Use Other Facts Please!

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Nuggets of information which are true, but everyone in the world already knows, but are still said with a smugness implying that something Extremely Fascinating is being imparted. Let them be said here and for the final time.

The classic rock one is the one about ZZ Top and Beards, if that gives you a flavour.

― Tom, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

A former CEO of IBM once claimed that the 'there's only a market for perhaps five personal computers worldwide'! Boy, was he wrong or what!

― tarden, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, tarden's the expert on this kind of thing. If 'A-Level Clichés' was owt to go by, he'll post 75% of the responses.

― the pinefox, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Classic football one. Tottenham always win the FA Cup in years which end in 1. Er except this year....

― Pete, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

New Zealand is full of sheep.

― AP, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Did you know that the Great Wall Of China is the only manmade structure you can see from space.

Problems with this. Obviously with good satelite imagining you can see pretty much everything from space. At which point they mention "the naked eye" and I point them to the last five minute of Total Recall (naked eyes abhor vacuums). And then i also point out that you can see any major conurbation from space due to light pollution.

Light pollution is - by the way - easily the best kind of pollution. Kids in three hundred years time ain't going to be moaning about the lamposts they wantonly used in the early 21st century.

― Pete, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Noise pollution's pretty good, as it goes. Except when it's rock 'n' roll, of course.

― Tim, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

New Zealand is full of people who have sex with sheep.

― duane, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The ultimate football fact is surely thus: "Of course, despite great individual talent, the Spanish always underachieve at major football tournaments." Fuck off, Hansen.

― Greg, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

New Zealand is full of people who have sex with dairy cows when they're done with sheep.

― AP, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Astonishingly, in "Casablanca" Humphrey Bogart never actually says 'Play it again Sam'.

― The Dirty Vicar, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Bondi Beach is full of sheep fuckers who got bored and decided to try kangaroo's meat for a change.

― Geoff, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Similar to the IBM one, Alexander Graham Bell (I think) once said excitedly something like: I do believe I am not overstating it when I suggest there will one day be a telephone device in EVERY town in the United States.

― chris, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Did you know: Clint Eastwood is alergic to horses - which is dead ironic really, considering the amount of movies he made WHERE HE HAD TO RIDE A HORSE!

I don't know if he's alergic to Urang Utans though. Hope not!

― D*A*V*I*D*M, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I don't think the last two count, because I didn't know either of them!

My favourite is Christian Scientists: They're not Christian, and they're not Scientists! which I've just used over on another thread, so there you go.

― masonic boom, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sarah Miles starts every day with a nice, warm glass of her own pish.

― Madchen, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Duran Duran were among the first pop acts to base their image around promotional videos.

― Robin Carmody, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sting can keep it up for 6 hours at a time!

― stevie t, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Slightly off topic, but: Anything expressed in football pitches or double-decker buses. Or bags of sugar. How many people have been to football matches often enough and recent enough to comprehend exactly how big one is? And don't bags of sugar actually weigh one pound each anyway? And maybe I'm an oddball, but I've never taken much notice of exactly how tall a double decker bus is.

And these are meant to make things easier for the common man to comprehend. Hence the "...stretch twice around the world!". And the classic "That's long enough to stretch around the coast of Britain three times!", which as everyone who knows about fractals knows (which, come on, includes everyone. If we're all capable of visualising how far it is to the moon (and back), how can anyone not know their fractals?), this is entirely meaningless, because the coast is any length you want it to be depending on how carefully you measure it. And I shan't mention waves and tides. Let's not forget that "If we laid the amount raised out in two-pence pieces..." line that goes with it (Obvious joke: "...someone would nick it!").

So I propose new measurements:

"This baby chimp weighs the same as 22 microwave meals"
"The Millennium dome is the same height as 22 drive-thru McDonalds, and covers the same area as 22 Tesco car parks" (except not as good a day out, obviously)
"That's enough money to pay for 22,000 Nokia 3310s"
etc.

― Graham, Monday, 2 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Prostitutes only do it for the money.

― AP, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

STOP IT WITH THE 22s ARE YOU TRYING TO DRIVE ME BLOODY MAD, GRAHAM?!?!?!?

― masonic boom, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

An over used one here - but one I love nevertheless.

Self styled brainiest woman on TV Carol Vorderman only got a third at University.

― Pete, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

No! It can't be! She's the cleverest woman - no, person - in the entire world! Everybody knows that!

― DG, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Of course it would have been a lot funnier (or at least annoyed Kate) if she had got a 2:2.

― Pete, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Spiders are not in fact insects.

― AP, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"[x] is actually a fruit, not a vegetable." The correct response to this statement is sudden, horrible violence.

― Dan Perry, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"Violence is not the answer"

― Tim, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Both Carol Vorderman and Richard Whiteley got thirds from Cambridge.

― Madchen, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"There is no proper medical name for the back of the kneecap".

Actually, that may just be an E L Wisty or Python line...

― Michael Jones, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The Madchen went and lost me good and proper with that Miles line.

I like what Tim H and Steady M have to say, but I still feel that Stevie T is closest so far. Is he? I suppose what I mean is: his was virtually the only fact I already knew. (Knew? No, I don't know the numbers of hours or anything like that. Does Sting?)

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yoghurt contains bacteria.

― AP, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"The average person uses just 10% of their brain"

Or is that 22%?

― Graham, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"R.E.M. is short for Rapid Eye Movement. It's something you do when you're asleep!"

Pretty much all band name explanations get old very quickly. They probably write them on press releases so that radio DJ's can sound interested, and fill airtime - unwittingly advertising said band for free. Genius.

― Graham, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"Goldfish have a memory of only [insert vague half remembered number - usually 3, 5 or 6, but never 22] seconds!"

Usually followed by a stream of crap jokes - Even Eddie Izzard's fallen into the trap. It was repopularise around 1993 (Either because of or before a Jasper Carrot program), but I've seen some 70s movie that mentions it, so it must be ages old.

And yes, this is the Persecute Kate And Her Bizarre Mental Tick thread. Apologies.

― Graham, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"Did you know that eskimos have [fantasy number] words for snow?" after which pause meaningfully and make a remark about Our Modern Life, and how "I've got about that many words for stress I'll tell you that!"

"Did you know that a whole dream takes place in a matter of seconds?" I am still amazed at that one, actually.

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 4 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I like Tracer's 'stress' thing. Reminds me of Myles and his Bores.

You are 88% water.

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 4 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Although the Beatles' songs are credited to Lennon / McCartney, they were in fact almost all written by *one or other* of the duo.

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 4 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

are we talking about nuggets of info that are true or that are false? i get very angry when anyone relates the following false facts/urban myths to me: "eskimos have 100 words for snow" "humans only use 10% of their brain" "humans evolved from monkeys"

or when anyone says the following: "it really makes you think"

― marianna maclean, Wednesday, 4 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

R.E.M. actually stands for Rapid Ear Movement when you are talking about the band. Which makes it 22 times worse.

― Pete, Wednesday, 4 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

(Richie Benaud is the doyen of 22. Finest moment, approx: "The score is 222 for 2, and Roger Twose, with that 2, is on 22.")

― AP, Wednesday, 4 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

ewe sheep fuckers have richie benaud in nz too?

― Geoff, Wednesday, 4 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

(Best Richie Benaud gag from The 12th Man, approx: "Hmmm, which jacket shall I wear today? The white, the off-white, the cream, the beige, or the bone?")

― AP, Wednesday, 4 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

(Note to head-scratchers: Richie Benaud = Oz cricket commentator who slurs the word "two". The 12th Man = Oz comedian who imitates Richie Benaud.) Actual answers relevant to thread question: all that trite, obvious crap sports commentators - experts! - spout EVERY FUCKING GAME, esp. "They'll be looking to get a win today."

― AP, Wednesday, 4 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Legendary English cricket commentator whose name I just can't seem to summon up once said on air "the bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willie" or something like that.

The Guardian newspaper was, for one legendary day, The Grauniad.

― Madchen, Wednesday, 4 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The legendary Brian "Johnners" Johnston, who said the batsman was having trouble getting his legover. The commentary team collapsed with laughter for about 10 minutes.

He was a national institution - people always sent him cake to eat during matches and my folks cried when he died.

― chris, Wednesday, 4 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Long Island isn't really an island, it's a terminal moraine, the patch of land left over when an iceberg receeds.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 4 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"terminal moraine" is a very good description of Lon Guyland, anyway that you look at it.

― masonic boom, Thursday, 5 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

And speaking of icebergs, you only actually see a small fraction of them above the water, you know... Oh, and K2 is higher than Everest, but it starts underwater so it doesn't count.

― Ally C, Saturday, 7 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I should say 'taller' rather than 'higher'. Er...

― Ally C, Saturday, 7 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The average person spends x years of their life sleeping/picking their nose/wanking etc.

Someone said this (they picked the sleeping option) on Eurostar last night, and then their friend actually said "I love facts like that". I guess she found banal repitition of meaningless factoids reassuring or something. Mind you, we had been stuck on the train for about six hours by that point, so I guess her judgement was impaired.

I could give you a load more of these if my brain was in gear. How about "Of course, Dennis Wilson was the only Beach Boy who could actually surf?" OK, not everyone in the world knows it. Talking of which, what's the ZZ Top / Beards fact, Tom?

― Nick, Monday, 9 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Skipping 16 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

How about: "You know the earth is mostly cake"

― mark s, Sunday, 9 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Columbus didn't *really* discover America.

― Kim, Sunday, 9 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

What about 'African music has a complex mathematical structure, actually' (I won't even begin to explain why that annoyed me) - that might not necessarily be 'something everyone knows' but it was imparted with smugness that implied something extremely fascinating was being said; anything that's kind of a postmodern revision of history that's blunderingly making more cruel generalisations annoys me, actually, and I seem to encounter stuff like that frequently.

― maryann, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

eight months pass...

(cat+feet)+(toast+butter)=flying

How many times have people hard this as new?

― Graham (graham), Tuesday, 20 August 2002 13:10 (twenty-two years ago)

"You know that cake is mostly earth?"

― Tim (Tim), Tuesday, 20 August 2002 13:17 (twenty-two years ago)

" Of course, Electro actually started when Afrika Bambaata used 'Trans-Europe Express' as the basis for..."

Where's that FUCKING SHOTGUN

― Ray M (rdmanston), Tuesday, 20 August 2002 13:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Where is the A-Level Cliches thread anyway? I love it and I can't find it.

― Sam (chirombo), Tuesday, 20 August 2002 13:43 (twenty-two years ago)

I bet you didn't know that the whale is not in fact a fish, actually. (I'll resist quoting Peter Cook.)

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 20 August 2002 18:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Mount Pleasant (a DC neighborhood) is neither mountainous or pleasant.

― j.lu (j.lu), Tuesday, 20 August 2002 19:03 (twenty-two years ago)

You know, cakes are more afraid of you than you are of them.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 20 August 2002 20:33 (twenty-two years ago)

An annoying variety: if you laid all the Xs nd to end/stretched out all the Ys it would stretch from here to the moon and back Z times.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 20 August 2002 21:02 (twenty-two years ago)

You don't literally need to drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day; you're getting some of your needed fluid intake through other beverages and food.

― j.lu (j.lu), Wednesday, 21 August 2002 01:56 (twenty-two years ago)

A peanut isn't a nut, it's a legume!

― Dan I, Wednesday, 21 August 2002 02:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Boring person rang in in boring radio show this morning to impart boring 'use other facts please' factoid to boring researcher who passed on said boring information to boring presenter who read it out to his boring audience. And the boring fact wasn't even true (that thing about a pepsi slogan meaning 'brings your ancestors back from the dead' in Chinese)

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 21 August 2002 07:35 (twenty-two years ago)

There's a radio station called 'The Rock' in Auckland where they say well-known facts after the songs like did you know that 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' was based on a girlfriend graffiti-ing Kurt Cobains wall with said phrase and Teen Spirit is actually a deodorant and you can read about it in Cobain's 'auto' biography. I heard a DJ on 'Solid Gold FM' in Dunedin say after a song, 'Well, I looked The Hollies up on the internet but I couldn't find any interesting trivia so ... whaddya know ... modern technology eh.'

― maryann, Wednesday, 21 August 2002 09:05 (twenty-two years ago)

I just had to RUSH straight here because I was reminded of my WORST FAVOURITE if you know what I mean - that is the fucking madeleine in Proust! It's on the FIRST PAGE! If you make a witty reference to the madeleine, do you not realise you are saying you have read the FIRST PAGE of the whole fucking thing! I was just reading a rom-com trashy novel and someone makes a plate of madeleines for someone because they love Proust. And in comedy routines, Steve Martin, Janeane Garafolineoaidfo, if they mention Proust, straight away, it's the flaming madeleine.

― maryann, Thursday, 22 August 2002 05:53 (twenty-two years ago)

they should have routines about the robot butler on pp342-75!!

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 22 August 2002 08:19 (twenty-two years ago)

TALKING OF CAKES: the cake on the cover of Let It Bleed was baked by... DELIA SMITH! Did anyone know that? Because I didn't until last night. God bless BBC2.

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 22 August 2002 08:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Did you hear me? DELIA. MADE. THAT. MENTALIST. CAKE. FOR. THE. ROLLING. STONES. That is the KING of actually interesting facts surely!

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 22 August 2002 11:18 (twenty-two years ago)

She didn't, y'know. She STYLED it. Whatever that means.

― RickyT (RickyT), Thursday, 22 August 2002 11:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Well yeah whatever. It saddens me that someone's actual JOB could be brushing pies tantalisingly with oil and otherwise creating horrible food porn.

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 22 August 2002 11:27 (twenty-two years ago)

8 years since I read it, but I don't think the madeleine *is* on the first page, is it? It's all about bedtime and the mother. But I could be misremembering this past thing.

yes a-level cliches was a fab idea for sure; I so agree.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 22 August 2002 12:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Making up facts like these is infinitely more fun, like hearing tabloid rumours and investing all your faith in them.

― Ronan (Ronan), Thursday, 22 August 2002 12:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Maybe the madeleine thing isn't on the first page, maybe it's like the fourth sentence, which could make it the twentieth page.

― maryann, Friday, 23 August 2002 02:31 (twenty-two years ago)

stephen stills tried out for the monkees. he didn't get in.

mike nesmith did, though. his mother invented tipp-ex.

although charles manson did not audition for the monkees, he did stay with dennis wilson for a while.

― RJG (RJG), Friday, 23 August 2002 03:04 (twenty-two years ago)

If you ever write anything about Jack Kerouac, please please please don't use the goddamn "That's not writing, it's typing" quote.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 23 August 2002 07:23 (twenty-two years ago)

in any and every magazine article about derrick may or detroit techno: "may said that techno was the sound of kraftwerk jamming with funkadelic in an elevator". really?

― michael wells, Friday, 23 August 2002 10:18 (twenty-two years ago)

hey did you guys know WRESTLING IS SCRIPTED?

― maura (maura), Friday, 23 August 2002 11:49 (twenty-two years ago)

um... "All you need is love" or some variation.

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Friday, 23 August 2002 12:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Amazing Grace, House of the Rising Sun, Advance Australia Fair, Auld Lang Syne, the Gilligan's Island theme, Yellow Rose of Texas and 95% of the entire anthology of Emily Dickinson's poetry can all be sung to the tune of any of them.

Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington both share the first given name Daniel.

There was a crewman called John Bertrand on Dennis Connor's yacht which lost the America's Cup in 1983 to John Bertrand's Australia II.

Is all this not amazing? Didn't think so.

― BJ, Saturday, 24 August 2002 21:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Despite their surnames and jobs, Roberto and Dino Baggio are _not_ related. Who'da thunk it?

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Sunday, 25 August 2002 06:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Sharon Stone actually has a genius level IQ.

― maryann, Sunday, 25 August 2002 07:49 (twenty-two years ago)

"Hey, did you know that dog is God spelled backwards? And vice versa? Isn't that just so deep and profound?"

Yechh. Actually, I'm always glad when I hear someone trot that out, because it means that I don't have to waste my time figuring out if the speaker's an idiot or not. The only non-stupid person I can think of that's used it is Steve Gerber (in Howard the Duck), and he meant it as an anticlimax.

Hey, wait! I've got an idea for a thread!

― Christine "Green Leafy Dragon" Indigo, Sunday, 25 August 2002 22:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Things that only
A-1 idiots think is profound

― Christine "Green Leafy Dragon" Indigo, Sunday, 25 August 2002 23:07 (twenty-two years ago)

It would more accurately descriptive to call Greenland Iceland, and vice versa.

― j.lu (j.lu), Sunday, 25 August 2002 23:14 (twenty-two years ago)

one month passes...

"A quarter of a million Iraqi children have already died"

SHUT UP.

(Not because I don't care or don't believe it or anything, it's just completely meaningless)

― Graham (graham), Monday, 30 September 2002 16:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Meaningless? I might be fed up of hearing it but I assumed the problem was with me.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 1 October 2002 08:19 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm not fed up with hearing it. In what way is it meaningless? I think it should be shouted at George Bush. Repeatedly. Every day.

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 1 October 2002 08:29 (twenty-two years ago)

How do you measure how many kids dies as a result of sanctions? And worse is how snactions often aren't mentioned as the cause, just a random number of dead kids as an argument for something or other.

― Graham (graham), Tuesday, 1 October 2002 11:53 (twenty-two years ago)

How do you measure how many kids dies as a result of sanctions?

You take the infant mortality rate pre-sanctions and, using infant mortality in the region as a whole as your guide, model the no-sanctions rate for Iraq for the years since. The main problems with this are: we don't know the claimed mortality rate now is correct; we don't know the mortality rate for 1991 was either.

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 1 October 2002 11:55 (twenty-two years ago)

five months pass...

actors call 'macbeth' "the scottish play" because they are superstitious about it!!

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 6 March 2003 22:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Surely that's too well known for it even to be classed as a UOF?

What next - Paris is the capital of France?

― N. (nickdastoor), Friday, 7 March 2003 00:06 (twenty-two years ago)

the reason actors don't want to say 'macbeth''s title is because, when a production was doing badly, they'd stick on a short run of 'macbeth' because it's not too long and easy to set up with few actors and is well known so they associate the play with a production not doing well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

― RJG (RJG), Friday, 7 March 2003 00:09 (twenty-two years ago)

one month passes...

david hasslehoff has/had, for a time, a successful recording career, inexplicably, in germany while remaining, understandably, a figure of ridicule in most of the rest of the universe!!!

― RJG (RJG), Wednesday, 16 April 2003 10:35 (twenty-two years ago)

five years pass...

Hey, did you know that the Chinese character for "crisis" is the character for "danger" plus the character for "opportunity"?

Or Japanese. Or Javanese. Or something. Honest. I sawr it on the webs.

― Ye Mad Puffin, Friday, 30 January 2009 19:17 (sixteen years ago)

michael jordan didn't make his high school basketball team, albert einstein was told he'd amount to nothing as a physicist, thomas edison failed out of school etc.

― Andrew Schlafly OTM (rent), Friday, 30 January 2009 22:34 (sixteen years ago)

Didn't we once have a thread along the lines of "use other ways of expressing facts, please?" Because I worry that alien anthropologists will come across some Earth trivia and think we waste all our time laying things end to end to see whether they'll stretch to the moon or not.

― nabisco, Friday, 30 January 2009 22:47 (sixteen years ago)

fourteen years pass...

A showbiz story involves his collaboration with Laurence Olivier on the 1976 film Marathon Man. Upon being asked by his co-star how a previous scene had gone, one in which Hoffmann’s character had supposedly stayed up for three days, Hoffmann admitted that he too had not slept for 72 hours to achieve emotional verisimilitude. “My dear boy,” replied Olivier smoothly, “why don’t you just try acting?”

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 11 May 2023 09:35 (two years ago)

hnnnngggghhh

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 11 May 2023 10:13 (two years ago)

Petrichor is the name of that iron-rich smell you get when rain falls on dry, hot ground.
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics using gold, so that a broken object becomes more beautiful through its scars.
I feel like both of these things get trotted out on a regular basis, and always explained as if nobody has ever heard them before.

― trishyb, Thursday, 11 May 2023 19:15 (two years ago)

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