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Mildly interesting, completely useless facts


ShortOrderCook

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Zeppo Marx, of the Marx Brothers (between 1929 to 1933), invented the clamp that held the Atomic bomb on the Enola Gay.

 

He also came up with a wristwatch that would monitor the pulse rate of cardiac patients and give off an alarm if they went into cardiac arrest.

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Bill Paxton is the only actor to have been killed by a Terminator, a Predator and an Alien.

 

Not since Aliens vs. Predator came out.

 

Lance-Henriksen-lance-henriksen-27248041-485-388.jpg

 

 

Bill Paxton is the only actor to have been killed by a Terminator, a Predator and an Alien.

 

Incorrect! Lance Henriksen has.

Lance Henriksen wasn't killed by an Alien.

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The first British football team to have played in all four European club competitions (UEFA Champions League, UEFA Cup, Cup Winners' Cup and Intertoto Cup) was Cwmbran Town - currently languishing in the Gwent County League Division 1, the fifth tier of Welsh domestic football.

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Bishop was torn apart by the alien queen at the end of Aliens - I know he didn't 'die' from it, but it ultimately led to him being deactivated - does that not count?

I wouldnt count it, no. Bishop survived the alien attack. He was then further damaged by the ship crashing at the start of Alien 3. Ripley turned him off as a bit of a mercy killing, he even said in that conversation that he could be repaired, but he didnt want to be if he couldnt be a top line model, and asked Ripley to deactivate him. So no, I wouldnt consider that to have been the Alien killing him.

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Tomatoes were thought to be poisonous during the middle ages, due to a number of people dying after eating them. Although, it wasn't the fruit that killed them, but the lead plate they were eating off which activated with the acid from the tomato.

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That one's bollocks.

 

http://www.snopes.com/language/phrases/1500.asp

 

Tomatoes were generally shunned by most Europeans until the 19th Century, but not because they had discovered that tomatoes were acidic and lead from pewter plates therefore leached onto them. Many people believed tomatoes to be dangerous to eat because they resembled other plants known to be poisonous such as henbane, mandrake and deadly nightshade. For a long time the tomato was considered primarily an ornamental plant; eating its fruit was considered to be distasteful and potentially harmful.

 

As a rule of thumb, if you've heard Karl Pilkington mention something, it's probably not true.

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That one's bollocks.

 

http://www.snopes.com/language/phrases/1500.asp

 

Tomatoes were generally shunned by most Europeans until the 19th Century, but not because they had discovered that tomatoes were acidic and lead from pewter plates therefore leached onto them. Many people believed tomatoes to be dangerous to eat because they resembled other plants known to be poisonous such as henbane, mandrake and deadly nightshade. For a long time the tomato was considered primarily an ornamental plant; eating its fruit was considered to be distasteful and potentially harmful.

 

As a rule of thumb, if you've heard Karl Pilkington mention something, it's probably not true.

 

Fair rnough, although I tend to find the misguided urban legends a lot more interesting. Such as:

 

Back in the middle ages, graveyards became over crowded so they would dig up the oldest graves and re-use them. When doing this, they would find that some of the coffins had scratches on the inside of the lid, from people that had been buried alive. Scared that this could continue to happen, they would tie a piece of string around the corpses index finger and conect it to a bell above the grave. Then if the body would move the bell would ring. This is where we get the phrase "A Dead Ringer".

 

For this to be effective, someone would obviously need to be in the graveyard to here the bell. Hence "The Graveyard Shift".

 

Both of the above are complete bollocks, but both do sound like they could be true. I have no idea where the actual terms "Dead Ringer" & "Graveyard Shift" come from so if anyone could enlighten me I'd be grateful.

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