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 Post subject: Strange but interesting facts
PostPosted: Sun Jul 24, 2011 8:17 pm 
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Air Conditioning the US Military Costs More Than NASA’s Entire Budget...
(http://gizmodo.com/5813257/air-conditio ... ire-budget)

In space, if unprotected pieces of metal touch each other, they stick together permanently.

Granite is chemically unstable.

It costs £70,000 to run an escalator in a london tube station for a year.

The Bowhead whale's lifespan can range from 150 to 200 years.

There are more trees in London than there are people.

The Bank of England is situated on Threadneedle Street. A few hundred years ago Threadneedle Street was called Gropecunt Lane because it was a favourite haunt of prostitutes.

The vibrator was originally used as a medicinal treatment for female "hysteria" during the 19th century.

So that explains it.

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 Post subject: Re: Strange but interesting facts
PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2011 12:49 am 
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dimejinky99 wrote:
The vibrator was originally used as a medicinal treatment for female "hysteria" during the 19th century.

So that explains it.

there's an amusing play about this in NYC.

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 Post subject: Re: Strange but interesting facts
PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2011 5:20 pm 
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taking down scaffolding is scary.

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 Post subject: Re: Strange but interesting facts
PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2011 5:40 pm 
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dimejinky99 wrote:
taking down scaffolding is scary.

It's fun though.

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 Post subject: Re: Strange but interesting facts
PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2011 9:25 pm 
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gotta put one up tomorrow. 3 storeys. not lookin forward to that.

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 Post subject: Re: Strange but interesting facts
PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2011 9:34 pm 
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Quote:
(In 1920) Many big thinkers were dreaming up dams and skyscrapers and subways of unimaginable scale for the time. But one man was busy out-thinking the rest. Herman Sörgel had a plan so grand that it would have changed the face of the Earth.

Sörgel was a German architect living in Munich. A follower of the Bauhaus school, he did not produce any notable architectural works in his lifetime. Instead, he is remembered for devising an audacious plan to dam the Strait of Gibraltar and lower the Mediterranean Sea by 200 meters. Known as Atlantropa, the project would have generated enormous amounts of electricity, irrigated much of the Northern Africa (though how the water would be desalinated is unclear), flooded the heart of the African continent, and exposed over 250,000 square miles (660,000 square kilometers) of land in a bathtub ring around the Mediterranean.

Atlantropa had a solution for every European problem. Feeling crowded? The plan would add another France and Austria’s worth of land. Need more electricity? Various dams would have generated 365,000 megawatts of power by some estimates. Short on food? Just import it from the new African breadbasket, now a mere train shipment away.

Image

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