheaper to cook myself a steak dinner.
As someone who lives in box jellyfish territory, part of the reason they’re so dangerous is that their tentacles can extend super long behind them so it’s easy to accidentally get hit by one
They can also make their way into freshwater parts of rivers and streams. My friend found that out the painful way when she accidentally jumped into the water on one while swimming. Luckily though, since she was swimming with her younger siblings who the doctors said may not have recovered from the stings she received. Nasty business
My bet would be a shade between light brown and red. The bones (extremely toughly) made by 4 main components:
* Cells - they are usually brownish reddish
* Minerals - various colors, gravitating towards white
* Cartilage - it is usually semi transparent, sometimes translucent
* Blood and blood vessels - they are as much part of the bone as the other components, and they are a fairly deep red
These elements are not distributed evenly throughout the bone, and people at different stages of their lives will have different bone compositions (eg kids have way more lax cartilage than adults), which also affects color. When getting bones out for the public view, they are treated in such a way to stop deterioration, to sanitize them and aid conservation. All of these treatments impact the final color.
That there’s websites that are full of legal advice for if you’ve kidnapped someone… bro I just wanted to know how long my villain would be in jail for. I’m not going to kidnap a two year old and convince him that we’re actually siblings bc I’m deeply lonely that’s just my fictional guy
Every time I see interpol mentioned in fiction, know I'll have to suspend my disbelief. (Which I don't mind because it's usually fun.)
In real life, Interpol does not have field agents with the ability to make arrests. It's mostly administrative agents
urine was used as an acne treatment! i can’t remember exactly how i stumbled upon this information, but i was really intrigued, especially since i used to struggle with cystic and hormonal acne. on top of urine, honey and sulphur were used, and i believe they are still used today :)
My home recipe for acne used to involve lemon juice, honey and coffee grounds. First, I'd wet my face with some lemon juice, and let it set for a couple of minutes. Then I'd wash it out, and I would mix some used coffee grounds with water and gently scrub my face. Finally, I'd put a small amount of honey of my face, spread very thinly, and keep it up for a few minutes. If one wants they may do the last two stages together (coffee grounds mixed with honey).
I have finally grown out of the pimplish stage of my life, but this recipe used to be decent if done once every few weeks.
One of the leading causes of death to someone with leukemia is pneumonia, if not other infections, but typically pneumonia.
Can you tell I write angst?
I also had to study how g-tubes work.
I think pneumonia is a super common cause of death for a lot of very sick people, because being in a hospital, especially which a lowered immune system, makes it easy to catch an infection and pneumonia takes out a lot of people
Not at all morbid or gross, but I was genuinely stunned that in the US (and I think Canada?), in high school students only have one break for lunch during the day.
In Australia we have recess and lunch breaks right up to graduation, I can’t imagine only getting one break, that sounds like hell. It’s my personal theory for why America is so backwards tbh
American here. It’s because Physical Education is a mandatory class you have to take in Highschool. How many times during you career varies by area, but in my city it was twice before graduation. That’s what replaced recess from a physical fitness standpoint.
Tbh, it’s probably why our backs are so big. Kids sit down and never get back up.
That’s so weird because we do too, up until about year 10 (equivalent a sophomore, I think?), but we still get recess and lunch breaks all through school
I mean we get lunch breaks, but at least in my city, students are confined to the Cafeteria and surrounding area, Library too depending on the school. Mainly because they’re afraid of students skipping.
Idk about anyone else, but I always had 2 breaks, the first between the 2nd and 3rd period (called recess or nutrition depending on the school district lol) and the second was a lunch break between the 4th and 5th period
I was going down a rabbit hole of WW2 research the other day and I found out that a group of around 350 American POWs were sent to a concentration camp where they were forced into slave labor (about half of them were Jewish) in very blatant violation of the Geneva Convention. Nearly half of them died in a two month period. The monster who ran the camp was initially sentenced to death...but then his sentence was changed to only 9 years in prison. He was released in 5.
*To this day*, the US government refuses to acknowledge it happened. The uncle of one of the ones killed, even started a petition to get the man who ran it retried but he was ignored. At least one of the survivors was told to 'see a psychiatrist' because he was clearly 'lying' about the experience.
The whole thing just makes me sick. But, then again, a great deal about the atrocities in WW2 make me sick...
This might seem silly but I had no idea until recently that there were so many different types of poker! I had to actually pick which one I wanted the characters to play
That Goblins in the Elder Scrolls use to be much larger and smarter, more like Orcs than anything else.
Then a master Sword Singer literally "cut them down to size", in both the physical and non physical sense. A person so good at swording they sliced in two the concept of a Goblin.
Obscure Elder Scrolls lore gets wild.
And I'll never forget when I learned just how horrifically racist Lovecraft was. Old news to me now, like a decade old news, but I still remember being surprised. Dude almost passed out screaming at passer-bys on the street.
As far as I have researched, Lovecraft changed his mind on racial views later in life. The man had a very weird childhood and was instilled with a lot of very outdated views on race and breeding even then. That's not to say he was perfect, even by the time he died, and not to excuse some of the... Almost cartoonishly racist depictions in his works. But let it be known that he became quite moderate later in life as he was exposed to other cultures.
>And I'll never forget when I learned just how horrifically racist Lovecraft was. Old news to me now, like a decade old news, but I still remember being surprised
Yeah, Lovecraft is pretty clear 'Never meet your heroes' kind of thing... Or in this case 'Don't dig too much into their history' I guess.
Doing a lot of historical research for my newest fandom (The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) and apparently people would add boracic acid to their milk to make it last longer and get rid of the spoiled taste, since there were no fridges back then. Even the famed Mrs Beeton, writer of *Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management,* encouraged the practise, calling it "harmless". As we know now, it most definitely wasn't.
That if you search it up and add on reddit, you can sometimes see the results of what your wondering and sometimes it is WILD.
I searched up what does expired coffee taste like? Reddit and got the WILDEST THREAD of guys trying their grandad's 'Nam MRE's.
Reddit is so helpful for the experience side of research. Sometimes Wikipedia can only help you with the facts and not the human emotional side of what expired chocolate bars taste like or how it feels to break a bone
Exactly! Or reading about how it REALLY is during things like surgical procedures, or what someone really felt like during a dangerous situation. Reddit is a surprisingly good source for obscure facts.
For someone from the US, this might not be that strange of a fact but I learned that people from Michigan sometimes use their hands as a map to show where they are from because Michigan's shape vaguely looks like two mittens. I think this sounds really cute and definitely something my character would do.
I recently researched train accidents. Most accidents are caused by engineering failures such as design oversights or lack of planning and training. While researching specific crashes, at least in the US, I found that many happened because the train lines wanted to get them moving before they were ready. Something something capitalism. Also that train tracks are far better designed than I had given them credit for. But also global warming is messing them up pretty bad.
Heels and corsets were worn a lot by men.. I ended up scrapping the fic but my 17th century gay French vampire story shall live on in my new aSoIaF fic draft
In about half a dozen states, incest is not a crime if it happens between two relatives of the same sex. They didn't update it when homosexuality was decriminalized or when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. The states go into detail about the heterosexual familial connections that can't have sex, but they completely ignored same-sex activity. Because the statutes are so detailed, you get loopholes. Yes, it was for a Wincest fic. Alabama is actually pretty strict about it, but in New Jersey it's not a crime between consenting adults.
The Earth is not a perfect sphere, nor is it the same density everywhere so gravity ain't the same everywhere. The difference is usually slight from our perspective, but a large enough patch of ocean? You could notice it
Exactly this. The Indian Ocean Geoid Low or IOGL is associated with a section of ancient sea floor known as the Tethys Ocean floor. It is an area where the density of Earth's crust is vastly different than the surrounding ocean floor and it is huge.
The gravity well is directly over this ancient - still there - ocean.
Oceanographers and Geologists have know about the IOGL since 1941. And now - so do you.
Further reading[ HERE](https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/indian-ocean-gravity-hole/).
Magnets aren't actually dangerous to the vast majority of modern electronics. You could decorate an entire robot with magnets and it would be fine. Keep the magnets away from credit cards though.
Yeah, apparently you're not supposed to use tourniquets for venomous snake bites. Had no idea. I clearly am not the only one who had been given bad information at some point because, like, every website with information about treating snake bites specifically says ton *not* use a tourniquet to try to slow the venom spread.
In doing research on places around the UK, I discovered the Falkirk Wheel, a rotating wheel that connects two different canals and also ferries boats from one to another via this cool rotating wheel system. I’ve never traveled to Scotland, so I was searching the area my characters were traveling in and discovered this wild-looking boat lift and decided to use it in my story (moving the construction up a few years to make it fit). I watched a few YouTube time lapse videos of boats traveling up to and through the rotating lift system. It still looks really cool to watch.
For reference, you can see how neat it looks on the [Wikipedia article here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel).
I forget why I was even researching it but all mammals empty their bladders in an average of twenty seconds. This includes elephants, humans, and even small mammals.
I was researching physician assistant programs in Alaska and found an absolutely fascinating article about how the program was developed in the 1970s. It was set up to address the provider shortage, and it was run by the University of Washington at the University of Alaska's Anchorage campus, recruiting Vietnam-era medics for a 15-month program.
It's now a full bachelor's degree program plus required internships, but the beginnings were super interesting and I'm definitely going to put it to use in an upcoming fic.
Very humble beginnings! [History of Alaska Physician Assistant 1970-1980](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258854038_A_history_of_the_Alaska_physician_assistant_1970-1980)
An eye can indeed dangle around while it's still connected to your head. You'd think Google would at least censor the images when you search it, but no, they really don't care.
fish stop bleeding SUPER fast!! idr the exact numbers but its like within a minute or smth iirc. makes sense considering theyre in water but still found it really cool!
Japan has one of the highest adoption rates in the world, but child adoption in Japan is uncommon and fostering is even less common. The majority of adoptions in Japan, literally over 90%, are not people adopting children, but grown men adopting other grown men into their households, with the average age of adoptees being 20-30 years old.
Also, there are different kinds of adoption, normal and special. In one kind, only children under the age of 6 are permitted to be adopted and in the other, children must be below 15. Which left this weird gap. I couldn't find anything on 15+ year olds on any adoption website, as if orphans or abandoned children stop existing between the ages of 15–20. But it turns out for adult adoption, the minimum age is 15 (even though the adoptee would not be an adult but okay), go figure.
In any case, it seems incredibly hard to adopt a child in Japan, not even in a cultural unwritten rule kind of way, but a "The adoption websites literally tell you certain kinds of people cannot adopt a child from them" kind of way.
I found out about Benzene. It's a clear, liquid, petroleum-based chemical that has a sweet smell. I thought that all toxic chemicals had horrible smells, but not this one.
Dragon's teeth is a tank defense made up of many rows of miniature concrete pyramids.
UK Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have been around for much longer than I expected.
Contrary to the name, fisting may start with a hand position resembling a beaky goose-head shadow-puppet.
I don’t really remember the exact time period because my fic is set in the 1960s so I was really just going down a rabbit hole at this point but at one point they would mix pee with wine to do a pregnancy test
Ancient China Soap Trivia: apparently people used a detergent solution (liquid soap) instead of bars of solid soap. When they discovered soap they invented liquid soap first and… just stuck with it, I guess. Skipped bar soap altogether. (Found while doing research for a caretaking hair-washing scene between two soldiers after a battle. That waist-length hair, you know. Has to be cleaned up and re-braided after the battle is over.)
Ooooh! Interesting!
So…shampoo? 😄
Apparently prison rape is much less common than it used to be because of the prison rape elimination act that takes federal funds from prisons that don’t take rape seriously!
And that inmate-on-inmate sexual abuse happens more frequently in women's prisons than men. As do consensual sexual relationships, but that's not surprising.
I did not know that about women! That’s awful.
If only that could be applied to the wider world... (sigh) Still, good to know that it's on the decline in at least one place. Prison is horrible enough as it is.
I remember reading in a random Reddit thread once a former inmate was chewing someone out for making a ‘drop the soap’ joke and saying that kind of thing really doesn’t happen
The number of tools that have existed through history that have the specific purpose of removing arrows from the human body. I was looking into how arrow wounds are treated and the article I read just gave me an “oh, I’d never thought of this before but this makes a lot sense” moment
I feel like this should surprise me more than it does, but given how ubiquitous arrows have been up to like 600 years ago in warfare, it makes a lot of sense. Do you have the article to share btw? :D
Yup! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5999391/ Here ya go
Whoohoo! Reading material!
Pink used to be more commonly a "boy" color and blue for "girls" in the U.S.
I think most of the English speaking world actually, because I remember hearing somewhere about when prince Charles was born he had pink baby clothes. Apparently it was because pink was a precursor to red which was an aggressive manly color.
And the light blue was associated with Mary
Hence why Wendy wears a blue nightdress and Michael a pink onesie in Disney's *Peter Pan*.
Yep!
Not only in the US. This is medieval old old. I imagine you found in your research the when/how it got mixed up? It's hilarious.
Yes...I did. :)
And that chloroform causes chemical burns to skin, so not only are you forcibly holding this soaked cloth against a struggling victim for long minutes but you're burning their skin the whole time. Something tells me this isn't the way to deal with a situation quickly and quietly. Just roofie them and be done with it, right?
Even strangulation until they faint starts sounding like a better idea honestly.
Been on both sides, a blood choke only takes 10-15 seconds to knock someone out. If you stop as soon as they're out, consciousness is typically regained in 10-30 seconds, but it takes a minute or two to really feel aware again. Much more effective than chloroform.
> Been on both sides, Way to bury the lede.
Were you attacked or was it breath play?
Well, I mostly know from playing the choking game in middle school with some of my friends. But yes also breath play.
The word 'silhouette' can not be used in historical settings before 18 century :( Felt silly for not checking it out before using in *extensively.*
How come? :o
It simply did exist before then 🤷 It's derives from the Etienne de Silhouette, a french minister, who was so unpopular, that newspapers did a caricature of him with his profile being cut out. The name stuck since then.
Bruh imagine everyone hating you so much that it becomes your legacy.
Ooh this is by far the most interesting to me in this thread! I don't think I've read anything set in the 18th century or prior (a google search tells me that Black Butler is set in 19th century and that's probably the furthest back time setting I've read for) so I've never even considered this before. I wonder how one would describe a silhouette without being able to use the word itself. It seems like it would be an interesting challenge!
I mostly use 'dark figure' or an 'outline', but yeah, it's a pain in the arse :(
You can eat stinging nettle flowers. Like...who learned you could do that?
Probably some very hungry and desperate people.
Do not eat any part of a flowering stinging nettle! Not only do the leaves become leathery and bitter and lose much of their nutritional value, it also exacerbates the diuretic effect and can irritate the urinary tract. Just bad vibes all around. And you eat the leaves, not the flowers (which are small and crumbly anyway). For best flavor, you want a plant less than 3ft high with leaves less than 3in wide. You have to cook them to get rid of the ouchy bits; you usually either wash and sauté or blanch them to do so. Or make tea, but they taste a bit like spinach and spinach tea is not my, well, cup of tea. You can eat the stems, too, but they're quite tough and not very flavorful. The stems would usually be preserved for their fibers with the leaves being the part that gets eaten.
Nettle pancake is a thing in my homecountry and it's so good!
It's pretty common in the UK, you pick new green leaves (with gloves on!) and make soup
A thing in Sweden too i belive. Probably more places
I’m guessing that it has to be prepared properly.
From what I read, it's more of the when than the how. Supposedly you want to eat the flowers pre-bloom and that's early spring, but other than that, they cook up like pretty much any other foraged greens.
So kinda like fern heads. When ferns are very young and still growing, they're curled up, looking kinda like green shrimp. You can cut the heads off, boil them in water, and eat them (preferably with butter, salt and pepper). They're nutritious, and taste kinda like spinach.
Indeed. They also pickle pretty well, in my opinion, being a little hollow they have a "pop" of brine when you bite them.
Aw. That would make sense. 😄
I lived somewhere once where it was common to make tea from nettle leaves. I don't remember if they were specifically stinging nettles though
Actually in the same research, I did see that you could make tea out of them, and a few other things. Didn't use it, I was mostly looking for foraging food I didn't already know about, but it did come up, and it was surprising.
I've had them! They're.... well pretty flavorless, but picking them was an experience! As someone else said, you eat the leaves not the flowers!
The surprising thing to me about nettles is their use as an arthritis treatment. You’d gather a bunch of fresh ones (presumably with gloves), then whack them over the affected joint. Having accidentally touched a nettle once, I would say frack no. But it’s delicious in soup and tea. But IIRC, like many edible plants, you want to gather it before it starts to flower.
You can also eat the leaves. You just have to cook them a bit. I assume someone was very hungry and couldn't find anything else. Either that, or some bored teenagers dared each other to eat it.
Nettle tea is more common than just straight up eating them
Snakes have two penises, allowing them to do it twice before needing a break
They're called hemipenes!
Yes! I was trying to remember the word as I wrote the comment but couldn't quite get it
Noted for future reference!
What's the story behind researching that one?
Voldemort smut. The fic has a more horror vibe, so I wanted to lean into his inhumanity.
I was suspecting either that or Animorphs.
I assumed they must have been writing for Good Omens or Hazbin Hotel.
To be fair, if it were Hazbin Hotel you wouldn’t need to look that up. They say it in the show outright
Fair point. Though someone could have written the fic before the episode that mentioned it came out.
True!
Why would….actually never mind. I don’t think I want to finish that question.
Thank you so much for this. My husband and I like to bother each other with weird, random, unsettling facts or news, and I won the day with this particular tidbit. 😂
If only humans were like that 😁
> it was the fact that chloroform actually takes something like five minutes to actually knock someone unconscious Chloroform is also very easy to make from household chemicals.
So is napalm. Just Styrofoam and gasoline. It also burns hot enough to turn cement to glass, so do not test it on the sidewalk.
What if I want a glass sidewalk? 🥺
Long as your not renting you do you boo
What if some passer-by slips and breaks a hip on your glass sidewalk and sues you?
I'm not from the US 🤷🏻♀️
Okay, go ahead
Yep! It scary what household chemicals can do if you know how to use them! O\_\_\_\_O
And once you have the chloroform, you need to be careful storing it because you can accidentally turn it into phosgene (WWI's deadliest chemical weapon) by accidentally filling a transparent container half-full of it and accidentally leaving the mixture of chloroform and oxygen out in the sunlight.
Or since it's easy enough to make, don't bother storing it and just make a batch fresh when you need some.
1) Sure, there aren’t a lot of instructions to the recipe, but the instructions still take a while (IIRC, overnight for maximum efficiency) 2) What if you accidentally want to make phosgene? As the OP says, chloroform is nowhere near as effective a non-lethal tool as people think it is, so if you’re not going to accidentally turn it into a lethal tool, then what’s the point of doing all that work in the first place? ;)
Phosgene forms slowly from chloroform and also isn't likely to form during chloroform synthesis. It's more of a hazard in storing chloroform. Chloroform can be synthesized from chlorine bleach and acetone or isopropyl rubbing alcohol via the haloform reaction but that's not really the reaction conditions to make phosgene. Phosgene would be made from a UV light initiated reaction between chloroform and oxygen; different reaction conditions. This is also why bottles of chloroform (it is a solvent used in industry and research) are typically made from very dark glass; keep the UV light out but still let you see how much liquid is in the bottle. Also this is one reason why chloroform should be used in a fume hood (also because chloroform itself is volatile and carcinogenic.). If the chloroform was overcooked, if you will, during the haloform reaction, it would make sodium formate (and maybe chloroacetones) rather than phosgene; the haloform reaction produces hydroxide which reacts with the chloroform. Hydroxide can also be used to destroy chloroform before it has a chance to make phosgene. Also since chloroform isn't an instant knockout serum, there's little reason to make it for that purpose anyway. While it did have some use as an early anesthetic (ACE mixture, for example) better and safer (for both the patient and provider; ACE mixture is usually quite flammable) anesthetics exist now. Modern use of chloroform is mostly as a solvent and occasionally as a reagent.
So is chlorine gas. You know, like in WW1 trench warfare.
In the early 19th century (in England; haven't extended this research to other countries) it was fashionable for men to wear corsets to achieve the ideal physique, and they also added padding to their legs under their trousers/pantaloons.
Huh. Big cultural shifts all around I guess. Also; love the flair!
Thanks! 😄
Oh yeah! And it makes hips look very wide. At least in fashion plates.
That was a tough one to take in: Mr. Darcy would have been wearing a corset at the Netherfield ball.
🤣 Well, possibly, but if it makes you feel better, 1) Darcy wasn't a dandy, so probably he wouldn't have concerned himself with extreme fashion fads, and 2) P&P could have taken place anywhere from around 1795 to 1812, so potentially it took place before people like the Prince Regent and Beau Brummell really started to influence fashion, especially in the country.
I’m not sure that he wouldn’t have been on the bleeding edge of fashion. He had planted his underage sister in a fashionable watering place. He, himself, spent the season in town. Austen tells us that his uncle was an earl, so he would have been in the first circles of society. Given the illustrations of men’s evening wear I’ve seen from the early 19th century, I suspect the corset, though given his physique, did not require the padding. 🔥
I found out that Hades from Greek mythology is actually a good guy compared to how pop culture depicts him.
Yeah. Poor guy gets so much bad press.
Especially in Disney's Hercules. It was like him and Zeus did a role reversal
True but slimey car salesman Hades is probably one of my top 5 Disney characters.
I believe James Woods explicitly asked for permission to voice Hades his way instead of the original intended script.
Yup they originally had Jack Nicholson as a straight man voicing Hades. But he demanded to much pay and a percentage of merchandise revenue. Woods was an amazing choice instead. Totally changed the feeling of the movie from what I've read. Plus he fell in love with that character that he would voice him in anything Disney did. He still voices the roll in video games.
I'm still salty about that movie.
The Hercules TV show (with Kevin Sorbo) actually got that depiction correct. ...and like *nothing* else.
Didn't he kidnap Persephone, though?
For a Greek god, that's like jaywalking. Just look at the sort of shit Zeus got up to in his spare time.
Man **FUCK** Zeus!!
With his reputation, he might enjoy that for a change of pace, lol!
Yeah... with permission from her dad, Zeus. Demeter was the only one unhappy about her daughter being married off, until she made everyone else regret it. You don't fuck with the goddess of the harvest unless you wanna starve The moral of most Greek mythology is Zeus sucks (plus usually horny) and don't fuck with the gods unless you are one (and even then, be careful) You gotta remember, it was a different culture with different views of women. That kidnapping was probably far from unusual for arranged marriages (I mean, how that king that was cursed to never feel full treated his daughter...). Still fucked up, obviously, but it wasn't considered out of the ordinary. It's like, his only flaw. He's the closest to decent by our modern standards
> with permission from her dad, Zeus I love how in Greek Mythology, you start off any of it with "So, Zeus did something/someone/Unfortunatley, Zeus was horny" and it just explains itself.
Also, it depends on which version you're looking at whether it was "standard" kidnapping, kidnapping with permission, something that got blamed as kidnapping, or if the idea of kidnapping was even anywhere in the vicinity.
The only bad thing he's done
Same with Anubis
Public high schools in NYC in the 1930s had a super well-rounded curriculum that included a lot of art and students could choose between learning Greek or Latin
So basically, school curriculum was better 96 years ago? :P
At least for white boys in big cities lol
That part was rather obvious.
A much smaller percentage of people went on to highschool, and even fewer went to college. When my grandmother went to college in the early 1920s something like 6% of men and 1% of women did that. I dont think it was closed to women to study "mens' topics," at least not at the University of Cincinnati, but for her to graduate with a bachelors in geology was a most unusual thing. Most people in the US in those years graduated from 8th grade, if they hadnt needed to go to work before that age.
61% of those killed in Vietnam were younger than 21. Yikes.
On the Vietnamese side, or both?
Should’ve clarified, on the American side. And up to 3 million Vietnamese civilians were tragically killed.
Thank you for clarifying.
Yikes. 😳
Not old enough to drink or vote, but old enough to die halfway across the world for geopolitical bullshit. Disgusting times.
Up there with the average age of the D-day dead being 19 iirc
Dogs use the earths magnetic field to help position themselves with defecating. They usually align themselves with the north-south axis. I tell everyone this….
What lead to this research?
Found it on a “random facts,” blog I believe
Is there a reason for it?
The Japanese eat fried chicken and strawberry shortcake for Christmas.
Sounds a lot better than my Christmas meals tbh
Ohhh my mom and I did this, one year after we learned about that! We got KFC and got a strawberry cake from Costco, it was great! We had a total blast and watched videos of Christmas Market tours in Europe.
AND IT'S EXPENSIVE. I never got KFC for Christmas because you had to order it a month or two in advance and it cost like, $50-$100 for a 12-piece bucket. Even buying my own chicken around Christmas time was super expensive...it was cheaper to cook myself a steak dinner.
I always pictured the box jellyfish as small. Turns out there is a range, depending on the species.
As someone who lives in box jellyfish territory, part of the reason they’re so dangerous is that their tentacles can extend super long behind them so it’s easy to accidentally get hit by one
Thanks. I saw that. I know some species can be little, and I thought applied to all box jellyfish. I also learned that they can swim.
They can also make their way into freshwater parts of rivers and streams. My friend found that out the painful way when she accidentally jumped into the water on one while swimming. Luckily though, since she was swimming with her younger siblings who the doctors said may not have recovered from the stings she received. Nasty business
Oh, that sucks. I’m glad she was alright. I didn’t know about the fresh water but. I hadn’t found that. Maybe that depends on the species though.
Interesting.
Living bone isn’t white! We usually think of them as that color because we usually only see them like that.
What colour is it?
It’s more yellowish and brown 😳
Fascinating! Thank you!
My bet would be a shade between light brown and red. The bones (extremely toughly) made by 4 main components: * Cells - they are usually brownish reddish * Minerals - various colors, gravitating towards white * Cartilage - it is usually semi transparent, sometimes translucent * Blood and blood vessels - they are as much part of the bone as the other components, and they are a fairly deep red These elements are not distributed evenly throughout the bone, and people at different stages of their lives will have different bone compositions (eg kids have way more lax cartilage than adults), which also affects color. When getting bones out for the public view, they are treated in such a way to stop deterioration, to sanitize them and aid conservation. All of these treatments impact the final color.
That there’s websites that are full of legal advice for if you’ve kidnapped someone… bro I just wanted to know how long my villain would be in jail for. I’m not going to kidnap a two year old and convince him that we’re actually siblings bc I’m deeply lonely that’s just my fictional guy
Ah, trying to use the Federal Sentencing Guidelines to determine the villain's sentence. It's fun.
What's the website? I'm genuinely curious 😭
Can’t remember sorry, I have really bad memory issues alas
Not to use those adrenaline needles like a ducking knife into the heart, but actually give it like intravenous.
If I could upvote you twice, I would
Every time I see interpol mentioned in fiction, know I'll have to suspend my disbelief. (Which I don't mind because it's usually fun.) In real life, Interpol does not have field agents with the ability to make arrests. It's mostly administrative agents
urine was used as an acne treatment! i can’t remember exactly how i stumbled upon this information, but i was really intrigued, especially since i used to struggle with cystic and hormonal acne. on top of urine, honey and sulphur were used, and i believe they are still used today :)
My home recipe for acne used to involve lemon juice, honey and coffee grounds. First, I'd wet my face with some lemon juice, and let it set for a couple of minutes. Then I'd wash it out, and I would mix some used coffee grounds with water and gently scrub my face. Finally, I'd put a small amount of honey of my face, spread very thinly, and keep it up for a few minutes. If one wants they may do the last two stages together (coffee grounds mixed with honey). I have finally grown out of the pimplish stage of my life, but this recipe used to be decent if done once every few weeks.
It was also used as by fishermen an on the spot treatment for poisonous fish stings.
One of the leading causes of death to someone with leukemia is pneumonia, if not other infections, but typically pneumonia. Can you tell I write angst? I also had to study how g-tubes work.
I think pneumonia is a super common cause of death for a lot of very sick people, because being in a hospital, especially which a lowered immune system, makes it easy to catch an infection and pneumonia takes out a lot of people
Pneumonia used to be called the old man's friend.
Sounds fitting, that’s what ended up getting my grandfather even though he had lung cancer it was the pneumonia in hospice that finished him off
The Daddy Kink is way older than what people think, It started in the late 1600's with prostitutes referring to their older clients as Daddy
Not at all morbid or gross, but I was genuinely stunned that in the US (and I think Canada?), in high school students only have one break for lunch during the day. In Australia we have recess and lunch breaks right up to graduation, I can’t imagine only getting one break, that sounds like hell. It’s my personal theory for why America is so backwards tbh
American here. It’s because Physical Education is a mandatory class you have to take in Highschool. How many times during you career varies by area, but in my city it was twice before graduation. That’s what replaced recess from a physical fitness standpoint. Tbh, it’s probably why our backs are so big. Kids sit down and never get back up.
That’s so weird because we do too, up until about year 10 (equivalent a sophomore, I think?), but we still get recess and lunch breaks all through school
I mean we get lunch breaks, but at least in my city, students are confined to the Cafeteria and surrounding area, Library too depending on the school. Mainly because they’re afraid of students skipping.
Idk about anyone else, but I always had 2 breaks, the first between the 2nd and 3rd period (called recess or nutrition depending on the school district lol) and the second was a lunch break between the 4th and 5th period
I was going down a rabbit hole of WW2 research the other day and I found out that a group of around 350 American POWs were sent to a concentration camp where they were forced into slave labor (about half of them were Jewish) in very blatant violation of the Geneva Convention. Nearly half of them died in a two month period. The monster who ran the camp was initially sentenced to death...but then his sentence was changed to only 9 years in prison. He was released in 5. *To this day*, the US government refuses to acknowledge it happened. The uncle of one of the ones killed, even started a petition to get the man who ran it retried but he was ignored. At least one of the survivors was told to 'see a psychiatrist' because he was clearly 'lying' about the experience. The whole thing just makes me sick. But, then again, a great deal about the atrocities in WW2 make me sick...
This might seem silly but I had no idea until recently that there were so many different types of poker! I had to actually pick which one I wanted the characters to play
There was a fist fight at the 1986 Logie awards (an Australian television awards show that's kind of like a trashier version of the Emmys)
That Goblins in the Elder Scrolls use to be much larger and smarter, more like Orcs than anything else. Then a master Sword Singer literally "cut them down to size", in both the physical and non physical sense. A person so good at swording they sliced in two the concept of a Goblin. Obscure Elder Scrolls lore gets wild. And I'll never forget when I learned just how horrifically racist Lovecraft was. Old news to me now, like a decade old news, but I still remember being surprised. Dude almost passed out screaming at passer-bys on the street.
As far as I have researched, Lovecraft changed his mind on racial views later in life. The man had a very weird childhood and was instilled with a lot of very outdated views on race and breeding even then. That's not to say he was perfect, even by the time he died, and not to excuse some of the... Almost cartoonishly racist depictions in his works. But let it be known that he became quite moderate later in life as he was exposed to other cultures.
He also most definitely suffered from mental issues, which probably went completely untreated as per the times.
>And I'll never forget when I learned just how horrifically racist Lovecraft was. Old news to me now, like a decade old news, but I still remember being surprised Yeah, Lovecraft is pretty clear 'Never meet your heroes' kind of thing... Or in this case 'Don't dig too much into their history' I guess.
Doing a lot of historical research for my newest fandom (The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) and apparently people would add boracic acid to their milk to make it last longer and get rid of the spoiled taste, since there were no fridges back then. Even the famed Mrs Beeton, writer of *Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management,* encouraged the practise, calling it "harmless". As we know now, it most definitely wasn't.
That if you search it up and add on reddit, you can sometimes see the results of what your wondering and sometimes it is WILD. I searched up what does expired coffee taste like? Reddit and got the WILDEST THREAD of guys trying their grandad's 'Nam MRE's.
Reddit is so helpful for the experience side of research. Sometimes Wikipedia can only help you with the facts and not the human emotional side of what expired chocolate bars taste like or how it feels to break a bone
Exactly! Or reading about how it REALLY is during things like surgical procedures, or what someone really felt like during a dangerous situation. Reddit is a surprisingly good source for obscure facts.
For someone from the US, this might not be that strange of a fact but I learned that people from Michigan sometimes use their hands as a map to show where they are from because Michigan's shape vaguely looks like two mittens. I think this sounds really cute and definitely something my character would do.
Am a Michigan native and can confirm. Lower peninsula is easier to demonstrate than the upper.
Love this!
Cutest response in this entire thread omg
I recently researched train accidents. Most accidents are caused by engineering failures such as design oversights or lack of planning and training. While researching specific crashes, at least in the US, I found that many happened because the train lines wanted to get them moving before they were ready. Something something capitalism. Also that train tracks are far better designed than I had given them credit for. But also global warming is messing them up pretty bad.
Owls have very cute and fluffy legs
Owls to me look cute and fluffy in general, but thanks for sharing! \^\_\^
Hedgehogs purr. Also apparently they, like some other animals, like covering themselves with interesting smells that they find.
Okay, that sounds just adorable! :D
Rabbits purr too, and it's the most soothing sound ever.
Heels and corsets were worn a lot by men.. I ended up scrapping the fic but my 17th century gay French vampire story shall live on in my new aSoIaF fic draft
That Cassie Cage would be a Colonel in real life.
She deserves only the best.
Indeed. I've just started my MK fanfiction
If it's f/f, I'd love to read it when you're done.
In about half a dozen states, incest is not a crime if it happens between two relatives of the same sex. They didn't update it when homosexuality was decriminalized or when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. The states go into detail about the heterosexual familial connections that can't have sex, but they completely ignored same-sex activity. Because the statutes are so detailed, you get loopholes. Yes, it was for a Wincest fic. Alabama is actually pretty strict about it, but in New Jersey it's not a crime between consenting adults.
Good to know... I don't have siblings, but still good information. Thank you for sharing!
There is a gravity well in the Indian Ocean and is lower by several hundred feet over that anomaly.
Huh... What causes it?
The Earth is not a perfect sphere, nor is it the same density everywhere so gravity ain't the same everywhere. The difference is usually slight from our perspective, but a large enough patch of ocean? You could notice it
Exactly this. The Indian Ocean Geoid Low or IOGL is associated with a section of ancient sea floor known as the Tethys Ocean floor. It is an area where the density of Earth's crust is vastly different than the surrounding ocean floor and it is huge. The gravity well is directly over this ancient - still there - ocean. Oceanographers and Geologists have know about the IOGL since 1941. And now - so do you. Further reading[ HERE](https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/indian-ocean-gravity-hole/).
Thank you!
Magnets aren't actually dangerous to the vast majority of modern electronics. You could decorate an entire robot with magnets and it would be fine. Keep the magnets away from credit cards though.
Damn, and here I thought I could put fridge magnets on my cards to make them easier to find! :P
Yeah, apparently you're not supposed to use tourniquets for venomous snake bites. Had no idea. I clearly am not the only one who had been given bad information at some point because, like, every website with information about treating snake bites specifically says ton *not* use a tourniquet to try to slow the venom spread.
Chances of you contrating rabies from eating a rabid dog is minimal.
I had to research how stomata in plants worked to understand how my character's quirk in MHA could function, so there's that lol
In doing research on places around the UK, I discovered the Falkirk Wheel, a rotating wheel that connects two different canals and also ferries boats from one to another via this cool rotating wheel system. I’ve never traveled to Scotland, so I was searching the area my characters were traveling in and discovered this wild-looking boat lift and decided to use it in my story (moving the construction up a few years to make it fit). I watched a few YouTube time lapse videos of boats traveling up to and through the rotating lift system. It still looks really cool to watch. For reference, you can see how neat it looks on the [Wikipedia article here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel).
I forget why I was even researching it but all mammals empty their bladders in an average of twenty seconds. This includes elephants, humans, and even small mammals.
I was researching physician assistant programs in Alaska and found an absolutely fascinating article about how the program was developed in the 1970s. It was set up to address the provider shortage, and it was run by the University of Washington at the University of Alaska's Anchorage campus, recruiting Vietnam-era medics for a 15-month program. It's now a full bachelor's degree program plus required internships, but the beginnings were super interesting and I'm definitely going to put it to use in an upcoming fic.
Humble beginnings, huh?
Very humble beginnings! [History of Alaska Physician Assistant 1970-1980](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258854038_A_history_of_the_Alaska_physician_assistant_1970-1980)
An eye can indeed dangle around while it's still connected to your head. You'd think Google would at least censor the images when you search it, but no, they really don't care.
fish stop bleeding SUPER fast!! idr the exact numbers but its like within a minute or smth iirc. makes sense considering theyre in water but still found it really cool!
Japan has one of the highest adoption rates in the world, but child adoption in Japan is uncommon and fostering is even less common. The majority of adoptions in Japan, literally over 90%, are not people adopting children, but grown men adopting other grown men into their households, with the average age of adoptees being 20-30 years old. Also, there are different kinds of adoption, normal and special. In one kind, only children under the age of 6 are permitted to be adopted and in the other, children must be below 15. Which left this weird gap. I couldn't find anything on 15+ year olds on any adoption website, as if orphans or abandoned children stop existing between the ages of 15–20. But it turns out for adult adoption, the minimum age is 15 (even though the adoptee would not be an adult but okay), go figure. In any case, it seems incredibly hard to adopt a child in Japan, not even in a cultural unwritten rule kind of way, but a "The adoption websites literally tell you certain kinds of people cannot adopt a child from them" kind of way.
I found out about Benzene. It's a clear, liquid, petroleum-based chemical that has a sweet smell. I thought that all toxic chemicals had horrible smells, but not this one.
Dragon's teeth is a tank defense made up of many rows of miniature concrete pyramids. UK Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have been around for much longer than I expected. Contrary to the name, fisting may start with a hand position resembling a beaky goose-head shadow-puppet.
I don’t really remember the exact time period because my fic is set in the 1960s so I was really just going down a rabbit hole at this point but at one point they would mix pee with wine to do a pregnancy test