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An interesting thing I didn't know until today

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  • WOM
    replied
    Originally posted by Balderdasha View Post
    I also don't know who Eddie Van Halen is. It's a name that sounds familiar but I could neither pick him out of a line up nor tell you any of his songs. Though I guess I now know that he sang on Beat It if that ever comes up on a pub quiz and if I remember it (I probably won't).
    Eddie was the guitar player for the band Van Halen, and his 'sound' was so distinctive that it stands out on Beat It. It was pretty common knowledge amongst 'the kids' at the time.

    Jimmy Sommerville is the falsetto singer from Bronski Beat, also dead easy to recognize singing background on the Fine Young Cannibals song.

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  • Balderdasha
    replied
    I also don't know who Eddie Van Halen is. It's a name that sounds familiar but I could neither pick him out of a line up nor tell you any of his songs. Though I guess I now know that he sang on Beat It if that ever comes up on a pub quiz and if I remember it (I probably won't).

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  • Balderdasha
    replied
    Originally posted by WOM View Post
    Hah…I casually mentioned the Beat It thing to my kids in the car once and L was like “Wait…what?” And I’m like “didn’t everyone know that???” I then peppered her with dead obvious musical factoids. Jimmy Sommerville sings backup on Suspicious Minds. Sting does on Money for Nothing. Etc.
    They may be dead obvious to you but I didn't know any of these facts and I also don't know who Jimmy Somerville is.

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  • hobbes
    replied
    Originally posted by elguapo4 View Post

    "A Roome with a view" I'm thinking.
    Bingo!

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  • Nocturnal Submission
    replied
    The majority of Turn! Turn! Turn! (words not music, silly) comes directly from the Book of Ecclesiastes.

    There can't be many pop songs with lyrics that could be 3,000 years old.

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  • WOM
    replied
    Hah…I casually mentioned the Beat It thing to my kids in the car once and L was like “Wait…what?” And I’m like “didn’t everyone know that???” I then peppered her with dead obvious musical factoids. Jimmy Sommerville sings backup on Suspicious Minds. Sting does on Money for Nothing. Etc.

    Leave a comment:


  • Patrick Thistle
    replied
    I think I did already know that Eddie Van Halen recorded the solo on Beat It. But I didn't know that the Van Halen album 1984 reached number 2 on the Billboard chart behind Thriller, meaning Eddie featured on the number 1 album and the number 2 album on the same chart.

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  • Sam
    replied
    Originally posted by Balderdasha View Post

    This is very sweet. She's a lucky lady.
    Thanks! The alternative explanation is of course that the mere sound of my voice sends her straight to sleep.

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  • WOM
    replied
    Madison Cawthorn, on the other hand, I don't think his chair was ever *not* in the photo.

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  • San Bernardhinault
    replied
    Even though I've known that he's wheelchair bound and have known that for a long time, you see it so rarely these days that it actually still comes as a surprise to me.

    It's always a good reminder, though, to put your prejudices aside. My first thought about wheelchair users is that they're sympathetic people who are deserving of a little extra patience and consideration given the limitations of their circumstances. Greg Abbot is a reminder that some wheelchair users, just like some traditionally able bodied people, are complete and utter shits.

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  • ursus arctos
    replied
    I think this is a relatively recent development.

    He was less self conscious about the wheelchair in his early campaigns.

    It wouldn't surprise me if it was done in response to Trump's incessant mocking of the disabled.

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  • WOM
    replied
    The only thing that compares, for me, in shock value was in the number of times I saw photo A, below, before they suddenly started cropping it like photo B.

    A)



    B)



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  • caja-dglh
    replied
    There is certainly a lot of co-operative photo selection that leave people able to not know Abbot is in a chair. I am not sure what motivates it, but it is definitely a pretty common surprise.

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  • ursus arctos
    replied
    Thus that element of the infinitely memed Bruno Gans scene from Downfall

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  • WOM
    replied
    Yeah, I thought of FDR. I remember watching a doc years ago where they said the press 'agreed' not to show him in his wheelchair, lest it make him look weak.

    Also, Hitler wore glasses, but strictly refused to be photographed wearing them. There are a few pictures of him where you can see them folded up in his hand.

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  • Nocturnal Submission
    replied
    Originally posted by WOM View Post
    So, this is Texas Governor Greg Abbott. I've seen his picture a hundred times...to the point where he's one of the very few governors I recognize by name on sight.



    So, imagine my surprise when I saw this picture and thought 'da fuck is Abbott doing in a wheelchair?'



    Turns out he's been in one since a horrendous accident in....1984.

    Now, I'm not suggesting a conspiracy of 'able-bodiedness' - and plenty of pictures abound of him in the chair - but I'm amazed that I've just never seen one before.

    I knew about Abbott's disability but, until I saw Steve Harley's obit on the BBC News programme, I had no idea that he'd been severely affected by polio, or even that he was a sufferer.

    Wasn't FDR's incapacitation hidden from the US public at the time, with relatively little film of him moving and revealing the degree of his impairment.

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  • WOM
    replied
    So, this is Texas Governor Greg Abbott. I've seen his picture a hundred times...to the point where he's one of the very few governors I recognize by name on sight.



    So, imagine my surprise when I saw this picture and thought 'da fuck is Abbott doing in a wheelchair?'



    Turns out he's been in one since a horrendous accident in....1984.

    Now, I'm not suggesting a conspiracy of 'able-bodiedness' - and plenty of pictures abound of him in the chair - but I'm amazed that I've just never seen one before.

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  • Balderdasha
    replied
    Not very common. Three of the top ten Google hits are still me. But there's also a Canadian pharmacist, a structural engineer, a Hindi YouTuber and the obligatory obituaries / genealogy websites (my first name was slightly more popular among overly religious immigrants to the USA for a bit).

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  • Balderdasha
    replied
    Actually scrap that. I just googled my first name and middle name and it's a surprisingly common combination.

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  • Balderdasha
    replied
    Originally posted by Janik View Post
    Likewise with my sister. But I would go further with her - there is a serious chance her name is unique in human history seeing as it pairs a Czech firstname that is actually not a proper firstname but instead a diminutive with a pretty esoteric Scandinavian surname. One of those surnames uncommon enough for the spelling to never have got standardised. Throw in on top of that my extended family doesn't use any of the five or six main variants but instead our own apparently unique spelling.
    This does sound rarer than mine. There were a few people with my first name and my maiden name (which was not very rare) who all seem to have died in the 1800s in the USA. My first name and married name could have occurred at other points in history but are quite unlikely to have for various reasons. My first name, middle name and married surname is almost certainly unique.

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  • Balderdasha
    replied
    Originally posted by Sam View Post
    ​​​ our current topic for me reading something from Wikipedia to my girlfriend as she falls asleep
    This is very sweet. She's a lucky lady.

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  • Sam
    replied
    Back in the (very) old days, six popes were married prior to becoming pope. I knew that already, because our current topic for me reading something from Wikipedia to my girlfriend as she falls asleep is going through each of the popes in order. Until today, we'd been through five once-married popes, all of whom were widowers by the time they were elevated to the papacy, and the last of those was Hormisdas, who died in 523 (we'd have read about him absolutely ages ago, because my girlfriend is normally out for the count after at most two paragraphs).

    We're now in the heady days of 867 – so over three centuries of never-married and at-least-pretending-to-be-celibate popes later – and have reached Adrian II. And here's my ITIDKUT: although the expectation that the pope would be a bachelor and celibate had well and truly set in by this point, he was made pope anyway ... even though he didn't want to be ... and even though he not only had previously got married, but also in fact had a wife who was still alive! And a daughter! They moved into the Lateran Palace with him. This is already quite an interesting curiosity if I just end my post here, right? Well imagine my surprise when I found that his wife has her own Wikipedia page, and that we know what year she died in ... and then read down and found out why we know what year she died in:

    The daughter of Adrian II and Stephania married Eleutherius, a relative of the Papal librarian Anastasius Bibliothecarius. However, Eleutherius withheld the fact that he was already espoused to another.[9] In 868, Stephania and her daughter were abducted by Eleutherius and murdered by him.​
    Bloody hell!

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  • caja-dglh
    replied
    Originally posted by S. aureus View Post
    It probably says something about me, but the territories represented in this map just bring to mind a pair of phalli.
    It says everything about you Staph. Everything. I bet you see those phalli cos you are still drunk on Guinness and dressed your kids up as Leprechauns. It ISnT evEN iN theRE BlOOd. If you let me see them I would smack that filth out oyer with my Red Right Hand.

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  • ursus arctos
    replied
    I would suggest that quite a few colonial outposts established along rivers had that general shape

    The Gambia , Togo and Benin retain it

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  • Hot Pepsi
    replied

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