The Compendium of Fake Facts

I figured we could do with a few more fun threads around here. So I made up a little compendium of fake facts to get you through your day:

  • Did you know? Text adventures were invented in 1977 by Tex A. Venture. Tex also invented the first microwave that didn’t kill you when you turned it on.

  • Did you know? Pete Townshend of The Who was inspired to write the rock opera Tommy after overhearing Ringo Starr boasting to Who drummer Keith Moon about being able to play pinball while “deaf, dumb, and blindfolded.”

  • Speaking of The Beatles, internet hit “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” is actually a fragment of a long thought lost Lennon/McCartney composition.

  • You may have heard that Melbourne, Australia was almost named Batmania. But did you know about all the other cities that were almost called Batman? There are over 14 of them, including Bane, Sweden; El Pingüino, Argentina; a couple of Robins in Canada; Nightwing, Ohio; and Hyper-Adapter, Scotland.

  • Hello Kitty is not actually a cat! Instead, she is a member of the marmot family.

  • Gentleman thief character Arsene Lupin enjoys considerable popularity in his native Belgium, and he even has an anime starring his descendent, entitled JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

  • Bonjour! Did you know that French was invented in 800 AD by Charlemagne?

That’s all for today! I hope to post some more facts next week, and the week after that. In the meantime, you can link to lists of fake facts that you like, or make up your own fake facts, or whatever. Have fun!

A total of 4 American Presidents had hooks for hands.

In Wyoming, it is illegal to give a bald man a noogie. If he shaved his own head, though, the maximum punishment is community service.

Believe it or not, this is half true!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/28963085

Haha, I heard about that! I think there was a news-site that interviewed Scott McCloud about it.

At least Musclemartini made the horizontal elevators run on time. We can’t even manage cold fusion.

If a mushroom doesn’t turn a silver spoon black then it is safe to eat.

The word ‘work’ is the first onomatopoeic word in the English language.

Dogs can’t look up.

For years a friend has insisted that in the event of emergency, ginger ale can be used in place of gasoline.

If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, they’d reach to the moon and back four times over.

But what kind of candy and nuts would they be, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts? And would maybes and howevers be, like, really gross vegetables?

Yeesh, that’s how it always is. People are never willing to list the facts that matter.

Parodies are illegal under UK copyright law, as is ripping CDs and DVDs for personal use.

  • The Coriolis Effect will make your CDs spin the wrong way in Australia.
  • Water is composed of two gins.
  • If you play Zork and you push all of the keys at the same time, then you will instantly win the game.
  • The internet was actually invented in China in the fourth century AD.
  • It is illegal to buy red underwear on Canada Day unless they have maple leafs printed on them.
  • The United States law originally required the entire world to use the same timezone.
  • The International Astronomical Conspiracy tampered with the video of the moon landing to remove any evidence there were ever any alien monsters there.
  • NASA destroyed the moon since then; what you can now see is actually a big photocopy of the moon with lights on it.
  • In Taiwan it is illegal to sell a DVD player to someone of a different religion than the manufacturer, unless the customer signs a form at first to say that it is OK, or if the box says “religion free” on it.
  • The reason we have leap years is because the Earth isn’t perfectly round.
  • When Infocom designed the Z-machine, they originally intended that it would be ported to the Famicom Disk System.
  • The first computer printers printed only in red.
  • The original television design had the scanlines in reverse order from what we have now.
  • Jeopardy! originally had only one clue per category, but they had twelve categories.
  • The popping crease in cricket was originally called a hopping crease, because the players were required to hop over that line.
  • The original purpose of daylight saving time was to confuse people.
  • There is an underground temple in a land which doesn’t belong to any country, where people say “God” exactly once per second while standing inside of a lit fireplace; if they fail, they are killed by the priest (who is required to the same things as everyone else; that means he might kill himself too)
  • Mona Lisa was originally called Lisa Mona, and then someone got it backwards. Also, all of the bones were drawn at first, and then the the blood, and then the body, and then several layers of clothing, but you can only see the one.
  • Pokemon game was originally going to be designed for Atari VCS.
  • This sentence is a lie.
  • Bricks are good to eat.

If lift-shafts were round, the support cables would unwind.
Donuts commemorate the Donner Party.
Ballroom dancing was a carefully designed as a warm-down exercise for men who wore armour all day.

The famous (for anti-Semitism) actor, Mel Gibson, is Australian.

The word “Life” is a recent addition to the English dictionary. It is said that the creators wanted a word that had “IF” in it.

It takes two IF authors to change a lightbulb. One to hold the lightbulb, the other to define the changing action.

My improvement on mostly useless’ ‘fact’: It takes three IF authors to change a lightbulb. One to hold the lightbulb, another to define the changing action, and the third to write the code that will implement it.

and a fourth, fifth, and sixth to review the changing of the bulb. :laughing:

Minced metaphors: IF Lightbulbs shine best after a short.