Remove this Banner Ad

Games & Recreation Pointless Trivia

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gough
  • Start date Start date
  • Tagged users Tagged users None

🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.

The assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo in July 1914 ignited tensions in the Balkans and in greater Europe, setting off World War I which would last for over four years.

The royal couple from the Habsburg family of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire were shot dead in a car that bore the registration plate AIII 11 18, and the armistice to end the First World War took place on 11 November 1918 (11/11/18).

I actually saw the car 2 years ago (I originally wrote last year, because Covid has made 2020 into a non-existent gap in my memory timeline - anyway it was in 2019). The car is in the Vienna Military museum. It was actually used for a few years by many people after the war. It has since been 'restored' to its 'assassination' condition which makes me wonder if the bullet holes are real or not. Still, it is definitely the actual car, and quite interesting to see as a genuine historical artifact. Also is protected by a proximity alarm - when I stretched out my arm to point out a bullet hole to my wife ( within 2-3 feet at best), sirens and horns went off and fully-armed officials came rushing up (well, actually, polite elderly gentlemen in their 70s shuffled into view, raised their eyebrows and gave me a brief smile as if to say 'Don't be that dick, OK?').

Regarding the number plate - yeah, but - the thing is, much of Austria-Hungary, and certainly the Archduke spoke German, while the the inhabitants of Sarajevo spoke Bosnian, Croat or Serbian (the assassins were Serbian). In any of those languages the number plate co-incidence doesn't work ('armistice' or 'treaty' in those languages do not begin with 'A", and anyway Austria-Hungary sgned their armistice on November 5th. But of course, we English-speakers put our own twist on things as if it is the most important thing. The number plate was only noticed in the early 2000s.

There are also a whole series of 'cursed owners' of the car, where supposedly owners and drivers of the car suffered deaths and horrible accidents in the years after - most of these events have been shown to be exaggerated - rather like the 'eerie' co-incidences between the Abe Lincoln and JFK assassination (did you know the car JFK was shot in was a Lincoln continental?).

Pointless Trivia. Fun.
 
The population density for the gold coast is around 1,428 persons living per square kilometre. Just behind Melbourne which is around 1,500 persons per square km.




City
PopulationAreaDensityCountry
/km2/sqmi
Manila1,780,148 [1]42.88[2]16.5641,515107,520 Philippines
Pateros63,840 [1]1.76[3]0.6836,44794,400 Philippines
Mandaluyong386,276 [1]11.06[3]4.2734,92590,460 Philippines
Baghdad6,719,500[note 1]204.478.932,87485,140 Iraq
Mumbai12,478,447[8]603[9]23320,69453,600 India
Dhaka8,906,136306.38118.2929,06975,290 Bangladesh
Caloocan1,583,978 [1]53.20[3]20.5427,98972,490 Philippines
Port-au-Prince987,310[10]36.0413.9227,39570,950 Haiti
Bnei Brak208,000 [11]7.088[12]2.73727,33870,810 Israel
Levallois-Perret64,379[13]2.41[13]0.9326,71369,190 France

 
listening to the podcast No Such Thing As A Fish which is by the QI elves, absolute treasure trove for pointless trivia

mainly due to English suppression of the language, Welsh has fewer loan words in English than Hawaiian
 

Log in to remove this Banner Ad

another one, the IAAF have to design a new javelin every so often because an athletics track is only so long, basically as soon as someone starts getting past 100m they make a new, less aerodynamic javelin and all the previous records are wiped. Additionally, in the 1960s someone figured out if you spun around and released it like a hammer or discus throw you could get significantly further but this was banned for obvious reasons.
 
and my last one for tonight, the marathon was originally set at 40km, which is the distance that Pheidippides allegedly ran at the Battle of Marathon, and this was the length used for the 1896, 1900 and 1904 Olympics. However at the 1908 Olympics in London, Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, requested that the race be started on the lawn of Windsor Castle so her children could watch and then end in front of the royal box at the Olympic stadium, which came to be the 42.195km distance used today.
 
There were still lions on mainland Europe during the birth of Christ.
 

Remove this Banner Ad

David Cameron used to say Dark Side of the Moon was his favourite album but this was a lie, it’s just that the Prime Minister of the UK can’t exactly say his favourite album is The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths.
 
the major north-south thoroughfare in the Adelaide CBD is King William Street, and every east-west street that crosses it changes name on either side because no one may cross the king.
 
Two giants of English literature in CS Lewis and Alduos Huxley died on the exact same day, but no one really cared for a few days because it was also the day JFK died.
 

🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.

The population density for the gold coast is around 1,428 persons living per square kilometre. Just behind Melbourne which is around 1,500 persons per square km.

If Alaska had the same population density as Manhattan then 48 billion people would live there.
 
Manatees have the most anatomically similar vaginas to humans of any animal.

they are also thought to be the origin of the mermaid myth.

enjoy connecting those dots
 
enjoy connecting those dots

d97.jpg
 
Manatees have the most anatomically similar vaginas to humans of any animal.
On a different note, a surprising number of BigFooty users are banned from SeaWorld
 

Remove this Banner Ad

Remove this Banner Ad

🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.

Back
Top Bottom