Titanic, Tic Tacs And Trailers. It’s Fact Day.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Welcome to another fact day at the fasab blob.

Last one for May 2015. Time flying as always.

This selection includes facts about the Titanic Tic Tacs and trailers, and lots more.

Enjoy.

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did you know3

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Light pollution usually doesn’t have a

significant impact on humans but it

causes major problems to many animals.

Birds often confuse days and nights and

scientists found out that light pollution can

change migration patterns in some animal species.

 Light pollution

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The Titanic was so big that 176 men were needed

just to shovel coal into its furnaces

 Titanic boiler room

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Although Tic Tac’s claim to have 0 sugar,

they consist of nearly 98% sugar!

This is because the size per serving is

.49 grams and according to the FDA a food

cannot be labeled “sugar free” unless it

contains less than .5 grams of sugar per serving!

How sweet!

 Tic Tac

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Bulgaria is the oldest country in Europe and

it hasn’t changed its name since 681 AD

 Bulgaria map

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When Soviet archaeologists opened the tomb

of Tamerlane, a Mongol descendant of Genghis Khan,

they found an inscription that read,

“Whoever opens my tomb will unleash

an invader more terrible than I.”

It was June 20 1941.

Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22.

 tomb of Tamerlane

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The only part of a Swiss Army Knife not

made in Switzerland is the corkscrew.

It is made in Japan.

 Swiss Army Knife

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Mothers become emotionally attached to their

children prior to birth by the virtue of

carrying the child in their wombs.

According to some studies men won’t become

emotionally bonded to the child for several months

after birth when the infant begins to smile, respond,

and interact with him.

 mother baby bond

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During Peter the Great’s reign in Russia

there was a beard tax which

anyone with a beard had to pay.

 Beard_token

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Nobody knows how the Mayan Empire declined.

Long before the Spanish came many of the great

cities had already been long abandoned and lay in ruins.

Scholars have hypothesized reasons ranging from

drought and famine to overpopulation and climate change.

 Mayan Empire

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JRR Tolkien’s estate only received $62,500

for the Lord of the Rings film trilogy

until a lawsuit was filed.

 Lord of the Rings film trilogy

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In June 2010 Oscar the cat received bionic limbs

to replace his original ones lost in an

accident with a combine harvester.

 Bionic-Cat

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Movie trailers were so named because they

were originally designed to play AFTER the movie,

but when marketers realized that people don’t tend

to stick around when a movie has finished they

started to play them at the beginning of the main movie!

Here’s an example…

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Golf Balls, Planets and Satellites, Just Some Of Today’s Facts.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Welcome to another fasab fact day.

Random as always, but hopefully interesting as well, here is the latest batch of facts.

Enjoy.

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fact 01

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The maximum weight

for a golf ball is 1.62 oz.

golf ball

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On August 6, 1920 in a game between

the Cleveland Indians and the New York Yankees,

Carl Mays (Yankees) pitched a ball towards Ray Chapman (Indians)

that hit him on the head, fatally wounding him.

Chapman is the only major league baseball player

to be fatally injured during a game.

Ray Chapman

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If you could compress the Earth down to the size of a marble

it would collapse on itself and become a black hole.

marble

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The most valuable chocolate bar in the world is a

Cadbury’s chocolate bar that’s over a 100-years old

and went on Captain Robert Scott’s first

Discovery expedition to the Antarctic.

The bar, which was 4 inches long,

wrapped and uneaten, was bought for $687 by

an anonymous buyer at Christie’s, London in 2001.

Cadbury's chocolate bar Captain Robert Scott's first Discovery expedition to the Antarctic

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Your brain is actually more active

while you are sleeping.

brain is actually more active while you are sleeping

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In her first solo skydiving jump, Shayna Richardson’s

main and reserve parachutes failed to deploy

and she fell 10,000 feet at 50 mph towards the ground.

She slammed into the asphalt face-first,

shattering her skull and pelvis.

Miraculously, she survived.

Even more miraculously,

the baby she carried

(which she found out about at the hospital)

survived as well.

Shayna Richardson skydiver in death defying plunge

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If you hear “code V” over  a radio

in DIsney it means Vomit.

code V at Disney

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October 4, 1957 is an historic date to be remembered,

it is the day the Russian satellite Sputnik 1 was launched.

On the same day America launched

the TV sitcom ‘Leave it to Beaver’.

Sputnik 1 Launch Novosti

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From the 19th to 20th century the French Empire

was the second largest in the world,

next to the British Empire,

extending to over 12 million square kilometers

and including territory in Africa and Southeast Asia.

French Empire

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Cryptophasia is the name given to

secret languages spoken by twins.

Cryptophasia

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Austrian Hans Steininger was famous

for having the world’s longest beard.

One day there was a fire in town and being in a hurry

he forgot to role up his beard.

He accidentally stepped on it,

fell down, and broke his neck.

Hans Steininger longest beard

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One spoonful of matter from a neutron star

would weigh about a billion tons.

neutron star

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According to new scientific studies,

eating chocolate can prevent pregnancy problems.

The chemical theobromine found in chocolate

may reduce preeclampsia, a major pregnancy complication.

theobromine chocolate

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Tragedy comes from the Greek word “tragodia”

which means “song of the male goat”.

song of the male goat

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Michael Di Lorenzo,

who plays Eddie Torres on New York Undercover

is one of the lead dancers in

Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” video.

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Did You Know? – Prepare To Increase Your Knowledge Base.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Welcome to another fact day and a list of very random things that certainly will increase your knowledge base, if you can remember them.

The only way to find out is to read on.

Enjoy.

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did you know1

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The first explorers who discovered the West Indies

thought it was Southeast Asia.

map West Indies

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At Disney there used to be paint brushes

hidden on Tom Sawyer island

and if you found one,

you could present it to the barge driver and

you and your party would get golden Fast Passes.

paint brushes hidden on Tom Sawyer island

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If the average male never shaved,

his beard would be 13 feet long when he died.

long beard

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Sorry to bust a much believed myth,

but sugar does not actually make you hyper,

the whole idea of a “sugar rush” is not real,

in fact, according to recent science from Yale University

it’s all just a placebo effect.

sugar rush myth

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Cracking your knuckles won’t lead to arthritis

cracking-knuckles

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The Chernobyl disaster region has become

one of the world’s most unique wildlife sanctuaries

with thriving populations of wolves, deer,

beavers, eagles, and other animals.

Chernobyl wildlife sanctuary wolf

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Pamphlet comes from the title of a Latin love poem called Pamphilus

that was supposedly passed from person to person

Pamphilus

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A cubic inch of bone is about

four times as strong as concrete.

bone smashing concrete

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The 8 lane, 26 mile long Qingdao Bridge in China

cost 14.8 billion yuan to build

but gets almost no traffic.

The-Jiaozhou-Bay-Bridge-1

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Napoleon was actually taller than the average Frenchman

napoleon height

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Not only is Reno, Nevada, west of Los Angeles,

but so are six other state capitals.

map north america

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William McKinley almost always wore

a red carnation on his lapel as a good luck charm.

While greeting a line of people in 1901, 

he gave the flower to a little girl.

Seconds later, he was shot by an assassin,

and died eight days later.

William McKinley

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Buck, the slang term for an American dollar

comes from the fact that on the American frontier

deerskins were used as units of commerce.

American dollar

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The coldest inhabited place on earth is Oymyakon, Russia,

where sometimes the temperature drops

below freezing in mid September and stays there until May.

The average temperature in January is -46 °C.

The village has a population of less than 500 people.

oymyakon-coldest-village-on-earth-amos-chapple-04

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Hacky-sack was invented in Turkey.

Hacky-sack

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If It’s Monday It Must Be Quiz Day!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Another chance to pit your wits against the fasab quiz archives with another random set of twenty questions.

Although there are one or two very easy ones, I think quite a lot of them are difficult this time, but here’s your chance to prove me wrong.

As always the answers are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down below – but NO cheating.

Enjoy and good luck!

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quiz 10

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Q.  1: What does the http:// in web URLs stand for?

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Q.  2:  What is the hood ornament on a Rolls Royce called?

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Q.  3:  Which former president of the United States, in his college days, worked as a male model, and even appeared on the cover of Cosmopolitan?

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Q.  4:  In what country would you find the strangely named lakes “Titicaca” and “Poopo”?

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Q.  5:  Sleeping through the winter is called “hibernation,” but what is the word that describes sleeping through hot and dry periods like summer?

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Q.  6:  Members of the band “ZZ Top” are famous for their beards, but what was the surname of the only member who hadn’t got one?

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Q.  7:  In 1918 the so-called “Spanish Flu” spread around the world killing tens of millions of people, but where did the outbreak start?

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Q.  8:  Who was the only U.S. president never to sign a bill into law?

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Q.  9:  On which continent are the 50 tallest mountains on Earth are all located? (This is easy if you think about it)

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Q. 10:  Which world famous company’s name means “three oceans” in Japanese because the company’s founder wanted to sell his wares across the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific oceans?

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Q. 11:  How old was Albert Einstein, a genius if ever there was one, when he learned how to drive?

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Q. 12:  What was the first ever registered domain name?

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Q. 13:  What city is America’s skyscraper capital?

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Q. 14:  Earlier this month the United States celebrated its birthday, but what is the only other country in the world to celebrate its birthday on July 4th?

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Q. 15:  Who is O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois named after?

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Q. 16:  The citizens of which country eat more donuts per capita than any other?

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Q. 17:  What European country is the world’s leading exporter of false teeth?

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Q. 18:  At more than 3.3 million square miles, what is the name of the world’s largest hot desert?

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Q. 19:  We have all seen a Snellen Chart, but what is it?

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Q. 20:  Possibly some of you have said “!#@%” when faced with a difficult question in this test, but what is the name for symbols such as “!#@%” that are used to indicate swearing in comic strips?

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ANSWERS

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Q.  1: What does the http:// in web URLs stand for?

A.  1:  The http:// in web URLs stands for “Hyper Text Transfer Protocol.”

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Q.  2:  What is the hood ornament on a Rolls Royce called?

A.  2:  The Spirit of Ecstasy.

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Q.  3:  Which former president of the United States in his college days, worked as a male model, and even appeared on the cover of Cosmopolitan?

A.  3:  Former president Gerald Ford wasn’t always gray-haired and paunchy — in his college days, he worked as a male model, and even appeared on the cover of Cosmopolitan.

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Q.  4:  In what country would you find the strangely named lakes “Titicaca” and “Poopo”?

A.  4:  In Bolivia, South America.

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Q.  5:  Sleeping through the winter is called “hibernation,” but what is the word that describes sleeping through hot and dry periods like summer?

A.  5:  Sleeping through hot and dry periods like summer is called “estivation.”

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Q.  6:  Members of the band “ZZ Top” are famous for their beards, but what was the surname of the only member who hadn’t got one?

A.  6:  Ironically, the only member of ZZ Top without a beard has the last name Beard.

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Q.  7:  In 1918 the so-called “Spanish Flu” spread around the world killing tens of millions of people, but where did the outbreak start?

A.  7:  The so-called “Spanish Flu” of 1918 started at a military camp in Kansas before spreading around the world and killing millions.

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Q.  8:  Who was the only U.S. president never to sign a bill into law?

A.  8:  William Henry Harrison was the only U.S. president never to sign a bill into law — he died before having the opportunity.

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Q.  9:  On which continent are the 50 tallest mountains on Earth are all located? (This is easy if you think about it)

A.  9:  Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on Earth is located in the Himalayas in Asia so since it has to be one of the 50 tallest mountains on Earth, they all have to be located in Asia.

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Q. 10:  Which world famous company’s name means “three oceans” in Japanese because the company’s founder wanted to sell his wares across the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific oceans?

A. 10:  Sanyo means “three oceans” in Japanese.

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Q. 11:  How old was Albert Einstein, a genius if ever there was one, when he learned how to drive?

A. 11:  Albert Einstein never learned how to drive.

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Q. 12:  What was the first ever registered domain name?

A. 12:  The first registered domain name was symbolics.com. It was registered on March 15th, 1985.

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Q. 13:  What city is America’s skyscraper capital?

A. 13:  Chicago is America’s skyscraper capital. The city has more 1,000-foot tall buildings than any other U.S. city.

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Q. 14:  Earlier this month the United States celebrated its birthday, but what is the only other country in the world to celebrate its birthday on July 4th?

A. 14:  The only other country in the world to celebrate the United States’ birthday, July 4th, is Denmark.

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Q. 15:  Who is O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois named after?

A. 15:  O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois is named after Al Capone’s lawyer’s son, Lt. Cmdr. Butch O’Hare.

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Q. 16:  The citizens of which country eat more donuts per capita than any other?

A. 16:  Canadians eat more donuts per capita than any other country.

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Q. 17:  What European country is the world’s leading exporter of false teeth?

A. 17:  Liechtenstein is the world’s leading exporter of false teeth.

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Q. 18:  At more than 3.3 million square miles, what is the name of the world’s largest hot desert?

A. 18:  At more than 3.3 million square miles, the Sahara Desert is as large as the world’s next 20 largest hot deserts combined.

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Q. 19:  We have all seen a Snellen Chart, but what is it?

A. 19:  The eye test chart with the big ‘E’ on top is known as the Snellen Chart.

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Q. 20:  Possibly some of you have said “!#@%” when faced with a difficult question in this test, but what is the name for symbols such as “!#@%” that are used to indicate swearing in comic strips?

A. 20:  Symbols such as “!#@%” that are used to indicate swearing in comic strips are called grawlix.

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Wonderful Wednesday

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Did you ever wonder where some of the every day terms we use actually came from? Well, even if you haven’t, I have and I’ve put this post together to highlight some of the most interesting and unusual.  

One of the most peculiar categories are units of measurement. For example, with regard to ‘time’ we often say things like “I’ll be back in a jiffy,” or,  “Just a moment.”

Here’s the list.

 

Jiffy

Although used frequently by many people to denote a short but unspecified period of time, a jiffy is actually a real unit of time measurement. It is 0.10 seconds.

 

Shake

Another fairly commonly used term, again for an unspecified period of time, for example, “I’ll be with you in two shakes”, a shake is also a real specific measurement, namely, 10 nanoseconds.

Both Shakes and Jiffies are used for convenience in nuclear engineering and computing respectively.

 

Moment

How long is a moment? It is 90 seconds long.

 

Beard-second

A beard-second is a unit of length inspired by the light-year, but used for extremely short distances such as those in nuclear physics. The beard-second is defined as the length an average beard grows in one second, which apparently is exactly 100 angstroms (or 10 nanometers). However, the Google calculator uses the beard-second for unit conversions of the value of 5 nanometers. It would be splitting hairs to say who is right and who is wrong.

beard-second
beard-second

 

Barn, shed, outhouse

A barn is a serious unit of area used by nuclear physicists to quantify the scattering or absorption cross-section of very small particles, such as atomic nuclei.It is one of the very few units which are accepted to be used with SI units, and one of the most recent units to have been established. One barn is equal to 1.0×10−28 m2. The name derives from the folk expression “Couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn”, and is used by CERN-type particle accelerator physicists to refer to the difficulty of achieving a collision between particles.

An outhouse is 1.0×10−6 barns and a shed 1.0×10−24 barns.

 

barn
barn

Barn-megaparsec

This unit is similar in concept to the attoparsec, combining very large and small scales. When a barn is multiplied by a megaparsec (Mpc) – a very large unit of length used for measuring the distances between galaxies – the result is a human-scaled unit of volume approximately equal to 23 of a teaspoon (about 3 ml).

 

Hubble-barn

Similar to the Barn-megaparsec, the Hubble-barn uses the Barn mentioned above with Hubble Length, which is the length of the visible Universe as derived by using the Hubble Constant and the Speed of Light. This amounts to around 3.45 Gallons (13.1 L).

 

Donkeypower

Everyone is familiar with the term “horsepower” particular with regard to vehicle engines. Donkeypower is a facetious engineering unit is defined as 250 watts, or about a third of a horsepower.

donkey power
donkey power

 

Rictus Scale

Earthquake intensity is normally measured on the Richter scale. However, a guy named Tom Weller has suggested a humorous alternative, the Rictus scale, which is a measure of earyhquake intensity linked to later media coverage of the event.

Rictus Scale #1 (Richter Scale Equivalent 0-3) Media Coverage Small articles in local papers

Rictus Scale #2 (Richter Scale Equivalent 3-5) Media Coverage Lead story on local news; mentioned on network news

Rictus Scale #3 (Richter Scale Equivalent 5-6.5) Media Coverage Lead story on network news; wire-service photos appear in newspapers nationally; governor visits scene

Rictus Scale #4 (Richter Scale Equivalent 6.5-7.5) Media Coverage Network correspondents sent to scene; president visits area; commemorative T-shirts appear papers

Rictus Scale #5 (Richter Scale Equivalent 7.5+) Media Coverage Small Covers of weekly news magazines; network specials; “instant books” appear.

 

Helen

First used by author Isaac Asimov, Helen is now a measurement. It is named after Helen of Troy who apparently had a face so beautiful that a thousand ships were launched to rescue her.

Thus 1 Helen is equal to this number.

A face that could only launch one ship would therefore be a milliHelen.

A face that would sink ships would have a value of -1 milliHelen!

Helen of Troy: The face that launched a thousand ships
Helen of Troy: The face that launched a thousand ships

 

MegaFonzie

The MegaFonzie is a fictional unit of measurement of an object’s coolness.

It was invented by Professor Farnsworth in the Futurama episode, “Bender Should Not Be Allowed On TV”. A ‘Fonzie’ is about the amount of coolness inherent in the Happy Days character Fonzie.

The Fonz - So cool
The Fonz – So cool

 

Wheaton

The celebrity Wil Wheaton is a keen user of Twitter, and when he attained half a million followers this number was deemed to be ‘1 Wheaton’. As few Twitter users have millions of followers, the milliwheaton (500 followers) and microWheaton are more commonly used.

Wil Wheaton - Wesley Crusher, Star Trek The Next Generation
Wil Wheaton – Wesley Crusher, Star Trek The Next Generation

 

Mickey

A ‘Mickey’, named after Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse, is the smallest computer mouse movement that a computer can detect, less than 0.1mm.

Mickey Mouse Mouse
Mickey Mouse Mouse

 

Nibble

Still with computers, a Nibble is half a Byte. 

 

Garn

NASA is well acquainted with a problem called ‘space adaption syndrome’, more commonly called space sickness. It is the result of some astronauts finding it difficult to acclimatize to unusual gravities or pressures. One astronaut who was particularly prone to this type of sickness was named Jake Garn, who apparently vomited ‘explosively’ on an orbital flight. 1 Garn means a person as sick as Mr Garn was, with a corresponding scale for those less afflicted.

Jake Garn, the sickest astronaut in the universe!
Jake Garn, the sickest astronaut in the universe!

 

Warhol

A ‘Warhol’ is a unit of fame or hype, that is derived from Andy Warhol’s famous pronouncement that “everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes”. Thus

1 kilowarhol — famous for 15,000 minutes, or 10.42 days. A sort of metric “nine-day wonder”.

1 megawarhol — famous for 15 million minutes, or 28.5 years.

Andy Warhol's infamous Campbell Soup
Andy Warhol’s infamous Campbell Soup

 

Jolie

A ‘Jolie’ is unit that denotes the amount of international aid a country receives when it becomes the cause celebre of a prominent celebrity. In 2005, International Rescue Committee calculated that Darfur received $300 per capita in aid, while DRC received $11 per capita. Hence, a Jolie can be thought of as a 27x increase in aid receipt.

Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie

 

Kardashian

The ‘Kardashian’ is the amount of global attention Kim Kardashian commands across all media over the space of a day.

The mind-numbingly boring Kim Kardashian
The mind-numbingly boring Kim Kardashian

 

Horse

Horses are used to measure distances in horse racing – a horse length (shortened to merely a length when the context makes it obvious) equals roughly 8 feet or 2.4 metres. Shorter distances are measured in fractions of a horse length; also common are measurements of a full or fraction of a head, a neck, or a nose.

Horsey
Horsey

 

Nanocentury

A ‘Nanocentury’ is a unit of time measurement sometimes used in computing. The term is believed to have been coined by IBM in 1969 from the design objective “never to let the user wait more than a few nanocenturies for a response”.  A nanocentury is approximately 3.155 seconds although Tom Duff is frequently cited as saying that, to within half a percent, a nanocentury is pi seconds.

 

Dog year

A ‘Dog Year’ is a unit of measurement equal to one seventh of a year, or approximately 52 days. It is primarily used to approximate the equivalent age of dogs and other animals with similar life spans. It is based upon a popular myth regarding the aging of dogs that states that a dog ages seven years in the time it takes a human to age one year. (In fact, the aging of a dog varies by breed; dogs also develop faster and have longer adulthoods relative to their total life span than humans.)

pluto
pluto

 

Stoddard

The Stoddard is a measurement used by political campaigns to determine the density of a canvassing area. It is measured in doors per acre. 

 

Mac Index: purchasing power parity

The Economist’s ‘Big Mac Index’compares the purchasing power parity of countries in terms of the cost of a Big Mac hamburger.This was felt to bea good measure of the prices of a basket of commodities in the local economy including labour, rent, meat, bread, cardboard, advertising, lettuce, etc.

A similar system used in the UK is the ‘Mars Bar’ (US readers think ‘Milky Way’). Tables of prices in Mars Bars have intermittently appeared in newspapers over the last 20 years, usually to illustrate changes in wages or prices over time without the confusion caused by inflation.

The Big Mac Index
The Big Mac Index

 

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