interesting and/or fun wikipedia articles

[benjipwns]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welteislehre

Welteislehre (WEL; "World Ice Theory" or "World Ice Doctrine"), also known as Glazial-Kosmogonie (Glacial Cosmogony), is a cosmological concept proposed by Hanns Hörbiger, an Austrian engineer and inventor.

Hörbiger did not arrive at his ideas through research, but said that he had received it in a "vision" in 1894. According to his ideas, ice was the basic substance of all cosmic processes, and ice moons, ice planets, and the "global ether" (also made of ice) had determined the entire development of the universe.

[OnlyRegret]

reading about chicoms and sparrows
 

what a clusterfuck

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign
and pieces elsewhere

[Great Rumbler]

Rather than being increased, rice yields after the campaign were substantially decreased. Mao ordered the end of the campaign against sparrows, replacing them with bed bugs, as the extermination of sparrows upset the ecological balance, and insects destroyed crops as a result of the absence of natural predators.

Mao was kinda stupid, wasn't he?

[OnlyRegret]

Rather than being increased, rice yields after the campaign were substantially decreased. Mao ordered the end of the campaign against sparrows, replacing them with bed bugs, as the extermination of sparrows upset the ecological balance, and insects destroyed crops as a result of the absence of natural predators.

Mao was kinda stupid, wasn't he?

the whole thing is absurd

[Great Rumbler]

The Erfurt latrine disaster was an event that occurred in Erfurt, Duchy of Thuringia in 1184. A number of nobles from across the Holy Roman Empire were meeting in a room at the Church of St. Peter, when their combined weight caused the floor to collapse into the latrine beneath the cellar and led to dozens of nobles drowning in liquid excrement. At least 60 people died in the accident.

[Tasty]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monstrous_moonshine

In mathematics, monstrous moonshine, or moonshine theory, is the unexpected connection between the monster group M and modular functions, in particular, the j function. The term was coined by John Conway and Simon P. Norton in 1979.

It is now known that lying behind monstrous moonshine is a vertex operator algebra called the moonshine module (or monster vertex algebra) constructed by Igor Frenkel, James Lepowsky, and Arne Meurman in 1988, having the monster group as symmetries. This vertex operator algebra is commonly interpreted as a structure underlying a two-dimensional conformal field theory, allowing physics to form a bridge between two mathematical areas. The conjectures made by Conway and Norton were proven by Richard Borcherds for the moonshine module in 1992 using the no-ghost theorem from string theory and the theory of vertex operator algebras and generalized Kac–Moody algebras.

what am I reading?

This is Timecube shit.

[Joe Molotov]

Kac shit

[Great Rumbler]

Hellevik was about to close the door between the chamber system and the trunk when the chamber explosively decompressed from a pressure of nine atmospheres to one atmosphere. One of the tenders, 32-year-old William Crammond of Great Britain, and all four of the divers were killed instantly; the other tender, Saunders, was severely injured.

The fourth diver was dismembered and mutilated by the blast forcing him out through the partially blocked doorway and would have died instantly.

Could have also gone in the bad vibes thread, tbh.

[Great Rumbler]

The complaint tablet to Ea-nasir is a clay tablet from ancient Babylon written c. 1750 BC. It is a complaint to a merchant named Ea-nasir from a customer named Nanni. Written in cuneiform, it is considered to be the oldest known written complaint. It is currently kept in the British Museum.

Ea-nasir travelled to the Persian Gulf to buy copper and return to sell it in Mesopotamia. On one particular occasion, he had agreed to sell copper ingots to Nanni. Nanni sent his servant with the money to complete the transaction. The copper was sub-standard and not accepted. In response, Nanni created the cuneiform letter for delivery to Ea-nasir. Inscribed on it is a complaint to Ea-nasir about a copper delivery of the incorrect grade, and issues with another delivery. He also complained that his servant (who handled the transaction) had been treated rudely. He stated that, at the time of writing, he had not accepted the copper but had paid the money.

[Joe Molotov]

Nanni demands to speak to the manager about this copper.

[EchoRin]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_names_considered_unusual

[Joe Molotov]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_names_considered_unusual

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab,_Alabama

As late as 1990, Arab was a sundown town, with a sign warning African Americans not to stay in Arab after dark[7] and, historically, even barring them during the day.[8] Ku Klux Klan material has been disseminated multiple times in Arab in recent years.[9] While Alabama is 26% black, in the 2000 census 0.18% of the population of Arab was black.

Live in Arab and be a KKK member.

[EchoRin]

I also liked this little bit:

As a result of increased notoriety, road signs are commonly stolen in Fucking, Austria, as souvenirs[43]—the only crime which has been reported in the village.[44] It cost some 300 euros to replace each stolen sign, and the costs were reflected in the taxes that local residents pay.[45] In 2004, owing mainly to the stolen signs, a vote was held on changing the village's name, but the residents voted against doing so.[46] Tarsdorf municipality's mayor Siegfried Höppl stated that it was decided to keep the name as it had existed for 800 years,[46] and further stated that "everyone here knows what it means in English, but for us Fucking is Fucking—and it's going to stay Fucking."[47]

[Madrun Badrun]

https://www.scribd.com/doc/228831637/Optimal-Tip-to-Tip-Efficiency#download

Shosta you'd be intrested in this

[Madrun Badrun]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

[EchoRin]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emo_killings_in_Iraq

[chronovore]

In his single attempt at Formula One, he entered the 1977 German Grand Prix on 31 July 1977 with the second Penske car of the new German team ATS. With little experience in single seaters and a bad car, he did not qualify. He was the first reserve, meaning that he would get the chance to race if another driver dropped out; however, Heyer chose to start the race anyway, slipping out of the pits and joining the pack without the officials realising. Only when his gearbox failed after 10 laps was it realised that Heyer should not have been competing, whereupon he was disqualified. He never attempted another race in a single-seat car. He is the only driver to be credited with a DNQ (Did Not Qualify), DNF (Did Not Finish), and DSQ (Disqualified) in the same race.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Heyer

[Nintex]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emo_killings_in_Iraq

I read this as 'Elmo killings in Iraq' 

[Trurl]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet-related_injuries_and_deaths

[Borealis]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology

Hadn't crossed my mind that these preachers would think of something this bogus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airplane_game

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticanon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_horrors

[Uncle]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_with_longest_production_time

interesting reading about the various complications for many of these films

[Tasty]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_with_longest_production_time

interesting reading about the various complications for many of these films

I love reading up on that stuff too.

- The Act of Killing: This is near the top of my list of things to watch next, heard it's fantastic
- Avatar 2: "writing and visual effects prep work happening simultaneously for seven years" Did we learn nothing from the Star Wars prequels?
- Begotten: Still need to see this one
- Boyhood: IT TOOK TWELVE YEARS TO MAKE
- Eraserhead: One of the best examples <3
- Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time: Was surprised to see this here but it's true.
- Movie 43: How much behind the scenes info is there on this one? Lol
- The Thief and the Cobbler: The documentary on its making, Persistence of Vision, is really good

[Uncle]

interesting how many of these end up mixed up with redlettermedia in some way

dangerous men, boyhood, roar, and they've brought up some of the others over the years

I don't know if jay has ever mentioned begotten but it is probably in his wheelhouse

even thief and the cobbler has the gilchrist connection

[Great Rumbler]

Boyhood's a little different from most of the others since it had an extremely long production by design.

[EchoRin]

What the hell?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390





edit: the images are reconstructions, but that's how it would have looked

[Tasty]

Top 5 worst nightmares

[Tasty]

Also:

And that's why you always have a co-pilot.

[Tasty]

Also are those recreation pics fake news? It clearly says his knees were caught by the controls and his upper torso was outside the plane. He wasn't literally being held by his ankles while the rest was outside the window, it seems (or at least, that would be my interpretation.)

[EchoRin]

Yes. I saw an article with those pictures mentioning those were recreations. You can find a picture of the real people from the incident and they look different.

[Joe Molotov]

Also are those recreation pics fake news? It clearly says his knees were caught by the controls and his upper torso was outside the plane. He wasn't literally being held by his ankles while the rest was outside the window, it seems (or at least, that would be my interpretation.)

It says that he later slipped further outside the plane and his head started banging against the fuselage.

[Great Rumbler]

[team filler]

  what a dumbass, hope he wakes up screaming every night from ptsd 

[Tasty]

Also are those recreation pics fake news? It clearly says his knees were caught by the controls and his upper torso was outside the plane. He wasn't literally being held by his ankles while the rest was outside the window, it seems (or at least, that would be my interpretation.)

It says that he later slipped further outside the plane and his head started banging against the fuselage.

Yeah a couple inches. That doesn't go from knees to toes tho.

[Great Rumbler]

Well, he was at least far enough out that they couldn't pull him back in and at one point seriously considered just letting him go.

[EchoRin]

I also liked this little bit:

As a result of increased notoriety, road signs are commonly stolen in Fucking, Austria, as souvenirs[43]—the only crime which has been reported in the village.[44] It cost some 300 euros to replace each stolen sign, and the costs were reflected in the taxes that local residents pay.[45] In 2004, owing mainly to the stolen signs, a vote was held on changing the village's name, but the residents voted against doing so.[46] Tarsdorf municipality's mayor Siegfried Höppl stated that it was decided to keep the name as it had existed for 800 years,[46] and further stated that "everyone here knows what it means in English, but for us Fucking is Fucking—and it's going to stay Fucking."[47]

 :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'(

they finally broke. 2020 destroyed their will. It will now be Fugging from January 1st, 2021.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking,_Austria

[Great Rumbler]

There's actually another town in Austria that already did the same thing, back in 1836.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugging

[Joe Molotov]

There's actually another town in Austria that already did the same thing, back in 1836.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugging

Fugging was first referred to as Fucking in 1195 in a local monastery's parish records. Its name was later changed from Fucking to Fugging for an unknown reason by 1836.

It's both funny in context and out of context!

[Tasty]

Wikipedia is 20, and its reputation has never been higher

One of the only nonprofits I've given to repeatedly.

[EchoRin]

Ha! I can't actually read the Economist article beyond like the first 200 words (paywall), but Wikipedia has been pretty awesome. Been a great jumping off point for most of what I want to know.

[Tasty]

A video not an article but:



Spooky. Nothing happens for looooooong stretches then it all happens at once at the end and it's over like it didn't even happen. Reading up a bit more, according to witnesses you could hear the steal imploding and hitting the ocean floor as it went down. Goddamn that idea creeps me out.

[EchoRin]

The brutality of the end is always so unsettling. The majority of the passengers still aboard. It tilts up and then suddenly snaps in half. That alone is horrifying. And then before you're able to get a clue what's next the boat starts to get all vertical within seconds followed by a quick unceremonious sinking.

  

[Tasty]

https://www.mariowiki.com/Mario%27s_Bombs_Away

Given the Jungle setting and the style of uniforms that Mario and the other soldiers are wearing, the war in question was presumably the Vietnam War.

[Tasty]

WRONG THREAD-O

[Tasty]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

 

[Tasty]

The bizarre tale of the world's last lost tourist, who thought Maine was San Francisco

[Tasty]

They Hacked McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines—and Started a Cold War

[Tasty]

Separate (serendipitously posted) video:

[Uncle]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bed_of_Ware

https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/great-bed-of-ware

[Great Rumbler]

That is pretty great.

[Joe Molotov]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glico_Morinaga_case

[chronovore]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt_latrine_disaster

First paragraph.

[chronovore]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glico_Morinaga_case

Is it my imagination, or is that an unusually rambling Wikipedia article?

[Uncle]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt_latrine_disaster

First paragraph.

The Erfurt latrine event (German: Erfurter Latrinensturz) was an occurrence in Erfurt, Duchy of Thuringia, that caused the deaths of at least 60 people in 1184. A number of nobles from across the Holy Roman Empire were meeting in a room at the Church of St. Peter, when their combined weight caused the floor to collapse into the latrine beneath the cellar and led to dozens of nobles drowning in liquid excrement.

A feud between Louis III, Landgrave of Thuringia and Archbishop Conrad of Mainz which had existed since the defeat of Henry the Lion intensified to the point that King Henry VI was forced to intervene while he was traveling through the region during a military campaign against Poland. Henry decided to call a diet in Erfurt where he was staying to mediate the situation between the two and invited a number of other figures to the negotiations.

 

[Uncle]

 

[Uncle]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

Saturday Mthiyane (or Mifune) (1987), a boy of around five, was found after spending about a year in the company of monkeys in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He was given the name Saturday after the day he was found, and Mthiyane was the name of the headmistress of the Special School which took him in. At the age of around 17, he could still not talk, and still walked and jumped like a monkey. He never ate cooked food and refused to share or play with other children. In 2005 he was killed in a fire.

Dina Sanichar, discovered among wolves in a cave in Sikandra (near Agra) in Uttar Pradesh, India in 1872, at the age of 6. He went on to live among humans for over twenty years, including picking up smoking, but never learned to speak and remained seriously impaired for his entire life.

[benjipwns]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monowi,_Nebraska

According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 1. It is the only incorporated municipality in the United States with such a population.[7][8] The sole resident, Elsie Eiler, is the mayor as well as librarian and bartender

In this capacity, she acts as mayor, granting herself a liquor license. She is required to produce a municipal road plan every year in order to secure state funding for the village's four street lights

[benjipwns]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_the_Farter

Roland the Farter (known in contemporary records as Roland le Fartere, Roulandus le Fartere or Roland le Petour) was a medieval flatulist who lived in twelfth-century England. He was given Hemingstone manor in Suffolk and 12 hectares (30 acres) of land in return for his services as a jester for King Henry II. Each year he was obliged to perform "Unum saltum et siffletum et unum bumbulum" (one jump, one whistle, and one fart) for the King's court at Christmas.

[Joe Molotov]

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/bernybelvedere/status/1468952488506105871

[benjipwns]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jackson_Marion

Four years after Marion was executed, in 1891, John Cameron was found alive and explained that he had, during the nearly twenty years since his "murder", traveled to Mexico, Alaska, and Colorado.

Whoops.