Random Thursday

We have reached the final chapter of The Little Book of Answers by Doug Lennox! It feels like we've been going through this book for ages! And we probably have. Lol. This last chapter is on Trivia so let's see what new facts we can learn today!

(image borrowed from Wikipedia)

When we see a statue of a rider on a horse, it's telling us that a hero or monarch died. The amount of hooves that the horse has raised tells us how the hero died. If one hoof is in the air, like pictured above, it means the rider died from wounds incurred during battle. If two hooves are in the air the rider died in battle and if all hooves are on the ground, the rider died a natural death.

That's interesting! I feel like I've heard this once before, but obviously hearing the meaning behind the hooves in the air seems fresh!

(image borrowed from Mental Floss)

Contrary to popular belief, SOS does not mean "save our ship" or "save our souls." It actually doesn't stand for anything--though I think we'll always think of "save our ship." SOS was chosen as a distress signal in Morse code at an international conference in 1906. Because it was such a short code 9 characters, it was thought to be the easiest combo to transmit.

Wow. So we pretty much made it up that SOS means "save our ship!"

(image borrowed from Wikipedia)

We all think that the shortest sentence to use all the letters of the alphabet is, "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," when in fact a shorter sentence exists! The previous sentence is 35 letters long and this one here is 31 letters: "Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz."

I totally forgot about the quick brown fox! Though I'll admit jackdaws doesn't flow as easily.

(image borrowed from Youtube)

In 2400 BC, the ancient Sumerians used six as their mathematical base and divided a circle into 360 degrees with each degree subdivided into another 60 parts, and so on. The Romans called these units "minuta prima" or first small part and "secunda minuta" or second small part. This system became ideal for round clock faces and that's where we get 60 seconds for a minute and 60 minutes for an hour.

Never really gave thought to this before!

(image borrowed from The Next Web)

The world's largest number is the "googoplex." It's 1 followed by a billion zeroes. This number allows us to calculate the number of electrons passing through a 40watt light bulb in a minute roughly equaling the number of drops of water flowing over Niagara Falls in a century.

Googoplex. I like it! Lol.