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Trivia thread.

Lady Irony

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Feb 14, 2021
The new word thread made me think it would be fun to also have a thread where people can post a bit of trivia. One bit of trivia per post, any subject.

Here is my tawdry little offering to kick us off.

Gropecunt Lane
Gropecunt Lane /ˈɡroʊpkʌnt ˈleɪn/ is a street found in English towns and cities during the Middle Ages, believed to be a reference to the prostitution centred on those areas; it was normal practice for a medieval street name to reflect the street's function or the economic activity taking place within it. Gropecunt, the earliest known use of which is in about 1230, appears to have been derived as a compound of the words grope and cunt. Streets with that name were often in the busiest parts of medieval towns and cities, and at least one appears to have been an important thoroughfare.

Although the name was once common throughout England, changes in attitude resulted in its replacement by more innocuous versions such as Grape Lane. A variation of Gropecunt was last recorded as a street name in 1561.

Toponymy[edit]
Variations include Gropecunte, Gropecountelane, Gropecontelane, Groppecountelane and Gropekuntelane. There were once many such street names in England, but all have now been bowdlerised.[1] In the city of York, for instance, Grapcunt Lane—grāp is the Old English word for grope[2]—was renamed as the more acceptable Grape Lane.[3]

The first record of the word grope being used in the sense of sexual touching appears in 1380; cunt has been used to describe the vulva since at least 1230, and corresponds to the Old Norse kunta, although its precise etymology is uncertain.

 
Here's a piece of trivia that I always find amusing.

Han's Island is a barren spot of land off of Greenland that is claimed by both Denmark and Canada. The ownership of the land has been in dispute since the 70's with both countries performing military exercises in the area. However it has been said that the two nations hold a sense of humour over the situation, leaving Danish schnapps and Canadian whiskey respectively on the island for the other nation whenever they visit.

It was proposed in 2012 to split the island in half by a a border, which would have made the two counties land neighbours had the proposition gone through. The boundary between the two counties is still in discussion today.

 
Continuing on the military theme, Sir Nils Olav the Penguin mascot of the Norwegian Kings Guard regiment. The penguin lives in Edinburgh, Scotland and each time the regiment visits he gets promoted. They are up to Sir Nils Olav III now as each time the predecessor dies they replace him. Tradition goes back to 1972.

 
Microwave ovens invented by accident - Percy LeBaron Spencer was working on magnetrons—high-powered vacuum tubes that generate short radio waves called microwaves—when he accidentally discovered microwave cooking. The engineer was doing his job as usual when he noticed that the candy bar in his pocket had melted. Quickly Spencer realized that it was the magnetrons that were causing this phenomenon. By 1945, he had filed a patent for his metal cooking box powered by microwaves.
 
The "Black Box" Flight Recorder was first invented in 1954 by David Warren of the Aeronautical Research Laboratories, Australia.
 
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