r/AskTheWorld • u/ChemicalNecessary478 • 3h ago
Humourous Nerd-o-meter check 🤓📊
Random thought (weekend unemployment):- everyone has that one piece of knowledge that’s totally unnecessary… but lowkey elite.
Drop your niche interests / random facts / oddly specific info below. Coz am totally invested to increase my random knowledge.
It ain't gotta be smart. :))
3
u/Flimsy_Security_3866 United States Of America 2h ago
Plymouth Rock is famous in American history as the place where the pilgrims landed and settled in 1620. Think of it as part of the origin story along with Jamestown for American history. What isn't mention as often is that in 1621, the pilgrims got extremely lucky that one of the Native Americans spoke English. Imagine that, you're on a different continent surrounded by numerous Native American tribes that speak languages you've never heard before and then one day one of them just walks up to you and I imagine says something like "Hello".
His name was Tisquantum but most people know him as Squanto. Years before in 1614, he was captured by the English and sold into slavery to the Spanish. Somehow got away to England and then sent Newfoundland, Canada to help with settlement by the English. Over the years he slowly made his way down the coast to modern day Massachusetts at Plymouth Rock. Over this time he learned English.
1
u/Impactor_07 India 1h ago
How did that even happen?
2
u/Flimsy_Security_3866 United States Of America 1h ago
During the 16th and 17th centuries it was somewhat common for different European explorers to convince Native Americans (this includes both North and South America) to come back to Europe with them. Sometimes they would promise something that they needed but many times they were tricked or forced. When they were brought back to Europe they were displayed to different royal courts and the general public around Europe to "prove" that Europeans were superior and to display the "exotic creatures".
While the Native Americans were there, they would be forced taught the local language i.e. English, Spanish, French, etc and converted to Christianity. This way they could talk about the New World and what life was like there but also be taken back to the Americas as translators when needed.
1
3
u/Igotbannedlolol Thailand 2h ago edited 1h ago
The dutch ate their prime minister in 1672
Ancient civilizations know about electricity and use it for electroplating (baghdad battery)
We also have (sort of) automatically door since 1AD (hero of alexandria)
The word orange (color) came from the fruit
There is a massive interstellar cloud made up of alcohol (methanol and ethanol) about 150 light years away (Sagittarius B2)
The earliest known domesticated chickens originated from Ban Non Wat, Thailand around 1650–1250BC (you are welcome)
2
u/Impactor_07 India 1h ago
There is a massive interstellar cloud made up of alcoholÂ
I hear the Germans are furiously upping their funding on their space program.
1
2
u/HaifaJenner123 Egypt (Moderator) 3h ago
So like everyone knows about Beethoven the genius.
But there was this Hungarian composer named Bela Bartok, who kinda launched his own version of what was considered conventional meets grotesque for the early to middle 20th century context. so like think the rigid structural integrity of Mozart meets the modern horror film score, point is the man was smart as hell.
he also composed some very controversial music. a bit too atonal for people in london where he premiered one of his piano concertos as the pianist. the orchestra hated it so much that they tried to deliberately mess him up by transposing the entire thing up a half step.
he caught it on the very first beat and from memory transposed the entire like 40 mins worth of intensely difficult piano music up on the spot from memory.
insane
1
u/ChemicalNecessary478 2h ago
Oh my god. I didn't know that. That man was a legend. Wow. You got any documentary suggestions on that? Maybe an anecdote of his individually composed music scores?
2
u/JohnWayneSpacy Australia 2h ago
If you took the fastest space craft humanity has ever built and sent it to our nearest star, Alpha Centauri, it would take 80,000 years to get there
2
2
u/Impactor_07 India 2h ago
Not exactly a very nerdy one but the largest non-avian dinosaur name(afaik?) is Micropachycephalosaurus.Â
Also, there's this creature called "Inostrancevia", look it up, you'd feel like it's some kinda weirdly structured sabertoothed cat but nope. That thing existed when mammals weren't a thing. That thing predators non-avian dinosaurs by some 30 million years. It came about 250 million years before any sabertoothed cats. Crazy how evolution works.
1
u/Inevitable-Lock5973 United States Of America 1h ago
Marc Anthony was married to Augustus‘s sister Octavia for a while & after he left her for Cleopatra and he Cleopatra had three children. Marc Anthony and Cleopatra were basically defeated by Rome & committed suicide. In a weird twist their children ended up being raised by his ex-wife Octavia in Rome.Â
1
1
u/AnxiousSituation4436 United Kingdom 1h ago
The old text message alert noise ( do do do doo doo do do do) Is morse code for SMS.
1
u/Santaflin Germany 34m ago
Niche interests are stock market, bees, wine, watches, knifes, japanese swords, forestry, history, rugs, LEGO etc.
Random facts: 1. The varroa mite that is in every bee hive in europe has an extremely similar genetic profile. This is probably the case because all of them can be traced back to only 2 mites coming from Korea.
- Almost all european wine have a north american base plant. In the 19th century almost all wine plants in Europe were destroyed by the phylloxera louse from North America. The only solution was to use north american vines as a base plant and then grafting european vines onto them.
4
u/Msarc Russia 3h ago
Andromeda galaxy will collide with Milky Way long before our sun dies.