First Fasab Fact File Feast For 2015.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Hi and welcome to the first fasab fact feast for 2015.

If you like a random selection of interesting tidbits this is the place to be.

I hope you enjoy.

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There are

169,518,829,100,544,000,000,000,000,000

ways to play the first ten moves of any chess game.

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James Bond works for MI6,

which is a real agency,

except of course that he isn’t real,

so therefore he doesn’t.

I hope that’s cleared that up.

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Although the phrase ‘get out of hand’

has several different meanings nowadays,

still the most common is to describe when

someone loses control of things or a situation.

The phrase has its origins in the old days

when failure to keep a firm grip on the reins

would result in a team of horses

getting “out of hand.”

 

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The estimates of the number of workers

involved in the construction of the pyramids

differ significantly but it could have

been as many 100,000 people.

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A polar bear has particularly developed

sense of smell and can track an

icebound seal up to 20 miles (32 kilometers) away,

or sniff-out a seal’s breathing hole in the ice

more than half a mile away, even if the seal is absent.

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Harry S. Truman’s middle name

was just S.

According to Truman,

the S as his middle name was a

compromise of his two grandfathers,

Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young.

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Football star and American war hero Pat Tillman

rejected a multimillion-dollar contract to play

the game professionally and instead

chose to serve his country.

In 2002 he enlisted in the U.S. Army,

but sadly his career and life were cut short

when he was killed in action in 2004.

Even though the exact circumstances

of his death are still in question,

his legacy is not and Tillman is considered

one of the bravest American athletes

who turned his back on a comfortable,

luxurious life for the love of his country.

A great man.

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YouTube was founded

by three former PayPal employees,

Chad Hurley, Steven Chen, and Jawed Karim.

They registered the domain name in February 2005

and the site was officially launched that December.

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On the planet Mars there exists

what is known as the “face on Mars”.

It is believed to be an optical illusion

created from natural looking Martian hills.

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Greece’s national anthem

has 158 stanzas.

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In 1938 Adolf Hitler was named

Time Magazine’s Man of the Year

and in 1939 was nominated

for the Nobel Peace Prize.

World War II began in 1939!

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Male mice sing love songs for female mice.

The songs they sing are ultrasonic,

and humans are unable to hear them,

but presumably the female mice can.

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The scene in the movie ‘Titanic’

when the band members continue playing

to calm down the passengers as the ship is sinking

is based on fact.

The band did continue to play for hours

after the ship hit the iceberg.

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Alcohol more easily causes dehydration

and dilates blood vessels

which can result in headaches;

it also increases stomach acid and

decreases the rate the stomach empties itself

which can lead to vomiting.

We call this infliction a hangover.

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Contrary to what you see in the movies,

real Tequila does not have a worm in it.

The worm, or gusano, actually originated

with tequila’s ‘lower-quality’ cousin, mezcal,

largely as a marketing ploy.

The gusano is the larvae of a type of moth

that lives on the agave plant.

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It’s An Ill Wind….

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The original title of this post was “Farting On Airplanes” because it is really about farting on airplanes, but I thought it might be better just to call it “It’s An Ill Wind”.

No, come on, now you know don’t turn your noses up, or pretend this is something that (a) you’ve never thought about, or (b) never done. Farting on airplanes is an international phenomenon that transcends all nationalities, religions, ages, creeds, classes and colors.

It is in fact the common bond of all the world’s travelers.

Whether it can ever bring us closer together, however, is another thing (Phew!)

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This is a quite embarrassing story. Not something one would normally admit to, but people write unusual things on blogs.

It concerns one of the first long haul flights that I was ever on.

Nowadays, as a seasoned flyer, I always have a good meal before the flight. I don’t suffer from air sickness of any kind and I don’t care for the stuff they call airline food. Back then, however, I was a novice and ended up on board without any breakfast other than a cup of coffee. My stomach was empty – of food anyhow.

All was well for about twenty or thirty minutes and then it started.

The obvious solution would have been to get up and go to the toilet. But easy options aren’t the way I have gone through life so far.

Also it was a big plane, a 747, and the toilets were quite a bit away from my seat. I would face a long walk down the narrow aisle.

Not that the walk itself was the problem. It was just that whoever designs airline seats has arranged things so that the nose and ears of the person sitting down is just about at the same height as the bottom of the person walking casually past.

You see the predicament?

In any case, I found myself in a window seat with two other seats to negotiate before I got to the aisle. Such was the pressure building up that I feared the exertion of hopping over the additional seats would make the whole purpose of the journey somewhat redundant.

There was nothing for it but to stay where I was, with the unfortunate choice being either bursting or releasing some of the pressure. Not unnaturally I chose to do the latter option.

As these things go it was a substantial outcome. But the drone of the plane engines (they were a lot louder in those days, I think, I hope, weren’t they?) seemed to drown out any other background noises.

I didn’t hear a thing.

I double checked by having a quick look at the person unfortunate enough to be sitting beside me, but there was no sign in the expression on his face that anything untoward had happened. Either that or he was a professional poker player with a practiced deadpan expression – or in a state of semi consciousness as a result of the concussive force emanating from the seat beside him.

My confidence grew. I thought of the famous campfire scene from Blazing Saddles and let a few more go in tribute.

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I was so happy at the relief and at the fact that all was undetected that I allowed myself a triumphant smile, and then even a laugh. The movie I was watching was a comedy so my laughter didn’t look out of place either.

It was all good.

Hang on a minute.

All was not as good as it seemed.

Cut the laughter and cue serious worried face.

I suddenly realized that all this time I had been wearing the headphones the flight attendant had given us for the movies they were showing. No wonder I had heard nothing!

Oh dear me! What had I done?

Well, I knew what I had done, of course. The big question now was, did anyone else know? Had they heard me doing it?

I looked again at the man in the seat beside me. Again no perceivable reaction on his face that indicated that anything out of the ordinary had happened, although now I was aware of them I saw that he too was wearing the headphones.   

I was relieved a bit, but still very curious. And when I get curious about something I have to try to find an answer.

So there was nothing for it but let rip again, this time with my headphones off.

And that’s what I did.

Thankfully, in the interests of the scientific experiment now under way, the quality of the offending item had not diminished in force. A guy knows about these things even without any audio feedback.

To my great relief, in every meaning of the word, I still didn’t hear a thing. The drone of the airplane engines had indeed drowned out any other sounds.

It was a magnificently liberating experience and from that day on I have never looked back, as it were.

Further experimentation revealed that the same undetectable result could be achieved even on much smaller airplanes. Commercial jets I’m talking about, of course, this is not a sport to indulge in on a single engined Cesna or something like that.

I also found out that it is possible I have been saving the airlines lucky enough to win my custom a small fortune. As you know the air in airplanes these days is all re-circulated and, as the methane content of a fart is lighter than air, the captured gas therefore contributes to keeping the airplane airborne with a consequent saving on fuel. That’s my story anyhow.

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And the good news just keeps on coming.

Independent research confirms that a person’s sense of smell is greatly suppressed in the reduced cabin air pressure, which incidentally is also why airplane food tastes so bad. 

So now if you are on an airplane and sitting beside someone who is chuckling to himself – or herself, yes ladies your secret is out – you’ll know the real reason why!

One day it might even be me!!!

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