You Learn Something New Every Day!

[quodec]

Well this morning I learned from an acquaintance that Ben Kane, the famous historical novelist, spent much of his formative years in the next village up the road from me in Co Louth. Having read some of his books and knowing vaguely of an Irish connection I did not know he had spent his youth in the Wee County!!
So what did you learn today. Let it be big, small, unimportant or otherwise, this is After Hours - after all!

[quodec]

Castlebellingham. The acquaintance lives close to his parents who reside there. (So I'm told!)

[quodec]

Here's another new piece of info I learned today - the origin of the word 'quarantine'!
It comes from the old Italian 'quaranta', meaning '40 days'; when during times of plague in the middle ages, sailors on ships coming into Venice and other Italian ports were required to stay on board for 40 days in case they were carrying some dreaded disease!

[isha]

Recently I learned that conches have creatures inside them with eyes like these. Yup!

[CelticRambler]

There are many towns in France named (or including the word) Moutier or Moustier. I learnt today that this is the fault of inattentive monastic scribes, who either mis-wrote or mis-read the letter N in their manuscripts and made it a U. An easy mistake to make - if you've ever tried your hand at Latin calligraphy script (and probably even easier if you're reading and writing by candlelight in a draughty scriptorium).

Mind you, the original word was nothing more exotic than monaster(ium) so they really ought to have got it right!

[Wibbs]

Here's another new piece of info I learned today - the origin of the word 'quarantine'!
It comes from the old Italian 'quaranta', meaning '40 days'; when during times of plague in the middle ages, sailors on ships coming into Venice and other Italian ports were required to stay on board for 40 days in case they were carrying some dreaded disease!

They had tried 30 days but it wasn't sufficient. Venice also brought in the first health "passports" because of the various poxes that struck Europe for hundreds of years. They also built the first plague hospital and organised lockdowns and social distancing. Much of this was because unlike other Italian city states they didn't have walls around their city and it was one of the biggest ports for trade and travel in Europe at the time so they were very exposed.

One thing I learned last week was the origin of the word "barrel" when talking about guns or cannon. When gunpowder got to Europe we had decent iron and steel in place alright and we could cast a blank barrel, but to machine a hollow tube from it was bloody hard and very very expensive. So how the very early cannon were made was to make up metal staves held together by hoops. Just like a wooden barrel. Hence the name. Apparently.

[peasant]

I learned today that you can actually fling / spin rockets into space

[isha]

Dragonflies might cross oceans - I learned that last night
https://www.universal-sci.com/article/d ... g-an-ocean

They have not actually been tracked doing it, but the theoretical proposition that they can do it is being backed up. Using trade winds. Think about it! The tiny little things crossing vast oceans. Mind boggles.

Twelve years ago, a biologist named Charles Anderson hypothesized that dragonflies found in the Maldives could cross the Indian ocean for thousands of kilometers all the way to Africa.

Now, more than a decennium later, a group of scientists agreed to look into his assertion and see if these little critters could actually make it through such a long journey.

The globe skimmer is uncommon in Europe but otherwise considered on most widespread dragonfly on Earth. Sadly they proved to be too tiny to be outfitted with any sort of sender or transmitter to verify their travels.

So rather than using transmitters, the research team looked into the globe skimmer dragonfly's physiological characteristics and determined how long it might stay airborne utilizing the energy stored in its body. Furthermore, the researchers employed meteorological wind models to see if there are winds that might help migrants in both directions.
According to biology researcher Johanna Hedlund affiliated with Lund University in Sweden, the research indicates that migration from India to the east coast of the African continent is actually feasible.

Nonetheless, the globe skimmer dragonfly cannot travel these types of distances using just the fat it can stock in its tiny body, meaning that they need some help from favorable winds in their journey. Luckily these types of winds exist during specific times of the year.
The team performed experiments using wind models and found that approximately 15% of the globe skimmer dragonflies could make it all the way across the Indian Ocean to Africa. Interestingly, if the journey takes place during the autumn season, a remarkable 40% can make the journey in reverse from Africa to India.

Have a couple of pictures as well of dragonflies which must be one of the most gorgeous type of creatures.

[CelticRambler]

Cool theorising ... but I have to disagree with you on one point: they're ugly little feckers with grossly misshapen heads.

[quodec]

The world’s oldest person, Japan’s Kane Tanaka, is 119 years old today! She is the 3rd oldest person ever recorded. Happy Birthday to her!

[95438756]

A superficial knowledge of Stream Locomotive Engine Maintenance.

[Del.Monte]

A salutary tale indeed but sloppy operating procedures are not unique to enthusiast operated railways which, if anything, are operated even more carefully than their bigger brothers as one serious accident could be their last.

[isha]

This I had never heard of til today ...

Franz Ferdinand was trigger-happy.

Tigers in India, kangaroos, emus and wallabies in Australia and stag and deer in the forests of Austria all met their demise at the end of the archduke’s rifle.

“Anything that moved, he was ready to shoot,” said Lebow. His personal record was reportedly 2,140 kills in a day.

Franz Ferdinand tallied his kills in a massive journal. The grand sum of pheasant, partridge and ground game that he shot was 272,511, according to calculations published in “Archduke of Sarajevo.”

Emperor Franz Joseph described his nephew’s hobby as mass murder, said Cohen, while others considered it a mania.

Hunting trophies — an estimated 100,000 — cluttered his estate at Konopischt. You had to be careful walking down the halls to avoid getting impaled by antlers, said Cohen.

At the estate, “(t)he foot of a giant elephant, shot by the Archduke in Kalawana in 1893, serves as an ashtray; the foot of another such colossus from Ceylon as a wastepaper basket,” wrote a government official from Prague.

Over 300,000 animals in total, aside from those mentioned here.
And to think it was himself meeting the wrong end of a bullet that caused so much trouble. What an absolute psychopath he was.


https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/kings- ... orld-tour/

[quodec]

This is something I only recently heard about on a David Attenborough documentary - Africa's 'Great Green Wall.' Seemingly a fantastic project which should eventually - and hopefully - see a giant belt of sustainable trees planted across the sub-Saharan countries! Maybe there is some hope for us yet! Read more about it here!

www.greatgreenwall.org/about-great-green-wall

[isha]

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/ ... 11926?s=09

Mushrooms send electrical signals that mimic language signals

Once again it seems that mycelium are the master species!

[isha]

I never saw this before... It looks a bit sore, even for snakes . And the young snake comes out all ready to snake!

[765489]

I took delivery today of a chemical I got online wrapped around the bottle was this.

On further googling of "Taski Zorba" I find out its an absorbant strip that will absorbant one litre of nasty stuff per foot of strip if there was a spillage.

Going to save it now in my shed of possibly never to be used essential kit.

Screenshot_20220425-121447_Gallery.jpg

[schmittel]

Thanks to Isha on the twitter thread I now know what a MAP is - a "minor attracted person".

A pedophile in old money I guess!

[isha]

Sorry I feel bad

Here's a nicer thing to learn about, even though it is

[quodec]

The world’s oldest person, Japan’s Kane Tanaka, is 119 years old today! She is the 3rd oldest person ever recorded. Happy Birthday to her!

This lady sadly died last week aged 119 years and 107 days, the second oldest person ever recorded. She had a long life!!

[isha]

This I did not know until today. And it kind of boggles my mind. Michelangelo completed La Pieta when he was ....... 24 years old!!

He became an artist's apprentice aged 13, and entered the Platonic Academy at 15, and starting making public sculptures around that time.

[Hairy-Joe]

I took delivery today of a chemical I got online wrapped around the bottle was this.

On further googling of "Taski Zorba" I find out its an absorbant strip that will absorbant one litre of nasty stuff per foot of strip if there was a spillage.

Going to save it now in my shed of possibly never to be used essential kit.

Screenshot_20220425-121447_Gallery.jpg

I've seen and used pig mats and vermiculite to absorb chemicals but never heard of this. I must have a chat with the health and safety dept at work about getting this stuff as we use some nasty chemicals at work......

[isha]

Whole, fertile plants of Silene stenophylla Ledeb. (Caryophyllaceae) have been uniquely regenerated from maternal, immature fruit tissue of Late Pleistocene age using in vitro tissue culture and clonal micropropagation.

The fruits were excavated in northeastern Siberia from fossil squirrel burrows buried at a depth of 38 m in undisturbed and never thawed Late Pleistocene permafrost sediments with a temperature of −7 °C. Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating showed fruits to be 31,800 ± 300 y old. The total γ-radiation dose accumulated by the fruits during this time was calculated as 0.07 kGy; this is the maximal reported dose after which tissues remain viable and seeds still germinate.

Regenerated plants were brought to flowering and fruiting and they set viable seeds. At present, plants of S. stenophylla are the most ancient, viable, multicellular, living organisms. Morphophysiological studies comparing regenerated and extant plants obtained from modern seeds of the same species in the same region revealed that they were distinct phenotypes of S. stenophylla.

The first generation cultivated from seeds obtained from regenerated plants progressed through all developmental stages and had the same morphological features as parent plants. The investigation showed high cryoresistance of plant placental tissue in permafrost.

This natural cryopreservation of plant tissue over many thousands of years demonstrates a role for permafrost as a depository for an ancient gene pool, i.e., preexisting life, which hypothetically has long since vanished from the earth's surface, a potential source of ancient germplasm, and a laboratory for the study of rates of microevolution

20220514_082322.jpg (112.31 KiB) Viewed 4629 times

[isha]

In 1949, Dr. António Egas Moniz from Portugal won the Nobel prize for his development of the surgical procedure known as lobotomy.

[quodec]

In 1949, Dr. António Egas Moniz from Portugal won the Nobel prize for his development of the surgical procedure known as lobotomy.

I think I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy