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Today I learned …

Posted: 28 Aug 2010, 4:18pm
by Dr. Medulla
… that Harry Morgan (aka Col. Potter from MASH) is still alive. Born in 1915.

Re: Today I learned …

Posted: 28 Aug 2010, 5:31pm
by Wolter
Holy shit. I just assumed he was dead.

Re: Today I learned …

Posted: 28 Aug 2010, 6:10pm
by tepista
I never watched Mash, but I watched Dragnet.

Re: Today I learned …

Posted: 28 Aug 2010, 11:31pm
by Dr. Medulla
tepista wrote:I never watched Mash, but I watched Dragnet.
He was already really old then.

Re: Today I learned …

Posted: 30 Aug 2010, 12:56pm
by Dr. Medulla
… that Britain's Queen Anne was so obese that she was unable to climb or descend stairs. To move between floors, she was raised or lowered via a series of pulleys through trapdoors. Source: Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life.

Re: Today I learned …

Posted: 30 Aug 2010, 2:12pm
by Kory
Dr. Medulla wrote:… that Britain's Queen Anne was so obese that she was unable to climb or descend stairs. To move between floors, she was raised or lowered via a series of pulleys through trapdoors. Source: Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life.
Not so private now...

Re: Today I learned …

Posted: 30 Aug 2010, 3:07pm
by Silent Majority
Dr. Medulla wrote:… that Britain's Queen Anne was so obese that she was unable to climb or descend stairs. To move between floors, she was raised or lowered via a series of pulleys through trapdoors. Source: Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life.
Waiting for that to either come out in paperback or get seriously reduced in hardback. I've really warmed to Bryson; got his Made In America book and enjoyed it almost as much as A Short History of Nearly Everything.

Re: Today I learned …

Posted: 30 Aug 2010, 3:14pm
by Dr. Medulla
Silent Majority wrote:
Dr. Medulla wrote:… that Britain's Queen Anne was so obese that she was unable to climb or descend stairs. To move between floors, she was raised or lowered via a series of pulleys through trapdoors. Source: Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life.
Waiting for that to either come out in paperback or get seriously reduced in hardback. I've really warmed to Bryson; got his Made In America book and enjoyed it almost as much as A Short History of Nearly Everything.
I'm listening to the audio version. It's good stuff, up to Bryson's standard of lively prose and efficient use of detail and example to make his point. You won't be disappointed if you liked those other two.

Re: Today I learned …

Posted: 05 Sep 2010, 8:03pm
by Dr. Medulla
… that if your pillow is more than six years old, fully one-tenth of its weight is made up of mites, dead mites, and mite shit. Source: Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life.

Re: Today I learned …

Posted: 05 Sep 2010, 9:16pm
by Wolter
Dr. Medulla wrote:… that if your pillow is more than six years old, fully one-tenth of its weight is made up of mites, dead mites, and mite shit. Source: Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life.
You can stop learning now.

Re: Today I learned …

Posted: 06 Sep 2010, 2:28am
by wmhp
That Greenland really is a place, it has a towns and everything. Dont think they have ever taken part in the world cup, but people do live there.

Re: Today I learned …

Posted: 06 Sep 2010, 11:20am
by Alyssa
Dr. Medulla wrote:
Silent Majority wrote:
Dr. Medulla wrote:… that Britain's Queen Anne was so obese that she was unable to climb or descend stairs. To move between floors, she was raised or lowered via a series of pulleys through trapdoors. Source: Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life.
Waiting for that to either come out in paperback or get seriously reduced in hardback. I've really warmed to Bryson; got his Made In America book and enjoyed it almost as much as A Short History of Nearly Everything.
I'm listening to the audio version. It's good stuff, up to Bryson's standard of lively prose and efficient use of detail and example to make his point. You won't be disappointed if you liked those other two.
Sounds really interesting...Little tidbits of information like that are my sort of thing. I'm downloading some of his audiobooks right now.

Re: Today I learned …

Posted: 06 Sep 2010, 11:42am
by Dr. Medulla
Alyssa wrote:
Dr. Medulla wrote:
Silent Majority wrote:
Dr. Medulla wrote:… that Britain's Queen Anne was so obese that she was unable to climb or descend stairs. To move between floors, she was raised or lowered via a series of pulleys through trapdoors. Source: Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life.
Waiting for that to either come out in paperback or get seriously reduced in hardback. I've really warmed to Bryson; got his Made In America book and enjoyed it almost as much as A Short History of Nearly Everything.
I'm listening to the audio version. It's good stuff, up to Bryson's standard of lively prose and efficient use of detail and example to make his point. You won't be disappointed if you liked those other two.
Sounds really interesting...Little tidbits of information like that are my sort of thing. I'm downloading some of his audiobooks right now.
His history/science stuff is very entertaining and informative (if factoidy); his travelogues, imo, are horrible—he comes off as a snarky snob, bemoaning how awful things are.

Re: Today I learned …

Posted: 11 Sep 2010, 2:07pm
by Dr. Medulla
… about one scary-ass Victorian-era nursery rhyme: The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb by the unwhimsical Heinrich Hoffmann. Here's a recitation:
[youtube][/youtube]

Source: Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life.

Re: Today I learned …

Posted: 18 Sep 2010, 1:12pm
by Dr. Medulla
… one of my favourite series of childhood books, Enid Blyton's The Faraway Tree, has been mutilated for reasons that could only be described as inane. From Wikipedia:
In modern reprints, the names of the children have been changed:
• Jo is changed to Joe, because the character is a boy and this is the more commonly used spelling of the name for males;
• Bessie is changed to Beth, because the former name is now less commonly used as a nickname for Elizabeth;
• Fanny is changed to Frannie, because the former name is slang for vulva in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand (see Wiktionary entry) and "bottom" in the USA.
• Cousin Dick, who appears in "The Magic Faraway Tree", has been changed to "Rick" as "Dick" is American, Australian and British slang for penis.
In modern reprints, the character of Dame Slap has been re-named to Dame Snap and she no longer practises corporal punishment but instead reprimands her students by yelling at them very loudly.
How on earth did I survive to adulthood, being exposed to books with kids named Fanny and Dick, and with obviously sinister adults who beat on children?