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The actress Hedy Lamarr thought of and helped develop a frequency hopping spread-spectrum device (and she was named on the patent) to counter radio-controlled torpedo attacks in World War Two; although it was not adapted by the US Navy until 1957. Nowadays the technology is used in Bluetooth.
She was the Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter of her day (and in looking up his name on the Steely Dan Wiki page I found out that before Steely Dan Becker and Fagan had a band called Leather Canary that included future comedy star Chevy Chase on drums...)
I discovered yesterday I have 2 Eurovision connections. Always knew about one, but two!
First one was the partner at Coopers & Lybrand who recruited me as a young management consultant wrote a winning Eurovision song in the 70s (For Luxembourg)
Gets better though - his wife, who I knew sang for the New Seekers - but I didn't know the New Seekers represented Britain at one of the Eurovisions.
Graham Norton might just as well hand over the presenting job tbh and you can all bow to my Eurovision greatness.
The Viking Ulfberht swords were the precursor to the more famous medieval swords and are a crucial piece of technology in terms of military history apparently.
There is an example of one found with an Islamic inscription (presumably why the Vikings TV series has that weird side story in the desert) There is loads of crossover with the Viking and Islamic world after all https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-41567391
Did you know that when you shuffle a deck of cards, it's highly likely that that combination of 52 cards has never been shuffled before, ever, in that order. So, in shuffling a deck of cards, it's almost certain that you're doing something nobody has ever done before.
Probability wise its a 52 factorial, or 52! chance of achieving the same arrangement of cards. That's 52 x 51 x 50 x 49.....etc. To save you doing the maths, the answer is, broadly speaking, an 8 followed by 67 zeros.
For some context as to how big that number is, it's greater than all of the atoms on the planet.
If every human who had ever lived (anticipated to be c. 100bn) had spent every SECOND of every day, 24 hours a day (assuming a generous average life expectancy of 50) shuffling cards, we would still have only shuffled 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002% of the total combinations.
Obscure but vaguely interesting facts, snippets or random randomnesses on 15:11 - Aug 5 by bluelagos
I discovered yesterday I have 2 Eurovision connections. Always knew about one, but two!
First one was the partner at Coopers & Lybrand who recruited me as a young management consultant wrote a winning Eurovision song in the 70s (For Luxembourg)
Gets better though - his wife, who I knew sang for the New Seekers - but I didn't know the New Seekers represented Britain at one of the Eurovisions.
Graham Norton might just as well hand over the presenting job tbh and you can all bow to my Eurovision greatness.
If we're doing Eurovision connections, I met Cheryl Baker when she was at Jackson's in Hull as part of a promotion for National Bread Week in about 1993.
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Obscure but vaguely interesting facts, snippets or random randomnesses on 15:50 - Aug 5 with 4698 views
Obscure but vaguely interesting facts, snippets or random randomnesses on 15:48 - Aug 5 by clive_baker
Did you know that when you shuffle a deck of cards, it's highly likely that that combination of 52 cards has never been shuffled before, ever, in that order. So, in shuffling a deck of cards, it's almost certain that you're doing something nobody has ever done before.
Probability wise its a 52 factorial, or 52! chance of achieving the same arrangement of cards. That's 52 x 51 x 50 x 49.....etc. To save you doing the maths, the answer is, broadly speaking, an 8 followed by 67 zeros.
For some context as to how big that number is, it's greater than all of the atoms on the planet.
If every human who had ever lived (anticipated to be c. 100bn) had spent every SECOND of every day, 24 hours a day (assuming a generous average life expectancy of 50) shuffling cards, we would still have only shuffled 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002% of the total combinations.
I can't help but feel that would be a bit of a waste of time.
Obscure but vaguely interesting facts, snippets or random randomnesses on 15:50 - Aug 5 by PhilTWTD
If we're doing Eurovision connections, I met Cheryl Baker when she was at Jackson's in Hull as part of a promotion for National Bread Week in about 1993.
I defer to Phil's meeting of Cheryl Baker on the basis that she was a proper hottie back in the day.
Crikey that takes me back! I think my Dad was infatuated with Judith Durham, and that song, along with Morning Town Ride and Georgy Girl were played incessantly during my early childhood.
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Obscure but vaguely interesting facts, snippets or random randomnesses on 12:40 - Aug 6 with 4456 views
When handing out the vehicle registration numbers, in 2007, they didn't register vehicles with the prefix letters 'SN' as that would look like the word 'SNOT'. They replaced the 'S' with the letter 'T'.
The letter T is a 'spare' letter as a first letter on standard format British number plates and is used when usual options are exhausted or would give a 'rude' or undesirable reading as above.
Obscure but vaguely interesting facts, snippets or random randomnesses on 15:58 - Aug 5 by GeoffSentence
Not a lot of people know that Edinburgh is actually a bit, just a tiny bit, further West than Bristol.
The southernmost point in Britain, Lizard Point in Cornwall, is further north than the 49th line of latitude which, for a lot of its length, forms the border between USA and Canada.
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